Greetings and happy springtime :)
What will Gine see on her journey into the past? Let's find out!
Based on MasakoX's What If series "What if Gine went with Goku to Earth?", but a retcon with some changes of my own on how I think the story would have went down had Goku's mother escaped planet Vegeta with him.
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CHAPTER 19: XAI CELNUSSIA IV
A round hole of bright light opened before her in the darkness. She fell through it only to see the ground of the planet rush up to meet her before she could shield her face in time.
Gine cried out in pain as she hit the surface hard with her shoulder, bouncing from the impact with enough force to throw up rocks and dirt. Then landed again on her back, laying momentarily dazed.
The dust settled to reveal the dark opening she fell from directly over her. Above it, the sky looked very different. A deep purple with a whiteish hue, a grainy band of silver spanned from horizon to horizon.
As Gine regained her wits, she tried to process what just happened.
Moments ago, she was on Earth. Kami was just telling her about a round room of clocks that could send someone back in time. Then she had suddenly been sucked into a dark opening, falling for what felt like an eternity and transported to... here.
Gine grunted painfully as she pushed herself off the ground and back onto her feet. Her green dress-gi was covered in dust from the hard landing, but she didn't bother to brush herself off.
She looked back up into the sky just in time to see the black opening shrink until it disappeared. Gine momentarily dreaded if her only way back to the Lookout had vanished with it, and she had been sentenced to this place.
The view of the sky would have been breathtaking if she didn't know what this place was. The thick line across the sky was this planet's rings, of dense rock and minerals that orbited thousands of miles high, glistening like the starlight. It even casted a shadow from partially eclipsing the blue sun.
She could smell the metallic tang of the planet's air, and the scent of death mixed with it too...
Gine hesitantly looked around herself to take in the burning city she landed in.
It was just like from her memories...
Tall spires of skyscrapers that stretched high towards the heavens, their crystalline glass shattered and walls blasted apart. Metal glowing red hot from the myriad fires that blazed within the buildings. Thick palls of smoke trailing from them to blow over the surrounding mountains.
She walked through the ruined streets in deadened fashion, taking in everything. Her footsteps crunching the shattered bits of glass and dirt thrown about.
Blackened craters dotted the avenues and littering them with chunks of debris.
And the bodies. Corpses of pointy-eared, albino pigmented humanoids strewn everywhere in every stage of disfigurement.
They were the Xai Celnussians, the inhabitants of this planet. Some beaten to pulps, limbs missing, or others blasted to pieces scattered everywhere. Some of them lay in familiar long depressions in the ground, crushed in gory mess. As if they had been squashed by the giant foot of an Oozaru.
And the stench… the way these beings smelled was more ammoniac than from what rotted flesh of other Saipan-races smelled like. But the smell of death was recognizable to her anywhere.
Gine eyes watered, not entirely from the smoke around her. She remembered this planet all to well...
A sound of harsh laughter broke the silence of burning fires. Gine wheeled around towards the direction it came, the hairs on the back of her neck standing. Someone was nearby, behind the rubble of a collapsed building.
Instinctively she ran toward the rubble and pressed her back against a flat surface, trying to keep quiet and suppress her energy. The laughing died down, and Gine perked her ears to listen for more as she scooted toward the corner.
"Looks like we got us some survivors!" Someone spoke.
"Oh great, nothing I hate more!" Came another.
There was more than one person, judging from the volume and distance. The speakers were male-sounding, with the first one having a sadistic infliction in his tone while the other sounded more like someone who was in charge. And hearing it sent chills down Gine's spine. She hadn't heard those voices in decades, but remembered vividly who they were.
Gine refused to believe she was where she thought she was, even as she reached out with her mind to sense the ki-signatures of who owned those voices. But she remembered what Kami said before she fell into that opening. What he said about time travel. What the room they were in could do, what it could show her. And... the way she remembered...
There were six signatures in total, just around the corner of where she was hiding. She felt that two of them were very low, and their resonance felt alien. The other four auras she recognized as Saiyan, including one that felt... extremely familiar.
She heard a scuffle from behind the rubble, then the Saiyan voices laughed mockingly.
Gine reached the edge of the corner, but was too terrified to peak. She feared that she already knew what it was.
A feminine wailing sound came from the scuffle.
"I think she's mad that we slaughtered her people." Came the malicious voice of a different Saiyan, chuckling.
"She is, huh?" Came the commanding one, then laughed hoarsely in such a dark sardonic way that made Gine felt ill.
"Well, do better at defending yourselves next time, weaklings!" He said, then came a kicking sound as the native alien cried out in pain. Another shrieking voice cried too, like that of a young child. It took all of Gine's restraint to not scream from her hiding spot.
"Leave them alone already!" Came a voice. Gine's heart nearly stopped in shock, her eyes wide.
