Chapter One:
If it weren't for the huge flashes of ki going off in the sky, tearing into the ground and rivaling the sun for brightness, the scene would have been beautiful. Green tress, dew still clinging to the leaves. The early morning sun had not been out for long enough to make the air really hot; it was only pleasantly warm. Oblivious to the chaos happening so nearby, birds nested in the trees, their song providing a bizarre contrast to the explosions not far away, explosions that they had gotten used to due to them happening every day for quite a long while.
Vegeta's knee was aimed for the abdomen of Son Goku, but it was stopped by the saiyajin's hands, sending another huge wave of energy across the landscape.
The two sparred, not too intensely, without speaking or even communicating at all. Not to say that they were silent. They screamed and yelled, letting out loud kiais that helped focus the blow as it was landed. Though they didn't communicate verbally, they were in an almost preternatural rhythm, where difference in strength and power didn't matter. Their strength was totally even, their movements calculated so that neither really landed any decisive blow.
It was more of an exercise to increase speed and stamina, and polish technique. The two fighters practiced this ritual so often that it had lost some of the aspects of a battle, and begun to resemble a savage, brutal dance.
They floated in the air, ki lightning flashing around them, digging trenches into the ground. Below them, the earth was being torn apart, although this particular area had been their sparring ground for a while, so it was slightly hard to tell. A line so straight that it could have been drawn with a ruler cut off the lush forest where the birds sang from the barren, torn waste that Goku and Vegeta sparred over.
In that torn wasteland, oblivious to the noise and also to the occasional stray bolt of ki that hit him, was a man, slightly boyish in appearance, though almost as tall as his teacher, and muscular. His skin was dark brown, and his hair was black, a mohawk that stuck up into the air, front locks coming down in a wave over his forehead. He wore white pants and a dark blue weighted cloak, his feet and chest bare.
Uubu's eyes were closed as he mediated amidst the chaos that the two older warrior's created. He had experimented in many different sorts of environment, meditating in everyplace of the world from the middle of the desert to underground. And he had discovered that while nearly anyone could learn to meditate successfully in the peace and silence of total solitude, such as Piccolo preferred, it took real skill to meditate in the midst of utter chaos.
Meditation wasn't what most laymen would think of it as. It wasn't a strange trance that emptied your mind, at least not in the form Uubu practiced it. Though he had heard of certain religious and even martial arts sects that did it in this way.
The form of meditation that he, and all the successful warriors he had studied with, practiced was entirely different. The form those monks and fighters practiced in general was a way of tuning out the outside and turning totally toward one's self. The form that Uubu used was the opposite; it tuned out the self, and tapped into the whole wide world. The ki and the spirit, the mental consciousness of the planet itself and the people around you. How far and how deep you could tap into it, this strange, almost psychic undercurrent of life, depended on how skilled and naturally gifted the particular practitioner was.
Right now he was so un-tethered from his body that he was barely aware of it. It was peaceful, being a part of the life force of the universe, rather than only himself. And there was something else, too. When you were a part of everything around you, you could always tell if something was wrong.
He was at the point now where he could extend himself and feel all that was happening over the entire planet, to an extent. And even some of space. It wasn't a set range; some days he could feel further than others, and he could feel further in some directions than others. The whole thing was a continuing mystery, and that was one thing that kept it interesting.
He couldn't have really said why he liked so much to be a part of this huge force, rather than himself. Maybe no one could have really said. He only knew that he found it peaceful, pleasant. He could not have known that something may have been wrong with his own mind, or not, just like every other mortal, because their own mind was the only singular consciousness that they knew. He had no context, nothing to compare his own mentality to, really. He had no way of knowing what was different, or normal, or right. He only knew himself, just like everyone else.
The problem was, no one person can truly know even themselves. There are some areas of the mind that are secrets even from those to whom they belong. Dark caverns and crevices, whole galleries that lay dormant and unused, unknown by the conscious mind.
And because of this, a question arises. When evil souls were sent to hell, they were cleansed and reincarnated as a general rule. But those of monsters so evil and insane that they were sent down to the lowest hells, were not reused. This was because with great evil comes, usually, insanity. And even more, far more, unexplored areas of the mind. The question is, can creatures of such complexity and evil be really cleansed? Creatures such as Cell, Frieza?
Creatures such as Majin Buu?
