What's in a Moment?

by The Once and Future Prophet

When the time came for him to die on the planet Namek, Vegeta falls unwitting victim to a small hiccup in the Universe. Now, alive despite Frieza's best attempts, he has to establish just where he stands in the grand scheme of things; pre-determined pawn, or writer of his own destiny?

21. Final Judgment

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The air was cool, but the winds were hot. The ground was solid, but it was trembling. The water lapped at the shore, but it retreated as though struck. The sky was shrouded, but they all could see.

And Vegeta was dead, but he stood before them now.

Goku simply didn't know what to think or how to feel - far too much having happened in much too little a time span for it to seem like anything more than a delusion of his grief-stricken mind. He heard the words that his son was speaking, and he heard the Prince behind those words, but he just couldn't wrap his head around how they had become one and the same. The two people whose deaths had been his fault were merged into this one being of power and anger that was doing the impossible and standing in Sel's way, the very last shield for the planet and countless others.

And his power...beyond description. Not because it was monstrously high, or that it was warping the world around it like molten glass, but simply because there was no real way to describe it. It felt almost exactly the same level as Gohan's maximum had been, though wavering enough that anything was guesswork, but there was an unnatural sensation about it; something that had never been present in the ki of any fighter this planet had ever seen before, but still familiar somehow.

Was this a dream, or a nightmare?

"Do you really expect me to believe such an outrageous claim?" Sel had mustered up her usual calm to hide her earlier shock - but the response had tellingly been slow in coming.

"I don't actually care what you believe." A negligent jerk of his head. Eyes glinting like a blade's edge. "I don't even really wish to speak to you, but...some habits just die harder than others."

They had been keeping eye contact through the entire exchange, and both moved at the same cue – Sel dashing sideways while Vegeta sprang upwards. A single lance of golden energy, impossible to tell from which direction it came and stretched thin by the speed at which it was fired, arced between them and exploded in midair. The concussive force of the detonation seemed to pause for a second before blowing outward like a miniature typhoon.

But that was the least of their efforts. In just a few seconds, the two had circled the island several times, firing off a flurry of similar blasts that threatened to either incinerate the grounded warriors or drown them in the upsurge of the agitated tide. It was incredible for the few remaining spectators as the sky filled with countless fireballs that seemed to endlessly join with others to create still larger explosions.

And in the middle of that hurricane of power, Vegeta and Sel rammed against each other, exchanging single move attacks that were meant solely to probe the others defenses - instantly back apart and firing off a dozen more ki bullets before colliding again. They were blurs of light and movement to all eyes but their own.

The ground began to tremble under each blow, resonating with the ungodly powers that were never supposed to exist on its soils. Unseen by all, tremors shot out across the ocean floor carrying the shock waves of the battle for miles around. City dwellers threw themselves to the ground to protect themselves from what they mistakenly believed to be one of the biggest quakes in history. Mountains shook to pieces, boulders the size of houses careening down the steep slopes. Canyons crumbled in on themselves, replaced by fissures that yawned open in grasslands and fields. And everywhere, the sky was dark and infested with lightning bolts that struck the ground with infrequency and malice.

Goku blinked, his eye falling shut.

Vegeta allowed himself to take a punch to the chin, rolling with it to prevent any broken bones. The next punch he blocked with both forearms, crossing his left arm between his right and his face to jab Sel in the mouth. She merely jerked back from it, unharmed and undistracted. Reeling back, she smashed the open palm of her other hand into the side of the the merged saiyan's skull, forcing him away even as she dropped backwards, coiling both legs in tight. When she rocketed them out towards him though, Vegeta grabbed both of her feet with his hands and used her attack to open up some distance between them. He threw her legs upwards, forcing her into a half backflip, and fired off a solid, gold ki blast at her exposed back, aiming right between her shoulder blades. Sel twisted around with a fluid grace, only barely managing to dodge the beam as she slipped in an impressive corkscrew, looking for all the world like a swimmer at a water show. Not upside down and half to Vegeta's side, she raised her hand and fired a blast of her own, prompting the saiyan to dash back a space and cross his arms to block it.

Goku's eye opened.

A relatively small explosion lit up the air above them, but it was almost instantly followed by two, three four more in lightning fast progression before the force of the detonations had even hit the bystanders. Yamcha felt something warm surge up against his legs, and he looked down to see that the ocean was overtaking the island, crashing in agitated waves against the shore with enough force to soak the several hundred feet between them and the body of water.

Without warning, both fighters reappeared with a booming crack of displaced air, grappling furiously, arms extended and taut with effort. Matching scowls were only a few inches apart, growls escaping from between clenched teeth.

But while this had happened to her not too long before, Sel was unaccustomed to matching wits against the last saiyan royal.

Both of the saiyan's feet shone with built up energy, evaporating all the water that had been licking at his boots into clouds of steam. As their struggle began to slip against him, Vegeta jerked his arms in a corkscrew as he fired off the accumulated energy and blasted into Sel's chest as their arms crumpled between them. He pulled his fist back and threw it into her eye, causing her to reel back with a snarl. She retaliated with a resounding headbutt that knocked him away from her – giving her enough of an opening to brace her legs a second then launch at him like a missile.

Vegeta grabbed at her as she collided into him, both of them rocketing across the island. He was slamming his elbow down onto her back as hard and fast as he could, but she ignored him as she slammed him up and then down into the muddy rock, pinning him there with the flat of one palm, the other filling with energy as she reared it back, ready to pulverize beyond recognition.

Even as her fist closed the short gap between them, Vegeta reacted without hesitation - bringing his own fist up to collide with her's, stopping both dead. Sel growled and redoubled her push, but the Prince had by then lifted his legs and pushed her away, creating just enough space between them for him to slap his other hand against the ground and release a concussive burst of ki.

The earth shattered beneath them as a hole, maybe only slightly larger than Sel was tall opened up around them and briefly caught the android unawares. Vegeta's knuckles audibly popped when they connected with the underside of her chin, but she barely heard it over the momentary rush of blood in her ears. Blinking once, she was back at attention as Vegeta slipped out from under her and kicked away in a spray of hot dirt.

His hands came up beside his chest for just a moment before he thrust them out towards her, purple charge already built up. "Gallick Gun!" The narrow beam tore through the space between them, though not nearly to overtake Sel; she easily jumped into the air and flew at an arcing angle towards the prince, intent on cracking his head open. Vegeta just looked back at her with a grin and raised one hand – one she had been mislead into thinking was also firing the Gallick Gun.

There was no time to dodge and the blast detonated in a small but brutal explosion against the top of her collarbone, just beneath her neck. She choked as her throat was squeezed by the force, and was again unable to dodge as Vegeta swept his left leg in a blistering uppercut to knock her further away, eliciting a sonic boom in the process.

She didn't take long to regain her bearings – throwing her arms out to their fullest extent and blasting the air around her with a small kiai that froze her momentum cold. The merged saiyan was only a second behind her, streaking straight towards her with a murderous scowl that warped Gohan's features into a passable facsimile of the Prince's.

Again as a flurry of limbs and violence, they collided with planet shattering force, each blow meant to do substantial damage. The two of them were matching the other through strength, speed and wit, playing out their possible moves even as they countered a kick to the head, or slipped out of a grab. They were two peerless machines of war, one raised and taught amidst slaughter and carnage and the other created for the purpose of revenge and domination.

But even at this break-neck speed they were fighting at, Sel knew that she would win. She had yet to make full use of her newly enhanced power, and she could feel that Vegeta was going all out right from the start, she believed. His power, despite feeling only around the same level as Gohan's, had actually been much higher; bolstered by an unknown force that she couldn't detect. But even so, she noticed that each punch was infinitesimally weaker than the last, and his reactions were becoming closer and closer: he was losing that power gradually every second he fought. She needed only to wait him out and force him to exert all of that gifted power so he was as easy prey as the boy had proven to be. Minutes, at most.

Vegeta was not blind to these facts either, noting them at the back of his mind. He knew that his time was limited, in more ways than one, but he couldn't try to rush it and lose the only opportunity he might have at finishing Sel off. Every second he bought for the Earth gave him another chance to find that opening in her armor and hit it with everything he had. He just needed to to hold out as long as he could.

He would not bend.

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The kais as a whole were strewn across the ground in the ragged remains of their ritual position, too exhausted even to stand.

It had been part of the plan to grant the saiyan as much of their power as they could when they sent him back, to try and equalize the gap between his power, that of the body he would be inhabiting, and the monster he was to fight. Any other bodiless soul would have burnt up under the magically gifted energy, but Vegeta's admittedly rudimentary spirit training had granted him enough of a buffer that it was manageable, if not a deal more reliable.

Grand Kai, the one among them that had had to donate the most power as the fulcrum between dimensions, blearily maintained his telepathic view of the proceedings on Earth, witness to the titanic battle now raging on mortal grounds. It was something else, and he was rather glad not be the one taking on the organic android: even in his heyday, taking her on would have been something nearly impossible for him in a straight fight.

King Kai too was still watching the fight, but with a much greater degree of anxiety than his superior. It was now entirely out of their hands, his insane plan having been pulled off to the letter, but the hardest part now fell to the prince, and it was as impossible a mission as ever there was one.

Faith wasn't something a kai was used to relying on, being higher beings themselves, and it was difficult to entrust their faith to a mortal with a dark track record; but that is what they had to do now.

The large doors at the other end of the meeting hall slid open, hinges too well maintained to groan or creak. An aide poked his head in sideways, spying the prone bodies of his bosses. He whimpered in alarm, but before he could fall into a panic attack, the door was pushed all the way open by the impatient person waiting behind him.

Tien didn't waste time in gawking, merely striding quickly over to the familiar form of his one-time master and kneeling beside him, propping his head up with a hand to better look him in the eye.

