I crashed hard into the cliff, bouncing off to hit heavily on a ledge below, my head crashing against a boulder. The rocks from my first hit smashed onto me, but I didn't really feel it. I blinked, dizzy, looked around.
A scream drew my attention, and a black-garbed man fell from the sky. His remaining four companions circled another, a long-haired blonde dressed in orange. Their forms blurred as the attack commenced, but somehow, I was able to follow what happened. Two flew at his legs, the other two at his arms. Another scream, this one of absolute agony, as the attack ended, the defender ripped apart. What was left of him dropped to the ground, his hair morphing to black spikes as he fell.
"NOOO!!!" The cry drew my attention to another orange-clad blonde, but no sooner did I spot him than a beam of energy shot through his mouth. My breath exploded from me soundlessly as his hair - what was left - also changed to black, and his remains fell from the sky.
Another war cry. My head! The agony as I turned it to see who had cried out. My vision blurred, seeming to turn red and black before finally clearing. Another blonde warrior - but this one in blue, also fighting black-garbed fighters. And just behind him, another, smaller black-clad blonde figure being borne to the ground by the ones he fought.
My head lolled to the side, more pain blurring my vision. The smaller fighter wasn't going down easily. The four who had defeated the first warrior, and the three from the second had joined the three in forcing him down. But, it seemed to me they weren't trying to kill him. In fact, it looked like…. The other warrior's cry drew my attention. He'd been knocked to the ground, and the five he fought blasted him at the same time. If I could have gagged, I know I would have.
It all seemed like a dream, though. Something that wasn't happening, not for real. I could hear the last one, his cries angry and defiant still, for all that they seemed so very far away. And then a black garbed figure floated over me.
"Is he dead?"
"Hair changed, didn't it? Look at all the blood. If he's not, he will be soon. Smashed his head open."
"Well, they've got the prince stripped. Shall we join them?" The answer from behind me was a nasty chuckle, and two shadows darted to where the cries had become even more enraged, with a hint of despair or desperation.
There was no one around when I woke up. My head hurt, but not so badly as before. And my vision was just fine. I moved slowly, pushing the rocks off me, staggering to my feet. I put my hand to the back of my head, it came away bloody. Old blood. I looked down to see a huge pool of the stuff where I'd been lying.
Had I not dreamed that fight, then? Had I really seen those people killed? It occurred to me to look around, and I hit the ground, heaving. I hadn't dreamt it, unless I was still dreaming. The bodies were there. But… what of the fourth? Had they killed him as well? Slowly, I staggered to my feet again, and began walking toward where I'd seen him forced down.
I spotted him, finally. Facedown, buried up to his neck, with a large slab leaned against the pile to rest on his neck. The pressure had to be bad. I'd finally regained my balance, so was able to scramble up to him fairly easily.
His eyes were dull, lifeless, but not dead. He knew I was there, but didn't seem to care. I studied the way the rock was set, and realized that just taking it away would cascade the other rocks down onto his head. So I took hold of it and pushed it back, shoving a bunch of the rocks off of him as well. And then, I set to digging him out.
They'd laid him over a rock, broken his arms and legs over the edges of it. His clothes were in shreds, bits of fabric remaining at his wrists and ankles. Memory supplied the two talking from before I'd slept. This was the prince, then. He was badly injured, but nothing that would have killed him. Why had they left him alive? I fished a little bag from my belt, popped one of the beans into my mouth, and force-fed him the other. And then fell over on my butt when his wounds disappeared as if they'd never been.
He didn't move, just laid there staring at me for the longest time. Finally, he spoke. "Trust you to have senzu beans."
"Senzu beans?" I moved my hand automatically behind my head, my hand landing where my wound had been. And jerked it back, staring in surprise when there was no blood. "Wha????" I patted at the other injuries I'd had, only to find them all gone. "What? What happened?" There was real fear in my voice.
He pushed up, then slid off the rock, seeming too weak to move further. "We lost." His voice was soft, completely devoid of emotion, just like his eyes.
"Lost?" I took in the surroundings - completely devastated, with corpses littering the ground. My own state, when I looked, showed my own orange clothes to be in tatters. "Lost what?"
