Chapter Ten - Escape
Tama nodded and the two of them blasted down the hall at full speed, all pretense of supressing their powers and hiding their presence gone. As the red light glared over everything, the siren wailed, and the calm mechanical voice sounded, the noise of fleeing personnel came to them as well. Jagaimo thrust an arm foward and the wall ahead of them blasted open. A second later they were through the opening and pulling to a stop up on a high catwalk. Below them was a large hanger lab combination with scientists running about in a panic.
And there, sitting in the middle of the room, was what could have only been their target. The Blood Moon Project. It was a large red sphere just floating in the air slowly bobbing up and down. "That has to be it..." Tama said gazing down at it. "But what the hell is it?"
"I don't know. Let's just destr..." he stopped as his eyes widened in fear and he turned to look toward the main entrance of the lab. A second later the doors opened and three unmistakable figures entered the room. The first was a short man no more than four and a half foot tall. His muscles seemed a size too big for his body. He wore a pair of blood red gloves and boots, a purple body suit, and golden armor with silver shoulder pads and abdomen section. His black hair was wildly spikey sticking up and out six to ten inches at random angles almost as if he'd stuck his finger in a light socket, and his was tail wrapped securely around his waist. He was Nasu, the weakest member of the Trio.
Next came another man, this one just over six foot tall. His muscles were thick but on scale to Nasu's they were smaller. He had on black gloves and boots, a dark red body suit, and orange armor with white shoulder pads and abdomen section. His own black hair was much shorter than that of Nasu sticking straight up only a few inches above his head. His tail, too, was locked around his waist. The second strongest member of the Trio, Kybabetsu.
Lastly came a female about five foot two inches tall and of a general build. She wore white boots and gloves, a blue body suit, and white armor with brown shoulder straps and abdomen section. Her hair hung halfway down her back but was still as wild as Nasu's. Unlike the other two her tail wagged around leisurely behind her showing that she was quite relaxed. Tama growled. "Kabocha."
"Easy girl." Jagaimo said resting a hand on her shoulder and pushing his power down as low as he could. "We can't fight them... we need to retreat."
She nodded slowly. She could sense it just as well as Jagaimo, these three were out of their league. Even the weakest of them, Nasu, would walk all over them, even in a two on one fight. The other two... no, they didn't stand a chance in a battle with them. "Ok, let's go." she said turning around. "Someday though... I wont run when I see her."
"Nasu!" Kabocha yelled from below making both of those up above stop and look back. Kabocha's tail was now moving much faster, a clear indication she was highly agitated. "I just got the report back... seems it was your own troops that set the self-destruct!"
"What?"
"Jade, Onyx, and Ruby!" Kabocha said narrowing her eyes. "The security cameras show that they were the ones that set the self-descruct."
"Those three Stonians I picked up last month?" Nasu asked in shock. "What the hell?"
"You're not up to anything, are you?" she asked walking toward him, her tail wrapping around her waist. "Trying to steal the Blood Moon perhaps?"
"What!? Never! I'm not an idiot Kabocha, the Emperor would rip me in half if he even thought... and how could you, of all people think that... I would never turn on my King!"
Kabocha relaxed and her tail slowly unwrapped from her waist. "Then look into those three." she said moving across the room toward the floating orb. "I'll take this back myself. You two get back to your pods and evacuate. I'll meet you back on Saiya."
Kybabetsu nodded and reached up to his scouter activating it to radio back to his pod. As soon as it came on-line the scanners went crazy. Tama gasped, eyes going wide, and quickly pushed her power down but it was too late. The powerful Sai-jin's look changed from one of confusion to one of shock as he saw Jagaimo and Tama. "Intruders!"
"What!?" Kabocha cried looking up. "You!"
"Damn it! Tama, get to our ship and get out of here, now!" Jagaimo ordered pushing her away.
"But... I can't leave you to..."
"Go! Now!" he yelled before turning back to the three below him and then jumping down.
Tama knelt there unsure what to do for a moment but then turned and shot off down the hall. She'd only gone a hundred yards when the floor in front of her exploded upward and Nasu floated up into view. "Where are you going in such a hurry?" he asked smirking, crossing his arms. The read-out on his scouter had jumped up but had quickly dipped back down once more. "So now girl, just how much power do you have?" he asked. "I've got your maximum marked at two and half million... is that all you've got?"
Tama drifted back trying to think of a way to get around him as the mechanical voice announced 20 mintues remained until the base was destroyed. Her eyes darted around frantically for some sort of escape. And then she felt it just below her and smiled. With a burst of energy she shot back a dozen feet and then down through the floor. As expected Nasu followed merely blasting out the floor under him and dropping down. Tama grinned as the large Neanderthan turned its attention from her to the new arrival on the otherside of it.
Knowing the mutant wouldn't delay Nasu for long, she shot off quickly down the hall weaving down side passages and up and down staircases pretty much at random trying to shake him. After a few moments she pulled to a stop and rested against the wall panting. Now only fifteen minutes remained. "That's... not enough... time." she panted closing her eyes. "I don't know where I am... I'll never get back to the ship before this place explodes."