"King Kai, what happened to all of you?" Succinct as usual. Let it not be said that even death could shake the triclops' sense of practicality.

With a dazed and faraway voice, the North Kai filled the former assassin in, giving him the highlights of the situation and providing details he missed after his death. He then allowed for him to join with his telepathy and watch the fight unfold, neither of them daring to glance away for even a second.

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The entirety of Papaya Island was now under several centimeters of water save for the shattered remains of the arena; a stark contrast to the blue-green surrounding it. The storm, which had encircled the entire planet like a death shroud by this point, had created numerous water spouts that connected the ocean to the sky in terrific pillars that whipped about as if made from cables. The winds were raging, slapping everyone with water drops at speeds high enough to feel like hail. Every few seconds a bolt of lightning would illuminate the horizon, inching closer with every occurrence.

One such strike erupted at the exact second Sel and Vegeta collided in the air, the Prince suffering a knee to the stomach. In that instant, the image of the two monstrous warriors was burned into the minds of the few remaining Z-Fighters, each of them getting a peek into the unimaginable battle that was rending the sky above them.

The saiyan was unable to avoid several more hits, reeling from each of them but doggedly maintaining his focus. When Sel jabbed his his cheek, he shot his hand out, fingers straight, and landed a chop just above her eyes. She flinched back, unable to quell that base of an instinct, and received a slug across her own cheek, then a body shot, and lastly a double punch, both fists hitting her square in the chest.

With the flat of her palm she slapped Vegeta's arms away, snapping her right leg up as she did to try to catch him vulnerable. Instead, her shin connected with his as he bent both legs underneath him to block her attack. Rather than push back, he used the momentum of her kick to force him away from her and open up a gap of a few feet.

His retaliatory blow passed through an afterimage, only just missing by a hairsbreadth. He chased after her, trying to keep her on the back foot by pressing the attack as much as he could but she was always just out of reach. She wasn't yet smirking or goading him, so he only hoped that she was actually trying her hardest not to get hit.

In actuality, Sel was watching his moves, finding the pattern therein and waiting for her chance. It came when the Prince swung the next punch just a fraction too soon - before his other arm could pull back all the way. Grabbing his fist in one of hers, she redirected the blow straight up and hammered a hook into his ribs. He gasped in pain and shock, briefly tensing up but unable to react when she swung their joined arms backwards, arcing him over her head. When he was at shoulder level, she pivoted about as she released her hold on him and planted a foot in his face, causing a fresh gush of blood to spew from his nose that dotted her leg with crimson, a few drops even peppering her cheeks.

Vegeta clasped one hand to his face and fired off a ki blast with the other, not at all surprised when her image vanished even as the beam pierced through her. The sky fell on his head and he was sent rocketing back onto the island, rock and surf exploding in a small wave around him. Sel didn't hesitate in raising her hand and instantly forming a dangerously buzzing Destructo Disc. She flicked her arm and sent the ki saw straight at him, intent on severing his body in half.

The Prince tried to roll out of the way, tried to dodge, but couldn't move fast enough and watched in horror as the burning blade of the attack-

PTSSH!

-shattered like glass. The world stood still for a heartbeat.

Trunks, transformed and standing tall, was standing just to the side of the Prince, elbow still extended from where he'd struck the Kienzan at its center, the weakpoint of the technique. Vegeta opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His eyes were glued to the demi-saiyan from the future in pure surprise.

Sel also looked taken aback by the sudden interruption, but she was quick to shift to anger instead, frustration inching closer to the boiling point. (She knew full well that she should just destroy the planet now and be done with all of this; but her genes were crying out in exultation at the actual battles she was having, and she had no clue if she'd ever have a chance like this chance again.)

Trunks didn't turn away from the biodroid, but he looked over his shoulder at Vegeta, extending the arm he'd just used to save him, offering his hand. The Prince, rattled by the close call, accepted and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. In Gohan's body, he was significantly shorter than the time-traveler, though it wasn't much of a difference from his old body.

"We haven't been introduced properly yet," the young man spoke quietly, voice a low rumble. "I'm Trunks."

"I...I know. I heard, before..." he didn't finish, but he could see that he didn't need to. The half saiyan glanced away for a moment before nodding and turning his full attention back on Sel. What could either of them possibly say in a situation like this? There just wasn't time to address the terrifyingly large elephant in the room, and Vegeta had no idea how he would anyway. Maybe later, if they had the chance, he could try, though his hopes were low. He hid under the familiar armor of boasts and bravado. "So, think you've got what it takes to stand next to the likes of us?" The challenge is lacking its usual heat, and comes off sounding more concerned than confident, especially in Gohan's youthful voice.

"Piccolo and I spent several months in the time chamber, training against each other until I managed to reach a similar level as Goku and Gohan; though I'm not as strong as either of them were." His eyes flick down to the Prince and back, almost hiding his apprehension. He's smart enough to know that neither of them have the chance that the other two did, but he's not about to back out of it now.

"That's good enough," Vegeta barked as he jumped into the air, closing on Sel in a flash. She caught his punch with her forearm, lashing back to catch him across the mouth with her knuckles, driving a kick into his rib cage for good measure. She turned and easily intercepted Trunks' charge, grabbing both of his wrists and twisting them painfully until he was straining to keep them from being snapped. Swinging him like a club, she attempted to clobber one saiyan with another only to find that the Prince had recovered enough to throw himself upwards, dodging the crude attack and fired a blast at her now vulnerable side.

Growling, she let go of Trunks and leaned back to avoid the hit, raising a palm and returning fire. Vegeta dodged to the side, but had to cross his arms over his face to absorb the rest, quaking under the jackhammer force of each bullet. Trunks was already flying back at her in a collision course, intent on breaking her defenses. He thought he had her, but he just barreled through empty space a second later, arms futility striking at the air. What came next was a sensory overload of pain as she punched him in the side with more force than had ever been directed his way.

But Sel didn't get away without a scratch: before she could even pull her arm back, Vegeta's leg swung around from the side and crashed into her stomach, sending her flying away from them like a green comet. Trunks wheezed and clutched at what must have been several broken ribs, but Vegeta immediately pursued their overpowered enemy with tenacity forged by desperation. She saw him coming and jutted her foot out like a barricade, aiming to smash him in the chest. The Prince's reaction was almost too fast to be seen: bringing both arms up, he grabbed onto the foot before impact and pulled himself ever so slightly upward, effectively leap-frogging her leg.

Flipping over, he repeated his earlier mule kick and again managed to score a direct hit to her face, rocking her whole head back and causing her to falter in the air. He took the opportunity to latch onto her leg and swing his body down and under, dragging her with him. Upside down, she angrily slapped him with dizzying force, detaching his grip, but also leaving her exposed for the followup punch that nailed her at the base of her spine.

Trunks quickly backed away, arm still clutching at his ribs and faint smears of blood tinging the edges of his teeth, but more than ready to put the pressure on the biodroid. Maybe, together...

Sel disregarded the comparatively weak sneak attack and focused on Vegeta, who was now attempting to out distance her in a lightning fast chase, ultimately failing as she wrapped slender fingers around one ankle. Yanking him down, she reared back and delivered a straight on headbutt just as he passed by, drawing out an unintelligible grunt of pain. The knee to his gut provided a much louder response.

This time, Trunks' attack was easily read and avoided with barely more than a raised hand, catching the snap kick with the back of her wrist. Spinning a hundred and eighty degrees, she used that momentum to shoulder check the youth, ribs fortunately blocked by the protective arm. An open palmed strike pushed him away in time for her to duck away from a haymaker from Vegeta that might actually have done some damage. Her attempted counter jab was caught in his fist, arm awkwardly bent downward to absorb the blow while still maintaining the leverage to combat it.

With a twist of his own, he brought his arm right ways, and hers not, and threw an elbow at her nose. Bending her neck back so the blow narrowly missed, she looked up with surprise as Trunks descended from directly above, both feet leading the charge. There was no avoiding him this time, and he landed squarely on her exposed face with a somewhat satisfactory FWAP, jarring her entire body.

Vegeta had let his hold go just as the boy landed the hit so Sel fell away from them, flipping backward once before landing in the waterlogged rock below. She didn't make much of a crater at all, but it was still something.

She was down for maybe a second before vanishing from sight. Only a shove from Vegeta allowed Trunks to avoid a kick that would almost certainly have snapped his neck like a wet twig – the resultant air current that blasted past him enough to cause windburn on the underside of his jaw.

He could barely even track Sel as she moved, losing her in the blurs of light and motion, but Vegeta always seemed to know just where she was coming from or was headed, doing his utmost to block her whenever he could. Trunks was there when she was brought to a momentary halt – landing a blow or firing off a single blast in the sliver of a window he had. He could tell that he was basically an infant pounding its fists against a stone wall for all that she was reacting to his attacks.

The Prince was working against his grain and acting as the defense; parrying and blocking rather than dodging and countering. He had been raised with the singular principle that you were the only important factor in a battle, and so you were the only one that you could rely on. And here he was, giving the time traveler every chance he could give him to land an ineffectual punch or kick in the hopes that one would be the lucky break they so desperately needed.

But strategy wasn't a foreign concept to Sel either, and she was steadily deconstructing their every move even as she fought them. She was locating every opening and tell that was presented, mapping out their styles and methods like an architect drawing up a blueprint.

Vegeta was powerful, but his reach was very limited. Trunks was tough, but he wasn't fast enough. Neither were used to fighting with a partner, but both were experienced at improvisation.

They were losing, but still fought with a tenacity befitting their extinct race.

Twisting at the waist, she grabbed Trunks' fist in her palm and pulled him along as she twisted back towards Vegeta as he came in for a wide kick. He aborted the attack at the last second, only narrowly avoiding pummeling his ally in her place, but he couldn't stop her from slamming them together as she had tried to do earlier.

