DISCLAIMER: Its hard to think of one cos I'm going out soon.. but.. I don't own DBZ… I can't pay for lawyers.. I only own a computer.. an stereo..a car.. and a tv an vcr. *remembers where she is..* OH! Ha ha ha… I swapped them for this gold plated piece of lint.. that's right.. *produces a cardboard box from no-where and jumps in it an tries to look inconspicuous….*
Author note: There is only one more chapter after this before I hit a small gap which I am working really hard on to fill, so updates will not be as quick. But after that is about 9 chapters… which do get quite citrusy too (and I'm not going to tell you who it involves because I'm a bitch! Needless to say it's a little out of the ordinary). So if you like what you're reading so far and want me to close the gap fast, egg me on!! Give me some encouragement which will lead me to sit in front of my computer for 10hrs straight and write a couple of chapters!! ~_^ Hmph. Not that I can't do that anyway.. Rating is up to R now because of graphic content.
Italics don't seem to be working so I've added :: 's to hopefully make things seem clearer.
So-
:: My thought speech and comments ::
~ My characters thought communication ~
"Spoken dialogue"
My characters thoughts and observations.
Voices (In One's Head by `InSaNe`/Schizophrenic Eggplant
Part 3. Chapter 11: Curiosity is Satisfied.Wearing my current and very
peculiar guise of an aged something that used to be a female, still shrouded in
my robe but unhooded now, I hobble with a liquid grace towards the door, and
silently push it open. I do not need
too use too much stealth because there seems to be a hubbub coming from a room
somewhere close. Snatches of hurried
sentences sweep about my ears.
"…lost a lot of blood!…."
"…clamp doesn't go There, you imbecile!!…"
"…baby in neonates?"
"…Yes. How's the…doing?"
"Not good… …impatient like both his…"
"…you see, he…."
"He WHAT?!?!…. that IS strong…"
"…too bad…"
I couldn't hear a whole lot of what was being said. Either it is because deafness was included in this withered and gnarled facial skin I was in, but no…
:: There was nothing wrong with your hearing just before. .::
Or there was some serious soundproofing going on. I walk past some sealed double doors, glancing inside as I walk onwards towards the muffled sound.
:: Go back. ::
I reverse the few steps I had made, and take a closer look. Behind the round portholes in the doors a team of doctors and surgeons swarm, some are alien, no doubt experts in their field.
:: Not expert enough… ::
Also I notice there are a lot of Saiyajin assistants helping them out. Usually that would seem strange, because they were a warrior race, not a race of healers. They have the regen tanks to do that. These Saiyajin were old though, past their fighting prime, and years ago maybe they would have been put down – a more pleasant option than the madness of battle withdrawal, but it seems these old timers have some uses. Whereas physically they may not be up the task any more, they know from experience how to deal with injury, and they can be trained up to be adequate dogsbodies, very rarely specialising.
All are too busy with their tasks to notice me looking in like some rubbernecker at an accident. Above them was a holographic projection of the patients vital signs.
:: They don't look good. Blood pressure is dangerously low, so's the temperature, that's even below my races normal of 37 degrees (Celsius), and the pulse is a little erratic. ::
I strain my ears really hard to hear what's going on.
"Kotakk, can't we just put her in the regen tank? It's worked before with similar injuries…" A wizened Saiyajin asks.
"I've told you before, Spud, the internal damage is nigh on irreparable! The liquid in the regen tank would just saturate the wounds and do more harm than good, and the blood leakage at that volume would encourage bacterial growth above normal standards. We're doing our best with what we have to work with, and it's a hard time to reconstruct the major blood vessels as it is! She's a tough customer though, I know that if it was any of my people, they'd be dead right now." Answers the reptilian doctor, Kotakk. A no-nonsense female Saiyajin with one eye takes slight offence with Kotakk's words.
"Of course she's tough!! You think the King would have taken a snivelling low-class?" Alarms start to wail, when the hologram flashes and beeps.
"She's going into system shock!" A short stout beaked creature barked.
"..elite of the elite females!.. Do you really thing this is going to stop her?" The Saiyajin woman continues her fired-up tirade.