It was her voice.
She poked her head around the edge of the rubble, and saw them.
Gine had no idea what was so cryptic in Kami's words until now.
Four Saiyans, clad in the distinctive black and bronze armor of low-class warriors. They stood surrounding the cowering form of a Celnussian female. Three of them were large-framed men. One tall with long hair, the other two fat and round with nearly opposite heights of tall and short.
Naga, Onio, and Banno… She mouthed their respective names in horrific recognition.
The forth Saiyan, a short young girl who looked no older than seven... was none other than herself. And this younger self eyed the other three staring at her angrily, and she was afraid.
There was no denying it anymore.
This was the planet of her first actual purging mission...
When Gine was a baby, she was sent on an infiltration mission to a frontier world like every low-class Saiyan. Even though she was born with a power level of four, they gave her a chance still. She had been subjected to the brainwashing in her incubation chamber as an infant, inoculated for every disease known in the galaxy, and sent on her way to destroy all of the inhabitants of the planet she would land on.
But something must have went wrong. Either the programming never took hold, or her Saiyan bloodlust was never awakened; or, maybe she was never meant for the task. Once she arrived, Gine didn't attack the natives as she was instructed, and ran instead.
For six years after that, all she did was survive. She killed only what was necessary to sustain or defend herself on the jungle world whose name she couldn't remember. Her earliest memories were that of running from dinosaur-sized centipedes that threaded their way through the snake-like trees trying to eat her. She recalled how afraid she was, of the things out to kill her and how powerless she felt to do anything about it. It was all she knew.
Eventually, a Saiyan crew arrived to pick her up and assess the planet for sale on the market. But once they exited their pods, they were surprised to see the planet's biosphere completely intact, and immediately tracked her down with their scouters.
They were the first other Saiyans Gine had clear memory of seeing, even though she didn't know that she was of the same species as them when they found her running from the monster insectoids.
The squad leader, Naga, was tall in stature and had a long oval shaped head with medium-length hedgehog hair that reached his waist in tangles. He had the look of a trained killer not only eager for a fight, but also had the presence of mind to know how to command others on the battlefield. Perhaps he was once part of a class just above rock bottom, only to be demoted to crap jobs like this for either drinking on duty or pissing off the wrong higher up.
His two subordinates were twin brothers. Onio and Banno.
Onio had the nickname "Stinky", as his body odor was absolutely retched. Supposedly, he fell into a toxic pool of sludge that the defenders of one planet used as a booby trap to drown him. He escaped unharmed but the stench of it has never left him no matter how many times he bathed, and after a time stopped trying all together unless he was ordered to every once in awhile. He was as tall as Naga, but fat and had a ratty patch of dust-mop hair that sat on the top of his head.
His younger brother, Banno, was short and also round in shape. What he lacked in height (and hair) though was an intense cruelty in his eyes that sent shivers down the spine of any poor soul who made eye contact with him.
Then there was her. Filthy, lost, weak, and afraid of the glare that Naga and the brothers gave her.
They were very disappointed in her that not only had Gine failed her mission, she was fleeing from fighting the creatures like a coward. But in her young-preprogrammed mind, she didn't know any better when it came to not wanting to kill, and remembered wondering what she had even done wrong.
Naga's crew ended up slaughtering the planet's life for her, accomplishing it in only a couple days. Even though Gine spent most of her first years of life running away from that world's creatures, she remembered feeling sad that they had to die so horribly. Naga and his crew setting fire to the jungles and roasting the insectoids alive with their energy attacks.
She cried that day, and when the Saiyans returned to her and saw her weep openly, they beat her mercilessly for the disgusting display of soft-heartedness.
For her inability to complete her most basic task as a Saiyan and for the atrocious act of showing the least bit of empathy for an enemy, they were tempted to just kill her on the spot. But they had orders to bring her back to planet Vegeta, and did so with some barely concealed contempt thrown at her along the way.
Despite her mind not having taken hold of the programming, Gine was given the rehabilitation treatment to fit back into Saiyan society. She learned of their culture, their allegiance to Frieza, their mission, and the depth of her failure. But... she still hated killing. No one knew exactly why, as nonviolent Saiyans were almost unheard of in their history. The Frieza Force doctors who examined her thought she was a fluke, an interesting curiosity among their most volatile servants to the empire. But her fellow Saiyans saw her as nothing more than an outcast, like a diseased or malformed biological failure of their race to be mocked and shunned. And they held the final say in what to do with her, as she had failed her mission still, and by seven was too old to be reprogrammed again as it would have no effect. It also became apparent to her superiors that her reintegration may have made her more docile and only exacerbate the problem.
