Chapter 49

In the Darkest Hour

Tuesday July 1, 8:35 pm  (Day One in the Month of Strength 13:35)

"What did you say?"

Tee just about wet himself.  As they decided he looked the least Saiyan among them, he was given the task of answering any calls from the surface.

The Changeling that glared at him through the vid-screen was not something he wanted to look at for very long.  Where as a normal Changeling was mostly white, this one was mostly the crimson color of fresh spilled blood.  It was in the fourth stage already.  Only in a few places was the blood red coloring broken by black or white armor plates.  'This has to be Blizzard.'  Tee thought to himself.

The Changelings face was a shining black.  This only made the red glow of its eyes show up even more apparently.

Tee knew he was staring into the face of his nightmares and it was all he could do to keep the waver out of his voice as he answered.  "I said that Snow told me she was busy playing with her new pet, and did not wish to be disturbed."

The Changelings eyes narrowed.  "So she captured the Monkey and has brought it back to die here?  This is good.  I will also enjoy playing with her new pet."

Tee almost threw up. 

"Let me speak to the Captain.  A peon such as yourself is not worthy of my time."  The Changeling said suddenly.

Tee had no idea what rank of uniform he was wearing.  He had just grabbed one that fit.  He would have to gamble.  "I am sorry.  The Captain is dead.  As your scouters no doubt indicate there are only a few of us left on board.  I am the only one free to speak with you."

'Please buy that Roshi is Snow.  Please buy it.  Oh please for the sake of everything buy the story.'

"Your heading will set you down in the middle of the ruined Capitol City.  I think that is a marvelous place to take the Monkey.  Let her see just how badly she has failed her people.  Tell Snow that I will meet her there in a few hours.  Then we can leave destroy what is left of this dead planet and move on."

"Yes sir."  Tee said as the connection was broken.

Tee swiveled around in his chair to look back at where Roshi was standing next to Ichigo.  He was surprised to see her gripping her hands so tightly that blood was slowly dripping from her fists.

'If Blizzard thinks it is a good thing for us to land there, what waits there for us?'

* * *

The first thing that hit him was the smell.  Smoke and ash filled the air as Roshi stepped out of Snow's ship.  The ash clung to anything and everything.  The smell that clung with it was the acrid choking stench of rotting and burning flesh.  The cold and slight amount of snow that had fallen did nothing to hide the devastation that had befallen the city of Hayashi.  The city was eerily empty.  Roshi could sense almost no one within the city itself.  It seemed not even Blizzard's men wished to walk within the horrors that greeted them here.

To his left Tee threw up.  Roshi turned to see what was wrong and felt his already chilled blood cool further.

A gust of wind had blown the dusting of ashes off of a frozen corpse.  Roshi looked back at Ichigo and saw she had seen it as well.  Her mouth was tight as she clenched her jaw.  Roshi looked at her hands and feared she would re-open the wounds he had just had a healer close.

Ichigo was dressed in her white and light-blue Royal Armor.  Her mother's pendant locked in place high over her sternum.  It held the two gold chains that went out to her blue and white cape, which fluttered gently in the wind.  If it were not for the setting he would have called her beautiful.  Her poise, her stoic stance as she stared off looking past the sight before her, she was a picture of calm collected power.

Yet, in all that, the sight before him only held the level of tragedy that seemed to revolve around her life.  She had known so much pain in her life, and now this.  Roshi could hardly stand to look at her now.  Her stoic pain was too much for him to bear.

Ichigo sadly shook her head and walked past the frozen corpse.  Tee and Boxer's followed at a slight distance.  Roshi took one last look before he too followed.

The corpse was that of a pregnant woman.  She had been striped nude and beaten.  Even with the gray ash and frozen skin the cuts and bruises were easily seen.  Most horrific, however, was that her belly had been slashed.  Her unborn babe half-ripped from her womb.

Roshi cleared the tears from his eyes and followed.  Piles of dead Saiyans had been stacked like cordwood.  Several of the piles burned.  Many showed signs that they had been lit to burn but had gone out.  Before each pile and at each street intersection, a mutilated woman or child had been place.  They had frozen there as statues to remind any who dared to walk these streets what had happened.  It was the most singularly demoralizing and vulgar thing Roshi had ever seen.

