So. I've been fighting with this chapter most of the summer, pretty much ever since I finished the last one and it was never my intention to take this long. I've always known how it would end, basically since I started writing this fic in the first place, but the actual exposition and action has been an absolute clusterfuck to write.
Hope you enjoy!
"Alright, listen up!" Daikon bellowed as he entered the training room. His squad of seventy soldiers immediately shut up and waited while he walked across the mats to the front of the room and hopped up on a bench against a wall. "I gotta say all of this so pay attention," he ordered, waving his clipboard. His squad snickered and settled down on the floor for the rigamarole that they all had to go through each time that they had shore leave.
Daikon cleared his throat and began: "Unless you've been living under a rock, you will have realized that this ship, SR 2847 of the Planet Trade Organization, is now in geosynchronous orbit with the planet Lulani. This ship entered geosynchronous orbit with Lulani at 2:30 this morning, this fifty-second day of the Universal Calendar Year 2359. This ship will remain in geosynchronous orbit with Lulani for the next four days, departing at 5:00 PM on the fifty-sixth day of the Universal Calendar Year of 2359. Are we all together here?" Daikon asked, running his eyes from one side of his squad to the other and turning his page over. Every one nodded dutifully, so he carried on.
"This squadron, captained by Daikon under Vegeta, Prince of the Saiyans, has been cleared for shore leave while this ship is in geosynchronous orbit with Lulani. Shuttles will be traveling from this ship to the planet twice per day, once at 8:00 AM and once at 4:00 PM. Shuttles will be coming back to the ship from Lulani on a reverse trip after offloading, so it is recommended that you arrive at the shuttle port on Lulani at 8:30 AM and 4:30 PM so as to catch a shuttle back to the ship. The last shuttle will leave Lulani at 3:30 PM on the fifty-sixth. Anyone not on board will be left behind.
"While on Lulani, soldiers are not permitted to engage in hostilities. Soldiers are not permitted to engage in larceny. Soldiers are not to engage in sexual assault of civilians. Lulani has provided this ship and the commanding officers with a list of brothels around the shuttle port and in the city center. Soldiers are expected to pay for any and all services they receive with their own non-fraudulent credits. Inability to pay in full will result in an equivalent docking of pay from the next credit transfer, with 10% interest, and outright refusal to pay at all for services will result in solitary confinement for three days, as well as an equivalent docking in pay from the next credit transfer, with 20% interest. Soldiers are not to discuss the movement of the ship, future engagement of the squadrons, and other related, confidential information with the Lulani or other persons currently staying on Lulani. Is all of this understood and agreed upon?"
His squadron nodded, and Daikon hopped off of his bench to pass around copies of the shore leave contract for his squadron members to sign. "By the way, the Prince and Princess will be on Lulani for a period of time, so keep an eye out for them and assist them if need be. Understood?"
"Yes, Captain," they chorused as they signed the papers and passed them back to him.
"Don't embarrass me," he called out, once he collected up the last of the papers. "Dismissed!"
With a raucous cry, his squad jumped to their feet and bumrushed the doors, eager to pack their shore bag and get off the ship for a while. Daikon followed them out after kicking the mats back into place and ran into Nappa and Radditz outside the door. "The brats are off," he greeted them, flourishing his sheaf of signed contracts. "Is your squad off this turn?"
"No," Nappa replied. "Parseri's is off here; we're off the next time."
Daikon elbowed Radditz in the ribs. "Luckily for you, commanding officers get shore leave no matter what."
Radditz grinned back at him and grabbed at his crotch. "I've worked my way through Wema's girls, I can't wait to get my hands on some Lulani ass." On the other side of Radditz, Nappa made a crude gesture with his fist, clearly on board with Radditz's plans.
Daikon passed them the list of brothels and raised his eyebrows in a challenge. "I'll be on the 8:00 AM shuttle, so if you wanna put your money where your mouth is, I'll see you there."
Bulma had never been anywhere like Lulani. Well, no, that wasn't exactly true. She'd been places like Lulani, but they were usually confined to conference rooms or ballrooms converted into convention spaces. But…a whole planet of that was a bit to take in, at first.
On their way in from the shuttle pad at the base of the city, they'd passed a variety of establishments, and everything from the clothing shops to the brothels had been neat, tidy, and inviting. The streets were free of litter, the cracks in the sidewalks had been filled in nearly seamlessly, and the shrubbery and trees were perfectly maintained. Vegeta had told her on the way down that Lulani was a service-industry planet. It had started out as a small planet of no particular importance in the middle of a massive interplanetary interchange, but at some point the Council had capitalized on their unique position by restructuring the planet's economy. Now, ships stopped regularly on Lulani, and the whir of ships moving in and out from all directions existed as background noise to the population.
