Prince of All, Part One
I am the prince of all Saiyins, the superior member of the superior race. I am the destroyer of worlds, the breaker of entire races and prophesied to be the strongest creature in the Universe.
I am the last true Saiyin. I am alone, surrounded by a people that don't understand me, who despise me. All, I hope, but one.
"Vegeta!" I hear her calling me, but I ignore her for a moment. I can't react too quickly to her voice, lest she begin to know the truth that I am in love with her, a weak, glorious human…
Bulma lead Vegeta up a hall and pushed open a door to a small, well-lit room with a bed, dresser and closet. "There you are," she said cheerfully, "home sweet home."
Vegeta looked at her sharply. "Earth is not my home. My home is gone."
"But this room is now yours," she said with a smile that he could tell was strained. "You'll always have it to come back to, so it's your home."
"Woman, this can't replace my planet," Vegeta growled angrily. "This is a box!"
She jerked back from him, her smile gone. "Have it your way," she snapped. "Geez, try to be nice to a guy—"
"You may leave me now," Vegeta said, turning his back to her. The sound of her stomping away hadn't been as pleasurable as he thought it would be…
At the time, her words were a gift of unacceptable pity from a creature beneath me. I regret those words now, when I realize that she wasn't trying to pity me, when she was just trying to welcome a lost alien into her home. And the feelings which have grown from her accursed kindness, while personally disturbing, are there and are true. I can't deny them, and I can't acknowledge them.
"Vegeta!" Bulma snaps again, and I set my face into a grimace and prepare to heave an aggravated sigh before I turn to face her. Whom I see behind her makes it easy to keep the grimace up.
Yamcha is standing in his ridiculous human clothing, his hands draped uselessly in his pockets. Bulma is wearing far less clothing than I am comfortable with, but she's smiling at me, and I forget everything else as my suspicions rise. Yes, I am in love with her, but I'm not stupid. She's wearing her "Bulma-wants-something" smile, and when it has been directed at me in the past, it has only caused me exasperation and inconvenience.
"You screeched?" I ask, forcing my voice to sound put-upon and bored. I don't want to treat her so, but I know that she belongs to another, so I push her away from me.
"Veg-gie," Bulma says pleadingly, laying her folded hands on my arm in supplication, "could you—"
Her touch sends fire racing up my nerves, but even that delicious pleasure cannot distract me from the conversation at hand. "No," I growl, certain that if she's using that tone of voice she is really going to inconvenience me.
"You don't even know what I want," she snarls, her pleasant smile fading as she begins tapping her foot. She doesn't know it, but this is the Bulma I love; fire in her eyes, so angry that you can almost feel heat rising off of her. At those times, she is almost like a Saiyan woman, and it eases my homesickness a little.
"Come on, Bulma, let him be," Yamcha says condescendingly, "He's not going to join us anyway."
I glare at him, angry that he's presuming what I want, even if he is correct. "Fine, woman," I sigh, "what is it?"
She grins again, all her anger forgotten as she gets what she wants. "Come have bar-bee-que with us," she says, pinching her lips together after in a sign of eagerness.
"And?" I ask, unsure what else this entails.
"And socialize!" she says eagerly, waving her hands toward her patio around the corner of the house.
"Socialize?" I growl, irritated that she's bothering me with this. Despite my feelings, I will not allow myself to be inconvenienced by a woman who can't see those feelings. "With whom?"
"Oh, let's see," she says too casually, "just some friends of Daddy's, and some of mine, like Krillin, Tien—"
I grunt at this transparent ploy. "Kakkarot will be there, and you want me to play nice, don't you?" I ask angrily. "I am the prince of all Saiyans, not your party-toy!"
"I thought you might be a little lonely," she growls at me, and I feel my heart swell with desire as the growl in her voice reverberates through the air between us. "And since they were going to discuss the androids and what to do about them, I thought you might want to join."
"There is no discussion," I growl, the thought of spending any time with anyone other than Bulma setting my nerves on end.
"Fine, mope here, alone," she says with a false airiness, flipping her hair over her shoulder and stalking away. The moron gives me a crooked smile and starts to leave, but I'm not done with him.
"She really wanted me to go, didn't she?" I ask speculatively to the air, but it stops Yamcha. "Makes you wonder why she desires my company so much."
"Hey, she's just trying to be nice," Yamcha says angrily. "It wouldn't kill you to be nicer back."
I smile slightly, and say, "Well, it's good to know that she's just being polite. I was starting to wonder if she was drawn to me." It's not true, I know it's not, but I can't help trying to worry her boyfriend, just to cause him a bit of the pain that he causes me every day.
