Brother

Episode 6: Enter the Plan

Disclaimer: I don't own Toryama-sama's characters, just James, Ed, the TCA, and the Skeemdians (well, there's more, but that would be spoiling the later parts of this story).

Warning: Sharp language (somewhat sharper than DBZ), violence, gore (more than DBZ), and maybe a little sexual innuendo. I would rate this fic a heavy PG-13, but not R. Enjoy!

The first rule was keep it simple. Nothing screwed up plans like plans that got too complicated.

The second rule was to not stop moving. Half of the plan was built around striking too fast and going to far to be stopped. Determination would see them through. They would realize their goals by being relentless.

The third rule was not to kill each other once the fighting started.

James was pacing like a caged animal, wearing a nice smooth spot into the cave's floor. Ed leaned against one wall, his aura pulsating with invisible power, kept at the ready.

Nappa was standing almost perfectly still, watching both the Humans and the distant entrance to their hiding place. Vegeta was behind him, eating breakfast.

All of them enjoyed a good night's sleep--Vegeta and Nappa in the comfort of their craft, James and Ed tucked safely within their coats. The Skeemdians had spent the night moving ever closer. In the morning, the Humans awoke and finished off their rations. Nappa roused himself soon thereafter, with Vegeta stepping out of his craft seconds later.

The plan was simple, direct, and foolproof. The plan wouldn't, couldn't fail.

Nappa cracked his knuckles, eyes still pinned warily to the entrance, his tail wrapped tightly about his waist.

Vegeta finished his meal and wiped his lips clean with the back of his hand. "Let's get this started."

"Three." James said.

At the agreed command, the four walked to the entrance of the cave, standing tall, shoulder to shoulder. Each grinned a secret, devilish grin, promising pain and suffering to the soldiers before them.

"Two." The assassin intoned.

Auras flared. The planet shuddered in sympathy. The forest came alive with small insects. They watched as something not unlike a dragonfly dashed away from the cave's entrance like a tiny winged bullet. Below, five thousand Skeemdian troops looked up in sudden dread. Flying camera's locked onto the cave's location. Commands were sent. Safeties were un-latched.

"One."

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A dozen years ago, alone in a dank cell, the Saiyajin no Oji considered his options.

The child didn't realize he was the Saiyajin no Oji just yet. As far as he knew, his father still ruled the Saiyajin's planet with an iron fist. Frieza wanted something from him, that was all the boy knew. What to do with this knowledge eluded him.

Since he could do nothing at the moment, he bided his time.

Returning to his home world, once upon a time, he was shocked to find nothing more than a band of asteroids rotating the sun of his home system. Anger welled within him, impotent rage at the injustice. He had been told that a rogue comet destroyed his planet, and after finishing his most immediate assignment, rushed to see the news for himself.

No spacecraft floated about. The place was dead--space dead, cold and barren. Burnt rocks floated around him like autumn leaves tumbling to the ground, and for once--and the only time--in the Saiyajin no Oji life, Vegeta cried.

Years passed. Many years. They blended into one another. Years of blood and insults, of humiliation and regret. Only three Saiyajins besides he remained alive. One was off-world on assignment. His brother had returned to the Saiyajin home world shortly after Vegeta, and seemed unimpressed with what he saw. Nappa, a guard of the Royal Family and Vegeta's retainer, remained with him... through the years. Years that reminded him that he was the last; strong, proud, pure.

So many years.

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The twin flares of the Saiyajin's spacecraft hurtled into the sky, taking off for a safer parking spot. The cave's entrance vanished in an explosion of light.

They covered over two kilometers before the giant Sky Goats found them, spraying streams of plasma at the ground. The energy beams cut through trees like a blowtorch through toilet paper, leaving great scalding craters in the ground. Nappa and Vegeta, each on the outside of the small band, fired ki blasts back to take out the first craft and its second. Another troop was on its way, but several minutes off.

They dashed ahead, aiming for a row of hills that ran almost all the way to the Skeemdian's base--using the ridge for cover was the only tactical advantage they could find on such short notice.

At least the Humans could now throw ki blasts as well.

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It was all true.

James, a boy sixteen years and several lifetimes old, set down the large book he had been reading. He hated it when he made sense. He hated it when he was right. He hated it because he was only right about the bad things. He only had common sense that fit the horrors of the world. Like a magnet for evil, everything in his life tore itself apart like clockwork day in and day out.

It was a macabre tale, this existence of his.

The book detailed a plot of perfect evil--the special kind of truly human evil that James knew far too much about. Everything he feared was true. Every last one of the few hopes he held onto was worthless. His world was about to be taken over by a power-mad group of sociopaths and he could do nothing to stop them.

Nothing... except....

But no. To fight the monster of human evil that way would surely make him a monster himself.

And yet...

