Chapter 4

What's wrong with me? She's just a Moroshkian female! Vegeta's breaths were shallow and strained from when she'd gripped his neck, and it didn't help feeling as though his heart was pounding in his throat. This isn't me. I have to fight.

A growl rumbled in his gut and worked its way up until it exploded from his mouth in a scream. He ascended to the next level, and threw himself at her. She jumped back and dodged, and parried his onslaught.

Vegeta went through the mechanics of a fight, but he came up short. Maybe it was the latent remorse of destroying her people, or perhaps she truly was as strong as the Kai said. Either way, before too long, she had knocked him on his back, and had thrown herself on top of him--pinning his arms down with her knees.

She panted, but not from exhaustion. "You will feel...the pain...that caused my birth..." she seethed. Her brilliant eyes were wet with belligerence. Before he could throw her off, she clamped her hands on his skull and locked stares with him, her eyes on fire with righteous indignation. Then the visions came…

He gasped.

Images filled his head. Horrible images; the thunderous crackle of a white-hot blast breaking through the surface layers of a beautiful planet, a small girl-child crying senselessly for her mother as people around her are being decapitated from the debris, Moroshkians by the millions--families, friends, comrades--being hurled by the explosion into the relentless vacuum of space. The hurt, shock, and pain of death after death. Cries, laments, wailings…so many voices in agony… He felt them as if they were his own. And through it all a dark, wicked face, laughing… A face Vegeta saw every morning in the mirror.

The sound of his own hoarse screams filled his ears as the images finally faded, tapering his suffering down to agonizing moans. For the first time in Vegeta's life, he comprehended the evil of his past actions-and he loathed himself.

He heard Kakkarot and Gohan cry his name in the distance, and felt the wind of their attacks. Then he heard the crash of their bodies imbedding in dirt as Moroshka batted them off with the ease of a flyswatter swatting flies.

When he opened his eyes he saw her through blurred vision. She was looking down at him as some great internal conflict twisted her features. Babidi's insignia faded.

He choked, with the agony of billions of innocents still singing his nerves. He saw his death in her eyes then, and it terrified, angered, and…relieved him? He shook his head.

The insignia on her forehead flared, and her eyes glazed over. She said almost mechanically, "It was all I was going to do, Murderer Vegeta. Show you the injustice," she winced. "…that created me." A grimace contorted her pretty face. "To give you a conscience. It was all I was going to do…"

He said nothing, for the only words on the tip of his tongue in that moment would have undermined his Saiyan pride - and he'd die before letting that happen. His tears were hot on his face from the psychological torture she'd subjected him to - a torture he'd earned a hundred times over - and he bit down on his own tongue and spat his blood in her face.

"I know the thirst for…revenge, Moroshkian," he hissed. "So avenge your people, and be done with it!" As he looked defiantly into her conflicted face, it occurred to him suddenly that this female might not be the only avenging warrior after him. What if others made their way to earth, and in discovering his absence, turned their fury instead to the only two people in the universe he cared about…?

"Wait! Trunks and B-Bulma," he stammered. "You must look after them when I'm gone." He tried desperately to swallow the lump in his throat. "Protect them from…others like you."

Her brows lifted in angst. It was apparent she was fighting Babidi's orders to kill. "Why…me?"

"You're powerful… And the Kai said you're good," Vegeta choked as a picture of Bulma's and Trunk's smiling faces popped into his mind. "Please. They're… innocent."

To his relief, she was able to nod before the insignia flared once more, completely engulfing her in Babidi's evil. When she raised her hand in the air like a blade, Vegeta closed his eyes.

The blunt edge cut through his heart.

It almost felt good.