Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Ball Z or its related characters. All is the property of FUNamation, Studio Toei, Fuji TV, and Toriyama Akira. I'm just borrowing them for some light-heated entertainment. Same disclaimer applies for Sailor Moon and related characters.
Space Opera
Chapter Eleven: It Must Be You
The Dragon Ball was perched precariously on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a river of lava, from which noxious sulfuric vapors wafted. It seared the skin and burned the eyes, that's not to mention what it did to the lungs. Damn obnoxious Dragon Balls and their damn absurd landing places.
Goten kept a shield of ki tight to his body to insulate him against the heat and the vapors -just like he did when in outer space. He snagged the Dragon Ball, the Six Star Ball, and zoomed far away from there. No reason to hang around when he got what he came for. Not when there was fresh clean air and reasonable temperatures somewhere else. Once again in breathable air, Goten dropped his ki shield and relaxed. Tapping his scouter, he called Gohan.
"Got one. Its the Six Star ball." He said. "How're you coming along?"
"Gohan left his scouter with me again." Videl's voice answered over the channel. "You can reach him on his cell phone."
Goten grumbled something incomprehensible -but very rude no doubt- under his breath, before saying, "'Kay, thanks." and clicking off. He then pulled up Gohan's cell number and called that. He hated calling people's personal phones from his scouter because the words 'Connected: Civilian Device…' flashed across the glass lens every second and a half and it was very distracting. As if he didn't know he was calling a civilian device and needed to be reminded every moment of the call that the person he was talking to was not an Imperial.
This time, it was Gohan who answered. "Hello?"
"Do you have something against scouters in general, or is it just yours you don't like?" Asked Goten testily. It was really more of a rhetorical question, because he was annoyed, he didn't really need an answer. "Anyway, I'm just calling to let you know I found my Dragon Ball. How are things going on your end?"
"Awesome." Gohan replied, sounding please. "With the one I just found that brings our number up to three. I gotta say, that Dragon Radar app the Prince added to your scouter really is pretty nifty. I'm gonna drop this one off at home before I get the next one. Why don't you-"
Gohan was abruptly cut off and the call ended by another incoming signal. That was how it was with scouter to civilian device connections. Anytime a message came in from another scouter or other Imperial device, the call was kicked off. You did not put the Empire on hold, and the Empire did not have time to wait for you to put your civilian caller on hold.
"Where are you right now?" Uncle Razzy's voice asked in his ear, gruff and impatient.
Goten double checked his coordinates before answering, "Somewhere over the south-eastern continent. Why? Trouble?"
He was still not technically on leave and as Captain of the Prince's flagship was on call twenty-four/seven, but then again, the whole planet was still on security alert anyway, after the Ice-jin attack just yesterday. His first reaction should be to assume that any call from a superior officer, or any call over Imperial frequencies for that matter, was a call to arms, or some other equally important emergency.
"No. Well, not really trouble, per say…" Uncle Razzy replied awkwardly. "But I need you to come to the Governor's Palace as soon as you can. As soon as you can drop off whatever Dragon Balls you might have found and change back into your uniform."
"Roger that." He immediately started flying back to Mount Paozu. "Something wrong?"
"Wrong? No. The Prince has just bestowed new responsibilities on you."
"Oh?" Trunks didn't say anything about that yesterday. Whatever it was, was probably the Prince's revenge for being left along with the Lunarian Princess. Ah, well. We all have to take our lumps.
…
"Considering that, just yesterday, you were willing to help us for free, I don't see what the problem is." Raditz growled over the conference table.
As per the Prince's instructions, he called the representatives of the Lunarian group back to the conference room and presented them with the hastily written and entirely temporary treaty. Raditz thought it was strait forward and reasonable enough. The Empire had not asked for the Moon Kingdom's aid, they just showed up in the middle of yesterday's fight to help and didn't mention wanting anything in return -either for their kingdom or themselves as individuals. Raditz thought the Prince's terms of their continued support in exchange for room and board and whatever they needed to keep up their wands and tiaras and magical roses, or whatever other equipment they had, seemed fair.