Roshi looked ahead to where Ichigo walked.  She walked slowly, as though she wanted to take in everything that was before her.  'How could any race, or any people be so heartless?  How can they be so vile as what I see here?'  Roshi thought as he slowly followed.

He tried to reach out his senses to Ichigo, to see how she was reacting.  She was a walled fortress.  Roshi could sense nothing.  From Tee and Boxers, he felt their horror at what they were seeing, but from Ichigo, there was nothing.

Roshi looked up into the sky, someplace up in orbit, Kit was waiting to help as she could in the Phoenix.  'Kit, I know your people believe in fate as though it is a higher power.  If this is so, I can only ask how fate could be so cruel.  How I could be so powerless in such a time as this.'

Roshi desperately wanted to take Ichigo someplace else, anyplace else, so long as he could spare her from the pain she was no doubt experiencing.

But he could not, so he followed silently, knowing that nothing he could say or do would make things any easier on her.

Ichigo led them up the long steps that lead to the burned out and destroyed Palace.  From the nature of the destroyed gardens and the still evident glory of what it had been, it was the only thing such a building could be.

Half way up the steps, a large olive green man in black blood splattered armor landed before them.

"What is this?  Where is her Lordship Snow?"

"Dead, just like you."  Ichigo said calmly as she held up a hand and shot a ki blast at the man without even falling out of step.

Roshi recognized the ki blast as a Star Ripper, an attack Ichigo had not used for some time.  He realized why when the man held up a hand to stop the blast and it ripped into him.

As Ichigo walked past him, his sliced up body fell to the ground in pieces.  Roshi noted with distaste that the once large warrior now looked like a pile of ground hamburger covering his boots.

'Please Ichigo; do not sink to their level.  You must not sink to their level.'

Ichigo walked through the collapsing archway of the Palace doors and walked down a large hall.  From places that the Palace had not burned, Roshi could tell that this hall had once been a grand ballroom of sorts.  One of its high domes still stood atop damaged buttressed pillars.   Ichigo walked to the first landing of a grand set of stairs and then kneeled in the ashes.

There she picked up the blackened and burned corner of a picture frame.  What remained of it was elaborately carved out of silver colored wood.  No sign of the painting or picture remained.

Ichigo kneeled there and clutched the ruined frame to her chest.  For the first time since looking at the flimsy on the ship, tears formed in her eyes.

Roshi wanted to go lay a hand on her shoulder.  He wanted to help support her.  But he knew she would not want his help.  She would not welcome his touch right now.

The remains of the picture frame suddenly shattered as Ichigo clenched her hands into fists.  Ichigo stood up and wiped her sooty hands off on her legs.  She then carefully climbed the rest of flight of stairs and walked slowly down the collapsing hallway.

She led them into a large room over which the roof had collapsed.  Ichigo threw some of the slabs of building material away from her in frustration but quickly gave up and walked out onto the balcony.

"There is nothing left."  She said mostly to herself as she looked out upon the ruins below her.  Something blew caught her eye, because she quickly jumped into the air and flew down behind the decimated Palace.

There in a small paddock lay several large furry animals.  Most of them had huge holes blown in them and were quite dead.  Ichigo leaned over by one and brushed the ashes off of its metallic gold and bronze looking fur.

It mewed.

Ichigo looked up at them as they landed with tears of hope brimming in her eyes. "It is alive.  We need to get it into the ship."

Ichigo looked up.  "It is one of the Sartan cows my father brought to the Palace gardens to better protect.  This one is showing bronze hair so it is pregnant."

"Ichigo, it's an animal.  Shouldn't we be looking for your people?"  Boxers asked.

Ichigo straightened up and glared at him.  "Look around you!  Look at this place!  The people are in hiding in the Catacombs.  They will live, but if we will have any hope at rebuilding what we have lost things like this unimportant animal must be saved."

