Dragonball Z: The Borg Saga
an original fan-fiction by Demon-Fighter Ash
based on characters created by Akira Toriyama
based on Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek"
Part 1: Arrival
Chapter 2: Encounter at Capsule Corporation
"Capsule Corporation, Bulma Briefs," Bulma answered quickly and wearily on the cordless telephone as she paced back and forth over the gray carpeted floor of the main computer lab, "no, we don't know what the object is...no, we don't think it's an asteroid or meteor...no, we don't think it'll hit the planet...no, we don't have any more information..."
She looked back up across the dimly-lit room to her father, who stood in front of the large central computer's screen, muttering thoughtfully to himself as he pondered the flickering image. Strings of tiny numbers scrolled quickly up over a huge black image barely visible against the darkness of space. Bulma gave a quick glance to her husband, who stood a few feet away from the two of them, still dressed in his black bodysuit and now simply glaring at the image, his arms crossed over his chest. Vegeta had barely said a single word since the ship had entered orbit. He seemed even more sullen than usual, if that was possible; she didn't have time to ask him about it, though, and she doubted that he'd say anything anyway. If only, she thought wearily to herself, the reporters shared that sort of stoicism...
"No, we're not hiding anything," she answered another question on the telephone, her voice rising with impatience and indignation, "no, we are NOT involved in a conspiracy with any aliens! Look, if you want answers, grab a telescope and find them yourself!"
She quickly switched the phone off and took a deep breath. She'd spent the past hour doing little more than answering the telephone and making press statements for Capsule Corp, ever since the first amateur astronomers had discovered the ship.
If it really was a ship, she thought, then she didn't want to think about how many people might be on it; the thing was huge, large enough to be seen from the ground, and most of the news broadcasts were filled with footage of the black angular shape hanging against the deep blue late-afternoon sky above the cities, the thing about half as large as the moon had once been. She couldn't really blame people for being scared, and she certainly understood them turning to Capsule Corporation for answers, but the truth was that she and Doctor Briefs barely knew anything more than the reporters.
"These signals," her dad said with a gesture toward the numbers still rolling across the screen, barely seeming to notice the black cat crawling across the back of his neck from one shoulder to settle onto another, "seem to all be coming from that ship. I would say it's some kind of communication, but more complicated than any of our radio signals," he turned back from the screen toward Bulma, "they could be trying to send us a message."
"I don't think so," she answered with a quick shake of her head as she walked toward the wall-mounted screen at the front of the room, "look at the power readings and the pattern of the signals. I think the signal that we're picking up is just the leftover energy of whatever it is they're broadcasting."
"Could they be sending a message," Krillin volunteered, glancing up from the chalkboard on the back wall where he and Gohan had just finished a game of hangman and started playing another round of tic-tac-toe, "to some other planet?"
"Maybe," Bulma replied with a shrug as she glanced backward at them, "it's hard to tell since we don't know what kind of signal they're using, but a lot of the transmissions seem to be looping right back into the ship. The whole thing's filled with these signals..."
"They might be sending the messages to themselves," Gohan said quietly, his head tilted slightly. The young half-saiyan's voice wavered as he seemed to realize how silly the idea seemed, though Bulma had to admit to herself that she didn't have a better theory.
"I guess," Krillin replied, running the palm of his right hand back across his bald head, and then rubbing his neck doubtfuly "but why would they need to do that?"
"That was great," Goku mumbled cheerfully as he stepped out of the dining halls and back into the flourescent computer room, swallowing a large mouthful of food and wiping his lips with one hand before he peered curiously at the screen, "so who are these guys?"
"I don't know," Bulma sighed with exasperation, shaking her head and looking back from the flat computer screen to Goku, "they arrived in orbit about ten minutes ago and they haven't sent any messages or done anything at all since then. We've even tried hooking up one of those old scouters to the computer to measure their power-levels, but the readings don't make any sense. One second it says they're totally off the scale, and the next, that the whole ship's just a few hundred thousand."
"Yeah," Goku nodded seriously, "that's kinda like what I've been feeling too. It's almost like the whole thing's a living creature, sometimes. But then it feels like it's just filled with people, and then it seems like there's nothing up there at all..."
"That's absurd," Vegeta suddenly barked, his eyes hardly leaving the screen except for one quick angry glance around at the rest of the group, "it's just a crowded ship, that's all! If they're really so strong, why haven't they even landed yet?!"
"He's got a point," Krillin admitted, "why haven't they landed, or tried to contact us, or done anything," then he shook his head slightly, "but I can sense it too, and whatever's up there, it's a lot more complicated than just a crowded ship."
"Is that the new arrival," a deep low voice, like the sound of distant, quiet thunder, asked from the door, and Bulma turned around to find Piccolo standing in the doorway, his towering form silhuetted black against the skylights of the gardens outside. The namek warrior stepped into the shadowy room and gave a long sideways glance at the large flat screen against the rear wall, at the black planet-like shape and the white numbers and lines of code flashing across the screen.
"Hi Piccolo," Gohan called out cheerfully.
"Hey Piccolo," Goku said with a friendly smile, then his innocent expression sank into a grim, thoughtful look, "I guess you've been sensing this thing too."
"Hello Gohan," Piccolo nodded to the dark-haired youth with only the smallest hint of a smile, then looked back to his old rival, "this power's different from anything we've faced before. It's not just coming from one fighter, it's looming over this entire world. I woudn't be surprised if even the normal people who have never learned how to sense ki are being affected by all the energy pouring out of it."
"I'm sure that could be affecting them," Bulma replied caustically, "or it just might be the sight of that big black shadow that flew in out of nowhere and parked itself in the sky! You know, it doesn't take sensing power-levels to know that there's something wierd going on..."
Bulma froze in mid-sentence as a high-pitched whine suddenly filled the room. A razor-thin sheet of shimmering green light suddenly fired downward from the ceiling along the back wall and swept into the room. The thick wall of emerald light raced sideways into the laboratory, the beam passing straight down through the tables and chairs like a ghost as it swept through the room. The laser swung directly through her right shoulder and Bulma felt a cold wrenching sensation within her stomach, as though her blood had frozen into ice-water, as the beam passed through her chest and down through her feet.
It suddenly emerged from her left shoulder and continued its sweep through the room, finally vanishing through the front wall like a phantom. She blinked her blue eyes with confusion, the icy sickness quickly fading away, and looked around to find all the others just as confused.
"What was that," Goku cried out as he swept his hand back through his slightly-ruffled hair.
"It passed through the whole room," Krillin remarked, rubbing his bald gleaming head with one hand as he tried to figure it out, "it felt like my whole body turned to ice for a minute..."
"Was it some kind of weapon," Piccolo asked quickly, his slightly bent-over form quickly lifting back upright as he regained his composure. The rest of the fighters all looked at Bulma, except for Vegeta, who stared silently into the empty air, his fists clenched with rage and confusion.
"I'm not sure," she shrugged helplessly, then glanced over her shoulder, "dad?"
"I don't think so," Doctor Briefs replied thoughtfully as he continued to study the computer screen, and Bulma wondered whether he had even noticed the beam at all, "it left a trace of radiation across all of the West Capitol, but that seems to be mostly harmless. I think the ship activated and swept that beam through the city to scan it. Whoever's on that ship seems to have taken an interest in our city."