But, they couldn't just execute her outright. The Saiyan population was very low, having nearly fought themselves into extinction several centuries prior and their numbers were still recovering from the Tuffle War. It was a punishable offense for a Saiyan to kill another Saiyan unless they committed murder or treason, even more so if that Saiyan was female. With only a few thousand Saiyans left, they needed to get their numbers back up, and the males outnumbered the women nearly two to one.
The Saiyans couldn't waste themselves to infighting, however it was nearly impossible to temper their fabled bloodlust even if it was for the greater good. They would never let their own kind grow soft if they were to keep their reputation as the most feared warriors in Frieza's empire. It would be intolerable for a softy like her to get away with pacifism and taint future generations with her setting an example.
In the end, the Saiyan commanders among the Frieza Force ranks decided to give Gine one last chance to prove herself worthy enough to be called a Saiyan. She was to go with a planetary purging crew to the very next world to be conquered for Frieza. If she refused to kill or if she tried to flee, that would be grounds enough for her to be executed. If she succeeded... then they would not kill her. And she would just go on the next assignment afterwards as if nothing happened.
It was not a choice she wanted to make at all. She couldn't stomach the idea of killing millions if not billions of lives. Despite what everyone around her said about the strong over the weak, it was wrong. She didn't know why she felt that way, but something within her conscience told her that it was a universal truth that causing suffering for gain as the Saiyans and Frieza's empire did was morally abhorrent in the most extreme sense.
But there was nothing Gine could do about it. She was just a seven year old girl who barely registered a power level of eighty. She couldn't challenge this twisted and evil system of conquest, and she could do nothing to escape it. She was forever trapped in it if she choose to do what was necessary to live. And to her dismay, the next crew to be sent out just so happened to be Naga's.
To her, it was either die as punishment or die in battle, possibly from her own "comrades" if they hated her enough.
But at least she would have a chance to redeem herself in their eyes. If she could have at least a confirmed kill, she would be spared long enough to make it to her next assignment. And then the next if she only killed as little as needed, to try and cause as little suffering as possible to the unfortunate civilizations that the empire set it's eyes on. Hopefully, she might live long enough to finish her time as a warrior and find a way out of the front lines and into more support roles. Perhaps as a supply officer or a cook. She doubted if she'd make it until then, or even go through with what she'd have to do. But with a choice to make, she had no time to dwell on it and just get through the task at hand.
So she choose the mission. The next day, she was outfitted with new armor and a pod to fly with alongside Naga, Onio, and Banno again despite their grumblings of "babysitting" her. They said that they would be better off with a batch of Saibamen instead of her, but there was no room to complain in the Frieza Force.
And then off they were, to Xai Celnussia IV. According to Frieza Force reconnaissance, this world had an abundance of rare metals and other natural resources that would prove useful to be mined for the Planet Trade Organization. So they were ordered to take it, and leave no survivors if the inhabitants refused to surrender.
Of course the pointy-eared, albino Xai Celnussians refused to submit when they recognized them as Saiyans upon landing. They had them surrounded with energy rifles and demanded that they leave.
"Oh well, I was itching for some huntin' anyway." She remembered Banno joking before Naga began blasting away, and the other two following his lead. Gine reluctantly began shooting ki blasts in every direction.
They fought their way out of the landing site and made their way to the nearest city. Gine followed behind the trio and merely tried to defend herself from the shots taken at the group.
Once they reached the metropolis, they had to contend with battalions of warriors. Despite their weak power levels averaging one hundred each, they fought together as singular units and with lots of ferociousness. They hopped that their numbers and tenacity could repel the invaders.
Naga however fought them off easily. With a battle power of twenty-five hundred, he could take almost every wave of fighters thrown against him with barrages of punching attacks that sent the Celnussians flying into each other as projectiles. To him, he could throw them around like rag dolls, but if enough tried to gang up he could vaporize entire divisions of them if he could free a hand.
Banno and Onio, with power levels of a thousand each, had a harder time. Despite being brothers they hardly ever fought as a team and quickly got angry with each other if either of their kills were contested over, and received a few grazing shots from their lack of coordination. But like Naga, they were strong enough to incinerate them if they were overwhelmed.
All three of them were rejects among the lower-class ranks of Saiyans for such ill-structured team work and skills as warriors, but they were at least somewhat competent.
Gine however, was utterly out of place for this job. All she could do was try not to die, and she was terrified. With her power level of eighty, she could barely even take on one warrior. She knew she couldn't go against them in a one-on-one fight, but she also remembered the ramifications if she ran away. The other Saiyans would find her, and kill her for abandoning the mission. So she did the best she could by hiding for cover, firing energy shots randomly to hit something, and hoping to be near enough to the trio to take care of any attacker. She also tried not to think of all the killing going on around her, saying it was to save herself.
Her strategy would work and the Celnussian warriors trying to kill her would be mowed down by Naga and his men when they reached her. With the city cleared out and in flames, they moved on to the next one.
