Author's Note: Before I get going, thanks for all your reviews so far. And a special request - could guest reviewer Anonymonomanamo please get in touch with me? I want to chat you ya! Either make an account and login to PM me, or you can email me at dragonbabezee at aol dot com. That goes for any other members without accounts too who would like answers to their questions about my fics, but I am pretty keen to catch up with a fellow Kiwi DBZ fan. Who knows, we could be neighbours. Peace, love and jandals (not today though, it's still fecking freezing outside).

It's still early days in this fic, but I hope you are all digging it already.


They had left the city and its outlying suburbs far behind.

As Vegeta flew on towards the lightening horizon he began to be filled with a growing discomfort. His head hurt in a way that made him reluctant to swing his head around, his stomach felt queasy, his tail was beginning to throb painfully, and each movement sent a fiery lance of pain right up his spine. Worst of all was realising that he'd not been in full control of himself these last couple of hours. He felt rather like he'd been out drinking all night, and now he was coming to his senses amidst his hangover.

He draped his tail loosely around his leg to minimise its movement, then braced himself to look over his shoulder at the source of the annoyingly loud buzzing. The girl was trailing him on that machine. He groaned and turned away again. His memories of the night were foggy. The last thing he remembered clearly was accidentally waking the girl and forcing her to help him find his tail. It had been a dumb move, but he'd been desperate. He dimly remembered a serum spray, minor surgery to reattach his tail, and being very happy. A little more clearly he remembered yelling at some brats and then their escape through the window. Kakarott, that was right. A fortuitous find. And the girl was indeed the princess he had heard of. He'd overhead her story, confirming as much.

He had brought Kakarott along with him, but he was not sure now if his decision to bring the girl was sound. It hadn't been his original intention. He'd been hoping that during his surveillance of her he would be able to uncover the secret to finding and using the mystical gems, but to his frustration, so far he'd found nothing of consequence. The girl lived an inane life of indulgence and talked in her sleep. The most useful thing he had discovered was that she was some sort of scientific protégé. Apparently she also possessed the craftiness to drug him, and the fact that he'd been compromised disturbed him. He'd already been contemplating a change of tactic, probably involving a discrete kidnapping and interrogation, but instead he'd allowed himself to be injured, then winged it and ended up in this messy palaver with no clear memory of what he'd done or exposed. He couldn't even properly remember what he had said to her. Well, if she was no use to them and he'd said too much, at least she would be at hand to dispose of, and not be a witness for Frieza to scoop up. In the meantime the girl would have to be watched, as perhaps she was not as harmless as she seemed.

Something squirmed in his hand and he looked across to the creature he still grasped.

'Are you a daemon?' he asked it plainly.

'No. I don't even know what that is,' it said glumly.

'It's a thrall,' he told it. The creature still looked back dumbly. 'It's a being with no free will, whose purpose is to serve its master with whatever skills or knowledge it possess. Some races use them. Some races make good daemons.'

'I'm a cat,' it said, and Vegeta thought he detected a note of derision in its voice.

'I've seen many things called "cats" on various planets. None of them was sentient. Are you sure you're not a creation of that girl or her kind?'

'Yes, I'm sure! I was born in a village of cats, and we can all talk and fly.'

'If you're not a daemon, what use are you?' He squeezed the cat harder to let it know that useless equalled dead. The cat choked and then suddenly disappeared, replaced by a snake. Vegeta was so shocked the he flung it away from himself. The snake fell through the air and he watched it go, wondering what manner of dark science this was, when the snake exploded outwards in a flurry of feathers. It was now a hawk, which wheeled around below him and began beating its wings frantically to get away. Vegeta was breathing hard, not knowing what he was dealing with, but one thing was sure – that creature was making a beeline back the way they had come and it knew everything that had happened this night, which was more than Vegeta did.

He grimaced with pain as he dropped downwards and then turned over in the air, putting on a brutal burst of speed, catching up with the hawk within a handful of seconds. He snatched it in mid flight, and it gave a keening cry of despair before turning back into the cat. The girl slowed and turned the buzzing craft around to see what was happening. Kakarott was still far behind. Who was that other figure with Kakarott? Oh, the assistant. He had almost forgotten.