A soft hum suddenly filled the air and everyone quickly whirled toward the back wall, toward the slate-gray lockers that house the lab's computer processors and servers. A spiral of green energy swept around a thick column of empty air, and the group stared as a translucent black shape materialized within the center of the energy beam. The shimmering helix faded away and Bulma found herself staring at a dark hulking alien creature now standing in the back of the room.
* * *
"Is it wearing some kind of armor," Krillin asked the others nervously as he stared at the thing.
It looked vaguely human--it had two arms, two legs, and a head, at least--but its entire body was solid black, perhaps from some sort of skintight bodysuit. Black hoses and cords stretched across its torso and wound in and out of its skin, and Krillin winced to himself as he noticed a few gaps in the creature's chest, the openings filled with what looked like whirring clock-gears. The thing's left hand looked almost normal except for being the same black hue as the rest of its body, but its right arm ended in a kind of mechanical stump, with whirring cogs and clacking levers protruding from the appendage.
Its face might have once been human-like, but now most of its head was covered in the same black material as its body; Krillin could see the round helmet-like covering gleaming in the flourescent lights of the lab and he realized that its body was covered from head to toe in some kind of black metal. Its left eye stared out at them from its corpse-white head, darting back and forth as though it were quickly scanning each of their faces. A bulky, roughly rounded machine seemed to be built into the right side of its skull, its right eye completely replaced by a flat plate of darkened glass, from which plastic-coated wires sprouted out along the right side of its head and trailed down in twisting cords into its neck.
"I don't think so," Bulma said, her voice slightly gagged, "it looks more like a cyborg. But how did it get in here? There aren't any doors or windows over there, so it couldn't be super-speed."
"Besides, the rest of us would've seen it or sensed it if it'd just been moving fast," Piccolo replied in a low voice, "it must be some kind of instant transmission."
"Yeah," Goku nodded, stepping beside Krillin and Bulma to look at the creature, "but instant transmission doesn't usually look like that. It could be another move like it, though..."
"YOU," a raspy voice suddenly screamed out behind the three, and Krillin looked back to find Vegeta glaring in rage at the creature. The cyborg didn't seem to even notice the saiyan's challenge, and instead turned silently around to look over the metal lockers of the computer servers.
"I should have known it was you," Vegeta continued, his voice tinged with both hatred and a kind of sadistic, smirkng triumph, "hiding your power-levels, skulking about like rats! I knew you'd show up again one day, but this time you're not running away! You're going to stay and fight!"
"Vegeta," Goku asked increduously, turning his head to look back at him, "do you know this guy?"
"I've seen his kind before," Vegeta snarled in reply, then he raised his voice again, "what's the matter, robot?! You're afraid to face a saiyan?! Come on, answer me!"
The creature hadn't even looked in Vegeta's direction, but instead simply finished studying the server cases and turned its gaze back to the large wall-mounted screen, a small mechanical whine rising from its neck as though its head were being twisted by tiny motors. It walked silently across the room, the heavy thud of its metal feet making the whole room shudder, and it stopped in front of the screen, its head turning left and right a little as it read the scrolling numbers on the screen.
"Pathetic," Vegeta taunted, his face twisted into a cruel grin, his dark eyes focused on the silent creature, "all those circuits in your head and you're still nothing more than a walking toaster! Now tell me, robot, with all that plastic and metal...do you still bleed?!"
"Vegeta," Piccolo suddenly interrupted, "that's enough! This one creature somehow has the full power of that entire ship within it! We don't want to start a fight unless we have to!"
Krillin could sense it as well--all the energy that they'd felt coming from that thing in orbit now seemed to be in the same room as them, all of it pouring out of this robotic thing. Did the vast ki that all of them had felt coming from the ship belong to this one creature? Had it been alone in the moon-sized ship? If so, why in the world did it need such a gigantic ship in the first place?
He quickly realized that he still felt the alien ship in orbit, as well as the almost-blinding level of power within it. Wahtever they had sensed in the ship was still there. Yet he felt the exact same power coming from the cyborg. It didn't make any sense, and there was only one experience he could compare to this bizarre double-ki that filled both the room and the sky: Tien and Piccolo's ability to split themselves into multiple forms, each of which seemed to have their distinctive energy.
Was this thing just a extension of something else in the ship, like an arm or leg, the enormous ki within it coming from its connection to something else? That actually made the most sense, but the robotic intruder looked real enough, and it seemed to be a completely seperate person. If, Krillin thought to himself, "person" was the word to use for a cybernetic monster like this...
The creature lifted its right appendage up to the corner of the computer monitor and a swarm of snaking wires quickly sprang out of its stump. The slender cables seemed to melt through the pale plastic casing and slither inward, and then the computer screen suddenly flashed white for an instant. Pages of text began to race across the screen, alternating with quick flashes of photographs and diagrams, and the cyborg stood silent, its arm connected to the monitor as it watched the flashing screen.
"What is it doing," Gohan asked softly as he stared at the blurred flashes on the monitor, and the black metal creature standing motionless before the huge screen as it watched the screen.
"I think," Bulma answered hesitantly, watching the screen, "I think it's plugged itself into Capsule Corporation's computers. It looks like it's reading every single file on our hard drives..."
"Hmph," Vegeta snorted, and then he lifted up his gloved right hand, his thumb folded across his palm as he narrowed his eyes and took aim at the creature, "since everyone else thinks you have such a huge power-level, let's see how you handle a little welcome-to-Earth present! Big Bang!"
"VEGETA," Goku cried out as a small orb of light, no bigger than a baseball, flew out from the saiyan prince's hand and hurtled toward the black cyborg. The orb slammed into the thing's back and sparks of white energy suddenly erupted from its chest, the circuits and motors within its body giving a loud wheezing hum as it suddenly collapsed limpy onto the floor like a ragdoll.
"How pitiful," Vegeta mocked the lifeless creature, slowly lowering his raised hand, "even my toddler son could've handled a blast that weak! And to think you had the namek all worried!"
Piccolo narrowed his eyes slightly with disapproval but said nothing, seeming instead to be lost in thought over what had happened. Goku, however, leaped directly in front of Vegeta, his dark eyes clouded with anger at the arrogant, and still smirking, saiyan prince.
"How could you," Goku shouted, "you just killed an innocent person! He didn't do anything!"
"Calm down, Kakkarot," Vegeta answered with a roll of his eyes, crossing his arms across his chest as his smirking triumph dropped into a sulk, "those things are NOT innocent!"
"If you know something," Bulma snapped, "then you'd better start telling us..."
A swirl of green energy suddenly appeared in front of the screen, a ribbon of dim light as tall and wide as a person, and the empty air within the helix shimmered as if it were underwater. A black shadow flickered within the pillar of energy. The translucent shape suddenly turned solid and the shaft of light faded away to leave a second cyborg, virtually identical to the fallen creature on the ground, standing in front of the startled group. It stared silently at them for a moment, its motors whining and humming with life, and then it suddenly turned back around to face the large computer screen.
It lifted the bio-mechanical stump of its right arm to the corner of the monitor and a swarm of tangled silver wires quickly leaped out of its arm and quickly pierced the plastic case, plugging themselves directly into the computer. The screen suddenly flickered to life once more, countless files of streaming text and pictures flashing across the monitor. The images quickened into a constant blur, the symbols and images racing across the monitor faster than Krillin could possibly make out, whle the creature silently stared at the screen, seeming to read the files as quickly as they appeared.
"So," Vegeta snarled as he lifted his right hand back up, "you're back for more! This time..."
"That's enough Vegeta," Goku suddenly said, stepping directly between Vegeta and the second creature, "these things haven't done anything wrong, and I'm not going to let you attack them."
