Even within a room full of lit candles, when two of the brightest candles diminish, the room becomes less bright.

A cowardly assassin had stabbed Vegeta in the back. At the same time, Goku fell face first into his rice.

Anyone on the planet that could sense ki immediately knew that something was seriously wrong with the King and the one that called himself Goku.

Roger immediately sensed the King's ki falter, then wane.

Roger immediately stood up, shock written across his face. "Gentlemen, due to circumstances beyond my control, I must ask that this meeting be postponed. An emergency situation has come up."

Roger looked at Bulma's face whose shock was also apparent. Surely she had felt what Roger felt through her bond with her mate.

Roger wasted no more time and grasped Bulma's shoulder and teleported to Vegeta's side.

The scene that greeted them there was nothing less than gruesome. Vegeta lay face down in a pool of his own blood with a dagger protruding from his back.

"Vegeta!" Bulma exclaimed as she flew to his side.

Roger immediately cast out his ki in to see if the assailant was still in the room. He didn't sense anyone close enough to have stabbed Vegeta, then gotten away on foot.

Suddenly Gerald and Jessica materialized in front of him.

Gerald was now an 11 year-old pre-adolescent and Jessica had become a very beautiful 17 year-old.

"Don't be fooled Uncle Roger. He is still in this room. He's wearing some sort of cloaking device and a ki suppressor." Jessica communicated telepathically. "He wasn't expecting anyone to arrive so soon."

Roger suppressed his own ki and concentrated on his hearing. "Yes! There he is! I can hear the bastard breathing. He's all the way across the room."

Roger issued some quick mental instructions and he positioned himself for a ki shot. He didn't want to kill him, not yet, just stun him.

Roger fired a quick beam of ki and hit his intended target. Immediately the cloaking device failed and revealed the assassin. Incredibly he turned out to be Saiyan!

"Who are you and why the hell did you try to kill the King?" Roger yelled in the stunned man's face.

"Heh! I'll never tell you a thing!" The man spit back at Roger.

Bulma had successfully removed the dagger and had stemmed the flow of blood, but King Vegeta was in bad shape.

"Roger! We must get Vegeta to my lab! We have to get him to a rejuvenation tank!" Bulma sounded desperate.

Roger grabbed the assassin and gave him a quick punch to the jaw. "There, that should keep you out of our hair for a while. Gerald, keep an eye on him."

"Will do father." Gerald responded.

Roger gently picked the King up and concentrated in an effort to teleport to the lab, but he couldn't find anyone's ki near the facility. He finally had to settle for the front door of the palace.

Roger, Bulma, and the prone King Vegeta materialized in front of the Captain of the Guard at the front doors.

"W-What happened?" The Captain said.

"There has been an assassination attempt on the king, we must get him to my lab immediately. The assassin is in the King's exercise area, please arrest him immediately!" Roger exclaimed as he and Bulma took to the air with Vegeta.

The almost three minutes it took them to get to the medical wing of Bulma's lab seemed like days. Once there Bulma took a quick blood sample, and filled the rejuvenation tank with a Saiyan DNA solution after Roger put the king in and fastened his air mask.

"What now?" Roger asked.

"Now we wait." Bulma responded.

Bulma worriedly looked at Vegeta's vitals on the monitor. "This doesn't look good at all." She was to the point of tears.

Bulma decided to analyze the blood sample she took from Vegeta. As she turned she noticed Roger's brow was furrowed in concentration.

"What is it?" Bulma asked.

"I've lost Goku's ki as well." Roger said.

"What do you mean, lost it?" Bulma looked anxious.

"You've never learned to sense ki have you?" Roger asked.

"No, I've been pretty busy getting the infrastructure of this planet to some level of normalcy, I really haven't had time to train!" Bulma snapped.

"Well, if you could, then you would notice that there are several kis on the planet that, well they just stand out. Vegeta's is one, several of those that made Super Saiyan Five, Gerald's because of the mystic qualities, mine and Yambia's, Gohan's, and Goku's. You really don't think of it, it's just sort of the background noise of the planet, you get used to it. But now that it's gone, it's like someone shut down the brightest star in the sky or something." Roger tried to explain.

"You think something is wrong with Goku?" Bulma sounded worried.