He turned, groaning again, to take his place in the lead, his grip on the cat firmer than ever. The damn thing transformed again, nearly slipping his grasp again as it grew enormously into an orange beast with black stripes and killer teeth and claws. It turned on Vegeta, curling up in the air to rake into him with its rear legs, roaring as it did so. Vegeta gasped in shock as his body armour saved him from the unexpected mauling, but he didn't let the beast have another go. He gave it a sharp blow across to the side of the head and it went limp, popping back to its usual form with a yelp.

'Well,' said Vegeta, 'that does seem very useful. What other services do you perform for your mistress?'

'Bulma isn't my mistress,' the cat said miserably. 'I was looking out for her because she's Yamcha's girl, and he asked me to.'

'And who is Yamcha?'

'My best friend – the one who you tried to kill earlier!'

'Tried to kill?' said Vegeta, slowing in the air. Shit! He'd meant to destroy the sentry in the bushes. How long would it take to get back there and finish him off?

'No!' said the cat, reading his intention. 'He's not a witness; you don't need to kill him! He barely saw you, and from a distance. He has nothing to tell!'

Vegeta frowned and tried to review his fuzzy memory. He supposed it was right, and he really didn't want to waste time going back. Blast the girl and her serums!

'So what other tricks did you do for your master? Be truthful now – useful or not, I'll kill you without a second thought if I find you've lied.'

'No other tricks! I give him advice and company because he's my friend!'

Vegeta brought the cat to his face and looked into its frightened black eyes. 'It sounds to me like you are a daemon. Well, you're my daemon now. My "friend" now.'

The cat struggled weakly and gave a cry.

'None of that,' commanded Vegeta. 'Obey me, aid me, and you'll come to no harm. Escape, and I'll kill the girl then come back for you and your old master. Do we have a deal?'

The cat began weeping and went limp in his hand again. 'Deal,' it said brokenly.

'Then my first order is; shut up. I detest the sound of self-pity.'

The daemon obeyed. Pleased, Vegeta looked away into the lightening horizon, where the dark shadow of a forest could be seen growing closer. It was probably only another half hour before dawn. He yawned. If Nappa was still in bed when he got back he was going to kick him out of the bedroom and shut him out with the rest of the rabble while he got some sleep.

'My name is Puar,' said the little voice.

Vegeta gave the cat a sneer. 'Poo-arr?' he repeated, rolling the silly name around his tongue. 'I will called you Daemon. You will call me Master or Prince Vegeta.'

The cat's miserable face turned hostile. Vegeta chuckled at its offence and flew on.


Tarble was bored. Yet again he was stuck on the early morning sentry duty. Nappa swore he was just following the roster, but for some reason Tarble seemed to be rostered to the crappiest shift more often than not. Tarble suspected that Nappa was full of shit.

The pine tree he had spent the last four hours perched in was uncomfortable and he was sticky with sap. When Prince Vegeta had sought him out on Planet Tech-Tech, revealed his Saiyan heritage and told him to come away with them to avenge their people, it had sounded tremendously exciting. Tarble had been overjoyed to join people who looked like him, whom he had a natural place with instead of being the tall, funny-looking freak all the time like he was amongst the Tech-Techies. At eleven years old he had already been stronger than the strongest Tech-Techie. When he'd been a young child he had transformed under every full moon and killed thousands of Tech-Techies until the gentle people figured out what triggered his monstrous transformation. Since then he'd spent every thirteenth day, the full moon of planet Tech-Tech's lunar cycle, in confinement under observation. The other twelve days of the month he'd tried to do every good deed he was allowed, but it didn't matter. He would always be just the strange, dangerous alien to most Tech-Techies.

He'd grown up on the charity of curious friends and strangers. The idea of having true kin was irresistible. But every day since he'd climbed on board the Saiyan's space ship, there hadn't been a single one that he hadn't regretted it.

He sighed. A year on, his place amongst his "people" was as the runt of the pack. The freakishly weak and soft. It was too late to turn back now. He would just have to try and live up to his birthright. The Tech-Techies had called him violent and overly-physical in his approach to everything. They had no concept of violence compared to the older Saiyans.