A tangle of limbs, they were unable to recover in time before bouncing against the nearly demolished island, skidding to a halt in a shower of white ocean foam. This was ample opportunity for Sel as she extended index and middle finger towards them, needing only a moment to sufficiently charge the ki wave. "Special Beam Cannon!"

The spiraling attack ate the distance in a flash and was nearly on the two saiyan's before either knew what had happened. Trunks' eyes widened and Vegeta's narrowed as an explosion engulfed them, consuming the ground they lay on.

With a static crackle, the both of them reappeared in front of her, unharmed. She flinched in surprise, completely taken aback; she had never seen Instant Transmission used before, and it was entirely unknown to her, something she didn't appreciate in the slightest.

Vegeta lunged with a war cry, capitalizing on her distraction by delivering a series of short but vicious punches, each strong enough to keep her off balance. Driving her across the sky, he made sure that every hit found its mark, taking a degree of grim satisfaction in the look of bewildered pain that had frozen on her face.

With a particularly savage gut punch, he managed to double her over slightly. Pulling back his other fist, he held it there for several seconds, long enough for Sel to regain her wits and look up at him. When he did throw the punch, she caught it with both hands, stopping it halfway to her face.

Then the Prince sneered. "You've been doing that an awful lot lately." Then he detonated the ki charge he had built up in his fist.

Sel was thrown back, both hands disintegrated at the wrist. She yelped in pain and surprise, looking at the burnt stumps with revulsion and a slight edge of panic. This was the only time her body had suffered anywhere near this amount of damage since reaching perfection, and it had been because of a dead man with rapidly dwindling power. No longer maintaining a mask of indifference, she turned her eyes back to the risen saiyan, who was shaking off the smoke from his hand and grinning mockingly at her. That show of an old arrogance wormed its way into her mind and made her...made... her...

Furious

Without so much as a noise of discomfort, she forcibly regrew her hands with a spatter of slightly acidic bio-fluid. Never taking her stare from the Prince, she straightened up, flexing her new fingers with a barely detectable tremor. The already thick air filled with a charged tension, that bore down on everyone like a storm front, the lightning strikes doubling in intensity and frequency.

"This," she hissed, teeth clenched in a failed attempt to hide her fury, "is over."

Vegeta raised his defense in time, but she blasted through it, grabbing him by the throat and punching him with such angry power that his right incisors shot from his mouth in a spray of blood. She punched him again, and again and again, each time forcing blood to gush out with alarming volume.

She wasn't holding back anymore. She was well and truly above anything he was capable of, now or when he'd been boosted by the unknown energy. She was on an entirely different level than a Super Saiyan at his greatest, and it was high time to show them all exactly that, and what better way about it than to crush the cocky Prince into a broken, bleeding pile of disgrace.

Vegeta tried to fend off her unexpectedly overwhelming assault, but he was like a burlap doll in her grip, with strength to match. His vision was going spotty all over, and his entire skull felt like it was slowly cracking apart. When she changed direction and began to rain devastation all over his body, he began to lose coherency, sputtering unintelligibly through a thick pool of blood in his mouth and grabbing fruitlessly at the ironclad grip around his throat. The armor Gohan had chosen was pulverized to fragments, and the body glove was being shredded under onslaught. A loud snap filled his ears and bile burned its way up to join the blood.

At last she released him, and he could do no more in his state than fall to ground limply like the dead body he truly was. Landing on his back, he wheezed for breath, bruised and broken ribs making even that an agony. Slowly, with whatever strength he had somehow retained, he pushed himself up onto his elbows and raised his eyes to the hellish sky.

Sel was breathing hard, though more from the intense surge of hatred that had seared her veins than any exertion. Her eyes were bloody embers, only hinting at the all she kept hidden.

"No more games!" she spat with vehemence, a crack of lightning flashing just behind her and briefly illuminating her like a spirit of death. She raised both palms to point at he fallen saiyan, gold energy amassing between them.

If he could, Vegeta would have laughed, bitterly. After everything that had happened, all that he had accomplished, he was going to die the exact same way Frieza had intended back on Namek; broken and defenseless on the ground. The cruel difference was that he had had only revenge to fight for then, and now...now he would lose everything he had never deserved but still been gifted with.

He could sense Kakarot and the others not far off, all of them as defenseless as he now was. Some last hope he had been...but then that had never exactly been his role in this life.

Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to envision soft blue hair, a smile like the sun, eyes with a fierce intelligence, and in her arms-

A wordless shout, impossibly loud in the heavy stillness startled all of them, ripping the Prince from his last dream. With a new kind of dread, he looked up and saw that Sel was now struggling with Trunks, who had wrapped his arms in a vice like grip around her chest. Like Sixteen before him, he managed to keep hold of her through shear force of will alone, veins bulging in his neck and arms as he strained to keep a veritable god in his grip. She was snarling with rage, writhing like a wild animal.

"FATHER!" Trunks yelled for all he was worth, face going dark with strain. "FIRE NOOOW!"

Vegeta could barely move, barely think, and his breathing hitched at the words of the half-saiyan. This was it, their one and only opportunity – the one they had been dying for. Against all odds, he managed to rise to his feet, blood caking his chin, neck and chest, and an entire sleeve ripped from his body glove, but still he stood. He could feel the energy granted to him by the kais swirling around him like a thick sheen of vapor, condensing invisibly through the air and fusing with the orb of pale yellow energy expanding in the palm he now aimed at the two beings not native to this time. It was all he had left, every scrap of energy that he could draw from the body of a boy who had tried to follow his footsteps, and the divine might of five gods that had decided to trust the fate of untold billions with him.

He looked first at the beautiful but hate filled face of Sel, seeing a legacy she had been born into as bloody as his own, then towards the last defender of another Earth, a living example of hope. He saw the young man that was willing to sacrifice all he had for those he loved, and to ensure that tomorrow would be free of the horrors of today. He saw a half-saiyan truer in spirit than many full bloods had ever been. He saw-

The boy, not even a year old, held carefully in the arms of a beaming Bulma.

With a gasp, he lost his control and the ki blast vanished, energy receding as he fell to his knees.

"FATHER!" Trunks desperately shouted, but it was too late – their one window had passed them by as a man had folded under the pressure of an impossible decision. The remaining Z-Fighters were too stunned to make a noise, witnesses to the end of it all.

Sel seemed refocus slightly as Vegeta failed to attack, looking down in distaste at the failed savior. The time for half-measures was long gone. Glaring over her shoulder, she brought both hands together over her solar plexus, and fired.

A blast ripped straight through her chest - and then kept going through Trunks', leaving them both with enormous, bloody voids in their bodies.

They both fell, his hold on her slackening enough for her to drift away before they landed, hard, on the partially submerged island. A gout of dark blood gushed up from his lips on impact, accompanied by a terrible, gurgling noise that might have been an agonized gasp. Everything was pain beyond compare, beyond belief, and it was getting worse and worse every second his body tried to draw breath into burnt and shredded lungs.

Vegeta, caught in a waking nightmare, crawled hand over hand to the other fallen saiyan, stopping when he knelt over him, hands uselessly hovering between them, drawing back in horror when he saw the full extend of the damage.

There was nothing else in the entire world, nothing at all, except the two of them. Everything faded away to darkness as Vegeta watched his greatest failing take effect and claim the life of a warrior he had been proud to fight beside.

"Fa...ther..." The whisper was barely there, drowned in the blood. Vegeta grasped Trunks' hand in his, squeezing as tightly as he dared. There were no possible words that could be spoken. Vegeta didn't even feel the tears streaming down his face as he looked Trunks in the eye, watching the life slowly, slowly fade away, until he was gone.

A cold breeze blew past them, rustling the lavender hair that wasn't under the thin layer of water covering the island.

Sel stood up, the once grievous wound in her chest now completely absent. She took a slow breath, centering herself. She had acted hastily, but there really was no threat to take advantage of her weaknesses anymore, so she didn't chastise herself over much. With calm and even steps, she walked with quite splashes to stand on the other side of Trunks, facing Vegeta. The Prince had his head bowed over the body, drops of water landing on the scorched and bloodied armor.

"He..." Vegeta tried to talk, but his throat felt even more constricted than when she had been strangling him. In Gohan's body, with his voice, it was even more apparent just how broken he was. "He was...he..."

Sel turned her head to gaze impassively at the four remaining Z-Fighters. They were speechless, all consumed with their own grief, and entirely past the point of fearing the end. At last, she would be rid of this world, having taken on and destroyed every single vestige of resistance it had to offer, proving that she was beyond anything Gero could ever have dreamed possible. She would shed his influence with the final fulfillment of his last mission, obliterating all traces of him with it and putting to rest what had proven to be a twisted legacy of revenge.

"...he was...my son..."

It began almost too faint to detect – the highest keys of a piano picking up intensity. A prickling sensation at her skin and aura made Sel look back towards Vegeta, as did the others. Something...huge began to expand outward from him, a force unlike any they had ever felt before, splitting the ground beneath them with thin fissures and giving the water someplace to drain. Vegeta was mute, but his body was shaking terribly from the anger and grief at war inside him. The air grew hot and the winds picked up, but now they were blowing outward from the saiyan, not towards him.

Unbidden, a look of surprise flashed across Sel's face, quickly buried under annoyance. The Z-Fighters were open about their alarm, gaping in awe. The pressure built to a suffocating level, bearing down on them with an oppressive tension. Something had to give.

And it was Vegeta's last restraint that slipped away.

Throwing his head back, Vegeta screamed, a noise that came straight from all the agony his body and heart had suffered in the past. A titanic wave of power exploded from him, wiping the island clear of water and leaving it bone dry in its wake. Sel threw her arms up to shield her face, being too close for comfort, while the others were pushed away, hastily taking flight out over the ocean.

