The golden light of the setting suns reflected off every leaf in the garden, giving the setting a warm, comforting glow. I lay on my back in the soft grass, watching as the suns set below the horizon. Taking me by surprise, I felt someone's fingers graze gently across my shoulder, then grab me completely in a warm embrace.
"What's my Vegeta doing out here all alone?" she asked, a warm smile upon her face.
"I'm just out here watching the suns set. The colors are so pretty."
Mother sat down beside me, her arm still draped across my shoulders, and mumbled, "So they are…"
When the first sun had set and the stars began to appear faintly in the twilight sky, my mother pulled me close and gave me a peck on the forehead, saying, "I love you, son, and don't you ever forget that. And even when I'm long dead, I won't be gone from you forever. I'll be like first setting sun, waiting along the horizon for you to follow me to the other side."
"So, we'll turn into suns when we die?" asked I with all the wonder of a six-year-old child.
"No, silly, I mean that I'll never leave you." She smiled motherly and hugged me again.
I never understood why she did that… hugging me. My father never did, and I never saw any of the other Saiya-jin parents show affection toward their children, but my mother always greeted me with her kind maternal love. I once asked my father about it, but he glared and lectured me, saying, "Why should a warrior do such trivial things? Don't you know, boy, that showing love is a weakness? If you let your emotions take control of you, your enemies could easily use that weakness against you. You have to be hard, strong, and ruthless to get anywhere in life!"
My mother, on the other hand, would always encourage me to open up to others and be aware of how I felt. Of course, being the young boy out to please his father, I tried earnestly to ignore any emotion that I felt. I wanted to be a strong warrior like him and conquer planets one day as king of my people, so I listened to him a little more each day, slowly shutting my mother out.
It wasn't that I didn't love my mother; I just didn't want to continue looking like a fool in my father's eyes and in the eyes of every other Saiya-jin warrior. As I grew older, my mother stopped giving me hugs so frequently, and eventually, gave me none at all. She knew that I wanted to grow up and break free from her arms to follow my father, so she let me be and gave me room to become whoever I wanted, no matter who he might be.
On my eleventh birthday, I remember, Mother said to me, "My dear little Vegeta… you're growing up so quickly that—why, soon you'll be a man. I can only pray that you won't forget the mother that raised you." Then, she held me close… for the last time.
Mother, I haven't forgotten.
My emotions were erupting within me like a volcano, intense and volatile. I wanted nothing more than to tear Freeza's army apart limb by limb, and I wasn't about to stop for anyone, not even Bulma. The only thing on my mind at that time was rescuing my mother from the greasy clutches of Freeza's malicious henchmen.
Despite my Lady's passionate cries of protest, I stormed headstrong down the corridor like a madman, my aura highlighting my once shadowed silhouette like a glowing flame in a dark room. Anyone who stood in my way would stand no longer, and I had planned use my bare hands to tear apart anyone other than my Lady who protested.
As I rounded the corner where we had turned earlier, I encountered my first victim. He was a gangly-looking guard suited up in an elite-ranked Ice-jin armor, strolling down the hallway, doing his usual routine cell check. Once he caught sight of my blazing form tearing down the hall, his expression went from one of carefree contentment to that of a horror-struck, petrified child. My fist against his face was probably his last memory. The guard's lifeless body fell in a bloody heap at my feet shortly after I impaled his midriff with my other ki-charged fist. I smeared his blood on the wall, trying to wipe as much of it off my hand as I could, but I only succeeded in making crimson smear marks.
After I wiped the remaining blood on my pants leg, I finally noticed another awestruck guard, this one pointing a laser gun at me and stuttering a string of Ice-jin curses. I looked him dead in the eye and gave him one of my menacing smirks, to which he only gaped in horror, his grip on the gun loosening due to his quaking hands. I rushed at him before he could fire a shot and, with a single blast from my hand, blew him to gory, chunky bits, along with the entire portion of the wall behind him.
Pandemonium ensued as a small army of security guards raced down the hallway in response to the blaring alarms that went off after I had demolished the wall. Those in front began firing a barrage of lasers and weak ki attacks at me, so I ducked into the hole in the wall, which happened to have an empty prison cell behind it. I waited for them to come to me as I charged up a Big Bang Attack.
I could feel them coming closer, their power-levels rising, but I refused to falter, for the fate of my mother and future wife depended on me. As soon as the first guard entered my line of sight, I released my attack, sending a blinding wave of energy to engulf him and the guards that followed. The walls of the cell then began to collapse, so I rammed my elbow into the wall just behind me, forming myself an exit to escape through. Once I reached the other side, I found myself again in another prison cell, this one as bare as the previous.
I had hardly enough time to breathe when I heard Bulma's voice cry, "Vegeta, help me!"
I turned around, expecting to see an uninjured guard with a gun at her head, or something of the like, but instead found her partially buried under a large pile of bricks that were once part of the ceiling. I wasted no time in coming to her aid and began throwing rocks off her as fast as I could lift them from atop her legs. Quick as lightning's flash, I had her thighs and knees uncovered. As I was removing the bricks from around her ankles, though, I began to notice the large number of cuts, scrapes, and bruises all over her legs. She looked as though someone had attacked her bottom half with red and purple paintbrushes; however, the worst was yet to be seen.
After I had finished heaving the stones off her, I offered her my hand to help her up, but when she tried to lift her arm to reach mine, she winced in pain and fell back down against the floor. I spied a trail of blood flowing down her other hand, with which she was bearing down hard on her triceps. She winced again as I gently pulled her hand away, revealing the gruesome sight beneath.
I exclaimed the only coherent thought I could form: "Bulma, you're arm!"
Blood poured down her left arm from a deep gash just below her shoulder. A single hunk of flesh hung down from the wound, making it a gory sight indeed. I normally would have thought nothing of such a respectively minor injury (no missing limbs), but the sight of the hideous gash marring the beauty of my Lady struck a chord within me.
"A sharp brick fell on me after you killed those guards," she explained in a hushed, trembling voice.
"Hold on. Let me bandage that up for you."
I ripped off the bottom of my tattered shirt and, after repositioning the hanging piece of skin, wrapped it tightly around her upper arm. I then helped her to her feet, an agonizingly slow process that seemed to take hours, but she eventually found her footing and could walk again unaided. However, she found it difficult to run, which would slow us down considerably. I wanted to find my mother as soon as possible, and if we were to make our way out of the castle alive, we would have to find a quicker escape route.
Suddenly, beam of light shot across the room, just barely missing the top of Bulma's head, and disintegrated the wooden door behind us. Painful though it was for her, I scooped my Lady up in my arms and hurriedly carried her out of the room. Then, I set her down in an alcove adjacent to the doorway and charged up another ki attack.
Laser beams shot through where the door once was like heavy rain, but I felt no fear. The anger I felt, even the sorrow, somehow drove me to do the things I did at that hour, as though a spiritual force urged me on to reclaim my kingdom. It was in that very moment, just before I reentered the very room that could have held my doom, that all became clear, and I could focus strictly on what needed to be done. Boldly, I sprinted forth and skidded though the doorway into the middle of the room, balanced on one knee and the heel of my opposite foot, and released a barrage of small ki attacks into the line of Ice-jin soldiers. One by one, they fell, and soon the opposing attacks ceased; there was no one left to fight me, for they had all been obliterated by the hand of one man, one Saiya-jin: me. Truly, I had regained my natural pride.
I smirked to myself, seeing the carcasses of my enemies lying in a perfect row across from me, and taunted them, in their native tongue, "Now see you the strength of Freeza's army. The Prince stands undefeated!"