Two of the three designated representatives of the Lunarian group seemed to agree with Raditz's opinion. The Princess being to shocked that the Prince was letting them stay at all to argue anything. Endymion, the so-called Lunarian King, also admitted that for the moment and the circumstances, it was the best deal they would get at this time and perhaps the contract could be revisited at a later date when all the necessary players could sit down at one table in a more formal setting. But the third Lunarian representative, Sailor Venus, the Leader of the Sailor Senshi, did not agree.
"The problem," she replied, glaring daggers at the Saiyan, "is that we will be doing just as much work as any soldiers of your army and be getting practically nothing in return. How about an alliance instead? We come to the Empire's aid now, help them protect the Earth from the Ascendancy, and in return, if the Moon Kingdom is ever attacked, the Empire will come to our aid. Its only fair."
Whether it seemed fair or not was immaterial at the moment. "Unfortunately, I do not have the authority to alter the contract. Its either the Prince's terms, or else nothing at all. The decision to accept them or not is up to you. If you do accept, fine. I'll have the Official Liaison escort you to more permanent military housing -as soon as he gets here. If not, that's fine too, you'll just be invited to leave. If you do not leave, we will either make, or kill you. At that point you'd be trespassing in our territory and we'd be well within our rights to do so. Those are your options."
"If any one of you lays a hand against us, you won't just have the Ascendancy to worry about." Venus warned.
"Venus," the Endymion cut in, "sit down."
He pulled the datapad with the Prince's terms to him and began reading it over one more time.
Raditz hated these things. He was no diplomat. He didn't know how to negotiate anything without using his fists. He wasn't even much of a bureaucrat either, hating paperwork and offices. Not for the first time, he wondered what in the world had possessed him to accept the offer of the governorship of Earth. Kakarot had been alive at the time and Raditz's options were either take the desk job, or else return to service in the Fleet. Be stationed on a random warship and only be able to see his brother or his family during the rare and all to short periods of leave. That had been why Raditz accepted the governor's position. He didn't realize at the time the Kakarot would be dead or off who-know-where half the time anyway. Raditz would have been just as well staying in the military. Might have even been made Captain of his own ship by now…
"I think we should take the deal." The Princess said, snapping everyone's attention to her. "I want… I want to stay here and help. Besides, the Prince strikes me at the type of person who would not have given us the option to stay if he didn't need want us for something. I think we can do good here. If it turns out that more compensation should be given for what we contribute, then we can renegotiate later." A pause. "Where is the Prince, by the way?"
Here Raditz paused, not knowing exactly how to answer. The Prince's note, while vaguely mentioning why he couldn't be present at the negotiations, had not been to specific in that area. The best answer Raditz could give was, "Urgent business has called the Prince back to the capitol."
"Oh." Her eyes fell, disappointed.
Raditz chose to ignore her unusual interest in the Prince. If there was any good gossip to be had about them, he was sure he'd be hearing from Goten soon -if he ever signed to show up!- and it it wasn't gossip but something more relevant to his position in the government, then he would hear about it when he needed to. So, ignoring the Lunarian Princess's disappointment over hearing that the Prince was away, he addressed the King, asking, "Will you be agreeing to the terms then?"
Endymion glanced quickly at his daughter, contemplating. She flashed him a pleasing look. He sighed. "Very well. But on the condition that we revisit the contract at a later date. For now these terms will do, but they are completely unacceptable for anything long-term."
"The idea was never for this to be long-term." Raditz agreed. "This is only a temporary treaty with temporary terms."
The Lunarian King nodded and pressed his thumb to the datapad's touchscreen, near the bottom of the document. "This is how you sign, right?"
Just then, the door opened and Goten stumbled in, in a rush. "Okay! I'm here! What's so urgent?"
The Lunarians gaped at him, halfway between startled and suspicious, and amused at his expense. Perfect. Real professional, Goten. You are definitely your father's son.
Raditz pinched the bridge of his nose. "Perfect timing." He said. "Your Majesty, King Endymion, Captain Son here will be acting as the Liaison between the Empire and yourselves. Anything you need, just ask him."
"Wait, what?" Goten looked at his uncle in startled confusion. "I'm the what now?"
…
Sleeping in a space pod had become easy after three -almost the complete four- years of service in the Fleet, but it was never comfortable. Trunks drifted in and out of sleep.