And still the pressure kept mounting, rising higher and higher, all of it seemingly pouring into the tormented saiyan as his scream tore through the air. The entire Earth shook from the force, and planets far away felt the unknown power like a distant echo of an explosion. Even the kais could feel it, catching their breath in the dimension of the departed.

"What is this?" Sel hissed to herself, unnerved at the outrageous power that had come from absolutely nowhere. Was he trying to self-destruct and take the whole planet with him? It certainly felt that way.

A pillar of intensely blinding light erupted around Vegeta, bringing illumination briefly back to the shadowed world. Sel took a step away from the heat emanating from that light.

And then it all collapsed inward – all that power and light went straight into the body of Gohan, into the soul of Vegeta. But the nova of light remained, shining from the furiously pulsing aura that encircled the Prince, tendrils of blue electricity snaking across it.

He was no longer screaming. But he was still crying.

Moving slowly, far, far too slowly after what had just happened, Vegeta stood. He looked down at his brave son, etching the image of what his failure had cost into his memory forever, making a silent vow.

Then he looked straight into Sel's eyes.

She had seen anger there before, both when fighting Gohan and Vegeta, but this was something entirely different, something without a name. There was something ancient in the saiyan's eyes, something that far outstripped any pale imitation of it: she was looking into the eyes of wrath untold.

From where they were now hovering several hundred feet away from the island, Goku and the others observed this new development with equal parts fear and wonderment. Whatever had happened to the Prince had drastically raised his energy level on a scale incomparable to any of the other transformations they had ever seen. It put him on even standing with Sel, but it would also be pushing the Earth's integrity to the limit with the two of them so near to each other. One way or another, the end of the showdown was fast approaching.

Between the only combatants on the planet, not a word was spoken. A suffocating amount of pressure was building around them as their energies flared freely, heating the air and scorching the ground. They had both powered up to their maximum; no more holding back. Brilliant gold and lively green pushed and butted at each other, but it seemed like they were at the exact same level, and sheer power was not going to be the deciding factor anymore.

Moving impossibly fast, Vegeta charged forwards – several afterimages being left in his wake. She caught his punch on crossed forearms, feeling the power of that one attack send a tremor through her bones. She blocked his second punch as well, sliding one arm down to intercept before throwing them both out to force his guard open. She swung three times, each one snapping his head to the side.

On the fourth, he hooked his wrist around her's and diverted the blow to the side while his other fist rocketed into her teeth, splitting both of her lips with thin spurts of purple blood. A palm strike to her chest pushed him backwards a foot rather than her, but this seemed to have been planned as it allowed him to narrowly dodge her grasping fingers, coming so close as to brush his chin.

He snapped his leg up and kicked the bottom of her arm, jerking it upward well over his head as a purple blast shot out. She reacted immediately, twisting at the waist so she was half facing him and her leg had curved beneath them and caught him in the lower back. Moving with it, she continued to push him and turned all the way about so she could arc him overhead while she reached out with her hands and latched onto his wrists.

With a heave, she threw him end over end at the ground, satisfied when he landed with a earsplitting crack of stone. He was only down for a moment, not even getting back to his feet before blasting into the sky with ample enough force to carve a shallow trench beneath him. Holding a hand out, he filled the air with small and compact ki bullets, producing them at a staggering rate. Sel threw out wide, conical blasts to catch as many as she could, but there were simply too many and they leaked through her countermeasure, each with the strength of a straight punch or kick.

Clenching both fists, she extended both out horizontally and a deep green sphere inflated to surround her body, catching all of the projectiles and allowing them to detonate harmlessly on the surface. Vegeta caught on after only a moment and fired a stronger, more focused beam that engulfed her shield but failed to breach it.

She gave him a sneering grin, glad to see something that would outstrip him.

Vegeta didn't seem to see it this way and flew at her with fist cocked back, ready. She allowed him to punch the barrier with all his might, amused to see him recoil in pain and glance at his singed knuckles. But then he came right back at it, showering the barrier with a barrage of punches, all focused on the same spot. Sel opened her mouth slightly in confusion, and then alarm as a crack appeared in the glowing surface of her shield, followed swiftly by a small network of them.

With a final grunt, Vegeta brought his elbow down on the vulnerabilities and broke through what should have been an impenetrable defense, the entire construct following suit and crumbling away as if made from dry wax. Her surprise lasted precisely as long as it took for him to lunge at her in a front flip, the heels of his feet crashing down onto her forehead and sending her to the ground.

She grimaced, but did not fall away. She came back at him with a furious resolve, ignoring the pain in her body and throwing punches like a madwoman. He could only block so many of the blows and was receiving more than he was preventing, feeling the anger and jubilation behind her fists and marveling at it with awe and resentment.

Timing it as best he could, he waited until she threw a particularly vicious left and turned his whole body with it, linking his arms around her's and bringing his chest flush with her forearm. Without the benefit of leverage, he pulled as hard as he was able and wrenched her wrist back painfully far, eliciting a sharp yelp as he did. Twining his feet around her shoulder, he stretched his whole body, using that motion to forcibly extend her entire arm out to its fullest length and then a little beyond that. She bashed at him with her free hand, but he didn't wait around to take too many before he released a shockwave of ki – substituting that for actual movement.

With the push, he dragged Sel off her feet and into an involuntary forward roll. At the apex of the revolution, when Vegeta was on his back and she was upside down, he kicked out with his feet as he let go with his arms. The sudden lack of tension was enough to leave the android off kilter for the fraction of a second that he needed to send her tumbling along the ground like a stone across water.

Bringing both hands up over his shoulders, he took a precious second to fill them both with energy before firing both at her. Sel, still on the ground, slapped a palm down and spun herself, bringing her back around in time to kick both blasts away from her with a dexterous ease.

But it was in that instant of recovery that Vegeta materialized over her, the buzz of IT following right behind as he buried a punch into her cheek. Her head was crushed into the rocks while the rest of her body sprang up into the air like she was a see-saw, torquing her neck to an alarming degree. Her elbow shot up and nailed him in the armpit, faltering his posture enough for her to grab him by the collar of his nearly shredded body glove and bring him down just over her shoulder, his own head making a nice sized divot in the stone.

They were both down, laying almost head to head in the loose rubble that had once been an arena and the island it rested on. Their breathing was ragged and blood was seeping from cuts and scrapes on their arms, legs and face.

"You're still weakening," Sel murmured, feeling her ribs with a subdued wince. "That power is still leaving you, and soon you won't be able to fight back any more."

Vegeta didn't respond, the anger that had ignited his blood still running far too hot for him to banter. 'Trunks...I shall not let you have died for nothing!' He rolled onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow. 'I will not fail - just this once I will not fail!' He pushed onto hands and knees as Sel matched him, her regenerative abilities slowly kicking in. They had turned and could now lock eyes once again, hatred meeting hatred. 'I am Vegeta, Prince, Super Saiyan...Father!'

He surged off the heels of his feet, lunging straight at the android as she did the same. They were giving everything they had, blurring the air around them from the speed of their attacks and creating a dense bubble of pressure around them as their auras burned with unrivaled intensity. Unable to track all of the moves, they both abandoned caution and embraced pure offense, determined to be the last one standing. Blood and sweat, skin and bone, muscle and ki; it was all being put on the line for this final push, this final chance.

Her fist rammed into his stomach, generating a fresh onslaught of internal bleeding.

His fingers chopped against her right eye, blinding it as the optic nerves were traumatized.

A kick audibly cracked his hip bone.

A headbutt took out several of her teeth, not all of them fully leaving her jaws.

Her nails tore trenches into his forearm from which blood gushed.

It was as brutal and as savage and as enraged as an exchange could ever be. It had long since ceased to be a battle and had escalated to a full on war between these two monsters of unimaginable power, body, mind and soul waged in a conflict of which there could only be one victor.

The Z-Fighters, drained and wounded, understood on a subconscious level that this was something the Universe could never reproduce in any of the millenia to come or that had been.

But, in the end, Vegeta's borrowed power and body were the ones to lose the contest of wills. He had slowed down too much, unable to keep up with her overwhelming barrage and was knocked away. Landing heavily on his back once more, he gasped out a choking clot of blood that was filling his throat. Nothing in his body felt undamaged, and he could barely keep his eyes open and remain conscious.

Sel hardly looked any better – in worse condition than she had ever been in any of her forms, save her close call after Sixteen's attempted martyrdom – but she still stood, albeit bent over and clutching at her face. She stared at Vegeta with an unreadable look, no longer certain she knew what it was that she felt towards him. Certainly anger and resentment, but also, possibly, a hint a respect as well. And gratitude.

She rose straight up, ascending until she was far above them, nearly indistinguishable from the boiling storm clouds. She never looked away from Vegeta as she extended her arms as far out to her sides as they could go, crackles of energy already issuing around them. She pumped all the power she had into building the charge, amping it up far faster than it normally should have been.

Driven by something that he was just too tired to even consider, Vegeta rose to his feet for the last time, unstable and bleeding profusely. He recognized the technique she was using, and felt an odd twang of guilt that it would be one of his that would take the Earth to oblivion. Already a corona of startlingly yellow energy was building around her, forcing a tunnel of wind and pressure down at him. He didn't turn his face away, bearing the discomfort without regard.

He breathed in and out, eyes closing. He had fought with every fiber of his being, given every scrap of resistance and had done everything that he could possibly have done to try and stop her, but Sel was simply much too strong; if he had been in his own body and not rapidly losing his connection to this plane of existence, he might have been able to overpower her, but the situation had been against him and it had turned out the only way it could have. He could return to the Afterlife with the small consolation that no one could have done any better.

'What are you mewling about?! Don't just give up and die like a pathetic, simpering coward!'