Something shifted in his eyes then, the blankness giving way to something I didn't recognize. "Help me."
"How?" I dropped before him. "How can I help?"
"Let me… let me cleanse myself in you. In your innocence." The light in his eyes was stronger, and it made me nervous. But, wasn't this the prince? His hair was dark now, spiking upward. He'd been a blonde when I'd watched him fight. So had the others. And hadn't those two fighters said my hair had changed? That meant he was my prince, didn't it?
"I'll help you."
He moved then, faster than I thought he could from the way he'd been moving, ripping away the remnants of my clothes, spinning me to face away from him. I fell, landing on my elbows instead of my hands, and he took advantage of my imbalance to capture me, ripping at my clothes. And then pain! Torturous, repeated pulses of pain. I screamed, even as he cried out - a wordless agony, purest regret - and fell over me, trembling.
"Kakarot… oh, Kakarot, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" I could barely make out the words through the sobs that racked his body. "I didn't mean to, I swear it! I'm sorry!"
I gathered him up, truly not understanding what had just happened. "My prince?"
"Kakarot… I betrayed you… I'm sorry… so sorry."
Kakarot. That was… me? My whole body stiffened as I realized I didn't know my name. That this man I held, my prince, was a complete stranger to me, as the other fallen warriors were. I didn't know what we'd fought for, or if it was truly a bad thing that we'd lost. And then he looked up at me. "I betrayed him…"
My own eyes were filling with tears, the suddenness of not knowing striking me as I realized I couldn't be the Kakarot he'd betrayed. I struggled to say something - anything - that would comfort him, comfort me, but couldn't say anything. Wordless, I just shook my head, let the tears flow.
It took us both awhile to calm down, and longer for him to realize that I had no clue what had happened, or who we were. When he did, he explained it all. He was Vegeta, Prince of the Saiyans. Kakarot, the one he said he'd betrayed, was my father, the only other full-blooded Saiyan to have survived the destruction of their homeworld, and his mate for the last ten years. His son, my father, and my brother had all died fighting to defend the people of their new home from…
"… an as of yet unnamed menace. They are out to destroy this world, and not to sell it to another. Just for the sheer fun of it. They have been hunting down the people of this Earth for sport, killing a mother and then taking bets on how long her nursing child would survive." He had paused, a strange, haunted look suddenly taking him. "They are much like I was before I came here, considering the inhabitants nothing more than a nuisance to be rid of before the planet is used for whatever purpose my master willed.
"We know… knew very little about them, except for their thirst to kill. Now, too late, I know who they are, and why they came."
They'd come for him. He had destroyed their homes, their families, or their worlds, when he had not been the master of his own fate. They had heard that he now defended a planet, and had joined together to destroy the planet and him.
"They weren't expecting your family, or mine. They only knew about me. But that they took down the others so quickly…" His voice had broken. "No one I fought, no planet I destroyed, had fighters strong enough to do that. I don't know who or what those warriors are…" Again, his voice broke. He didn't like talking about those warriors, and I knew why. They'd raped him, breaking his arms and legs so he couldn't fight back or get away. Raped him until he'd lost consciousness, and still been at it when he regained it. They'd left only when he had stopped screaming at them, stopped caring what they did to him. It had taken days.
I'd been thinking it over since he'd told me, and realized that one: I'd been unconscious for five days, at least, and two: I didn't want to fight them again. I'd taken out six; my brother, four; my father, three; his son, two. He had taken out three before the others had joined in taking him down. We'd all started out with seven opponents - all of whom had originally targeted him. There were too many of them left for the two of us to handle, especially in the condition we were in.
Physically, we were fine, of course. But on the inside? We were scared silly and coping with the loss of friends and loved ones. We weren't in any shape to fight.
Besides, we didn't have any clothes.
Vegeta rarely spoke to me after he explained what had happened. When he did, it was mostly monosyllables, usually orders. A few days have passed, we've found clothes at a destroyed village. We rested there, recovering as much as we could, but after what we'd been through, well, we weren't doing so good at recovering. Oh, our strength was back, we were stronger than we had been. But Vegeta was jumping at shadows and trying to make sure I didn't know he was crying himself to sleep at night. Me, well, I spent most my time trying to remember who I was.
