Onward and Forward!

Within the alcove I had left her sitting, my Lady remained unmoved, except that she had covered her ears with her hands and shut her eyes tight. Her facial expression reminded me of one of the creatures she had shown me from her home planet--a "monkey," I believe she called it. Ah, the sweet memories it brought back…

"Bulma, you can open your eyes now," I told her after pulling one of her hands away.

She carefully opened one, then two, and finally realized that the danger had passed. Bulma flashed a smile of delight and attempted to leap up and embrace me, but stopped short and fell to her knees from the soreness in her legs. I longed terribly to ease her pain but lacked the ability, and watching her struggle only made it worse; so, I offered her my hand, which she grabbed eagerly without a second thought, and rose to her feet. Then, she seized me in a full embrace, planting swift, tender kiss on my lips. I paused carefully before responding.

It was at that point that I began to feel that familiar twinge return. I had to stop; something just didn't feel right. Romancing was not something I did well, and most certainly not something I enjoyed. Though I loved Lady Bulma very much and wanted nothing more than to see her happy, cuddling and kissing simply weren't the sort of things a Saiya-jin warrior did to show adoration. We were subtler in our displays of affection, while her kind relied more on physical touching and plain, open confessions of their love… so crude, it seemed to me.

Several seconds passed before she finally let me go and relieved me of that sweet agony. Finally, I could revert to normal.

"Bulma," I began as she released her grip about my midriff, "you said there was a way to find Mother quickly. What was it? I have to know."

"Ah, yes, that." She smiled, returning to her usual air of intelligence, and limped to the doorway that led to the room of dead guards. Peering inside, she raised a hand over her mouth at the sight of the bodies and let out a light gasp. Green as I had ever seen her, she continued shakily, "If you can find a scouter that still works on one of the bodies…"

"Of course! We could follow her ki with the scouter and find her easily."

So, I commenced a search of the dismembered cadavers, only to find that most of the scouters either had cracked eyepieces or had been completely destroyed from my ki attacks. I picked a few of the least damaged ones to check and see if they worked. The first one beeped like normal and picked up a few ki signals before letting out a piercing, electronic screech and exploding on the side of my face. I irately rubbed my cheek to relieve the stinging and tried the next. That one, too, blew up in my face, its red-tinted eyepiece shattering in my hand like so much glass.

"Son of a bitch!"

"Vegeta, are you all right?" my Lady asked concernedly, still cowering behind the corner.

"I fine!" I replied and angrily snatched the last one from the floor, adjusting it to fit my ear. "You'd better work, you piece of shit…"

I breathed an irritated sigh and pushed the button to survey the castle, but the screen remained blank. I pressed it again harder and waited for a response, but still nothing came of it. After pushing the scan button about three more times, I ripped it off my ear and smashed it against the wall.

"None of these scouters work, Bulma," I called crossly into the next room.

"I guess we'll just have to steal one off the next guard we find," she answered.

And so, we were off again, sneaking down corridors, hiding around corners; all the while searching for our next unsuspecting victim. Bulma used her ki-detecting device to warn us of any approaching sentries, though the softly glowing disk showed no signs that anyone was near, which only added to my ever growing anticipation. It seemed that then when we needed one, no guards were to be found.

As we continued our trek through the dank passages of my ruined home, my thoughts wandered back to Mother and the problems that lay ahead us. The vision of her capture during battle still ran fresh through my mind, as well as the pain I felt from not being able to save her, and my imagined scenarios of how they might have been torturing her while we wandered around aimlessly along maze-like corridors were almost more than I could bear. Her beaten body lying cold against the stone floor, her wails of anguish echoing about the walls of an impenetrable room, her sanity broken from watching countless numbers of her subjects die: it was enough to drive a man mad. Suddenly, I felt the stinging in my palms from where my ragged fingernails had carved little half-moons into my flesh, a single tear of rage forming in the corner of my eye.

Despite my overwhelming desire to rip everything in sight apart, I kept my extreme feelings of hatred and sorrow bottled within me, so as not to alarm Bulma. Her sheltered human psyche couldn't handle the kind of pain I was in at the time, and even though she possessed intelligence far beyond that of the average of either our kinds, I still felt that she wouldn't understand what I was going through.

Bulma was lady of high stature, the daughter of Earth's most prominent inventor and corporate owner, the living key to her planet's wealth. She'd never seen the likes of a battlefield bloodied with thousands of corpses nor the true hostility of Saiya-jin nature. The only reason she had agreed to be my bride was to bring military might to her planet and economic power to mine, hopefully uniting the kingdoms of two physically similar races and eventually creating one Vegeta-Earth superpower capable of presiding over the entire known universe. Though it would be several generations before such a plan would begin to show noticeable results, both my father and Dr. Briefs had high hopes for success.