"Fine," Vegeta glared over Goku's shoulder at the flashing screen, "have it your way, Kakkarot. We'll just sit here and wait around until THEY make the first move!"
"What do you think it's doing," Krillin asked Bulma under his breath, while Goku and Vegeta continued to stare each other down, "why are they so interested in the computer?"
"Capsule Corp has the largest database in the world," Bulma replied, "they're probably using it to learn about us. Remember, these are aliens. They probably don't know how to speak English or anything. I'll bet that green scanning beam was their way of locating the biggest computer."
"So once that guy's finished reading the hard drive," Gohan asked, stepping beside Krillin as he watched the creature's dark silhuette against the kaleidoscope of pictures, words and equations filling the computer screen, "he might learn know how to speak our language and try to talk to us?"
"Maybe," Piccolo answered softly, "but it's strange. The second creature doesn't seem to be concerned about the first one at all. It didn't check to see if the first one's alive and it doesn't even seem to be worried about Vegeta. Look at it, it's not even trying to protect itself."
"It just picked up right where the first one left off," Krillin thought aloud, "but I don't get it. If the ship sent down a second alien to finish the job, they must have known that something happened to the first one. So why wouldn't it try to protect itself or try to find out what happened?"
"Maybe they already know," Gohan shrugged.
The blurred screen suddenly went black and the gleaming wires slithered back out of the hole that they'd melted through the bottom corner of the computer screen. The tangled wires disappeared into the creature's cybernetic arm once more and it quickly turned around, seeming to notice its dead comrade for the first time. The group of fighters watched, even Vegeta ceasing his arguments to turn his attention to the mechanical alien, as it bent down on one knee to look over the other creature's body.
"Listen," Goku called out sheepishly, "I'm sorry about your friend. Vegeta just gets kinda carried away, but the rest of us are all really nice. If there's anything..."
The second creature suddenly reached down with its left hand and grabbed the dead cyborg's metallic eyepiece, quickly disconnecting the bulky device and roughly yanking it up from the corpse's head. Goku's apology faded into bewildered silence as all of them watched: the creature reached further down, the eyepiece now pressed tight against its palm, and methodically unhooked several wires from the body's chest, then grabbed a small circuitboard between its fingers and yanked it out of the lifeless alien.
The black cyborg lifted up from the body to stand upright. The transparent column of twisting green energy suddenly appeared around it once again, whipping around its metal body like a whirlwind. The creature quickly faded away like a ghost, and the glowing shaft of whirling green energy vanished. The body on the ground suddenly glowed green for an instant and then vanished, the metal exoskeleton and white chalky flesh disintegrating into a pile of gray ashes.
The aliens had vanished, one disappearing into a column of energy, another turned to dust.
"That was wierd," Goku finally said, shaking his head with confusion.
"Do you think they're mad at us," Gohan asked.
"I'm not sure it even noticed us," Krillin replied uncertainly.
The screen suddenly flickered on again, this time showing a black background and a set of green numbers in the center. The numbers constantly changed, and, after all the confusion of the past few minutes, it took Krillin a second to realize that the numbers were a clock counting down...
...0:15:29...0:15:28....0:15:27...0:15.26..0:15:25...
"It's a countdown for fifteen minutes," Bulma said aloud, then she shook her head quickly to regain her composure, "did those things set our computers to count down?"
"No, it's not our computer," Doctor Briefs suddenly remarked, and Krillin suddenly noticed him at the keyboard perched atop the large table in the middle of the room, "watch this."
He typed a few words into the keyboard and the computer screen suddenly switched to an image of a news report. The newscaster sat behind a powder-blue desk, a small nervous-looking man with black hair and a thin dark moustache, as a "live" icon flashed at the bottom left corner of the screen.
"We've just recieved word," the reporter said, "that the broadcast signal for CZN, the world's largest news channel, has been hijacked by the strange object now orbiting the Earth. The pirate signal seems to be showing a steady fifteen-minute countdown, and there appears to be no way to override or block the alien broadcast. We can only wait and see what will happen..."
"So all the alien did was set our computer to switch to CZN," Bulma nodded, "but why are they broadcasting a countdown? Are they planning on attacking us...?"
"I don't think so," Krillin answered doubtfully, "if they were going to attack us, why would they send us a fifteen-minute warning on global television?"
"That's it," Piccolo exclaimed, and everyone turned from the screen to look at him, "practically everyone owns a television set, and everyone can pick up CZN. They must planning on sending a message to the whole world, and the countdown's meant to make sure everyone's watching."
"It'll work," Doctor Briefs replied casually as the black cat on his shoulder mewed anxiously at the screen, "I can't imagine anyone who won't be watching to see what happens next."
"Alright," Bulma said firmly, and she looked straight at Vegeta, "it looks like we have a few minutes to spare, so now you can start telling us how you know these creatures."
* * *
"I first saw them about fifteen years ago," Vegeta answered after a long, brooding silence, leaning back against the varnished table and closing his eyes as he remembered them, "when Raditz, Nappa and I still fought for Frieza. Frieza sent us to conquer any planet that he wanted to add to his empire, whether it was because of their technology, or some resource he wanted, or some strategic position.
"We travelled in our pods for months between planets," Vegeta continued as everyone gradually began to pay attention to him, "and when we arrived we gave their leaders Frieza's terms for surrender. Most of the time they didn't believe us, so we'd use a few of their larger cities to show them what happens to those who refuse," he gave a small satisfied smirk at the memories of his conquests, "that usually did the trick, and if they still refused, it just meant all the more fun for us."
"One time we were sent to the planet Tapuen, to enslave its scientists for Frieza's research and development teams. They'd invented some new spaceship that'd impressed him, or something like that. We spent five months journeying to their world and we emerged on Tapuen ready for battle, our blood boiling after so much time in the pods. But somebody beat us there..."
"All the cities had been obliterated, scooped out of the ground like a giant claw had just grabbed them and pulled them off the planet. Every hint of technology had been stripped from the surface, the place was a desert. We didn't find a single living soul on the whole planet, and we didn't even find many bodies. But we did find a few bodies in some of the craters, where the cities used to be.
"Them."
Goku didn't need to ask who Vegeta meant by "them," not with the clenched hiss that he said it. The very thought of Vegeta travelling from world to world, killing so many people, made Goku a little sick, but, whether the proud saiyan prince admitted or not, he'd changed since then. He had originally come to destroy Earth, just like he had destroyed so many others, but had since become a father, married Bulma, even helped them in defending the Earth from Cell. Vegeta deserved a second chance as much as any villain and, despite his constant temper, Goku believed he had come a long way.
"Those black metal exoskeletons, those hoses and wires, those white faces with one eye covered by those cameras or whatever they are, I could never forget them. There weren't many of them, maybe five or six on the whole planet, but we tracked down each and every one of them. The bodies were still fresh, we knew that it couldn't have been more than a few days since those things had left."
"Wait a minute," Krillin interrupted, "why didn't you tell us about this when we saw their ship?"
"Because I've never SEEN their ship, baldy," Vegeta snapped, and then he closed his eyes once more, trying to focus on his story, "we searched the star system for some sign of their vessel. It took our pods months to travel between stars, so we knew they had to be somewhere close. But we never found any trace of their ship. They must have been hiding from us, behind some moon or asteroid!"