Roshi remembered the story Ichigo had told about her Trial of Passage and how her father had helped her cook herself a Sartan.  More than just a chance to rebuild the pathetic wounded creature represented a tie to her past.

'Without directly personal ties such as this she will not have anything worth fighting for in this battle.'  Roshi realized.

Roshi reached into the pocket that had been sewn into his gi and grabbed one of the small capsule ships.  He tossed the capsule a few meters from the downed sartan and waited for the smoke to clear.

"Let's get this thing loaded and up to Kit.  There has to be corn meal or something up there for it to eat."  He said as he waited for the others to help him move the elephant sized beast.

They loaded the animal and then watched as the ship automatically returned to the Phoenix.

"Well that is it.  If they didn't know something was up by now, the do now."  Boxers replied as the ship disappeared.

"It does not matter.  We will fight them when they get here and on this ground of death and destruction Saiya will claim their lives too."  Ichigo said forcefully as she started walking around the Palace the opposite way from that which they had come.

Roshi took in what he could of the sights.  They were obviously walking though what had once been a huge garden.  Smashed fountains and trees littered the ground as Ichigo picked her way around the Palace.

On the other side of the Palace a stadium had once stood.  The large ruined marble blocks stood testimony to what it had once been.  Roshi was impressed with the grandeur of the few remaining spires that had been left standing.  Saiyan construction looked like it was a mesh between Roman and Egyptian works.  Everything was marble, or granite.  Everything was huge.

Roshi walked over to a fallen spire and looked at the helix patter that had been carved into the stone.  'Ichigo clamed that her people did not have artists, but in the architecture I have seen today, they had stunning displays of art.'

Roshi turned back to tell Ichigo what he had been thinking when she suddenly took off and darted up to the top of an obelisk that had been left standing.

Roshi walked around to see what had cause Ichigo to fly off like that.

"Oh no!"  He gasped as he saw her floating near the top of the obelisk.  There at the top of the tower and facing the city itself, hung a man.  Surprisingly he was still in armor, and a red cape draped the white of the obelisk.

Roshi flew up to get a better look at the man he was certain was Ichigo's father.

Roshi had half expected her to loose it and go Super Saiyan up in the ship when she saw that flimsy.  Now as he looked at the emaciated man tied there on that tower of stone, he wondered how she could just float there in silence looking at the gristly sight before her.

Roshi had seen what it looked like to starve to death.  After the evacuation of Vulpe a small group of people felt the Earth was becoming too diverse with alien life.  They had bought a ship and set off for the unknown reaches of space where they could keep their human nature "pure."  A few years before his birth, a ship from Capsule Corp had detected a distress call from their colony and gone to help.  A violent series of storms had wiped out their farms and the entire colony was slowly starving to death.  While the pictures he had seen were vivid, they were only pictures.  This was much more ghastly.

The man was gaunt.  His armor no longer fit on his frail looking frame.  His bare arms were little more than bone, sinew, and tendons.  His eyes had sunken into his head and his mouth was pulled back into a gasping oh.  Roshi could imagine many deaths, but starving to death was one that had always been too gristly for him to imagine.  Seeing this practically mummified man hanging there woke many a nightmare in the back of Roshi's mind.

Ichigo just hung in the air and stared at him.  Roshi watched her.  Her eyes were not staring blankly, but were taking in every detail.  All the while she just hung in the air silently.

"So now I am Queen."  She said to herself almost too softly for Roshi to hear as she reached out and lightly slid her hand down her father's cheek to his pointed goatee.

Roshi started to move toward her when she turned.  "Boxers, give me your sword."

Roshi looked back at Boxers.  He hadn't even remembered that Boxers had Trunks's sword with him.

Boxers quickly flew up and gave her the sword.

Ichigo stared down into the reflection of the sword blade for what seemed like an eternity before she suddenly arced the sword through the air.  Before Roshi or anyone could even react, she had sliced the back behind her head and cut off her long braid. 

Roshi gasped as his mouth fell open.  'She was always so adamant at never cutting her hair!'  Roshi thought as he watched the long braid flutter through the air as it fell down below and into on of the smoldering fires.  Roshi almost went down to get it, but it soon caught and burned.

