I'm finally back with an update- thank goodness. Please let me know what you think. As always, thank you all for reading. =)
I'm dying for some review guys, lol.
"Enough, enough!," Tarble's voice strains as he turns away from the crystal ball.
For a moment, I can believe it, that this strange Saiyan is my brother. He turns his back to Baba and me. His rounded shoulders pout just beneath his pink ears. He crosses his arms over his chest and studies the floor with his black eyes. I see the frustration- the anger. I see a softer, more honorable version of myself.
"You're the one who agreed to help her," I remind him.
"I know Vegeta, but I will not watch her be brutalized by an animal!," he raises his voice at me and stares me square in the face. His brown tail cuts the air as it swooshes back and forth.
"There's more she wants to show you," Baba says dryly, "I can't control what she decides to share, but this will help you with her request."
"I understand," Tarble answers her as his tail settles back onto his waist.
"I told you no good would come from this sort of meddling," I add.
"We'll see I guess," Tarble says to me as he settles back down to watch the crystal ball.
Yucca makes short work of the hallway. Frosted glass lanterns lined the stone walls. Crackling silhouettes of orange flames gave private dances in their cages, teasing the outside world with glimmers of light. Yucca knew who waited behind each oval door. It was always a shapely body, lingering at the king's beck and call. The concubines were rarely called upon as they were when Yucca's long deceased sister was married to the former King, Vegeta II. Yucca remembered his brother-in-law and thought about how brashness eluded the man. Vegeta II was a man of few words, with a slow, booming canter to his voice.
Oh, but he loved the women… and then some, Yucca thought as he rolled his eyes.
Then Yucca pondered his nephew, Vegeta III and how he wears ruthlessness like a jewel around his neck, yet he's not estranged and distant like his father. Yucca could not decide which predicament was worse: a calculating, yet absentee political tactician, or an emboldened, fledgling tyrant, temper and all, who could play ambassador.
Yucca stopped in front of a wooden door. It is identical to the others except for the inscription on the top post of the frame: XVIII. He wrapped his knuckles on the wood and called, "Coming in, make yourself descent. You're being summoned."
Raksasha rolled over in her bed, with surprise plastered over her tired, haggard face. She scrambled to pull the comforter up to her bare neck. She wiped the sleep from her eyes, shell shocked by the situation. Yucca milled through her quarters laying out a plain blue uniform, bypassing the dresses the other sparkling things in the wardrobe that was registered to her just a few days ago.
"Get Up, get dressed," Yucca said with urgency, "The lab is expecting you in thirty minutes."
Raksasha grabbed the blue garment, but still had herself robbed in the grey comforter.
"Um, sir, can you step-"
"What's the matter- get dressed," Yucca interrupted her and clapped his hands.
Raksasha faced the wall and dropped her comforter. She focused on the diamond shaped window. Her eyes traced the blue glass and the intricate frosted, lacey design decorating it. She threw on her clothes as fast as she could, only glancing over her shoulder once to survey Yucca's position.
"Are you finished yet?," he asked as if he didn't know.
The question melted the tension from her muscles, but she couldn't describe why. Yucca pulled her into the hallway by her seized arm. His grip was firm, yet not overbearing. She thought about his comings and goings from the last few days- nearly not enough time to trust the man, but enough to establish a pattern.
He does his job, leaves, and nothing more- good, she thought, soothing herself.
The last four days reeled in Raksasha's mind despite being uneventful. It was the unexpected calm that unsettled her the most. The first night she expected to be holed up in a cage or a dungeon somewhere far from the light of day, not taken to a private room with a bed, and solid wood furnishing plated in silver. She expected rags, not a library of floor length gowns, with shimmering beads, and every precious stone that have ever been graced by Saiyan eyes. She expected a hungry, wanting belly, not quiet meals indulged at a table of spoiled concubines. She expected to simply exist beneath the oppressive wrath of the king's thumb, not to be thrown away and forgotten about a piece of coal in a silk purse. Calm washed over her as she thought about the cool evenings in the courtyard, surrounded her with water fountains, an oasis in the dessert, complete with chattering lemurs and birds strutting about in their colorful plumage.
It's like the bastard forgot about me, she thought about the king, but that would be too good to be true.
