Vegeta hung over what was left of the turbulent waters, catching his breath. Frieza was right; he was going to have to stay out of the water, because the lizard had a natural advantage there. Up above him Frieza also paused.
'What next?' he muttered aloud. He thought it possible Frieza might just try the same trick again.
The Ice Lizard suddenly disappeared from view, and Vegeta moved as swiftly as he could, too, out, away from the lagoon and over the mainland. Sensing something coming from his left side he curved away and rolled his body to face it. Frieza was coming at him, knee jabbing out to catch him. Vegeta turned his roll right over, barrelling away from the attack and putting himself above his opponent. While Frieza was still trying to recover, Vegeta came down on his side, swinging a two-handed hit into Frieza's kidney area. Who knew if that's where he kept his kidneys, but Frieza gave a satisfying grunt of pain, which was what Vegeta was after. Frieza retaliated with his fists, but Vegeta managed to block the punches until the lizard flipped over in the air too, mimicking Vegeta's move a moment earlier. Vegeta turned again to keep himself still facing him, and now they were shooting through the air, locked into a revolving corkscrew while trading blows.
Vegeta was amazed – he could keep up with and give as good as he got, even against this transformed Frieza.
I have done it! I had achieved the greatest Saiyan potential!
Then something hard wrapped around his thigh and jerked him up against the hard, white and purple torso. Before he knew it Frieza's arms were around him in an unwelcome bear hug, pinning Vegeta's arms to his sides. The thing around his thigh didn't let go, and Vegeta realised it was Frieza's tail.
Nestled against Frieza's bosom he looked up and found the creature smiling, chuckling. The arms around him, already tight, became crushing. Vegeta felt some of the air squeezed out of him in a cough.
'Hush, now, little one!' Frieza crooned in a mockery of a mother's gentling. 'Just go to sleep.'
The landscape around them stilled as Frieza halted their flight. Desperately, Vegeta kicked back with his one free leg. Frieza flinched with each contact, but then he wrapped one of his legs around Vegeta's pinning that, too.
Frieza looked down, his smile twitching and becoming more of a snarl of bitter pain. 'This will be the last time I let you get so close to my heart, Vegeta.'
'What – tck! – heart?' Vegeta struggled to retort; incidentally, even with his cheek smooshed against Frieza's chest plate he could feel no beat. He tried to divert some chi to his fingers to zap Frieza with, but he needed everything he had to resist the crushing power of Frieza's embrace. He even released his tail from around his waist, risking it to try and pull Frieza's off of him, but though it was strong, it was no match for Frieza's deadly weapon of a tail. Every limb pushed against its bonds and a tremor ran through him. At first Vegeta thought it was himself, shaking with the effort of keeping the tiniest bit of air going in and out of his lungs, but then he saw the shaking in Frieza's arms. Frieza was giving all he had to contain him.
'If I had a heart, then,' said Frieza, his breath nearly as laboured as Vegeta's. 'You would have broken it.'
'Liar! You didn't…care…about me!'
'How could I…not care for something…I spent so long crafting?'
For some reason this incensed Vegeta beyond anything Frieza had said until then. From deep within him a second wave of chi exploded. He didn't even direct it, he was so mindless with rage for a moment; it just flooded his muscles, flaring his aura, and he suddenly found the strength to wrench his arms out wide and break Frieza's hold. The chi kept coming, almost as hot as his rage as he used the space between them to slam handful after handful into Frieza. The lizard had to use his arms to deflect it, and he gave up trying to hold onto the Saiyan, Then he started to scream with each landed attack and he let go with his leg and tail, too, fleeing back toward the lagoon to get away from Vegeta.
Vegeta gave chase, feeling incandescent with power and fury. He had Frieza on the ropes! He would fry that bastard!
Bulma's heart nearly stopped for a moment – Puar and Nail weren't where they left them.
'Where have they gone?' she screamed. 'We've been double crossed!'
'No, I sense them further back from the shore,' said Brolly. 'They must have moved to safety.'
He flew over the low hills going inland, their valleys still flooded by the tsunami earlier, and then angled down towards a high point with a copse of Ajisa trees in front of a cliff. Bulma didn't spot Puar or Nail until they had landed and their small figures appeared out of the Ajisa tufts and dropped to the ground.
'Did you-'
'YES!'
Puar laughed and popped her capsule of dragonballs open on the moss for them to add the two last dragonballs to the collection, and Brolly dumped them onto the mat. Immediately the seven massive orbs pulsed with energy that she could feel thrumming in her bones. Brolly fell back against a tree, as if he was exhausted by their feat. Nail stared down in awe at the golden light that lanced through the heart of the orbs.
'I didn't know they did that,' he said.
'Have you never seen them used before?' Bulma asked, surprised.
Nail shook his head. 'There has never been a need.'
'You know how to summon the dragon though, right?' she asked.
'Oh, yes!' he said. 'Takora te pa Porunga-'
'Wait!' she cried.
'-popura pyro!'
But nothing happened to the balls.
'Phew!' said Bulma. 'I thought for a second that you'd just summoned him now.'
Nail looked over at her, suddenly wary.
'But I did. Should I have not?'
She gaped at him and then the balls suddenly glowed brightly with golden light.
'Oh, fuck!' Bulma swore.
'What's wrong?' cried Nail, switching his gaze to the balls as they faded and then lit up again, almost too bright to look at. Puar knew what was up and she was looking back and forth between Bulma and the balls in panic.
'We're too close!' said Bulma. 'Frieza will SEE it!'
'But we're a long way back!'
She shook her head and then looked up, seeing the sky was swiftly going dark, and the clouds above were ripping themselves to shreds as they swirled in a circle above them. 'If your Eternal dragon is anything like the size of Earth's, no one in a hundred miles is going to miss him.'
Nail threw her a look of utter horror.
'I – I didn't know he was that big.'
Hell, they were going to have to be so fast and hope that Frieza was too tied up in his fight with Vegeta to do anything about the giant dragon that was about to appear. And vice versa for that matter!
Golden light exploded up and out of the gathered balls, roaring as it rushed and cracked through the air. It was as if the balls were a portal to another realm, and air rushed from them with the light, making them all turn their faces and stagger back. The Ajisa trees thrashed around and bent away from the emerging dragon and they all cried out in terror. Even Bulma and Puar, who had seen something similar before were terrified by the raw magical power in front of them.
'Bulma, what should we do?' asked Brolly.
'We'll have to make the wishes as quick as possible!' was all she could come up with. 'Damn it, Nail, be ready to make those wishes!'
It seemed like the world was going dark, lit only by the light of Vegeta's attacks, his perception as focused as his intentions.
One blast caught Frieza in the back, and he tumbled in the air, dropping almost down to the lagoon shoreline before recovering. He turned to defend himself, and Vegeta dropped lower too, enough reason left to know that he didn't want to be shooting wildly downwards into the heart of the planet. His next blast Frieza tried to deflect, but it exploded on him anyway, and knocked him back over the water. Even at this distance Vegeta could see Frieza breathing hard, and feel his weakening chi.