"Maybe," Bulma answered softly, her bright blue eyes crossed in deep thought, "or perhaps their ships use a different kind of propulsion, one that moves a lot faster than saiyan pods. If you arrived a few days after the attack, they might have already been long gone."
"Impossible," Vegeta growled with a short glance to Bulma, though he seemed to hold himself back from saying anything more, instead continuing his story, "we finally had to give up and return to Frieza's ship, to tell him that those thieves had stolen the planet we were meant to conquer."
"Frieza couldn't have been happy with that," Krillin said with a sly, faint smirk that Goku had seen countless times during their lifelong friendship. Krillin might not want to stand up to the saiyan prince, but he obviously liked the idea of Vegeta getting his comeuppance, even if by another villain.
"That's the worst part," Vegeta suddenly shouted, apparently swept up in the emotions of that day fifteen years ago, "we should've gone back and searched out those rats wherever they were hiding, fought and proved ourselves against them. But the moment we told Frieza what we'd found on Tapuen, he forbid us to go back to that system. He called every single ship in that area back and closed that entire sector of space to everyone in his empire, without even explaining himself!"
"It sounds like Frieza recognized them," Goku replied curiously.
"Frieza was a coward," Vegeta barked, his eyes clouded with rage, "and he forced the rest of us to share in his cowardice! We should have hunted them down, challenged them for denying us the battle we'd earned, killed them like true saiyans...but Frieza forced us to turn our tails between our legs and run from that whole sector! The saiyan prince, forced to run from some dead robots in a crater!"
"I don't know," Goku answered skeptically, "Frieza was a lot of things, but he wasn't really a coward."
Goku remembered his battle with the interstellar tyrant on the dying planet Namek, a battle that had turned hopelessly against Frieza when Goku turned into a super-saiyan. Frieza had continued to fight, though, despite Goku's attempts to show him mercy. Even in the last moment, with his legs cut off and his body kept alive only by the energy Goku had given him, Frieza had chosen to launch a final, hopeless attack, choosing death in battle over the prospect of living with defeat.
Frieza had been evil, sadistic, a cold-blooded monster with no remorse...but he was not a coward.
"But if Frieza was afraid of these guys," Krillin said hopefully, "maybe they're on our side!"
"Not necessarily," Piccolo replied grimly, "Frieza might've just been smart enough to stay out of their way."
"I was afraid you'd say something like that," Krillin answered nervously.
"Are you kidding," Vegeta scoffed, "they couldn't handle even the smallest attack! I could have killed one of those walking scrap metal heaps as a child!"
"He might've known something about them that we don't know," Piccolo countered, "that ship has a single power-level unlike anything we've ever felt. That has to mean something."
"Anybody else want some more tea or cookies or cupcakes," Mrs. Briefs suddenly asked as she walked into the lab, carrying a huge platter of cookies in both hands and setting them down on the table. Goku suddenly began grabbing handfuls of cookies and gulping them down.
"Yeah, thanks," Goku mumbled through a mouthful of cookies, his stomach still rumbling a little even as he finished off the plate of cookies, "but could you bring a few more plates, and maybe a couple of glasses of milk, and some tea...and, oh yeah, some egg-rolls..."
"It's almost done," Doctor Briefs called out from his chair in front of the screen, and everybody else turned around.
0:00:05...0:00:04...:0:00:03...0:00:02...0:00:01...
The screen suddenly switched to a view so surreal that it took Goku a few minutes to figure out what he was seeing. Steel girders and beams hung around the edges of the screen, along with platforms and catwalks filled with tiny people. He quickly realized that they weren't actually tiny, that they were just incredibly far away. Two sets of different levels of platforms and catwalks hung along the opposite sides of the screen, the distance between them probably miles. However, the center of the image was a huge white void, a pulsing glow of light that looked like the sun--except that, instead of a blinding glow, the light looked almost cold and empty. Was this, he wondered, what the inside of that ship looked like?
"People of Earth," a voice suddenly boomed through the speakers. It wasn't a single voice at all, but a huge chorus of voices all speaking at the same time, in perfect sync with each other. It seemed to emerge from the light itself, the glow shuddering slightly with each syllable. It suddenly occured to Goku that everybody else in the world was watching this exact same image: people sitting in their living rooms, others gathered around the display TV sets stacked in store windows, or looking up at the giant screens built atop the skyscrapers, all of them listening to these voices coming from the ship.
"We are the Borg," the echoing throng of voices all said in unison, "we have analyzed your offensive and defensive capabilities and found that your society will be unable to withstand us. If you attempt to resist us, you will be destroyed."
The image suddenly flashed again and he found himself look at an anchorman's desk, where a middle-aged man and blonde-haired woman suddenly looked up in surprise, then swung their swivel-chairs back toward the television cameras and began to quickly talk to the audience.
"This is CZN," the male announcer said, still fidgetting with his tie "and it seems that the pirate broadcast signal from the alien ship has ended. We're back on the air and..."
"What does that mean," Krillin asked, rubbing the back of his neck, "what is 'the Borg'?"
"Well," Bulma answered, "it's them, obviously! But what was up with that voice?"
"They seemed to be speaking all at once," Goku suggested, "like a choir..."
"Or perhaps their minds were thinking all at once," Piccolo said, "as a single mind."
"Whatever it was," Vegeta growled impatiently, "they're obviously planning on attacking!"
"Hey guys," Gohan called out nervously as he nodded toward the wall-mounted computer screen, "you'd better take a look at this..."
Goku looked back at the television image and saw that it had changed again; the CZN logo was still at the bottom of the screen, along with the word "live image," but the camera now showed a large city, the buildings silent and the streets deserted. His heart suddenly wrenched as he saw a black metal figure step into the camera's view. The creature suddenly turned around to advance toward the camera and the image quickly switched to another view high above the city, where he could now make out swarms of black figures walking slowly about the streets, spreading out from the city square.
"This is helicoptor footage," a newscaster's voice said, "over uptown South Capitol, where hordes of robotic creatures have suddenly appeared out of nowhere. They're attacking anyone on the streets and have virtually taken control of the central city...the police have been completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of invaders and the federal government is reportedly worried about the consequences of trying to launch a military attack against the creatures in a populated urban area..."
"So much for avoiding a fight," Goku sighed, then he closed his eyes for a second, focusing on the strange echoing ki of the "Borg" and finding a new source on Earth, in the South Capitol. He nodded to himself, then held out his right arm to the rest of the fighters.
"We're going to South Capitol," he said quickly, "everybody who's coming, grab on."
"Instant transmission," Krillin nodded with a smile as he grabbed Goku's forearm with one hand, "how did we ever manage to get by without it?"
Gohan quickly grabbed onto Krillin's shoulder with his left hand and Piccolo took hold of Gohan's right elbow. Vegeta looked silently back and forth at the line of fighters and then, with a resigned sigh, walked to the back of the group and roughly grabbed the right side of Piccolo's cape in his fist.
"I'm ready, dad," Gohan called out.
"Let's go, Goku," Piccolo nodded.
"How about you, Vegeta," Goku called out to the back of the group, "are you on?"
"Just get it over with."
"Okay," Goku answered, "everybody hold on tight!"
"Good luck," Bulma waved with an encouraging, but slightly nervous, smile.