Reclining as best he could in the airline-style seat, his arms crossed over his chest because there was no other comfortable place to put them. His dreams were of heroic archetypes of the past, and grilled meat that he would pick up but then could not eat -this was most likely do to the fact that he had not eaten anything before jumping in his pod and taking off-, and dark looming villains that threatened his home and way of life.
He was sitting in his Grandfather's lap.
That right there should have been his first clue that this wasn't real, Grandfather King Vegeta never let Trunks sit in his lap, never hugged him, never showed the type of affection that Gramps and Grammy so freely showered him with, not even once. But everything seems normal and makes perfect sense in dreams.
They sat at the long table, the one used for formal court dinners. It sat on a three-tiered dais and looked down on the rest of the Hall. But the Hall was empty apart from them. The table before them was laid with yakiniku, bacon covered doughnuts, ice cream, pie-flavored cake… but no matter how hard the Prince reached for it, or how much his arm stretched, he couldn't seem to get at the grilled meat, the bacon doughnuts rolled away from him, the ice cream slithered out of his grasp… None of the food let him eat.
"…it appeared that a golden light was shinning through the form and raiment of the warrior, as if through the thin veil of mortal flesh." Grandfather was saying, but the Prince wasn't paying much attention. His dinner was escaping him and that took precedence over everything. "The Seer says that the Legendary will return one day and that he will come in the form of a hansaiya. It might even be you, my little Vegeta. It should be you. You are a direct decedent of the Legendary, the most recent in a proud dynasty. It has to be you."
The Prince grumbled indignantly about how he couldn't possibly be the Legendary if he couldn't even get the plates of grilled meat to stop running away from him.
Grandfather King Vegeta laughed, an oddly shrill laugh that was not his own that slowly morphed into what became recognizable as a scouter announcing an incoming call.
Groggily, Trunks blinked at the round view-port of his pod trying to remember why he was in a pod and how he could make that obnoxious sound go away. Tapping his scouter, he said with a yawn, "Hmm… what is it…?"
"Where the hell are you!?" Goten's voice growled in his ear.
Trunks rubbed his other eye, the one not covered by a red glass lens, with the heel of his hand and recalled that he'd climbed into a pod because he couldn't fly the Patriot back to Vegeta-sei. He was going to Vegeta-sei because… shit! That's right! Quickly, he checked his current coordinates, made sure his course trajectory was still correct and no random astral body with a strong gravitational pull had dragged him off course while he was sleeping. When that was done, he answered his friend's question. "I'm another eight hours out from the capitol. Why? Trouble back on Earth?"
Goten ignored the question, which Trunks chose to interpret as there being nothing new since he left. "Why are you going back to the capitol? We only just got to Earth, I thought you wanted to goof-off and make an asshat of yourself like you always do when we come to Earth."
"Something came up." He thought about warning Goten that the Kold's were targeting humans and hansaiya specifically. But then he would ask why, and Trunks couldn't tell him about the Legendary. If the Legendary appeared in another family, if another hansaiya besides the Prince or his sister ascended to become the Legendary… it would be the end of the Vegeta Dynasty. His family thrown from power. The throne taken from them. It had to be Trunks, or else none at all. Grandfather King Vegeta had taken steps in the past to ensure that this was so.
It wasn't that Trunks didn't trust Goten. They grew up together and there was no other warrior in all the Empire that Trunks wanted at his back. They were best friends, but they were also Saiyans, and that meant that Goten was also competition. Friendly competition was a good thing. Healthy. It encouraged them to become better fighters, better warriors, better men. One always striving to heat the other, neither one ever stayed on top for very long, both giving each other a reason to seek new levels. But if Goten learned that he to had as much chance of becoming a Legendary as the Prince did… No, it had to be Trunks. It had to be the Prince, the direct decedent of the first Legendary. Or else no one at all… Trunks didn't want to think about something like that coming between them, so he couldn't tell Goten.
That, and he wasn't quite sure who could intercept their transmission. It was bad enough that the Ice-jin knew. The Empire, and more importantly his family, didn't need anymore information leaks.