He didn't give his old master a chance to recover, sending wave after wave at him. Frieza didn't even try to deflect the blasts now, only dodge them, his cry of alarm was music to Vegeta's ears. One wasted shot crashed into something, but he paid it no heed until he heard a voice, in his head, knocking him out of his trance of vengeance.
'Vegeta!'
This was no time to be chatting to Guru though.
'VEGETA!'
The golden column of light began to twist violently like it was alive.
'Guru!' cried Nail.
The boy looked away from the light and into the gloom of the lagoon. The spire of Guru's tower could be seen a long way off, wavering.
Without another word he shot into the sky.
'Nail!' she screamed. 'Our wishes!'
'Guru's up there!' cried Brolly.
'The guy that made the dragonballs?' She saw the top of the tower falling already and her heart leapt into her throat. 'Oh my god, he'll never make it!'
Brolly took off then too, the sound of him tearing the air loud even over the wind of the dragon's entrance. She and Puar were left alone to witness the light swell, bigger and bigger, forming a head and arms and a barrel chest.
'He doesn't look like Shenron at all!' said Puar.
The light still continued to grow.
'How damn big is this thing?' asked Bulma, her voice trembling. Much bigger than Earth's dragon, that was for sure.
Brolly overtook Nail and got there first, but still half a second after the house disappeared into dust atop the massive pile of rubble.
'No!'
But then he saw something hanging like a blob in the air, something small he thought at first, but as he came closer and closer he could see it was actually quite large and quite Guru shaped, and descending gently to the top of the pile. He flew down to join him, thinking that maybe Nail's alarm was for nothing because Guru seemed to be able to fly, but then something smaller underneath Guru shifted his wide bulk and rolled him off into the debris. Nail arrived at his side just in time to see Vegeta stand, coughing. Guru let out a long groan and then began coughing, too, the rock dust in the air choking them both.
'You saved our elder!' Nail cried.
'At my inconvenience,' snarled Vegeta. 'Where were you, bodyguard?'
'Summoning the dragon,' said Nail plainly, leaping to Guru's side.
Vegeta's head snapped up, giving attention to the great golden light to the west for the first time.
'You little bastard!'
Frieza had been left wondering why Vegeta had suddenly sailed over his head at top speed, and had turned, ready to shoot the vermin in the back, when he saw the great golden thing to the West lighting the mysterious darkness.
Glancing back to where Vegeta had headed, all he seen was the odd rock formation crumbling, and one of those primitive habitations perched on top, surely about to be crushed as the base fell in chunks of rock and dust.
Now he looked back at the light – it had a shape almost like the torso of a person, and then the light faded and left the most stunningly large creature Frieza had ever seen, his green hide gleaming with scales.
Wait, a minute! Where were his dragonballs? Could this possibly be the dragon?
'MY WISH!' screamed Frieza, forgetting about Vegeta for now.
He flew as fast as he was able to the dragon, which wasn't that fast with his injuries. It pained him to admit it, but he was going to have to transform again to beat Vegeta. It was unbelievable; he'd never actually had to fight in that form before!
The dragon was brutish looking, with a wide, very toothy mouth, red glowing eyes and black horns. The massive body twisted and tapered to a point where golden light was still spilling from amongst a grouping of trees, and it curled over, bending to look down there.
'YOU WHO HAVE GATHERED THE SEVEN WISH ORBS, SPEAK YOUR FIRST WISH.'
Frieza felt the voice in his bones, and felt, for the first time in his life, small.
Down he swooped amongst the trees, and there to his surprise was the Bulma girl! She screamed and ran, some kind of smaller creature clinging to her shoulder. Frieza used his chi to move the air, forming a blast of wind that caught her fleeing back and took her off her feet, slamming her into a tree trunk. She fell there and didn't move. He'd deal with her later as long as she wasn't dead.
He looked up.
'I gathered the seven balls,' he lied. Well, he'd gathered some of them. 'I thought the wish needed to be made in ancient Namekian, but you speak Galactic after all.'
'I CARRY THE KNOWLEDGE OF ALL NAMEKIANS, INCLUDING ALL THEIR KNOWN LANGUAGES, BUT I WAS CREATED TO ONLY GRANT WISHES SPOKEN IN THE ANCIENT TONGUE OF THE NAMEKS. WHAT IS YOUR WISH?'
'I wish for immortality!'
The dragon said nothing. Frieza reached for his scouter to contact Dodoria and the translators, but it wasn't there. Damn it! It had been destroyed! And Vegeta was sure to be here any second. He decided to use what time he had to transform again. What a surprise that would be for the monkey!
It was a surprise, and an unwelcome one.
Vegeta was frantic as he landed in the dragon's shadow, just in time to see Frieza's head elongate into some disturbingly non-Saiyanoid shape. Frieza had double spikes protruding from his skull and more on his back, no nose and just a wide, beaklike mouth.
Vegeta touched down in the Ajisa trees before him.
'What have you become now? You're hideous.'
The Frieza-thing chuckled, and its voice was chillingly sibilant and layered, like he had two larynx. 'You may have had some cause to be arrogant earlier, but not anymore. My strength in this form is far greater than the last, and this isn't even my final form.'
Vegeta glanced up at the dragon. He'd heard the dragon's words to Frieza, and realised that Guru had held out on that little gotcha about the Ancient Namekian. Well, he was sure Nail would turn up soon enough and when he did he'd force him to make his wish for him.
He'd only taken his eyes off Frieza for a fraction of a second, but when he looked back Frieza was gone. Immediately he tensed, searching with his chi, but that was as far as he got before something slammed down on his shoulders, so hard he was driven into the rock up to his neck.
'Argh!'
Frieza laughed above him, hopping off his shoulders to land before him. 'Oh, this reminds me of one of those ball games the weakling races play. What is it usually called?' He charged, his leg coming back and then striking forward to take Vegeta's head off with a powerful kick. Vegeta flared his chi though, sending it out explosively in all directions, and rock, moss and Frieza were all thrown away. It bought him less than a seconds reprieve though, as Frieza pounced, one punch bowling Vegeta though the copse and smashing down half the Ajisa trees before embedding deep in the cliff behind them. He was stuck there, stunned for a moment before Frieza blasted away the rest of the cliff, hot chi burning at Vegeta as his resting place was destroyed. He was hard pushed to control his chi enough to protect himself. As soon as the blast ended he shot from the rubble, but Frieza came from nowhere, spinning and hitting Vegeta with his tail – now longer and thicker than ever. Vegeta sailed through the sky, not able to gather himself before Frieza hit him again, this time with his fist. Dismay and pain blossomed inside him. He was being utterly dominated. Frieza overtook him and hit him again and then again.
'I think in some places this game is called "Tennis",' said Frieza.
Finally, Frieza hit him and decided not to keep him airborne. Vegeta crashed into the ground, taking out a couple more trees and rolling along the ground until he finally fetched up against a trunk. Groaning he struggled to lift his head. This couldn't be happening, not if he was the Super Saiyan!
