Chapter 7
20 DAYS LATER
"Where are they?" Nail asked in perplexed alarm.
The stripling warriors shrugged and shook their heads. "They never came," one of them replied. Nail took in their bewildered faces, dread forming a knot in his stomach.
He'd returned from gathering the last of the dragonballs only to find that Choda, Churet and Chik hadn't shown up to train the warrior batches as scheduled. It wasn't a good sign. Especially considering the last conversation he'd had with Choda had been far from amiable. The altercation replayed vividly in his mind.
"You're hiding her from us." Choda's eyes were angry, hateful, jealous…
Nail had noticed his growing animosity, but this was the first time it was given voice. Had it been any other topic, he might have been objective. But his nerves were still raw when he thought of Axle…which meant they were raw all the time.
"Guru told you," Nail reasoned, remembering the moment that the Father sat his three warrior brethren down to explain how Axle's presence had affected them. "She needs to be isolated from us."
"But you know where she is."
It was true. Unbeknownst to Axle, Nail had scouted her out the second day - another inexplicable act that he couldn't justify. He'd just needed to know where she was. It was that simple.
It was that complicated…
Not one to lie, Nail said nothing.
Choda's face darkened from accusatory to loathing. "So we are forbidden to mate with her but you are not? You abuse your position among us, alpha son," he spat the title out as though it were something vile.
Nail felt the muscles in his jaw jump. "Fool! I've gone nowhere near her since she was exiled. Have you listened to nothing?" He wasn't sure if his ire was due to Choda's blunt accusation, his complete disregard for Guru's directive, or the visual of anyone else being intimate with her. But it took a conscious effort not to rip his brother's tongue out and slap him in the face with it.
Choda glared suspicion at him, as though Nail's heated words were nothing more than a masquerade. His face creased in a toothy grimace. "Where is she, Nail!"
Before he thought it through, Nail had wrapped his fists in Choda's vest and slammed him against a dome wall. "Stay away from her!" he seethed, the words dripping from his lips like a thousand deaths. "Or alpha son, or no, I'll-"
"Nail…?"
He went rigid.
"What's happening?"
Nail slowly turned to see Bok the Healer gawking at him in stunned horror, as though… Well, Nail thought in growing panic, as though he'd just caught me attacking a brother out of anger for the first time in my life…
He turned back to the snarling namekian in his clutches, whose spiteful gaze was still locked on his face. Nail released him and Choda thumped his chest in response, hurling Nail well out of his personal space. An edgy silence passed as they glared at each other, until Bok's awkward presence sobered Nail up enough to break the show down and walk away.
That had been three days ago.
And now Choda had disappeared along with Churet and Chik. Nail's vision began to narrow, his focus turning black. With a muttered apology to the unattended batch of youth, he burst into the air and headed for Axle's grotto. A reflexive prayer formed on his lips that he'd have the restraint to spare his brothers' lives if they'd gone where he thought they had…
And for what.
.
Axle threw the fattened waterfowl in the food cubby along with an assortment of edible foliage. She took a glance at the empty charge on her emulsifier, and with a disgusted curse, tossed it aside as well.
She'd taken to hunting these past twenty days in an effort to take out her aggressions and forget about Nail. It hadn't worked, and now her only real weapon was about as useful as a rock.
Axle, you moron.
She plunked down in the corner of the grotto and stared out at the dusky horizon that bisected her view. The green sky sat on top of an aqua-painted lake; serene, peaceful, paradisiacal… Namek was a beautiful planet, and had things not taken a turn south twenty days earlier, she might have stayed…
Had Nail asked her to.
Despite the bitter note she'd left him on, she missed the gentle warrior; his awkward innocence, his stoic wisdom, his constant attentiveness and good nature. She sighed bemusedly. The taste of his kiss, the press of his body, the passion in his eyes... Egh.
She threw her head back and closed her eyes, giving way to the daydreaming of happier days on this planet. With him. A bittersweet encounter, that. Her dearest memory and biggest regret of Namek.
And who would have thought that she had the power to turn an amiable species against each other just by being near them? Figures, she thought in muted bitterness, contemplating the misfit adventure that was her life. The one people that embrace me and my background, and I'm poison to them.