The girl was young, sixteen at most, and clothed in soiled rags that kept the wind out about as well as nothing at all. She stood on the platform of what appeared to be a huge station of some kind, like a train station. Only docked at the various bays were not trains, but ships built to carry passengers across whole galaxies.
She stood amidst the bustling crowd, full of faces so varied that trying to take them all in was impossible. She appeared strangely beautiful in this setting, and indeed she was. Her hair was as white as new snow, cut short enough to fly around her head in semi-ordered tufts, except in front, where it was slightly longer and hung lower. But this disarray only added to her overall appearance, in some strange way. Her skin was slightly pale, eyes just a little larger than average, dark green.
Across one of them ran a scar. It started at her hairline, lanced down over her left eye (how she hadn't lost it was a mystery), curved slightly over her cheekbone, and ended near the corner of her mouth.
Her build was naturally slight, but made even more-so because she was malnourished, a child who had left home too soon and was now living the life of a vagrant, that much was obvious. But she had good muscle tone as well, very likely from some sort of combat, and in all aspects but her slightly childlike face, she was a woman.
The reason she caught Arda's eye was because she looked very frightened. The vampire had seen her exit a small, old looking ship, the sole passenger. How she could have paid for a private taxi, even one as old as the one she had exited only a moment ago, was beyond him, but apparently she had.
He was only here for a brief stop, to re-fuel the ship he was in before launching back into space until the fuel tanks ran dry again. If he had come five minutes sooner or later, he would have missed her all together, and maybe that would have been better. But he saw her, and instantly felt sorry for her, the expression of fear and anxiety on her face as she glanced back and forth across the port bringing this emotion to the front.
He reached out with his telepathic ability, but to his frustration he couldn't get more than the same fear he saw on her face. Apparently, she was trying not to think about what was actually making her feel afraid. he could have dug deeper into her mind and found the memories, but he considered it a horribly rude thing to do.
Instead, he decided to go talk to her. At the very least, he could get her a meal and something warm to drink.
The sky was already dark and cloudy, and as he began to move through the crowd, it began to sprinkle down rain lightly.
With another telepathic impulse, this one much more subtle, he made himself obvious to her, as well as letting her know that he had nothing but good intentions. But when she saw him, her eyes widened a bit, more fear showing on her face. he saw her vision of him in her mind; Hair hanging down long in waves and curls, matching his eyes, the color of fresh blood. Skin so white that it shone like alabaster, clothed in rags not so much better than her own and covered with a dark green trench-coat. Startling, if not frightening, but his simple appearance was not the only reason for her fear.
In her mind, he saw that he was similar, either in appearance or some other way, to what she was so terrified of.
He stepped up in front of her, his own stature not too much greater than hers. The fear left her eyes in an instant, and was replaced by something else. Determination, maybe.
He remained silent at first, wondering if she would perhaps say something, give some indication of why she felt such fear, which was still apparent even though she hid it very well. But she didn't speak. If anything, the silence seemed to stretch and thicken, the sounds of the rest of the port growing dim until it was just them, looking at each other.
Finally, Arda broke the silence.
"You look hungry." He said matter-of-factly.
The defiant expression on her face was suddenly cracked. At the mention of the word hunger, her own was rekindled, on her face and in her mind. He felt it in the forefront of her brain, and recognized it instantly. Before he had been a three millennia old monster, he had been a boy, and knew what it was like to be a homeless wanderer. You grew so used to being hungry that your stomach ceased to exist, except as a hard knot in your middle, until someone mentioned food. Then you suddenly remembered.
The crack in her mask of defiance was mended as quickly as it had been made. "I'm fine." She said shortly. Her voice was like her; light and pretty, but with more than a hint of steel underneath. He quickly changed his assumption of her just by the way she reacted. The lost look on her face could be put off totally to fear of whatever it was; this girl had been alone for a while, and she was probably tough as nails. Whatever she was afraid of, it had simply shaken her to the core.
The look of sympathy on his face only caused her to scowl.
He tried again. "Please, let me buy you some food. I won't hurt you, you know. Whatever you're afraid of, it's not me."
Her eyes widened suddenly, and her face shifted from a scowl to utter disbelief. It was a reaction he had grown used to.
"Come on. I'll buy you a meal, and if I can, I'll try to help you." He grinned in an open, kind way. "After all, I don't have anything else to do."