The first person he saw when he raised his head was not Frieza though, but Bulma, her body sprawled on the ground, pale-faced, and Puar weeping quietly beside her. Cold shock shot through his stomach. Was she dead?
Then cruel talons raised him up and his next terrified thought was that he might also soon be joining her.
'Grand Elder, are you okay?'
'I am-' But the old Namek gave way to coughing.
'We need to move him,' said Nail. 'We should take him away to safety. Will you help me?'
Brolly looked over at the dragon. 'What about the wishes? Frieza is over there with the dragon!'
'It's okay, he can't make a wish if he doesn't know ancient Namekian. But if Guru dies, no one gets to wish anything!'
'Okay, then,' Brolly agreed, not happy about it, but seeing it as necessary.
They each got under one of Guru's giant arms and hauled him up, sagging between them.
'To the far side of the lagoon,' said Nail. 'There's less damage there and I know a cave where we can hide him.'
'No, you mustn't waste your time one me,' wheezed Guru.
'It's not a waste!' said Nail. 'You're the most important of us! Without you alive there's no way to end this scourge on our people!'
Frieza flicked him up to face upwards, then laced his long tail around Vegeta's throat. This time Vegeta was too dazed to react fast enough, and his hands scrabbled uselessly at the grip the tail had on him. While he was dangling, Frieza punched him once then twice in his defenceless midriff. Vegeta felt ribs snap for the second time that day, and he would have vomited from the blow to the stomach had the grip around his throat not been so tight. He dropped his hands to defend himself as Frieza hit him again, but he could hardly see where the next hit was coming from and soon he had a broken arm too. He cried out in pain, but it only came out as a gurgle.
'How sad that you should come so far only to fail now!' said Frieza. 'If only you had remained my loyal servant.'
He raised Vegeta by the neck. Vegeta's heart raced, and his feet cycled in the air, trying to reach anything of Frieza's to kick to no avail.
'But you couldn't, you couldn't.'
Though Frieza's face was huge and completely distorted now, his eyes were unchanged. They were narrowed in bitterness.
'Something is amiss here,' his tormentor said, and Vegeta felt a hand grip his tail. It squeezed, and spine-weaking pain lanced up his back. 'You've got something more than you deserve,' said Frieza, and then he yanked Vegeta's tail. The pain blinded him for a moment before slowly receding, and Frieza gave a forced laugh.
'Well, look at that. I didn't mean to pull the whole thing off, but it looks like your tail was never that firmly attached.'
He dangled the severed end of Vegeta's tail in front of him and weakness and sickness soaked through the prince. His tail; the last remaining item of his Saiyan inheritance was taken from him.
'Vegeta,' Frieza breathed, quiet now that they were so close. 'It seems so strange that this should be the last time I say your name. The last time that I should speak to you. I don't think…there has ever been anyone that I've ever felt more passionate about killing. It pains me to do so and yet I want it so at the same time! And you must die, you simply must.'
Vegeta's terror was absolute. The tail squeezed tighter and Vegeta's eyes bulged, his tongue pushed up and out of his mouth. Oh gods, this was it! He was dying! His limbs were starting to go weak as all the oxygen in his blood stream was used up. Stars were dancing on the edges of his vision, and Frieza's voice seemed to recede. Tears welled up and he was unable to stop them. He knew that as a Saiyan he should not fear death, but he did. Ignominious death was the ultimate horror, and it would be one thing if he believed completely in the Saiyan legends of Hell, and that all his Saiyan brethren waited there for him. He was afraid that the common atheist philosophy held by most of the PTO rank and file would prove true; that death was simply not existing. His entire collection of Vegeta-ness might evanesce into nothingness, never to know itself again. His soul shrank in terror from the possibility of its own transience.
'Soon, very soon,' Frieza promised. 'But first...'
He felt the ground beneath his feet then, and his knees folded as Frieza deposited him on the dirt. Mostly unconscious, Vegeta slumped forward until his head touched the moss. When the tail came off his neck he whooped in breath, feeling like he couldn't get enough air down his damaged throat, and he tasted blood in his mouth.
'There, that is what I wanted to see. You on your knees before me, begging for forgiveness, weeping for mercy.'
Vegeta groaned in protest but couldn't say a thing. He wasn't begging. He wouldn't beg for mercy he knew wouldn't be given. He was dead-meat, but like a cat, Frieza wouldn't just kill him. He sobbed at his utter helplessness and tried to push up with his unbroken hand. He just managed to raise his head and shoulders enough to look Frieza in the face, though his eyelids fluttered and threatened to close on consciousness.
Frieza bent down. 'Is there something you wanted to say? If you beg, if you plead for mercy now, maybe, maybe, I would take you back.'
Some foolish part of Vegeta jumped at the false hope, but he knew Frieza better than that. There was no going back from here, and he would sure as hell not beg.
He flipped his middle finger at Frieza.
'What?' roared Frieza. And then he stamped on Vegeta's hand, his clawed foot crushing his whole forearm into the ground.
The lights went out entirely for Vegeta.
Frieza glared down at Vegeta's still form. He appeared to be alive still, but quite unconscious. It would be no fun to torture him further and he would not let him go out on that defiant note. There was something more of Vegeta to be broken, and he would do that before granting the vermin death if he could.
'SPEAK YOUR WISH OR RELEASE ME FROM THIS PLANE,' commanded the dragon from above. Recalled to that purpose, Frieza picked his erstwhile protégé up with his tail around his middle. He would not make the mistake of leaving Vegeta somewhere that one of his friends could aid him, and the monkey was not above fakery either.
He levitated up closer to the dragon's face.
'I need more time,' he told it. 'If I ask you to return to those dragonballs and then come forth in a short amount of time, would that be possible?' Frieza was not used to asking for anything, but this was magic and he knew the line of his knowledge and influence was drawn at magic.
The dragon growled in irritation. 'NO. ONCE I RETURN I MAY NOT BE SUMMONED FOR ANOTHER YEAR.'
Frieza shuddered, glad that he had asked. 'Then we must wait for my translator to arrive.' He assumed that somewhere Dodoria was still on his way. Surely even that imbecile would see the giant dragon and think to see if Frieza had summoned it?
Bulma moaned and rolled over, feeling sick with the mixture of dull and sharp pains in her chest and shoulder.
'You're okay!' cried Puar, launching herself onto Bulma's neck, which made the girl cry out in pain.
'Ow! No, Puar!' She absolutely wasn't okay. She hadn't passed out, but for a while there the world had been quite fuzzy beyond the pain. Despite the sounds and quaking ground around her she hadn't been able to raise herself until now, with the pain receding into something manageable.
That cat backed off. 'Sorry, sorry! What's wrong?'
Bulma's woozy gaze attached itself to the dragon's tail and followed its body upwards until it got to its massive face. Some ghastly shaped creature was hanging in the air before it, with something that looked a lot like Vegeta dangling from its tail.