By the time they reached their next target however, the entire planet's forces had been mobilized against the Saiyans and were waiting to meet them at the second city. So, knowing that they couldn't take the Celnussians on the old fashioned way, Naga decided to pull out the trump card early and threw up a Blutz Wave energy ball.
Gine didn't fully remember what happened after Naga told her and the twins to look up, only to wake up hours later at an entirely different city to find it completely destroyed. But images flashed in her mind from the perspective of what she must have guessed was when she went Oozaru.
The Celnussians look of utter terror at the giant monsters that were her and her compadres stomping through the city defenses, the tiny soldiers shooting desperately at them with energy weapons that merely tickled her. Her mindlessly stomping them like ants, and the screams of the civilian populace fleeing before them. With wild fury she flailed her arms and mouth beams at all the skyscrapers before her. They looked as if they were asking to be destroyed, and her ape-mind was all to eager and kill crazy to resist that temptation. Then taking flying leaps across entire continents, landing from city to city and obliterating them with the shock of her impacts. Knocking down buildings, reducing entire blocks to ash, and sweeping armies aside. She felt unstoppable.
This continued well throughout the mission as the team made their way across the planet. Eventually, the Blutz Waves wore out and they reverted to their normal forms, as Gine found herself then.
She couldn't stop to think about everything as Naga and the others dragged her on to continue the mission. They had nearly wiped out all of the planet's population in their Oozaru forms, and now there were just a handful of outposts and towns left untouched by their wrath. With the hard part over, they went about with mopping up the rest of them.
Gine didn't take part and just held back and watched helplessly. Naga, Onio, and Banno grew tired of fighting hand-to-hand with what were now worthless weaklings to them and would just resort to vaporizing every warrior that came across their path and blowing up every remaining settlement with energy bombardments.
After a day, all life on Xai Celnussian IV had been eradicated. The few standing structures that were not outright obliterated were left burning and in ruins, the Saiyans had to keep at least some of the planet's infrastructure intact. No armed resistance remained and every safe haven for the civilians to evacuate the planet was snuffed out. All that was left of a population of millions was just a few stragglers that Onio and Banno eagerly tracked down with their scouters.
Gine just stood in the middle of the ruined city, shocked to the core at the horror that had befallen on this world with her help. Naga stood behind her, arms crossed and observing their work with a semi-satisfied smirk. She dared not cry in front of him this time.
"Cleared out pretty good, no thanks to you." Quipped Naga.
Seven year old Gine wiped around to him. "I did my part. Okay?" She barely kept her sorrow in check.
"Ha!" Naga laughed hoarsely. "If you call letting us have all the fun and you just shooting wildly "doing your part"".
"I did what I had to and helped out when you needed it, so let up." She shot back, immediately regretting it when Naga took threatening steps toward her. She was short for her age and he was incredibly tall, as she barely reached above his knees.
"Are you tell me how to do my job?" He asked her coldly.
Gine shrank back, feeling like he was about to squash her. "N-no! I just-"
"I'm your squad leader, and I say you didn't do a damn thing!" He interrupted. Then swept his hands around to the surrounding carnage.
"All this was from us! The Saiyans! The actual ones who have any ounce of pride in themselves. Whereas you..." He pointed accusingly down at her. "Are a sorry excuse of one. And you didn't do so much as charge into battle as we did."
Gine sighed and tried to shake her head in acknowledgement. The easier she could pass off that she agreed with him the faster he'd leave her alone.
"There's only the strong and the weak in this universe! The strong Saiyans must destroy the weak filth of this galaxy, and we CANNOT have any weakness among our ranks. And that includes you. Understood?"
"Yes." Gine said reluctantly, just wanting Naga to shut up. But he just stared at her even angrier than before.
"I don't think you do... weakling." He spat at her. "YOU have failed our race when you failed to kill as the rest of us did as babies. Any Saiyan in his right mind should have just vaporized you when we found you. But you're far too lucky that the higher ups gave you another shot." He said that last sentence as if it were a curse.
"I wouldn't be so forgiving, and if it turns out that-" Naga started to say, but both his and Gine's scouters beep to signal Onio returning to their position.
Onio landed beside the two of them. Gine's nose stung and immediately held her nose, trying to not gag from the pungent smell. Even Naga looked annoyed and uncomfortable.
"Stinky, how many times have I told you to give me a little warning next time you show up?!" Naga complained.
"Fuck off, Naga!" Onio shot back. His response was met with a punch to the side of the face from Naga. Onio wheeled around and fell, cupping the side of his cheek Naga's fist hit.
"Don't get angry at me for something that's your fault, Stinky." Naga mocked.
Whatever trace of hurt Onio felt came and went in an instant. It's not his fault he fell in that pit, despite how everyone told how dumb he was to not see an obvious trap it was that day. But he replaced that feeling with mockery of his own when he set eyes on little Gine.