A voice, his own but harsher, flared up at the forefront of his mind. His pride had taken voice.

'This is far from over! She has broken your bones, cut your flesh, spilled your blood and even taken your son, but she has not yet taken your life, and that means that you do not have an excuse to stop fighting!'

A surge of pain wracked his body and he let out an abbreviated shout of pain, but he was back in the present, his failing body still on its feet and with a spark of energy still left. Embracing his pain, his fear, his anger, he pulled out one last impossible reserve of energy, a store he had never thought existed: he was fighting for others, not himself, and he knew now that his own ambitions were inconsequential in this raw moment of decision.

His mind called for a ki blast, and his body responded with a memory so ingrained that it was instinctual even with a different soul inhabiting it. Hands cupped at his side and body braced, Vegeta didn't even pause to consider the great irony of this turn of events. He knew what had to be done.

"KAAA!"

Sel scowled, slamming the heels of her palms together and finishing her own attack as quickly as she could and hampered by its incredible requirements. If he wanted one last shot, she would let him have it, but that would be the last mercy she granted them.

"MEEE!"

His heart was racing and his body was shivering, but his mind was focused solely on the android. His wounds had stopped bleeding, his ki searing them shut as an aside.

"HAAA! MEEE!"

There was a space of time, right there on that great battlefield, wherein Vegeta could hear only the beating of his heart. Ba-thump. An eternity passed. Ba-thump. Instantly: Ba-thump.

"FINAL FLASH!"

"HAAAAAA!"

The sky was torn in half as the two titanic beams of energy erupted into life and scorched the world with their might. The pulsing blue collided with world ending force against the shrieking yellow. Vegeta was immediately pushed back by the sheer weight of what he was fighting against, but he held firm and continued to push out all the energy he had, baring his teeth and struggling to keep his arms straight.

Sel was amazed that he had managed to halt her Final Flash, but she was not going to let that keep her from ending this once and for all. Likewise pouring everything she had into the beam, she inched the pure destructive force closer to the saiyan prince.

Everything was a storm of hurricane winds and biting heat around them, forcing the ocean to spread away from them and leaving the island a mountain sprouting from the ocean floor. The Z-Fighters were continuously blown back, unable to maintain any proximity to the calamitous struggle. Goku was watching with a frozen expression of wonderment as the saiyan that looked like his son and acted like his friend stood his ground and faced Armageddon all by himself. Something...something inside of him was filling his body with a fire all its own. Something he could no longer ignore. He moved back behind his friends, hair starting to dance upward.

The locked orb of their meshed beams was still slipping closer to Vegeta every second, making it more and more torturous for him to maintain his effort. He had screwed his eyes shut, concentrating as hard as he could on his herculean task. He would not stop until he was dead, and would make her work for everything she took.

The heat was on his face now, as though he stood before a blast furnace. It was blistering in the high-speed wind, slashing at his exposed skin and baking the moisture from the air. He could no longer swallow and his throat was burning, but he could still breathe and that was all he needed. Pushing, he kept her from overtaking him and forced her to expend everything she could as he was.

Sel was indeed straining, muscles taut as rope and growling lowly as she trudged on. 'I have dragged myself my whole life to reach this point, and I will not allow anything to stand in my way!' She heaved on another burst of power, jerking the enormous sphere of interlocked ki at him. 'I have him! I HAVE HIM!' She was close to exhaustion, but the prospect of victory spurred her on, a manic light in her eyes as her dream was just seconds away from coming true.

Vegeta fell to one knee under the insane pressure, holding his hands over his head and dragging this out for as long as he could. Everything was agony for him, and letting go would be the easiest thing in the world - but that was just not his way, and never would be! He would die with his honor intact, dammit!

A roar rose up from deep within his chest, sounding much like his lost Oozaru form. An intense flare from his Kameamea saw it jump back a meter as he jerked back to his feet, glaring with eyes of molten green through the meshed energies at Sel, giving her a final taunt. She responded with an enraged bellow, redoubling her efforts and sending the ki sliding quickly back at him. He braced himself for the heat and pain, ready to re-enter the Other World.

A static buzz was barely audible over the cacophony.

Every eye turned to see Goku, Super Saiyan form positively bursting with power, standing next to Vegeta, sapphire orb ready and cradled between his hands. "HaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

His beam joined the Prince's, smashing against the head of the Final Flash with a small explosion of its own. The yellow pillar of energy slowed, and finally halted its previously unstoppable advance. Sel's eyes widened.

"NOW VEGETA! GIVE IT EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT!"

At the command of his fellow saiyan, Vegeta allowed his beam to take everything he had, screaming with effort as he felt his body burning up inside. Goku was right there with him, pushing beyond his limit to throw everything he had into his ki, matching yell rising in volume.

Sel forced the beams with all she had...

...and found it lacking.

The three energy blasts slowly began to head towards her, picking up speed until they were a single globe of undiluted power hurtling through the air until impacting against her like a meteor. The Perfect Being resisted to the end, horror replacing the rage as she watched the two saiyans unite against her and become an unstoppable force.

The combined might of two Super Saiyans enveloped her in brilliant, blinding blue - her body dissolving away as it was disintegrated under the bombardment of ki. She couldn't feel the pain.

"I was...so close..." she managed to whisper, her voice stunned.

And then she was gone, the last evil of Dr. Gero eradicated as the enormous beam of energy blasted through the storm clouds and zoomed far off into space before finally dying away, a ray of hope to all who saw it.

On the island, there was an initial, absolute silence, nothing moving in the wake of the impossible. Then the ocean came rushing back into place with a dull roar that was strangely muted in everyone's ears. The sky slowly began to clear, the clouds fading away as quickly as they had come, the orange light of the late afternoon sun breaking through at last and casting warmth on the people of Earth once again.

Piccolo, Krillin and Yamcha were all staring with numb shock at the two saiyans, not quite able to fully comprehend yet what had happened. In their own dimension, the Kais were dancing about with joy and excitement, openly jubilant for the first time in centuries, Tien smiling as well but begging off from the dancing. Trunks had vanished, allowed to keep his body into the great beyond.

And at the epicenter of it all, on an island that was barely holding together, Goku and Vegeta fell to their backs, breathing heavily, a terrific number of threatening wounds between them and completely drained...but victorious.

"Vegeta-" Goku turned his head to look at the Prince, but a grunt cut him off.

"Kakarot, I do not have any time left. Gohan is waiting for his body and I must return to Other World. Tell Bulma-" his voice faltered, and he seemed to bite back on something. "Tell Bulma that I was killed by nanomachines, and if she can get them out of my body I can have it back. Tell her."

Goku nodded quickly, but when he looked back, Vegeta had gone still, his soul departing its temporary shell. Several seconds later, Gohan's body vanished with a murmur of wind.

Goku looked back up at the sky as his friends slowly landed around him. They had won their tomorrow, and he was going to be sure to cherish every single day. A weak laugh escaped his lips, the relief he felt making his body feel light as air. The others gave him smiles of their own, indescribably glad to finally escape the shadow that had been hovering over them for three years.

At that moment, the days ahead looked like a good place to be.

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Chi Chi fell to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably into her hands. Goku knelt next to her, wrapping her in a tight hug with his large arms. He whispered soothingly into her hair while he rubbed circles on her back, doing his best to be there for her while she grieved the death of their son, no matter how temporary it would be.

"He was so brave," he told her with a small smile, remembering how well Gohan had fought against Sel, being the first to really challenge her. "He made us proud."

The Ox Princess stopped crying after a lengthy stretch, the sky turning golden through the living room window, but she was still clutching to the front of his gi and shaking with hiccups. She hadn't seen the hole where he had been pierced by a Death Beam, the wound thankfully healed by Dende when they had all gone to the Lookout directly after the fight to recuperate, and he was going to try to keep it that way as long as she could; from all accounts, she hadn't handled it well when he had died either.

"When will we see him again?" She breathed out, words like a hot vapor through the material of his top.

"Dende says the Dragon Balls will be ready in no more than a week. We talked it out and decided that three wishes were too many and reduced it to two, which means that they will be ready much sooner. Then, we'll wish back our little boy and everyone else who was lost."

Surprisingly, a watery chuckle escaped the young mother. She looked up into Goku's perplexed face, eyes glassy with water and starting to redden on the edges. She smiled delicately, reaching up to wrap her hand around his. "He's not going to be our 'little' boy for much longer."

"Well, yeah, he's grown up a lot and is almost a teenager now."

She chuckled again, pulling his hand down to press against her stomach. "That's not what I mean you lug head."

Goku looked confused, glancing from his hand to her face a few times, not quite catching on.

"Oh for the love of- we're having another baby, Goku!"

The saiyan's expression flowed quite smoothly between shock, open mouthed surprise, and then glee in just a few seconds. He hugged her tighter, rocking both of them with his excited energy. Chi Chi huffed, though she too was smiling, and buried her face in his neck to cry a bit more and share in their joy for another child.

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Bulma had obviously gotten to removing the nanomachines from Vegeta's body as soon as she heard the revelation, entrusting Trunks once more to Piccolo, Namekian warrior and babysitter supreme.

She worked around the clock for four days straight, going so far as to invent a whole new machine that identified the micro machines within an organic body. Now inactive, they provided no resistance to the surgeon she had flown in from Central City, paying him a large (for anyone that wasn't a Briefs) sum of money for both his expertise in mending the damage done to Vegeta's heart and his discretion on the matter. She had Goku come in so she could draw some of his blood ("Goku! Goku it's just a needle!" "It's EVIL, that's what it is!" "Don't be such a child and sit in the chair! This will take a minute, two tops." "Un-uh, you're not jabbing that thing into me! It could make a hole and I could bleed to death in seconds!" "Goku, how many times have you been speared by an attack and just walked it off?" "That's entirely different!" "HOW!?"), and after some slight difficulty, managed to get enough saiyan blood to study.