"Thanks," Goku replied, and he lifted his right hand up to the middle of his forehead. He pressed his first two fingers to his temple and crossed his eyes for a moment, trying to sense the alien ki in South Capitol again--and then his image suddenly flickered and vanished. The four other fighters all quickly vanished alongside him, leaving Bulma and her father alone in the laboratory.
an original fan-fiction by Demon-Fighter Ash
based on characters created by Akira Toriyama
based on Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek"
Part 1: Arrival
Chapter 2: Encounter at Capsule Corporation
"Capsule Corporation, Bulma Briefs," Bulma answered quickly and wearily on the cordless telephone as she paced back and forth over the gray carpeted floor of the main computer lab, "no, we don't know what the object is...no, we don't think it's an asteroid or meteor...no, we don't think it'll hit the planet...no, we don't have any more information..."
She looked back up across the dimly-lit room to her father, who stood in front of the large central computer's screen, muttering thoughtfully to himself as he pondered the flickering image. Strings of tiny numbers scrolled quickly up over a huge black image barely visible against the darkness of space. Bulma gave a quick glance to her husband, who stood a few feet away from the two of them, still dressed in his black bodysuit and now simply glaring at the image, his arms crossed over his chest. Vegeta had barely said a single word since the ship had entered orbit. He seemed even more sullen than usual, if that was possible; she didn't have time to ask him about it, though, and she doubted that he'd say anything anyway. If only, she thought wearily to herself, the reporters shared that sort of stoicism...
"No, we're not hiding anything," she answered another question on the telephone, her voice rising with impatience and indignation, "no, we are NOT involved in a conspiracy with any aliens! Look, if you want answers, grab a telescope and find them yourself!"
She quickly switched the phone off and took a deep breath. She'd spent the past hour doing little more than answering the telephone and making press statements for Capsule Corp, ever since the first amateur astronomers had discovered the ship.
If it really was a ship, she thought, then she didn't want to think about how many people might be on it; the thing was huge, large enough to be seen from the ground, and most of the news broadcasts were filled with footage of the black angular shape hanging against the deep blue late-afternoon sky above the cities, the thing about half as large as the moon had once been. She couldn't really blame people for being scared, and she certainly understood them turning to Capsule Corporation for answers, but the truth was that she and Doctor Briefs barely knew anything more than the reporters.
"These signals," her dad said with a gesture toward the numbers still rolling across the screen, barely seeming to notice the black cat crawling across the back of his neck from one shoulder to settle onto another, "seem to all be coming from that ship. I would say it's some kind of communication, but more complicated than any of our radio signals," he turned back from the screen toward Bulma, "they could be trying to send us a message."
"I don't think so," she answered with a quick shake of her head as she walked toward the wall-mounted screen at the front of the room, "look at the power readings and the pattern of the signals. I think the signal that we're picking up is just the leftover energy of whatever it is they're broadcasting."
"Could they be sending a message," Krillin volunteered, glancing up from the chalkboard on the back wall where he and Gohan had just finished a game of hangman and started playing another round of tic-tac-toe, "to some other planet?"
"Maybe," Bulma replied with a shrug as she glanced backward at them, "it's hard to tell since we don't know what kind of signal they're using, but a lot of the transmissions seem to be looping right back into the ship. The whole thing's filled with these signals..."
"They might be sending the messages to themselves," Gohan said quietly, his head tilted slightly. The young half-saiyan's voice wavered as he seemed to realize how silly the idea seemed, though Bulma had to admit to herself that she didn't have a better theory.
"I guess," Krillin replied, running the palm of his right hand back across his bald head, and then rubbing his neck doubtfuly "but why would they need to do that?"
"That was great," Goku mumbled cheerfully as he stepped out of the dining halls and back into the flourescent computer room, swallowing a large mouthful of food and wiping his lips with one hand before he peered curiously at the screen, "so who are these guys?"
"I don't know," Bulma sighed with exasperation, shaking her head and looking back from the flat computer screen to Goku, "they arrived in orbit about ten minutes ago and they haven't sent any messages or done anything at all since then. We've even tried hooking up one of those old scouters to the computer to measure their power-levels, but the readings don't make any sense. One second it says they're totally off the scale, and the next, that the whole ship's just a few hundred thousand."
"Yeah," Goku nodded seriously, "that's kinda like what I've been feeling too. It's almost like the whole thing's a living creature, sometimes. But then it feels like it's just filled with people, and then it seems like there's nothing up there at all..."
"That's absurd," Vegeta suddenly barked, his eyes hardly leaving the screen except for one quick angry glance around at the rest of the group, "it's just a crowded ship, that's all! If they're really so strong, why haven't they even landed yet?!"
"He's got a point," Krillin admitted, "why haven't they landed, or tried to contact us, or done anything," then he shook his head slightly, "but I can sense it too, and whatever's up there, it's a lot more complicated than just a crowded ship."
"Is that the new arrival," a deep low voice, like the sound of distant, quiet thunder, asked from the door, and Bulma turned around to find Piccolo standing in the doorway, his towering form silhuetted black against the skylights of the gardens outside. The namek warrior stepped into the shadowy room and gave a long sideways glance at the large flat screen against the rear wall, at the black planet-like shape and the white numbers and lines of code flashing across the screen.
"Hi Piccolo," Gohan called out cheerfully.
"Hey Piccolo," Goku said with a friendly smile, then his innocent expression sank into a grim, thoughtful look, "I guess you've been sensing this thing too."
"Hello Gohan," Piccolo nodded to the dark-haired youth with only the smallest hint of a smile, then looked back to his old rival, "this power's different from anything we've faced before. It's not just coming from one fighter, it's looming over this entire world. I woudn't be surprised if even the normal people who have never learned how to sense ki are being affected by all the energy pouring out of it."
"I'm sure that could be affecting them," Bulma replied caustically, "or it just might be the sight of that big black shadow that flew in out of nowhere and parked itself in the sky! You know, it doesn't take sensing power-levels to know that there's something wierd going on..."
Bulma froze in mid-sentence as a high-pitched whine suddenly filled the room. A razor-thin sheet of shimmering green light suddenly fired downward from the ceiling along the back wall and swept into the room. The thick wall of emerald light raced sideways into the laboratory, the beam passing straight down through the tables and chairs like a ghost as it swept through the room. The laser swung directly through her right shoulder and Bulma felt a cold wrenching sensation within her stomach, as though her blood had frozen into ice-water, as the beam passed through her chest and down through her feet.
It suddenly emerged from her left shoulder and continued its sweep through the room, finally vanishing through the front wall like a phantom. She blinked her blue eyes with confusion, the icy sickness quickly fading away, and looked around to find all the others just as confused.
"What was that," Goku cried out as he swept his hand back through his slightly-ruffled hair.
"It passed through the whole room," Krillin remarked, rubbing his bald gleaming head with one hand as he tried to figure it out, "it felt like my whole body turned to ice for a minute..."
"Was it some kind of weapon," Piccolo asked quickly, his slightly bent-over form quickly lifting back upright as he regained his composure. The rest of the fighters all looked at Bulma, except for Vegeta, who stared silently into the empty air, his fists clenched with rage and confusion.
"I'm not sure," she shrugged helplessly, then glanced over her shoulder, "dad?"
"I don't think so," Doctor Briefs replied thoughtfully as he continued to study the computer screen, and Bulma wondered whether he had even noticed the beam at all, "it left a trace of radiation across all of the West Capitol, but that seems to be mostly harmless. I think the ship activated and swept that beam through the city to scan it. Whoever's on that ship seems to have taken an interest in our city."
A soft hum suddenly filled the air and everyone quickly whirled toward the back wall, toward the slate-gray lockers that house the lab's computer processors and servers. A spiral of green energy swept around a thick column of empty air, and the group stared as a translucent black shape materialized within the center of the energy beam. The shimmering helix faded away and Bulma found herself staring at a dark hulking alien creature now standing in the back of the room.