Roshi gaped at her like she was a ghost.  She had cut it so close to her head that it had given her a bald spot on the very back of her head.  The remaining hair stuck almost straight back before forming a flat edge where she had cut the braid.

"Ichigo why did you..." Roshi began to ask but she turned and glared at him in such a way it made him swallow his tongue.

She then carefully sliced the ropes that bound her father and carried him like a baby down to the ground.  There she hugged him on last time before she flew up and kicked the obelisk.

The large column of quarried marble fell as one onto the cleared area where she had laid her father.  It fell on him and settled.

"What the hell?"  Tee gasped.

But Roshi recalled that Vegeta had insisted he be buried under the largest rock they could find.  Each race of people had their own burial customs and Saiyans obviously entombed their own under large rocks.

'There is so much I truly do not know about her.'  Roshi surmised as he watched her kneel by the fallen slabs of marble.

"Ichigo..."

Ichigo spun around and looked at him.  She seemed to hesitate but then took in a deep breath and shook her head.  "By rights, I am now Queen in everything but Coronation.  It is improper for you to call me by name."

"You have got to be kidding!"  Tee blurted but Roshi held up a hand to stop further discussion.

"She had to adapt on our world, we will do the same here on Saiya.  If we are not to call you by you name, what do you wish to be called?"

"I," Ichigo started, "I want to be called by name, however, as I said that is improper, so call me Kudamono.  My sir name is not much better, but it is better than my first name."

"Ok, just don't expect me to stick to that if a ki blast is about to take off you head.  Your first name is much easier to say."

"Good."  Ichigo nodded.  "I have already wasted far to much time in my reminiscing, I can feel the Changelings approaching.  We need to get into the Catacombs so that we can start loading the wounded onto ships before the Changelings get here."  She said as she handed Boxers his sword back.

"I..." Roshi started and then grimaced.  "Miss Kudamono you realize that propriety in a time such as this is quite pointless, but that non-withstanding, have you changed your mind about the evacuation?"

Ichigo looked thoughtful for a moment.  "Your friend Kit told me about all the work that has been done on her world, and how far they are from finishing.  It will be decades if not longer before Saiya will be a place I can call home again.  This will always be my world, but home is a place where you are safe.  Look around you; I doubt anyone who has seen the sights we now see will ever feel safe here again.  This is a dead world.  While I do not plan on leaving it dead, I think we need to leave for now."

Roshi turned to look at the rest of them.  "You heard her.  Let's get moving."

Ichigo started to walk into the ruined stadium when Roshi sensed a sudden burst of ki to his left.  It was a little over a kilometer away, and it was barely over 20,000 but as soon as it rose two even larger ki bursts rose to challenge it.

Ichigo jumped into the air and flew towards the source of the three struggling ki's

"Get off of me you heathens!"  A young woman's voice cried out as they closed on the scene.

"AIIIEEEEAAAAA!!!!"  The young woman cried as they came into view and he saw two large burly looking men manhandling a Saiyan woman.  One of them was pulling on her tail as she squirmed in pain while the other was busy trying to pull her armor off of her.

The girl's breastplate had split revealing the left side of her chest, which the men were lustfully fondling.  The young woman looked to be the same age as Ichigo, or Mariah, or Slip, and the thought of anyone doing such a thing to them or any woman he knew boiled in his blood.  In a flash of light and ki Roshi went Super Saiyan.

In the next instant he hand knocked the man who was undressing her away and had the one who held her tail by the throat.  "Leave her alone."  He demanded.

The man didn't get a chance to respond as a pink ki blast suddenly blew off the top of his head.

"Scum such as these do not deserve any mercy," Ichigo said as she landed on the first man and smashed his head into the ground.

The girl for her part was cowering in fear.  But when Ichigo spoke, she looked up with an expression of awe.

The girl leapt to her feet and then started to curtsey but stopped as if she were somehow unsure of how she should act.  "My Princess you... your hair!  So you saw..." the girl suddenly leapt and pulled Ichigo into a hug.  "Oh I am so glad you are alive!  We were so worried.  And then when your father died and..."