Her eyes snapped wide and she let out a cry of shock and pain as she was suddenly flung forward. She slammed into the wall a few feet from where she'd been and bounced back a little before falling to the floor. Looking up she saw Nasu standing there, smirking. "That was a nice try, using that mutant to stall me. But unfortuantely for you it didn't work." Tama rolled over and climbed up onto her feet wincing in pain. He'd not held back much with that energy blast he'd hit her with. "So, now, what do you say you just surrender, hmm? For some reason Kabocha wants you alive and I can't garuantee that in a fight."
"Come on Tama, you're not a child anymore... you've been training for this sort of thing for years! Don't stand here shaking like a coward, fight him!" her mind screamed, but her body ignored it. Her feet remained planted firmly where they were, her eyes kept darting about looking for an escape route...
"Is that a no?" he asked. "Hmm, well, I guess so." Suddenly he was charging at her and then pain was lancing through her body as he attacked her, blow after blow. She was too scared to even block. A moment later a kick to her stomach sent her down through the floor and onto the floor in another lab.
"No... I wont cry... I wont scream... I wont let him see me in pain... I wont!"
Wincing, she managed to roll over onto her back in time to see Nasu peer down at her from above, a finger on his scouter. "Yeah, I've got her. She didn't even try and fight, just some worthless coward. She's fairly strong though, I read at least three million a second ago. Yeah, definitely not Human. I think she's a Sai-jin actually. ... Oh? So you think she's one of them?"
Tama groaned and looked around her still trying to find an escape. And then she saw it sitting against the far wall on a catapult lancher. A round, silver, glimmering, Space Pod. "What's... a... Space Pod... doing..." she wondered. Suddenly the conversation she'd overheard earlier drifted back to her. "This... this must be... that prototype... pod. Well, sorry Onyx... first come... first serve."
Fighting against the pain, she managed to climb up onto her feet as the computer voice announced only five mintues remaining. She glanced up and saw that Nasu had turned his back on her and could tell he was having an arguement with someone. "Perfect..." she breathed, turning toward the pod and flying toward it as fast as she could. It took her several agonizingly long seconds to get to it and get in, time in which she was sure Nasu would spot her. But he hadn't.
Bringing up the pod's coordinates systems she put in the first location that came to mind, a planet well out in the Fringes and far from the Empire's influence. As she finished she heard Nasu's loud shout of suprise, he'd just found that she was missing. And with the blood she was losing... there was probably a trail to the pod. Quickly she hit the launch button and was rocketed into space.
As she flew away she monitored the Earth on one of the view screens. Only a few minutes after she'd launched the labs began to explode all across the planet's surface. And then, as the last of the escape pods sped off she saw something else fly into orbit of the planet. Zooming in on it she growled, seeing Kabocha's face. It looked like the red sphere from before had split open like a four petaled flower and Kabocha was in the middle, her feet stretching down the bottom petal, her arms out on the left and right ones, and her head resting on the top one.
And then the whole thing began to glow and a blast of energy surged down into the planet. Energy began to break free from the planet's core and then in a blinding flash of white the entire thing exploded. Tama closed her eyes and braced herself as the energy shockwave surged toward her. As it hit, her pod shook violently and everything went black.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
"And then... I guess I crashed here." Tama finished, closing her eyes. "I don't even know if Jagaimo got away..."
"Well... that rules out the future." Gohan said after a moment, scratching the back of his head.
Piccolo nodded. "Yeah, if there's that many Sai-jins around where she's from it's certainly not the future."
Tama blinked. "What? Wha... why not?"
"Because the Sai-jins are all but extinct." Mirai said.
"What? But... how?"
"An alien tyrant named Frieza." the time traveller replied. "He feared them and the chances of a Super Sai-jin arising and so he destroyed their world, only left four alive. Since then three of them have died, leaving my father as the last full blooded Sai-jin."
"Your... father...? Then... you're half Sai-jin?"
"So am I." Gohan said with a nod. "And my brother is too, as well as his best friend who is... er, well, Mirai's younger self. Remember how I mentioned I had a friend from the future? Well, that's Mirai."
Tama blinked as she looked over those standing on the Lookout with her. "This is... so odd. Nameks still alive, the Sai-jins nearly extinct..." She shook her head trying to clear it. "In... my world... half Sai-jins are unheard of. I mean... they exist in places, probably number in the high hundreds, maybe even thousands, but they aren't spoken of. The Sai-jins look down on them and most of the hybrids keep quiet about their heritage. Admitting that they're a hybrid would only get them killed."
"Why would they be killed?" Gohan asked.
"To keep the race pure." she replied, scrunching up her face. "They're big on purity and think they're superior to everyone else and want to stay that way, so they don't allow hybrids to exist."
"What about you?" Mirai asked. "You said you were a Sai-jin, right?"
