Basically? I had this the whole time and forgot it was there. Sorry! SOOOO SORRY! Okay...I guess that's it. Read and Review, por favor.
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Chapter 5: Nightmares
I raced through the woods, my legs pumping with vigor. Muscles rippled like that of a tiger's and hair whipped around my forehead in a shower of wind and water. Tears mixed and mingled with blood and sweat, each of my own making.
"You can't escape, baka!" cried a triumphant-sounding voice, "We are all around you!"
"NO!" I roared in a voice not my own, "I can beat you! I know I can!" But my uncertainty was evident.
"No, you can't!" the voice sneered. A man appeared in front of me, his eyes shielded in shadow. I didn't recognize him at all.
"Hullo, lil' Angel," he sneered at me, "How's about a kiss?" He stepped forward. I shook my head and did a military-like about face, racing in the opposite direction.
"You cannot escape your destiny!" a voice hissed behind me. A slithering, rattling sound echoed from the ground beneath my feet and I screamed aloud as several crystal-clear snakes began to move all around my legs.
"You can't escape!" the nearest one hissed.
"Escape is futile!" Another added.
"You can't escape!"
"Escape is futile!"
"You can't escape!"
"Escape is futile!"
"You can't escape!"
"Escape is futile!"
This went on for several minutes, each snake adding its own line to the chant. Two snakes came around in front of me and began what looked like the Saiyan Fusion dance I'd seen in DBZ many times over, using tiny hands and feet that had appeared out of their rippling scales. Snake after snake joined, becoming larger, scarier, and blacker, if at all possible.
"What do you want?!" I shrieked up at them.
"You..." the last two said bluntly, in a voice so low-pitched I found it ear-splitting to listen to. They did the odd fusion dance once again and I gasped as the snakes became one finally and was so huge, its fangs alone were longer than one of my legs.
I squealed in fright and raced in the opposite direction, my legs pumping as swiftly as they could carry my figure. The black snake followed me and circled until I was caught in its coils.
"What do you want from me?!" I yelled at it. "I'm only a little girl! What could you possibly want from me?!"
"You aren't just a little girl," the snake snapped at me, as though my words had been extremely rude and insufficient to its wishes.
"Then what am I that you want to kill me?!" I shrieked loudly, leaping up and down to accent my words.
"We don't want to kill Angel," the snake said coyly. "We only want the information we seek."
"I don't have that information! I don't know what you're talking about!" I bellowed at the top of my lungs.
"Then you shall perish like all the rest!" The black snake struck me once with its poisonous fangs, drawing blood out of my right arm. I felt woozy as the poison went to work on my immune system, but I clutched the wound with my left arm, struggling to remain standing.
"What information do you want that you'll kill me if I don't have it?" I asked, my voice dangerously calm.
"Your brother's name," the snake replied and it looked at me with its beady, slitted eyes.
"I don't have a brother," I told it. "I am an only child."
"You lie, Angel, you lie...only those who are the offspring of B-"
"WAKE UP!!!" a voice shouted and I toppled over. My eyes flew open and I stared at my surroundings, not quite knowing what to make of everything.
I was in what looked like a hospital room, but the view from the window and the blue-haired lady beside me told me otherwise. My eyes stared up at her in shock but I knew it hadn't been her who had shouted. I saw the lavender-haired boy behind her and knew it wasn't him either. Another, final glance around the room revealed a black-haired man, short, stocky, but powerful in stature, standing over me with a rather large smirk on his face.
"That was rude, Vegeta!" the blue-haired woman shouted at Vegeta furiously.
"What should I have done, let her sleep through a nightmare, woman?!" the man shot back.
"Mom, Dad, please, she's only been here a few minutes!" The boy I now recognized as Trunks yelled at the couple, breaking up the fight. "Are you all right, Angel? Sorry my Dad scared you like that." He shot the black-haired man a scorching glare before turning his kinder face toward me once again.
"I suppose I'm okay," I said after a few moment's silence. "But I've one question."
"Shoot," he grinned.
"What happened, where am I, and what am I doing here?" I asked.
"That's three questions, but it'll take some time to answer either one of them," the blue-haired woman replied for her son. "I'm sorry, I'm Bulma, and this is Vegeta. Your name is Lily, if I'm not mistaken."
"Yeah, but my friends call me Angel," I explained, "Well, the only two I had, anyway. Where are they?" I looked up at Trunks expectantly, but his eyes dropped.
"There was a...uh...malfunction in the continuum machine," he explained, rather awkwardly. I knew almost immediately that there had been no "malfunction", but I didn't press the subject. After all, I was a guest on their turf, not my own anymore.
The First Kid may have had a lot of power back in her world, but here? I might as well curl into a ball and hope Vegeta didn't try to blast my head in.