Tee elbowed Roshi.  "So why do we have to be all super respecting when she lets her do that?"

Roshi sent him a glare that had the words: Shut up you brainless idiot written all over it.

Ichigo returned the hug stiffly and then seemed surprised when the girl jumped back from her and held her at arms length.  "And what happened to your tail?"  The girl asked in shock as she gaped at Ichigo's waist.

"Sakura?"  Ichigo said tentatively looking into the girl's eyes.  "It is you.  I..."

"You lost your tail?  How did you lose your tail?"

Roshi saw the glint of fear break through Ichigo's walls and wash over her eyes.  He would have done just about anything to be invisible at that moment.

Ichigo's face hardened.  "Yes, I lost my tail.  I lost it because I was too arrogant to learn and too blind to see."

Sakura shook her head.  "It does not matter.  You are back.  That is all that matters.  You didn't abandon us.  That is all that matters.  Momo said you would return for us.  Many have started to doubt, but I knew you would be back."

"Momo is alive?  How many people are hiding with her?  I was away for far too long and I was starting to think I would never see you again.  You hid I take it?  How did you end up getting captured by two bullocks like that now?"

Sakura took a step back from Ichigo and stood there looking at her.

Roshi noticed Tee start grinning at the improved view and he hit him hard enough to nock him over and into the side of a ruined building.

That was not to say that Sakura wasn't a fine looking young woman, because she was.  Her short spiky hair spiked forward and to the right giving her hair a windblown look.  A small scar ran from the left side of her forehead down onto her right cheek.  It marred what would otherwise be a very nice face.

She had dark black eyes and an incredibly light complexion.  She was shorter than Ichigo, but not by much.  Her small bust and smaller waist gave her an extremely athletic allure.

No, she was not hard on the eyes, but for Tee to grin so openly was distasteful.

"Would you like to cover up?  The air has to be quite chilling."  Boxers said as he held out his outer jacket he had worn over his gi.

Roshi smiled, 'At least one of us remembered to be a true gentleman.'

Sakura looked up at Tee and then instantly blushed and moved her arm to cover herself while she grabbed the jacket.  "Oh! Thank You.  If you and Princess... Queen Ichigo hadn't come along I..."

"It is best you do not think about it."  Ichigo said as she walked over to kick one of the dead assailants.  "Please, fill me in on what has happened.  I need to know."

Roshi looked to the sky.  "We need to hurry, the Changelings will be here in about a minute."

Ichigo nodded.  "Right.  Everyone give me your capsules.  Take us to the entrance to the Catacombs you have been using Sakura.  And while you are doing that tell use what has happened."

"Yes ma'am" Sakura said quickly as she started flying over the ruined buildings and piles of dead bodies.  "But who are these strangely clothed people with you?"

"They are our allies in this.  It is a long story best saved for later.  First tell us your tale."  Ichigo replied.

"Well I do not know where to start.  Your father fought them to the end.  He starved to death.  A most terrible way to die."

"Yes I know."  Ichigo replied.

"No, you do not know.  The Changelings came with over twenty million troops.  They brought their entire army.  Every last soldier came to Saiya.  We fought as best we could.  I saw my brother go down."  She looked back at Ichigo, "He was at the Palace.  He took a ki blast for Momo.  I was about to jump in to help the fight when Momo grabbed me.  She told me that you had told her to hide in the Catacombs.  Your Father had fallen back as the front lines closed and two Warriors were helping him to get into a defendable location.  He overhead what she said and then told me that you would be back with help.  He said to help Momo save the children that had been taken to shelter below the Palace."

"We grabbed what we could and fled.  Momo, myself, a few other true warriors and a few civilians fled into the depths with the children."

Ichigo sped up.  "So all who are in the Catacombs are children?"

"Yes, mostly all of the survivors are, and we are running out of food.  Which is why I was on the surface.  I was scavenging what I could find."

"How?  How did it get this bad?"  Ichigo asked in a distant voice.