The city was situated on a hill, with the shuttlepad at the bottom, and larger landing strips further outside of the city limits. At the very top, surrounded by all of the massage parlors, banks, barber shops, and other unmentionable stores, sat a large hotel. It was here that the Council had met them—a group of twelve elders that steered the direction of Lulani's present and future. All dressed in what appeared to be professional attire, they discussed Lulani's economy with Frieza in the most strict businesslike tone from their seats at the round table.
Discreetly, Bulma turned her head towards Vegeta. "Are they a part of the PTO?"
They were seated in a sort of amphitheater-like gallery, watching the discussions take place below them and able to listen, thanks to some sort of audio amplification technology that they could hear but could not see. Vegeta shook his head minutely. "No. Lulani is an independent planet. An ally of Frieza's though."
"And…why are we here?" she asked, looking around. The gallery was filled with the heads of the other groups on Frieza's ship—the Yaguris, the Tungas, the Qossacs, and so on. They, too, kept their attention on the talks taking place below them.
"Because our soldiers are the consumers," Vegeta replied, a smirk curving his mouth. The sole light in the large room was focused above the round table in the center of the room, leaving the audience in relative darkness. He leaned over and put his lips by her ear. "The men always appreciate some variety in their rotations."
Bulma frowned at him and jerked her head towards Gohan, who sat on the other side of her, meticulously folding sheets of paper that she had grabbed on their way out of the lab into origami animals. Vegeta rolled his eyes and settled back into his seat, clearly unamused by Bulma's rejection.
Like clockwork, one of the Lulani elders leaned forward and asked: "Where is this half-breed you have talked about, Lord Frieza?" and Frieza looked over his shoulder and fixed his flinty eyes on her. Zarbon had told her this morning that the Lulani are always interested in new discoveries, and that a little "show and tell" would do wonders to keep them on the PTO's good side. Of course, the PTO could always strong arm the Lulani into keeping their ports open, but what was a bone thrown to the street mutts every now and then? Bulma looked down at Gohan's head and wondered what ChiChi would think of her little boy referred to as a political bone to be thrown around.
Bulma gently tugged the origami from Gohan's little hands and hoisted him up onto her hip. Vegeta's eyes were shuttered as she passed by him, not ashamed, but like he was hiding something that he hadn't yet told her about. He'd been twitchy all morning, she realized as she descended the steps of the amphitheater seating with Gohan, and she'd ask him about it later.
Gohan buried his face into her neck as they approached Frieza and the Lulani council members. Frieza smirked. "As you can see, councilors, the child isn't the most remarkable specimen. The humans are a weak race, and clearly, even though it appears to be possible to interbreed—which has yet to be proven on a larger scale, my dear councilors—the result is less than desireable."
A female councilor leaned forward, chin on her fist. "There has been no indication of any hidden power, then?"
"None at all." Frieza's gaze on Gohan was cold, and Bulma hugged the boy closer to her. "Our scientific team has been observing him for weeks now, and his power level is completely insignificant and unresponsive."
Bulma felt Gohan tilt his head to peer out of one of his eyes, and his thumb went up to his mouth. The councilors leaned back and forth, whispering to each other in hushed tones. "And you, you are a human?" one of them called out. Their eyes combed over her from head to foot, trying to determine how she was different from them.
"Yes," Bulma replied, and did not elaborate. She and Gohan were being pimped out like museum exhibits to benefit her captor, and so she wanted to get this charade over with as soon as possible.
"Her father is the one that invented capsule technology," Frieza continued for her. "The technology will soon be organization wide. I will personally make sure that the Council will receive one of the first batches of encapsulators." The Lulani councilors smiled and nodded, and bile rose in Bulma's throat. She shifted Gohan from one hip to the other to hide how her hands shook in rage and shame, and by the time Gohan was settled into his new spot, she had pasted her businesswoman mask back onto her face.
She smiled at the men and women seated before her. "And, of course, I hope the councilors would allow me to demonstrate the capsule technology when it becomes available for their use. I was the lead engineer under my father for years. The compression can be a bit tricky at first, but practice makes perfect."
The councilors laughed, and Bulma tittered along. Frieza frowned at her and jerked his head, Bulma gratefully took the exit offered. Crossing back into the darkness of the amphitheater seating was wonderful. There had been a time in her life when she would have loved selling capsule technology to these councilors, loved flaunting her intelligence, but now she wanted to be out of Frieza's eyesight and safe in the darkness next to Vegeta.