* * *
"Is it wearing some kind of armor," Krillin asked the others nervously as he stared at the thing.
It looked vaguely human--it had two arms, two legs, and a head, at least--but its entire body was solid black, perhaps from some sort of skintight bodysuit. Black hoses and cords stretched across its torso and wound in and out of its skin, and Krillin winced to himself as he noticed a few gaps in the creature's chest, the openings filled with what looked like whirring clock-gears. The thing's left hand looked almost normal except for being the same black hue as the rest of its body, but its right arm ended in a kind of mechanical stump, with whirring cogs and clacking levers protruding from the appendage.
Its face might have once been human-like, but now most of its head was covered in the same black material as its body; Krillin could see the round helmet-like covering gleaming in the flourescent lights of the lab and he realized that its body was covered from head to toe in some kind of black metal. Its left eye stared out at them from its corpse-white head, darting back and forth as though it were quickly scanning each of their faces. A bulky, roughly rounded machine seemed to be built into the right side of its skull, its right eye completely replaced by a flat plate of darkened glass, from which plastic-coated wires sprouted out along the right side of its head and trailed down in twisting cords into its neck.
"I don't think so," Bulma said, her voice slightly gagged, "it looks more like a cyborg. But how did it get in here? There aren't any doors or windows over there, so it couldn't be super-speed."
"Besides, the rest of us would've seen it or sensed it if it'd just been moving fast," Piccolo replied in a low voice, "it must be some kind of instant transmission."
"Yeah," Goku nodded, stepping beside Krillin and Bulma to look at the creature, "but instant transmission doesn't usually look like that. It could be another move like it, though..."
"YOU," a raspy voice suddenly screamed out behind the three, and Krillin looked back to find Vegeta glaring in rage at the creature. The cyborg didn't seem to even notice the saiyan's challenge, and instead turned silently around to look over the metal lockers of the computer servers.
"I should have known it was you," Vegeta continued, his voice tinged with both hatred and a kind of sadistic, smirkng triumph, "hiding your power-levels, skulking about like rats! I knew you'd show up again one day, but this time you're not running away! You're going to stay and fight!"
"Vegeta," Goku asked increduously, turning his head to look back at him, "do you know this guy?"
"I've seen his kind before," Vegeta snarled in reply, then he raised his voice again, "what's the matter, robot?! You're afraid to face a saiyan?! Come on, answer me!"
The creature hadn't even looked in Vegeta's direction, but instead simply finished studying the server cases and turned its gaze back to the large wall-mounted screen, a small mechanical whine rising from its neck as though its head were being twisted by tiny motors. It walked silently across the room, the heavy thud of its metal feet making the whole room shudder, and it stopped in front of the screen, its head turning left and right a little as it read the scrolling numbers on the screen.
"Pathetic," Vegeta taunted, his face twisted into a cruel grin, his dark eyes focused on the silent creature, "all those circuits in your head and you're still nothing more than a walking toaster! Now tell me, robot, with all that plastic and metal...do you still bleed?!"
"Vegeta," Piccolo suddenly interrupted, "that's enough! This one creature somehow has the full power of that entire ship within it! We don't want to start a fight unless we have to!"
Krillin could sense it as well--all the energy that they'd felt coming from that thing in orbit now seemed to be in the same room as them, all of it pouring out of this robotic thing. Did the vast ki that all of them had felt coming from the ship belong to this one creature? Had it been alone in the moon-sized ship? If so, why in the world did it need such a gigantic ship in the first place?
He quickly realized that he still felt the alien ship in orbit, as well as the almost-blinding level of power within it. Wahtever they had sensed in the ship was still there. Yet he felt the exact same power coming from the cyborg. It didn't make any sense, and there was only one experience he could compare to this bizarre double-ki that filled both the room and the sky: Tien and Piccolo's ability to split themselves into multiple forms, each of which seemed to have their distinctive energy.
Was this thing just a extension of something else in the ship, like an arm or leg, the enormous ki within it coming from its connection to something else? That actually made the most sense, but the robotic intruder looked real enough, and it seemed to be a completely seperate person. If, Krillin thought to himself, "person" was the word to use for a cybernetic monster like this...
The creature lifted its right appendage up to the corner of the computer monitor and a swarm of snaking wires quickly sprang out of its stump. The slender cables seemed to melt through the pale plastic casing and slither inward, and then the computer screen suddenly flashed white for an instant. Pages of text began to race across the screen, alternating with quick flashes of photographs and diagrams, and the cyborg stood silent, its arm connected to the monitor as it watched the flashing screen.
"What is it doing," Gohan asked softly as he stared at the blurred flashes on the monitor, and the black metal creature standing motionless before the huge screen as it watched the screen.
"I think," Bulma answered hesitantly, watching the screen, "I think it's plugged itself into Capsule Corporation's computers. It looks like it's reading every single file on our hard drives..."
"Hmph," Vegeta snorted, and then he lifted up his gloved right hand, his thumb folded across his palm as he narrowed his eyes and took aim at the creature, "since everyone else thinks you have such a huge power-level, let's see how you handle a little welcome-to-Earth present! Big Bang!"
"VEGETA," Goku cried out as a small orb of light, no bigger than a baseball, flew out from the saiyan prince's hand and hurtled toward the black cyborg. The orb slammed into the thing's back and sparks of white energy suddenly erupted from its chest, the circuits and motors within its body giving a loud wheezing hum as it suddenly collapsed limpy onto the floor like a ragdoll.
"How pitiful," Vegeta mocked the lifeless creature, slowly lowering his raised hand, "even my toddler son could've handled a blast that weak! And to think you had the namek all worried!"
Piccolo narrowed his eyes slightly with disapproval but said nothing, seeming instead to be lost in thought over what had happened. Goku, however, leaped directly in front of Vegeta, his dark eyes clouded with anger at the arrogant, and still smirking, saiyan prince.
"How could you," Goku shouted, "you just killed an innocent person! He didn't do anything!"
"Calm down, Kakkarot," Vegeta answered with a roll of his eyes, crossing his arms across his chest as his smirking triumph dropped into a sulk, "those things are NOT innocent!"
"If you know something," Bulma snapped, "then you'd better start telling us..."
A swirl of green energy suddenly appeared in front of the screen, a ribbon of dim light as tall and wide as a person, and the empty air within the helix shimmered as if it were underwater. A black shadow flickered within the pillar of energy. The translucent shape suddenly turned solid and the shaft of light faded away to leave a second cyborg, virtually identical to the fallen creature on the ground, standing in front of the startled group. It stared silently at them for a moment, its motors whining and humming with life, and then it suddenly turned back around to face the large computer screen.
It lifted the bio-mechanical stump of its right arm to the corner of the monitor and a swarm of tangled silver wires quickly leaped out of its arm and quickly pierced the plastic case, plugging themselves directly into the computer. The screen suddenly flickered to life once more, countless files of streaming text and pictures flashing across the monitor. The images quickened into a constant blur, the symbols and images racing across the monitor faster than Krillin could possibly make out, whle the creature silently stared at the screen, seeming to read the files as quickly as they appeared.
"So," Vegeta snarled as he lifted his right hand back up, "you're back for more! This time..."
"That's enough Vegeta," Goku suddenly said, stepping directly between Vegeta and the second creature, "these things haven't done anything wrong, and I'm not going to let you attack them."
