Forming a Bond

Chapter Four

Footsteps fell in a rapid beat as he hurried to the throne room. He had hear the most vicious rumor. He had to make sure it wasn't true. Surely the King wasn't really planning on dispatching his son...not after how long it took to force his zeyato to submit and breed with him. Broly had done nothing wrong!

From the look on King Vegeta's face when he entered unannounced into the Throne room, Paragus had a feeling he had already lost. But he had to try.

"No more discussion. I want his son executed immediately."

The room fell quiet as the noticed Paragus' entrance.

"Paragus, I didn't call for you," King Vegeta said in his thunderous voice.

"Sire, have mercy on him," Paragas pleaded.

He tried to continue forward, feeling all his instincts screaming that this was a bad idea. But as the king stepped down, two guards rushed at him and grabbed his arms.

"He can be of great help..." Paragus struggled against the two guards, "to the prince! And to our planet! Please he's just a child. The data could be wrong! He could grow up to be a great warrior."

The look on King Vegeta's face told him all he needed to know.

"That's exactly what I'm worried about."

"Noooo!" Paragus called out as he continued to struggle.

"And I don't like arguments. You'll die with him!"

King Vegeta powered up a ki blast, slamming it directly into his General's stomach. Color's exploded in his vision and he could have sworn he heard his child's cry. But the world went to black and he went unconscious before he could figure out if it had been his imagination.

It took a while to regain a semi-state of consciousness. By that time Paragus had been thrown into the garbage shoot for incineration. His son lay next to him, bleeding out. Paragus stretched as far as his beaten body would allow and attempted to staunch the flow. He wasn't good at this shit. Annya should have been there. King Vegeta was no fool, he knew that his zeyato had the support of many of the elites and grunts. He wouldn't have attacked so quickly if she had been there. But that didn't matter right now. All that mattered was saving the both of them.

Broly gave a slight twitch as the ground shifted underneath them. Suddenly everything started to get very hot at an accelerated rate. Paragus looked around in what had just been a poorly lit up furnace. Lava...the ground was splitting all around them. The planet was about to explode! Grasping for breath, Paragus was unprepared for when Broly opened his eyes and the turned white from power. The child rose into the air, screaming, and Paragus held onto his leg.

Together they escaped the planet just before it was destroyed. Paragus would never be able to forget the awe he felt the moment he understood the true potential of his son's young power.

Space was a funny thing, especially when traveling through it. Flight plans could be changed at the touch of a few buttons, yet there was no feeling of actually flying. And sometimes getting to the same destination could take longer than any time before. It was a combination of all of that, that prolonged Annya's trip to get the Princess. Not to mention the fight they had encountered just when she had convinced the girl to come back. She was definitely not expecting to come out of a week long hibernation (it was only supposed to be a day!) only to face opposition from Frieza's goons. A chill had settled into her for that fight.

What a fight it was - those men had not been playing around. In fact, by all rights, they should have won. Her scouter had measured their power levels and calculated her chance to win. There hadn't been a high percent chance at all. She had even kept Leta out of the fight because of the likelihood that they killed her. But apparently birthing had the same effect as a life threatening fight. So her strength must have increased since she last measured herself because of that. That was the only plausible reason for why she was still alive.

Her mind had raced with the idea of why Frieza was hunting them down and there were no scenarios that she could tolerate. One of them ended up coming true. Annya found it hard to breathe when they arrived a few days later to where their planet was supposed to be. There wasn't even a solid chunk of it left, just dust. She had even decompressed her pod and opened the hatch, holding her breath, in the middle of one of the dust fields. Her hand grasped at weightless sand in disbelief.

Her home was gone. Her baby was dead.

Annya's body shook but she wasn't sure why. She didn't know if it was sadness, anger, or a lack of oxygen. What she did know was that the two handfuls of dust she managed to grab would never be enough to remake her planet. Or give her, her son back. Returning to her pod she sealed the door and reset the environment controls so she could take a breath once more.

The sound of a whimper filled her ear through the scouter. Leta was obviously as distressed as Annya over the loss of her planet. That or she wasn't as reserved as Annya had come to expect. Hopefully it was the later - the loss of one's planet should be the only reason a saiyan princess should whimper.

Annya tapped on her scouter to send a message, "Chance of finding survivors is low."

Not the friendliest things of saying, of course, but she didn't feel very friendly as she stared at the space where her world had been. There was silence between them as they stared out through their pod's window. Annya found an empty ration container with her tail stored under her seat where she had stashed the syringes, emptying the handfuls of dust into them. It might have been irrational...but she couldn't let it go. Their planet...the only thing that they never seemed to be able to damage...gone. Her son...gone...

All either of them had was what was inside of their pods.

"What do we do?" Leta's voice came out in a whisper.

Annya could practically imagine Leta's blue eyes, dark as any deep lake, turning to look at her. Annya tugged at her own dark red hair, her aburn tail falling slack over her thighs.

"Survive," was Annya's first responce. "We will be fine Leta. We are saiyan elites. We will be fine."

Someone was going to pay. She didn't care if she had to flood the universe in blood or destroy all the inhabitted planets. But someone was going to fucking pay for taking her home and her son from her. And when that time came she hoped it would get the pain spreading through her entire body to stop.

"Where will we go?" Leta questioned.

"Tasbar...there was a squad on Tasbar. Maybe they survived."

If the had, and they were smart, it was unlikely they were still there. But it was possible. And a possibility was better than nothing. Even if there were no signs of other saiyans what did they have to loose by checking?