The councilors rose and clapped their hands three times. "We have very much appreciated this public meeting with Lord Frieza. The time has come, though, for our private meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your time and attention, and hope that you enjoy your time on Lulani. Guides are waiting for you in the lobby if you would like a tour of the city. Please let them know your wishes and they will do their best to accommodate you."
Vegeta met her at the foot of the stairs, sidling close so that the other observers could flow around them on their way out. "Parseri is out there," he told her, putting his hand low on her back as they exited the reception chamber. Bulma glanced up at the casement on their way out—the doors here were like those on Earth. They had hinges and latches, despite the high-tech nature of the city. "Stay with her."
"Where are you off to?" Bulma asked, shifting Gohan to tuck her bangs behind her ear. He was beginning to get antsy, but she wasn't about to put him down with all of these people roaming around without looking where they were going.
"Nappa and Serori want to eat in the Southern Quadrant." He looked over his shoulder and waved Parseri over. "Don't let that brat out of your sight unless you want Frieza to get a hold of you again." His tone was mocking, but the squeeze of his hand on her hip belied lightness.
"I won't." She bounced Gohan on her hip and pulled a face. "We're gonna go exploring, kiddo! What do you think about that?"
"I'm hungry," Gohan said with a pout.
Vegeta rolled his eyes. "Parseri, use your credits to feet the brat."
"Why the fuck do I have to do it?" Parseri was in a simple jumpsuit and light armor today, much like the other Saiyans. They all still wore their scouters, though, to stay in contact with each other and the ship. Bulma had been trying to get issued a scouter, but her position was a shaky one, and she figured that Frieza and his crowd thought that it was easier if she remained entirely dependent on others around her.
"Kakarott's in your squad," he reminded her with a raised brow. They locked eyes for a moment until finally Parseri jerked her head in defeat.
"Well, come the fuck on then; I ain't got all goddamned day." She pivoted on her heel and marched out of the lobby. With a sidelong glance at Vegeta, Bulma waved goodbye and followed her escort out into the sun.
Gohan managed to easily scarf down three bowls of noodles, a bit of fruit because Bulma had insisted, and some sort of icy dessert because he'd made Parseri laugh and she'd bought it for him. Now the three of them meandered down a side street, passing by massage parlors, lounges, high-end casino boutiques, and other shops of varying business. Gohan stopped every now and then to press his palms and face into the glass fronts and bable about what he saw. Only at one place did he want to go in—it was a narrow shop, with clean glass in a red-painted wooden frame.
"Look, look! They have toys!" Gohan called out, pointing at the figurines in the window.
Bulma looked up at the neon sign advertising palm readings and laughed. "No way, kid. This is a fortune teller." Gohan frowned at her and she shrugged. "They…think they can tell your future by looking at your hand or tossing some bones around."
"Bones?" Gohan repeated, his eyes lighting up.
Bulma bopped him on his head and Parseri laughed into her fist, faking a cough. "Geez, your mom needs to bring you down off the mountain more often." She squinted through the window and finally said, "You know what? It can't hurt. That old witch Baba would be proud of me. Just—don't touch anything breakable, Gohan."
The fortune teller's shop was dim, the air still and heavy with the scents of oils and smoke. Parseri coughed for real, this time. "I fucking hate smoke," she wheezed, eyes watering.
"You can wait outside," Bulma offered in a low voice. "We're just going to poke around." Parseri shot her a withering look, and Bulma shrugged. "Don't say I didn't offer."
The front of the shop was unoccupied, but Bulma wasn't particularly interested in buying anything. Wait—did she even have credits? Shouldn't she be receiving some sort of payment for all of her work in the lab? Where was her Black Member Card when she needed it? She ran her fingers over a figurine of a kneeling four-armed woman, fiddled with some dried plants in a wide-mouthed vase. Gohan was messing with some tumbled stones in a box on the floor, and when he moved to touch a small temple on a shelf, Bulma cleared her throat. He ducked away sheepishly. Parseri coughed again, and then sneezed. Bulma gave her another pointed stare over her shoulder, which Parseri returned with equal vigor. Heavy tapestries covered the walls, and Bulma stepped around a solid bookcase to get a closer look at the embroidery on one. Golden scrolls and runic-looking letters against deep red cloth…the mastery of the work was apparent.