His post was near the top of a hill. Below him on one side the forest fell away into a deep valley. At the bottom of the valley, tucked away out of sight in a clearing was their ship. He made another revolution around the trunk of the tree, his weight shaking the trunk and branches this high up, and this time he saw something through the infrared binoculars. Some tiny dots. Tarble felt his stomach immediately drop. Two dots coming this way? Sentry duty was bad enough when nothing happened!

Nervously he fingered the radio com unit. The others wouldn't thank him for waking them if it was just some flying dinosaurs like last time. But they might thank him if he killed the flying dinosaurs…Nappa and the others were never likely to turn their noses up at fresh meat.

'Oh no,' he whispered as the specks came closer. He could sense that one of them was Vegeta. That was one thing that he was good at that the other Saiyans were useless at. For all their power and control of Chi they couldn't sense it worth a damn, and instead relied upon their scouters. The Tech-Techies were weak, but even the children were trained to use their sense of Chi.

What or who could possibly be coming back with Vegeta?

If Vegeta was being pursued he should raise the others. But if it was something innocuous he didn't want to get on the bad side of Nappa again. He still had the bruises from last time. He needed a second opinion.

He raised the com unit to his lips. He didn't have a scouter like the older Saiyans because he'd never been in the Planet Trade Organisation Army. They weren't using the communicators on the scouters anyway. Vegeta said that the tech sharks on Frieza's planet recorded everything transmitted over the scouters, and in that way Frieza might track them down. These old-fashioned hand held units they had found on the ship, and that was what he'd been given to use on sentry duty.

'Hey, is someone awake?' Please not Nappa, please not Nappa! he prayed silently. 'Hey! I have a situation out here.'

'What is it Tarble?' came Raditz's irritated reply. His voice sounded sleepy.

'Vegeta is on his way back, but there's someone with him!'

'Who?'

'I can't tell from this far away.'

'Is it friend or foe?'

'I don't know!'

'Well, is Vegeta flying alongside them or is he coming in fast and ahead of them?'

'Um, not sure. Maybe the second. Raditz, maybe you should come up here and make the call.'

'No, Tarble, you gutless little shit! I'm on the crapper. You make the call!'

'Oh no, they're much closer now!'

'Make the call, Tarble.'

'I think he's being chased!'

Raditz must've taken the radio away from his mouth to yell out through the ship. 'WAKE UP, VEGETA'S ON HIS WAY BACK WITH COMPANY AND TARBLE'S HAVING A MELTDOWN!'

Tarble choked at Raditz's chosen phrasing but then his anxiety climbed higher as he could see Vegeta and the stranger even without the binoculars now. Vegeta was in front, and the other person was not flying under their own power, but was on the back of some mechanical beast. Was it weaponised?

'Raditz, please get out here! I think Vegeta's in trouble!'

He could hear shouts and movement on the other end. 'All right,' said Raditz, 'we're coming. But I better not have pinched a loaf for a false alarm, is all I'm saying.'

Tarble decided to fly back towards the ship so that Vegeta and whoever it was wouldn't overtake him, but as he flew low over the trees he realised that he was flying away from battle. If the enemy was powerful enough to have Vegeta on the run, Tarble didn't stand a chance and he knew it, but the pursuer probably hadn't noticed him. The others were always having him on about how meek and cowardly he was. The fact that he'd never (consciously) killed anything more sentient than a cow was a black mark against his name according to Vegeta, Raditz and Nappa. Vegeta had killed his first person when he was four, or some ridiculous age. Tarble couldn't run from his first real opportunity to live up to his birthright by defending his Prince. The others weren't going to get here in time to be any use – Tarble was Vegeta's only back-up.

He took a position hidden behind another trunk and gathered his energy. He would attack the threat under the element of surprise. It might be the last thing he ever did, but if it worked his standing amongst his fellow Saiyans could only rise.

Vegeta flew overhead, and then the person on the noisy craft. They hadn't noticed him, and when the intruder's back was to him and they were bearing down on the ship he fired his Chi blast.


Vegeta swooped low to land with great relief on the mossy ground in front of the spaceship's closed hatch. It was a common saucer design, of which there were many variations throughout the galaxy. This one stood on six sturdy, insectile legs, was about two and a half storeys high at its apex, and was the size of a medium sized house. Three space pods were docked to the side of it like lifeboats, and the top was a clear, shallow dome that gave the cockpit and command level a view in every direction except down.

