Juggernaut
By The Eternity Dragon
The 'Cube'
Disclaimer: …………… (&..&)
Chi-Chi blew a stray strand of ebony hair out of her face and continued to glower aggressively at the wall opposite her.
5 times today already, she didn't think she could stand it if another person called her Chiana one more time.
She had reduced one teenage girl into floods of tears when she had enthusiastically asked for her autograph.
Her eyes flicked to the display screen above her head, reading the number of minutes till the freighter came in, 16 minutes and 29 seconds.
She wasn't even late, sighing dejectedly to herself she slumped into the chair beside her, the spindly legs creaked awkwardly as they struggled to support her weight.
She wasn't even fashionably late!
Chi-Chi desperately envied the way Vegeta could waltz into a room half and hour late looking as though he'd done nothing wrong, almost daring people to reprimand him, of course they never did, it had something to do with being the empress's son she supposed.
While she; as her punishment for allowing him access to those training scenario's in the first place had been lugged with such a punishment Chi-Chi didn't know whether or not she'd be able to stand it.
Chi-Chi closed her eyes, wondering why these things always happened to her, the human, the scum of the universe, the bloody creature in her charge???
What sort of inhumane punishment was that?
Humans had been imprisoned for a good reason, they were dangerous, malicious, selfish and cowardly, an extremely dangerous combination.
Chi-Chi remembered the rebellion well enough, the vicious onslaught of machines against the brutal power of the Saiya-jins; blood had poured like rivers down the streets, cries and yells of the injured against the merciless embodiment of God like machines.
Led and co-ordinated by unseen commanders it had taken every strand of resilience, cunning and strength the mighty Saiya-jin empire possessed to beat down the attacker.
The memories still ran clear and as vivid as they had been yesterday, the day the fighting stopped, the day of the apocalypse.
The underground vaults had been created for those who where important enough to be guarantied some sort of safety, the battle had raged over head, enormous explosions filled the air, sending vibrations in all direction, dust had showered down from the ceiling as it cracked, filling the air with a rusty stench, slowly suffocating them as the mass of bodies wrought with fear and anticipation listened for sounds of victory or massacre.
She had been young at the time, too young to understand the silent looks that flickered from one face to the other of adults.
To young to understand what the bodies that no longer moved where no longer with them, once the soul had gone it was said, the body was no more than flesh.
Meaningless and irrelevant the endless corpses where disposed of in any way possible some said they were brutal, but the bodies were so innumerable, so mutilated they could hardly be recognised by their own families, her own father had died that day.
One of the elite front pilots in the final stand the last 'hope', the first wave of those who were doomed to die from the word 'go'. The huge juggernaut had enveloped the whole world it seemed. A massive structure of colourless metal ridged with lines of technology unfathomable to every one of their scientists, completely characterless, a monster, devoid of honour, pride and mercy.
The perfect killing machine.
The humans where just as ruthless as their creations they placed so much faith in.
As enormous rays of shimmering light ploughed down onto the earth that was once alive and free, it became engulfed; it turned into part of the enemy, its energy taken, identity lost.
How could they stop it?
Where was 'hope'?
It had been in desperation that the last attack had been made, wave upon wave of elites had been thrown at the massive machine, the 'cube' as many had affectionaly dubbed the slaughter mechanism.
'Cube' left no survivors, its attacks in the beginning had begun on the outer regions of the Saiya-jin empire, tales of the massacre and mutilation of living things turned into breathing machines rippled like a black whisper on the home planet. Murmurs of unknown human monstrosities that had nothing that was humane and yet everything that was perfection in their appearance and minds.
'Cube' had cut a bee line straight for the centre of Saiya-jin space, leaving ruined solar systems in its wake like broken and blooded carcasses discarded to one side as though obliteration and demolition mixed with blameless blood amused 'cube'. Its sick little game of picking off the innocent as a way to punish those who supported the Saiya-jin empire, so many families and worlds where lost in this way.
Its monstrous appetite seemed to expand with every death, every sacrifice that it took, on a diet of life, consuming death and disregarding it as 'imperfection' it spread fear and suspicion like an unseen plague.
"Grethor help us," people would mutter at the mention of 'cube'; even the Saiya-jin army in all their glory where almost defeated, very nearly. And she remembered it well.