"I think so. I've just located his ki, and it's very low. It's the exact same level as Vegeta's" Roger said. "I'm going to check on him."

Roger materialized at Goku's side. Chi-Chi was shaking him trying to wake her up.

"What happened?" Roger asked concerned.

"I don't know! All of a sudden he just screamed and keeled over. It looked like he was trying to grab something on his back!" Chi-Chi wailed.

"Where at on his back?" Roger asked.

"About there." Chi-Chi said in tears.

"Right were Vegeta was stabbed." Roger thought to himself.

"We'd better get him to Bulma. She may know what to do." Roger smiled reassuringly at Chi-Chi.

Roger teleported back to Bulma's lab with Goku and Chi-Chi in tow. He materialized to find Bulma cussing.

"Damned it!" She screamed.

"What's wrong?" Roger asked.

"The blade was poisoned!" Bulma wailed. "Even if he is healed in the Rejuvenation Tank the poison will still kill him!"

"Isn't there an antidote?" Roger continued.

"I don't know, I've never seen anything like this before!" Bulma seemed frustrated. "If it wasn't for his Saiyan stamina, he'd be dead already."

"Well, I got Goku here who seems to be suffering from the same symptoms as Vegeta." Roger said.

Bulma quickly had Goku placed on an examining table and began to look for anything that would cause his current condition.

"I don't get it." Bulma finally said. "Goku is physically unharmed but he seems to be exhibiting the same symptoms from the stab wound and poison as Vegeta."

"I'm going to get a real Saiyan." Roger smiled. "Someone who might be able to shed some light on some things."

"Okay, I guess I'll put Goku in the other Rejuvenation Tank. I don't think it will do any good, but it couldn't hurt to try." Bulma sighed.

Roger teleported out and in a few minutes returned with Bardock and Turles.

Bardock took one look at the two wounded Saiyans and closed his eyes. "I've never seen a warrior's bond this strong before."

"Neither have I." Turles said with no small amount of amazement in his voice.

"Warrior's bond?" Bulma said.

"Yes, you see a Saiyan can share any number of different types of bonds. The bond between mates, natural bonds that form between twins, bonds between close friends, and then there is the warrior bond. It's a bond that forms between to warriors that have fought side-by-side for a long time. Years ago, they would regularly rotate warrior team members to try and prevent these bonds. When one member of the bond was hurt or killed, the other would be ill for weeks, sometimes months before they were fit for duty again. But if I read these gauges right, Kakkarot is dying with King Vegeta." Bardock said.

Roger was listening, but also examining the dagger that the assassin used. It wasn't a simple dagger, but a highly ornate item with a jeweled hilt and a poison container. Obviously a ritual weapon of some sort.

"What do you know about this?" Roger asked.

Bardock looked at it and drew a blank, but Turles's eyes widened the second he looked at it.

"Eshosh S'Krith!" Turles exclaimed.

"Come again?" Roger asked curious.

"Well, as you may or may not know, my past is somewhat, well, less seemly than my brother Bardock. I fell in with an ever eviler crowed than my brother, if you can imagine." Terles said.

"More evil than Frieza and his teams that purged planets?" Roger thought.

"In my youth I got an invitation to join the Eshosh S'Krith. They were, or perhaps still are, a group of hired assassins that were, in those days, bent on destroying Frieza in the name of Saiyan dominance. It was their belief that the Saiyan race was the rightful rulers of the universe." Turles explained. "In fact, they had contract out on King Vegeta for capitulating with Frieza, and turning over the rightful heir, Prince Vegeta, over to the tyrant. Before they were able to act on it, Frieza blew up the planet."

"You know, I'd have thought that their time in hell would have taught them some manners." Roger said.

"I think it's time we question the prisoner." Bardock stated flatly.

"Ok, I'll take you to him." Roger said. With that, all three men disappeared.

They appeared before the Captain of the guard. Beyond him was a small, dank cell with a naked Saiyan pacing back and forth.

"For crying out loud! Why is this man naked?" Roger asked.

"When we got to him he was still unconscious so we searched him and found several items that he could use commit suicide." The captain said pointing to a nearby table.

Roger looked and seen several capsules that could be poison, a small firearm of some sort, and a couple other smaller daggers.

"It would be typical for a member of the Eshosh S'Krith to end their own lives to avoid capture. Stunning him was a stroke of luck." Turles said.