"I... I'm only half Sai-jin... I think." she said. "I'm... I'm not really sure. I was found, in a Space Pod, up in the mountains. Just a baby, I don't know who my parents are, or were, or exactly why they sent me off... It was obvious by my power level that I was a Sai-jin, no other race has infants with powers over fifty thousand, mine was around one hundred and twenty thousand. My blood was never tested, to find out my exact parentage, in case the information ever fell into the wrong hands. But we figure, since I didn't have a tail, that I am probably a half Sai-jin. My parents, or most likely just my mother, would have sent me away to hide me... most likely it was my father that was Sai-jin."
"Oh... wow..." Gohan said. "You... you mentioned a Corna and Zuka before?"
She nodded. "They were the ones that raised me, half Sai-jins too. They... died... ten years ago, when our world was attacked by the imperial forces. Somehow they learned that our world was a haven for mutants. So they came to wipe us out. I was... only a child. I couldn't fight... so I hid. I'd been taught survival skills, supressing my power, masking my presence, and I used them..." She closed her eyes to hold off the tears. "I hid and watched as my village was massacred. Corna and Zuka were..." she swallowed and shook her head.
"After it was over and the troops had moved on passed my village leaving only a low level occupational force, those of us that had managed to hide emerged, fought them back, and escaped into the woods where our escape center was and fled the planet."
"That's horrible..." Gohan said softly.
"That still doesn't explain where she's from." Piccolo said.
"Another universe." Mirai said simply. "It's the only possibility."
"That's possible?" Piccolo asked.
It was Gohan that answered. "Entirely. If you can punch through the fabric of space you can cross between dimensions... that pod was certainly going fast enough."
"I wonder..." Mirai said slowly, deep in thought.
"Hmm? What is it?" Gohan asked.
"That invention of Mom's we worked on the other day." he said slowly. "Just before you arrived I saw... something. It looked kind of like a cat but... it didn't seem solid, like it was made of shadow. It had this pulsing Ki almost like a heartbeat and I lost it when it jumped into a shadow... I'd forgotten about it, even dismissed it as me being over-worked right before you arrived, until now. It could have been a resonance with another world, which would mean the barriers between this dimension and others would have to have been weakened around then..."
"Made of shadow?" Piccolo asked, interrupting Mirai, his eyes narrowing. "Or maybe... made of Darkness..."
"Darkness?" Tama asked.
"I'm afraid you've arrived at a bad time." Piccolo said looking toward her. "An old evil is returning somehow, a great Darkness that once almost engulfed this world." he looked toward Mirai again. "Shadow Beasts were one of Tejina's means of scouting areas when she was still a rising sorceress. Birds, dogs, cats."
"So then, it was tied to what we're facing, not Tama?" Gohan asked.
Piccolo nodded and turned. "I believe so. I'm going to return to my training... a war is coming and I intend to be ready for anything." And with that he walked off. Dende waited a moment and then followed after him wishing to speak with the powerful Namek.
"Um, Tama?" Mirai began.
"O-oh, yes?"
"You said you could supress your power... just how strong are you?"
"Oh... well, I was almost 7 million before." she said. "One of the strongest members of the resistance... 5th strongest I think... But, after those injuries I had... I don't know."
"Zenkai." Gohan said nodding. "Think you could power up?"
"Ummm, ok." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A light blue outline formed around her and her power started to climb fairly quickly. She soon hit and passed Gohan's power. And then matched and passed Mirai's. Finally it started to settle and the two Hybrids looked at each other in shock. She was about twice the power of Mirai.
"That's amazing..." Gohan said in shock. Mirai nodded in agreement.
"So, I'm stronger than you?" she asked a little suprised. "I guess... it was the lower class Sai-jins that survived here..."
Mirai shook his head. "No, not exactly. Gohan's father was born to the lower class, something my father never drops. If he's not going on about being surpassed by a low class he's going on about being surpassed by a low class born with a power of 2." It was all Mirai could do not to laugh. "But father was... well..."
"As he's so fond of reminding everyone, he's the 'Prince of all Sai-jins', not that there are any full blooded Sai-jins left to rule ov..."
"What!?" Tama cried in shock, her eyes turning to Mirai. "You... your father is the Sai-jin Prince!?"
"Was, when they were still around." he said.
Tama shook her head in confusion. "I... but... I wonder if... if it's the same person..." she mumbled. "Your... your father... who... what's his name?"
"Huh? Um, Vegeta."
Tama's eyes widened. "It is the same person!"
"What do you mean?" Gohan asked moving over to her, the girl looked like she was about to collapse.
"V-Vegeta... he... he's the... ruler of my universe..." Tama said softly. "He's the Emperor..."
"What? No way!" Gohan cried shocked.
Tama nodded. "It's true... he's the one ruling the universe... him and his son, Vegeta the 32nd."
"Hey, she's awake!" Goten's voice called excitedly. "See Trunks, I told you!"