"Vegeta, ahead," my Lady whispered, interrupting my thoughts.

She had hidden the glowing ki detector and pointed to the other end of the hall where an Ice-jin guard had just exited a door and was in the process of locking it. I watched him closely awhile to anticipate his next move, the jingle of his keys being the only sound made. He held an ancient-looking spear at his side similar to one that a guard we had seen before carried. Again, I was baffled as to why Freeza would issue his men such prehistoric weapons, while the rest of the universe used laser guns or ki attacks. (Little did I know that I was soon to find out why.)

This time around, I decided on silently breaking the guard's neck instead of using Bulma's sword. The trim along the 12-foot ceiling had a great many bricks jutting out from it and several niches below them more than large enough to fit the end of a foot inside them, so I opted to scale the wall and drop down beside him at the end to avoid making as much noise as possible. Being the non-fighter, Bulma hid behind one of the statues lining the left side of the corridor while I climbed along the wall.

Soon after I had reached the halfway mark, the jingling stopped, and I paused to watch the guard's next move. He tapped a button on the side of his scouter, the one for communication, and muttered some Ice-jin gibberish to his commander. I managed to catch bit and pieces of their exchange.

"This sector is clear, sir. No sign of Vegeta anywhere."

A worried voice replied, "You'd better be damn sure; otherwise, you might end up like Akunza and Makali."

"No worries, Captain. I sent a team after him in Block 21. I haven't heard any calls for back-up or any more alarms go off, so they must have the situation under control."

"Riktor, that was half an hour ago! You say your men haven't reported back. Perhaps that's because Vegeta's killed them all!"

Despite his superior's fearful tone, the guard insisted flippantly, "Nonsense, Captain. They were some of the strongest fighters patrolling the west wing. The Prince of Saiya-jins he may be, but Vegeta's still just one guy! Why, I bet that…"

The captain cut him off short, "Listen to me, Lieutenant! If we don't get this situation under control, and Lord Freeza finds out about it, he'll mount both our asses!"

Sighing, the lieutenant accepted defeat. "Will do, Captain. I'll check on the men and see if they've made any progress."

I smirked, somewhat proud of the chaos I had caused. Freeza's idiot henchmen had no idea how to handle a real situation, as Freeza himself had personally made sure to keep things in check at all times. For most of the beings who knew his name, to hear it was equivalent to meeting certain death, or at least, the loss of precious freedom. As for me, I equated its utterance with pure, unrepressed hatred. Anything that had to do with Freeza meant nothing more to me than the dirt under my feet, and sight of his undesirable form aroused the kind of anger within me that destroyed entire planets.

Stealthily, I slunk further along wall, creeping closer the guard, who at the time was trying to radio his men. With his back turned to me, I knew it was safe to sneak as closely as possible to him before striking. He fiddled around with his communicator for about half a minute without getting a response, so I hurried my pace, hoping to reach him before he could realize that there was no one left to contact. Foolish dimwit… if only he knew the Prince of Saiya-jins was lurking mere shadows behind him, waiting for just the right moment to pounce.

Then, I heard him speak again, though I didn't bother to translate a word he said. It sounded like he was commanding some underling in his jurisdiction, but it didn't matter, for I decided that then would be the perfect time to catch him off guard.

I climbed down the end of the wall and set foot again on the floor, the poor lighting from single bulb above the door conveniently hiding my figure. Cautiously, I crept up closer behind the Ice-jin's back, almost close enough to reach out and—

"Look out!"

Now, where had I heard that phrase before?

—He whipped around like greased lightning, swinging at my head with his spear, the tip of which emitted an eerie purplish glow. I lurched back just in time to avoid having the lower half of my face removed, only to have him ram a ki-charged fist into my abdomen. Though it did little to harm me, the mere fact that I had been attacked so unexpectedly had me stunned for a blink or two. After swiftly regaining my wits, I attempted to snatch his weapon away, which he had poised above his head ready for his next blow; however, he swung it forward out of my reach and nicked me on the shoulder while I closed in with my other hand, shifting my target to his neck. With brute force on my side, I was able to keep a firm grip over his throat and lift his entire body above my head as I flung him into the wall behind me. The impact caused only a minor crack in the wall, but left him lying on the floor gagging. I seized the opportunity to pummel the living daylights of the bastard and rushed at him with a swift low kick to the stomach, striking him again with the heel of my same foot against the side of his head.