"Guess what, girly. Today's our lucky day. You know why?" He asked her.
Gine looked confused. "No, why?"
Onio placed a hand on his knee and stood up again. "Because our mission is officially complete. Our scouters show no survivors left of this rock!"
She felt her stomach drop within her.
"Oh, goodie!" Said Naga, then looked at her with an evil smile. "You know what that means?"
At first Gine didn't know what he meant, then her heart stopped.
Naga and Onio burst out laughing with such vigor and sick pleasure. Gine felt her whole world crumble around her.
She failed. In all this madness, all she had to do was kill at least one warrior. How could she have screwed this up? There were millions, and she shot randomly. She HAD to have shot someone!
"But-but I went Oozaru like you! I HAD to have crushed a few myself! You should know that!" She begged.
"Uh-uh." Naga shook his head with a tsk-tsk. "Doesn't count kiddo, any Saiyan can kill in that form. We had to get that killer instinct out of you in your regular state. And you failed. Besides, how are we supposed to confirm who squashed who out there?" He laughed mockingly.
Gine's blood boiled. In rage and despair. How could they just not accept that she had already killed in her Oozaru form? That she had to be as cold-blooded as they were? It was impossible for her, and Naga seemed all to happy to make that the case for her just to off her.
"Can I do it, boss?" Onio asked excitedly, aiming his open palm at Gine.
"No, I'm squad leader. I'll do it. My job to enact discipline around here." Naga gloated, and raised his hand to charge up some ki.
Gine fell to her knees, about to scream. Then...
All their scouters beeped, Banno was approaching too. Along with something else.
"Hey boss, lookie here!" Came Banno as he dropped two bodies at the center of the group.
Celnussians. A mother and young child, their garments torn to rags. The four Saiyans surrounded them.
"Looks like we got us some survivors, here!" He beamed. But Naga couldn't look more annoyed.
"Oh great. Nothing I hate more." He complained, having been robbed of the opportunity he was just handed moments ago.
The Celnussian mother looked up at Naga and locked it's dark eyes with his. The alien features seemed similar to that of a Saiyan, and looked at him with incredulity… and hate.
How could they do this?! The Celnussian was probably saying to them with her looks. She clutched the child in her arms as best she could.
The alien mother lunged at Naga, pounding on his tall chest in a futile attempt at rage. Naga chuckled at the effort, saw it as a fitting gesture for another inadequate race slain yet again and wailing in disgusting despair in their last moments on their destroyed world.
"I think she's mad that we slaughtered all of her people." Piped Banno, chuckling.
"She is, huh?" Naga gruffed, then bent over to stare down at the Celnussian in the face in mocking consternation.
"Well, do better at defending yourselves next time, weaklings!" He said, then kicked the mother in the face into the center of the circle. She cried out in pain while the child tried to help her mother.
The brothers started laughing again and began kicking dirt into the Celnussian's face.
"Come on up here! Take a shot at us too! Haha!" Mocked Banno, holding his arms out in an open invitation at the child who looked as enraged as the mother.
Young Gine couldn't stand it anymore. They were toying with them.
"Leave them alone already!" She yelled.
The brothers stopped laughing, and they with Naga glared daggers at her.
"What was that again, Gine?" Asked Onio, threateningly.
Gine shrunk, cursing herself for ever speaking up.
"I-I said... leave them alone. We-we've already won this planet." She stammered trying to explain. "Now lets just go."
Naga felt his eye twitch. He had enough of this pitiful softy. For a brief moment, he didn't care if he got punished for killing a female Saiyan, for he'd been demoted before. What more did he have to lose besides his pride?
They had given her plenty of chances, and now with just two survivors out of a planet of millions she wanted to call it quits and leave?! He didn't just want to kill her. He wanted to hurt this little bitch. Wanted to grind her to the ground, not just physically. But break her spirit, to put her nonviolent waste of a mindset in it's proper place in the dust with the rest of the weakli-
A light clicked on in his head. And he smiled.
He may not get his wish to act on that impulse to kill her, for the scouters would surely provide proof that he robbed her of a chance to honestly prove herself. But an opportunity had been landed at his feet afterall...
"Oh no no, not so fast, weakling. Our orders are to purge ALL life on this planet. So..." He let his sentence hang.
But Gine couldn't help herself. "Can't we just, I dunno, put them into the slave labor division? They would at least make themselves useful." She tried to bargain, to find a way out for these two on the ground.
"Nah that's not acceptable." Said Naga, then decided to speak his idea. "But, no, I won't kill them."
That caught Gine by surprise, until...
"You will."
Gine looked at him in horror. "WHAT?!"
Naga's smile grew wider. He was going to enjoy this. If she was as much of a soft-hearted weakling as he thought she was, then being forced to execute someone would shatter her entirely.