"Fine," Vegeta glared over Goku's shoulder at the flashing screen, "have it your way, Kakkarot. We'll just sit here and wait around until THEY make the first move!"
"What do you think it's doing," Krillin asked Bulma under his breath, while Goku and Vegeta continued to stare each other down, "why are they so interested in the computer?"
"Capsule Corp has the largest database in the world," Bulma replied, "they're probably using it to learn about us. Remember, these are aliens. They probably don't know how to speak English or anything. I'll bet that green scanning beam was their way of locating the biggest computer."
"So once that guy's finished reading the hard drive," Gohan asked, stepping beside Krillin as he watched the creature's dark silhuette against the kaleidoscope of pictures, words and equations filling the computer screen, "he might learn know how to speak our language and try to talk to us?"
"Maybe," Piccolo answered softly, "but it's strange. The second creature doesn't seem to be concerned about the first one at all. It didn't check to see if the first one's alive and it doesn't even seem to be worried about Vegeta. Look at it, it's not even trying to protect itself."
"It just picked up right where the first one left off," Krillin thought aloud, "but I don't get it. If the ship sent down a second alien to finish the job, they must have known that something happened to the first one. So why wouldn't it try to protect itself or try to find out what happened?"
"Maybe they already know," Gohan shrugged.
The blurred screen suddenly went black and the gleaming wires slithered back out of the hole that they'd melted through the bottom corner of the computer screen. The tangled wires disappeared into the creature's cybernetic arm once more and it quickly turned around, seeming to notice its dead comrade for the first time. The group of fighters watched, even Vegeta ceasing his arguments to turn his attention to the mechanical alien, as it bent down on one knee to look over the other creature's body.
"Listen," Goku called out sheepishly, "I'm sorry about your friend. Vegeta just gets kinda carried away, but the rest of us are all really nice. If there's anything..."
The second creature suddenly reached down with its left hand and grabbed the dead cyborg's metallic eyepiece, quickly disconnecting the bulky device and roughly yanking it up from the corpse's head. Goku's apology faded into bewildered silence as all of them watched: the creature reached further down, the eyepiece now pressed tight against its palm, and methodically unhooked several wires from the body's chest, then grabbed a small circuitboard between its fingers and yanked it out of the lifeless alien.
The black cyborg lifted up from the body to stand upright. The transparent column of twisting green energy suddenly appeared around it once again, whipping around its metal body like a whirlwind. The creature quickly faded away like a ghost, and the glowing shaft of whirling green energy vanished. The body on the ground suddenly glowed green for an instant and then vanished, the metal exoskeleton and white chalky flesh disintegrating into a pile of gray ashes.
The aliens had vanished, one disappearing into a column of energy, another turned to dust.
"That was wierd," Goku finally said, shaking his head with confusion.
"Do you think they're mad at us," Gohan asked.
"I'm not sure it even noticed us," Krillin replied uncertainly.
The screen suddenly flickered on again, this time showing a black background and a set of green numbers in the center. The numbers constantly changed, and, after all the confusion of the past few minutes, it took Krillin a second to realize that the numbers were a clock counting down...
...0:15:29...0:15:28....0:15:27...0:15.26..0:15:25...
"It's a countdown for fifteen minutes," Bulma said aloud, then she shook her head quickly to regain her composure, "did those things set our computers to count down?"
"No, it's not our computer," Doctor Briefs suddenly remarked, and Krillin suddenly noticed him at the keyboard perched atop the large table in the middle of the room, "watch this."
He typed a few words into the keyboard and the computer screen suddenly switched to an image of a news report. The newscaster sat behind a powder-blue desk, a small nervous-looking man with black hair and a thin dark moustache, as a "live" icon flashed at the bottom left corner of the screen.
"We've just recieved word," the reporter said, "that the broadcast signal for CZN, the world's largest news channel, has been hijacked by the strange object now orbiting the Earth. The pirate signal seems to be showing a steady fifteen-minute countdown, and there appears to be no way to override or block the alien broadcast. We can only wait and see what will happen..."
"So all the alien did was set our computer to switch to CZN," Bulma nodded, "but why are they broadcasting a countdown? Are they planning on attacking us...?"
"I don't think so," Krillin answered doubtfully, "if they were going to attack us, why would they send us a fifteen-minute warning on global television?"
"That's it," Piccolo exclaimed, and everyone turned from the screen to look at him, "practically everyone owns a television set, and everyone can pick up CZN. They must planning on sending a message to the whole world, and the countdown's meant to make sure everyone's watching."
"It'll work," Doctor Briefs replied casually as the black cat on his shoulder mewed anxiously at the screen, "I can't imagine anyone who won't be watching to see what happens next."
"Alright," Bulma said firmly, and she looked straight at Vegeta, "it looks like we have a few minutes to spare, so now you can start telling us how you know these creatures."
* * *
"I first saw them about fifteen years ago," Vegeta answered after a long, brooding silence, leaning back against the varnished table and closing his eyes as he remembered them, "when Raditz, Nappa and I still fought for Frieza. Frieza sent us to conquer any planet that he wanted to add to his empire, whether it was because of their technology, or some resource he wanted, or some strategic position.
"We travelled in our pods for months between planets," Vegeta continued as everyone gradually began to pay attention to him, "and when we arrived we gave their leaders Frieza's terms for surrender. Most of the time they didn't believe us, so we'd use a few of their larger cities to show them what happens to those who refuse," he gave a small satisfied smirk at the memories of his conquests, "that usually did the trick, and if they still refused, it just meant all the more fun for us."
"One time we were sent to the planet Tapuen, to enslave its scientists for Frieza's research and development teams. They'd invented some new spaceship that'd impressed him, or something like that. We spent five months journeying to their world and we emerged on Tapuen ready for battle, our blood boiling after so much time in the pods. But somebody beat us there..."
"All the cities had been obliterated, scooped out of the ground like a giant claw had just grabbed them and pulled them off the planet. Every hint of technology had been stripped from the surface, the place was a desert. We didn't find a single living soul on the whole planet, and we didn't even find many bodies. But we did find a few bodies in some of the craters, where the cities used to be.
"Them."
Goku didn't need to ask who Vegeta meant by "them," not with the clenched hiss that he said it. The very thought of Vegeta travelling from world to world, killing so many people, made Goku a little sick, but, whether the proud saiyan prince admitted or not, he'd changed since then. He had originally come to destroy Earth, just like he had destroyed so many others, but had since become a father, married Bulma, even helped them in defending the Earth from Cell. Vegeta deserved a second chance as much as any villain and, despite his constant temper, Goku believed he had come a long way.
"Those black metal exoskeletons, those hoses and wires, those white faces with one eye covered by those cameras or whatever they are, I could never forget them. There weren't many of them, maybe five or six on the whole planet, but we tracked down each and every one of them. The bodies were still fresh, we knew that it couldn't have been more than a few days since those things had left."
"Wait a minute," Krillin interrupted, "why didn't you tell us about this when we saw their ship?"
"Because I've never SEEN their ship, baldy," Vegeta snapped, and then he closed his eyes once more, trying to focus on his story, "we searched the star system for some sign of their vessel. It took our pods months to travel between stars, so we knew they had to be somewhere close. But we never found any trace of their ship. They must have been hiding from us, behind some moon or asteroid!"
"Maybe," Bulma answered softly, her bright blue eyes crossed in deep thought, "or perhaps their ships use a different kind of propulsion, one that moves a lot faster than saiyan pods. If you arrived a few days after the attack, they might have already been long gone."