"The only thing that is going to stop her, is a lack in our teamwork. Put a lid on it Sweet-pea."
"SPUD! Don't call me that around these foreigners!!" She quietens down nonetheless, and continues her work, sucking up fluid with a small sterilised vacuum, while Kotakk works feverishly on the internal wounds and the beaked creature injects drugs into an IV line, to try and stabilise her condition. One of the Saiyajin, when he sees the needle, turns a few shades paler and runs to the other end of the room, bringing down screens and knocking machinery off their tables.
"Aww Spinaki!! You said you could handle it!!! Now is NOT the time to be showing weakness!! It's only a needle!!" Screams the female, identified only as 'Sweet-pea'.
"One of you go and hold him down before he upends anything important!" The beaked physician orders.
"Only one, Ptiresch? In that frenzy it's going to take at least two!" Another assistant remarks.
"We can't spare two! Just get him out of here and calm him down at least." Is the brisk reply from Ptiresch. More alarms start to go off as a large member of the team goes and deals with the panicked Spinaki. My vision is still obstructed, but I can see that there is a struggle going on, on the table. I see small feet wave frantically about, attached to tanned legs. If the situation isn't so grave, I would think it a rather comical scene.
"Where is he?" A faint voice wavers over the firm but calming ones. "Where's the brat who did this to me!!!?" Not so faint a voice now.
"My Queen, I.." Spud starts.
"'My Queen' nothing!!! Bring the little shit here! Now!" The struggle increases as the injured monarch attempts to rip out her IV lines. Spinaki is unlucky to witness that, and slumps to the floor in a very un-Saiyajin-like dead faint. A/N: His eyes are those anime whirly spirals
The assistant dumps his now unresisting body onto a trolley-bed and walks back to the action at a fast pace, ready to lend a hand to restrain the rabid Queen.
"You must lay still, Queen Kapsikaa, or-" Ptiresch is cut off.
"I'll do what the hells I want!! Fine. You're not going to bring him to me? I'll go get him myself!!!" She again tries to wrench free with a burst of strength, but there are too many arms restraining her.
"No, you're in a bad state as it is... just calm down." Ptiresch speaks to the queen in soothing tones, as much as a soothing tone through a beak would sound.
'Sweat-Pea' fetches a warm cloth and dabs it along the queen's brow. Kapsikaa looks up at Ptiresch, Kotakk and Spud, almost pleading with them.
"I only want to hold him. I really am proud of being a mother to such a powerful little tyke.." She wheedles to them… "It's not like I'm going to last the next day with my body this way." A small tear threatens to escape the corner of her eye, but is skilfully held in check. At last, seeing she had relaxed and leaned her head back onto the pillow, Ptiresch motions to the team to lessen their hold on the queen, who isn't an elite for nothing. Before the beaked physician is able to re-hook up her IV connection, the devious woman smirks quietly, then lightning fast, she leaps off the bed sending most of the team sprawling…
:: Like bowling pins. Steeeeeerike!! Go Queenie!! Fight to the bitter end!!! An end all the same. ::
…and lands on her bare feet, with her arms crossed over and firmly wrapped around her abdomen. Not a sight for queasy stomachs.
"Yes.. I want to hold the brat…and squeeze the life out of him.. slowly!" Her face twists in a mask of pain and revenge as she starts towards the door, the very door I'm standing behind. She sees my face behind the triple strength Perspex porthole and looks at me with a mixed expression of horror – although technically speaking, she is the more malformed out of us two, and anger – that an impostor must have broken through or bribed the guards to sneak a peek at her weakened condition. Then sudden disbelief as I decided to flicker to my normal form, just for a few seconds, and then back. She has to hold herself back from pointing, for she is using both her arms to hold herself together, literally.