The silence of the shop was broken by rustling, and Bulma turned to see a woman emerge through the back doorway. She was younger than Bulma had been expecting—maybe late teens, early twenties. She wore her platinum hair in dreadlocks gathered in a high bun, and her orange skin was covered in blue markings—though whether they were temporary or permanent, Bulma couldn't tell. "Hey," she greeted them, her eyes on Bulma, like she was pleasantly surprised to see her.
"…Hi," Bulma replied, put off by her familiarity. "We're just…looking around."
The young woman smiled slowly and nodded. "Come back and have a cuppa, Princess," she offered, pulling the beaded curtain aside. Bulma looked at Parseri, who shook her head minutely. "The Captain can come check my room for monsters that go bump in the night if she'd like," the woman offered with twinkling eyes. "I promise that you won't find any. That door is the only way in and out."
"I'll stay in the room while you drink your tea," Parseri stated, taking a step towards the woman. "C'mon brat," she called out to Gohan, who was waving around a wand that turned different colors.
"No, you'll stay out here," the woman replied placidly, her smile still in place. Parseri's face hardened and she opened her mouth to argue but the woman cut her off by saying: "I doubt that I can get on a ship faster than the Prince could catch me, Captain. You have nothing to fear."
With a scowl, Parseri moved past the woman and into the back of the shop. Unperturbed, the woman beckoned to Bulma, and let her pass through the beaded curtain ahead of her. The back room was even more dim than the front, lit only by candles on a low chandelier. There could have been windows, but any light that would have been let in had been firmly blocked off by heavy tapestries like the ones in the front room. Parseri walked the perimeter, patting the walls through the fabric and stomping on the floor through the thick rugs. "It seems secure enough," she admitted, but lingered at the doorway with a frown on her face. She was clearly uncomfortable with leaving Bulma alone with the woman, but Bulma didn't feel unsafe, just a bit confused and intrigued.
"I won't be long, Captain," the woman told her, and handed her a box with something that rattled around inside. "The little one can play with these while you wait. Please don't eavesdrop," she added with a chastising tone.
Parseri rolled her eyes and shoved her way back to the front of the shop. The woman gestured for Bulma to sit down on the other side of the low table. Quietly, the woman poured a cup of steaming tea from a heavy iron teapot and passed it to Bulma. The woman's movements were elegant and practiced, and Bulma eyed her suspiciously, waiting until the woman poured herself a cup and drank from it before Bulma sipped it herself.
"Are you homesick much, Princess?" the woman asked after she swallowed, setting the cup on the table and wrapping her palms around the warm china.
Bulma's heart tightened in her chest, immediately picturing the domes of Capsule Corp in her mind and she nodded. "Yes, I am. Of course."
The woman seemed to shrug, but without actually shrugging. "But with the Prince, you're happy as well."
It was a statement, not a question, and Bulma's furrowed her brow. Something ugly twisted inside of her and her first instinct was to deny that she was. Guilt, she realized. "I don't think one outweighs the other."
The woman's placid smile seemed to widen, and she tilted her head, searching Bulma's face and taking another sip of her tea. "But with the Other one, you weren't truly happy." The woman reached out and took Bulma's right hand between her own and turned it over, peering at her palm. "He ate away at you."
"Are you talking about Yamcha?" Bulma asked incredulously.
"I don't know his name," the woman told her, matter-of-fact. She flattened her hand out over Bulma's open palm, stretched its plane out wide. "Ah, I see now," she breathed, closing her eyes and leaning her head forward. "I wasn't sure before but—young love. Born from innocence and carried beyond its time." The woman opened her eyes and met Bulma's. "You are not meant for such love now, Princess."
A shiver ran down Bulma's spine as she stared across the table at the woman. "Is this some trick?" she breathed. "Some carnival caper where you try to feel out what I react to?"
The woman shook her head and squeezed Bulma's hand. "No, Princess. I have been waiting for you. I had been worried…that I would not see you before that which will come to pass. The dreams have been determined with you, have brought you forth to me over and over and over again until I thought I had seen all that I could see of you. But dreams only tell so much, even when you are actively seeking them out—everything is sharper now, now that you are here with me."
There was something in the cadence of this woman's voice, and the weight behind her eyes that belied the smoothness of the woman's skin… "How old are you?" Bulma asked in a hushed voice. "How long have you…been waiting?"
The woman raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Long enough."
"And the dreams have told you about me and Vegeta—" The woman waved her hand with a tsking sound.
