A/N:Ya know, I wouldn't have been inspired to write this had Vegeta Jr. not been inspired first (he's got some classic comedy fics, btw!). I gave him permission to expound on Vegeta's post ass-whoopin' journies in space, and he was kind enough to give the permission back to me. It was reading his fic that put the idea in my head in the first place!
And dude. The only reason Vegeta isn't on his knees repenting by the third chapter in this fic is because piccolosfire has been kind enough to be my Prince-of-Saiyans-OOC-Detector. Help I needed.
BADLY.

Chapter 2

Vegeta grimaced and twitched on the floor of the spaceship, a burn the size of a namekian's head searing the skin of his back. He swore at himself. He should have caught the ki blast. Kakkarot most certainly would have.

But he was tired. Seven days had passed since he'd left. A hundred and sixty-eight hours. One week…of recycled air, cold metal floors, and triple-processed food.

And sparring. Above all else, sparring. Whether it was out of habit, desire to surpass his nemesis, or in effort to distract himself from his own abysmal thoughts, it didn't matter.

He just knew he had to.

Growling with each breath, he lifted his face away from the 400g pull and measured how far away the switch was.

Ugh. Damn far...

Clawing his fingers into the smooth floor, he forced his protesting muscles to slump his battered body onward, fighting the dizzying black spots that thwarted his vision with sheer doggedness.

He extended his arm, and heaved. He brought his knee up and pushed. Again, and again, until all he saw was the bloody haze of the red button. It grew gradually until it was within his reach, and he raised an oscillating hand up to turn off the enhanced gravity mechanism.

And stopped himself.

What the hell am I doing?!

Ignoring the pain of his self-inflicted wounds, and batting aside the subliminal red flags, he heaved himself up against the control panel to gain his footing. It took a rush of crazed adrenaline, but he would defy his body. He would push himself beyond the breaking point.

Vegeta would train.

But the sweat on his palms caused him to slip, and the gravity yanked his head down on the panel with a sickening starry crack. Next time he saw straight, he was staring up at the ceiling with a blurry ache behind his eyes that surpassed the sting of his burnt flesh tenfold.

He blinked exhaustedly, and raised a hand up to his bloodied forehead, noticing as he did so that the gravity had been turned off. It occurred to him that his skull must have hit the switch, despite his efforts not to. He snarled at his body.

Disobedient lump of flesh.

His stomach growled at him in response, and he could almost hear its snide rebuke. Idiot. When was the last time you ate?

He glanced over at the refrigerator. He hated stopping. For anything. Without the distraction of exerting his physical form, his thoughts were inexorably drawn inward. And his mind wasn't the most stable of places to be at the moment. He could already hear Kakkarot's mocking laughter creep into the rumbling roar of the ship's jets.

Laugh it up now, you imbecile. It won't be so funny when I come back and kill you, he grated silently. Reflexively. Emptily.

His words lacked momentum…conviction. He felt it. Knew it. Even now, several earth days later, his visions of returning and getting his revenge were tainted with the promise of another humiliating defeat. And again, he was forced to contemplate his own significance in the shadow of Kakkarot's indisputable strength. Again, he resisted.

"He can't replace me…" he rebutted instinctively. "If that were possible, then everything I've lived for…everything I've done is a lie."

Vegeta winced, and cursed himself for saying the words aloud. He tried to take them back, but they lodged in that growing void created by his defeat, weighted down with more substance than his declaration of royal Saiyan superiority.

Growling defiance, he stumbled to his feet, and staggered back towards the gravity switch. This time he wouldn't stop for the needs of the body.

Hence, his insolent stomach rumbled again. He swore at it, and turned, throwing all his frustrations into a ki blast. It was a stupid thing to do - something that he realized as soon as the refrigerator exploded and remnants of food rained all about the chamber in damp, chilled clumps. A leaf of cabbage landed in his hair.

Shit.

The mess unexpectedly had a sobering effect, and sighing his defeat, he reluctantly trudged over to a mutton wedged in the twisted heap of what was left of the refrigerator, and began to rip at it with his teeth.

He delved his attention into the task at hand, trying not to let his mind wander as it tended to do when he wasn't training. But the loud wet grind of his masticating jaw, and audible swallows made him think of the scientist. She always complained about how loudly he ate. She complained about a lot of things.