"That's what Uncle Razzy said." Goten sounded annoyed. "I know you couldn't tell him, but c'mon, what's going on?"
"I have Princely things to do." Trunks growled. "And sometimes I can't tell you about those things either."
"Fine. Keep your secrets. I'll find out eventually, anyway. You never could keep anything from me for very long." Sure, Chibi, whatever helps you sleep at night. "Anyway, when are you coming back? The Princess was very disappointed to hear that you'd gone."
For some reason, the memory of her ambush in the Patriot's engine room sprang to his mind, unbidden. How she suddenly jumped at him, pressed her lithe body against his. She was so soft, all over. How the curve of her lower back felt under his hand when he wrapped his arm around her to keep the idiot from falling. And that kiss… He'd had better. Her's had been clumsy and unpracticed. Mashing her lips against his with no deliberation, just earnest intent. But her lips were been warm and soft and tasted vaguely of strawberry chapstick…
Trunks caught himself running a finger over his own lips at the memory and wondering if her kisses might improve with practice… Then he quickly came to his sense. "What do I care if she's disappointed? I can come and go as I please in my own damn Empire! I do not exist to serve her pleasure!"
There was a beat of silence on Goten's end.
Then, "Okay, well, I have no idea what exactly I'm supposed to do in my new position as Liaison. So, I just want you to know, if this whole thing with the Senshi goes south… I blame you! 'Kay?"
"Whatever." Trunks groaned, readjusting in his seat, trying to find a more comfortable position in the absurdly uncomfortable pod. "I've still got eight hours and nothing else to do. I'm going back to sleep. Hanging up now."
He clicked off before Goten could protest and set the scouter to only accept incoming calls with Priority One message tags. Then he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
This time the Lunarian Princess was in his dream.
Her soft lithe body pressed against him. Her knees drawn up, her hands gripping at the shoulders of his cracked and broken armor. He wrapped one arm protectively around her trembling body while extending the other to get off a pathetically impotent ki blast.
The shot was deflected effortlessly by the dark figure that loomed over them. Short, white skinned, with a round head and a lizard-like tail. The face was half in shadow and indistinct, but the form was clear enough. Ice-jin. Kold. Or one of his sons. It didn't matter. One three-toed foot took a menacing step towards them and he wrapped his other arm around the Princess, holding her tighter against him.
The Ice-jin gathered his ki, the power pooling in his hands. This was the end. The Prince might could save the Princess. Flip them around, place himself between her and the on-coming blast. Maybe once he was dead the Ice-jin wouldn't bother with her. After all, she was neither Saiyan nor hansaiya. Heck! She wasn't even an Imperial. Yes. That would be what he did. Save the woman. Die with honor. The Prince looked up into the face of his death, gathering his whatever energy reserves he had just to move.
Then something unexpected happened.
A new warrior appeared. His aura a shinning golden corona. His body illuminated as if lit from an internal light. His face, indistinct and general. He could have been anyone. Any Saiyan.
He came in from the left and rushed the Ice-jin. One solid punch to the face.
The Ice-jin went tumbling away. Recovered. Rushed back to return the punch. The two tangled in a blur of fists and feet, so fast that even the Prince's eyes could not follow them. One moment they were in front of him, then they were grappling in the air, then over to the right, then far off in the distance. Finally the golden Saiyan warrior threw him down and the Ice-jin did not get back up.
Then he came back to the Prince.
The Princess wriggled out of his arms and climbed to her feet, running to the golden warrior. He was clearly stronger than the Prince, of course she would prefer him.
The Prince stared up at the warrior. Face still nothing more than general features. Indistinct and anonymous. It could be anyone. Anyone but him. The Prince wasn't the Legendary. It was someone else. That meant… that meant…
The Legendary gathered a ball of ki in his hand. This was it. His Dynasty was ended. The Prince was defeated, the Legendary was victorious. The strong ruled and the weak served. But not deposed monarchs. Deposed monarchs died.
Trunks woke up before the blast hit him.
He groaned and rubbed his eyes. Which was worse, being woken up by a scouter call or a nightmare? Both were equally unpleasant.