"The Prince – Vegeta is his name, you say? Lovely name, very regal, if I do say so – didn't show up for years at first. You can imagine my confusion. And the Other shows up now and again, when the dreams see fit to bring him forth. No, Princess, I've dreamt of you." The woman closed her eyes again and tipped her head to the side, her ear nearly meeting her shoulder."I've dreamt of a woman with soft hair like ocean water surrounded by dark titans, once weighing her down, and then adrift, and once again pulled by gravity to the star nursery like a whirling galaxy," she murmured, her words flowing one into the other. Then a deep breath, and the woman straightened back up, blinking away her trance.
"But why?" Bulma asked, bewildered. "What do the dreams…say?"
The woman clasped Bulma's hand between her own in a strong grip. She brought her elbows up onto the table, like she was praying, but with Bulma's hand caught in the middle of it. Her eyes bored into Bulma's, the pupils blown wide, and what she said to Bulma she said like she was dying, like these were the last words she would ever tell another soul through gritted teeth. "Do not be afraid. When you are weakest, you will be strongest. You will be lost, Princess, but do not wander. You will carry the torches—you will bear the blinding lights of your people. The others," the woman said, her grip loosening and her hand brushing the back of Bulma's forearm, where goosebumps rippled and hair stood on end, "they weren't for you."
At the woman's last words, bile rose in Bulma's throat and she jerked her hands away to press her face into them. She shuddered, trying to swallow the fear and guilt in her throat, and the woman circled around the table and wrapped her arms around Bulma's shoulders.
The woman murmured soft and soothing nothings into Bulma's hair, ran her warm hands over Bulma's back and arms, and Bulma missed missed missed her mother, how would she go through this again without her mother with her? The woman reached forward and brought the mug of spicy tea to Bulma's lips. "Drink, Princess," she said, and Bulma sipped obediently. The warm liquid slid down her throat, and heat seeped outwards from her belly, through her arms and lets, and to her fingers and toes. Bulma reluctantly pulled herself from the woman's embrace and set the mug down with a heavy sigh.
"It's going to get worse, isn't it?" Bulma asked, meeting the woman's eyes.
The woman nodded. "Yes."
Bulma felt strangely calm and drained at the same time, that strange feeling that comes after a cathartic cry. "I'm not lost yet, am I?" she asked.
The woman shook her head, earrings swaying with the movement, and she wrapped her hand around Bulma's again, and Bulma noticed again the comforting heat emanating from the woman's body, and the strength in the woman's elegant fingers.
"Do not be afraid."
The lab was blissfully quiet, given that such a large portion of the crew had been granted leave to go planetside. Fewer staff also meant more counterspace, and Orja was using this time to make sure all of the patients' charts were updated in the network. She'd been there for a while, trying to get the work done before the ship left Lulani and she would be surrounded by chattering people using socialization to avoid getting work done.
She pulled up Bulma's file on the computer, only to find that the woman's recent bloodwork results had already been imported into her chart. Convenient, Orja thought, and since all of the numbers looked within normal ranges, Orja was about to move on to the next chart until she saw the time stamp in the bottom corner. The results had been imported at three o'clock standard time that very afternoon, a time at which Orja knew no one had been in the lab but herself and the patients in the back of the wing.
"Strange," Orja muttered. With a few keystrokes, Orja dove into the administrative program. Her eyes darted along the lines of code until she saw where someone had created a backdoor with an automatic timer. It was subtle work, and if Orja hadn't been raised on Juqard, a planet that had provided networking capabilities and infrastructure to the PTO, she would have easily missed it. Orja's fingers tapped away at her keyboard, peeling back layer after layer of the backdoor entry, which led to a discreet hacking program. Orja sucked on the inside of her cheek and tried to crack the hacking program. It seemed to have a dead end, but there was something about the way the lines of code ended…
Orja drummed her fingers on the desk after a few tries yielded no results. She laced her fingers behind her head and squinted at the program on her screen through her glasses. Finally, she saw the method behind the madness and, fingers flying across the keyboard, she cracked the hacking program, which led into Bulma's file, and Bulma's file only. "What have you been up to, Bulma?" Orja mused. The program had changed a few of the values from the most recent bloodwork analysis after it had been imported into her file—all of the same values had been changed in her bloodwork analyses, starting from nearly three months back.
It seemed strange, to create a program to just alter a few values in her bloodwork. They were proteins and hormones unique to the human organism, so unique that new lines had to be created in the program to accommodate them when Bulma had been brought on board. The values had started changing after she was brought on board, and the program had altered the values to make it look like they had been steady this whole time; like nothing was changing.
And then Orja realized what she was looking at, and her heart began to pound in her ears.