Bulma even had the audacity to insist he not leave. As though he'd had a choice. The unpleasant moment of his departure replayed in his head before he realized where his train of thought would inevitably lead him, and he flinched at the panicked desperation in her tone from when she'd caught him on the ramp of the ship.

"Vegeta! Where are you going?"

"I don't know."

"When will you be back?!"

"Maybe never."

"You can't just abandon us like that! What about me? And Trunks?"

"I don't expect you to understand."

Tears sprang to her eyes. "Don't let this beat you Vegeta-"

"It already has!" he yelled, cursing himself for letting so much emotion into his own voice. "You can't change my nature Bulma. I've been defeated… Mocked. I have no place on this planet."

"You're delusional!"

"I'm Saiyan."

I'm Saiyan…

It explained all, and yet she'd acted as though it explained nothing. Vegeta sighed heavily. There wasn't a being left alive who knew what that truly meant, save himself. If only there'd been someone around who understood…

Vegeta stiffened, mid-swallow. There had been someone. Radditz. Nappa. His comrades for most of his life. He absently dropped the meat, his stare fixing on some random point in the room as a solemn connection was made.

Radditz had died at the hands of his Saiyan brother. Nappa had died at the hands of himself, a Saiyan prince. And had Kakkarot been any weaker, Vegeta would have succeeded in eliminating any residual trace of his species.

A certain callousness he'd once been proud of suddenly didn't sit so well.

Were we doomed from the beginning? The notion left him wondering if his people would have killed themselves off, given time, had Frieza never taken the liberty of doing so first.

He shook himself, but the disconcerting train of thought continued, with one savage word ringing clear above the rest.

Cannibals…

A warrior race of blood-thirsty tyrants, eating their own kind until only the last…the strongest was left. It wasn't a love of heritage, but a love of power.

And he couldn't help but to question where the honor lay in exterminating one's own species.

Gods…

Vegeta swallowed, his eyes wide and staring.

Even…wild dogs…don't slaughter themselves into extinction…

What little sense of self he'd regained since his defeat was swallowed back up in a new, perverse identity crisis that had nothing to do with Kakkarot.

But he was mercifully saved from a disturbing session of self-analysis by a piercing electronic beep. It pushed through his blitzing attention with an even cadence, and he finally looked over to the panel where a red and gray planet popped up on the navigation screen.

His destination. Already.

Vegeta got to his feet and stumbled over to the control panel. He needed to ready the ship for the drop into the atmosphere of the one place that might be able to suck him out of the mire of his past, and stand him on his feet again.

A place where he'd be treated like royalty, yet given the privacy he required, and the land for training.

Planet Vicodin. Home of the Chosen. Prison of the Curs.

It would welcome him with open arms.

Vicodin's unique horizon bisected Vegeta's view as he stared out the bubble window, neither fully light, nor fully dark, but colored in some perpetual day's end that brushed the curve of the globe in a bleeding, swirling rust.

Most of the planet was unlivable, which is what kept it safe from xenocide. Its axis actually pointed towards the sun, baking over half the red-sanded globe in a scourging heat. The remaining portion survived only in a state of never-ending night, its only exposure to the sun being a cyclic dusk and dawn that peaked at opposite hours. And that's where its people lived, as superstitious and fanatic as Vegeta had ever seen.

He, Nappa and Radditz had used it as a servicing station when their employ under Frieza brought them to the North Quadrant.

Upon first contact with the Vicodians, the Saiyan prince had attempted to strong-arm them into subjugation by blowing up one of their three moons. But it turned out that the moon he destroyed emitted cancerous rays for their species, and instead of fearing Vegeta as a tyrant, they worshipped him as a god.

Which was fine by him.

On his occasional stop, they would house him with every luxury imaginable, most of which he rejected as excess - but still a better set up than starting from scratch elsewhere.

The city grew as he descended over it, the smudged, dreary ring of the outer circle contrasting sharply with the blue lighting of the inner province, whose light softly profiled his folded, unwavering form like the moonlight outlines a shadow. It called to him, promising nothing, but offering something. Anything. As long as it fueled his anger enough to burn away the despair. Then he'd return and take what was rightfully his.