'No!' she said.
Puar turned and looked, too, and Bulma saw that she had been crying.
'What is that?' Bulma asked.
'That's Frieza,' replied the cat. 'I saw him change shapes. He has Vegeta...' She gave way to tears of despair and Bulma joined her, the pain of her chest giving way to the tearing pain of her heart. Bulma put her hand to her capsule kit, trying to think if she had something, anything that could help, but there was nothing that would magically help her to speak Ancient Namekian, and the motorhomes and sporting equipment and even light explosives in the kit weren't going to be any use.
They were on the verge of losing everything - even Vegeta - and she was all out of ideas.
Frieza ventured out further form the dragon's shadow. He was afraid to go too far from it in case some lucky, lucky Namek snuck up and stole the wish out from under him, but he couldn't see well under the darkened sky. There did seem to be small movements in the far distance, and even the occasional pinprick of chi attack. Something was going on near the lagoon.
As his exploration took him high enough to see over the crest of a tall hill a flurry of movement caught his eye. Four figures leapt into the air, turned tail and fled from him. Frieza almost gave chase, but then when he recognised one of the figures he did give chase.
'Halt!'
He used his incredible speed and appeared before them. All four cried out in fear, including Zarbon who was held up in the air, supported by some lousy foot soldier. The look on their faces was indescribably funny in their panic, and he realised that of course they didn't recognise him. Then his eyes alighted on a wonderful thing. One of the soldiers, that now he realized he recognised from earlier that day, was holding his littlest translator! The Namek boy was clutched in his arms, mutely weeping. The sight of a child weeping while making no snivelling sounds was quite picturesque to Frieza.
'Calm yourselves, men, and marvel that you should be the first in centuries to behold me in this form!'
They stared blankly.
'I am Frieza, your master!'
Zarbon looked at him doubtfully. 'I know my master's transformation, and this is not it.'
'You don't know everything about me, Zarbon. I see you brought me one of my translators. Where are the rest? Where is Dodoria? He was the one that was supposed to be bringing them.'
'Dodoria is dead, my Lord, if you really are my Lord.'
Frieza blinked with shock. That was a blow, and one that he didn't expect. Dodoria, that usually dependable, stalwart, if uncultured and sometimes dim General of his - he'd somehow grown used to the idea of him always being around. Every time Frieza had sent him into some situation or other that was bound to kill him, he always managed to survive. In this way he had risen through the ranks to his position, not through Frieza's careful nurture but by blunt indestructibility and power. Even though Frieza had wished the idiot would die several times, now that he had, the lizard felt a certain unnerving pang.
'How did he die?'
'Saiyans, my Lord,' said the soldier holding the Namekian. 'They swarmed him. I was the only one that managed to get away, as I knew your lordship would need a translator. I came looking for you straight away, although that was difficult due to your scouter being inoperable.'
Zarbon finished his tale for him. 'I came across him, and when the dragon appeared in the sky we came to see if you, or rather, Lord Frieza, was there.'
'Good. You did well. Now, give me the child.'
'Don't!' said Zarbon, as the soldier prepared to throw the kid to him. 'We don't know that this is Frieza. It could be the shapeshifter. Perhaps he doesn't know what Frieza actually looks like.'
'I don't have time for such nonsense,' complained Frieza. 'Do you have the translation notes you made? Give them to me, and the child.'
The soldier looked back and forth between Zarbon and Frieza.
'Sir?'
Frieza was losing his temper. 'Private, Zarbon may or may not punish you for disobeying him, but I will definitely kill you if you don't hand me the notes and the child at once!'
The fool hesitated again, eyes on Zarbon, but then slowly reached inside his armour and drew out the notebook. Frieza snatched it and the Namekian too, then for his slowness, he fired a bolt of chi through the irritating soldier. He fell away, disappearing down a gully with a crash. The child screamed and Zarbon and the other two soldiers carefully made no other move.
'It's me, Zarbon,' warned Frieza. 'You're already in my bad graces today, and if you get in my way again we'll see if I can do without both my Generals.'
Zarbon looked appalled, apparently now convinced. 'Yes, my Lord. I'm sorry; I was only being cautious.'
Frieza didn't stick around to listen though, taking off back towards the dragon.
'Dragon, listen up! I'm here with my interpreter!'
The dragon growled in answer.
Frieza brandished the child before him with one hand and held the notebook up in the other. Now that his immortality was practically a reality he began to feel excited again.
'Say the words,' he muttered in the Namek's ear. 'I have our notes, so I'll know if you go off-script - if you do and I'll kill you and destroy your entire planet, do you hear?'
The child wasn't crying so silently now. He was sobbing so hard that the words were hard to make out.
'Tenomora p-pa dengo te d-dynoma pongura, ma.'
The dragon's huge red eyes closed for a moment and when he opened them he pronounced, 'IT IS DONE!'
Frieza felt something like an electric shock pass through him from the severed tip of his tail to the ends of his fingertips and the crown of his head. He jerked, losing his hold upon both the child and Vegeta, but neither hardly mattered now! The shock left him feeling positively buoyant with life – he had done it! It was his! Immortality! He would rule not only this Galaxy but the entire Empire! No, he had enough time now that he could be the master of the entire Universe! He would be unassailable!
Joy pulsed through him, and chi, cracking at his form. Suddenly Frieza felt that he couldn't be contained any longer. With a rush of pink energy he let himself go, transforming before the dragon into his final form.
'Yes, yes, YES!' he cried as the final restraints on his power fell away. Oh, it was amazing! He felt more alive than he had done in centuries! And he would be alive for centuries! For countless millennia!
'I am a god! I am a GOD!'
Vegeta hit the ground, his fall unbroken by anyone or anything. Bulma and Puar screamed and hid the sight of his discarded body with their hands over their eyes.
'No! No!' they both cried in futile denial, for how could everything be going so wrong? How could this be happening?
'What just got wished for?' cried Krillin as the echoes of the Dragon's voice faded. Tarble was not far away, but of course didn't know the answer either. They had been fighting their way closer to the dragon ever since the sky had gone dark, but now they raced, abandoning the pursuit of enemy soldiers.
'Hurry!' said Nappa over comms. 'Forget the translator for now, get to the dragon!'
But then, when it hardly seemed possible it could get any worse, Frieza's monumental life force increased and by not a little, or even ten. It felt infinite, it felt…
Krillin clenched his bladder hard, as he realised he'd been just about to let it go in fear. Beside him Tarble turned and Krillin saw his disbelief echoed there.
'I think he's done it,' said Tarble. 'Frieza, I mean. Got his immortality.'
Nail and Brolly stopped in the act of settling Guru in a cave as the rumble of the dragon's voice rolled across the land.
'No!' said Guru. 'Someone has made a wish, and I fear it was not any friend of ours!'
The two boys turned and took off as fast as they could back to the dragon.