To break this little twerp and get the job done at the same time. Win-win in his mind, probably the most brilliant idea he ever had in his bloody life.
"Time to get your hands dirty, kid." Naga said, then pointed to the two. "You've failed your infiltration mission and you barely helped here. So I'm ordering you, if you ever want to live to call yourself a Saiyan..." He spat at that implication, she was too pathetic to even carry that name if she succeeded today.
"Execute them, and we're done here."
Gine looked at the Celnussians in horror, and they looked back at her now as if they knew their fate had been sealed. They gazed at her in sorrow.
She began hyperventilating, she couldn't do this. As much as she tried to rationalize going on this assignment to get it out of the way, she never imagined it being like this. Killing in the heat of battle was one thing as horrible as it was, but an execution?
She cursed herself for ever being here, for ever being born.
"Please! Naga, I'm begging you, just let them go!" She cried out, tears starting to fall. The other three cringed at her show of emotion.
"Too bad, runt! You're doing it whether you want to or not!" Naga declared snidely.
"No, please! Don't make me do this!" Gine cried again, practically begging. Onio felt like he was going to be sick from the water works of her crying, and wanted to off her and be done with it, but Banno spoke up before he could act.
"Frieza's orders, kid. No survivors to be left on this planet, so... you do the honors!"
Gine didn't know what to say or do now. There was no way she could save them, and there was no way she could escape without dying. Part of her wanted to, for being in this living Hell. Now she was weeping, hiccupping in despair. She was angry at herself, at all of this. Why this? Why this life?! WHY HERE IN ALL PLACES OF THE COSMOS DID SHE HAVE TO BE A MURDERER?!
Naga had enough of her sniveling, and spoke to her in a dangerously calm voice.
"Do it, or I'll kill you alongside them too. Might be better off that way anyways, one less weakling. You are a disgrace and this is your only chance to prove otherwise. So, I'm ordering you one last time:" He raised a hand in her direction. Gine saw it through the blur of her tears and knew he was about to charge a ki blast aimed at her.
"Execute them." He demanded slowly.
There was nothing she could do now. Despite her grief-wracked state, she knew. She had to do it if she wanted to live. But how could she live with herself? She was about to commit murder. Not only a person, a defenseless mother and child. And the last two survivors of an entire species. It was the final act of genocide.
The mother and child looked at her as if expectantly. They knew that she was supposed to kill them, but... they did not look angry at her. Strangely, it was comforting.
She couldn't understand their language, but they must have known she did not want to kill them. That she was being forced to. And that there was no escape for them.
The mother made a mournful sound directed for Gine, crying in it's alien language. The mother covered the eyes of the child who was panicking and struggling to escape.
Reluctantly, Gine raised a shaking hand.
"DO IT!" Yelled Naga, a threat more than a command.
A ball of white ki emerged in Gine's palm, it hummed louder as she feed it all of the energy she could muster to make their deaths as quick and painless as possible. The Celnussian mother cried out again, this time in what sounded like a plea of mercy in their native language. One last chance to live.
But there was no going back now.
"I-I- I'm sorry!" Gine choked out.
She couldn't look them in eye, and at the last second Gine closed hers shut.
And fired.
The ground in front of her exploded, rocks and dirt flew everywhere that forced her to shield herself. Through the sound of the blast, she could hear the Celnussian mother and child's dying screams, shrieks of despair that faded with the wind.
The dust settled, and all that remained was a crater in front of her where she shot them. Not a single speck of ash remained. The last two Xai Celnussians, like the rest of their species, were now extinct. By her own hand.
A wave of nausea hit Gine. She fell to her hands and knees, vomiting whatever she had in her stomach onto the ground. Her hiccup sobbing returned in full force, almost threatening to choke on her upheaving.
"There, now was that so hard?" Naga asked in mock innocence.
"Could've aimed a little better." Banno griped as he brushed of the dust and rocks from himself, since he and Onio were standing next to the blast. But they were unaffected.
Gine didn't hear them, and just lay there shaking violently. She was distraught with guilt to a level she never knew existed.
What had she done? She had actually killed innocent lives. A mother and child. And they pleaded for her to spare them. She had helped her "comrades" wipe out an entire species. An entire culture and history, gone. Even any memory of them was to be gone with the last survivors.
As much as she could tell herself that she was forced to do it, it would never change the fact that she did it. At least on her infiltration mission she killed to protect herself from actual threats. Here, this was quite the opposite of self-defense in her eyes.
This must have been what Hell felt like.
"Alright then!" Declared Naga in the background, typing into his scouter and paying no mind to Gine's breakdown.
"Xai Celnussia IV, mission complete. Purged, and now a territory of the Planet Trade Organization. New designation:..." He waited as the numbers came up from command.