But I'm surprised to see how much doubt that I've put into face of the fighter, as if he truly feared what I had said. "Do me a favor, Vegeta," Yamcha spits. "Don't talk to me anymore."
"Nothing would please me more," I growl, happy that we understand each other at last. Yamcha had been overly friendly before today – I know that was Bulma's influence, her attempts to keep me from being "lonely". Maybe now he would leave me the hell alone.
"Yamcha!" Bulma shouts from the corner of her house. "You coming, or do you want to keep smarming with Vegeta?"
"Coming, dear!" Yamcha shouts back as he trots over to her. He scoops her up in his arms, twirling her around before kissing her. I make myself watch them, seeing every smile, every touch. This is the way it is, and I will endure it, just as I endured my father, Frieza and Zarbon. After they move around the corner, her still in the idiot's arms, I turn back to my training.
I'm in the middle of my most complicated kata when a flash from the top of the Capsule Corp building catches my eye. With a frown, I stop and float upward a few meters, trying to see what is flashing in the light.
I'm just in time to see what looks like a heat wave shimmer over the roof-top, and then slip into the building through a vent in the roof. The movement of the "heat shimmer" brings back the memory of what it is.
"Xager," I growl, and power up. In response, I feel Kakkarot's power spike, then the bald human's, then the moron as all the party-goers realize that something's up. Ignoring the others, I shoot up two hundred feet, then tuck into a tight roll so that I'm facing down without losing too much speed. With a battle-roar, I fly down at the building, cracking through its outer shell and into the lab below.
The Xager is in the room next to a computer, and it twists its small rodent-like body to face me. With a hiss, it's personal force-field rises, and I'm left staring at another heat-shimmer. But I know where it is, and I don't have to see it now. With a snarl, I fly at it and punch it in the body, making a clean contact. I grin as I feel the tough little creature's skin buckle over my fist.
"Hema das! Caraba yahi!" the Xager shouts, and then the world is enveloped in a blinding flash of white. I snarl as I recognize the blinding attack, but my eyes are already blasted, and I can only guess where the creature is. At the last second, I hear a mechanical noise, and I spin and turn my kick against that.
I didn't hit clean this time, partially because I couldn't see, and partially because the little rodent had moved. I felt the toe of my boot connect, but I could tell that it was a glancing blow. Damn it, I had forgotten how quick the little buggers are. The good news is I'm staring to see again, in blurry little streaks of color. But I don't need to see to deliver this little bastard to the next life.
"Vegeta!" How wonderful. Kakkarot is here. I was hoping that he'd stay out, but that was apparently a blind hope.
"Stay out of my way, Kakkarot!" I shout as I punch the air where the Xager had just been. I connect with machinery, but I see a moving blur out of the corner of my slowly clearing eyes. I kick at the blur, and am pleased to hear the grunt of the Xager and the sound of dropped parts.
"What is that thing?" I hear Kakkarot ask, and he sounds closer. Just what I need. His interference. Again.
"A Xager," I answer, reminding myself that it is my duty to teach Kakkarot how to be a Saiyan, if possible. "You can kill them with one blow to the shoulder. When this one stops wiggling, I'll show you where to strike." I can see even better now, and I can see the heat shimmer huddling on itself on the floor. Kakkarot and his human friends are hovering over the building, staring down at me.
"No kill," the Xager rasps, and I stare at it in surprise. I didn't know that the little pests spoke anything other than their garbled tongue. They had never spoken directly to Frieza in their dealings with him, only through a translator. Of course I avoided speaking to Frieza when I could as well, so I guess I couldn't blame them for that. "No kill for knowing."
"What?" Yamcha asks, and I don't deign to answer him. Any idiot should be able to tell that the creature was willing to trade information for its life.
Kakkarot kneels down next to it. "What do you think is worth your life?" he asks it clearly, shouting only a little. I roll my eyes. Xagers constantly lie, but Kakkarot hadn't asked me, despite my obvious knowledge, and I wasn't going to volunteer.
"Oh, my god," Bulma says from the doorway. She is panting slightly, and I guess that she has run from the party downstairs to this room. "What the hell is going on?" She jumps forward suddenly and picks up the piece of machinery that the Xager dropped. She turns it over and over in her hands as if trying to identify it, but she knows what it is. I can tell from the worried frown and the way she bits her lip.
"Know who want that," the Xager says, pointing at the piece of machinery in Bulma's hands.
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Author's Note: Chapter two tomorrow, and so forth until it's all posted. Let me know if you like it, and please see my profile for news on my other pieces of fiction.