Though she wasn't a Hematologist, it wasn't terribly difficult for her to chart the DNA sequences that differentiated saiyans from human using both Goku's and Vegeta's blood, figuring out that either they had the same type or else their race were universal, replicate a large batch of saiyan blood synthetically using an artificial heart design that had been on the table for years, introduce a surrogate pump to act as the heart, and flush out the tainted blood from Vegeta's body and replace it with the new stuff.

On that fourth day, when she had done all she could think of, double-checked everything a half dozen times and worried herself sick over it, she detached all the fancy machines and let Vegeta's purified body lay by itself. She knew that it didn't have to be a perfect job, seeing as Goku had managed to keep his body after having a watermelon sized hole blown through it, but that didn't lessen her anxiety levels in the least. She was biting at her knuckles for what was surely hours before a soft breeze stroked her face in the middle of an underground lab, and then his body was gone, leaving no trace that it had ever been there.

She released her breath, feeling the tight knot that had twisted her insides finally ease up, letting her relax for the first time since this whole mess had started. Rolling backwards in her chair, she looked at the table where Sixteen had stayed for several weeks with regret, but knew that the kindhearted automaton would not want her to remember him with grief, but with fondness. So that's exactly what she did: smiling tiredly, she rose from her chair, took her lab coat off and threw it onto the empty seat as she exited her work space, turning the lights off as she did, not intending to come back until she'd had at least a month of time to be a mom.

She found Piccolo where she'd left him, in the living room with her own mom showing the silently suffering Namekian her artfully decorated and completely filled photo albums, Trunks sitting on his lap and contentedly playing with something.

She scooped her son up into her arms, eliciting a giggle of delight as she made whooshing noises while spinning about him with her. His simple happiness was a balm for her frayed nerves, and she couldn't have loved him more.

"By the way, Bulma," Piccolo spoke up as he stood, tactically using this chance to retreat from the couch and her mother's bountiful vacation snaps, "where did he get that?" He was pointing at the thing Trunks was clutching in his chubby hands.

She scrutinized it for the first time, not recognizing it or recalling ever buying it. "I'm not too sure. He might have just picked it up from somewhere and carried it with him. Why do you ask?"

Piccolo frowned, but in contemplation rather than annoyance. "It has a telepathic imprint on it – something that retains a bit of the owner in it."

Bulma instantly snatched it from her son's startled grasp. He reached for it, whining and grunting though thankfully abstaining from a crying fit.

"Don't worry; I checked it thoroughly and found it to be harmless. It only has an emotion imprinted on it, and I'm not too sure it was even on purpose."

"An emotion?"

"Yes, a powerful feeling of...joy."

"And...it's safe for Trunks?"

He nodded, small smile softening his stern features. "Not only is it safe for him, it would actually be beneficial to him. When he holds it, he can feel that imprinted joy and share it like his own. In effect, he will always be able to feel happy so long as he has it with him."

"But, where would something like this come from?"

"Just like you, I don't know. But it must have been important to somebody, and they wouldn't have parted with it lightly. I suspect that it is a gift to Trunks."

Bulma looked down into the palm of her hand. It looked innocuous enough: a simple bracelet of string with blue and orange beads. It wasn't fancy or even expensive looking, but it had been precious to somebody, and that somebody had saw fit to give it to her son so he could have a source of happiness with him at all times.

Even if she was wary of not knowing its origins, she could feel that it would be best for her son to have something like this. Handing it back to him, she smiled as he burbled happily and clutched it with his adorable fingers, twisting it about while he looked at it with wonder.

"Ooooh, that's so sweet! How about I show you two pictures of when Bulma was a baby and would put on her father's coat and glasses to pretend to be a a scientist like him?"

"Sorry, I have to go – need to meditate."

"Trunks needs a bath!"

They scattered, leaving the matron of the Briefs to giggle to herself at her joke.

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Vegeta was rather taken aback when he suddenly had a body one moment where before he had been a puff ball. For a moment, he was slightly taken aback by the red and black armor and the sleeveless body glove, having long since forgotten what he'd been wearing when he had died, but the thrill of delight immediately pushed that away. He stretched his arms out with a contented groan, feeling everything he had normally taken for granted with relish and relief. You never knew just how much you appreciated fingers until they were gone.

"Enjoying yourself there?"

Vegeta scoffed, looking over to where Tien and Trunks were standing at the edge of the fighting arena with him, halos glowing faintly in the soft 'sunlight' of the Warrior's Paradise. "Immensely, thanks for asking," he snipped, grinning as he continued to work his reclaimed limbs in familiar motions. It hadn't been that long since his death, but it felt like it had been a year and a half since he'd been forced into that horrid cloud form.

The triclops shrugged before turning back to watch Gohan spar against Olibu, an ancient human with considerable strength and a saiyan sized ego, but a decent enough person to be around. The young half-saiyan was trying to readjust to a body that suddenly seemed to be twice as fast and strong as it had been when he left it. Likewise, looking back at Vegeta, he could see that the Prince was throwing punches in the air, frowning as he didn't perform as highly as he felt he should. It was understandable, in both of their cases, why they would be feeling these discrepancies, and he couldn't help but wonder just where they would go from here.

A crash from the ring drew his attention back where the Olibu had been flipped onto his back by a boy literally a third his size. Gohan laughed with slight embarrassment and offered a hand, hauling the Grecian man up as he too laughed, ruffling the boy's raven hair with good cheer.

Trunks quietly smiled at seeing the other 'demi' finally lighten up. He had been worried about his state of mind for weeks, concerned that the person he had known in his timeline was being snuffed out years before they ever would have met, but it seemed like with the threat of Sel being ended he was at last starting to act like a kid his age should. Perhaps that alone was reward enough for his role in saving this time from a threat far worse than the one he had brought warnings of.

"Trunks, a word," Vegeta spoke, discreetly getting his attention as he walked away from the crowd of fighters by the arena.

He followed a few steps behind the full-blood as he led them towards a silent copse of persimmon trees that were growing in Grand Kai's backyard, fruit perpetually in bloom.

Once under the shade of the leaves out of earshot of all but a namekian, Vegeta stopped, still facing away from his son from the future. He resisted the urge to cross his arms and scowl – his normal method of shielding his emotions. He had been going over this moment for days, and he didn't really want to sound like he would rather be groveling in front of Frieza (though he had heard human dentistry was a suitable comparison and didn't sound nearly as degrading).

Tilting his head back, his eyes traced over the lines of lights seeping down between the branches and leaves while Trunks waited silently, nervous despite himself. When Vegeta did speak, he almost didn't sound like himself; quiet and without any force.

"When I came to Earth for the first time, it was in pursuit of fulfilling my own selfish and cowardly desires. I can admit that now, but don't ever tell anyone I said so." Trunks grinned slightly, nodding even though it wouldn't be seen. "The second time, I didn't really have much choice in the matter, and the only reason I stayed was because you had told us about the Androids that were coming, and I thought they would be a decent fight. At the time, I was in a strange place," he flicked a finger at his head. "I had so much anger built up over my whole life, but no longer had any target for it. I would have lashed out at Kakarot, but how could I when he was part of the reason I attained Super Saiyan on Namek?" Trunks hadn't heard that part of the story before. He figured it was because nobody had been there to witness or understand it. Was he the first person Vegeta had ever told this to?

"I was without a home or claim in all the Universe. I had absolutely nothing, not even the armor I wore. But...a loud-mouthed human woman forcibly invited me to her family home and gave me a place to sleep, eat and train with absolutely nothing expected in return but manners and cooperation with the rest of the planet's defenders." He sighed, hanging his head and rolling it to either side, drawing out a crack from only one. "Your mother – this version of her – is many things, not all of them polite, but she is the only other person I have ever met who would have given me shelter without a thought towards her own gain. In that way, she is perhaps the greatest human to have ever lived."

He turned around. Like he had guessed, Trunks was half a head taller than him, surpassing both parents in height, but in that moment it seemed like they were perfectly level, equal. "And from us, came you. You have the best qualities we could offer, and you have proven yourself to be a powerful warrior and a good person." He closed the distance between them and placed a gloved hand on the time-traveler's shoulder. "I may not be the Vegeta you were born from...but I consider you my son, and could not be more proud to be your father."

Tears traitorously threatened to slip out and Trunks had to lean his head back to force them back down, weakly covering his action with a cough and swiping the back of his hand over his mouth. Okay: seeing Gohan return to his old self AND getting to meet his father. Those were his rewards.

"If anyone ever asks, I commanded you to surpass Kakarot under pain of death. I could never live it down if they thought I was going soft." Trunks couldn't suppress the laugh, the first real one he'd had in years. Vegeta grinned, keeping a hand on his son's shoulder as he led them back out towards the rest of the deceased warriors. "Honestly though, I fully expect you to slug that clown in the gut next time you see him and remind him that he has no right to be weeping and carrying on like some over-emotional TV character."

"You watch TV?"

Another sigh, this one making his annoyance on the matter understood. "Krillin brought a soap opera when we went to the South Galaxy, and we were all so bored that we eventually had to watch it."

Trunks laughed again. Vegeta rolled his eyes.

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Grand Kai, twitching with trepidation, activated the crystal ball resting on a padded pedestal in a very small backroom of his mansion. He hadn't been looking forward to this, but he was responsible enough not to keep putting it off until the matter came to light anyway.

Several seconds of silence as the opaque sphere didn't visibly do anything, but magic teemed around it like heat waves. Then:

"Grand Kai. This is unexpected." The voice of his superior came through the very air, clear as glass and as loud as if he was standing in front of the elderly kai, not on a different planet altogether.