There was no point in trying to go back to sleep now. He didn't even have to check his instruments, Trunks could clearly see Oca, the larger of Vegeta-sei's two suns, through his pod's viewport. Romanesco would be coming into view soon. From a a distance, Oca's light usually eclipsed the smaller star. And then, orbiting those binary stars at a distance of 159,600,000 kilometers was the red planet of Vegeta-sei.
Trunks checked his instruments, measuring his speed and the angle of his approach to make sure he wasn't going to fling himself into the sun and die a horrible fiery death, or slingshot around the suns and fling himself back out of the system (you'd be surprised how often lone pods actually did that). He had to correct his course by eleven degrees. It didn't sound like much, but over the great distance that he still was from the planet, it was a huge margin. That done, he opened a hailing channel to Landing Control at the Imperial Palace.
"Landing Control zero-zero-one, this is space pod DB-one-nine-seven-five, Prince Vegeta." He announced. "Have a landing cradle ready and waiting. Arrival time estimated at six minutes."
There was a pause on the other end as whomever was running the control tower checked his pod's ID code and his voice print to verify that he was, in fact, Prince Vegeta. Then, "Space pod DB-one-nine-seven-five, confirmed. Welcome home, Your Highness. Landing cradle number four is open and awaiting your touch down."
The recommended entry vector was fed into his pod's console and Trunks once again adjusted his angle and trajectory to align with, not only the landing field, but the individual cradle he was aiming for. And at this distance, with the planet itself still just a small red marble in his view, it was like trying to hit a grain of sand in Hawaii with a tank-shell fired from Russia.
"Entry vector confined." He announced when the computer acknowledged his changes. "Has the Dominance return yet?"
"Sir." The Landing Control officer began in that subtle tone people used when they weren't sure if their answer might anger him or not. "Neither the King nor the Fleet have returned yet. On their last communiqué, estimated ETA was three hours from now."
Ah. So, he'd managed to beat his father here. Trunks couldn't decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, while the delay in speaking to his father about this latest turn of events with the Ice-jin was annoying and quite possibly a waste of precious time, it did at least give Trunks time to consider what exactly he was going to say. King Vegeta XIV had a rather volatile temper and, while Trunks was technically stronger than him, he still found the idea of his father's rage terrifying. A small fear from his boyhood that he never seemed to outgrow. But then, no child liked to see their parents upset, he supposed.
His mother met him on the landing pad.
Just looking at her, one would never be able to tell that she was actually the most powerful (read: influential) person of non-Saiyan blood in the Empire. Dressed in plain blue-jeans and a Capsule Corp. t-shirt, flip-flop style sandals on her feet, and a baseball cap on her head, she looked more like an ordinary woman whom was on her way to a terran-picnic, got lost along the way, fell into a space-time wormhole, and ended up on Vegeta-sei. It was hard to believe she was the Queen. In fact, visitors to the Palace often mistook her for an off-duty servant more often than not. Those were interesting occurrences.
"So," she said, placing a hand on her hip and watching her son climb out of his space pod. "To what do we owe your unexpected return?"
Not that she wasn't happy to see her son. But Bulma knew better than anyone his moods and habits. Once Trunks was on Earth and unsupervised, nothing short of a direct order from his father would get him to leave again. And even then, he stalled and dragged his feat. For Trunks to rerun to the capitol of his own volition, alone, without the Patriot or even Goten… something significant must have happened.
"Hello, Mother." He pointedly ignored her question. Crossing the distance between them, he gave her a hug instead. Because Dodoria's orders to kill all humans would have included her and he didn't want to think about what would have happened if she had been on Earth during the attack and their mission succeeded, and he was almost sick with relief that neither of those things happened. When he finally pulled back from the hug, Trunks continued, "I need to see Father as soon as the Dominance arrives. But until then, I really need to eat!"
Bulma sighed in exasperation. Saiyans and their monstrous appetites. "I know you didn't fly here all the way from Earth just for a meal. But c'mon, lets get you fed."
…
The battle with the Kold family's forces had been a great disappointment. It was true what his son and Goten had said, the battle was nothing more than a diversion. A useless waste of time. Nothing like their usual skirmishes with the Ascendancy. That gave Vegeta cause to wonder.