"Frieza Planet 138." He said.
"Frieza could at least come up with a better system..." Onio's voice said, but it faded further and further into silence.
In her grief, seven year old Gine wondered if being executed herself would have been better afterall once she saw what happened. But she guessed that even if she did die, Naga and the twins would have purged this planet anyway. At least she wouldn't have been around to experience this pain, and damn herself for the crime she committed.
But she was alive. As much as she hated this, she had to admit that at least she could live another day.
Gine felt a boot kick her hard in the gut, knocking her off all fours and laying on her side. She clutched her stomach in a stunned daze.
"Get over yourself and stop your groveling, you little brat." Naga spat at her.
Gine eyed her commanding officer with pure hatred.
"We gotta get this place cleaned up before we can leave. Now hop to it." He barked at her.
There was nothing in the universe she wanted more than undoing what she did, but she really wanted to kill this bastard and the suck-up twin accomplices that made her do what she did. But she couldn't do anything about it, and hated herself just as much for it. So, her hate gave way to numbness.
"Yes sir." She said with no emotion in her voice whatsoever.
Moving almost mechanically, Gine got up and walked after Banno and Onio. They had to get the bodies of the fallen Celnussians together for incineration before the planet could be put on the market.
The young girl went about the task without saying anything throughout the rest of the mission, completely detached to everything happening around her. The passage of time and the exertion on her bodily vessel meant nothing to her as they piled the corpses up and vaporized them. She didn't even remember when they got back in their pods and flew back to planet Vegeta, but her senses eventually came back to her as they begrudgingly "congratulated" her for proving herself.
From that day forward, she was broken. Before she could have a long enough break to process what happened on that planet, she was already sent on her next mission. Again, she was forced to kill in order to defend herself and support her comrades. But at least with feeling nothing, she didn't feel fear either. The only thing she could feel was guilt. For all the pain and suffering she would cause after that. But it would never amount to what she first did that set her down the path of being a Saiyan warrior. The looks of the Celnussian mother and child would haunt her forever.
She could die, or live long enough to enjoy whatever meager pleasures and comforts she could scrape up in this thing she called a life. But nothing would ever undo what she did. All she could do was get by and try as hard as she could to not experience that level of suffering on herself and others again. The little voice inside her still yelled strong despite everything, telling her that everything she was doing to help Frieza's empire was wrong, and spoke as her own voice sometimes when the injustices she witnessed were too great. But again she would be beaten down for ever speaking, and would be the cause of all the ridicule and bullying from her fellow Saiyans that would instill her sense of inferiority.
Every crew she met did nothing but make it their mission to torment her for how pathetic she was. Never offering her drinks, giving her scraps of food, avoiding her in mess halls, and kicking her around. The lack of basic comradery and the constant belittling she endured was soul-crushing, and deep down she didn't care for any other Saiyan to be friends or listen to her anyway, they were all the same bloodthirsty monsters their evolution made them out to be.
So she did what she could to heed to that voice and keep her head low. But over time that voice became less and less of a beacon of light for her, until it became just a blip in the back of her mind that only dictated her actions in the slightest. It would do her no good in this world aside from getting her in trouble and cause herself heartache.
She got to live afterall. But a part of her died back on Xai Celnussian VI, a part of her soul that had the will to stand for what was right. Now it seemed to her that strength really did make the difference between making things happen the way you wanted them, or just submitting to the more powerful forces that made things happen around you. And with her weak potential given at birth, she was forever destined to be nothing more than subservient to the forces around her. And there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it.
As Gine grew into adulthood, she fought when she needed to and learned how to survive on and off the battlefield. She kept low to avoid ridicule. She would fail often, and lash out feebly in her lapses of reason and actually try to stand up for herself to only fail yet again and again. Sometimes, nothing mattered to her anymore, and didn't care if she lived or died even when she served her time and made it to the support roles. All she learned to believe in was that the world was a cruel place, and as much as she secretly wanted happiness and justice, she was never meant to know those things for the rest of her days.
Until she met Bardock. And the rest was history...
Gine's present self stood there as still as stone. All of the memories rushed through her mind from the very scene before her.
So far, Naga and the twins had not noticed her yet. Their backs were turned to her, with them focused on the Celnussian mother and child on the ground. And on her younger self, who was understandably too distressed to notice her either.
But she was certain if she did anything, their scouters would alert them to her presence.
"What was that again, Gine?" Asked Onio, threateningly.
This was too surreal for Gine. It was as if she was inside a bad dream, reliving her life from the perspective of her older self. Clad in the green gi she made on Earth, and her seven year-old counterpart wearing her female Saiyan chest armor and skirt. Both of them feeling just as frightened at what was happening.
Young Gine shrunk, cursing herself for ever speaking up.
