A/N: Wow, you came back! Vegeta will be acting more like himself in this chapter.

Know You Not the Prince of Saiya-jins!

I noticed that she had been glancing over at me quite often since she'd broken me out my cell, but any time that I met her eyes, she would avert her gaze in another direction. I wondered what could bring about such strange behavior, but dared not ask. "It's probably just something stupid going on in her head," I thought… yet every time I sensed her gaze fixed upon me, I felt the urge to ask what was on her mind.

Finally, as if reading my thoughts, she asked quietly, "Vegeta, dear?"

Feeling the common urge to hide my dejection, I snapped a forced, "What is it?" but caught myself before I could say anything else. I could have sworn that I saw tears welling in her eyes as soon as I spoke in the harsh tone to which I was usually accustomed.

"I was wondering—Vegeta, what's wrong?" she stammered meekly, which I found quite odd for her. Normally, she would have snapped back, insisting that I tell her what she wanted to know, but she reacted with such hesitance and caution that it caught me by surprise.

"Nothing—nothing's wrong with me," I lied, for I knew that if I tried to explain it to her then that my unplanned, jumbled up words wouldn't make any sense to her.

I could tell from her concerned expression that she didn't believe me, but then again, I was never really good at lying, though I could usually hide my emotions, which I had often times wished didn't exist. I just wasn't ready to tell her, not at that point in time. I thought that, one day after we had settled down, I might perhaps tell her of the events that occurred during my forty-eight-day nightmare, but until then, the subject would be off limits.

My focus needn't have been her at the time, but the rescue of the only other woman I held dear: my mother. Although it wasn't the only thing bothering me at the time, I decided to use it as an excuse to satisfy Bulma since her ever-present look of concern had me feeling rather awkward.

"Bulma?"

"Yes, Vegeta?" she returned almost before I had finished.

"Before we leave this putrid place, there is one thing I have to do first." I sighed and continued, "You see, my mother is being held captive here as well, but I don't know where. I couldn't live with myself if we left her here, so I want to help her escape with us… and I wouldn't place her rescue in the hands of anyone else."

"So that's what's been bothering you," she mumbled idly to herself, to which I remained silent. "Well, I know of a way we can find her cell without looking all over the castle."

"Anything to get her out of here as soon as—"

Bulma's sudden hush cut me short, and I saw her point down at her power-level detector. It was glowing more brightly than before, so brightly in fact, that it was enough to give away our location. To keep whoever it was from finding us, I grabbed it from her hand and quickly stuffed it inside her boot to hide the light.

"What the—Oomph!" Before she could say anything else, I clamped my hand over her mouth to save the element of surprise. Instinctively, she bit the inside of my hand, not only causing me more pain that I had expected, but also making yelp at an uncomfortably loud volume.

I heard the shuffling of feet and someone whispering some Ice-jin gibberish directly ahead of us. The darkness shrouded most of their features, but I could manage to make out two distinct silhouettes. One appeared immensely larger than the other, with the latter holding what seemed to be a spear-like weapon, which was quite unusual for one of Freeza's lackeys to be carrying since most of his men were issued laser guns. I thought for sure that they had heard me, but they continued to jabber on as if nothing had happened.

"Bulma," I whispered in the quietest voice I could muster, "you stay here while I take care of these goons."

She nodded in agreement while I crept up silently behind the two guards, who were both completely oblivious to our presence. Before I could reach them, however, the taller guard's communicator began to beep. Although I wasn't very fluent in Ice-jin and it didn't seem important at the time, I listened in anyway.

"Hey, Akunza," I heard the extremely loud, ominous voice on the other end yell, "we got a situation here on Cell Block 50!"

"Block 50? What seems to be the problem, Captain?"

"Vegeta's escaped! I thought I told you bumble brains to watch that sector today!"

The Ice-jin guard winced at his commander's impetuous tone and continued fearfully, "What for, sir? We had no idea—"

"Kea's on leave for the rest of the month, so she wouldn't be there to guard Vegeta's cell. I told you that a week ago! Now, either you get that monkey back in his cage where he belongs, or I'll personally skin your hides!"

"Yes, Captain…" He then turned to his vertically challenged partner and announced, his voice dripping with dread, "Makali, Captain ordered us to go catch Vegeta."

I silently debated on whether I should speak at that and scare the living hell out of them or use the element of surprise and kill them without letting the rest of the castle know. Of course, my pride has always shone through for me, so I decided to do both. I first tiptoed back a few steps and borrowed Bulma's sword, then sprinted forward, purposely being loud enough for them to hear me coming, and beheaded the tall guard just as they were looking back to see the source of the noise. The other merely gawked in terror, the blood of his comrade speckled across his face.

"So you think you can capture the Saiya-jin Prince," I sneered boldly at the shocked and quivering sentinel. I swung at lightning speed for his head, stopping but a hair's breadth from the end of his nose. "You pathetic, low-class piece of shit! Hmph, I wonder why Freeza keeps such incompetent soldiers like you around… but then again, your 'mighty leader' never had much common sense anyway. I guess those ugly horns of his take up any room for a brain in his thick skull."

Just as I was about to thrust her sword through his neck, Bulma shouted, "Wait! We can use him first! He might know where they're keeping your mother!"