"Whatever you say," I grumbled quietly in answer to Trunks' words. He nodded and Bulma looked at him with a cocked eyebrow, but no one said a thing. The silence stretched into what seemed like an hour, but she finally turned back to me.
"Well, I'll go get you some clothes to wear," she chirped. "Vegeta, Trunks, if you boys will kindly exit..." I blushed a little as she forced them out of the room.
"Well, well, well, I can see they've got their work cut out with you," Bulma told me with a wink.
"What do you mean by that?" I asked, terrified.
"Nothing to be afraid of, at least not yet," she hastily replied. "But I must say, I didn't expect you to be so..." Her voice trailed off and she seemed to be searching for the correct word to use.
"Shy?" I supplied. She nodded, almost sheepishly. "I get that a lot. Nobody expects me to be a shy little shrimp, but that's what I am and there isn't much people can do to change it." I shrugged slightly. "Not much at all."
"Well, I did expect you to be about my size or Videl's, but I suppose not," Bulma said, studying me, "But you seem to be about Trunks' height and size, when he was younger, let's find out." She handed me a pair of black pants and a white tank. Alarmed as I saw how very revealing the shirt was, my face heated up once again. The pants fit just fine, though.
"I suppose you aren't quite used to no sleeves, are you?" Bulma snickered as she watched me try and cover my bare arms with my hands.
"Not quite," I agreed sheepishly. She chortled lightly as she found a denim jacket and handed it to me. I was glad to find that it was the right size and quite baggy. "That's better. What's this all about, Bulma? Trunks told me something about Bardock and Goku and the Supreme Kai, but it went over my head long ago."
"Well, you know who Bardock is, right?" she asked, and I nodded. "Bardock had an...affair with a young lady in Snake Way and that produced a half-Saiyan child. You. The Supreme Kai wasn't sure what to do, because this had never happened before. So they put you in someone else's womb when you were half-formed and you were born. However, they sort of had a little dimensional problem when they did it, so instead of you being born here, like you were supposed to..."
"-I was born in my dimension instead," I finished and she nodded in confirmation. "So I'm half-Saiyan. Great. So, another question. Why did you bring me here in the first place and how?"
"Well...when Goku heard that he had a half-sister, he wanted to bring her here. And Dende said something was coming, something that only someone the same age as Trunks could handle."
"Why the same age as Trunks?" I asked, shaking my head.
"Well...I don't know, really," she shrugged. "You'll have to ask Goku yourself, I guess."
"Oh. Great," I sighed and sank back onto the sweaty sheets of the bed. "This is just not my day...not my day at all."
"Don't worry, everything will work out soon enough," Bulma said, putting a friendly arm around my shoulder. I sobbed softly and smiled sadly at her.
"I miss Kat already, Bulma. She was my best friend, better than most," I looked out the window. "She always knew what was wrong, why it was so, she always had all the answers, no matter how tough the situation was."
"Sometimes we have to leave our crutches behind," Bulma said, sounding wise. I nodded, seeing this as true. Maybe Kat was my crutch. I leaned on her for almost everything. Well, I decided silently, if Kat was my crutch, then I would learn to walk without her. And I would learn all there was to learn from these boys.
"Hey, you're awake!" cried an extremely familiar voice. I turned and saw in shock the real, true Goku, standing next to his youngest son, who still had the Goku hair down pat.
"Goku, I thought I told you that she needed more rest before you came in here!" Bulma shouted hotly, her temper flaring already.
"No, no, it's okay," I said quickly. "I'm all right, Bulma, really, I am." I blushed as she stared at me, then nodded slowly.
"Well, all right," she consented. "Come on, everyone's in the living room already."
"So you're my aunt," Goten said, laughing as he walked up to me. He circled me like a shark, studying me light a carving from every angle. In general, making me extremely nervous. "I didn't really think that you'd look like us, being from that other dimension and all. I mean, they have smaller eyes, don't they?"
Bulma explained. "The machine changed her appearance to that of this dimension's before she came here, Goten."
"Oh...well, no matter," he grinned that famous Son grin that had made me weak at the knees years ago. "You'll be stronger in no time at all, aunt Lily."
"Just Lily or Angel is fine," I said, blushing again. "You're Goten, right?"
"That's me," he grinned again. "Come on, Angel, the others are waiting."
"O-Others?" I stuttered.
"Yeah, everyone's here," Goku grinned. "They all want to meet you. Even Piccolo and Dende are here!"
"P-Piccolo and D-Dende?" I stammered again, feeling light-headed. If those two were here, who knew who else was?
"Yeah, don't worry, we don't bite," Goku laughed, a hand behind his head. It was then I noticed just how much bigger he was than me. My brother was five times my size, at least. Oh, well, I guess I'd better just get out there. The sooner I get out the sooner I can leave. Hopefully.
We stepped out of that room and into my worst nightmare.
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A cliffhanger. I still gotta write it. I'm screwed. I'm definitely screwed.