It's not that Vegeta hadn't told me my name! No, he told me that. But I didn't remember one blasted thing about my life. He is all I know. He is all the life I have. It's kind of sad. He can't bear to look at me, but he denies it. I catch him sneaking a peek every once in awhile, but mostly he just sits over in the corner with his head down. Actually, I don't really like for him to look at me. I feel weird when he does, because he looks so sad… and hungry.
I know what he wants, I know why. He has nightmares, wakes up screaming my father's name. Sometimes, he uses me as a substitute for my father without knowing. I don't mind, not really. If I did, I wouldn't be trying to calm him when he's had a nightmare, or shaken him awake from one. I wouldn't answer "Yes" when he asks in that soft, heartbroken voice, if I'm my father. I would fight, instead. But I don't. I need him as much as he needs me to be my father.
It's strange. I don't mind that he doesn't talk to me, that he only looks at me if he has to, or when his pain is terrible. I must look a lot like my father, for him to not be able to tell when he takes me. But maybe… maybe he does know. Maybe he does. He cries afterward, soft, nearly silent sobbing that shakes his entire body. He tries to hide it, but I know. I have heard him whispering about betrayal.
"Kakarot! Look at this!" He is calling me by my father's name again. I go to see what has gotten Vegeta worked up this time. It is a large golden building, a dome. "It's Capsule Corp. It's still intact!"
He seems very excited by this. I feel nothing out of the ordinary, so follow his headlong rush to the building. The inside is perfectly clean. There is no dust, no blood, no signs of a fight, although the rest of the city around the building lays in ruins. Vegeta seems to be looking for something, something important. He is checking every room.
"What is this place?"
"Capsule Corp. My home. My daughter, I left her here… perhaps she survived." Vegeta has wrenched open another door leading to another empty room.
This is the first I have heard about a daughter. He told me of Trunks, but he had not told me about a daughter. I bump into him when he does not enter the next door. I am taller than he is, and the sight I see makes me dart back down the hallway to be sick. I hear his footsteps as he enters the room, how they slow as he approaches the horror within.
It has to have been his daughter, I realize, when I can approach the room again. He is standing in the center of the room, head down, fists clenched at his sides. In this room, there are signs of a battle. In this room, there is blood. In this room, there is a body.
She had had long blue hair, this girl. Strands of it are woven into an intricate pattern. I swallow hard, and force myself to enter the room, to take in what our enemy has done to his daughter. Her body lies on the blood-soaked bed. There is no doubt that they have raped her, and not just naturally. One of the objects they used is still in place, others arranged obscenely between her broken legs. It looks as if they started to skin her, then changed their minds. Her eyes are a part of the gruesome decoration they made of her hair. She has been sliced open, and her insides are now her outsides, neatly arranged around the shell that once housed them.
I reach out, touch Vegeta's arm. "The blood is fresh. Maybe we can find them. You can kill them."
His power explodes around him. I am flung into - through - the wall to outside. The dome crackles, then explodes upwards, Vegeta a burning fire in its center. It is hours before I can get near him.
We have looked everywhere. There has been no one - no one - left alive. All we find are remains, and those are usually… widely dispersed. The findings have been anything but pleasant. We usually burn the remains, since burying would leave more of a visible mark. The fires we set are allowed to burn even after we've gone. There's no one left to worry about burning, just the dead.
We are both stronger. Vegeta said that would happen, that is the way it is with Saiyans. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and what does kill us makes us stronger yet. I didn't understand him, but I wasn't going to tell him that. We train constantly, as well, trying to ensure that we do not loose our hard-won strength. It has been months, now, since I woke up that day, not realizing I didn't know who I was.
I have remembered bits and pieces. I remember mostly my mother, bits of my early childhood. I remember a boy with purple hair that I played with. I remember my brother, and a cloud called Nimbus. It seems funny to me that I could turn into a golden warrior - a super Saiyan - before I could fly.