A distant rumble woke Bulma from her sleep. Vegeta shifted next to her, raising up on one elbow. She pushed her hair out of her face and peered up at his profile, taking in his downturned mouth in the faint light filtering in from the city outside. "What's going on?"
"I don't know," he replied. He sat silent for another moment before tossing his covers back and circling around the bed to the window. "There are shuttles coming into the port," he said, surprise and confusion turning his last few words up, almost turning his statement into a question.
"I thought shuttles only had two runs," Bulma said, yawning and running her fingers through Gohan's hair. Their dinner had run past the time of the shuttle run, and Goku was sleeping on a narrow cot downstairs. Vegeta had glowered when Bulma had snuck Gohan into the room, but she'd told him to essentially grit his teeth and bear it.
"They do," he replied, stepping closer to the window and squinting his eyes. "They're…full." Through the glass, he watched the shuttles empty themselves onto the shuttlepad. Something was glinting under the lights of the shuttlepad, on all of the persons spilling out onto Lulani. Behind him, he listened to Bulma rustle in the sheets, soon overcome by the pounding of the blood in his ears. No, it can't be… "They're in uniform," he bit out, whirling away from the window and turning on the light to the room.
Bulma scrambled out of bed, shaking Gohan awake and searching for her shoes. "Is this a purge?" She asked, her voice thin with panic.
Serori kicked the door in, nearly clean off its hinges, dressed only in a tanktop, a pair of underwear, and her boots. "Where is your scouter?" She screamed at Vegeta, "Where is it?"
Serori had never raised her voice to Vegeta before, Bulma realized foggily, pushing her feet into her shoes and helping Gohan into his.
"In the bathroom," he shouted back, and Gohan began to cry, but Serori was already screaming back: "You son of a bitch, I've been calling you on it for the past ten minutes!"
Over the shouting in the room, the hotel was coming to life. Footsteps began pounding down halls, doors opened and slammed, and flashes of light appeared through the window. Ki blasts, Bulma thought, a coldness spreading from the nape of her neck through her shoulders and chest.
"They're coming for her," Serori said. "They're coming for all of us. I got a message from Weila-"
"It doesn't matter," Vegeta interrupted. "We're wasting time. We have to get out of here." He looked back at Bulma, and Bulma saw stark fear written across his face. "We have to get to the shuttles. We can't hide from scouters," he told her, and she knew that a legion of Frieza's forces lay between this room and the shuttlepad.
Do not be afraid.
"We'll make it," Bulma told him, and she watched as Vegeta and Serori stared at each other for a long beat.
"We'll make it," Serori repeated, low and firm, and Bulma's heart pounded against the cage of her ribs. She pushed Gohan in front of her towards the door, towards Vegeta and Serori who were moving out into the hallway. She passed the table by the door and the flash of light off of the firestone necklace King Roqq had given her as a wedding gift caught her eye. She'd worn it for dinner and now she paused, staring at it—"Bulma," Vegeta urged—and snatched it up. As they ran down the hall, swept along with other Saiyans and occupants of the hotel, she wrapped it around her neck, awkwardly clasping it and tucking it beneath her shirt.
Outside, explosions boomed and fires lit up the night sky. Serori and Vegeta hustled Bulma and Gohan to a street corner and pushed them up against the exterior wall of a shop. Saiyans were in flight, battling in the air with members of Frieza's army, keeping them a decent distance from the hotel. Bulma saw Daikon, Radditz, and Nappa shouting orders at their squadrons, and Parseri flash-stepped across the street to meet them.
"We're trying to maintain a perimeter—" she screamed, her voice already hoarse.
"No," Vegeta shouted back, and pointed into the fray of the fighting. "Establish a corridor to the shuttlepads. We need to get out of here."
Gohan was crying, and from the corner of her eye, Bulma saw Goku battling alongside other members of Parseri's squadron. He was focused, intent on his job, and Bulma swore to herself that she was going to get Gohan out of here for him.
Parseri shouted into her scanner, and within seconds, Bulma saw the shift in tactics as fighters pushed forward and began a battle of pure attrition, fighting forward for every inch of ground they could gain. The Saiyans were strong, and even though Frieza had caught them off-guard and flooded the city with enough soldiers to easily outnumber the Saiyans, with every passing moment they became more orderly, more precise, more effective. A bulge formed up, pushing down the main street, clearing a path. Frieza's soldiers seemed to notice what the plan was, and tried to move themselves into blocking position.
Vegeta stared at the battle taking place before them, and Bulma could see what he saw—his men and women locked in a literal fight to the death. She looked beyond that though, through the fighting, to see an empty shuttle pad with no more incoming ships.