"Lord Supreme Kai, I felt it prudent to update you on a matter that has transpired both in the living dimension and in my own jurisdiction."

"Something that demanded the intervention of the lower kais, I presume." It wasn't a question. "The last instance of such was when the being known as Bojack was running rampant."

"Yes, Lord Supreme Kai, that was indeed the case a little over ten thousand years ago. A recent development on a planet named Earth was of similar magnitude and ultimately required our assistance to put a stop to it."

"'Assistance'? You did not contain this threat as you did the Heran?"

"Ah, no, Lord Supreme Kai, we did not. We can only have one seal of such strength active at one time, and this threat on Earth might have been-" He coughed, throat uncomfortably dry. "might have been even more dangerous than Bojack."

He didn't get a sense that the Supreme Kai was startled by this news so much as he was vaguely curious.

"But you still intervened."

"Yes, Lord Supreme Kai, by sending a soul back to the living dimension."

The pause that followed his words was heavy, leaving the Grand Kai in the dark about how the single remaining Supreme Kai was taking the news. He started to sweat slightly.

"...interesting. Tell me everything."

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Sel sat up ramrod straight, jerking her head about to take in her surroundings. Seeing the fountain of blood and the far off mountain of building sized thorns, it didn't take much for her to puzzle out where she was and how she'd gotten there.

"SHIT!"

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The day soon arrived for everyone to gather atop the Lookout for the summoning of Shenron. Though it was frigid above the clouds, Chi Chi and Bulma found that the floating palace was pleasantly temperate, forcing them to abandon the heavy coats they had thought to bring along. The surviving warriors were wearing their usual fighting attire, Chioutzou was in his embroidered jacket, and Master Roshi had put on his best purple turtle shell for the occasion.

Dende, the incredibly young successor to the mantle of Guardian, was talking with the blue haired heiress he'd met only once on his home planet, Trunks tucked in the crook of her arm.

"And you saw for yourself that it was safe?"

"Yep", she practically chirped, excitement making her face shine like a lantern. "I made sure that all the reconstruction was top notch and billed to the Capsule Corp expense budget. We can cover something like this easily, and nobody will ever be able to tell that a few city blocks were demolished."

"Well, it is good that you thought of that for us. On behalf of the people of Earth, thank you Bulma."

"Aww, you don't need to be so formal with me!" She knelt down and drew the namekian boy into a half-hug, making him blush with embarrassment but smile back. "To me, you'll always be the little squirt who could beat Tights in Blackjack like it was a sport." Dende grinned a bit more sheepishly at that.

Extricating himself from her embrace, he led her back over the rest of the group, gathered in a semi-circle around the gathered Dragon Balls. They quieted their chatter as the Guardian took his position over the seven mystical orbs, hands outstretched in traditional form.

"By your name do I summon you: arise, Great Shenron!"

The Dragon Balls pulsed with their inner power, emitting an oscillating tone as the sky darkened above them. When the seven crystals were the only brightness within sight, a crack of thunder heralded the trail of golden-yellow light that shot from them and flew, twisting, into the air. An obscuring but harmless flash of luminescence later, the tremendous and majestic form of Earth's Eternal Dragon dominated the sky, his expansive body arcing all around the palace so that he may look down at them with his softly glowing eyes of crimson fire.

"YOU WHO HAVE SUMMONED ME, STATE YOUR TWO WISHES SO THAT I MAY GRANT THEM!"

There was a moment of silence as the customary awe swept through all of them at the incredible sight and the tingle of raw magical power in the atmosphere. Then Piccolo stepped forward, edges of his mantle flowing in the warm breeze generated by the dragon's appearance. He had volunteered to be their voice, something nobody felt the need to argue against, and had made sure that they were all in agreement about what their two wishes would be.

"Mighty Shenron!" He called, steady as a rock. "Is it in your power to bring back the planets destroyed by the being known as Sel?"

King Kai had informed them the day before about what the android had gotten into during her sojourn into the reaches of the galaxy, and it was unanimously agreed that it would be a terrible misuse of the power they were granted if they didn't try to help out others besides themselves.

Shenron paused, presumably to think it over.

"IT IS IN MY POWER TO DO SO, YES. IS THIS YOUR FIRST WISH?"

Piccolo nodded. "Yes. Please bring back the planets destroyed by Sel."

Shenron's eyes flared as he worked his stuff, shaping the cosmos like a mortal would play with wet sand. It wasn't exactly simple for him, but he wasn't pushing himself to his limit for this wish. One planet, however, couldn't be brought back. It had already been dead by the time Sel had demolished it, so it was exempt from the wish, as well as the parasitic tree that had killed it.

"YOUR WISH HAS BEEN GRANTED. STATE YOUR SECOND WISH." Of course, he could guess pretty well what it would be, but he was a professional, so he didn't jump the gun. Never knew when someone would wish for a pair of panties again, after all.

"Shenron, please bring back all the lives taken by Dr. Gero and his creations!"

Shenron's eyes started to glow.

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They had been notified by King Kai when the Dragon Balls had been used, and were now all standing just in front of Grand Kai's mansion. The five kais were all there to see them off, Grand, South, East and West all standing on the steps while North stood next to the warriors. Gohan was veritably bouncing on his heels in anticipation and Tien had given up on hiding his small smile behind a stern demeanor and crossed arms.

Trunks and Vegeta were right there with them, keeping the group close together. The Prince had once more rested a hand on his son's shoulder, the only method he was comfortable with in showing his love. The time traveler was trying to keep himself calm, focusing on the facts, but he couldn't ignore the fact that he really was about to be wished from death like a fairy tale character.

"Alright you guys, they're making the wish now," King Kai spoke up, antennae drooping slightly as he relaxed them. He gave Vegeta a meaningful nod, which the saiyan returned before looking back at his son and comrades, looking each of them in the eye before giving a wolfish smirk.

"I hope to never see any of you here again for at least a few decades." They chuckled in agreement, undeniably glad to see the last of this warrior's paradise no matter how great it had been. Someday, when their fights were over, they wouldn't mind returning with the intent to stay. "No, I'm serious."

"Do you hear that?" Gohan piped up, tilting his head slightly as if that would help his ears. "Sounds like...bells!"

Indeed, a soft tinkling was quietly audible to the four Z-Fighters; the sign that Shenron was fulfilling the wish. A warm breeze kicked in and rose up around them, making them feel relaxed and calm.

Right as the magic took effect, Vegeta gave Trunks' shoulder a firm squeeze. When the half-saiyan looked over to his father, the Prince gave him a faint smile that spoke only of fatherly pride, nodded his head minutely in respect...

...then let go and stepped back as the other three vanished.

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Without so much as a sound, whole planets became repopulated in an instant, trillions of lives put back into place without pause or delay. Fish, birds, plants, bacteria, countless varieties of humanoids, sentients and sapients. It was the single largest surge of life the universe had ever seen in all its long eons, and the positive energy generated by it was so significant that on those planets brought back, and those surrounding them, a sense of peace was shared by all the inhabitants, briefly bringing a halt to wars that had lasted generations, and made ancestral enemies take a day or two to share in the unexplained camaraderie.

On Earth, the number of people brought back wasn't so great as some of those among the stars, but Dende was delighted by the appearance of every single one. At the same time, three figures materialized at the base of the dragon, impressively back-lit by Shenron's constant glow. No sooner had they arrived when-

"Gohan!"

Chi Chi had wrapped her arms around her son in an embrace that would have been crushing for any other boy on the planet. He smiled somewhat meekly as he returned the hug, trying to give her comfort as she began to cry with relief. Goku was there a second later, encircling both of them in his big arms.

The rest came forward as well, crowding around the revived warriors with words of greetings and familiarity. It would have been a picturesque moment, matching the dreams of many, if the quiet voice of Bulma hadn't cut through the clamor with more force than a cannon shot.

"Trunks? Trunks, where's Vegeta?"

The words were all it took for the absence of the saiyan to be felt, and the exuberance of their celebration turned quickly into concerned confusion. Tien and Gohan both looked to Trunks as well, silently asking the question that would soon come from everyone. He was spared trying to answer it as Shenron's booming voice vibrated the Lookout.

"YOUR WISHES HAVE BEEN GRANTED! FAREWELL!"

The magical entity disappeared in the same flash of light as he had first emerged, the seven Dragon Balls rising up through the space he had just occupied. When they had reached an indeterminable height, they separated, scattering in seven different directions across the globe, to be inert for a full year.

They were silent then, standing still while the darkness faded away and the sun came back to shine with a cheer that now felt misplaced. Nobody knew what to say, to console Bulma as she slowly sank to her knees, a strange expression marring her attractive features. She was wildly bouncing between emotions, unsure which one to settle on.

"Well, aren't you all a miserable looking bunch."

They all looked up, expecting to see the Prince standing just a few feet away, with arms crossed and a mocking tilt on his lips. But he wasn't. There, that is; he most definitely sounded mocking.

"Vegeta? Where are you?" Goku asked the air, still looking around for lack of better aim.

"In the Otherworld you idiot, where else would I be?"

"Here, you bastard!" Bulma finally exploded, shaking her fist at the sky with a vengeance. Everyone else took a careful step back.

"I am not there because I did not want to be wished back. I was told that free will was something even an Eternal Dragon can't supersede, in most cases at least."

"Damn it Vegeta, why wouldn't you want to be wished back?" Tien broke in, knowing well enough not to look to the sky as well.

"My reasons...are my own." For a second, hesitation took over the usual arrogance in his tone. "I will not be coming back, so don't go trying to wish be back to life next year, or the year after that; it will just be a waste of time. For once, listen to me when I say that I will not change my mind on this and it is best that none of you try to make me."

"But...why?" Goku again, hurt mingling with the confusion. "After everything we did, I thought you'd want nothing better than to come home!"

