AN: Thank you once again to Vonigner for the excellent beta reading, and I hope you all enjoy some Goten POV!

He was kicking himself for his stupidity.

Goten couldn't understand why he was replying to Marron. Several times now, he had picked up the cold glass of his comms device and promised himself that the message he was about to send would be his last. The sooner he stopped this painful diversion, the better.

He had built a life for himself. A good life. Work that paid well, getting to fight every day, always growing stronger, and seeing the wonders of the universe. Far from the influence of Earth, and far from the people who should have loved him, but couldn't — or wouldn't.

He thought he was very lucky to be living this kind of life. The sort of existence he could never have dreamed of when he was a countryside boy on Earth, overshadowed and overlooked in the dull green garden of his parents' dowdy house.

He had been an afterthought. And an accident too, he knew. Born at an inconvenient time, the byproduct of a crisis. His brother had been planned, and perfect. A self-sacrificing prodigy. There was nothing his older brother Gohan couldn't do. And there was nothing he hadn't done already by the time Goten was old enough to walk.

In his new, better life he trailed in no-one's wake, not Gohan's, nor Trunks's, or even his father's. And yet his self-control abandoned him every time he saw her code on his device, signalling another transmission.

Initially, it had been moment of madness, and weakness. He'd been choked with fear at the thought that he'd seriously injured his niece. Her own fault for being there, he'd told himself for several hours afterwards. He'd made his wishes clear — twice — by refusing the dragon's attempt to bring him back home. They had no respect for what he wanted. They had always taken advantage of his good nature and felt entitled to order him around. And he was no longer someone who could be told what to do.

He'd gone to sleep satisfied, secure in his sense that they were knowingly inviting danger if they pursued him. And if they did that, then they deserved it.

He woke up a few hours later, panic in his chest, imagining Gohan's face, wondering if his brother would try to find him — this time not to bring him home, but to punish him for killing or maiming Pan. Would their father come too, to make sure they could bring him down? They wouldn't want to hurt him. They would show him mercy despite their heartbreak and disappointment. Somehow, unfathomably, this knowledge was worse than the idea that they'd track him down just to kill him.

It had not been a good idea to send an unsecured transmission to Marron in the middle of the night. But he had tried and failed to push down the fear and go back to sleep, and he could think of nothing else. An answer from Marron had come within minutes. Pan was all right. His fluttering heart had begun to slow at last.

He wondered why he had kept talking to Marron after that. He had what he needed, but it was as if something had gotten into him. He felt tugged like a fish on the end of a line. He hated it.

Now he even reached out first sometimes. He would come back to the base, fresh from battle, and go to his quarters to strip off the dirt (and sometimes blood)-encrusted armor and gray uniform. Normally, he felt supremely calm after battle, the lingering fullness of power still palpable in his arms and legs. He would sleep, deep and dreamless, and wake refreshed.

But not any more. Not now that Marron had taken up residence in his mind.

He had just returned from a brutal and unsuccessful stint on a damp, muddy planet. They hadn't found the guy they were meant to be tracking. Instead, they'd found a band of rival mercenaries who were looking for the same guy they were, and who'd tried with great enthusiasm to take their crew out.

Everyone involved had taken a beating, but the others had folded in the end. Four men and a woman. Goten found he couldn't remember their faces once twenty-four hours had passed. One of them had gotten away. The rest they'd left scattered in a field, blood moving in small rivulets, soaking into the already saturated grass.

The next gig was easier.

"Forty in that village," he was told. "Major threat. Wipe-out mission." A threat to what, he didn't know. He didn't think to ask.

There were actually closer to a hundred of them, hairless aliens huddled together in striking blue clothing. Individually, they weren't a problem — together they put up a good fight. But Goten was relentless. That was what the higher-ups on base said about him — he always found a way to powerhouse through, even if it nearly killed him.

But it had been a long time since he'd encountered any real danger on a mission. A long time since he'd fought anyone who gave him a run for his money. He was stronger than he'd ever imagined he could be. He was also more bored than he'd ever imagined he could be.

As he left the village, smelling acrid smoke on the wind, a stomach-curdling thought met him on the road out. How much did Marron know about what he was doing? If she could message his comms, if she had been able to send Pan and Trunks to his location — what else did she have access to?

He crushed the thought of that down in his mind, smaller and smaller, till there was nothing to see.

He didn't message her for several days after that. He put his comms device down, over and over, only to absent-mindedly pick it up time and time again.

Eventually, her greetings and inquiries about his wellbeing turned into firmer questions.