The heat brought her back to reality. Yucca dragged her through the enormous, weighty garden doors. The hot sun beat down on the top of her head, melting her scalp beneath her black hair. They walked until the planted grass ended and the castle walls were far behind them. They walked deep through the endless swath of red clay until three figures bobbed in the distance. The round carriage house emerged on the horizon. Her heart sank as it sat empty, still dusty with the tire tracks of the coach that brought her there.
King Vegeta looked down on her from his sharp nose. He stood with his arms crossed, waiting for Yucca to close the gap with a last few steps. Two men wearing white coats waited with Vegeta out in the desolate quarter of land.
"I trust she gave you no trouble Yucca," Vegeta said.
"Not at all," the older man said.
"I thought you said we're going to a lab," Raksasha said wearily to Yucca.
"Not exactly," Yucca offered her, "We were to meet the lab technicians- the scientists," he added for clarity.
"This can't be done indoors," one of the technicians spoke up.
"What exactly are we doing?," Raksasha asked.
"Running some tests," The same technician said as he placed sticky white pads on her forehead and cheeks. Without introduction, the other scientist continued to place them on her hands, elbows, and knees.
"Like that tells me shit," she says as shies away from them.
"If you want to act like a toddler, I'll treat you like a toddler," the king hushed her, "I'll put you back in your quarters and you will not come out for two weeks if you don't cooperate."
Raksasha calmed herself. She allowed the technicians to examine her from head to toe. She even followed their thankless requests.
Does this hurt? Can you feel that?, she mocked them inside of her head, I'll show you hurt.
"Everybody take a step back," the first technician said as they all scattered around her.
Raksasha's heart galloped in her chest. She felt like she was an explosive that was getting ready to be detonated. Anxiety prickled the skin on the back of her neck. The observing men put on a thick glasses with black lenses. The lenses were half an inch thick a piece.
"What's happening?," she asked, but no one bothered to answer her.
The king formed a glittering ball of white ki in the palm of his hand. He lobbed it into the air high above their heads. Raksasha's eyes were drawn to it, craning her head back until the base of her skull rested on the back of her neck. Foamy drool gathered in the corners of her lips as her nerve endings went dead. Her bones ruptured from her skin and a headache split her skull. Her clothing disintegrated from her rippling flesh as black hair sprouted from her skin. Her sinuses burned as sharp teeth ripped through her bleeding gums. She shot up into the sky as a gargantuan beast- an ape. Her lips pulled into a snarl above her glistening sharp teeth.
Her angry pupil-less eyes looked down on them. The king felt her blank red eyes drilling into his suddenly small body. He was certain that she was fantasizing about revenge.
You probably want to squash me and scrape me off your heel like a bird shit, Vegeta thought.
"Sire," Yucca said as his brows raised above the oversized glasses on his face, "Did- are there any counter measures in place?"
"The electrodes should also act as a sedative, sending B-frequency waves directly to her brain," piped up a technician, "She's ready sire. Her accessory neural waves are being read as we speak."
"Well?," King Vegeta questioned them expectantly.
"Her frontal lobe is active, sire, with the occasional hot spot in the occipital lobe as well," the technician answered, "This could be promising. We have to test it further."
The king signed; he pushed the oversized glasses up the bridge of his nose. His fingers found the brassy clips on his shoulders, making quick work of them. He pulled his cape from his back and handed it to Yucca in an inpatient leather wad. He groaned as he tightened the laces of his boots and wiggled his heels deeper into the soles.
"Sire?," Yucca barely got out before Vegeta's feet left the ground.
The king zipped through the air, flying straight up to the chiseled muzzle of the black-haired ape. He looked like a buzzing blue fly to the men gathered below. Raksasha's nostrils flared at the sight of him. The vapor of her breath fogged over the fiberglass sheath covering his armor. He struggled to hold his tongue in the wake of her cavity infused, sour breath.
The tawny skin of Raksasha's muzzle quivered into a displeased frown. A deep gurgle escaped her mouth, rumbling in the king's chest.
Just a burp, the king thought, until her brows flattened the tops of her already intense eyes.
"Do you understand me?," he yelled at her.
She remained silent, only giving him a vexed, thousand-yard stare. The king, zig zagged slowly in the air, her head lulled back and forth on her neck, following him. He couldn't bring himself to break his gaze from her face; it was something ingrained and primal.