An old interplanetary myth came to her mind then. She didn't recall the world from which it originated, but its theme fit her circumstance perfectly.
"Pandora's box," she muttered, patting the curve of her thigh, pointedly.
"Who's Pandora?"
The deep voice startled her out of her reverie. She gasped and sat up. Silhouetted black against the mouth of the grotto stood three spar-honed namekians. Their expressions were hidden in shadows, but their tensed muscles and twitching hands unnerved her immediately. Their stance was intimidating instead of casual, menacing instead of friendly. They seemed anxious… Predatory.
Shit.
"How did you find me?" she asked, trying to calm her scattering nerves.
"Namek is a small place," said the other, and she recognized the voice as Choda's. That meant the two that flanked his sides were Churet and Chik.
"I thought you boys weren't allowed to play with the alien," she said, her confident tone hopefully belying her sudden anxiety.
Choda stepped forward, all trace of his former tranquility completely gone from his eyes.
"Well," his baritone voice resounded off the black slate walls in courage-sapping waves. "We grew weary of Guru playing favorites."
He was on her so quick that she barely had time to yelp before he pinned her to the jagged ground.
"And we're fed up with you playing favorites," he snarled in her face.
Axle's earlier reservations left when he attacked her, giving way to her more aggressive nature. She snapped at him.
"GET. OFF. ME!" With a grunt, she flung him to the side and he smacked against the slate wall. She hopped up into a crouch and glared at Choda as he shook off the daze and staggered to his feet. Licking the blood off his lips, he smirked at her, a frenzied glint in his eye.
Great, she thought sickly, He likes it rough. She began backing up when she suddenly bumped into Churet, who had materialized right behind her, chuckling. His arms were folded stiffly across his chest, and he bore down on her with a feverish gaze.
"You're not yourselves," she said in a futile effort to reason with them. "Snap out of it!"
"The most powerful warriors of the Dragon Clan," Churet began, his jaw muscles jumping, "ought to have the same privileges as the alpha son. Don't you think?"
"What privileges?" she cried, near hysterics. "You're not making any sense!"
"You think we don't know what Guru's doing?" Choda asked as he pushed off the wall and joined Churet as they advanced on her. "Breeding females back into our species using yourself and Nail?"
She blinked. It was so ludicrous that she was rendered utterly speechless.
Chik paced the entrance like a territorial canine, his arms twitching in penned up aggression. "Our genes are no less desirable than his," he chimed, finally contributing to the persecution.
Axle pursed her lips and swallowed. Her panic was interspersed with flashes of guilt for having brought out the beasts in these otherwise peace-loving namekians.
"You're insane. All of you," she hissed, as her eyes darted from one to the other. "My presence here has tweaked your ability to reason. Don't you see that? Guru is wishing me off this planet any day-"
Her words were cut off by Choda's booming laughter. "You are the first female namekian to set foot on this planet in 500 years," he chuckled maniacally. "What makes you think the Father is going to let you leave?"
To her horror, he made a good point. But… "He said-"
"Oh, he told us that, too," Churet cut her off, visibly growing impatient. "But we're not fools. We knew Guru had unfairly reserved you for Nail."
"Stop saying that!" she hissed, and then swore as Chik clamped his arms around her from behind. Together or apart, they were all stronger than she, and her shot at talking her way out of this was miniscule. She instinctively struggled in his grasp.
"Why are you fighting us?" Chik purred in her ear. "We were friends, weren't we? You enjoyed our company."
She choked. "That's before you turned into a bunch of sex-crazed males desperate for a lay!"
Her words had no effect except to make them laugh. In her growing desperation, Axle contemplated whether or not she could infuriate them into killing her. Better that than the alternative.
With her blood thundering in her ears, she lifted her feet and dropped in Chik's grasp. When he hunched over to keep his hold, she kicked off the ground, knocking his chin up into his skull.
"Nnngh!" He let her go to nurse his wounded jaw, spitting blood out on the floor.
With the element of surprise in her favor, Axle went to jab Choda's left eye, only to have him catch her wrist. Using the momentum, she spun wildly, driving her other elbow into his face, feeling the sick rubbery crunch of busted cartilage.