He touched down and belted his gloved fist against the metal skin of the craft, making it ring in a rather unsubtle request for the occupants to open up. Just as he did so though a prickling feeling at the back of his neck made him swing his head around just in time to see a bolt of energy slam into the girl on the hovering contraption. She screamed and Vegeta cursed, sure he was seeing his last two weeks effort and his hope of destroying Freiza being wiped out before his eyes. The craft exploded, but the girl was thrown free, plummeting through the air. Vegeta let go of the cat and tried to get under her, but he was too far away. Luckily her fall was broken by a tree branch. She hit it head first and then fell limply the rest of the way to the ground, where Vegeta managed to catch her before she landed.

He looked at the body in his arms dumbly as he heard the hatch open and his men come tumbling out in a babble of confusion. The cat rushed over with a tiny cry of, 'Oh no, Bulma!'

'Prince Vegeta, what is it? Are you all right, sir?' he heard Nappa above all the others.

The girl's hair was darkening with blood and he could feel it running down his forearm. He could feel no pulse of life in her. Such a frail creature couldn't survive such trauma. She didn't move.

'Crap. She's dead,' he said softly.

The daemon sighed and fell to the ground, passed out cold.

'Who did this?' said Vegeta, looked back the other way and upwards to see where the blast had come from. Tarble floated into view. His nervous face sagged into horror when he saw the girl in Vegeta's arms.

'I - I thought you were being attacked!' Tarble said.

Vegeta placed the girl on the ground in front of the others and turned back to Tarble. 'And you thought you'd save me? You! You're a weakling and an idiot, and now she's dead!' He released his temper in one powerful blow to Tarble's nose, and the boy was knocked back against the tree that the girl had hit, knocking it loose from the ground. Vegeta watched him for a second, clutching his face and rolling onto his knees to deal with the blood that was dripping from both nostrils. At least the runt didn't cower like he used to. He took his punishment like a man these days.

'Fucking Tarble,' said Nappa. 'The prince brings us a gift and you go and kill it! Nice one.'

Vegeta turned away, feeling unaccountably depressed. His glove was wet with her blood. He'd killed many, many people, but having one killed in front of him that he wanted to remain alive was a new experience. What would they do now? Would the assistant be able to find and use these dragonballs alone?

'Brolly,' he said to the youngest Saiyan. 'Get rid of the body.'

Brolly nodded in his usual subdued manner and leaned over the girl. He was younger than Tarble, but he was about a foot and a half taller. No doubt he was going to be a giant like Raditz when he was done growing. His eyes were invariably gentle and distant looking. Sometimes Vegeta thought it made him look wise beyond his years, and sometimes he just looked like a simple-minded dolt. One could almost forget he was there, but he could be relied upon, except for those few times that Brolly lost that far-away look. Then he could be very unreliable and very difficult to ignore indeed.

As Brolly lifted the girl she made a little noise like a moan.

'Sir,' said Brolly calmly. 'She's not dead.'

Vegeta wheeled around and pressed a hand over her heart. It was still beating, though it was softer than he would expect, more like a bird's than a Saiyan's; no wonder he'd missed it before.

'Hmm,' he said. 'Looks like she is not as delicate as I thought.' He sighed in great relief, although now they would have to deal with an injured girl. He swiftly ran his hands over her limbs and torso looking for more injuries. He couldn't help noticing how soft she was. There wasn't a lot to her, not like a soldier. He felt something rather amiss in the front of her shoulder.

'She has a broken collarbone and that blow to the head. I suppose she'll probably live. Take her inside.'

'Thank goodness,' said Tarble, his voice distorted as he gripped his bleeding nose.

'Shut up,' snarled Vegeta. 'It's only due to your incompetence that she's still alive. If you'd actually hit your target instead of the machine she'd have been blown to bits.'

Tarble's face twisted up bitterly. 'I am sorry, Your Highness,' he said, but Vegeta turned his back on him without acknowledging the apology.

As Brolly moved to take her inside Nappa spoke up. 'Why wait for her to heal? Why don't we just kill this one anyway and go get an undamaged girl?'

'What?' said Vegeta, rounding on the big, bald man. 'Did I not say that no-one was to pick up any waifs and strays for entertainment?'

