I am moving tomorrow, as in packing up my house and moving to another. If you PM me, I probably won't get back to you. My apologies in advance.

Tank you for the 4.5k views this month! Enjoy!

-Kanotari

Chapter 13: The Tapestry is Woven

"My name is Dende," the green child explained by way of introduction.

"Hello Dende," Tarble responded. "Did you see how we arrived here?"

"That is easy. I used my instant transmission," the green alien said, grinning.

"Well then, thank you for saving us," Tarble replied with a bow. Gure bowed as well.

"But Dende," the young prince continued. "How did you know to come and help us?"

"Guru told me," the child explained. "He wishes to see you."

"Lead the way," the princeling acquiesced.

"Take my hands please," Dende requested, proffering them to the saiyan and his wife. Tarble confidently seized the small green hand, with Gure following his lead.

A blink of the eyes and the three stood in front of an enormous person. Tarble assumed that this new person and Dende were of the same race. Their garb and coloration were similar, and they both had antennae, but the similarities stopped there. Dende was small and childish. The new person was morbidly obese and clearly ancient. It was also possible that the chair he currently sat in had fused with his gelatinous backside.

"This is Grand Elder Guru," Dende announced proudly. The visitors bowed politely.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, and thank you for assisting us, sir," Tarble greeted, the essence of politeness.

"Thank you," Gure echoed, bowing again.

"It was nothing," Guru replied in a low, rumbling bass voice.

"If I might," Tarble requested, "how did you know we were in trouble?"

"NAIL!" the Grand Elder shouted, stretching the name so it lasted several seconds. Another green person, this one with a surly disposition, entered the room.

"Yes, Lord Guru?" presumably Nail asked.

"Fetch them," came the order.

"Yes Lord Guru," Nail obediently answered. He returned a minute later, arms laden with a wooden rack. Stretched across the frame were seven threads. All started at varying times, but all ended abruptly in fray at the same exact place.

"The note, Nail," the Grand Elder commanded. His green servant cleared his throat and read a small piece of paper attached to the rack.

"It reads, 'There is an eighth thread. These must be re-spun.' " From the silence in the room, it was clear no one understood the cryptic remark. Yet someone had understood that it meant to help the young saiyan prince. A figure robed in black entered the room, his hood obscuring his face.

The flames of Ananke burned brightly below themas Bannan took the helm. It was clear that the cybernetic saiyan was nervous. He was sweating profusely, and his breaths were shallow and strained. Frieza's soldiers were shooting down any vessel attempting to escape the carnage, so he had every right to panic. Anyone who knew the reptilian overlord would not find it surprising if he intended this to be the final resting place of his saiyan mercenaries.

He glanced behind him at his prince and at his friend. Vegeta was his liege. He was sworn to protect him. Cale… well he thought of her like a little sister. He would see that no harm came to her. They were counting on him to save them. Somehow it calmed him, focused him. Bannan took a deep breath and steered the ship towards a sizable gap in the blockade. The cyborg wisely kept to a reasonable speed. The faster they went, the more they looked like escapees, and the more likely target they were.

"Bannan!" Cale warned, her voice cracking. She pointed to the nearest warship. It had more turrets than he could count, and every last one was turning slowly. Towards them. The saiyan pilot gunned the ship, willing it to fly as fast as it could. Engine damage was fixable, suffocation in the vacuum of space was not. The turrets locked on.

"Come on, baby," he begged the ship. "Don't fail me now." He rerouted power from every extraneous system and rerouted it to the engines. The cyborg could feel himself being forced into his seat as the juice took effect and the ship surged forward. Behind him, he heard Cale screech and Vegeta swear as the sudden acceleration caught them off guard. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the turrets. They were still following the ship, their unison motion haunting.

"Please, girl!" he begged again, routing power from everything but the propulsion system. "Hold your breath," he warned as he shut off the life support. "And hold onto something," he continued, shutting the gravity off. Again, the ship greedily consumed the extra energy and surged forward. Bannan patted the main control console affectionately. "That's my girl."

He took one last glance at the receding turrets, and saw flashes of green like a million deadly raindrops falling toward them. There was time to swear, and then everything was gone.

