I cannot appologize for the two month wait between last part and this part. I needed a vacation, and I got one. At first, I was cram reviewing my German, and then for two weeks (winter vacation) I was IN Germany, living with a German family who didn't speak much English, so I had to keep myself German-oriented (thus, I couldn't exactly spend time writing a fanfic in English!) And then, I admit, I was just lacking the ambition to write for a while. Reviews were lousy ("ur fic is gudwrite mor soon plz an email me nex time u update"). So I wasn't exactly sitting on a raging volcano.
I think I'm out of the deep blue for now, at least, though there's no real telling...
Also, for some odd-ass reason, ffn refuses to recognize when I use italics or bold fonts, so all my emphasises and inner reflections are sort of fucked up. It would almost be better if you read them at my web page, where they're in their true form.
Contradicting Mission
Part 35
Though he almost knew the halls of the Tahch-jin fortress by heart, Joru Le'Armont felt completely lost.
His escorts were surely all dead, though he did not know. After they had been overswept by the strange Aeesu-jins, all of which wore gold sashes across their chests, Joru's stomach for courage shrank and twisted and he did what would surely shame his entire family. He ran for his life, blindly and without thought, leaving his escorts to fight and die as fate so took it. And without consulting rational thought, he ran to a place he felt safe.
He'd run to Henning's room.
Sweat slicked and feeling as though he were going to vomit, he stumbled into the bathroom and washed his palms and forehead and neck in his brother's sink. Toweling off his face in the mirror, he looked into his own eyes, and tried to look for something there besides cowardice. Shame shifted to irritation with himself. Which, in turn, shifted to anger at the situation in general.
And then his tiny sense of courage began to regrow, like a sprout, and he felt an urge to get out there and do something to make a difference, though he did not know how or why or for whom. He just knew he couldn't hid in his sibling's room, curling up in the corner as he was literally tempted to do and smooth out the few stray strands of fur left on the backs of his hands and just pretend that everything was okay.
His head was growing hot and humid under his hat, and he removed it, flinging it to his brother's bed, to run his fingers through the streak of perspiration-damp blue hair that ran like a crest over the top of his head. He shook out his arms, removed his outer cape and robe, down to an easier, less cumbersome garb.
Then he went looking for a weapon.
It was in behind Hennings bed-side desk that Joru found his brother's Chah't scepter. He despised the thing, knowing that an uncountable number of Henning's victims had suffered its touch.
But he needed it. So he took it up, feeling through his sensitive fingers the pain and fear that had come from those it kissed, and, even more despicable, the amusement and joy that Henning had felt as he used it.
Joru thumbed it on, every hair on his body standing up for half a second as the tool hummed to life.
And, armed, he ventured out again, though he did not know for what destination.
The burning that grazed Gohan's arm was probably chi. It probably hurt, too, were he to bother feeling it. He was also pretty sure that when his back crashed down against the floor, it was because a three-toed foot had slammed full-tilt into his face. It probably hurt, too. Were he in a different mind, he might even be rolling on the ground to put the fire lighting up across his suit out.
But in all truth, Gohan really didn't care at the moment.
He had long-since passed being merely 'tired' of being pushed around.
He was, if one would excuse the phrase, fighting mad.
He hadn't been able to run far from the pursuing Aeesu-jin party before being overtaken, though certainly not from lack of his own speed. Rather, the Aeesu-jin had simply more experience in running the tunnels of the underground. They'd branched off, split up, then circled in upon him like a pack of hunting wolves. Attacked from all sides, the option of flight erased, a queer sense of panic overcome him, sending him into the state of an animal that, when cornered, fights with the ferocity of the very devil.
As sick as it was, he almost was glad to be fighting people weaker than himself. Bojack these assailants were not. Even as they struck him, they fell to his feet from his blows. His two small boy-feet, and his two small boy-fists and his flying knees and his bony elbows and his rampant chi. They were lethal. Desperation gave him power, and his peculiar fighting mood loaned him the ambition to dish out more than he would have were he in a quieter or more melancholy mood.
He was into it. He felt it in him. The burning. The feral, reptilian thrill of the fight. He needed this. He liked this.
And just see who tries to take it from him.
His speed and size were his greatest advantages.
His lithe body -- far too lean than what would be healthy for either a human or Saiya-jin of his age -- all but slipped around the flying, dangerous limbs that sought to strike him, and it was proving that more often the Aeesu-jin ended up harming one another far more than the boy, enraging them into less coordinated attacks on both Gohan and one another. There just wasn't enough room in those narrow halls to hold everyone.
The only real individual that could really move through the shifting, moving, narrow spaces between the bodies was Gohan, on account for his size.
And he exploited it. Twisting his limber little form through the crooks of armpits, to slither between ankles, to duck under tails; half the time he wasn't aware which way was up or down, or if he was flying or jumping or ricocheting or some queer mix of them all.