"They could not break us, so they decided to kill us all.  When your father refused to be broken, they started parading people in front of him and killing them in mass."

"He refused to eat because all they would give him to eat was the meat of those they had killed in front of him.  He starved himself defying them.  It was a message to us all. Even if we died they would not cow us.  While I hid protecting the children, the people rose up.  They fought and died, but they battled and we were not cowed."

"That is unbelievably horrendous!"  Tee commented, "They tried to force him to become a cannibal?  That's disgusting!"

Sakura looked over at him and nodded.  It was the type of a smile and nod one uses with a child.  "I think the only reason they are even here any longer is to wait for Snow to return."

"She's dead."  Ichigo said quietly.

Sakura stopped and turned.  "How?"

"We killed her."  Ichigo said simply.

"Changelings, twenty seconds," Roshi yelled over his shoulder as he stopped following them and turned to float in the direction of the Changelings.

"Sakura, take these."  Ichigo said as she handed her the duffel full of capsules.  "Click the button and throw them away from you.  Each one is a ship.  Load the children aboard them and leave.  There is a ship in orbit that will help you.  The woman on board is not Saiyan, but you can trust her.  My father trusted you to get the children hidden.  Now I need you to get them to where they will be safe."

"But we cannot just run away!"

Ichigo turned.  "Changelings blow up planets when they start to lose!  Get the children off Saiya.  That is an order.  Do not argue with me!"

Sakura started to take the duffel so that she could escape.

It was too late.

The four Changelings were there and had them surrounded before she could move.

Roshi looked at them and smiled.  Fate was on his side.  Only Blizzard it seemed was beyond the first stage.  The other three were in their weakest form.  'Three males, one female, if I can kill one or hopefully two of them before they transform then this fight might not be so bad.'

"Well, well, well," Blizzard said in a remarkably feminine voice.  "If it isn't the Princess Monkey and one of the other vermin pests that we've been trying to root out."

"You can retreat now Blizzard and I will let you leave."  Ichigo said calmly as she finished handling the duffle to Sakura.

"Oh now that is just almost cute!"  Blizzard laughed.  "I don't know how you managed to steal Snow's ship from her, but you will regret your attempt at subterfuge."

Ichigo laughed.  "What subterfuge?  Snow is dead.  She fought a Super Saiyan and lost."

Blizzard checked his scouter.  "Do you think I am stupid?  You may have a power level that is disgustingly high for a monkey, but you are still a bug to be squashed.  There are no Super Saiyans here."

Roshi smirked. 'Nice to know I was actually able to keep my ki down even as a Super Saiyan.'

Ichigo shook her head.  "Oh I am not talking about myself."  She turned and pointed.  "That is your Super Saiyan.  That is your death if you stay."

Blizzard looked at Roshi for a few moments.  "I grow tired of you stupid games.  He is not Saiyan.  He had no tail.  Besides, his power is even weaker than your own pathetic amount."

Sakura was looking from Ichigo to Blizzard to Roshi as though she was in shock.

"Oh, I assure you that he is Saiyan.  Blizzard, meet your death.  Meet Son Roshi, heir to the Vegeta line.  Those once cast out as traitors now return as our saviors.  He is our myth and your nightmare. He is our strength, our honor, our glory, our justice and most importantly our vengeance.  So I say again, leave now, or die."

Roshi didn't know where Ichigo found her sudden sense of bravado, but he found her words to be energizing.  He pulled his ki in even deeper as he focused his mind.  'Thank you for your trust Ichigo, now I only need to show that I earned it.'

"I will take no more of this foolishness.  Kill the one she claims to be her savior first."  Blizzard said as he turned away.  "Then bring me the girl when the rest are dead." 

Roshi saw his chance and threw a Kienzian at the back of Blizzard's neck.

The Changeling must have heard it because he turned at the last second and ducked to the side.  The disk cut deeply into his cheek, but otherwise missed him.

The other three Changelings jumped as one at Roshi.

The battle for Saiya was underway.

* * * * * *

If you want me to post again soon you had better review.   I know a lot of you are not.  I gave you a double dose of Fic... least you can do is review.

The Smooster.