'Isn't that what you've just done? I thought you'd changed your mind.'

'You thought that just because I've brought a female back that she was for you?' His disgust was so evident that Nappa took a half step back and went on the defensive. Raditz looked disappointed too, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

'Well, for all of us, but if she's just for you, th-that is your prerogative, my Prince,' said Nappa. As Vegeta still glared at him Nappa went on talking. 'In fact I would be pleased for you. I was wondering when the day would come when you'd wake up the pleasures of keeping a female handy.'

'She's not for anyone!' snapped Vegeta. 'This is the Princess the old Namekian talked about! She came with me to help us, if you can believe it, so keep your dick in your pants!'

Had she really said that? That she would help them? No doubt he had made some threats to her along the way, but she had been following him instead of being carried kicking and screaming. She was a willing volunteer, so that willingness was probably worth preserving for as long as possible. Letting Nappa rape her would probably end that willingness pretty fast.

'You are neither of you to touch her,' he told Nappa and Raditz, looking between the both of them. 'There will be dire consequences if she complains you have forced yourselves upon her.' Tarble joined him at his elbow looking horrified at the warning he was hearing. He was the only one of the company who was shorter than Vegeta, but instead of being glad to have someone he didn't have to look up to when he ordered them around, somehow it just made him despise Tarble more.

'I'd never do something like that, Prince Vegeta!' he said.

'I know you wouldn't, you useless little squirt. Now go tell Brolly what I said!'

'Wait, Vegeta,' said Tarble, offering up a bundle of blue and brown fur. 'What's this?'

'Mine,' said Vegeta, and snatched up the unconscious daemon. Man, his head and his tail were hurting something chronic. He'd see the girl settled and then get right to bed.

'Oh, by the way,' he said to Raditz before he forgot, 'I found your brother.'

'Kakarott?' said Raditz, suddenly perking up. 'Where is he?'

'Following. Or at least he was.' Vegeta realised that he hadn't kept track of the boy. Had he lost him? It would be rather hard to find him again if so. He sent a flare of chi high up into the early morning sky and exploded it in a pretty display of crackling white energy. If the kid were within a dozen miles he wouldn't be able to miss that.

'If he turns up, don't expect much.' And then he pushed between Raditz and Nappa to make his way up the ramp into the ship.


'Look, Goku!' said Krillin, staring ahead at the sudden firework-like display on the horizon. 'You think that's where they are?'

'I think so,' said Goku. 'It feels like it anyway.'

They flew onwards, both of them nearly slipping out of the sky at times as their concentration failed. Goku's eyes kept sliding shut.

'Urh, Krillin, I'm so tired.'

'Me too, Goku. Flying is exhausting. That Vegeta guy didn't exactly take it slow for us beginners!'

'He seems pretty mean,' said Goku.

'Do you think he's really an alien?'

Goku frowned and lashed his tail around in the air. He'd never met another human with a tail. At first he'd thought that it was weird that all the people he met had no tails, but then he'd come to realise that he was the weird one.

'I don't know,' he said, 'but he says I am what he is…a Sayun? So if he is an alien, so am I.'

Krillin regarded his friend nervously. 'You know, that kind of makes sense, given everything I know about you. Who else could eat as much food as you do and not grow to the size of a whale? And the tails you both have are kind of a give-away.'

Goku's frown deepened. He felt very uneasy about all this. He'd never thought much about where he'd come from or who his parents might be. He was Grandpa Gohan's grandson, and that had been good enough for him. He wasn't going to forget that and do what some stranger told him to just because they were both 'Sayuns', whatever that was.

They were flying over forest now, going even slower to look down and around for where Bulma and the prince might be.

'Do we even know what we're looking for?' said Krillin. 'How careless was that guy for getting so far ahead of us? It's like he hardly cares if we show up at all.'

But when they saw the ship nestled in the heart of a valley they knew they had found what they were looking for.

'It's a flying saucer, Goku!' said Krillin looking at his friend with wide eyes. 'Congratulations; you're an alien.'


Author's Note: I'm continuing to write this story, but I will take a goodly long break from posting while I get a handle on the plot. If you like what you've read so far, add it to your following list, and hopefully in a few months the updates will begin to flow :) Of course, if you want to leave me a review or a PM with some encouragement, that would be nice too.