Choda roared and she leapt forward, the swoosh of Churet's grabbing hands spurring her on. With her heart racing, she dodged Chik, who was now on the rebound, and gathered her ki to ascend into the air.
But it only took a moment before a white hot blast from Churet knocked her from the sky. The ground jumped up and knocked the breath from her lungs. Before she could recover, he'd caged her down, with her hands pinned above her head.
She cringed as he sniffed at her skin with a disturbing enthusiasm, and snarled in her ear.
"Show me," he hissed.
She swore, meeting fevered gaze. He hesitated and frowned at her. As their rabid insanity was her fault, she didn't have it in her to hate them. But she had lines. Her voice took on a hardened edge, seeking death over rape. "Kill me, Churet," she panted. "I'd rather die than be in my body when you violate it!"
Suddenly, a remnant of his former self flickered across his eyes, and he squinted at her. She could almost hear his buried conscience screaming to be heard. He eased back. She would have rejoiced for having finally reached one of them had Choda and Chik not chosen that moment to show up and spur him on.
"I think-" Choda's words were abruptly silenced as a sudden, searing ki blast lanced through his chest and out his back. He spasmed and fell to the ground, whimpering in pain.
Churet stiffened and his eyes grew wide in panic as they fixed on someone behind her. He released her wrists and got up just in time to be pitched backwards by a blurring kick to his chest. Axle muffled a cry as his hovering presence was replaced by none other than Nail.
And he was furious.
Every muscle and tendon seemed strained, as though his body were trying to contain the rage that emanated off him in a hellish aura. He was trembling, explosive, each breath a growl. Terrifying. Even to her. And she could only imagine the sobering effect it had on Chik.
Her last sex offender started backing away, his mouth quivering in unvoiced trepidation. Moans and gasps were heard from Choda and Churet's fallen forms, and Axle wondered if she'd be any better off after Nail chased them off.
Then, after another glance at the maddened warrior, she wondered if he'd even let them live.
"You had no place keeping her to yourself, Nail!" Chik cried, as though that could possibly justify his actions. As though it could possibly protect him from Nail's wrath.
Axle held her breath as the alpha son disappeared and materialized in front of the doomed warrior. One blow to the gut. That was all it took to fell him, and Churet crumpled, unconscious.
She half expected, hoped, that it would end there. That Nail's expression would release some of the tension that made his visage so murderously unfamiliar. But it didn't. He was beyond reason. She barely had time to call out as he raised his foot to crush Chik's head.
"Don't kill him!" she cried. "Please, Nail! It's not their fault."
She bit her bottom lip in anticipation of the worst as the great warrior hesitated. His hands clenched, and his ears twitched. A sick, scuffling noise was heard from Choda as he began to convulse in the background. Churet had managed to weakly raise himself up, his eyes saucer-wide.
After a taut silence, Nail lowered his foot, and instead kicked Chik's body to Churet who managed to catch him, grunting with the impact.
"Leave," he said, his voice grinding like the shifting plates of a planet's crust.
His visage horribly pained, Churet curled Chik under one arm and shakily went and heaved Choda's dying body over his opposite shoulder. Then summoning what little ki he had left, Churet ascended into the air, bobbing weakly along the air currents.
Axle winced as she got up on her feet, and toyed with the idea of running while Nail watched their departure, but figured that if the powerful namekian wanted her around, there wouldn't be much she could do about it.
After they'd disappeared over the nearest plateau, Nail's shoulders sagged an inch, and he spoke without looking at her.
"Are you alright?" he asked tautly, each word strained.
Suddenly, the skin on her back began to sting, from where Churet's blast had knocked her from the sky. And her ribs hurt from being grabbed from behind, and her wrists ached. Then the true horror of what almost happened penetrated her psyche, and she felt the tears wash the dust from her cheeks. Grateful he was too conflicted to look at her, Axle took a deep breath, and lied.
"I'm fine."
He paused, and she knew he heard the quiver in her voice. But to his credit, he forced himself to take her words for face value. "Then follow me," he said, a harsh edge still tainting his tone, "They might return after they're healed." With that, he ascended into the air and took off at a manageable speed.
Seeing reason in his words, and having no desire to be the cause of another altercation between Nail and his brethren, Axle levitated and followed.