Whether it was the kind tone of his voice, or for some other reason, her demeanor now subtly changed. She was looking at him not as a strange person who was invading, but as someone who she needed to ask questions of. He could hear her working it over in her mind, and got another glimpse of her slightly cold, practical personality. She could get a free meal out of it, at least. And this guy seemed to know something, so maybe he could help…
Her mind suddenly was cut off, but he got one more word. Killed.
This was making him uneasy. He would have to ask her a few questions.
Kaio-sama watched over the entire northern galaxy, one fourth of the remaining one forth of the universe, which was divided between him and his three counterparts. The remaining three fourths were barren wastelands that had no gods and few inhabitants, save those few living beings that had begun to explore since the long ago rampage of destruction of Majin Buu.
It was from these barren, mostly uncharted deserts, the death valley that spanned three quarters of the universe, that the vampire Osiris had appeared into the long series of events that were recorded as The Golden Moon. But Osiris was not the focus of that story, or this one. And there were many other things out there, things that went undetected during the centuries that the gods did not even glance into this land of death.
But Kaio-sama was looking now. Specifically, he was looking at a rather large spaceport on the edge of the waste, the largest before the utopia of civilization in space became an airless desert. A former pupil of his was there, and that was an astonishing coincidence. The one he was mostly looking at was the girl who was now with his pupil. He was watching her to the extent that he took his attention away from his own galaxy; because of where she had come from, and what had just happened there.
In broad terms, a spirit had been up to very bad things. A rather newly dead spirit, and one that the Kai could not identify. This troubled him greatly, because he knew as a god the names and kis of every spirit he had ever seen, and this one was no ancient that had died before his time. This thing had died less than a century ago, he would have staked his life on it.
Even that wouldn't have bothered him so much. Spirits were up to tricks all the time, and so what if he had forgotten one?
The thing that bothered him was what this spirit was doing.
Being in the middle of a large busy spaceport, it was no hard task to find a bar/restaurant where they could sit in a corner unobserved. The place they entered was dirty, and mostly filled with aliens that didn't even give them a glance before taking another sip of various drinks or a bite of a cheap, tasteless meal. The only light seemed to come from two red lights, one at the entrance and one over the bar.
Arda immediately wove through the tables that were peopled by various bizarre looking creatures, and she followed behind him until they were in a back corner, surrounded by several empty tables.
He sat down, and after a second, she did the same. The table was made of a dark colored wood, covered with a worn oilcloth. The chairs were the same.
"Now." Arda said suddenly, and she seemed to jump as if someone had pinched her. The girl was so on edge, she seemed not to be able to decide whether to be suspicious or afraid, or both. The expressions on her face were a strange mixture. First she looked afraid, then she seemed to grow angry with herself for feeling afraid, and then she would quickly cover it up with a mask of contemptuous defiance. This was how she was looking at him now.
"Listen, I'm not going to hurt you or anything." He said. "You don't have to jump around like a nervous animal every time I speak." He smiled a wide, open sort of smile. "You looked hungry, and scared, so I thought I would buy you something to eat. Is that worthy of so much suspicion?"
Her face changed, eyes widening, very pretty eyes. She still looked suspicious, but now a bit confused as well. In his mind, Arda was surprised that he had even been able to convince her that much. A homeless girl, humanoid (considered by many less physically attractive species to be a great prize), on her own and apparently defenseless, she had to be suspicious of everyone, male or female, no matter how friendly they seemed.
"What…" she paused. "What do you want?"
He smiled. "Well, right now I'd settle for a name. After that, you can decide. I want nothing that you are unwilling to give."
She pushed her chair back suddenly and stood up. "Okay, I see what this is about. You can forget it, bud. I'm not that hungry."
She hadn't even turned to leave when he threw his head back and burst out laughing, drawing the stare of nearly every customer in the place. She looked more confused than ever, one hand still resting on the back of the chair. The vampire choked back his laughter, waving his hand toward the chair she had just vacated.
"Sit down, sit down. You've got it totally wrong."
Still confused, she seemed to hesitate. The various staring aliens turned back to whatever had held their attention before the alien sound of laughter had filled the place.
Arda grinned wryly. "Believe me, I have absolutely no interest in that. Just sit down."
Slowly, still staring skeptically at him, she did.