Radditz rushed over to the controls. The prince and the odd creature he claimed to have married were simply gone, like they never existed. It was utterly impossible. He and Nappa were guarding the airlock, the only way off the ship. Instant transmission was a myth and teleportation a distant technological dream.

As curious as he was, the saiyan had no time. The prince's ship had already nosed down, heading for the ground. The controls were utterly alien to him. Normally, he was happy to let Bannan do the flying. The aging saiyan was skilled at what he did, and had more than a natural dislike for people touching 'his girl'. It was simply easier to let the old man and his precious ship spend some quality time together. Today, however, he was beginning to regret taking the easy way out.

The ship was still plunging for the ground at increasing speeds. He would have to learn, and fast. One of the stray passengers he and his partner had pulled aboard appeared to understand the situation. The weaver, presumably, let out a blood-curdling screech, pointing out the bridge window. Radditz empathized. The burning ruins of Ananke were rapidly approaching. He hit a button, with no clue whatsoever of its function. The saiyan felt his hair lift off the back of his neck, and his body lift from the seat. The passengers shrieked.

"Damn gravity controls," he swore, hitting the button again. He fell roughly into the captain's chair.

Nappa shut the airlock and rushed over. "What are you doing? Where's the prince?" he demanded.

"I don't know and I don't know," Radditz spat back.

"Try this," Nappa replied, an edge of panic to his voice. He hit it without waiting for an opinion. The bridge window darkened systematically.

"Idiot!" Radditz called. "That's the radiation shield!" The younger saiyan hit another button. He heard the rush of a fan behind him. It was the sound of the internal environment control kicking on. He became conscious of the sweat dripping down his back and running into his eyes. Radditz wasn't sure if it was the heater he had just turned on or the mounting pressure.

"This one! I got it!" Nappa insisted, hitting another button on the top of the screen. This time all the menus and gages disappeared, replaced with another set.

"Directional controls," Radditz sighed with relief. He nudged the ship upward, resuming the course to safety. The relief was only temporary. Frieza's bombarding warships drew ever closer. They would have to pass the military blockade if they wished to survive.

Wires hummed with electricity as the ship's energy system powered the propulsion. To look like a piece of space junk, one had to float like a piece of space junk. Without a proper pilot, this was the best course of action: cut the engines. Much like with the computer system, he had almost no clue what he was doing. Wires in a wide array of colors seemed to scream, "Cut me!" After several long moments of study, he made a decision. Glancing out the bridge window, he saw Frieza's warships drawing within firing range. He knew there was no other choice. Radditz sliced clean through the set of wires he thought was most likely to control the engine.

The hum of the propulsion system faded away, the silence deafening. They floated, just as Radditz had planned. Sheer luck had kept them from dying a fire-y death, at least so far. One last obstacle remained: the blockade.

The waiting was torture. There were other, faster-moving ships that made better targets for the warships' turrets. Their vessel was just waiting there, like a sitting duck, albeit a slightly camouflaged duck. A woman wept in a corner. Her soft sobs were loud in the deadly quiet. Nappa and Radditz shared a worried glance. Both saiyans felt a soft pressure on their hands, and then the ship vanished.

She screamed, pounding on the glass with her all her might. Her human limbs did little to harm the glass keeping her safe from the vacuum of space. Vegeta shouted something to her, but both the glass and her own screams of denial prevented her from hearing. The prince was at the control panel. All it took was a few simple pushes of a button, and she was floating away in her pod, away from the only place she could think of as home in this timeline. Bulma couldn't help but wonder if she'd ever see it again, ever see him again.

Why had he sent her away? Had she not been useful? Of course that was a ridiculous thought. She had saved his life back on Riparian. She cooked his meals and did his laundry. She took care of the vox during their short stay on the ship. She even took care of the arrogant prince himself when he had suffered from those horrible mysterious burns. No, she assured herself, she wasn't useless. Why, then, had Vegeta thrown her into a pod and sent her off to who knows where?