It like therapy. All his anxiety, all his hatred and fear went into his fighting. He was an artist of combat, inspired by enflaming passion, delivering his attacks without hesitation or second thought as, yes, his would-be attackers perished in oft times messy impacts or bursts of chi.
It wasn't that he wasn't getting injured himself. He just was or chose to be oblivious to it. He didn't acknowledge it when an Aeesu-jin, trying to jerk him off balance, tore off his entire right sleeve, nor did he care to notice when a long, bloody whip-mark tore through his body suit and across his abdomen. He was burned in more than once place, bloodied, with both his and his attacker's blood, his suit almost stained to the point that its original color was lost.
And then two things happened at nearly the exact same time that threw the whole fight off.
From one end of the hall, Heng suddenly appeared, and stood back for but a moment and watched the fray, as one would watch a fight among wild dogs. Watching and waiting for an opening through which he could reach through with his long tail and smite the Saiya-jin boy. But then he looked past them, his face darkening with an even deeper hatred.
For the second thing then occurred.
On the opposite side of the fray as where Heng stood, Bojack appeared, Freeza and Garlic at his heels.
Brooding Biraju-jin eyes met flaming Aeesu-jin eyes. An unspoken message passed between them, We settle this now. Indeed. And a new fray erupted that literally blew the other away.
Bojack met Heng midway, right above the very place Gohan and his attackers stood, and for a split second, the world seemed to freeze as the two's chi met.
And then they merged, and an explosion rocked the Underground down to the depths of the Lower Class.
A loud battle was also waging across and lower in the fortress, near the entrance of the Tahch-jin's domain. There, Henning had just entered, backed up by nearly his entire army, with the rest coming as rapidly as possible.
Henning could not wait for his men to secure the compound. Everything was falling apart about him, including the ceiling, of which chunks were continually falling onto his hat; damage, unbeknownst to him, caused by the two-man war between Bojack and Heng some seven stories up.
Leaving his men to fend for themselves, Henning slipped around the battle, pressing his tall figure into the shadows, and journeyed on ahead, eyes ever watchful for danger, or more importantly, for perhaps the flash of a furry brown tail, or a glimpse of dark hair.
He kept his hat pulled low over his eyes.
Sunow threw a stack of unused papers across the room, some of which hit the wall, though most slipped into the air and flew about the room in a busy rustle of movement. He didn't feel better for it.
He had no clue what he was doing.
Again he hunched over the computer, and began his dogged attempts to break through the security of the Tahch-jin computer, but yet again he ran into one wall after another, tearing down each barrier so messily that four new ones cropped up to continue hindering him. He tried phony passwords, but as each failed, figured that they must either be random codes or in the Tahch-go language.
Either way, they were impossibly to guess.
The only real break through he'd had was finding where the program Gohan had told him of was. And this problem was solved quite by luck when, in sheer frustration, the Aeesu-jin father had typed into the password slot "Gohan, where are you?!" and it turned out to be, indeed, the password (which, he assumed, was Henning's personal code) and though after that he tried hundreds of variations, and many uses of Son Gohan's name, they all must have been slightly off, for they could not break through.
Sunow paused for a moment and leaned back away from the console, wiping the back of his wrist over his face to rid it of the sweat. He was terrified for himself, yes, but even stronger was his concern for the Saiya-jin boy, of whose fight he heard quite clearly through the spiffy new communicators. It did little to aid his ill mood. Hearing the raw cries of battle through one ear, and through the other the infinitely patient, expectant hum of the computer, he felt as though half his head was being torn asunder, while the other was slowly melting.
His concentration was shot. He was infuriated and worried and felt cornered and small and helpless and, oddly, a little bored in front of this task.
His back hurt from hunching over the buttons for so long.
He was no hacker.
But still his fingers continued working away, though they knew not what they were doing.
Heng had a slight size advantage. Bojack, not small on any standards or life, had never battled someone as large as the Aeesu-jin dictator. It was something new to him, one of the few new things he'd come across for quite a few years (except, of coarse, for the particular boy who had the ability to alter his hair color and power in mere seconds...)
But it was only size. Of the other sparse advantages the Aeesu-jin had, were only his tough old body's ability to withstand even the Biraju-jin's mighty impacts, and his rampant inner fire to not lose to this foe.
Bojack had everything else. Power, speed, agility; and unlike Heng, who had remained in his thrown for years rarely training, he was at his body's peak capacity.
And he, also, harbored the stubborn refusal to relinquish victory.
So they rage, and they battled, any obstacle appearing in their way instantly getting obliterated into fine dust.
Gohan decided this was his time to slip out. The raging chi was battering to his mind, still partially on Saiya-jin fighting-mode, though already it was seeping back to his more human side that insisted he preserve himself, elbowing past the Aeesu-jin that had so few minutes ago been zealously attacking him (now standing in silence as they watched, uncomprehending, the fight between their lord and the mighty blue alien). They didn't try to stop him.