:: Now in full view to me, Queen Kapsikaa of Vegetasei was powerfully and nobly beautiful. Small, and compact, but solidly built. Her thick midnight hair cascaded, somewhat dishevelled, around her shoulders. Her torso and midsection though, was far from pretty. It was a righteous mess, to put it lightly. Although she was hugging herself tightly, blood poured freely from between her legs and leaked out of the numerous gouges in her un-sutured wound. The wound itself is intriguing, like someone had snuck a small packet of C4 into her uterus and set off the charges. When she saw us and almost went to point, a few flaps fell loose, spilling even more crimson blood, and a loop of intestine dangled precariously from one of the most open parts, dripping a mucous yellow-brown sludge from the exposed sac. Her face screwed up in a grimace of anger and pain, showing teeth stained red with blood she had coughed up, as she shuffled slowly towards the door. The staff assigned to treat her picked themselves off the ground they had been shoved into previously, and just stood there awestruck as this very-near-death, now fatally wounded woman, was up and walking around. The Saiyajin knew better though, they were aware of their races constitution, as well as their limits. There was nothing they could do, their queen had signed her own death warrant by refusing to accept any more treatment, so they let her have these last few moments without interference, and die the way they were used to – on their feet and screaming, not on their back like a blasted invalid! ::
"You!!! Get my son now or I'll… I'll… where.." Before she could draw attention to me I disappear, and a good thing too, because a squalling starts up, like the one which called me here in the first place.
"Is that him? Is that my boy..?? Where's the scalpel!!! I'm going to hack his tail off as punishment for disfiguring me!" Behind her, Spud, 'Sweet-pea', and the Saiyajin contingent of the team hiss collectively. Spinaki, who had recovered consciousness and was just about to sit up and get off the trolley-bed, hears the queens words and limply slams back down for round two of horizontal limbo, his eyes rolling up in his skull A/N: And going all whirly again.
"I hardly think that's necessary," mumbles 'Sweet-Pea'. "I'll go.. umm… see to the newborn, he's making quite a ruckus." There was flashing lights coming from behind the blinds in the next room. She opens the double doors leading into the corridor, muttering to herself.
"Really, there is no end to peoples insanity when they're delirious…"
:: Or when they start having conversations with themselves… ::
~ Does that make ME insane then huh? ~
:: Of course it does!! ::
~ You think she's got a voice in her head too? Apart from those other things.. which are still her not something else… like what you are? ~ There is a brief silence while we both ponder that…
:: Naaaaaah!! ::
~ No? Ooh look, Kapsikaa's not coming to visit us anymore… ~
:: My counterpart was right, instead, she was moving over to the window, which was still covered in blinds on the other side. Her tail hung limply downwards, the tip stained red from being dragged along the bloody floor. It twitched a little in annoyance as she banged her head a couple of times on the Perspex, impervious to the fact that each time she jarred her body with the impact, thick clotted blood and disconnected flesh splattered on the floor with a plopping sound, and the string of intestine bulged out like a glistening rope. 'Sweet-Pea' sent the blinds up quickly, adding more artificial light to the room and bathing the already-sickly looking queen in its yellow-white luminance. Her face fought a battle of expressions between joy and deep hatred. For his life, she must give up her own. The babe lying in the crib, screaming his pint-sized lungs out, must have reminded her of a small version of his father. She wheezed out a sigh, coating the Perspex in a small spray of blood and spume, then snorted, increasing the aerosol effect coming from her mouth, as 'Sweet-Pea' plucked the newborn prince out of the atmospherically controlled crib, and held him over her shoulder and stroked him, trying to lessen the crying. She then turned around, her back facing towards the dying queen, as if allowing her a moment of privacy. The baby was now facing his mother, a red tomato face screwed up in a brain-exploding, eardrum-piercing wailing session. Until he opened his eyes, and the waterworks shut off instantly. Queen Kapsikaa saw at her son properly for the first time, and although she was trying to still be angry over what had happened, she couldn't help but look at him through a mothers eyes, instead of an infanticidal mothers eyes. She almost smiled as she saw the prince force himself to focus his eyes on her, regarding her with a serious, sombre expression before smiling slightly, mimicking that of his mothers which had stolen onto her lips without her knowing.