And Kakkarot would pay.

His dark thoughts were redirected when the ship vibrated, shifting through a series of gears as it landed on the platform built specifically for Vegeta so many years ago. He took a deep breath, rehearsing their language in his head. He'd changed into a clean set of clothes, not because he felt any need to impress them, but because he didn't want the religious zealots worrying over his self-inflicted wounds.

He could already see the extravagantly cloaked forms of the Chosen scurrying outside, some bowing at his ship while others knelt in awed reverence, the words, 'He's returned!' forming on their lips.

He rolled his eyes, more disgusted at their ignorant display of worship than flattered. The ramp opened and he strode out projecting his usual aggravation with ease.

He jerked his chin at the nearest prostrate Vicodian. "You there. Who is the residing dynast of this abysmal planet?"

The individual lifted a trembling head, and it took Vegeta a moment to re-adjust his perception to their physical appearance. Vicodians looked for all the universe like humanoid badgers. White fur streaked with black grew short and soft - while their manes grew thick and long. Their tails bushed out behind them, some high, some low depending on their caste. They were wild to behold, but not unpleasant.

"Lord V-Vegeta," he stammered nervously, his bifurcated lips chewing on the prince's name with a throaty accent. "The prophet king is Dynast Tweak, O Vegeta, most holy servant of Ganja."

"I am no one's servant!" Vegeta spat reflexively, recalling Ganja as their idyllic god. "Tweak, is it? That old fool is still alive?"

The Vicodian's slanted eyes widened at the disrespectful title, and after a moment, nodded mutely.

"Hn." His attention was drawn towards the perimeter of the outer circle, where scuttling forms ambulated in the shadows. He flicked a steady glance in that direction, catching light reflecting off of skittish, slivered eyes. The Curs. Same species, but lower caste, dressed in tattered grays instead of elegant violets. Their sole despicable existence was to be taxed to death so that they could support the useless, idle Chosen. Vegeta turned away from them with a mental shrug. He'd seen worse political exploitations.

"We can send out the sacred guard, Lord Vegeta, to chase off the lesser creatures if they bother you."

Lesser creatures... Vegeta went rigid as the words triggered something primal in him. Something ignored for far too long.

Suddenly, his vision turned red. The form before him blurred as he was bombarded with an unexpected hallucination of planet Vicodin - its spiraling, holy buildings reduced to smoldering heaps of rubble; its busy commercial streets swamped with blood, caked with carcasses, Chosen and Cur alike. All trampled underfoot, fodder for his insatiable bloodlust. Their piercing screams of terror rang in his ears, giving him the heady, intoxicating sensation of absolute power, total domination.

His coherence grew inebriated with the caleidescope of carnage. His heart raced at the promise of it. His hand twitched to act on it. It would be so easy. So empowering. So...Saiyan.

"L-Lord V-Vegeta?"

Vegeta blinked.

"Are you well?"

His dialated eyes focussed, and he saw the Vicodian cowering nearly to the cement. He could smell the creature's fear, and practically lost his hold. "Get up, you fool," he panted. "GET UP!"

The Vicodian scrambled to his feet, but it did little good. Its wide eyes were still glossed with terror. Vegeta balled his trembling hands into fists.

"Never show your fear, Vicodian," he grated through clenched teeth. "There are beings who prey on such weakness. Do you understand?!"

Its mouth opened mutely, and after a moment of confused silence, it nodded, clearly having no idea.

I am a prince, not given to whim or impulse, Vegeta reminded himself forcefully, remembering that the euphoria of mayhem was a temporary sensation...a high followed by an inevitable low.

"Take me to your dynast," he barked, barely maintaining the thin hold he had on his rampaging instincts. He averted his eyes from the timid Vicodian, who to him was just begging to be slaughtered. His narrowed gaze landed on a towering white temple in the center of the inner province, and he exhaled a shuddering breath. "Or better yet, I'll take myself."


A/N: Dude. I just gotta say that there isn't a more messed up place to be than inside Vegeta's head. Especially in THIS story. Oh. And bear with me on the silly nomenclature. I'm working with a theme, here. (btw - in my Nail fic, Axle and her crew were all named after motorcycle parts, fyi.)