Well…ff.net won't let me in, and I really want to post the chapter that comes before this. I'm really bored, so I guess I'll go ahead and type up this one and submit them both together when the stupid page starts showing up again. (Sigh) Well, at least you aren't left a long time with that last cliffhanger.

He found her where she had been before; sitting on a white column that had fallen horizontal, staring at the ground. She kept drifting between solid and nearly invisible and then back again. Vegeta's joy at seeing her again shrank to a cold worry when she didn't look up to greet him.

"Usagi? Onna, what it is? You're barely here."

"They drugged me." Her voice was quiet, hollow. "I'm only half asleep." Tears filled her unseeing eyes and spilled down her cheeks as she continued to stare blankly out in front of her. "I can still feel, a little. And hear…"

Vegeta grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to look up at him. "Usagi!"

She blinked, seeming to come into herself. Recognition filled her eyes, along with more tears. "Oh Vegeta!" She was in his arms, crying against his chest. He could only try to hold on while she slipped from solid to mist and back again. "I've done a horrible thing!" She cried. "I was pregnant and I didn't tell you and now it's gone! It's just gone!"

His heart sank at her hopeless wail. Usagi was never hopeless, never let herself be beaten. He didn't want to ask, he already knew the answer with a certainty that chilled him, but he asked anyway. "What's gone?"

"They took it. They killed it, Vegeta! That's what they're doing right now, and I can't stop them! I can't! They're already done, it was so quick, but I couldn't fight and it was just too fast and it's gone!" She was sobbing uncontrollably and raving like a mad woman, words barely understandable, but Vegeta knew.

A child of his, killed by that monster…

"That isn't your fault." He assured her, but she heard the anger in his voice and mistook it, he knew, for anger at her. He forced his voice to gentle. "Onna, listen to me-"

She gasped suddenly, pulling away. She stared at something he couldn't see. "How?" She whispered, voice shaking in fear.

"What is it?"

Her voice had once more taken on the hollow, distracted tone. "My body transformed." Eyes widening in fear, she turned back to Vegeta, grabbed the collar of his shirt. "Vegeta! The darkness!"

"Darkness?"

She was panting, staring around her as if ghosts chased her. "I can't get away, there's no anchor this time."

"Anchor?"

"It won't be me anymore. You can't come here again!" She pushed him away violently, only succeeding because he was caught unaware. "Go! You have to go!"

"Usagi-"

"I'm sorry for what It does. It won't be me. I love you. I always love you, don't forget, but kill It. Promise you'll kill It." And then she was gone. Vegeta stared all around him, but there was no sign of his mate anywhere. The landscape he had come to view as a paradise retreat where her could be with his mate now seemed dark and cold.

For the first time in a long time, Vegeta, the mighty Prince of all Saiyans, felt truly afraid.

"But none of that makes any sense!"

"I know that, you imbecile, she's the one who said it, not me!"

Ami frowned, offended both by his tone of voice and by being called an imbecile. The last thing she wanted was to deal with the raging, frightening man who had come barging into the senshi's temple meeting, but the others had shoved him on her and left. "The fact hat you have been meeting in the world of dreams is strange enough, however, Usagi's state of mind perplexes me even more. It is only natural that she would be upset after loosing an unborn child, however this talk of an "it" is a complete enigma. Why would she be hallucinating? Perhaps the medication they used to put her under? But that raises another question, why drug her in the first place?"

"So she wouldn't fight!" He snapped.

"Usagi? Fight?"

"She would have never allowed them to take her child, she would have fought them to the death and then beyond." Vegeta sat down, hiding his face in his hands. For the first time Ami realized that he was in pain. Could it be that the monster Usagi had chosen to wed actually loved her in return?

"Still, I think there must be another reason." She insisted, going back to the notes she had taken of Vegeta's retelling of the dream. "Perhaps…"

"What? Perhaps what?"

"There are some who believe that a person is more susceptible to suggestion when he or she is sleeping, most successfully when that person is in the middle of the REM cycle." Ami shuddered, she had seen how much power Usagi now possessed, and it seemed endless. "It is possible that-"

"Don't you dare even suggest it."

"Why couldn't they convince her to give her power up to some other warrior? It is conceivable. She may be lying dead, drained of all energy she possesses. That could be why she said that this "it" wouldn't be her."

"I would know if she were dead." He snarled, thumping his chest right over his heart. "She's still there, I just can't get to her. I just don't know why the wall grew higher after I woke up…"

"Vegeta-san, why don't you go home, eat some food, get some real sleep. We senshi will take care of our enemies, we've been doing it for a long time." She suggested soothingly.

"Can't. The brat would know something was wrong. Stupid boy knows me too well."

"Trunks?"

"Hn."

"Well, that's beside the point. Would Usagi really want you leaving the boys all alone at a time like this?"

"I don't do what she tells me to, I do what I want!"

Ami sighed, and excused herself, turning away to answer her communicator. After a brief conversation with Hotaru, she turned back. "I must leave."

"I'm going with you." He decided, standing. "I'm through with sitting out while you amateurs screw everything up. I want my mate back."

Vegeta touched down in front of the library, the sight of the latest youma attack, and set Mercury none too gently down beside him. He was fed up with the senshi pretending to know what they were doing when they were just making everything worse. He would take control now, Usagi would soon be back where she belonged – in his arms and helping him raise the boys to be strong warriors any Saiyan could be proud of.

There were three monsters this time, an oddity. As Vegeta understood it, usually there was only one. The senshi were having problems dealing with splitting up their attacks between the monsters and weren't having the impact they had wanted.

"Deep Submerge!"

Vegeta scowled as he watched the so-called battle with a critical eye. They should be embarrassed for such a pathetic display, really. No wonder they had been too afraid of loosing to go after Usagi the first time.

He suddenly remembered what she had told him. In fight where magic was going up against chi, whoever struck first won. She had also said that the monsters fed off energy. But it was always possible to eat too much, wasn't it? Yes, hadn't Kakarrot once done something similar? He hated to be copying his greatest rival, but there was no one here who would know that's what he was doing. None of these things could be anywhere near as strong as one of Babadi's henchmen.

Smirking, Vegeta brought his power up to its highest level.

"Tru-chan?"

"Hush, Veggie. Dad just went Super Saiyan 2."

"Supah Sayah?"

Trunks stared out the window, frowning. "Something must be wrong." He decided finally. He stood and pried the wooden building blocks they'd been playing with out of his brother's small hands, picking him up. "Come on, we gotta' go see what it is."

"Fly! Fly!" Veggie laughed.

Vegeta smirked in satisfaction as the third and final kedamono exploded from too much energy, almost preening under the gaping stares of the senshi. It sure hadn't taken very much energy to blow the things up, and, interestingly enough, he had gotten it all back once they were dead.

"I thought these things were supposed to be a challenge." He sneered arrogantly.

"I tried to allow you to meet you ends in a less humiliating way, but since you insist on stubbornly staying alive, I guess I'll have to take matters into my own hands." A silky voice purred. From the shadows stepped a small woman, her skin ghost pale, lips painted black. Her eyes were pupiless orbs of ruby, and long midnight hair cascaded to the ground. She wore a long black dress, skintight, low cut, with slits clean up each thigh. From her back arched wings like a bat or a dragon might have.

Vegeta felt dread as his mind instinctively reached for hers.

"Usagi?"