"I...I know what I am doing, and why it must be done. If you ever trusted me before, Kakarot, trust me now."

"Yeah," interjected a new voice familiar to half their group, "he's pretty serious about this. Wouldn't even tell me why he wanted to stay."

"King Kai," Piccolo said by way of acknowledgment. "Do you approve of this?"

"Approve? Heck no - this guys a bigger sourpuss than you are. But I believe him when he says that he knows what he's doing, and I learned that he isn't always a terribly reckless brute."

"I'm standing right here you know, with my hand on your back."

"I am well aware, Vegeta. If I was still worried about your tantrums I would have gotten Pikkon to stand guard."

"I still owe that self-righteous prig one. Speaking of..." It was scary how well his predatory grins translated through just a few words. "Trunks, please recall my words in the Persimmon grove regarding this moment."

They all looked to the half-saiyan, who appeared just as confused for a moment before a look of realization and mortification came over him. To his credit, he didn't dally around before walking up to Goku. Giving the older saiyan a weak and crooked smile of apology, he let his aura flare for just a second as he reared his arm back and punched him – hard – in the stomach.

Goku toppled over, gasping for breath as Vegeta's cackles came through loud and clear. Chi Chi made a noise of indignation and protest, Gohan hid a laugh of his own behind a coughing fit, Trunks toed the tiles underfoot, and Bulma groaned in annoyance.

"He, uh, wanted me to do that...and to say that 'you have no right weeping and carrying on like some over-emotional TV character.'" A pause. "Sorry."

Despite his pained gut, Goku managed to chuckle. "That certainly sounds like him alright. I guess I should listen, huh?"

"Yes you damn well better! With that out of the way, it's time I let you get on with your lives." If he was capable of such an emotion, it almost sounded like Vegeta felt regret at having to say what came next. "I won't be contacting you again. This will be the last time you'll hear from me, but I won't degrade myself further with sappy speeches and farewells. I might even miss some of you." Yamcha looked amazed. "Except you, Yamcha." The bandit's face fell, making Tien laugh out loud.

"Vegeta wait!" Bulma called into the air, but no reply came back – the connection had been severed. She crumpled back to her knees, hope deflating harshly in the face of such a disappointment. It almost felt like losing him all over again, with only the thin comfort that she had gotten to hear a few words from him before he'd left once again. She let the others comfort her with empty and clumsy words and a few reassuring touches to the shoulder or elbow.

There wasn't much of a celebration. It was a somber affair, one they all decided to appreciate by living their lives as though it were any other day, without danger waiting just around the corner for them. The Son family all vanished with an electric sizzle of Instant Transmission. Krillin carried Master Roshi away. Tien, Yamcha and Chiaotzou all flew off. Piccolo was already where he wanted to be. Trunks helped her and his baby counterpart into the air car she had arrived in and piloted it himself back to Capsule Corp.

They had only been at the Lookout for half an hour, but it felt like the whole day had passed. She told Trunks to get something to eat in the kitchen, assuring him that her mom would be overjoyed to see him again. She didn't miss the empathetic look he gave her as she subtly dismissed him, but he recognized that she wanted some space and would give it to her for as long as he thought she needed. They were all still healing, and some took longer than others.

She took baby Trunks up to her room, closing the door behind her softly before laying him down in his crib. He was fast asleep, tuckered out from the trips to and from the Lookout and was snoozing peacefully, like only an infant can. She leaned over the side, running a finger through his wispy lavender hair and wondering how it was possible to love something so much. He really does have his father's frown. She smirked slightly.

Moving away from the crib, she sat down heavily on the corner of her bed, feeling the empty space behind her. She absently circled her thumbs over one another, absent of any consuming thought, but drowning in emotion. It had been a real mixed bag that day, and she didn't know if she should be grateful for what she had gotten back or grieving for what she had lost.

It occurred to her that she really didn't know what would happen from this point on. She had been working towards very short term goals since the androids had first shown up, keeping herself busy with tasks and jobs that could occupy her mind and time, and then she hadn't thought past the Dragon Balls, focusing on the wishes to repair her fractured life. She had never given a moments consideration about what would happen after.

But here she was, still alive and on her intact world, with both versions of her son healthy and whole, and ripped away from the man she loved and had come to depend on for stability. It really was like having a leg kicked out from underneath you – falling backwards, blind, and with no way to stop yourself. She could go on, she would go on, but it was such a daunting prospect, being alone, that her mind balked at trying to visualize herself in five years, ten, twenty. Where had the optimistic, wide-eyed teenager with too much gumption and not enough caution gone?

She suddenly felt hollow. Slouching forward, she ran her hands over her face and into her blue tresses. Everything seemed too heavy, too swollen with her melancholy. The only thing she wanted right now was for-

"Bulma."

She straightened immediately, eyes darting about her room with a fervor that was shocking in its suddenness. As she half expected, she saw no one. "Vegeta?"

"Yes. I-" His voice croaked with something implacable, briefly waylaying her instinctive temper. "I did not want to talk to you while the others were still around. My words are for you alone." He made no mention of King Kai, but it seemed that he trusted the minor deity just enough to swallow his pride and passively include him into this moment that was solely theirs.

"Why?" She whispered, desperate and feeling the tears making a comeback. "Why wouldn't you come back? Come back to me? I thought you were happy here!"

"I...there is no place for me in the Universe but with you. You are the only light in my life, Bulma, and for that I must stay away." She nearly shouted at him to get his head out of his ass and stop being an idiot, but a momentary surge of grief silenced her for a second, and he continued in that pause. "I have never known a life of peace, and never will. Fighting is in my blood, and I will never be without it. I have murdered countless beings in my life, under the command of Frieza, yes, but it was still me and there is no excuse strong enough to absolve me. I would not have you or Trunks tainted by that life as it did me."

"I don't understand," she all but mouthed, holding her hands helplessly at her sides, imagining the Prince standing in front of her with that clearly exasperated look on his stern features.

"To protect the only things that matters to me, I must stay away. I am not a good man, not like Kakarot. I let my pride lead me, and that endangers those around me." She heard him sigh deeply, sounding as tired as she was. "I would never be an attentive husband, nor an encouraging father. I can recognize my flaws, even if I usually choose to ignore them. If it means you can retain your happiness, and live a life worth living like I never could, then I will ensure that you can do it without the one influence that could threaten all of that."

"Vegeta, you don't-"

"No. I have decided on my path, no matter how much I resent it and wish it were any other way. It is the best possible option. Just...always understand that I don't do this because I hate you; I do it because...because..." He faltered, and she could picture him grinding his teeth in frustration. But she could hear that unspoken word, the one they had never once said to each other in the years they had grown close. It was filled with far too much promise, somehow threatening to make very real what had only been an intangible thing between them. He saw danger in such an attachment, and there was no easy way for him go against his upbringing and face it. But she had lived off of the unspoken for years, and didn't need it to be any more definite than he did.

"I know," she spoke for him, a small smile finally lighting her face. "I know, Vegeta."

A feeling of gratitude and understanding tickled at the peripheries of her mind, his core emotions bleeding through the telepathic link and giving her a look under the brusque tone, at the man underneath the warrior.

"What will you be doing? While you're away?" She voiced it like he was only going out of town for a few weeks, and somehow it felt close to the truth.

"I shall be training, and learning. Perhaps someday, when I am prepared to be a different man than I have been my whole life, I may yet prove to be worthy of being with you and our son. Someday."

"I'll be looking forward to it," she smiled, tears now freely dripping down her cheeks, but no longer entirely from sadness. "Until then..."

"Until then..."

She knew that the connection had been ended once again, bringing her last conversation with the Prince to a close. She still felt the heaviness of loss, but now it was tempered by the ember of hope that had not been there for so long. Even if she did not see him again in this life, she would find him in the next. Death was no longer something to be feared at the end of her journey, but accepted as the next step in a larger path. She could wait for that day, but she would not spend her time idly! After all, the woman who had snared the Prince of all Saiyans would be expected to leave the world a far better place than when she had found it!

Standing, she moved over to the window and threw it open, allowing a gust of summer air rejuvenate the room, bringing with it a sense of tomorrow, and all the days beyond.

"Until then," she promised herself.

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Vegeta pulled his hand from North's back and took a step back, closing his eyes for a few seconds to ensure that Bulma's and Trunks' faces were engraved in his memory. He would not let himself lose them in that way as well, even if the memory of them caused him as much pain as it did contentment.

He fell into step next to King Kai, walking with him towards the god's house on the minuscule planet he called his own. "Thanks you," he managed to bite out, suppressing the desire to threaten the overseer into silence about what he had heard.

"It was my pleasure," King Kai nodded, hands held primly behind his back. He would never speak a word of this to anybody, not even if it was Lord Beerus himself. His respect for the Prince had skyrocketed during the fight on Earth, and his reluctantly noble reasons for staying had cemented him in the Kai's good books. Even if he was a ruthless saiyan with a cruel streak and a foul temperament, he just might prove to be a good person yet. "I suppose your fight is finally over."

Vegeta halted, looking into the sky with distant eyes. A slight grin formed and he let out a slow breath that seemed to take an invisible weight from his shoulders.

"You know...I think you just might be right."

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AN: And so it draws to a close, the finale of a fantastic journey that we started two years ago. For those of you reading this years after the fact, this is meaningless as it probably only took you an hour or two to read this far, but let me just say that it really was one hell of a ride.

But if you think this is the end, oooh hohohoho! Let me assure you that 'WiaM' is now only roughly HALF done, and there are still so many more adventures to embark on. Even though I've accepted that this story is much more of an "Alternate Telling" than a full on "Alternate Universe", I still have much love for it and won't put anything less than my best into it.

Gal, since you're reading this: FINALLY!