He flirted with the idea that he alone could face that evil, become it, defeat it, and somehow keep the innocent out of his battle. There was a chance of success, a maddening chance.

If he became the greatest warrior ever...

He could do it. He knew how. He knew there were others with the pieces he needed; the right skills, the right information... but no.

And yet...

He went in circles for weeks. Days of school and nights of studying flew by. Ignored by his family except for occasional bouts of abuse, he had lots of time to think. To wonder. To ask if he had the strength to cast aside his humanity for a greater cause. If he did, would he have any regrets?

He made his decision before the week's end.

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James sprinted through the underbrush, exultation like fire in his veins, a fire quenched and shaped by cold fear--all directed and fueled by a killing fury that he knew all too well. Senses were honed to razor-sharp levels of perception. Nothing escaped his notice. Any enemy he so much as felt nearby would die with speed that was difficult for even the master assassin to contemplate. About him slid his allies; all primed for battle. James, in the lead, played pointman, just like the 'good old days.'

Vegeta was in his own world, seething. How dare these... these INSECTS rise against him? Skeemdians. The word would remain burned into his memory until he killed the lot of them. Fucking worthless, revolting, under-evolved insects. He leapt from tree to tree, his anger powering him forward, the other three burning like tiny fires at the edges of his senses.

Nappa followed the Saiyajin no Oji's lead on the opposite side of their pack, his blood boiling. Not a soul yet, not a single target. His hands twitched as he leapt from over-sized tree limb to over-sized tree limb, the tall human below him moving from one copse of cover to another like a vengeful ghost.

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Failure was not an option.

Nappa's last standing order from the King had been simple: look after Vegeta. Now, with his planet gone, the young warrior was among the last of a dying people. Nappa had watched his charge grow in both power and maturity over the years. He had a temper, as all Saiyajins did, but he learned from his mistakes rapidly. His skills increased by leaps and bounds. When the King was killed, he could match Nappa blow for blow with ease.

Nappa had earned respect from his charge, something he did not fully accept from the short, spry warrior. Nappa knew he was a failure in many ways. He was brash and hot-headed, eager to get into a fight, and eager to end it in the most violent ways. Vegeta was ever understanding, turning the larger Saiyajin's rage and fighting prowess into a unique play, a ballet of destruction--and often death--that enthralled the young Price.

It struck Nappa dumb one day to hear Vegeta praise his fighting as 'a rare form for the Saiyajin race.' He dubbed it 'comical yet pleasing.'

Comical? How was that 'rare form'? Some things the Price said puzzled him to no end. Was he clumsy? Simply stupid? Though his anger bristled at the mere possibility, he said nothing. Vegeta never went out of his way to insult Nappa, though chastising insults were not uncommon both on and off the field of battle.

In time, Nappa felt that Vegeta did respect him as a warrior, for his cunning, for his determination. Certainly the Price didn't feel sorry for him, it wasn't the way of a Saiyajin to be amused by weakness. Vegeta prided the large fighter on his ingenuity.

It was high praise indeed, coming from the most powerful warrior in a race where strength and strength alone determined one's worth.

Weak as he may have been, Nappa would not fail his Price, his lord and master. He would fight by the Prince's side until death and beyond, battling demons in the afterlife, if things came to that.

Failure was not an option.

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Ed was a simple man. He grew up in an average home, in an average town. He felt like he lived in the middle of nowhere and had yearned to do something important with his life. After enduring high school, he quickly learned he had a gift for machinery, and the weapons that machines could produce under his skilled hands.

He wasn't a born combatant. He didn't live to fight; not like the others, but he had convictions. Convictions James called him on almost daily. James made his own rules and lived by them with a religious fervor that Ed admired and feared greatly.

Joining forces with the Earth's greatest assassin had been no accident. Coincidence, yes, but no accident by the furthest stretch of the most vividly flawed imagination. James was fighting an international conspiracy single-handedly. He had crafted his own mind and body into a weapon of such perfection that it drew tears to the eyes of those who witnessed him in action. At a young age--only seventeen or eighteen by Ed's count--the young Mr. Rahn had chosen his path in life, made his rules, and lived by them. He was good simply because he chose to be and matched his actions to his decision.

Ed had learned to do the same, over the years. Life had become one never-ending war from that moment on. His knowledge had become his curse; a curse he did not mind in the least, as he was content doing what he did best.

Then the world blew up in their faces.

Literally.

The conviction that Ed had always observed rather than felt had now become real feeling. He spun his wheels for year, his panicked mind dispensing an idea every ten seconds, each birthed for the single reason of erasing the Skeemdians from existence.

The morning had been like the last piece of a cosmic puzzle clicking firmly into place.

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Each had a chosen path.

Separate yet linked.

Each knew their place in the order of things.

Now it was time to work together.

Fight or die.

- TbC