I remember my father, a little. Just enough to realize that I am very, very like him. I still answer "yes" after Vegeta's nightmares, I still let him take me. I know enough about my father to be able to imitate some of his ways, and I know since I have filled out that I look even more like him. Vegeta calls me Kakarot all the time now.
We have found a survivor! I do not expect she will live very long, though. I do not know how she survived the purging, or how she has survived since. She is insane, and babbles inanely when she does not cry. Yet she obeys Vegeta's every whim, even being silent when he tells her to. I can't help but wonder if perhaps she was kept alive…. She was once very pretty.
Vegeta seems to be of the same opinion. He can make her be silent, but he can also make her talk. He has been taking her off in the evenings, before dinner, to find out what he can. She comes back more skittish each time, and he comes to me. He says he must purge himself in me. I am afraid to know what he does.
He has discovered that the invaders left only a few weeks ago! We have been searching for two years for any sign of life, and they have been here the entire time. Neither of us could detect them, and we are both worried about this. Vegeta says I must protect the woman in the event they find us. I did not point out that we had slim chances of surviving a second encounter.
She is dead, the poor woman. She never did regain her mind, though she stopped the babbling and crying. I think it is because Vegeta told her to. He says we must continue to search. Since we cannot sense them, it may be possible that when they left, they merely went to a different area of the Earth.
I think he is right. I have not felt right since the first fight… as if I feel the wrongness of their presence still. It is like a faint cramping pang, a sour taste in the back of my mouth, an unpleasant scent, all in the background of what is normal. I have told Vegeta this, he just nodded, as if he had expected me to say exactly that.
"I have been thinking about what you said. Your father… Kakarot was very attuned to this planet. He could often tell of a danger coming well in advance simply because he was so aware of everything around him."
It surprised me, that he would speak of my father while holding me. He has never done such a thing since that first day. "Vegeta?"
"I think it may be that you are also aware, if not on the same level. Let me know if these feelings of your vary."
He got up and left me then, leaving me staring after him in shock.
I have been sick all day. I feel awful. Vegeta is losing patience with me, saying that a Saiyan shouldn't be plagued by a stomach flu. Even so, he has not been far from me today. Usually, he flies a far-ranging pattern, but he hasn't been more than a mile in any direction today. He has even been comforting.
There is something wrong with him, though. I can feel that as well. My father was attuned to this planet. I am attuned to Vegeta. There is something wrong. His color is off, he seems fidgety. Vegeta does not fidget. I do. There are other things, all small, all things that would be overlooked by someone who does not know him as I do. His nightmares have been more violent of late.
He has become even more withdrawn. With each destroyed town we find, the farms and villages, he withdraws a little more. He often refuses to eat. I have taken to waiting until he is almost asleep, then cajoling him into a bite or two. I haven't been able to manage to get more down him. He doesn't call my father's name when he sleeps, nor does he call me by my father's name anymore. I don't understand why. He says we are heading for an important place, and I will find my answers there.
We went to a place high above the clouds a week ago, to find only destruction, and to a place higher still that was bathed in blood. He hasn't spoken once since we left that place. He wakes from his nightmares, shivering and shaking, but turns away if I try to comfort him. I am worried about him, but I don't know what I can do.
My name is Goten Son. I am thirty years old. My mother was Chi-Chi, she married my father after a martial arts tournament. His name was Goku, an only Vegeta ever called him by his Saiyan name. I became a super Saiyan before I learned to fly, and it was my brother Gohan who taught me, along with the girl, Videl, who became his wife. I helped save the world once, from Majin Buu, who eventually became a good guy. That was when I was little. There was a long time of peace, after, until these guys came. I had married Paris. Our children were two year old twin boys, Kinoko and Ninniku. My best friend was Trunks Briefs, Vegeta's son. I had a niece named Pan. I am a demi-Saiyan, and as such, can live to be well into my hundreds, and still not look a day older than I do now. It was at the Lookout where Vegeta lost his will to live, because it was there we found the remains of the Nameks. There are no dragonballs now to revive anyone. I was not who he longed to be with, no matter that he had used me.
I remembered all this as I buried him. I am only thirty, and I will be alone a very long time.
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