At the mention of the name of his guild, the assassin looked suprised.

"You know of us?" The assassin asked.

"I recognized the ornamentation of the blade you used. Tell me, is Potock still a member?" Turles asked.

"I'm not telling you a damned thing." The assassin crossed his arms in defiance, but Turles noticed a flicker of recognition at the mention of Potock.

"Well, I would hate to resort to more primitive means of persuasion. Especially in the light of our new constitution and your right to a fair trial and everything, but you just tried to assassinate the king. I don't think that anyone would object if we got the answers the old fashioned way. But first let me make a few guesses. You tell me if I'm close." Turles said. "Let's see, King Vegeta had abandoned Saiyan domination of the universe to live in peace so you guys tried to assassinate him right?"

"Tried? He's still alive?" The man asked

"Now, now, you answer my question first." Turles said.

"Sure, no harm in that question I suppose. The answer would be partly. We don't approve of what King Vegeta has done, but we aren't as political as we once were." The assassin said.

"I see, so you were hired?" Turles said.

"Of course. Can't operate a good assassin's guild without money." The assassin smiled.

Roger kept thinking that he should have informed the prisoner of his rights, or something, before the questioning began, but he was too concerned about finding out what kind of poison they used.

"Tell me, is there an antidote for the poison in that knife?" Roger blurted out.

"I don't know. Those that hired us supplied the poison. Said it would kill Vegeta almost immediately. I guess they screwed up." The assassin said.

"Who hired you?" Turles said.

"Don't know that either. The negotiations and money handling was through a 3rd party." The assassin answered.

"Captain, you may either release the prisoner, or give him back his poison capsules. Either way, the man will be dead in a short while." Turles said.

"Wait! You didn't answer my question!" The assassin yelled after them.

Turles ignored him.

"What? Let him go? No! We can't do that!" Roger said.

"The Eshosh S'Krith will naturally consider the assassination attempt a failure since Vegeta is still alive, albeit barely, and you got captured. They will find a way to kill him. If he is here, they will come here to kill him placing everyone that happens to witness the murder in danger. The Eshosh S'Krith leaves no witnesses. We either let him go and let his partners do their job, or let him take his pills. Either way, we've already gotten as much information as we are going to get from him."

Bardock stepped forward. "As the head of the house of Bardock, I take full responsibility. Give the man his pills captain"

"Yes sir." The Captain complied.

"It is a far easier death than he deserves, and far easier than he would get from his people." Turles smirked.

Roger shook his head mournfully.

"What's wrong Roger?" Bardock said.

"We've still got a rung or two in the social ladder to climb, don't we?" Roger said.

"That we do." Bardock agreed. "This is not a normal circumstance however. Think about this, two of our strongest, and most experienced fighters are

"So what now?" Roger asked.

"We see if the queen has found anything out about that poison." Turles said.

"Captain, also call out anyone you need and trust to close off and secure the queen's medical labs. I want a 24/7 tight as a drum security force there until further notice. " Bardock ordered.

"Right away sir!" The captain answered.

Roger, Bardock, and Turles materialize a few feet in front of Bulma and the two operating Rejuvenation Tanks.

"Any new information Bulma?" Roger asked.

"On the poison? No, it has so far defied analysis. But look at these ki indicators." Bulma motioned to some gauges on a panel that swiveled out from Goku's and Vegeta's rejuvenation tank.

Bardock studied the readings. "It looks like Goku's ki is keeping King Vegeta alive."

"Exactly! But if this continues, we're going to loose both of them." Bulma's face was streaked with tears.

Turles suddenly turned on his heel and went to leave.

"Where are you going brother?" Bardock asked.

"To visit an old friend." Turles stated flatly.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Both Kirillin and Gohan felt the disappearance of Vegeta's and Goku's ki and after leaving a note on the door of the school that classes were cancelled that day, they flew to Goku's house only to find it abandoned.

"Where do you think they are?" Kirillin said.

"I don't know, but our best bet is to find Bulma." Gohan sighed.

"That's quite a flight." Kirillin also sighed.

"Yeah, damned it that I never learned the instant transmission technique. I relied on Dad if we needed to go that far." Gohan said. "Oh well, nothing getting done just standing I guess.