I put on my usual smirk and pushed the guard against the cold stone wall. "So, it seems my Lady here has saved your life… unless you refuse to cooperate." I raised the sword up to his neck and demanded to know where my mother was. He either couldn't understand Saiya-jin or was just plain stupid, for right afterwards, he tried to reach for a dagger on his belt. Needless to say, his trying didn't exactly end in success. Since he obviously didn't want to take the easy way out, I collared him roughly and almost effortlessly wrestled him to the floor.

All who know me personally know that I am not a patient man, nor do I like insubordination from lower-level underlings, but this particular low-class pile of dung very much liked to try my patience. Tired of his struggling to get away, I tossed the sword aside and beat his head into the floor three or four times to get through to him. Right when I thought he was going to break down and say something, he threw a punch at my face, but I caught it before it could've hit me. He let out a deafening shriek as I crushed his fist, probably breaking every bone in his right hand and causing him permanent carpal damage.

"Now, you listen here, you worthless son a bitch," I growled irately, giving him a hard slap in the face for good measure, "if you don't tell me where my mother is in the next ten seconds, I'm going to blow your sorry ass to smithereens!" Still, he gave me no answer.

"Vegeta, may I give you a suggestion? Try speaking his native tongue," Bulma proposed, so I took her advice and spoke some horridly mispronounced and mostly likely grammatically incorrect Ice-jin. I've always wondered how she managed to think of simple, obvious things before I could…

"Mother, tell me where you be!" I spat in his face in Ice-jin, but he only looked at me as though I were a complete lunatic, so I reworded my sentence and tried again: "Tell me, my mother, where be she?" Again, he looked confusedly at me. "Damn it, you fucker from hell! Tell me my mother where she be!"

As one could easily see, I wasn't having any fun trying to speak a language in which I had had little formal teaching. All that I knew of it was what I'd picked up from listening to the guards at the castle and what a few of my father's ambassadors had tried to teach me before Freeza invaded our planet, which wasn't much. The language barrier between the guard and me was frustrating to no end, and I wasn't sure how much longer I could continue to guess at the proper sentence structure before I blew him to pieces for not being able to see past my bad grammar.

"Where be my mother, tell me," I tried again as calmly as I could in one last attempt to establish communication between us.

"Your—your mother?" he stuttered hesitantly.

"Yes, tell me, where keep you her?"I asked, relieved that he had finally understood what I was trying to say.

"Cell Block 21, room number 6075. You'll never make it out of here alive, bastard. The whole complex is on alert—nobody escapes from Freeza!"

Enraged, I responded, "Know you not the Prince of Saiya-jins!" With that, I snatched Bulma's sword off the floor and thrust it through his neck as I had originally intended.

"Well, what did he say?" she all but demanded to know.

"That fool called me a bastard! And I was going to let him live! I'll show him who can escape from Freeza. On to Cell Block 21, we haven't a minute to spare."

We wondered through the castle's vast corridors for what seemed like hours before we ever reached Block 21. When we finally did get there, we found that there were more cells than she and I could ever have searched without knowing at least the first two digits of the cell number. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of cells, all filled to capacity with Freeza's war captives, most of them Saiya-jins. I hated the thought of leaving all my subjects locked up in those filthy little rooms, but I knew that I had to find Mother first, since I knew I would need her wise guidance to organize a well-strategized war against Freeza.

Lady Bulma and I slunk cautiously down the much narrower halls that held the cells. The first room number we passed began with a three, so I assumed that we had a long way to go on finding the rooms that started with a six. After about fifteen minutes of dodging security guards and sneaking around corners, we finally reached the end of the hallway, which branched into three other halls. The one on the right led to the rooms starting with four, the one straight ahead led to the rooms starting with five, and the one on the left led to the rooms starting with six. So left we went, and we didn't have to go far at all, since Mother's cell was almost right around the corner.

"Cell 6075," Bulma sighed, relieved that we had finally found it.

I checked above the doorway to make sure we had the right cell, and indeed, we did: Underneath the number, in bold Saiya-jin lettering, was written "Meillon Vegeta," my mother's name.

The door to her cell was of a plain design, smooth and rectangular, but the door hadn't a handle or a button to open it, and I couldn't find a place to slide in a security card; so, fed up with things not working for me, I decided to blast the door open. Raising the ki in my right hand, I formed an energy ball about the size of a person's head, but before I could release it, Bulma saved me, once again, from doing something incredibly stupid.

"Vegeta, stop! If you raise your power level too high, they'll find us!"

I charged down my attack, realizing that she was right. Since I still couldn't find a convenient way to open the door, I beat it down with my bare fists, hoping that the noise didn't alert any guards. The beaten door collided into the floor with a booming metallic clang, disturbing the loose dirt on the floor so that a sheer cloud of dust circulated about the cell. I had halfway expected to hear a cry of joy, or at least one of momentary fear, but received neither. From the doorway, I scanned the entire room, but all that I saw was a cracked water bowl and an article of clothing that was shredded beyond recognition.

"Mother…"

I don't remember what all I said to Bulma at the time, but I do remember the flood of emotions I felt. Thoughts of Freeza's men beating, molesting, maybe even killing her, swarmed through my head like a plague of hornets, enraging me to a level I had never felt before. Even when Freeza's forces raided the castle and locked us all up in our own dungeon, I didn't fell the kind of fury that I did standing in the doorway of my mother's empty prison cell. Whether it would've been a wise move or not, I was about to unlock the gates of Hell.

A/N: I hope you liked this one. Again, opinions (good or bad) are greatly appreciated.