If the battle was just a diversion and their real target Earth, what did the Kold family want? This was not the normal behavior of the Ascendency. He hoped the boy got there in time and didn't goof off. The King knew his son was more than capable of defending one planet with the soldiers and resources he had aboard the Patriot plus his more than considerable intelligence in hearted from his mother -and a little bit from him. But he also lacked focus. Vegeta hoped that the boy would remain focused on what needed to be done long enough to actually finish it.
Earth was necessary for the Empire's continued strength. They could not afford to lose it.
The boy knew that. But more than that, the Earth was the home of his mother's people. It was his mother's home and he would defend it not just because the Empire needed it, but because, in some small way, he loved the Earth -possibly even more than he loved Vegeta-sei. The King needn't worry. But because it was the boy, his first born, and his only son, he did worry. The woman said it was something that couldn't be helped, 'paternal instinct' she called it, all parents feel a version of it and it couldn't be helped. 'Weakness' what was he called it. The boy could take care of himself, and so long as he kept his head on strait, could take care of those under his command and the planet he'd been sent to protect as well. Concern was unnecessary.
"Two minutes to hyperspace drop." The Helm announced.
Vegeta ignored him. Unlike his mate and offspring, he did not have an uncommon fascination with the nuances of space-travel. A ship was just a tool to get you from point A to point B. Admittedly, the ships the woman had designed over the years were worlds more comfortable than the simple one-man pods that were now only reserved for planetary drops or grunt troops, but that did not change their core function. To traverse the distance between planets and keep the warriors inside in fighting condition so that they would be ready when they reached their destination. Everything else was window-dressing.
"Dropping from hyperspace now."
The mottled sky of hyperspace melted away into starlings which then slowly condensed themselves back into the normal pin-pricks of light that were the stars when seen from normal space. There, ahead of them, looming big and red, was Vegeta-sei. The home world of the Saiyan race and capitol of their empire. Oca, the red giant star was slowly disappearing behind it, with Romanesco, the blue dwarf star trailing behind it. The suns' sets from the Palace must be beautiful right now, only about four times a year did both Oca and Romanesco set so close to one another. Vegeta found himself wondering if the woman were watching it right now, alone, or perhaps with their daughter, and thinking about him.
The King quickly dismissed the thought. Such sentiments did not belong on the bridge of a warship. After he was home, his feet firmly on the ground, then he could indulge in such trivialities.
His eyes focused on the space dock. Large capitol ships like the Dominance and Admonitor were much to large to land on the actual planet's surface. Only in extreme circumstances. That was one drawback of exchanging the smaller one-man pods for these behemoths. But the woman designed space stations for that specific purpose. The warship would park at a dock orbiting the planet and the crew would take a smaller shuttle down to the planet. The woman seemed to think of everything.
"Your Majesty," ventured the officer manning the Comm. "Message from the Prince, Sir. He says Earth is safe for the moment and he has returned to the capitol and needs to speak with you the moment you make planet-fall."
The King's eyes narrowed, searching the space dock growing ever-nearer in the bridge's main view-port. He did not see the Patriot docked at the station. That meant he had to have taken a one-man pod back to Vegeta-sei. Did that mean his ship was destroyed in the battle for Earth? Or had his infernal tinkering with the ship's damn engines finally caught up with him? Was it like the Executor all over again? Damn boy. When was he gonna learn that a warrior's place, no scratch that, a Prince's place was not bent over a machine covered in grease, but on the bridge of his ship, in a place of command.
Then it occurred to the King that his son had no real reason to return to Vegeta-sei once Earth was safe. He was already on holiday when this whole mess started, his crew about to start a temporary leave of service. If Earth was once again safe, Vegeta would have expected the boy to stay there, waste his time one women, music, drink, games, and whatever other frivolities he indulged in, and wouldn't come home until he'd had his fill -or Vegeta had to drag him. So, then… why had the boy returned to the capitol? To speak to the King in person, obviously. But why? What was so important that it could not be said over a comm channel, or even a direct scouter-to-scouter signal?
Now the King was curious and wary.