Bulma looked up when the pink light grew intense, wondering what the hell else could be happening. Was this not enough? She was crying so hard she could barely see. Apparently not - lightning flashed, and a fork struck a tree nearby, exploding it and leaving the split trunk burning. Wind rushed down after it, whipping at her hair and Puar's fur and sending every bit of loose dirt and leaf litter airborne. They were both screaming, and Bulma looked down again, hiding her face from it, which was when her eyes fell on the thing she'd been trying not to see.
Vegeta's corpse moved. He lifted one broken hand and let it drop again.
'Ugh!' he said.
'Puar, he's not dead!'
The two looked at one another and then as one, scrambled across the tree littered wasteland to where he lay.
'Vegeta!'
Until then she couldn't bring herself to look at him more than through a crack in her fingers, unable to face the sight of him dead, but though he was still alive the sight was still terrible. Lit by the steady golden glow of the dragonballs and the flickering pink light from above, she could see that the front of his training suit was covered in blood, one of his arms broken and the other one mangled. There were red and purple bruises around his throat and blood on his face. His eyes were half open and red with broken blood vessels and he gave no sign that he could see them.
'Oh, no, oh, no,' Bulma cried, now that she was there, unsure of what she could do for him. Her first aid, her serums and sedatives were no use for injuries like this. He needed a full emergency ward and a team of doctors, or better yet, a regen tank! His eyes slid closed again and he fell limp, and she and Puar both screamed in panic. Bulma reached for the pulse in his neck.
'His heart's still beating,' she said, feeling like she was about to barf with relief or fear or pain. The wind and the light were dying down again.
Puar leapt into the air. 'I just heard Nappa over the comms!' she cried.
It took Bulma a second to work out what Puar was talking about. Her earpiece must've finally dried out enough to work.
'Puar! Speak to them!'
Puar touched her transponder disk. 'Guys, can anyone hear us? We're underneath the dragon and Vegeta is really hurt bad! Frieza just got his wish!'
Bulma was almost beside herself with desperation to hear the replies.
Puar looked up at her and grasped Bulma's finger with her paw. 'They heard us! They're on their way!'
Bulma hiccupped out a strange moan of anxiety. Someone had to do something, but could they be enough when Vegeta had failed? If Frieza took the last two wishes...
'Vegeta is done?' said Nappa, coming to a stop, shocked. Raditz and Kakarott overtook him. 'Don't you realise we're fucked?'
The others kept going. Kakarott shouted back over his shoulder.
'There are still two wishes left!'
Nappa planted his face in his palm for a moment, but then he was off again after them. Hadn't he always known that this was the best death his life could offer? In a blaze of glory and blood, losing against some magnificent foe? Funny how it didn't seem such an attractive prospect from up close.
'What the Hell…' he muttered to himself. He'd be there soon, with the King, with the Elites, with Vegeta and Raditz, and fuck, even these brats…
From up high a small, chubby, green figure floated down between the trees.
'Nail!' called Bulma.
The kid looked over at them and yelped, his eyes wide with fear. Then he flew away at speed.
'That wasn't Nail,' observed Puar.
'Well, where the hell is he and Brolly?' Bulma despaired, remembering how they'd abandoned them here to face Frieza alone. 'There are still two wishes left and they're our last chances!' Not that there was anything much any of them could do about that while Frieza was in the vicinity.
That thought apparently conjured the devil himself, and Bulma forgot her despair in favour of flat fear as she saw the figure descending like an angel to the clearing made by Vegeta being tossed around. Puar squealed and they both backed away, hoping vainly that Frieza hadn't seen them. He looked completely different than he had as the monster, slightly closer to his old self, but they could tell it was him. Though he was pure white apart from plates of shining purple on his head, chest and shoulders, the doll-like face was definitely Frieza's, and Bulma could feel it was him. Maybe she would never be able to sense chi well, but she could sense something from him, and not just the electric crackle of free chi that made the hair all over her body stand up.
He hovered a foot before the ground, the air around him seeming to pulse.
His eyes found hers.
'Oh, you are alive.'
Bulma said nothing, only stared back, shaking. Frieza's mouth twitching into a preening grin
'Do you have nothing to say to your new god?'
'New god?' Bulma echoed dumbly. That was a statement she hadn't been expecting, and Bulma found her mouth saying, 'You're the opposite of a god, asshole!'
'Bulma!' shrieked Puar.
Frieza face became thunderous, and whatever purpose he had saved her for before appeared to go out of the window as he raised his hand, purple lightning dancing over his fingers.
'For that you'll d-'
His words were lost in a tremendous crack; light flashed and the remaining trees rocked back on their roots. Bulma blinked the brightness out of her eyes, and when she could see clearly, Frieza was gone. There was a sound of a second impact and the ground shook. Brolly hung in the air with his back to her, looking over the top of the rubble of the cliff. His hair looked like he'd had a purple rinse. She couldn't make any sense of what she saw.
'Brolly?'
He turned and swooped down to her, picking her up so abruptly that her teeth clacked together and pain shot through her chest and shoulder. Puar leapt onto Bulma's stomach and then they were airborne, Bulma in too much pain to scream and feeling sick with the speed of acceleration.
'There's no time to lose!' Brolly shouted, zooming away from the dragon, the balls and their last hope.
'No, Brolly, the wishes!' she struggled to protest.
He shook his head. 'He'll be after me any second! We've got to get away!'
Frieza growled, seethed, bared his teeth and roared. Who? What had struck him? Had he let his attention waver so much that he'd become vulnerable to a lesser being?
He leapt up from the debris of the hillside he had found himself landed in, throwing off boulders the size of houses like a kitten leaping from a box of packing peanuts. His eyes searched the sky, but there was too much going on. Zarbon and the two sorry crew members were being chased by Vegeta's entourage; more soldiers were making their way after then in pursuit and the dragon hovered over all. He expected that it was somehow Vegeta who had hit him, and he headed back towards the dragon to see if his prize was still there.
'I GROW TIRED OF THIS WAITING. MAKE YOUR SECOND WISH OR RETURN ME TO MY REST,' the dragon complained.
Wait, another wish? No one had mentioned that!
Frieza's heart contracted with sudden fear. If someone else took the wish he could find his immortality wished away as easily as it had been granted. He got back to the clearing again, spied Vegeta still prone of the ground, and hastened to gather him up in his tail's grasp again. Should he send the dragon away? Or claim the second wish? Wait, could he claim the second wish? Where was his translator?
'Namek! Come here!'
He looked around and then saw it zipping through the trees, attempting to stay undercover.
'Nice try, kid.'
He appeared before the tyke, surprising him and wrapping him in an unbreakable grip. It shouted and struggled, but it was no use.
'Now, now, you've been very helpful once before and I need you to be so again.'
Just as quickly, he reappeared before the dragon. He was so fast now, it really was almost instantaneous, but as someone who ruled over an area as vast as a galaxy, there had always been one fantastical skill he'd wished he had. He knew he was taking a risk by asking for another wish – this translation wouldn't be verified like the other one – but the child was so timid, Frieza felt he was liable to be too scared to defy him. However, the pay-off would be considerable.
