The Princess
Chapter 16: Polkrif's Game
By: senzubean
I do not own Dragon Ball Z in any way. I make no profit from this story. I just wrote it for fun.
"So, what'll you do with them?" Goten asked Sala around a mouth full of hamburger. All sixteen aliens were gathered in a surly heap in the middle of the yard. Six saiyans acted as guards, even though their prisoners were all too beaten to even run.
"As soon as we hear from Vegeta concerning Polkrif, we'll take them for trial at our main base. They'll definitely be sentenced to life in a maximum security prison."
"They deserve it." Trunks replied, passing around more food. Bulma was preparing it, trying to keep her mind busy.
Sala nodded, then swallowed. "You know, they'd probably prefer to be dead rather than be incarcerated."
"I don't want to kill anyone." Trunks replied. Goten nodded in agreement, eyes wide.
Sala shrugged. "Well, just keep it in mind if you feel like releasing some pent up frustration later. We won't have news from Vegeta for a very long time."
Trunks groaned quietly and looked at his Mother. She'd heard that. She put down her barbecue tongs and quietly went back inside.
"Damn." Sala said ashamedly.
"It's all right, she knows that already." Trunks reassured her.
Pan grumbled. "Can't we take a spaceship and go help?"
"No!" Everyone replied. Pan crossed her arms and grumbled some more.
Two and a half days had come and gone. Vegeta hadn't slept, despite his mother's protests. Insisting that he could fight fine without sleep, he passed the time meditating and trying to estimate what he was up against based on his mother's information on Polkrif. Unfortunately even she was at a loss as to what to expect. Polkrif's methods were different each and every time she did battle with him. He was an expert in surprises. Unable to know exactly what to expect, he was unable to form a battle plan. It wasn't a big deal. All battles required improvisation. The real downfall was when Vegeta realized he had to search for another topic of thought. Of course, Bra was the first thing that popped into his mind. He forced himself to think of something else. He had learned to accept his emotions over the years, but the kind he was feeling over the loss of his daughter were threatening to break his composure and ruin everything. So, his mind pondered other things.
"Mother, " Vegeta asked quietly.
"Hmm?" Recely replied sleepily.
"How did you become a Super Saiyan?"
Recely shifted in her seat to get more comfortable. "It was during one of attempts to retrieve you. I was getting desperate, you were twenty five years old by then. We'd determined you to be back on Frieza's base and we knew Frieza had gone to Namek. So, we decided to take the opportunity to infiltrate it-"
"But I left for Namek before you got there." Vegeta finished for her.
"Yes, and the entire base was in a state of turmoil when we arrived. A few people were left, everyone else had deserted. We determined soon enough that Frieza was thought to be dead. And ..you had been executed." Recely added. She sighed. "When I heard that I ..lost it. The next thing we knew, half the planet was gone. I almost killed Sala and Letta that day." There was a long pause as Recely remembered the details painfully. "It was a long time before I was able to gain any control over my transformations, and I'm still not very good at them."
Vegeta hummed understanding. "I can teach you."
"I don't want to be taught. I will always hate fighting. And I'm getting old, I've started to slow down these past few months. There's no need for me to learn any new techniques when I'll be forced to retire soon." Recely replied.
Vegeta couldn't help but chuckle. "You're a bizarre saiyan, Mother."
Recely smiled. "I always knew that I was different from most saiyans, Vegeta. You know, I always could detect power without a scouter. No one believed that I could, not even your father."
There was a long silence. "You should have killed him when you had the chance. I would have forgiven you." Vegeta said.
Recely smiled. "I realize that now, Dearest. But at the time, you loved him. And heaven knows a part of me loved him too."
Vegeta nodded and appeared to go back to meditating.
"How did Zorn die?" He asked. Recely didn't answer. Vegeta looked at her, she was pale and looking at him with a sorrowful expression on her face. "Mother? What's wrong?"
"I just miss him." She replied almost mournfully. "He'd be so happy now. He wanted to be a father to you. He was a true warrior, he died in battle helping innocents on a planet Polkrif was trying to seize. Thanks to my Zorn, that bastard didn't succeed."
"I never knew you loved him." Vegeta said.
"Well, It wasn't until you'd been taken that I started to love him. He did so much for me on his own, I never once ordered him to do any of it. Of course your father did things for me too, but I usually had to coax actions out of him. And he had taken something of me for himself first, and it wasn't you." Recely shook her head sadly. "I don't want to hurt you Vegeta, but he loved your power well before he started to love you. I wish... he hadn't have been killed on Frieza's ship, so you could have experienced him actually caring for you."
