Hello all! Thanks for all the reviews – you all have been very kind.  Love you all!

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I don't cry until I remember that he's never denied me anything else before.  And now, when it matters most, he denies me his heart.

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I can't cry too long – I have way too much to do.  So I find myself driving not toward Goku's house but toward Master Roshi's island.  Goku can deny me day in and day out, but Krillan is putty in my hands, and I know that I can beat the answers out of him, if necessary.  I'm hoping all I have to do is scream at him for a while; I don't want to break any nails.

But I'm foiled there too; when I arrive, Master Roshi is resting alone on the beach. "Well, hello, young thing!" he practically drools at me, and I choke back a retort.  I need to be nice long enough to find Krillan.

"Hello, Master Roshi!" I call and wave to him.  His grin widens exponentially, and my stomach clenches at his leer. 

Suddenly, his face pinches in on itself in suspicion.  "You're never that nice to me, young lady, unless you want something."

"You're too smart for me," I grin at him, and I see the suspicion waver, battling with his incorrigible lust. 

"All right, what is it?" he grumps at me.

"Where's Krillan?" I ask, my voice dropping its syrupy sweetness as I turn business-like.

"You just missed him," Master Roshi says.  "Took off that-a-way," he points out over the ocean, "like the hounds of hell were after him.  But it must have just been you."

I grimace at him, more irritable than ever.  Yamcha's drunk, Krillan's AWOL, which means I'm just going to have to try my luck with Goku.  "Thanks, you beastly old man," I sing-song as I climb back into the car.

"Anytime you want to let me drool at you, you're welcome to come by," he answers.

"Then I'll be sure to wear my full-body habit, next time," I reply as the car powers up and lifts away.  I see his mouth move with a reply as I lift off, but from the way he's wagging his eyebrows, I'm just as glad that I can't hear it.

I've only flown a few miles when I realize that there is another place with answers.  And while I've never sought help there personally, whatever was going on was large enough for Kami's help, wasn't it?  Only one way to know – I set course for the House of Kami.

I can just see the spire ahead of me when the car bucks violently and a loud boom roars.  All is chaos for an eternal moment, until the airbags erupt, filling the cockpit.  Pinned into my inflated safety device, I can only howl with fear and outrage as the hovercar falls.  I can tell I am descending rapidly, for my ears are popping madly. 

One loud, permanent crash echoes through the cockpit, and all is silent.  Except for me, that is, once I try to move.  Just twisting my head to the left to try to see what is around causes a spike of pain to shoot down my back.  I don't bother to bite back a yelp of pain – no one is here to make fun of me, namely Vegeta.

After a long minute, the airbags decompress, and I pull myself out of the car awkwardly.  My back hurts with each movement, and I hiss through my teeth as I stumble around to the back of the craft to see what caused the crash.

I see the damage and stop, frozen with fear.  The back of my hovercar is a twisted, charred mess; only Dad's ingenious engineering and safety back-ups kept the car from dropping like a rock.  But the most frightening part is that the damage was done by a chi blast. 

My heart is pounding in my throat now.  Someone attacked me; someone is trying to kill me.  Vegeta, the only killer I know, is unconscious in the hospital; Yamcha is home drunk; Krillan is avoiding me; and Goku is unreachable.  Hell, if I could call any of them, none of them would answer the phone if they knew it was me!  Damn them, some friends!

I took a deep breath to calm and collect myself.  Whoever shot me down will probably come looking for me.  I have to leave the car, which will be easily seen from the air.  But I can't just mindlessly run either.

I pull my purse out of the wreckage of my beloved car.  For just a second, I'm actually overwhelmed by its loss – not because I can't get another but because that was my car!  I built it from a kit when I was seventeen; it was my baby, tweaked to my specifications and set to my desires.  If I can find some way to swing it, some possible avenue to do it, I'm going to get the son ova bitch who put a chi blast into it.

Then I'm running slowly through the woods, picking up speed as my back slowly unknots.  Thank god I wasn't seriously injured; otherwise, this would be impossible.  After five minutes, I stop and lean against a nearby tree, panting.  It was time to start pulling out capsules and saving my own ass, because Vegeta and the boys aren't coming this time.

The first thing I pull out is my scanner and tool kit.  Five minutes of fiddling, and I have adjusted it so that I can sense the chi's around me.  What I see when I activate it and extend its range almost makes me give up.

