The Valley of Unrest
"The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awakened, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see…"
-Dagon by H.P. Lovecraft
A shocked whisper shattered the thick layer of silence that had descended upon the room.
"No."
Vegeta turned to find an exact duplicate of the woman in the bed staring back at him. He snarled and phased into the darkness before she could even blink. Her blue hair hung in crimped waves, tickling his cheek as he wrapped his arm tight around her neck. Her air supply was cut off and she was struggling to scream a warning to the other woman, who was still sleeping soundly.
He held his arm out from his side and a beam of light formed into a glowing saber. He quickly brought it up to her throat, just underneath his other forearm closest to cutting what he knew would bleed her dry in less than three minutes.
"Not a sound," he growled. She nodded her ascent and held back a whimper as he loosened his hold. "Who are you?" He demanded, lowering his knife. He couldn't kill her until he knew which one was his real target.
She was lucky; if he'd been Turles, she would have been drowning in a pool of her own blood, crumpled on the floor next to the dead body of the other woman. But he… He never killed for nothing. He never killed just because he could.
The moment she could get a breath, she screamed to her double on the bed.
"RUN!"
He grabbed at her and clenched his hand over her mouth, but it was too late. The other woman had already shaken herself awake and taken off running into the closet to his right. He swore and pulled a small pin out of his leg strap, sticking it into the struggling captive's neck. She immediately slumped out of his grip to the floor, and he let her go, moving as quickly as he could to follow the blue-haired escapee.
He entered the closet just as the back wall slid shut. He prepared another energy blast and aimed his palm into the darkness. With a yell, he released it, only to recoil when the residual heat waved toward him as it refused to penetrate the shielded door. The whole room shook violently, the clothing-free closet rod clattering noisily to the ground.
He ran to the bedroom window and wrenched it open, leaning out to see the white tail of a space pod shooting out into the night sky. Muttering an oath, he slammed the window shut again, shattering the glass pane with the strength of his anger. He stalked over to his unconscious prisoner, considering his options. If he killed her and she wasn't his true target, he would have his own conscience to answer to in killing someone without cause. If she was his target and he let her live to go chase down the other woman, Ambrose would feel no remorse in reporting his failure to Lord Frieza.
He shuddered. He would sooner die than face that evil androgynous lizard.
The light reflecting off the woman's pale skin brought his thoughts back to her. He had no way of knowing where the emergency pod had gone. The woman obviously would. What if the biggest threat to the empire was running loose all over the galaxy because he couldn't do his job? He was going to have to take her with him for interrogational purposes.
His face was grim as he lifted the woman bridal-style and thought of the words of Ambrose the last time he had neared failure.
"Soon there will be nothing left for you anywhere, Vegeta. If you are banished, you will have nowhere else to go. I'd hate to kill you… But if you fail me, if you humiliate me with your cowardice, I will do it without remorse."
He could not fail.
A/N: Sorry no B/V action yet, but I want the characters to be well developed first. No jumping in the sack in the first chapter for this fic! Thank you so much to Pearl3, Bulma Breif, and kurlyQT for being the first reviewers. Your reviews really inspired me to update! The next chapter is about nine pages long, so look for it in the next week or so. PLEASE R&R! They really are the food of inspiration.