Vegeta didn't answer for a few minutes. "I wish I had've seen that too. Maybe I would have been better to my son, instead of having to spend years learning how to be a decent father."
"Your children love you." Recely said solemnly.
"I know." Vegeta replied then began to look much more depressed. "I'm very close to Bra. If she dies, a part of me will die too. I don't know what I'll do if that happens, but whatever it is, it won't be good."
Recely couldn't find a way to respond to that, since she had been unable to prevent it happening to herself.
Abruptly, high pitched beeping sounded from across the room, rousing Letta from a deep sleep in her chair.
"Well, we're here." Recely stated recognizing the sensor alarm. Sure enough a small green planet was gradually getting larger in the view screen as they approached.
"I can't feel Bra's ki at all." Vegeta stated. He stared at the planet, rage quickly taking over his shock at not detecting his daughter. But then something he saw on the planets surface caught his interest.
"How.." Recely trailed off in utter confusion. Three numbers were etched into the planets surface.
"More coordinates." Letta stated. She quickly typed them into her computer and the database provided a visual and information of the planet it corresponded to. "That's in a completely different system, at least five days away from here."
Vegeta stared long and hard at the planet. Debating whether or not to believe this message, obviously left by Polkrif. It took a lot of effort to gauge out craters deep enough to show up from space. And when he concentrated, he realized that not only could he not detect Bra's ki, but there was little ki on the entire surface. Polkrif had destroyed an entire planet for the purpose of this little game of his. Vegeta barely managed to suppress a shudder at that. Polkrif was exactly like Frieza.
"I want to go down there." he announced.
"Are you sure?" Recely asked. "If Bra is there, she is surely dead. We can come back after we've defeated Polkrif if he doesn't have her with him."
"No." Vegeta replied. Trying his best to ignore the logic. "There's still living beings down there. If one of those happens to be Bra, she likely won't still be living by the time we get back. Polkrif will wait."
Letta and Recely didn't respond. Letta immediately began landing procedures.
Bra woke with a start, looked around, and then started to panic.
"What's going on.?" She moaned as she sat up. Positive she should be dead, the familiar sight of the barren wasteland terrified her.
Chuckling rang out behind her. There was the creature again, and there was the energy ball. Bra leapt out of the way, skidding across the dirt.
"So, you want to fight me , do you?" It asked just as it had asked before.
Bra just stared, mouth agape. Terrified.
"You're pathetically weak. To be fair, I'll fight you with one hand behind my back. What do you say now?"
Bra moaned again and scrambled out of the way as it fired.
The creature advanced, chuckling, throwing ki blasts with its free arm, all of which Bra dodged.
Bra didn't like being afraid. In fact she hated it. She growled forcing her feelings into what her father had taught her to be a more useful emotion in battle, anger.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" She wailed and threw a barrage of ki blasts, each one more intense than the last, until finally she was exhausted and the enemy was engulfed in a massive dust cloud. Bra hacked and wheezed, then fell to her knees. Supporting herself with her hands, she then tried to stop shaking.
The chuckling started again and the creature emerged from the cloud of dust, unharmed and smiling. Tears fell from Bra's eyes.
"Just kill me and be done with it." Bra said between gasps. Her opponent powered up again. Instead of dodging, she let the blast hit her. She half skidded half tumbled , until she stopped; a bloody mess. Her whole upper half felt like it was being stabbed over and over again with searing hot knives. Then, slowly she found herself struggling to breathe, choking on her own blood. All this took place with continuous laughter in the background, it only faded as she slowly lost consciousness.
Back in space, while flying as fast as they could to the next planet, Vegeta stared out the window. He watched the stars merge together, and tried to purge his mind of the anguish that was gradually building up. Biding his time until the moment he would turn all of that anguish into pure hot rage and find justice in ripping Polkrif limb from limb. He'd find justice for his wife, his son , his daughter, and his entire family. Not to mention for that planet he'd just spent five hours on, sifting through mangled corpses, searching for his daughter among them, and when not finding her, leaving them to be eaten by the only living things left, scavenging beasts. Vegeta realized that it was the first time he'd felt badly about a planet being massacred. He'd had a sudden idea, something that struck him deep down to the very bottom of his heart. Polkrif had killed all those people just to toy with him. And if Polkrif had ordered Vegeta to do it, he would. For his little girl, he'd do it to a thousand planets.
"Vegeta." Recely said as she wrapped her arms around his neck loosely from behind. "I want you to sleep now."
"I can't."
"You haven't tried."