A grumpy looking fat pink alien waddled up to them suddenly. He was wearing a greasy apron, and had a small silver rectangle in his hand that was presumably some device for recording orders. He had a very difficult accent to understand, but he asked them in the Common language what they would like.
Arda looked at the girl, raised his eyebrows. "Whatever you want, I can cover it."
She looked up to the fat alien. "Whatever's good here for humanoids is fine." She said. "Just bring me a big plate."
It nodded and waddled off after pressing several buttons on the metal rectangle.
"Well, you still haven't answered me." Arda said as soon as the waiter was out of hearing range.
"What?"
"Your name." He said. "Unless you would prefer I call you Hey You."
The curious stare was beginning to unnerve him a bit. Her expression hadn't changed since he had burst out laughing when she presumed that he wanted sex.
"Mia." She pronounced it mee-ah.
He smiled. "Now, was that so hard?"
Before she could answer, the pink waiter came back and thrust a huge plate of some sort of noodles in front of her. They were steaming, and though they were blandly colored, they smelled rather good. She picked up the set of chopstick-like utensils that rested on the side of the plate and fell to with the enthusiasm of someone who has not eaten in a long while.
She paused, after a few bites, and looked up at him. "Aren't you eating anything?"
He shook his head. "No. I don't eat."
Her eyes narrowed a bit, almost to little to be perceptible. She swallowed the food in her mouth, but didn't take another bit right away. Instead she stared at him, suspicion back in her gaze.
"You don't eat?"
"No." he answered. His eyes were glittering in the half-gloom of the shadows. "I don't."
She said nothing for another few seconds. And he suddenly began picking up wild thoughts from her mind. She was beginning to make wild connections in her head, fear and some horrible, aggressive emotion whirling in her mind. Either she had encountered a vampire before, or she was just incredibly sharp. Or both. Because she was beginning to realize what he was, and the emotions were rapidly building in her mind.
He sighed. Best to get this over with.
"I know what you're thinking, and yes, you're correct. I'm a vampire."
He was going to add that nothing he had said was a lie; he wasn't going to hurt her at all. But before he could do so she had leapt up from her chair, and in a flash a sword was in her hand, produced from somewhere under the rags she was wearing, and swinging directly for his forehead.
He reached up deftly and caught it between his palms.
Her eyes went wide. The sword he held in his hand was short, maybe a two and a half foot blade, perfectly straight until it's pointed end, about an inch from his face. there was a square guard above the hilt, which she held in both hands in perfect form. She knew how to use a sword well, then.
Arda was still smiling, but the smile changed subtly into a look of surprise when he saw something very odd. There was a trickle of blood running down each wrist. The blade had actually cut him, something that any metal he had ever seen would never be able to do.
Well, there was a first time for everything..
"Sharp sword." He said, letting the blade go.
Without a pause, the second her sword was free she swung it in a wide swipe that was aimed for decapitation. But the blade whistled through nothing but air.
"You're wasting your time." His voice came from behind her.
She turned her head slowly over her shoulder, and there he was behind her, still smiling. Her face was twisted by some powerful inner emotion, frustration or fear.
He lay a hand softly on her shoulder, and spoke gently. "I'm not evil, okay? I was telling the truth when I said I wouldn't hurt you. Just sit down."
He was shocked at the extremity of her fear of him. Under his hand, he could feel her shaking. Her eyes were turbulent with fear, the kind of fear a child feels when seeing a monster, fear of something horrible and just beyond understanding.
At last, she picked her chair back up (it had overturned when she leapt to her feet) and sat down.
Arda moved swiftly back to his chair, noticing as he did that no one had even looked around at the sound of their sudden conflict. He wondered with brief concern what kind of place this was, where laughter was so startling and strange that everyone noticed, but when one person tried to cut another's throat, no one spared it so much as a second glance.
Then his gaze and concern turned back to Mia. She was sitting across from him, all composure gone, shaking like a leaf.
His eyes were wide and gentle, and he sent the strongest telepathic urge he could of calmness.
"Now," he said softly, "I think you'd better tell me why you just tried to chop my head off."
Mia said nothing, only stared down at the table. She had drawn her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them, making her look less like a defiant, homicidal woman and more like a frightened child.
"Please." He said, his own concern for the girl startling him. "I may be able to help you if you just tell me what it is you're so afraid of."
And, momentarily, she did.