"After the Sleeper Woke Up" - Chapter Eight Chapter Eight

Endive's face was stony when she saw the ship for the first time. She felt surprise, but not much more. She hadn't liked the ship, after all, and had no emotional ties to it. Not that she really developed emotional ties anyway.
The young half-Saiya-jin led her in through a gash in the hull. She supposed it happened when the ship crashed, or maybe there was a battle of some kind that led to the ship crashing. Either way, it didn't matter to her.
Trunks lingered a little behind her, looking out of place and unsure of what he should do. Of course he is, Endive thought with mild amusement. For all that he knows, the next time he opens his mouth I could explode. It wasn't a possibility to put beyond a female Saiya-jin. If you encountered the usual male and thought he was bad, you hadn't met a female.
But Endive was quite a bit more mellow than the normal Saiya-jin female, and knew it.
Much of it came from growing up away from other Saiya-jins. She'd only had one other creature for company, and as she grew, some of what she had been taught as a very young child faded a bit. It was still there, of course, but not so deeply ingrained that it couldn't be overcome and ignored. Arrogant she could be, but she was also a realist and knew her own limitations.
She didn't hesitate to kick the reddish brown plates out of her path when she walked. They couldn't hurt her, and she knew it.
"What are those, anyway?" Trunks finally asked. He was trying not to step on them, she noticed.
"The husks of dead creatures," she said absently. She was looking about herself, using the flash light that Bulma had given her to look up. The top of hull had been colonized by wispy webs with insects in them, and there even a few furry brown creatures hanging upside down there. They didn't concern her, though, so she turned her attention back to the area around them.
She placed her hand on a wall and gave a hard push. It gave way beneath her hand with a loud, hollow crunch. The ship is no longer alive, she realized. Whether it was from the crash, or something about the alien atmosphere, it was quite thoroughly dead. Their footsteps were hollow, and she was glad the husk was thick enough to support their weight.
" 'Dead creatures?' " he echoed softly.
Endive let her hand fall back to her side, then with a dramatic sigh kicked a few more of the plates out of the way and strolled on towards the control room. "Yes, dead creatures. The remains of parasitic armor, to be exact. The damn parasites were soldiers of the ship. Mindless workmen that took orders from the ship itself, which was also the host of a parasite. The prisoners that were on here were probably meant to be used as hosts for more parasites."
"Did you help the prisoners, or blast everybody?" There was something almost accusatory in his tone. Endive stopped in her stride down the corridor to the control room and looked at him. She shined her light directly in his face and put her hand on her hip.
"You'd better be glad I'm not your usual Saiya-jin, or I might have blown your ass away for that remark. The only creatures I killed at that particular time were the main computer and the people infested with parasites." She turned and walked away, fuming, but not because he had the audacity to ask her that question. She was angry because it had struck a nerve, somehow.
There was the hollow clatter and crunch of the remaining armor at her back as Trunks took a few long running strides to catch up. Endive kept walking.
In a moment the lavender haired boy was walking just a little behind her. She could feel the hesitation in the air before he spoke. "How'd you get wounded like that?"
"An error in judgment," she answered smoothly, pushing aside a piece of armor with her toe as she entered the control room. The room seemed smaller than she remembered it, and it looked odd without the suspension tank. She went to the control panel first and pressed a few buttons, but got no response. Endive had hoped it might work for a few minutes, at least. Though she wouldn't admit it to Trunks, she did want to find out why this ship crashed, and if someone she knew had been on board at the time.
She heaved a silent sigh and turned from the control panel. The bright beam of the flashlight scanned over the walls and floor as she shone it around. The Saiya-jin had the sense of looking for something, but not knowing what. Trunks stood at the entrance way of the control room, watching what she did. Endive ignored him and walked around the room, kicking the shards of the armor around, looking at the dusty floor.
Finally, near the only real clear spot in the room, the spot where the suspension tank had stood, she spotted the glimmer of metal. She crouched down and picked up the dusty little lump of metal, cupped it in her palm, angled her flash light to see it more clearly, then blew on it in an effort to remove more dust from it.
Endive finally had to tuck the light under her arm, which cast a shadow over her hand, and use her other hand to brush some of the dirt off of it. The flashlight slipped out from under her arm and struck the floor, then went dead.
She cursed and waved Trunks over with one hand. "Come here, and hold the light." He did so without a word, and when he got closer, she could see that he was curious about what she held.
The Saiya-jin got enough of the dust off for the basic shape to be seen. It was a crescent shaped pendant suspended from a ropey chain. Both objects were made of a strange silvery blue metal, and the pendant was thick and heavy. Endive stared at it for a moment before she suspended the chain from one hand, then, with her other, pressed gently on both ends of the curve. There was a light click.
A soft tune began to play, one that oddly reminded her of crystals being tapped in a gentle rhythm, made to resonate in a strange, beautiful harmony. A low hum lay under this, and after a few seconds a light shot out of the center of the crescent. Displayed on one of the dusty walls was an image of a planet.
It appeared thickly forested and green where it wasn't blue, with expanses of white at the poles. It was beautiful and gave the overall impression of peace and prosperity.
"Wow," Trunks said quietly. Endive almost jumped. She'd forgotten he was there. "Who do you think it belonged to?"
"Someone I used to know," she replied thoughtfully. Yes, she remembered him well. His name had been Amian. She'd met him on this very ship, in fact. He had been one of the dozen of so that she'd been stuffed into a cell with. He hadn't been there long; unlike nearly everyone else she came into contact with, he hadn't lost his taste for rebellion. The two of them had been fast friends. . . and might have eventually become more if given time. Endive didn't like admitting this even to herself, but it was true.
Amian had been the one to put her in the suspension tank after the parasite had punched a hole through her stomach. He had been the one that told her that Vegeta-sei had been destroyed by Frieza. He had been the one that she formulated plans for escape with. It hadn't worked as planned, of course, but little ever does go according to plan.
He was an Ikomian. If the rest of the race followed his example, then most of them were tall and lean, with generally iridescent white skin, violet hair and startling green eyes. Of course, he had been particularly beautiful, too, so perhaps not.
But was he on the ship when it crashed? she wondered. She pressed the ends of the curve again, shutting the pendant off. She pocketed it and picked up her flash light and turned it on, then set about looking for evidence that he might have died with the rest.
"Now I'm looking for a skeleton. I know that doesn't help much, but if you find any that look whole and aren't stuck to the parasite husks, tell me." Endive started to scour the floor once again, looking for anything. A wisp of violet hair, a scrap of clothing, anything that might tell her something as to the whereabouts of her old friend.
The two of them searched for hours and came up empty. There were no skeletons that weren't connected to the armor, no full ones anyway. She had expected to find some in the torture chamber, but most of those weren't right. The bones were far too thick or too large to have any place at all in the slender Ikomian's build.
It was after dark outside when they gave up and returned to Capsule Corp. Endive wasn't in the best of moods, either, but she didn't think Amian died on the ship. If he was alive, she wanted to try and find him, and had a very good idea of where to look. All she had to do was get there.