"Vegeta… you bastard.." She rasps out with as much affection as she is capable of. Whether she meant it for the infant or his father, no-one would ever know. With that said, and past the point of caring anymore, she brought her arms up to the window and pressed her hands against its warm surface. With their bonds released, and sutures torn, her innards came crashing down around her ankles in a massive and very audible gushing overspill out of her abdominal cavity. Blood trickled down the corners of her still-smiling mouth, generously coating the Perspex when ejected in a forceful retch. Through the new red tint, she saw her son for the last time, sinking slowly from her view as her legs collapsed from under her.
Her hands remained on the window, until they could stay there no longer and slid down with a 'screee', leaving a trail of vermilion finger and handprints down the once-transparent material, coming to rest beside her motionless body. There is an uncomfortable silence.. ::
"My Queen!!!"
"Queen Kapsikaa!" The five Saiyajin comprising the treatment team rush to her side, and knowing there is now nothing they can do, stand around her while the non-Saiyajin contingent, although working on Vegetasei currently, do not know the rites of the natives, for all they knew the Saiyajin may roast their dead on an open fire! So they awkwardly clean up what they can, place instruments in the sterilisers, and mop up some of the blood and other internal components, without going too close to the corpse. 'Sweet Pea' lays the baby prince back in the crib and closes the lid. As soon as she leaves the crying starts up again, but there is no one to tend to him now. It grows more intense as this little prince is on his own, the bawling mounts to screaming, and flashes of light and energy shakes the crib, threatening to break the shell.
:: Gah.. babies… ::
~ You think he needs some attention or something? ~
:: I know as much about babies as you do about individual death.. perhaps even less now because of what you've seen in the past hour… but I guess it can't hurt. ::
~ I can sense another presence too. Away from here but still in the same complex. You think it's..? ~
:: We shall find out soon enough. I want to get a close up look at this prince first. My curiosity over his mothers demise has been satisfied. Who would believe that even so small, he blasted his way out? Amazing! ::
Reverting once again to invisibility and my normal form, I quietly slip into the door without alerting the mourning party and clean-up crew in the process, and glide smoothly over to the hi-tech crib and release the lid, wincing as the slightly pressurised hiss sounds loud enough to rouse the recently dead. I dare not pick him up, because if anyone in the next room saw a baby floating in mid-air, they'd become highly suspicious. However, I do reach down and touch the newborns hair. It is deceptively soft, for such gravity-defying fibres. I smooth back the fringe covering his hot red forehead. As soon as he feels the contact, he opens his eyes again, and the crying becomes stifled sobs, unlike before when it had stopped with eerie suddenness, and he again endeavours to focus his eyes, squinting straight at me, and through me at the same time. As I'm leaning over him, he grabs a handful of my purple/black hair in his fist, and.. and studies it!
:: He can see us? ::
~ Impossible! Were you expecting this, did you know? ~
:: No… I didn't know it would be like this… ::
I am unprepared for his next move, and I cannot help but utter a sharp yell as he pulls at my hair with surprising strength for a baby barely half a day old. He lets out a loud cackling gurgle of laughter and awards me a with a gummy smile.
:: Not THAT surprising is it? Barely a mild sting compared to what he did to his mother. ::
~ I'm not concerned with that now. We've got an audience. ~
Alerted by the noise, all faces were now pressed against the window, staring in bewilderment as they observe the previously inconsolable new prince and heir to the throne of Vegetasei giggling and waving his arms and legs around as it trying to reach something.
"I'm 100% certain I closed the lid on that thing, I'm positi-" 'Sweet Pea' half said to herself, before her and the others jaws dropped as they saw the prince's tail corkscrew around something.
~ My arm!! ~
:: That's gonna look weird to them. OK, I think this is where we make an exit. ::
"Be back soon," I whisper to the small one, "Don't kill anyone else while I'm away, huh!" And before he can grab any more of my person, close the lid and leave him behind. On my way out the door, I unintentionally pass through 'Sweet Pea', who was still confused about the lid being open, then when she sees the lid closed again, she pauses at the door and leans her head on it tiredly. She shivers as my presence floats through her, and mutters something about being chilled.
:: Speaking of presences, didn't you say you felt one before? ::