Part III: The Dream Becomes a Nightmare
Meghann huddled not two feet from where the Kai lay; somehow the distance seemed greater. "Meghann…" he faltered. The emptiness, to which prolonged exposure to Majin Buu had dullled his ability to sense in her, seemed to be tearing at the seams. Dread drained his face of blood. Pulses of adrenaline trembled at the tips of his ears and fingers, each as the shock of waking to a man long submerged in a dream.
Her face livid with pain, she somehow managed to drag her head up to look at him. However, the face was not her own. Kaioushin realized with a stab to his heart that he had become remarkably familiar with her true features; the thin lips, curly golden locks, a nose lightly dusted with freckles, piercing eyes like radiant clouds dimly blocking the sun framed with long, sooty lashes. Hideous silted eyes almost buried in fleshy folds regarded him from her face, the pupils barely discernable. The insignia of Majin marked the forehead, a bold stroke of the brush.
Kaioushin gasped and staggered backwards. "You! How did you…What did you…" Flabbergasted, the Kai clenched his teeth and crouched defensively. Tears of hot rage seared his almond-shaped eyes. Tricked…so horribly… Near blindness caused Buu's piping voice, like a stretched balloon deflating, to resound hollowly in his sensitive pointed ears.
"Yucky! Yucky, yucky, yuck! Kissy, kissy with the Kai!" He danced about in a circle, thrusting the extensive bulk of his lower half toward Kaioushin with vulgar delight. "Buu not want kiss! Buu want cracker!" Suddenly Buu threw back his head and his calliope scream ripped at the seams of the sky. Violent convulsions wracked the magician's creation, making thunderous waves of hurricane might course across his flesh. Like a globule of butter in a frying pan, Buu seemed to melt away. When Meghann appeared in the midst of the vanishing mists of the fat monstrosity, her shock and terror mirrored his own.
"Who are you?" Kaioushin snarled, aghast.
"What happened to me?" she whispered. She closed her eyes, as if a swoon would overtake her limbs "The night was flowing through me rapidly when I kissed you, so fast that it overspilled its banks… Then I felt myself floating away from my body. I have no recollection of where I went, though."
Kaioushin, hardly daring to believe the explanation, took half of a step towards her. Every inch of his being longed to believe in her, to rush to her side and crush her to him, continuing what had been forgotten in the excitement of Buu's manifestation. How could it have happened? He could find one explanation; albeit, it fit the situation so perfectly that his blood ran cold. She is a conduit for darkness, though neither one of good or evil. I have seen her neutrality: in the innocence pleasure she derives from the enhanced senses, while acceptancing the fear that follows her in the echo of her footsteps and the whispers of her shadow.
"It is as I feared from the time of our first meeting. You have unwittingly become a conduit, no, a shelter for Majin Buu."
She opened her mouth and then closed it. Her fists clenched until her knuckles turned white. Instead of the flurry of unanswerable questions that he expected, she turned to the stars, raw agony in her cry. "Why is it that all things succumb to evil, though we would not have it so?" He did not mistake the quaver of disbelief in her. "That makes me your enemy now." Such a final, abrupt blow she dealt him, though its effects affected her doubly so. She nearly buckled from the strain.
After the kiss they had shared, Kaioushin could not meet her fierce eyes. Instead, he too turned to the stars for an answer. Claws of black cloud seemed poised to strike the brightest and send them hurtling to earth where they would hollow out their own grave before their fire died. A touch on his shoulder startled him out of his reverie.
"Tell me…about Majin Buu…and Babidi. Tell me everything. My heart could not survive my being your adversary."
A measure of the old helplessness surfaced. Kaioushin sighed. "I don't know what I can tell you that will help. Buu is a tremendous glutton, stuffing himself with other beings. I suppose it keeps the emptiness of which he is composed from folding in on itself."
A gleam like those of the vanished stars shone in her eyes, a warmth like that of the ember that would rekindle the life of the phoenix. "I think I know what I have to do!"
It seemed the ragged pain in his heart would split him asunder. "What can you do? Majin Buu is an entity of tremendous power!"
"Power that will collapse if his balance is interrupted! All I have to do is keep him from absorbing life, right? Other entities and things like that? My will is strong, unbelievably so from all these twilight runs."
"I would believe it, have no doubt. Yet there is the matter of another energy. That which you mortals call food. It's just a hunch, but your daily intake might provide Buu with all the fodder he needs to continue existing in you."
A shudder ran through Meghann. "You don't want to believe in me, do you, Higashi no Kaioushin?" she whispered bitterly. "Just as you couldn't bring yourself to believe that Saiyans, though mortal, could exceed your power."
Feeble denials died on the tip of his tongue, leaving a residue of powdery ash. His hand found hers. He held his lavender hand and her own between them, the first and last of their shaky bond. Such irony is woven for me… Were there any mirth in it, I might actually laugh… Shafts of moonlight streamed between the spaces in their fingers and played about their faces. They made an odd pair. Really, the universe could not have brought together two more different individuals. He scarcely reached her shoulder. Hair as white as the wings of angels, as fine as trailing smoke from a snuffed-out candle framed a sensitive face. In his eyes, deep-set, inky darkness, the placid surface exuded the sorrow akin to the long-lived elves. So many shortcomings, sins, and travesties had these eyes looked on, unable to look away, that their surface, dark mirrors that should have remained impassive with confidence in the powers allotted to the guardian were ragged with pain. His clothes, once fine silk, hung in blood stained tatters. His most recent failure, his inability to make the Saiyans understand their peril, painted his face in overlapping shadows of sallow and haggardness. He was a careworn traveler indeliably aware that he could never return his home to the way things had been. With glints like tiny silver fish in a clearwater pool, the Potara earrings twinkled upon his timeless face.
Beside him, she was the epitome of rosy youth. Troubled, her eyes were clear of conscience, their eerie light ignited from their brush with passion. No jewels adorned her and her clothes hung on her, ill fitting. Their shadows seemed as fleeting as ashes, in danger of being borne away on the hot wind.
"I believe in you." A choking hand closed around Kaioushin's throat. "Yet what would stop Buu from climbing back into you once you expelled him?"
"I will make his stay," she touched her forehead, "Memorably unpleasant."
Kaioushin flinched at the hard, bitter edge in her voice, so similar to Vegita's when he had reprimanded Gohan, threatened the audience of Budokai, and defied Babidi.