He spent the rest of the time it took the Dominance to dock thinking about it. Deliberating all the possibilities and organizing them in his mind from most mundane and trivial, to most severe and of earth-shattering import. By the time the King finally climbed out of the landing shuttle and set foot on the Imperial Palace's landing pad, he had every possibility he could think of neatly organized in a bulleted list from A to Q, like the multiple-choice answers on a test.
Nappa would probably want to discuss the oddness of their battle with the Kolds, but the King put that off for the moment. He wanted to settle whatever it was that had prompted the boy to rush back here without his ship and crew when he didn't have to. Something so out of character for his son definitely merited five minutes of his time to investigate.
Vegeta followed the boy's ki to the sitting room of the Prince's suit where he found his son sitting on the floor with little Bra standing on the couch cushions behind him, attempting to twist his fine lavender hair into… what the hell kind of style was that!? Bunny ears? The King quickly decided he did not want to know.
The boy looked up self-consciously when the King entered.
"I, uh… I lost a bet." He explained.
The King he didn't care what his son's excuse was this time. It was not the first time he let his little sister play with his hair, molding it into an absurd and undignified style for a warrior. He act like he hated it, but that never prevented him from submitting to the little girl the next time she got 'inspired'. He crossed his arms over his chest and graded down at his children. "Bra, go bother your mother." He commanded. Then to the boy, he said, "You had something urgent to discuss."
"Yes." The Prince climbed to his feet, attempting to pull the knots out of his hair and only succeeding in making them tighter. By the gods he looked stupid! Things like this were the woman's influence. The boy waited until his little sister was out of the room, the door shut firmly behind her before he continued. Taking a moment to collect his words, he took a deep breath and began, "The main battle was a distraction, as we already guess. A smaller force of Kold troops were sent to Earth, but they weren't attacking the planet. Their target was the people, just the people. Not the land. They didn't care about the resources or Imperial targets. They were just after the humans… and the hansaiya."
The King raised one critical eyebrow. "Why?"
Here, the Prince paused. This was the part that he had the most difficulty deciding on how to explain. Not because it was particularly difficult to say, but rather, he feared his father's reaction. "Father… they know. I don't know how they know, I haven't figured that part out yet, but the Kold family knows that Grandfather was trying to use Earth to breed a new Legendary."
To the Prince's great surprise, his father did not react in any of the ways he predicted he might. The King did not exclaim 'What!?' and snarl at him that he was incompetent to not have discovered the source of the leak. He did not take a 'punish the messenger' approach and smack the Prince across the face. In fact, for a couple of seconds, he didn't really react much at all.
Then, "I… see… And they were seeking to destroy all humans and whatever hansaiya they could find in order to prevent that."
"Yes." The Prince nodded. Not quite sure how to handle this new calm version of his father. It was very disconcerting. "But there's more. According to the officer that lead the attack, the Kolds are direct decedents of the original Ice-jin that came to Vegeta-sei centuries ago. They want revenge for their ancestor and are trying to destroy us. Not just the humans and the hansaiya, but all Saiyans -every person with Saiyan blood. Father, this is different from our normal skirmishes with the Ascendency."
"Yes. It is." The King agreed, an odd tone to his voice. He looked his son up and down, examining him critically, sizing him up. Looking past the unpolished armor and ridiculous purple hair -made all the worse by Bra's stylings-, he was examining the boy not as a Prince or even as his son, but as a warrior. He was strong. His ki was already greater than the King's own. But he lacked focus and drive. He was spoilt and he was lazy. Vegeta locked eyes with his son. "Now, more than ever, we need the Legendary."
There was silence for one… two… three beats.
The two men did nothing more than stare at one another, their eyes locked. The King's meaning was clear.
But the Prince said, "M-me? But I'm not…"
"You will train until you ascend." And that was the end of that. No more discussion was necessary. That was final.
The Prince looked down, averting his eyes. There was no arguing with his father. Of all the hansaiya in the Empire, he was the only direct decedent of the Legendary. If the Legendary were ever to appear again, it had to be him. If it wasn't him… "Yes, Father."
But, just to drive the point home, the King continued, "You know what would happen if another hansaiya were to ascend before you do."
"He kills both of us and takes over the monarchy and mother and Bra are left to his mercy."
"See that, that doesn't happen." The King commanded. "If the Legendary is fated to reappear, it must be you!"
…