To the dragon he said, 'Just how many wishes do you grant?'
'UP TO THREE, IF REQUIRED,' the dragon replied. 'DO YOU HAVE ANOTHER WISH FOR ME?'
'Yes!' He turned the child in his arms to face the dragon. Suddenly the struggle went out of it. 'Now, just like before, I want you to translate my wish and ask it for me. Remember that I reward those who help me, and I punish those who disobey me, and I will know very quickly if you have spoken the wrong words, understand? A wonderful reward awaits you if you get this right. If not; death.'
The kid nodded.
'Good, then, we understand each other. Now here is what I want you to wish for me. I wish to have the power of teleportation! Instant travel, understand?'
'I understand.'
'Then repeat my wish to the dragon.'
In his arms, unseen by Frieza, Nail couldn't stop a smile of blazing hope spreading across his face. Frieza had mistaken him for someone else, and it was a fortunate mistake indeed.
'Te lomonoro Porunga, lo tekengo no pyloha mora ne kressa ponya, tina mei lomne ulitna pa Nameka ula, ma!'
'IT IS DONE.'
The words boomed over the sound of the wind in Bulma's ears as she tried to see back towards the dragon.
'No!'
And then it was gone.
It was all gone.
She was lying on the floor of the bathroom of their ship.
Immediately she sat upright, sending pain through her again, her breathing becoming frantic with shock and incomprehension. Outside the window was stars and nothing else, and there was a strange whistling sound.
What? How? Have I lost my mind?
She heard a yell from another part of the ship.
'What the bleeding gods is going on?' Evidently Nappa was on board too.
She leapt to her feet and to the bathroom door, tearing into the corridor and colliding straight into Tarble who was running towards the bedroom. Nappa burst out the bedroom door, and there were the sounds of more voices and confusion from different areas of the ship. In the lounge the whistling was louder, and Puar, Krillin and Goku staring around in confusion. Brolly appeared for the kitchen and Raditz from down the stairs. Vegeta lay on one of the couches.
'What happened?'
'Why are we here?'
'How?'
For a more than a second Bulma doubted her own reality.
'Did I die?' asked Raditz. 'And this is Hell?'
'We're in space!' said Nappa. 'How the fuck did that happen?'
Krillin ran across the lounge towards her, and Goku began to follow before his eyes found Vegeta on the couch. He just stopped still, and alarm jolted through Bulma. She hurried over, everyone else having pretty much the same idea, and they crushed together around him on the couch. They couldn't be dead if Vegeta was still in the process of dying!
'We need to get him in the tank!' she said.
'No shit!' said Raditz, already lifting Vegeta's unconscious form. Bulma rushed ahead to open the door of the tank, and was joined by Nappa, who hauled forth the electrodes and mask.
Suddenly the whistle was joined by an ear splitting alarm blaring. The lights around the side of the room flashed an ominous red.
'What the heck is that?' asked Krillin.
'Oh, fuck,' said Nappa, looking up at Bulma.
This time the ship's builders had considered the occasion serious enough to warrant a pre-recorded message, and an oddly accented female voice spoke over the hidden speakers in the lounge.
'Hull breach. Cabin depressurisation. Seal breach immediately or abandon ship.'
Raditz practically dropped Vegeta in the tank.
'We don't have any pods left to escape in! Do we?'
While he rushed off to the airlock to check, Nappa picked up where Raditz left off, stripping away what was left of Vegeta's battlesuit top and revealing purple contusions and scary swelling.
Bulma's limbs felt rubbery and all she wanted to do was collapse on the floor. She tried to will herself to act, to think about what the blaring warning was telling her, but instead she was mentally scattered to the four winds. What happened to the wishes? What happened full stop? Vegeta was before her, curled awkwardly in the base of the tank and needing help, and the only course of action that would occur to her was to reach for an electrode and to place it over his heart. Nappa took it from her.
'I'll handle him. You get the ship's tools!'
'The what?' she said dumbly.
'The ship's tools! You're the fucking back-stabbing ship's mechanic, aren't you? Go and mechanic!'
'There's no escape!' cried Raditz, skidding back into the room. 'Bulma! How do we fix it?'
Whimpering and standing, Bulma beat her brow, trying to get things moving again. A breach, a hole...she had read in the ship's manual that there was an emergency hull patching kit somewhere for use on minor cracks and punctures.
'Find where it's leaking from!' she ordered him.
'It's somewhere over the entrance,' yelled Nappa, not looking up from his task. 'A wild chi blast clipped the outside of the ship - musta left a hole!'
Bulma ran for the section of floor that she knew the tools were under, scattering the dazed boys as she went.
'Is there anything we can do?' asked Goku.
'Yes!' she replied, lifting the edge of the flooring section before being helped by Tarble. 'Find the emergency hull breach kit! It's in one of these compartments.'
One of her arms didn't seem to be working properly, and Tarble lifted the tool bag out of the cavity for her, and she rummaged around for the patch kit but couldn't see it. Looking up towards Raditz who had his ear up against the upper curve of the ceiling she shouted out.
'I need that ceiling panel off!'
The other boys were hauling up sections of flooring and knocking them together in their haste.
'What does it look like?' asked Krillin.
'I have no idea!' she admitted. 'Hopefully it's labelled.'
Raditz ripped the cladding down, no doubt shearing the attachments points, not that aesthetics mattered at this moment. The whisper became a raw sucking sound.
'It's only a crack!' he said, obviously relieved.
'It doesn't matter if it's just a crack!' she said, rooting through the tools for a worklamp. 'With the pressure difference between the inside and the outside it could become a tear at any moment! And even if it doesn't it's only a matter of time before we run out of air to breathe.'
Tarble found the kit and Bulma spilled out the contents, reading the instructions as fast as she could. The patch was a thin, malleable metal plate, a thick rubbery sheet with glue to go over it, and another thin metal plate to be soldered over the top. One armed, as she was, she got Raditz to place and hammer the first sheet flat with his fist. Straining to see, Nappa lifted her up without her asking, and Goku held the tasklamp to shine into the narrow wedge-shaped space. Krillin prepped the rubber sheet with the glue and Raditz placed that, too, accepting Bulma's barked orders to place it higher and hold it longer. Bulma took responsibility of the soldering, not trusting the others to do it, and she struggled, sweat standing out on her brow from the effort of holding up the soldering gun above her head one handed, but at last it was done and she lowered her arm, almost toppling out of Nappa's hold with exhaustion.
She'd been surprised when he'd picked her up, and she would have suspected he was up to no good except for the seriousness of the situation. He put her on the floor now, not super-gently, and she collapsed against the wall while he took a seat on the lower stairs leading up to the flight deck. He and everyone else looked ready to drop, and all looked ragged, dirty and covered in various shades of blood. The sight of Goku's clothes almost drenched shoulder to ankle in blood, with heavy smears on his arms, neck and face was particularly nauseating.