"I surrender!" he stammered, wheezing in several sharp, quick breaths.

I paused and withdrew my foot.

Then, he repeated, "I surrender! Please… I give up."

Ever since I was a little child, my father taught me never to trust an enemy on the battlefield. This guard would be no exception. Were I more fluent in Ice-jin, I might have tried to negotiate conditions for surrender, but as you well know, I'm not a patient man, nor do I like confusing Ice-jin sentence structures. Instead, I snatched up his spear, which was lying a few feet from were he laid, and rammed it with little resistance through his chest. A gout of blue blood sputtered from his mouth, and he took several long, heavy gulps of air before his breathing shifted to short, quick gasps, the tips of his fingers twitching all the while. To keep it all plain and simple: he died a very painful death.

Once the guard was finally completely dead, I donned his scouter and removed the glowing-tipped spear from his carcass. I remember wondering why the end of the spear irradiated so but refrained from touching the end of it, lest I zap off the tip of my finger. I grazed my hand over the handle several times in search of a switch or button that could make the old-fashioned, barbaric spear shoot out laser beams or something of the like. Much to my disappointment, I found none. The weapon was as it appeared: just a glowing pointy stick.

I couldn't help feeling that Freeza had lost his mind. The security guards with spears were the easiest to take down, so why give them such obsolete weapons? It made no sense.

Averting my attention from the spear, I looked up and happened to catch my Lady peering from behind her hiding place.

"He's dead, Bulma. It's safe to come out now," I called out to her.

Before emerging, she asked, "Did you get the scouter?"

I pointed to the side of my face and answered, "Right here."

Smiling, she appeared from behind the statue andlimped as quickly as she couldup to me. I could see the twinkling excitement in her eyes as she removed the scouter from my ear. After turning it over in her hands a few times, she quickly popped open the side with a look on her face similar to that of child with a new toy. Whipping outa small, metal tool,sheproceded to tinkeraway at the wiring. Instead of trying to translate numbers from Ice-jin, she decided that it would be easier to just change the language settings to something one of us could read. With her handy multipurpose repair tool, which I noticed she carried around with her everywhere, Bulma poked around and pressed a few tiny buttons inside the device.

Though she often never mentioned what it was she did at her father's company, I had a feeling that it might have had something to do with mechanics. After all, since she was Dr. Briefs' daughter, she could have held any position she liked. What puzzled me, however, was the fact that nothing seemed impossible to her. It was as though she lost all sense of reality when it came to fixing or building something, though I can't say that I've ever seen her fail.

"Just a turn here, and… Presto!"

Bulma snapped the cover back on, fitted the scouter to her ear, and pushed the scan button. Dozens of different symbols flashed before her, but she seemed to comprehend everything that she saw.

"What's your mother's power-level, Vegeta?"

That, I was unsure of. I'd never measured her ki before, nor did I know of anyone to whose strength I could compare hers. She wasn't as strong as my father was, I knew, but I didn't know how she would stack up against me. Before the war between Saiya-jin and Ice-jin, Father was estimated around 12,000, and I had heard guards mentioning my power-level on the occasion while I was imprisoned. Numbers between 10,000 and 20,000 were fearfully whispered amongst them as though I were equal withone of Freeza's elite soldiers.

Finally, I gave her my answer: "I'm not sure. Can you give me a synopsis?"

She pushed the button again, taking it all in within a matter of seconds. "Three hundred meters west, there is a cluster of high power readings. That's where we found your people locked up. Down south, there's one mega-huge ki signal surrounded by several much smaller ki signals, and over to the east of us, a few scattered readings."

"What about to the north of us?"

"Eh, let's see… Uh, clear shot for about a hundred meters… then a small cluster of low power-levels."

"I say we check out that high power reading."

She smiled and agreed. "Lead the way, Your Majesty."

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Author's Notes: Sorry this took so long to get out. I've been pressed for time with schoolwork, so I haven't had as much time to write. Rest assured, I wouldn't leave you faithful readers hanging. As always, if there's something I can improve on or something I've gotten wrong in relation to the series, please let me know so I can fix it. Many thanks to those who have already given comments, and even to those shy readers who haven't.

If you've been paying attention, when Vegeta is telling the story, he uses customary units; but when Bulma gives him a read-out, she uses metric. This is because the scouter was programmed on a 10-base number system. By my theory, changing it to customary units would require more than just a little rewiring; she might have had to change the entire program, which would have taken her much longer than a few minutes.