As he began to remove himself from the scene, though, he paused to look back a moment, his eyes the only in the room save the battalions themselves that actually saw all the details of the battle. This was a battle to the death, there was no doubt. And Heng had more power than any Aeesu-jin Gohan had ever come across before.
What if Bojack was killed?
Then Cell would -- shut the hell up. The unfriendly voice. Just shut up and stop thinking and stop thinking until this is over, you moron! And with this wash of inner words came the reason; there was nothing he could do as he was. His only hope of stopping this, of stopping everything, of ever finishing this and getting home and ever being happy again lay in another direction.
Be it from injuries or severe emotional stress or confusion or sickness of heart or body: he wanted to vomit. His guts were churning fitfully, his mouth tasted like bile. He was so hungry. So tired, and, wait, was that pain on his body? He'd only now begun to feel it, the burned and blackened skin, the slick, sticky red slipping from under his nostrils. He felt like he was shriveling, drying up; his flesh felt as though it were flaking off, his stomach as though it would implode, vanishing inwards until there was nothing left of him in existence.
So he began trekking, jogging, leaving Bojack and Heng and the Aeesu-jin far behind, his mind feeling as though it were cracking in half within his brain, unsure if he was heading in the right direction. He could not feel Sunow in the state he was in, but feeling as though he must have action, action, action or he would die, die, die, because all he heard was instinct while reason was being burned in replacement of food, and he heard the Saiya-jin call for fight! and the human call for flight! and so his chi was gathered about him to project him in a direction he did not know nor cared to because all he was a machine of destruction and he meant to destroy, though yet he knew not what...
In such a state, surprise was not one of the things he was capable of when he felt a strong pressure appear on his tail, near the tip, although he felt a very real sense of primal terror as feeling left his body and he began to fall to his knees.
He was aware of one thing, which was being yelled at him of all of his mental council:
Someone has my tail...
And then he heard a laughter and voice that made his blood run cold.
"Ho! My dear little Gohan, I've been looking for you. But I knew you were meant to be mine. And now you are. All mine."
The voice of Henning.
A long, white arm caught him around the waist before he could fall, and lifted him back up, pressing him against tall, narrow body of the Tahch-jin monstrosity, the greedy fingers pressing against his ribs, just beneath his right breast, nails digging in as though they were starved wolves devouring a downed prey.
Through his partially opened eyes, Gohan saw his hair sway as the Tahch-jin breathed over his shoulder a shuddered breath of pleasure, murmuring, "I missed the feel of you..."
Were he able, Gohan would have screamed in sudden pain for, though the rest of his body was numb and cold and terrible, the iron grip Henning had on his tail suddenly began to feel as though it were burning, for, though he did not know it, the Tahch-jin, in his ecstasy to feel more of the boy, was digging his thumbnail through the thick fur of his tail, and into the impossibly sensitive tissue beneath, then pushing up his tail, forcing all the hairs against their grain, his thumbnail scraping off flesh and fur.
Tears of unspeakable horror passed from the boy's eyes, though he could not feel them. The agony of the feeling was more than anything that he had ever felt, or would ever be able to describe. It was like dying a thousand deaths, being burned alive, oh it was all over, it hurts, it wouldn't stop, oh, please, let me die, let my heart stop, it hurts, let me die, I have to die, I have to die, please stop! stop it, stop itstopitstopit!!
And yet all he could do was hang there, helpless, as Henning hugged him tight with one arm, the other preoccupied with the boy's tail. He'd never felt anything quite like the pain he was feeling through Son Gohan right then. It was terrible and wonderful and it was everything. With his thumb buried into the source, he felt it until it nearly consumed him, robbing him of sight and smell and taste but for the love and hatred and need of that feeling.
He recalled his dream, and, in remembrance, his left hand, clenched tightly against the boy's ribs, went to the spot just beneath his right breast. Here. Here is where I shall brand him. Here will he be marked mine and--
But then Henning's thoughts were all cut short, as he felt a pain that was not Son Gohan's.
He felt pain that was his own.
His entire seven-foot body convulsed backwards, his hands unclenching on their own, releasing the boy, now forgotten to him, from his grip as his entire form fell to the floor, and his pale white lips opened up and screamed and screamed, because his form was burning and he was suddenly aware of an electrical sound, a popping, static sound, and beneath it he heard a deep, resonating hmmmmm.
When it stopped, he looked upward, to see that his brother, Joru Le'Armont, was standing over him, his normally pleasant, pale face moist with sweat and twisted in horror at something.
In his hands he held the Chah't scepter. It was glowing vibrantly.
Henning mind was white with utter and complete shock from what he was sure had to be, and he said, sounding almost like a confused child whose sibling had accidentally hurt him, "Brother... you.. betrayed me?"
To be continued...