'Someone explain to me what we're doing up here in space,' Nappa moaned.
They all looked around rather blankly except for Brolly. He was looking at Tarble and Krillin and back to Nappa as if he expected them to say something.
'What is it?' asked Nappa.
Brolly turned to him looking nervous and Bulma saw the colour drain from Nappa's face.
'Oh gods,' he muttered, 'Brolly…'
Brolly's face transformed in an instant. 'I'm okay!' he snapped, almost angry sounding. 'I don't know what you all thought was wrong with me before, but Guru said he healed me!'
Nappa flinched and raised his hands. 'Sure, sure, son. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with you, but let's just calm down a bit.'
'But Guru did heal him!' said Goku.
Nappa held a cautionary finger up to Goku and said gently, 'I've no idea what you're talking about, Kakarott, but let's just be calm, okay?'
Brolly's face started to flush pink and he scowled. 'You're talking to me like I'm…' Words apparently failed him, and seeking to save him further suffering and dispel Nappa's impression that Brolly was a danger, Bulma stepped alongside Brolly and patted his arm.
'It's true. Brolly's okay. Guru, the Grand Elder of the Namekians really did heal him.'
Brolly looked at her, his face losing a little of its angry set as he accepted the support.
Nappa made a face of obvious scepticism. 'Who is this old fart you've all been going on about? Unlocking this and healing that! Sounds like mumbo jumbo.'
'This is the same guy that made the dragonballs,' Bulma reminded him. 'Still think those were mumbo jumbo?'
Nappa glared at her and she gave it right back.
Brolly was giving Nappa his own stony glare. 'I was gonna say, when I came to save Bulma, Nail was right behind me. He must have had the chance to make his wish that all the aliens be far away from Planet Namek.'
As he said it, Bulma realised that Brolly must be right. Frieza would not wish them to be on their ship, alive. Raditz and the boys made exclamations of realisation, too.
'Move over,' said Raditz, stepping over Nappa awkwardly in his haste to get up to the flight deck. Nappa snarled but followed him, and the others swarmed up behind.
Upstairs, Raditz took a pilot's seat and Nappa perched on the other one while the rest of them crowded around. Raditz was pressing buttons.
'Where are we, then?' he asked as the holographic diagram of the galaxy appeared over the console and over the map table. The little red arrow took it's time appearing, but when it did even Bulma could see that something was way off.
'What the…!' cried Raditz.
'Isn't that the opposite side of the galaxy from where we were?' she asked.
'Just about!'
'Well,' said Nappa. 'Guess we won't be getting that third wish then.'
A peculiar coldness washed over Bulma, and suddenly she was having to swallow saliva that flooded her mouth, gulping down on the feeling she was about to throw up. She gripped the back of Nappa's chair to keep steady. She heard a high pitched moan and thought it was herself for a second before she recognised it as Puar. The cat fell off the headrest of Raditz's chair and landed in his lap.
'Are you all right?' Tarble asked Bulma. He looked scared, so she figured she looked terrible. She shook her head, shying away from putting her realisation into thoughts, because she would lose her shit.
'That can't be it!' said Goku.
'No, there's got to be something more we can do!' said Krillin.
'We can't give up!'
Krillin grabbed her hand. 'Think, Bulma! There must be some way out of this! We can't just have…lost everyone for good!'
Bulma's throat closed up, but instead of crying she began hyperventilating. 'Don't say that!' she squeaked out.
'Please, Bulma!' said Krillin, squeezing her hand between both of his. 'There has to be a way around this!'
'We'll come up with something,' said Goku, his voice hoarse with emotion.
Nappa rolled his eyes. 'Earthling drama.'
Raditz watched them with more sympathy. The sight of them panicking over the fate of their planet reminded him of his own reaction when Nappa told him that Planet Vegeta was no more. He'd been brand new to Frieza's ship and already hating it, and he'd never even been properly introduced to Nappa and the prince. The news of the meteorite strike devastated him.
He hadn't thought of that time for years and tried not to, but now he remembered irrationally arguing with Nappa that there must be something they could do to undo what had already happened. He'd wanted Nappa to tell Frieza to turn the ship around so that he could see for himself, just in case it was all a mistake.
'There's nothing to see, you idiot! It's gone!'
But how would he ever get home again if his home was gone? His mother would be so angry if he didn't come home one day!
Raditz flinched, shaking himself out of the eerily vivid recollection. Nappa was squinting at him.
'What is it?' he asked.
Raditz searched for something more acceptable to explain whatever his face had been doing. 'Wait until Vegeta wakes up - then we'll get a treat of some real Saiyan drama.'
Nappa let out a long moan. 'Oh gods, can we just fast forward through the next couple of months?'
'Months!' cried Bulma, her memory jogged into spitting forth a Hail Mary.
'What?' cried the boys.
'We've got another chance!' she told them. 'Even two!'
'How?' asked Puar. It seemed she had come round from her faint and started up at Bulma in hope.
'Nail told me that Namekian years are only about six Galactic months long. That's like, what? Four and a bit Earth months? So though we've only got a year from when Frieza arrived on Earth to wish Kami back to life, the Namekian dragonballs will be ready to be used again in four and a bit months!'
Puar, Goku and Krillin screamed with joy, and so did Tarble, but luckily the older Saiyans didn't seem to notice in the general din. Raditz smiled and added an, 'Oh, shit,' to the mix of celebration, but Nappa groaned.
'Fuck, Vegeta's going to make us go back there!'
Brolly grinned at her.
'You're so clever,' he said.
'That's not clever,' she said, grinning with relief herself. 'That's just remembering the right thing at the right time. We're not in the clear yet though.' She turned to Raditz. 'We need to get back to Planet Namek first. How long will that take from here?'
'Let me look it up,' Raditz said, obliging.
'You're assuming that we're going back and that Frieza doesn't have exactly the same idea and get there first,' said Nappa harshly. 'Not to rain on your little festivities, but we'd still be in competition with the most powerful being in the Galaxy, who, by the way, is now a freaking immortal.'
Bulma went cold at Nappa's words. He was right, of course. If Frieza decided to head back to Namek, assuming he was drifting in his spaceship out in space like they were, he would perhaps take more wishes, but he would definitely destroy the planet.
'Huh?' said Raditz. 'Am I crazy?'
'What?' asked Nappa, focusing on his subordinate again.
Raditz leaned away from his screen so Nappa could see. 'This is how you spell "Namek", right? It's not "Namik" or "Nermek"?'
'No. Weren't you the one that first found the planet in the database? How did you spell it last time?'
'This way, I thought.'
Bulma leaned over Nappa's shoulder. 'Why?'
'Because it's not showing up in the directory.'
'What?'
They all watched in silence while Raditz typed in several close phenomes into the directory but came up with nothing.
'Surely our last destination is in the ship's computer?' she said. 'Just recall it from that.'
'Probably,' he said. Then he began laboriously perusing the menus of the ships computer and she realised he had no clue how.