Gohan and Kirillin took to the air.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Gerald and Jessica had stared exploring the palace a bit after the Captain of the Guard came and took the assassin away. All and all it was quite spartan in appearance, very few paintings or brick-a-brack to speak of. They were both getting a bit bored.

Gerald decided that they should go find Roger but Jessica thought that they should go find Raditz and tell him what had happened. Of course, Jessica won.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Raditz was shocked at the news about Vegeta. He had just woke up and didn't sense Vegeta's ki plummet earlier. Then it also dawned on him that he could not feel his brother's ki either. Raditz decided to go see Bulma. It was then that Raditz noticed Gohan and Kirillin's ki heading towards the palace.

"Gerald do you feel Kirillin's and Gohan's ki approaching?" Raditz asked.

"Of course!" Gerald said.

"Go and get them and take them to Bulma, okay?" Raditz asked.

"No problem Unk Raditz." Gerald said and disappeared.

"C'mon everyone. The lab is only a few minutes from here, we can fly." Raditz said as he took to the sky.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Gohan and Kirillin were flying as fast as they could without ripping the atmosphere off the planet, at this rate they would arrive at the palace within the hour.

Gerald appeared above them and suppressed his ki. Gerald and Jessica both attended Gohan's school. Gerald came in for the attack. Just as Gerald closed in, Gohan spun and kicked the boy in the butt.

"Ouch! Master Gohan!" The boy wailed after he stopped his forward momentum. "No fair!"

"Hehehe... In your excitement you didn't suppress your ki far enough." Gohan chided. "I could sense you a mile away. Why are you here any ways?"

"Raditz sent me to get you. He says that it's important." Gerald said. "Vegeta's been hurt."

"Ok, let's go!" Gohan and Kirillin made contact with Gerald and all three disappeared.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The back streets of the city had not been improved much. Although there was far less poverty, it still existed. Much of the old slave ghettos had been torn down for new development over the years, but a small section still existed. It was here that Turles hoped to find his quarry. A man with a shady reputation that has not been changed much from his stay in hell. "There he is, I recognize the ki." Turles muttered to himself. It had been a long time since Turles was forced to associate with such filth, and he didn't miss it at all. But the situation being what it was, he had no choice. He would find the man and, if necessary, beat the information he wanted out of him.

"Roger was right, we still have some rungs to climb." Turles thought to himself. "But I won't let my king and my nephew die if I can help it!"

A shadowy figure walked the back allies headed for home. Suddenly he is confronted by a large man clocked in shadow.

"Hello Potock, long time no see." Turles stated flatly.

"Who is it?" Potock reached for something under his cloak.

"I'm hurt Potock, surely you remember your old friend Turles, don't you?" Turles said with a sneer.

"Turles! What the hell do you want?" Potock stammered.

"I want to know about the guild. The Eshosh S'Krith." Turles said.

"What? They've been disbanded since the planet was blown up. What makes you think I know anything about them." Potock demanded.

"Perhaps you can explain this then." Turles took out the dagger and brandished it toward Potock.

"Where did you find that?" Potock looked at the weapon.

"Embedded in a friend of mine." Turles said.

"Look Turles, if the Eshosh S'Krith has come back, surely you don't think I..." Potock started.

"I don't know what to think, that's why I'm here asking you questions." Turles said. "Now, I want you to tell me what you know, and don't lie to me or I will give you a world of pain."

Potock took a second to judge his chances of defeating Turles, discarded the idea then judged his chance of escape and also discarded the idea.

"Okay, okay then. I don't know much, especially about the reformed guild. But if anyone would have reformed it, it was Caroot." Potock thought for a few minutes. "Back in the day, Caroot was the most militant of the guild members. Even in hell, he wanted to overthrow King Vegeta and take over that level of hell. As we were leaving, he almost stayed just to spite the king but decided to come out at the last minute. I would be willing to bet that if you find Caroot, you will find the guild."

"Just where might one find Caroot?" Turles asked.

"I don't know. But I do know you won't find him here. The Ghetto wasn't Caroot's style." Potock said.

"You know, If I find out you're lying to me, I will be back." Turles warned.

"I understand. Find Caroot. If the Guild does exist, he will know about it, or probably leading it." Potock assured.

Turles took to the sky.