Do not be afraid.
When he finally turned to look at her, she met his gaze steadily. Bulma spoke before he did. "I need to get down there before you do. If Frieza has half a brain he'll have location transmitters on those shuttles."
Vegeta nodded and looked at Serori and Parseri. "You know what to do," he told them. He looked at Bulma again, his dark eyes running over her face, lit up by the flashes of ki blasts and the warm, flickering light emitted by the torched buildings. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone, off to fight alongside the other Saiyans. Bulma drew a shuddering breath and shook her head to clear it.
Serori reached up and pressed the side of her scouter. "This is Serori. Operation Omega. I repeat, Operation Omega. This is not a drill—I have the ball."
There was a shifting in the front lines, and Parseri nudged Bulma. "Pass me the brat, Princess."
It was the first time a Saiyan had ever really touched Gohan, and to pick him up meant that they were about to move. Kabocha was the first to touch down, followed only seconds later by at least twenty-five Saiyans that Bulma had passed by in the hallway hundreds of times and who had never given her a second look.
"It's the Princess?" Kabocha asked, and with a single nod from Parseri, he swung her up onto his back. "Hold on. Mizuna, cover my back."
"Shuttlepad—side streets only—stay low," Serori ordered. Bulma wrapped her arms around Kabocha's thick neck, and she felt his muscles bunch and then they were off, zipping through the narrow alleyways of Lulani. Ahead of them, Serori and a few others cleared the way for the group by knocking down and incinerating stray soldiers sent by Frieza. The wind stung Bulma's eyes, and as the group whipped around another corner, losing one of the Saiyans to a ki blast but not slowing in the slightest, the falling debris came too close to her head and she finally turned her head down into Kabocha's neck.
All she heard was screaming and the zinging of fired ki blasts, the crumble of buildings, the clash of soldiers from close and far away. Kabocha's body was tense under hers, moving with precision and such extreme power. They were getting closer, because the fighting seemed to be more or less behind her shoulder, and she raised her head just in time to see a flash of light and feel Kabocha convulse. He tumbled to the ground, his body rolling on top of hers and pushing the air out of her lungs.
"Fuck," he wheezed, and Bulma felt a hot wetness seep through her clothes.
"Kabocha," she called out in alarm. "Where are you hit? Where?" But he continued to shake and mutter nonsense profanity into the air.
Parseri screamed her brother's name and her face appeared above the two of them. She had Gohan tucked under her arm, and her eyes raked over her brother's body frantically. Two more Saiyans appeared and quickly rolled him off of Bulma. Blood covered her body, plastering her clothes to her skin, and she saw that he'd been shot through the shoulder and stomach. A fine sheen of sweat was breaking out over his face, and his grey eyes began to drift shut.
Do not be afraid.
"We have to go," Serori shouted at them, and went to grab Bulma's arm.
"Bring him!" Bulma called out, and when Serori's face shuttered, Bulma shook her head. "He's Parseri's brother and he got me this far and I'm not going to leave him to bleed out in the middle of the road!"
Kobocha coughed behind them. "Go. Get her offa here."
Bulma looked around, scanning the line of the buildings around them. "Look—the lights of the shuttlepad are right there."
"Fine! You—carry him," Serori ordered, and a burly man with brown hair tied at the nape of his neck hauled Kabocha up onto his shoulder. Kabocha groaned, but didn't protest, and when they reached the shuttlepad minutes later and clambered aboard the first shuttle, he was immediately deposited onto a windowseat. Bulma rushed to the cockpit with Serori close on her heels and dropped to her knees.
"I need to get into the wiring," Bulma said, and Serori knelt down beside her and yanked the bottom sheet of metal that enclosed the control panel clear off. Wires crisscrossed every which way, and Bulma made quick work of figuring out what went where.
Serori peeked inside and watched Bulma's fingers flit along the lengths of wires. "What are you looking for?" She asked.
"Whatever transmits the signal of the location of the ship back to Frieza. Ah, here it is," Bulma said through clenched teeth, and yanked the purple wire clear out of the panel. "Please tell me you all know how to fly these things."
"Most of us do," Serori answered.
Bulma walked out of the cockpit and glanced out the door of the shuttle. The Saiyans were making great progress, it looked like, so they would have to move fast before Frieza's men splintered off more than they had already. Activity on the shuttlepad would only draw attention, so Bulma cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted: "Hey!" The twenty or so Saiyans twisted to look at her, except Kabocha, whose eyes were shut and whose skin was turning gray. "If you can fly a shuttle at subluminal speed, I need to you go to the other shuttles, open the bottom hatch of the control panel, and yank this wire out." She lifted up the wire above her head and the Saiyans squinted at it. "See how narrow it is? It's about…half as long as your tail, a dark purple, and is going to be on the left side of the panel, near the front. Do you understand? This has to come out—it'll keep Frieza from tracking the ships. When your shuttles are full, leave."