Five dots circle around my position, working in toward my general area in a tight spiral.  They could be friends, but given how everyone is avoiding me, I don't think it's likely.  The next thing out of my bag is a scent-masking agent.  I don't know that they're tracking by smell, but they could, and I won't be caught for something as simple as that.

The last thing I remove from my capsule is one of Capsule Corps's newest experiments.  It looks like a full wetsuit, but it is far more than that.  The skin of the suit refracts heat, rendering me invisible to infrared vision.  Since part of the refracted heat is light, it makes me harder to see to the naked eye.  Unfortunately, it has to have a closed air system so that the heat from my breath won't give me away; a system that looks – and sounds – like a gas mask.  Within seconds, I feel claustrophobic as all heck, listening to the hiss of my own breathing and the thud of my blood in my veins.  But I'd rather be claustrophobic than dead, so I cope.

Now the part that is hardest for me.  I begin to move away keeping under the trees and moving slowly, easily.  The radar held before me, I start to work my way out of this mess, using the radar to figure out when I have to stop and hide.  Only once do I see a pursuer – a large, powerful-looking humanoid flying overhead with green skin and a crest of small yellow horns.

I'm beginning to think that I've made it away, when all of the blips on the radar turn toward me.  With a gasp, I pick up speed, hoping that it's just an ugly coincidence.  But as they get closer, I can't deny that they're closing on me; they're fanning out, the two furthest out swinging wide before turning in so that they're perpendicular to me.

I have one weapon, a sort of chi tazer.  It won't put Vegeta or Goku down, but it is strong enough that I hope that I can use it here.  The problem?  It is a one-shot-at-a-time item – I'll have to reload, and I have no illusions as to whether I'll get to reload. 

One shot, and five targets; I have to choose who'll I'll go for.  I use the radar to single out the most powerful – the signature of that creature is a baby compared to Goku at his best, and I still have hope that the chi tazer will disable it.

The creatures land in the open area just ahead of me; I hold myself stock still, pretending that I am part of the tree I hide behind. Based on what the scanner is telling me, I find the strongest, a frail, cat-looking thing balancing on hind legs.  I carefully aim, and wait for my moment.

The tazer pops out with a soft puft noise, and the wires sizzle and snap as the cat-creature screams and spasms.  I only have a second to enjoy it, because the closest creature to me takes three giant steps and strikes me with its fist.

I go down like the non-combatant I am, hitting the packed dirt of the forest floor hard.  Hands grab my arms, and I am just aware enough to vainly struggle against them as they lift me.  Someone yanks roughly at the hood of my suit, and quickly strip it away, letting us see each other face-to-face.

"Dordock's dead," the alien that isn't helping hold me says.  The two holding my arms stare and blink at their companion in disbelief.  The one in front of me, a tall, burly brown humanoid, snarls and punches me in my stomach.  The pain is immense, and I scream as I try to curl around my injury as best I can with two people holding me.

A hand seizes my hair and yanks my head up painfully.  The brown one growls, "What did you use on him?"

"Fuck.  You," I wheeze out, glaring at him as best I can through my tears of pain.  He draws back his hand to hit me again, when the fourth stops him. 

"Hycik, don't hurt her anymore," the tall, thin creature levitates carefully toward us.  He appears to be a large crystal; he refracts the sunlight in a most disturbing way.  "If you hurt her too badly, she's useless to Master Montidulein." 

"Titles," I groan painfully.  "You aliens always gotta have your fancy titles."  I expect them to ignore me, but the thin creature leans down to look at me as I convulsively cough. 

"The right title makes the man," he replies with a condensing smile, blinding me as the sun bounces off his faceted surface. "Just ask your Saiyan prince."

"I don't claim him," I hiss, but my bravado almost flees when I taste blood in my mouth.

"Does he claim you?" the alien asks, running a finger along the open line of the suit hood.  "Has he tasted your tzidrah?"

I wasn't sure what he was talking about, but it sounded nasty.  I open my mouth to retort when my body convulses again and I cough some more blood up.  This time, my captor sees it.

"Knock her out and get her to the med bay," he snaps to the two holding me.  One of them presses something to my arm just I hear him say to the brown alien that hit me, "You'd better hope she fully recovers or Montidulein will have you for breakfast."  Then the world is black, and I fall into it.

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I'll post again soon.