Author's Note: Gah! Sorry. My laptop had some kind of weird virus where when I turned it on, I couldn't open anything!! Sorry About that, but I fixed it ^.^ (Yay!)  So, here's the chapter!

Chapter 29

Right Places at the Right Times

            He couldn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it. How could it be possible?

            "T-this isn't what it looks like…" Doshen stuttered, his eyes darting from Trunks to Vegeta.

            "Oh? Well then what is it?" Trunks growled. Doshen didn't answer.

            Vegeta came up behind his son, holding his side where a medium-sized cut was. "What's the meaning of this, Doshen," he asked coldly.

            "It's not natural, 'Vegeta," Doshen said, purposely leaving off his title.

            "What's not natural?" Trunks asked, his tail swishing warily.

            "You," he said, looking to Trunks, "him," he said, looking to Vegeta, "His mate…"

            With a growl Vegeta slammed his fist into Doshen's jaw, anger glinting in his eyes. "That'll be enough from you," he snarled. He grabbed Doshen, and despite his injury he shoved him into a chair.  "We'll find out what we need to know when we torture you."

            "T-Torture?" Doshen stammered, clearly not liking the idea.

            Vegeta and his son wore twin smirks. "Just like Son Pan, Doshen," was Trunks's reply.

            Vegeta was about to ask him another question but was interrupted by someone banging on the door. "King Vegeta! Prince Trunks!"

            "Come in," Trunks said to the people at the door. Several guards walked in, creating a loose circle around himself and his father.

            Vegeta looked to the commander. "Take him to the dungeons. I'll come by to ask him questions later."

            "What is the charge, sir, on Master Doshen, if I may ask?"

            "Attempted assassination on my son and I," Vegeta said, tossing the knife to the Commander, who caught it-luckily-by the handle. Vegeta pushed past the guards, walking out of the room.

            "S-sir?" The guard asked, confused, then looked to Trunks for an answer.

            "Drop the charges on Son Pan. She's innocent," Trunks said briskly.

"She was framed-she didn't try to kill me, she saved my life." He followed his father out of the room, not wanting to answer any more questions. Absently he wondered how fast it would take this news to get around.

*******

            Trunks followed his father to the royal quarters, knowing they had a lot to talk about. What were they going to do now? If there were others involved, then this whole crisis had just begun. They needed to find the traitors and separate them from the innocent-and fast, before anything else happened.

            Trunks walked into the room behind his father and sat down on a couch, his head drooped. His father looked around for his mate before sitting, and when he didn't find her his tail flickered once in worry.

            Bulma walked in the doors behind them, relieved to see the two of them all right. "Woman, where were you."

            "Turning the lights on for you-don't get snappy with me."

            Vegeta sighed and sat, as Bulma looked to the two of them, hands on her hips. "What's going on here? Is someone going to explain?" she asked crossly. She looked to Vegeta who was holding his side, and ran over to him. "Are you all right? What happened?" She got a first aid kit and Vegeta wordlessly took of his shirt, and she was immediately at work at cleaning his wound.

            Trunks spoke up first. "The assassin never was Pa-Son Pan. She… she saved my life…"

            "Twice," Vegeta reminded him in the gruff tone of his. Something abruptly clicked in Vegeta's mind, his eyes a little wider then usual. "…Mine too…" He remembered why Son Pan's power seemed familiar to him when she saved Trunks the second time-because she had done the same thing to him when he had been near death.

            "…What?" Trunks asked.

            Bulma had caught on to what Vegeta had figured out. "When Vegeta's heart had been stopped by the assassin… Pan gave his heart a shock with her ki…" she said, both surprised and ashamed of herself. "The whole time I was mad at her, she was innocent… I wanted to kill her-"

            Vegeta cut her off to stop her brooding. "The real problem is the assassin, now."

            "What? Why? You caught him, right?" Bulma asked, pressing a little harder on his wound then she had intended.

            "Yes," Vegeta assured her, wincing slightly. "But he could be working with others, which I suspect."

            "And why do you suspect that?" Bulma pressed.

            "Because Doshen's smart."

            "What?! The assassin is Doshen?!" Bulma exclaimed, eyes wide.

            "Certainly is," Trunks answered his mother. "When Pan was ordered to work in the palace, he figured that she would be the perfect person to blame, since most saiyans would naturally blame her for the fact that she is a female fighter. And she just happened to be in the right places at the right times-or the wrong places at the wrong times-it depends on how you look at it."

            "Right places at the right times," Bulma muttered.

            "Huh?"

            "Had she not have been there twice for you and once for Vegeta, then the two of you would have been dead," Bulma said in a quiet tone.

            Vegeta knew this to be true-perhaps he would still be alive by Bulma's instinct and not the girl's, but Bulma had not been there those nights, night-away on royal business. He said nothing, however.

            Trunks nodded solemnly, his eyes trained to the floor in an unfocused manner as he thought.

Author's Note: Once again, sorry! ^^; Anyway, as usual,

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