"Blink twice if you know what I'm saying," he yelled to her.
An unmistakable grumbling, growl escaped from her gritted teeth. The king allowed himself to descend from the sky, careful not to turn his back to her in the process. He touched down on the red clay with a displeased frown.
"Yucca," Vegeta demanded his attention, "See to it that the debt is reinstated."
"Sire," a scientist spoke up, "The neural waves indicate that a high level of processing is occurring in her brain. She very well could be conscious and able to remember this."
"Is that so?," Vegeta said, "But if she can't talk, she's no value to us. She can't even follow simple commands. She's worthless. Send out a search party for that lying waste of space that parceled off his sister. He will die in front of her."
An imposing shadow cascaded over them, gobbling up the light in seconds. A blast of moist air broiled their skin. Raksasha's red eyes were like two swirling red moons looming over them.
"Sissssteeeeerrr," she snarled over them.
"You can speak!," Vegeta called out to her from the ground.
"Stop yelling. I'm not deaf," she said, tapering off the sentence with a gravely groan, "Stupid king."
"You will respect me!," the king hollered at her red faced and heaving for breath, "How dare you make a fool of me!"
Rage bubbled up from his chest, painting his neck and jaw crimson.
"Made you a fool? No…," she hummed, "You did that all by yourself. Do you think yourself as so mighty that I am powerless to hold my own tongue," she chuckled, " I can speak, but that doesn't mean that I have to- you stupid fuck."
The king's eyes widened, mortified with something akin to embarrassment. It was something he hadn't felt since he was a little boy. He had almost forgotten what it felt like, what the creeping insecurity of humiliation was like.
"How dare you!," he said, fists trembling with anger, "You insolent bitch!"
The king raised his palm and sent a green blast into her eye. An ear-splitting cry shook the ground as she cupped the side of her head with her hand. Her black tail cut through the air, like thunder rolling before a lightning strike. A craggy burnt wound split her eye socket. She reared up again, standing tall on her back feet, raising her fists high above her head.
"What have you done?," Yucca scolded his nephew turned king.
"She's supposed to be sedated," the king snapped, wagging his finger at the two trembling technicians.
The king watched the bottoms of Raksasha's clenched fists, certain that she would squash them into the clay at any moment. With a husky, roar she turned on her heels and splintered the carriage house beneath her forearms. Dust rained down on them. Slivers of periwinkle glass twinkled beneath the afternoon sun, creating a gritty, glittering haze.
"Siiiissssteeerr!," she let out a raspy roar.
The king was frozen in place, as her mournful cry spread across the landscape. He was immobilized not by the shock of what she's done, but the shock of what she chose not to do. The king aimed high in the sky, aligning his hand with the churning white ball of ki that unleashed all this chaos. A quick, sure shot destroyed the hydrogen bonds causing it to evaporate in the air, becoming nothing more than an insignificant little bloom of smoke. Raksasha began to convulse where she stood as her body ate itself, sucking in lumbering meat and bone. Yet again she was nothing, just a steaming heap of naked flesh in the rubble of the obliterated building.
The king strolled up the remains of the carriage house with yucca and the technicians hot on his heels. He began picking through rubble and battered boards.
"Find her," he said plainly to the three men behind them.
Yucca ignored the sweat dripping from the end of his nose. He folded the king's cape neatly and placed it on the ground. He began to scrounge half-heartedly, digging in the glass and dirt.
It would be better for you to just stay buried and suffocate, he thought about Raksasha, I pray he doesn't find you, he thought as he processed his lukewarm emotions.
Part of Yucca was indifferent about what happened to the girl and didn't want to clean up the pulpy mess the king would leave behind from her. Deep inside, a squeamish morsel of his heart winced at the predicament though he refused to acknowledge it.
"I found her!," a scientist cried.
"Very well," the king said stoically, trying to hide that he was catching his breath, "Yucca, take her back to the palace."
"And, then what sire?," Yucca asked.
"Just take her," the king scoffed and shook his head at his manservant.
Yucca looked down at the unconscious girl for a split second, allowing himself to briefly drop his hardened, unbiased demeanor of duty.
He doesn't even know what he has planned for you, Yucca thought, Surely these are your last days.