Bulma savored her last glimpse of her prince. He turned away looking regretful, or so she imagined. His figure soon became too small to see. The ship vanished too, eventually, merging with the inky blackness of empty space. Then the stars beside her shut off.

The Crown Prince of the Saiyan Race rose from the dirt, brushing the dust from his pants. He took in his surroundings. The foliage around him was a sea-foam blue in the form of rolling grasses and rounded topiary-like trees. The sky was a deep green, which the water reflected. From his vantage point, the terrain seemed to indicate some sort of archipelago. The horizon was dotted with rolling plains broken by abrupt plateaus and flowing water. Vegeta wasn't sure where he was, only that he had never been there before.

Cale and Bannan groaned nearby, both coming to. Bannan stood first. He ran straight over to their ship, which was in surprisingly good condition for a crashed vessel. Presumably crashed, Vegeta corrected himself. If he didn't know better, he might have thought that the ship was placed there, or landed there on its own. The cyborg stretched his arms as wide as he could, embracing the hull in a hug. The bright clunk of metal on metal sounded as his arms connected with the vessel he cared for so much.

Cale was more civil about the situation. She sat disheveled on the ground. After checking to make sure all of her body parts were intact and functional, she checked her hair. The combat and …. well whatever had transported them here… had ruined her braid's immaculate appearance. She fixed it with skill, tying the pink ribbon with a flourish.

Eventually, all three became aware of something nearby: a large domed building. It was bone-white, decorated with several jutting points reminiscent of the spires of a castle. It was practically begging to be explored. The three saiyans answered its plea, entering.

A morbidly obese green alien sat upon a throne flanked by several other members of his race. A hooded figure sent chills down Vegeta's spine. It was clearly a member of the Cult of Bardock. They were creepy, indeed, but they hadn't steered him wrong so far. To his great surprise, there were two more people in the room.

"Tarble!" Bannan called to the princeling. "We thought you were dead." Vegeta took advantage of the touching reunion to allow himself a moment of weakness. A look of peaceful relief found its way onto his face for just a few seconds.

The final person in the room was of an unknown species. Vegeta was quite positive he had never seen anything like it.

"Glad you're safe too, Gure," Bannan laughed, seizing both Tarble and the mysterious alien in his arms.

Wait… Gure? Vegeta thought. The name was familiar, but he couldn't place it. It wasn't a saiyan name. It wasn't any of his previous slaves, at least not that he could remember. It wasn't any of Frieza's minions. The answer hit him like a Kamehameha to the gut. Gure was the name of his brother's wife. That… thing… was married to his brother. Tarble might have laughed if the expression on Vegeta's face wasn't directed at his wife.

Tarble gave his elder brother a big hug, something he probably wouldn't have been capable if Vegeta had been in a normal frame of mind. "Vegeta," he said calmly, "I would like to introduce you to my wife, Gure."

"It is good to meet you, brother-in-law," she added, bowing.

"You as well," Vegeta replied reflexively, bowing back.

Tarble chuckled. His brother was in a bit of shock. The shocking events didn't abate, either. From nowhere, Radditz appeared directly on top of Cale's foot. She punched him in the arm with her full strength, then captured him in a tearful embrace. Nappa appeared a few feet away. He was still clutching the hand of his green alien savior.

A loud crash outside caused everyone, regardless of species, to run outside. The Grand Elder was much to old for running, but he strained his eyes trying to see. Vegeta was the first on the scene, ki ready in case it was hostile. It wasn't hostile, it was round. It was, in fact a space pod of saiyan origins. The pod had plowed straight into the hard dirt. There was a hiss of decompressing air and the glass moved aside, opening. A familiar blue-haired woman stepped out.

"Bulma!" Vegeta gasped. He winced, realizing he was more relieved to see the slave girl than he had been to see his supposedly dead brother. He expected her to tease that he had finally slipped up and called her by her proper name, or a slap for shoving her into the pod and ignoring her protests. She did neither. She was too busy glancing around, mouth wide open.

"I don't believe it," she whispered. "I'm on Planet Namek."

Stay tuned for next time, when the Cult reveals their plan, the saiyans discover Bulma's true origins, and the Dragon Balls resurface.