It was in the moment between defeat for the Saiya-jins and victory to the humans; the atrocity hovered above the planet, glinting eerily in the morning sunlight, the slight morning breeze gently moving across Chi-Chi's face wafting the scent of fear across her senses as she looked up into the face of death, her large child like eyes widening in incomprehensible fear as she clutched her mothers hand with podgy fingers.
Chiana looked up; her beautiful face with its almond eyes surrounded by that stunning cloud of black hair blew gently on the wind.
She stared into the face of death, her expression held no fear, just antagonistic revulsion, and when she spoke in was in an oddly husky voice that she had said, "Daddy's up there."
It had been then the empress had acted, with her own division; in the plan reserved for only the worst circumstances. Some called it murder, others who believed in old values self sacrifice.
Whatever it was it was as horrific as the humans themselves, Chi-Chi knew it, "Grethor spare us," Chiana muttered, as a glow of ethereal red light began to gather about 'cube'.
"They knew the risk," people would say in an undertone as if they'd rather not think about it, "It was either them or the Empire. What would you have chosen?"
Life, she always thought, she would have chosen life.
The elite, those hand picked by the empress, showered in glory, "their deaths where not in vain," she said, it was easy for her to say she wasn't the one who had done it.
Those who were loyal to the Empire, the finest of their genre, they were injected with a machine devouring virus, and flown straight into the enemies path.
They had died; no they had been slaughtered for the good of the empire, losing themselves, their humanity to perfection which ultimately destroyed them, and it.
'Cube' disappeared, like a shadow of a memory consumed by that ethereal light, and Earth had been seized, turned into a high security prison, a mortal punishment for those who had dared to rebel against the Saiya-jins, they were made an example of.
The lowest of the low, lower than scum even, humans, the scourge of the quadrant, and now she, SHE the empresses niece was to suffer the humiliation of being in charge of one.
Chi-Chi buried her head in her hands, as a sudden hiss and clang of metal against metal told her the ship had docked and was now unloading.
Looking up she saw a battered and ancient piece of equipment the 1200 model if she wasn't mistaken, she had thought they had all be decommissioned years ago.
Obviously not, fiddling irritably with the pulse pistol by her side she stood up,
Moving slowly forwards wondering whether or not this was the right vessel.
A young man appeared by the cargo bay doors, Chi-Chi moved slowly up to him.
He had a young unsure face that was framed by dark brown hair, and large eyes.
"Are you the twelve nine freighter," she questioned gruffly, her eyes sliding apprehensively across the outside of the ship again for reassurance, her grip on the pulse pistol slightly tighter than before.
He nodded slowly, "Where is the prisoner?" she questioned visibly relaxing, it was the right ship.
"Coming," he said in a voice that was neither here nor there, she nodded, her smoky eyes roving across his appearance, recon team, she thought with amusement; first year tech if I'm not mistaken. She remembered Vegeta's curt disposition towards techs and felt glad for the young man that the empress had forbidden him to accompany her here.
This guy looked like one well placed insult might finish him off.
Suppressing a smile, the noise of approaching footsteps brought her nerves straight back again, a man with dark hair that defied all the rules that gravity had laid down appeared between the open doors, the crest of the Saiya-jin symbol was emblazoned on his chest, it shimmered in the artificial light of the docking bay sliding across the blood stained sword and coming to rest on the hand of Grethor.
Chi-Chi bowed; a deep sign of respect to her superior, Bardock, the Bardock was standing in front of her, she felt her stomach squirm unpleasantly.
He smiled kindly down at her, his dark eyes glinting strangely and stepped aside, behind him stood a girl that was so thing she could have been a skeleton.
She long knotted and filthy hair was blue, and her skin covered with muck and grim was the unhealthy pale white of someone how hasn't seen sunlight in years.
This girl, Chi-Chi thought with some horror was her own age, her own dark eyes travailing up the expanse of her frail body to rest on her face.
She could, she supposed have been very attractive, she had plump lips and high cheek bones, a proud nose, but there was something frightening about her too, something menacing, like the living dead that walk among us.
Eaten away at by malevolence, hatred and despair, it was those eyes, perfectly blue, perfectly symmetric in everyway possible, that look of absolute loathing and disgust, that look that made the hairs on the back of Chi-Chi's neck stand erect and alert, that look which made her stomach convulse in fear.
That gaze, she knew right down to the depths of her beating heart, meant certain death.