When that didn't work, she took the tack he loved and hated in equal measure, reviving their teenage sexual encounters, spooling out the best days of his life for him, thrilling him with details he'd long forgotten.

Link 45715242bi43agfa996. Chanel open. Session 45.

CAPCORP: Do you remember that time in the woods near your house

G116: Oh god. Was that the time when we had to wash your eye in the stream?

CAPCORP: Yep!

G116: I'm still sorry about that

CAPCORP: You didn't do it on purpose.

CAPCORP: And it was objectively hilarious

G116: Pleased you still think so

CAPCORP: I was laughing too hard for you to be able to help me. And then we ended up kissing again …

G116: What happened next?

CAPCORP: You've got a bad memory

G116: I know. It sucks

CAPCORP: Well then my T-shirt was soaked

G116: Oh

CAPCORP: If memory serves, you were overcome by the sight of my nipples(!) and pulled me back into the woods. We upset a lot of nesting birds with what we got up to against that tree

G116: It's all coming back to me now

CAPCORP: I still know which tree it was

G116: Really?!

CAPCORP: That was the time I made you keep your eyes open. You used to close them when you were getting close but I wanted to see them open

G116: It was so difficult

CAPCORP: The way your eyes rolled back in your head as you surrendered to the feeling, that's what tipped me over the edge

When they finished speaking he went to bed, his hand creeping down to caress himself, her name on his lips. He felt like she was trying to take him over. In moments like this, he felt she was succeeding.

He woke up cursing himself. He'd dreamt they were sitting at the kitchen table in his parents' house. A chorus of laughter. Sunlight streaming through the open window.

He batted the thought away, lifting his screen to skim the available mission summaries. He never knew exactly what he was going to be doing, but the essentials — where and when to turn up, the basic activities expected — were provided to him. Over time he had begun to be able to guess the tasks that were likely to be involved. He selected something interesting and began to ready himself to leave the base.

In the clean, austere steel of the shower room, the sunlit interior of Goku and Chi-Chi's house came crashing back, Marron perched smilingly on the edge of a chair, her hands around a steaming cup of tea. He swore and banged his forehead against the wall, as if that might exorcise the image. He turned the heat up as far as it would go. As the water stung his back, he realised he no longer really even knew what she looked like.

She loitered in his mind all day, on the margins of things. He wondered if she knew or suspected the effect she was having, and whether he was being manipulated. He half-suspected she did, and that he was. This was all deliberate. He couldn't tell if he minded.

Then he felt angry, and was glad to remember that he had a training session on the other side of the base in an hour's time. He would feel better when he'd smashed someone's face in.

"You don't talk much, huh?"

He was sparring with Yelu. He didn't particularly want to smash Yelu's face in — he was the least objectionable person on the base, in Goten's estimation. For one thing, he often tried to have ordinary conversations with those around him, which Goten respected even if he thought it was a bad idea.

"I talk," Goten said.

"Oh, good." Yelu grinned and swung for him.

Goten blocked the punch. "I guess I'm on the quieter side these days. I used to talk too much." He swung a kick at Yelu.

Yelu leapt over it. "Oh yeah?" He was a little out of breath. "What did you … talk about?"

"I dunno, some stupid shit probably."

"No-one talks … around here." Yelu jumped and attempted to seize Goten's arm.

Goten saw it coming, and in a flash he had hooked his own leg behind Yelu's calf and pulled him foward by his feet. Yelu crashed to the ground, pinned.

"Nothing much to talk about," Goten said, releasing Yelu as quickly as he'd brought him down.

There was a silence while they exchanged more blows. Yelu managed to land one. Goten landed several. Yelu had a bruise blooming on the right side of his face.

It was unusual to spar like this. People on the base tended to train alone, or with only one or two others who they'd come to trust. It wasn't good to lose to someone here, and then have them go about their business safe in the knowledge they could beat you. Unless you knew you would win, you left it an open question.

Yelu was relatively new, and seemed not to know about this. Goten looked at him properly for the first time. He was younger than Goten had initially realised, though that was always hard to say with alien species. Yelu's smooth purple skin could be a sign of advancing age for his species, for all Goten knew. He suspected, though, that he was young, and that he hadn't yet learned — the hard way — that you didn't let people in this game know they were stronger than you.

Yelu reminded him of himself when he'd first arrived here, brought in by recruiters. It had been a long time since Goten had really thought about the base — just one of many owned by the largest mercenary organization this side of the universe, which seemed to have come about to fill the vacuum left by the Frieza Force's decline.

