Chapter Two
The little beast nodded.
He sat up in his bed. "Spot, you can speak!"
It nodded again. "My name is not Spot."
"You sound like a girl……" Freeza said and pulled a face.
She frowned. "I AM a girl!"
Freeza sniffed and took a good look at her. "So what is your name than?"
"Xerena." She told him.
"Why did you not tell me that right away?"
"I was afraid."
"Why?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "It's been a while since people were good to me."
"So who's pet were you before I got you?"
"I am NOT a pet!" she exclaimed almost insulted and then she started transforming. Her fur disappeared and her looks changed into those of a girl.
Freeza pulled the cord of the light to switch it on so he could see what she turned into.
She looked like a normal girl with long curly hair and a furry tail. Her hair was colored
reddish with natural highlights in her locks.
"Cool!" Freeza stated.
She smiled.
"Where are you from?"
She shrugged her shoulders again. "Can't remember anything before I woke up in a cage in that 'cat-form' with those horrible circus-men."
The bedroom door opened and Freeza's mom looked into the room. "What's the matter Furiza? Can't you sleep?"
Frightened Xerena hid away under the sheets, out of her view.
A lightning flash light up the night-sky and loud rumbling thunder followed it a few seconds later.
"It's just my mom," Freeza whispered to Xerena and beckoned his mother to come in.
"What's Spot doing under your bed-sheets?" she asked him.
Before she could say more he said: "Her name is not Spot, it's Xerena."
"Ooh…." She sat down on the bed. "So, you have changed her name."
"No, she told me her name is Xerena," Freeza told her.
"Did she now?" She said with a smile. "What more did she tell you?"
Outside it started to rain and the drops spattered onto the window of Freeza's bedroom.
"That she's really a girl."
His mother raised an eyebrow as she looked at the shape shivering beneath his sheets.
"She is a bit scared though." He poked his new friend. "You can come out now."
The rumbling sound of the thunder filled the room.
Slowly Xerena pulled the sheets away and looked at Freeza's mother. She was not that afraid of her because she was always friendly. But then she didn't know she was not just a cat.
Freeza's mother raised her other eyebrow as well. "Oh… I see…."
Xerena looked at her with her big blue eyes, still shivering.
"Oooh… You poor thing," she picked her up to put the girl on her lap. Then she saw she wasn't wearing anything. "No wonder you're shivering, you're not wearing anything. Furiza, get her one of your pajama's, dear."
Quickly he jumped out of bed and got one from his pajama-drawer. His mother put it on Xerena and put her back into bed.
"Tell me, dear, where did you come from? Where do you live?"
The girl shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. I can't remember. I tried very hard, but I can only see vague faces in my head. And I don't know who they are."
Freeza's mother ran her fingers through her hair and gave her a friendly look. "We can try and find out where you come from. Then maybe we can find your family."
Freeza walked away from his window to get himself a glass of whine. He remembered they tried to find information about races who could transform into cats. But they never found anything on them. Nothing.
His mother accepted Xerena right away, as if she were one of her own children. But his father…. That was something else. You could say he tolerated her.
And when they had her examined by their doctor – also her blood – to see if she was healthy, and found out she was half Ice'jin, he slowly started accepting her more.
As a child Freeza didn't have a lot of friends. His father was feared in his empire so the kids stayed away. And King Kold didn't think his children should play with ordinary kids. If he had anything to say about it they would not waste their time with play at all.
But his wife convinced him otherwise. And now that Freeza had a playmate, he could play all he wanted with her. Coola was too old to play with him anyway. He did not even want to play with his younger sibling anymore. He considered himself a young man now. Besides, King Kold was training him to be a warrior and a conqueror of worlds.
Because Xerena lived and played with a prince, she also got royal teachings in their private classroom every day. They had a lot of fun during the lessons, teasing the teacher and driving several of them crazy.
Freeza took a sip of his whine. Now that he thought back of that time he realized that her disappearance had left a gaping hole in his heart that had never been filled again. He still missed her.
He took another sip and then emptied the whole glass in a single draught. He remembered when she disappeared. They went with his father and one of his armies to a planet he wanted to conquer.
He and Xerena had been trained very well in fighting skills and they had learned to control their ki. It still amazed him – now that he thought back of it – how powerful she was, compared to him. Must have been her better Ice'jin half.
On that planet they ran into more resistance as expected. The rulers of the planet had hired several very powerful warriors to defend their world on their behalf. Even the mighty King Kold had trouble defeating them.
So when most of his men were killed he decided to retreat and come back later, accompanied by his older son. But when everybody was running and flying back to the ship, he lost track of Xerena.
When his father returned to the ship he ordered the pilot to take off.
"Papa, have you seen Xerena?" he asked him desperately when he did not find her among the men.
The door of the ship closed and it started to take off.
"Papa, we must look for her!" he insisted when he did not answer him.
"Son," he started and put his hand on his shoulder. "She could not get away from those men. They killed her. I'm sorry, but there wasn't much we could do about it."
"W…wh…… what?" he stammered unbelieving. He looked out of a small window in the side of the ship. "We have to go back for her!"
"Son, I'm not going back for a corpse!"
"But we must burry her!" he yelled at his father.
"She will be buried with the planet as I blow it up," his father told him and left his son speechless on the corridor.
His mother would have gone back for her. But well, she died years ago. She got sick and was weakened. Most of the time she had to rest. Back then he didn't know the sickness was lethal. Xerena didn't know either. Nobody had told them.
Then one day, when his father and Coola were out, conquering planets, the palace was attacked. It was attacked by a race his father had enslaved not too long ago. And they weren't very happy about that. They had waited for the right moment and then struck back.
That was the Saiyan race.
Freeza and Xerena were with his mother at the time of the attack. They were barley ten years old and had hardly been trained. They weren't very powerful either. If they had been, they might have been able to save his mother.
He'd rather not think back of that. His mother was killed by the Saiyan warriors and if his father hadn't come back that day, they would have killed him and Xerena too. Xerena even saved his life that day by attacking one of the Saiyans that was about to strike him down. She took her cat-form and jumped the guy, using all of her razor-sharp nails and teeth.
The Saiyans struck her down anyway and shot Freeza several times with their ki-blasts. But before they could kill him they had to retreat because of an enraged King Kold who was wiping every Saiyan he ran into to the next dimension.
He was even more furious when he found his wife and the children. For the death of his wife he destroyed more then half the Saiyan race. The rest was turned into slaves and made to do his dirty work.
Freeza and Xerena missed his mother greatly, but they found comfort with each other. They got better, even though they missed her. His father was never the same again.