"I know I won't be able." He said, losing his patience.
Recely tightened her embrace. "It will take five days, dearest. Your mind needs a break. Trust me, I know how to deal with this pain. You need the release that only a deep sleep can provide."
"And what release does Bra have as an option? Tell me that." Vegeta snapped.
"I don't know. Neither do you. But staying awake for nine days straight, agonizing over it will not help Bra at all. In fact, it will probably result in her death. You'll be in no condition to fight once we get there."
There was a long pause. Recely sighed and let her arms slip from her son's shoulders in defeat.
"Fine." Vegeta huffed and stalked off to the sleeping quarters.
Recely breathed deeply in relief.
"He certainly inherited your stubbornness, Recely dear." Letta said, and smiled over at her sister.
"I'm going to bed." Recely said in mock exasperation.
She was still in that desolate place. This time she wasn't surprised to be alive. After thinking she was done for three times already. She sat up and leaned on her arms. Any minute now that creature would be back throwing ki that only seemed to hurt her when it wanted. That was yet another discovery Bra had made. She had gotten fed up with beating a dead horse, becoming exhausted only to let that creature start to finish her in more painful ways than before. Bra shuddered and hugged herself, thinking about the battle she'd just woken up from. She'd become quite suicidal by that time and decided that it would just be a lot easier if she let the thing kill her at once and save her from the pain of gradually accumulating injuries. To her surprise her plan did not work. The ki that hit her, the very first blast hadn't even singed her clothes. The creature had made her so mad with its laughing and taunting that she'd finally retaliated and again got nowhere. The next ki blast hit her and she was done.
Bra was determined not to have that happen again. She wasn't going to fight Polkrif's lackey anymore. Obviously, this whole place wasn't real, only the power was. Somehow, Bra needed to find out how to get out of there, but she was never given very long to think.
The alien came laughing behind her again. She let his initiating blast hit her back. Trying to tune it all out so she could concentrate, she fixed her gaze on the ground. Ten more blasts followed the first. As they hit, they began to get more painful. Bra bit her lip and stayed firm under the assault. But she was unable to think of anything but trying to suppress the pain. The creature stopped laughing.
"You can hit me all you want, Polkrif! I'm not giving you any more of my energy!" She announced. Bra's eyes furrowed and waited for the response. Surely there had to be one, she'd determined his plan after all.
After five minutes of no action, Bra gave up her attempt to ignore the alien and looked behind her. She gasped when she saw it.
It was no longer the alien, it was her father. This pushed her off the edge into full blown rage.
"DO YOU THINK I'M STUPID? I KNOW MY FATHER WHEN I SEE HIM!"
"How about when you hear him?" The impostor Vegeta spoke, and it sounded exactly like the real Vegeta. Bra slowly rose and backed away a few steps.
"He's not my father." Bra repeated. "HE'S NOT MY FATHER!" She screamed. The fake Vegeta blasted her, sending her flying. Like the other creature the blast was accompanied without a ki signature. Bra knew Vegeta's ki signature better than anyone else's. This wasn't her father attacking her, but it was still creepy none the less.
She was hurt. Wincing she rolled over onto her backside. She then glared up at the impostor, who was smiling down in a way Vegeta had never looked at her before. Bra felt like crying right there, but again, feelings of pure anger overshadowed her grief and terror.
"You're Pathetic." The impostor said.
"YOU ARE!" Bra bellowed and attacked the illusion. She attacked it with everything she had, everything she could muster. The fake Vegeta absorbed every ounce of energy thrown at it, but Bra seemed to have disregarded that.
"I'LL DESTROY YOU! HOW DARE YOU PRETEND TO BE MY FATHER!"
She continued her barrage until she was too exhausted to attack anymore. Falling to her knees, she panted, repeatedly mumbling to herself that this thing wasn't real . She looked up at the smirking illusion of her father and felt a wave of utter dispair overcome her. She shook it off, forcing herself to keep eye contact with it.
Don't be so stupid. That's not Daddy. Polkrif wanted your energy and you just gave him a whole crapload of it. All because of stupid emotions.
Suddenly she felt another wave of devastation.
It's the same as before though. He's going to beat me now until I pass out. When I wake up, it'll start all over.
The fake Vegeta laughed, the sound made Bra tremble all over. She couldn't get rid of the feeling and just looking at it made her want to burst out crying. The thought of having to fight her father over and over again was just too terrible. Her opponent chose that moment to start finishing her off. Bra watched it advance, not moving. She hugged herself and looked at the ground helplessly. "I wish I were dead."