"Impossible," Vegeta growled with a short glance to Bulma, though he seemed to hold himself back from saying anything more, instead continuing his story, "we finally had to give up and return to Frieza's ship, to tell him that those thieves had stolen the planet we were meant to conquer."
"Frieza couldn't have been happy with that," Krillin said with a sly, faint smirk that Goku had seen countless times during their lifelong friendship. Krillin might not want to stand up to the saiyan prince, but he obviously liked the idea of Vegeta getting his comeuppance, even if by another villain.
"That's the worst part," Vegeta suddenly shouted, apparently swept up in the emotions of that day fifteen years ago, "we should've gone back and searched out those rats wherever they were hiding, fought and proved ourselves against them. But the moment we told Frieza what we'd found on Tapuen, he forbid us to go back to that system. He called every single ship in that area back and closed that entire sector of space to everyone in his empire, without even explaining himself!"
"It sounds like Frieza recognized them," Goku replied curiously.
"Frieza was a coward," Vegeta barked, his eyes clouded with rage, "and he forced the rest of us to share in his cowardice! We should have hunted them down, challenged them for denying us the battle we'd earned, killed them like true saiyans...but Frieza forced us to turn our tails between our legs and run from that whole sector! The saiyan prince, forced to run from some dead robots in a crater!"
"I don't know," Goku answered skeptically, "Frieza was a lot of things, but he wasn't really a coward."
Goku remembered his battle with the interstellar tyrant on the dying planet Namek, a battle that had turned hopelessly against Frieza when Goku turned into a super-saiyan. Frieza had continued to fight, though, despite Goku's attempts to show him mercy. Even in the last moment, with his legs cut off and his body kept alive only by the energy Goku had given him, Frieza had chosen to launch a final, hopeless attack, choosing death in battle over the prospect of living with defeat.
Frieza had been evil, sadistic, a cold-blooded monster with no remorse...but he was not a coward.
"But if Frieza was afraid of these guys," Krillin said hopefully, "maybe they're on our side!"
"Not necessarily," Piccolo replied grimly, "Frieza might've just been smart enough to stay out of their way."
"I was afraid you'd say something like that," Krillin answered nervously.
"Are you kidding," Vegeta scoffed, "they couldn't handle even the smallest attack! I could have killed one of those walking scrap metal heaps as a child!"
"He might've known something about them that we don't know," Piccolo countered, "that ship has a single power-level unlike anything we've ever felt. That has to mean something."
"Anybody else want some more tea or cookies or cupcakes," Mrs. Briefs suddenly asked as she walked into the lab, carrying a huge platter of cookies in both hands and setting them down on the table. Goku suddenly began grabbing handfuls of cookies and gulping them down.
"Yeah, thanks," Goku mumbled through a mouthful of cookies, his stomach still rumbling a little even as he finished off the plate of cookies, "but could you bring a few more plates, and maybe a couple of glasses of milk, and some tea...and, oh yeah, some egg-rolls..."
"It's almost done," Doctor Briefs called out from his chair in front of the screen, and everybody else turned around.
0:00:05...0:00:04...:0:00:03...0:00:02...0:00:01...
The screen suddenly switched to a view so surreal that it took Goku a few minutes to figure out what he was seeing. Steel girders and beams hung around the edges of the screen, along with platforms and catwalks filled with tiny people. He quickly realized that they weren't actually tiny, that they were just incredibly far away. Two sets of different levels of platforms and catwalks hung along the opposite sides of the screen, the distance between them probably miles. However, the center of the image was a huge white void, a pulsing glow of light that looked like the sun--except that, instead of a blinding glow, the light looked almost cold and empty. Was this, he wondered, what the inside of that ship looked like?
"People of Earth," a voice suddenly boomed through the speakers. It wasn't a single voice at all, but a huge chorus of voices all speaking at the same time, in perfect sync with each other. It seemed to emerge from the light itself, the glow shuddering slightly with each syllable. It suddenly occured to Goku that everybody else in the world was watching this exact same image: people sitting in their living rooms, others gathered around the display TV sets stacked in store windows, or looking up at the giant screens built atop the skyscrapers, all of them listening to these voices coming from the ship.
"We are the Borg," the echoing throng of voices all said in unison, "we have analyzed your offensive and defensive capabilities and found that your society will be unable to withstand us. If you attempt to resist us, you will be destroyed."
The image suddenly flashed again and he found himself look at an anchorman's desk, where a middle-aged man and blonde-haired woman suddenly looked up in surprise, then swung their swivel-chairs back toward the television cameras and began to quickly talk to the audience.
"This is CZN," the male announcer said, still fidgetting with his tie "and it seems that the pirate broadcast signal from the alien ship has ended. We're back on the air and..."
"What does that mean," Krillin asked, rubbing the back of his neck, "what is 'the Borg'?"
"Well," Bulma answered, "it's them, obviously! But what was up with that voice?"
"They seemed to be speaking all at once," Goku suggested, "like a choir..."
"Or perhaps their minds were thinking all at once," Piccolo said, "as a single mind."
"Whatever it was," Vegeta growled impatiently, "they're obviously planning on attacking!"
"Hey guys," Gohan called out nervously as he nodded toward the wall-mounted computer screen, "you'd better take a look at this..."
Goku looked back at the television image and saw that it had changed again; the CZN logo was still at the bottom of the screen, along with the word "live image," but the camera now showed a large city, the buildings silent and the streets deserted. His heart suddenly wrenched as he saw a black metal figure step into the camera's view. The creature suddenly turned around to advance toward the camera and the image quickly switched to another view high above the city, where he could now make out swarms of black figures walking slowly about the streets, spreading out from the city square.
"This is helicoptor footage," a newscaster's voice said, "over uptown South Capitol, where hordes of robotic creatures have suddenly appeared out of nowhere. They're attacking anyone on the streets and have virtually taken control of the central city...the police have been completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of invaders and the federal government is reportedly worried about the consequences of trying to launch a military attack against the creatures in a populated urban area..."
"So much for avoiding a fight," Goku sighed, then he closed his eyes for a second, focusing on the strange echoing ki of the "Borg" and finding a new source on Earth, in the South Capitol. He nodded to himself, then held out his right arm to the rest of the fighters.
"We're going to South Capitol," he said quickly, "everybody who's coming, grab on."
"Instant transmission," Krillin nodded with a smile as he grabbed Goku's forearm with one hand, "how did we ever manage to get by without it?"
Gohan quickly grabbed onto Krillin's shoulder with his left hand and Piccolo took hold of Gohan's right elbow. Vegeta looked silently back and forth at the line of fighters and then, with a resigned sigh, walked to the back of the group and roughly grabbed the right side of Piccolo's cape in his fist.
"I'm ready, dad," Gohan called out.
"Let's go, Goku," Piccolo nodded.
"How about you, Vegeta," Goku called out to the back of the group, "are you on?"
"Just get it over with."
"Okay," Goku answered, "everybody hold on tight!"
"Good luck," Bulma waved with an encouraging, but slightly nervous, smile.
"Thanks," Goku replied, and he lifted his right hand up to the middle of his forehead. He pressed his first two fingers to his temple and crossed his eyes for a moment, trying to sense the alien ki in South Capitol again--and then his image suddenly flickered and vanished. The four other fighters all quickly vanished alongside him, leaving Bulma and her father alone in the laboratory.