Five Saiyans burst out of the shuttle, firing ki blasts to clear their way to remaining the shuttles. Another woman stuck her head out of the door and shouted that they needed to get the fuck outta here. Bulma let Serori push past her and into the cockpit. Bulma heard the door to the outside slide shut, the hiss of the repressurization, and when the shuttle finally lifted off of the ground, she slumped against the wall of the shuttle.
Outside, as the shuttle eased into the air, Bulma could see the orbs of light that exploding ki created, and the final push of the Saiyans, their numbers thinned somewhat, towards the shuttlepad. Another hundred yards and they would be there. The hum of the engine picked up, and Bulma knew that Serori was about to take them subluminal. The space around the shuttle began to warp and distend, and Bulma watched as Frieza's soldiers, now pinpricks against the ground, realized that the shuttles were already warming up and splintered into unorganized factions, trying to simultaneously fight off the Saiyan front and keep the shuttles on the ground.
Then space popped and everything was quiet. The scene outside the window had turned into the long ribbons of light that Bulma was used to seeing on Frieza's ship. Inside, just over a dozen Saiyans sat quietly, their eyes on her, except for Parseri, who sat by Kabocha's side and pressed down on his wounds. Gohan's sniffles had died down, and he had curled himself up in his seat and pressed his eyes to his knees.
Bulma's boots tapped against the hard floor of the shuttle's interior as she walked back into the cockpit. Serori was still at the control panel, presumably charting a course. Bulma lowered herself into the second seat and leaned back to watch Serori work.
"Did they get out?" Serori asked with a tight voice.
Bulma shook her head. "I don't know. They seemed to be getting there." Serori nodded and leaned back as well, flattening her palms on her thighs.
"We barely made it ourselves. If not for Weila—" Serori cut herself off with a shake of her head. "Gods. Weila probably saved all of us and she's…dead. Or as good as it, unless she was able to get out like I told her to."
Bulma twisted to look at Serori. "What do you mean?"
Serori rolled her head against the headrest to look at Bulma. "Weila is a servant—usually in the lower levels. But with so many on Lulani…she was in Zarbon's rooms, cleaning while he and Frieza ate. She said that scientist, Orja, came in with some papers and showed them to Frieza. He told Zarbon to send five hundred soldiers to Lulani to—kill you and the rest of us. When she called me—" Serori's voice was starting to shake "—she said that they had already pulled Nappa's squadron out of their rooms on the ship and were executing them in the hallways. I told her to get out. Find a space pod, anything, go anywhere. Maybe she was lucky, like us."
Bulma's heart froze and she felt like she was going to throw up. Orja had betrayed her—not only hacked her hacking, but had gone straight to Frieza. How could she be surprised though? After what Frieza had done to the both of them after Gohan had been brought back? And Nappa's squadron—so many Saiyans, gone in a matter of minutes. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Do not be afraid.
"Why you?" Serori asked. "Weila said that Frieza kept saying that you had to be killed."
Do not be afraid.
In this moment, Bulma wanted more than anything for Vegeta to be there with them. For all she knew, he was dead, or mortally injured, or she would never see him again. She shivered and thought of everything that had brought them to this moment in time—the first time his eyes had settled on her, the tremor in her hand as she had taken his in their mockery of a marriage ceremony before Frieza, the warmth of his body next to hers in bed even before Roqq, when she had forced his cards and they'd fallen into each other like starving animals, the sight of his worried face through the glass and liquid of the regeneration tank, even the most basic flesh memories of skin against skin, the reassuring press of his lips against her neck, the way his hands had always tugged her close, closer, like he wanted the two of them to slide together into a single space, all whirling together until the moment she realized something had been missing and the clock had become important, and began counting time against her.
Do not be afraid.
Bulma flattened her hands against her stomach and looked down at the slightest curve that they made.
"I'm pregnant."
You will be lost, Princess, but do not wander.
END OF PART ONE.
Please let me know what you think! And follow me on tumblr, if you'd like-my handle is labonsoirfemme and I mostly reblog gifs/photosets/quotes from my fandoms and writing in general but I also talk about my fics, post them there, and have an ask box! If you've ever gotten a reply to a review from me, you know that I love to talk to y'all.