"I-I said... leave them alone. We-we've already won this planet." She stammered trying to explain. "Now lets just go."
Naga's eye twitched. He looked as if he was contemplating about just blasting her on the spot, until a spark of inspiration appeared in his eye.
He smiled evilly, and Gine felt her heart pounding in her ears in terror.
"Oh no no, not so fast, weakling. Our orders are to purge ALL life on this planet. So..." He let his sentence hang. To hear the exact same words Gine heard all those years ago play out again before her and in her memory, sounded like she was hearing double.
"Can't we just, I dunno, put them into the slave labor division? They would at least make themselves useful." Young Gine tried to bargain, to find a way out for the two Celnussians on the ground.
"Nah that's not acceptable." Said Naga, then decided to speak his idea. "But, no, I won't kill them."
Gine knew what he said next, and could barely hear him say it over the sound of her terrified heartbeat.
"You will."
Young Gine looked at Naga in horror. "WHAT?!"
Naga's smile grew wider. Gine felt frozen in fear. As much as she tried to bury this memory in her mind, it was all flooding back in full detail. Right up to...
"Time to get your hands dirty, kid." Naga said, then pointed to the two Celnussians. "You've failed your infiltration mission and you barely helped here. So I'm ordering you, if you ever want to live to call yourself a Saiyan..." He spat at that implication.
"Execute them, and we're done here."
Young Gine looked at the Celnussians in horror, and they looked back at her now as if they knew their fate had been sealed. They gazed at her in sorrow. Present Gine couldn't see the look of the Celnussians from her vantage point, but remembered it very clearly. How it haunted her still...
Young Gine began hyperventilating, and so was her older counterpart.
Was she really going to witness this all over again?!
"Please! Naga, I'm begging you, just let them go!" Young Gine cried out, tears starting to fall. The other three cringed at her show of emotion.
"Too bad, runt! You're doing it whether you want to or not!" Naga declared snidely.
"No, please! Don't make me do this!" Gine cried again, practically begging.
"Frieza's orders, kid. No survivors to be left on this planet, so... you do the honors!" Banno spoke.
Present Gine didn't know what to do now. Her mind went blank, full of fear and anger. There was no way she could save herself or the Celnussians then, and now she was going to watch herself execute them all over again.
How could Kami do this to her?! How could he force her to re-experience her most painful private memory in such a perverse way?! How could he make he feel as powerless as Naga did?! DAMN HIM! DAMN NAGA!
Now Young Gine was weeping, hiccupping in despair. Naga looked fed up and spoke to her in a dangerously calm voice.
"Do it, or I'll kill you alongside them too. Might be better off that way anyways, one less weakling. You are a disgrace and this is your only chance to prove otherwise. So, I'm ordering you one last time:" He raised a hand in her younger self's direction to charge a ki blast.
"Execute them." He demanded slowly.
There was nothing her younger self could do now. Despite her grief-wracked state, she knew. She had to do it if she wanted to live. But how could she live with herself? She was about to commit murder. Not only a person, a defenseless mother and child. And the last two survivors of an entire species. It was the final act of genocide.
The mother and child looked at her younger self expectantly. They knew that she was supposed to kill them, but... they did not look angry at her. Instead, the Celnussian made a mournful sound directed for Young Gine, crying in it's alien language. The mother covered the eyes of the child who was panicking and struggling to escape.
Gine started shaking violently, her fists balled up tightly.
Reluctantly, Young Gine raised a shaking hand.
No...no, no. She couldn't relive this!
"DO IT!" Yelled Naga, a threat more than a command.
A ball of white ki emerged in Young Gine's palm, it hummed louder as she feed it all of the energy she could muster to make their deaths as quick and painless as possible. The Celnussian mother cried out again, this time in what sounded like a plea of mercy in their native language. One last chance to live.
Gine barred her teeth in rage, she clutched her fists so hard they started bleeding. She will not let this happen again. SHE WILL NOT!
"I-I- I'm sorry!" Young Gine choked out, her cheeks streaked with tears. She closed her eyes, about to fire the ki blast...
But then, all of their scouters started beeping rapidly. They detected the sudden rise of her nearby energy signature.
"NOOOOOO!"
Before they could turn their heads to see where that scream came from, the pile of rubble exploded into a cloud of debris. From it, Gine in a white aura shot out towards Naga.
Faster than he could react, her booted foot slammed squarely into his jaw.
A/N: And that's where we're gonna be leaving things for right now ;) This was a doozy to write and got longer than I thought it would be with a bit of Gine's backstory and how she was to face her fears as part of her spirit quest, so I'll split it in two.
Next chapter: Confronting the past!
Also, Naga = short for Naganegi (long onions), Banno = short for Bannonegi (green onions), and Onio = short for just Onion. Think of them like the Phantom Saiyans from the non-canon episode "Pendulum Room Peril"