He liked this base, it was quieter and newer than some of the others. The long glass corridors offered a view of the uninhabitable gas giant the base orbited. Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, he would lean his forehead against the thick glass of the porthole in his quarters, gazing out at the hazy fluorescent dust. It was a change from the usual inky, unbroken, twinkling expanse of space, which was typically all you could see from the windows of most of the bases. He was sick of looking at empty space.

He'd been dazzled when he'd first toured the network of bases. The slick training facilities, the incredible fighters, the high-stakes missions— all of it had made him dizzy with excitement. The culture had been a shock — keep your mouth closed, show no weakness, nothing matters but your strength and the rapidly rising fee your presence commands— but he had adjusted in time. He became popular immediately. 'Send the young Saiyan', he remembered hearing. Before long, everybody had known who he was. And soon they were putting him in situations that had terrorized him to new heights of power.

"Be careful who you fight," he said.

Several feet away, and completely absorbed in untying his wrist wraps, Yelu started and looked at him quizzically. Goten realized that this was probably the first time he'd ever deigned to speak to Yelu without having been asked a direct question.

"Just be careful," Goten murmured, glancing away, finding it difficult to word what he wanted to say. "Because once people here know for sure they're better than you, they might screw you over. Make you the scapegoat if a mission goes wrong, or take your cut."

Yelu's pupils grew large. "I hadn't thought of that."

They stood for a moment together. Goten began to don the layers he'd stripped off earlier for their session.

"Did that happen to you?" Yelu asked.

"Yes, but it didn't go well for them," Goten said.

Yelu smirked. "Good."

Two days later, he went to meet Yelu in the training wing. The air in the sparring enclosure was frigid. He kept his outer layers on while he stretched. Outside, the base was passing through a cloud of slow-moving debris, giving the impression that the stars outside had set about multiplying.

He checked the messages he had sent the boy via comms, wondering if he'd misremembered the time they'd agreed. He hadn't. Yelu was late. He had been out on a mission, but due to return today.

After a long time, he went into the corridor and wandered the length of the base. Thousands lived here, in theory, though in practice only a few hundred were ever in residence at a time. He checked the canteen, the infirmary, the other set of smaller training rooms on the far side of the base, finding only a few people in each place. None of them were Yelu, though he did a double take at a few purple-skinned lookalikes in the infirmary. He didn't know where the boy's quarters were. He hadn't asked.

He was on his way back to his own rooms when he heard Tarlow. The commander's booming voice never failed to tie a poisonous knot in Goten's stomach. They had been friendly when Goten had first arrived. He'd been Tarlow's shadow for a year, looking up to him (quite literally — he was enormous) and drinking in every bit of candid insight that came his way.

Until Goten had realized that Tarlow was the sort to give you heartfelt advice, only to turn a corner and start mocking you to an audience of his friends and admirers without missing a beat. He had apparently never missed an opportunity to repeat Goten's every worry or anxiety to anyone he thought might find it amusing.

He was important, supposedly. A big deal on his home planet. He came from a family of warriors who ruled most of that world. He'd worked for the company since he came of age, and his uncle before him had been in Frieza's Ginyu force. All very impressive. Goten occasionally dropped into a sarcastic bow when he passed him on the base, usually leading Tarlow to swing for him. He smiled now, remembering being physically separated by guards the last time they'd fought — sparring together was one thing, and roughing each other up was tolerated, but threatening the 'merchandise' by actually trying to dismember one another was another matter. They'd been forbidden to continue. Tarlow was told he ought to have known better, by virtue of his rank.

He turned on his heel now, keen to avoid the commander and whoever he was pontificating to. The crowd around him was laughing.

"And then, the little purple fucker says 'Don't leave me here!'. He was crying, of course."

Approving noises from the listeners. Goten had paused.

"I told him — listen, kid, you're not cut out for this! I'm doing you a kindness."

More laughter.

"If he'd gotten out of the pit alive, it would have been character-building, I suppose. A moot point, since he didn't. Gave us plenty of time to get out of there, though. So I'll drink to his ugly little purple face for that."

Goten had a strange sensation, as if something within him had suddenly stretched too far and come apart.

He was back in his quarters moments later, having moved with a speed he normally reserved for the battlefield. He would never get away with what he was about to do. He knew that. But he found that he didn't particularly care. He began to scroll through the available missions — he knew Tarlow well enough to pick out his likely favorites. One by one he sent them out, giving each log a bit of thought, imagining who might be able to put the information to good use. One after another, the messages left his device, leaking out into the comms ecosystem of the local galaxies, being passed on, handed over to those who could act.

Grimly, he wondered how long it would take them to come drag him out of his quarters. He wondered how he would handle it when they did.