Everywhere, everything, and everyone seemed death and destruction all around. Shouting, smoke, flames, sheer panic seemed to be ever engulfing. Val looked around, trying to keep herself upright without tripping over her baggy pant legs, and to make sense of the chaos everywhere. There was nothing and nowhere safe to hide from three saiyans and the men who were aiming to exterminate the whole population of the planet Aviary. It was the next planet to be sold off to the highest bidder.
Val ran, obeying the last thing her father said, shoving her away before he flew away to challenge one the Saiyans in a fruitless challenge. Even an Avian warrior like himself, all wings and armor, could hardly hope to stand a chance. Val ran, not watching where she was going. She tripped and fell, knees smacking hard onto the stone pavement beneath her. She cursed her luck to have such a short and stocky stature yet at her age, having yet to grow up. Her baggy clothes flounced around her shapeless frame. The corded necklace bounced on her chest as she hit the ground. She clutched the vial around her neck, keeping it from being damaged. If she lost that and the powder within it, her mother warned her her body would give out and it would be a painful death when the Antromorphic transformation overtook her.
She rose up, looking around the area, seeing other fleeing, mostly Aviarians like her fathers, and a few Anthromorphs like her mother. The ones that were not dead yet anyway. The ground shook from a blast that rocketed the ground near her feet. She struggled to stay standing, leaning herself against a collapsed pillar almost as tall as she was now. She went to start running again, but felt a huge hand haul her up in the air by the back of her hair, collar and necklace, high above the collapsed pillar. She cried out at first, only to have the sound choked off. She struggled to breathe, hands coming to the cord in front of her neck. The top the vial dug into the hollow of her throat.
"What have we here?" a gruff voice asked. She could smell the Saiyan's stench of blood and death before she saw him. "This little runt's clothes are bigger than she is." She struggled, kicking her legs in the air. Another Saiyan landed on the ground in front of her, looking like he had been in a fight he thoroughly enjoyed. His long black hair spiked in and out all the way down to his knees. "Hey, Raditz, take a look at this one. Doesn't look too much like an Aviarian to me. Missing the wings and height for starters."
The other saiyan, Raditz, walked closer over to the two of them. Val's kicking slowed and her head started to pound. Raditz went from looking amused to shock in an instant. "Napa, put her down!" Raditz commanded. "Now."
"What? Why?" the saiyan holding her asked. She saw black spots in her vision. "A kid like this is an easy kill, and I am getting a little tired. Not as tired as Vegeta though."
Raditz shook his head. "That's not an Aviarian, that's an un-grown Anthromorph," he explained.
Napa dropped her liked a bag of bricks. She landed hard on her knees, unsure how many bruises were forming on them now. Raditz stepped over to her, hauling her up by her upper arm. He let her go, sizing her up. She barely came up to the tail around his waist. He snatched at the cord around her neck, ripping it off. "No, give that back!" she reached up for the vial, jumping. She hated how childish her voice sounded. She kicked him in the skin, but he hardly seemed to notice. She fumed hearing Napa behind her laugh at her. If only she was taller, stronger, grown up...
Raditz studied the vial at eye level. "They say Anthromorphs can be bred with just about any alien race, once they grown into adults. The trick is, they have to exposed first to a race that they are most compatible with, otherwise they stop growing at full childhood and won't grow anymore until they can. Their bodies freeze development and they don't age. I've heard of one who took decades before growing up. Yet once exposed, the growth into adulthood is triggered hours to days later, and without a vial of dry tea powder like this to ease the symptoms of rapid development, the Anthromorph could die or be disabled upon reaching adulthood."
"How do you now about all that?" Napa asked, tapping Val in the calf with is boot. She flinched, which made him chuckle. "Studying when you should have been attending tail training days?"
"King Vegeta used to visit this planet time and again, having made a deal with the Aviarians to allow him to vacation here and give him his every whim, in order to spare them rather than sell them out to Frieza. They were smart enough to not deny him a thing. Remember when he told us about how the Aviarian numbers were dwindling? How an offshoot of Anthromorphs came to help?" Raditz asked.
"That was like two generations ago, before the Anthromorph planet was destroyed by an asteroid," Napa groaned. "If she really is an Anthromorph, how come she's so tiny and not at all grandmother like?"
Raditz closed his fist around the vial. "How old are you?" he asked her, giving her such a harsh look, she dare not lie.
She answered him honestly, "seventeen, almost eighteen."
He smirked, "same age as my little brother having his own fun on his own target planet. It's too bad this paradise of a planet has now been slated for sale. Perhaps one of the women shouldn't have refused Lord Frieza like she did. No one ever dared to do that to the late King Vegeta. It's her fault this is happening."
Val stared up at him ruefully, trying to figure out how to snatch the vial out of his hand and run away.
Napa asked, "if the Aviarians brought in the Anthromorphs two generations ago, then how the hell is she a child when she is hardly younger than either of us?"
Raditz shrugged. "Likely she's second generation born on this planet. When an Anthromorph has a child, that child either will be another Anthromorph that starts the process all over again, or they become the same species as the other parent. They don't go half breed. This one has bird in her, alright, and who knows what else, but swayed Anthromorph. Probably the birds never triggered her to grow up. Might even be the last of them..." The longing way he was looking at her made her skin crawl." He looked down at her. "You ever been off planet?" he asked.
She looked up at him, too scared to lie. "No," she admitted, shaking her head.
He raised his eyebrows up at her. "Never been exposed to anything but Aviarians and Anthromorphs. No one to trigger her. She would have been left her to never grow up had we not come along."
Napa clicked his teeth, "then just kill her and be done with it. Two for one death of a whole race on this planet."
Raditz shook his head, saying, "oh no, this one is mine. I think I just figured out a way to save the Saiyan race after all."
Val turned, trying to make a run for it, only to feel Raditz scoop her up like she was nothing.