'Out of the way!' she said, shoving him out of the seat, though it hurt her arm and chest badly. He rolled aside, letting her have it, and she took to the controls, knowing exactly where she was heading after her weeks with the ship's computer being her primary source of entertainment and comfort.
'Here it is. Planet N-A-M-E-K.' Strangely the sector entry was missing, but she took the entry and entered that into the directory call.
'No entry with designation "Planet Namek",' the computer dialogue told her.
'What?' The cold feeling grew and Bulma stilled, crouched over the console.
'Did you find it?' asked Krillin.
She shook her head. 'It's not there...'
'It's been destroyed?' cried Goku.
She shook her head again, and Raditz answered for her. 'It's not a live feed. It's the information that's not there. How is that possible?'
'Wishes,' replied Bulma, shrivelling inside, feeling her hope cave in again. She quickly looked up their flight path from the planet they'd stopped on to revive Brolly and it was blank too. All reference to Planet Namek's location was gone from the computer.
'That was the Grand Elder's suggestion, remember?' Krillin spoke. 'He said that the Nameks should use one wish to wish all the aliens off Namek and another so that Planet Namek couldn't be found again.'
'I think that's what Nail planned to wish for,' said Brolly. 'He must've used the third wish for it.'
'But we can find our way back though, right?' insisted Goku. 'We've been there before – we can always retrace our steps. Go back to Grenouillea and head out from there in about the right direction.'
Bulma's head sank until her forehead rested on the console, breathing deep as panic tried to take her. 'Space is big, Goku! You really have no concept of how big. We could do that a million times and not hit the exact correct angle that we need to find the Namek system!'
'Well, we could try!'
They could try. It wouldn't work, but they could try.
Silence descended on the flight deck. After a tense minute Raditz leaned over Nappa to use that console and made up a flight plan. 'From here to that last stop before Namek, it's going to take us around six months of straight flight.'
'Six months!' the others cried.
'That'll use up a whole dragonball cycle just getting there!' Bulma's despair deepened.
'Unless we take the Frieza Centennial Wormhole trade route,' Raditz added. 'That'll take three months off.'
'Then we'll do that!' Bulma said, wondering why he hadn't suggested that first.
'No, we can't!' Nappa immediately shot her down. 'That wormhole is completely controlled by the PTO space stations at either end. We'd be shot down the instant we rocked up there. Or else they'd impound the ship as soon as we docked for inspection!'
She gaped at him, and then when she couldn't take it anymore she felt the crushing power of nothing roll over her. It was a heavy, dead feeling. It was awful, it was painful, but she was grateful it wasn't the insane grief that she'd been teetering on the edge of.
'Is that the only way?' asked Krillin.
'No,' Raditz answered him. 'But the alternative is just as impossible; using one of the wormholes owned by the privateering companies.'
'What's so impossible about that?'
'Only that it'll cost us about five million credits in bribe money! Those guys don't always operate a hundred percent under the law, but they also don't break it for cheap!'
'You're Saiyans aren't you?' Krillin began to flush red. 'How about we just overpower them and take their wormhole?' For once, Bulma agreed. Saiyans storming space stations using brutal and maybe even lethal force no longer seemed like such a bad thing.
'Because...there's technology...' Raditz floundered. 'I don't know how wormholes work, do you? Normally ships are guided through them on remote operation by the station!'
'We'll do that,' said Bulma, each word feeling like an immense effort to say.
'Do what?'
'We'll either find several million credits or we'll highjack a wormhole.'
'How?'
'We'll figure it out!' she snapped. 'You're basically pirates already, aren't you? And you have the galaxy's second strongest warrior on board, and you have me! What are you scared of?'
'Woah!' objected Nappa. 'We're not scared of nothing, but we don't know that we're going anywhere yet, Princess. Let's wait until the Galaxy's second strongest wakes up before throwing around proclamations.'
Bulma closed her mouth. What would Vegeta do or say when he woke up? She wanted to think that he'd see things her way and immediately head back to Planet Namek with her and the other Earthlings on board, but she really wasn't sure.
'If we use the wormhole how long will that give us to find Planet Namek?' asked Krillin.
Bulma made the quick calculation in her head. 'About eight Earth months.' That wasn't long considering their plan was to cast about aimlessly for it. They were going to have to come up with something better than that or they would fail. First things first though.
'We need to find somewhere to land. Where's close?'
She brought the drive online and entered the password she'd locked it with. It felt like a week ago that she'd created it, but it was only one, very long, Namekian day.
'What're you doing?' said Nappa, hauling her out of the seat by a fistful of her clothing, leaving her half crouched between the two pilot chairs. 'Do you think you can claim control of this ship for your own ends just because Vegeta is in the tank?'
She twisted away from him, tearing her already torn training suit some more.
'Fine, one of you do it!' she yelled. 'But we have a very pressing issue right now!' She looked around at the assembled men and boys, and none of them looked like they had a clue what she was talking about. 'That patch we put on is an emergency patch only. It could go at any moment, the hull with it. We need to get to the nearest place we can swap ships or make proper repairs.'
The silence was stunned. Even Nappa was wordless for the space of two breaths.
'How long will it last?' he asked.
'How long is a piece of string?' she replied. 'It could last weeks or it could fail in the next second. There's no way for us to know.'
Raditz began frantically searching the navigation system again, and Nappa moved aside so that he could have the seat. He was breathing raggedly, exhibiting a panic that Bulma no longer felt.
'The nearest planet is two days away but it's a PTO outpost.'
'Well, that's not going to fucking do, then, is it?' said Nappa.
'I know. We're way off the trade routes… There's this uninhabited one a bit further away.'
'We need civilisation,' insisted Bulma. 'I doubt I can fix the ship with the tools and materials we have.'
'Well, then, five days away in the other direction. Baccanelli. It's Cold aligned, but it's a free planet.'
'Civilised?'
Raditz popped up the directory, and the page for Baccanelli displayed, flashing with colours, large, gorgeous pictures and a sales line – Baccanelli: Where Dreams Become Reality.
'I'd say so. It's a brand-new pleasure planet.' He turned to Nappa. 'Have we been there before? The name sounds familiar.'
'Yes,' replied Nappa, and then he huffed with laughter, as if anything could be funny at a time like this. 'It was one of the first purge jobs we three did together, when you were still just a brat and Vegeta was only knee-high.'
'Huh. Really?'
A chill ran up Bulma's spine. To hear about the Saiyans' epically genocidal past was one thing, but to drop in on the results of it?
'Yeah. Set a course for that one,' commanded Nappa. 'It'll be interesting to see what they've done with the place.' Then he smirked. 'And maybe get a good time while we're at it.'
Author's Note: Here Endeth Book Two.
Book Three will commence in several weeks hopefully. This story is a lot of fun to write. I only regret that it takes so long to write and that I can't quit my job to write fan fiction full time. I do keep playing the lottery though, so if lady luck comes through I will be able to spend all the time I like on this hobby.
