Metal

Chapter 80: The Big Empty


One thousand, one thousand and one… come on…

Digging her fingers into the metal floor, Launch seized for a moment, red-drenched body wobbling like a table with three legs. The superheavy air around her sat in place, rigid like stone, even as she felt immeasurable force press down on her back from above. This was pure torture. Whenever she turned on the gravity machine, she traded her pure stubbornness for time. She was looking forward to getting back to Earth and never making that trade again.

Dear Kami… if this is what 100 times Earth's gravity feels like… was Bulma right that this thing can go all the way to 300Gs? It's not like she could test that herself…

Well, I could test that myself.

Groaning, Launch levered herself down to the ground, stiffening when her momentum began to move her too fast, and pressed her torso to the floor. Alright… one more push-up… Whookay…

'HRRGGH! HRGGH!'

Launch wiggled for a few moments, but eventually released her breath and flattened to the floor. 'Oh… oh, okay… guess that's it.'

'COMPUTER!' she yelled, whipping up her sweat-ridden face. 'GRAVITY OFF!'

The muscles in her neck spasmed. Launch grimaced.

'I SAID,' she stressed, 'GRAVITY OFF!'

As if the computer was some kind of disobedient child, the central pylon- as a fixed piece of structure does- didn't flinch, nor did the gravity in the circular chamber turn off.

Launch's red aura began to flicker around her. No, no… don't stop working now… not when I'll be squished into paste...

'COMPUTER-'

The gravity in the room froze, then reversed. Launch gasped, body unbowing like a bent piece of metal realigning, and let her aura wink out around from her. She panted on the floor, sweat dripping from her matted hair, white, sleeveless t-shirt, and loose gray pants.

'You alright?'

Launch lifted her weary head. Waiting in the open-air entrance to the chamber, Bez stood, carrying a tray of food. On his wall to the left was one of the gravity chamber's emergency off switches. 'Huhh… huhh…'

Bez jostled his tray. 'You hungry?'

About a minute later, Bez and Launch were seated at the sole canteen-style metal table in the common area adjacent to the gravity chamber. Launch eyed her re-hydrated food, some part of her disgustingly hungry, but with a queasy look, she pushed the bag of breakfast sausage away from her.

Bez guided the tray back towards him. 'Not hungry?'

'Still nauseous from the training,' Launch groused. 'Probably will be for the next hour.'

'Alright, then…' He tossed some pork into his mouth. 'More for me.'

'Since when do you eat Earth food?'

'You think I could eat anything but Earth food while on Earth?'

'Well…' Launch scowled at him and his suggestion. 'It's a big galaxy. I'm sure Bulma could get food from your home planet if you asked.'

Bez took a second to really stare at her. 'You don't know anything about me, do you?'

'No- should I?'

'Well.' Bez leaned back in his chair, arms folded. 'That would explain a lot.'

With a sneer, Launch snatched the bag from Bez's side of the table and tipped it back into her mouth. 'Look, buddy-' She chewed, swallowed. 'I know why you're here. Bulma wants you to stop big-bad-Launch from breaking her stuff. I get that. I'm sure you bringing me food was partly to check in on me.'

'I never said that.'

'Aha!' Launch jabbed a finger at him. 'But your face did. You think I'm a loose cannon, don't you?'

Bez struggled to make an appropriate expression. 'Well, I don't think... "think" is the right word…'

'And Bulma thinks so too.' Launch straightened in her chair. 'Which is… understandable, I guess. She knows me. But you don't.'

He lifted his hands, palms upturned. 'True. I don't. I'm just doing what Bulma asked me to do.'

'And why is that, exactly?'

Bez stood, grabbing the bag from Launch. 'I think you're getting paranoid from being cooped up in this ship for too long.' He walked over to the counter that ran along the wall on the far side of the room and stowed the bag in a fridge. 'Maybe even stressed- it might do you some good to train with someone else.'

Launch glared at him. 'I wasn't finished with that.'

'You look like you're about to throw up.'

She burped, making a disquieting gurgling sound. 'Euuhh- Says you,' she regrouped.

After a second spent near the fridge, Bez walked back over to the table and sat. 'You should take Recoome up on his offer. I don't think he's anywhere near you in strength, but a training partner is a training partner.'

'What about you?'

'What?'

Launch folded her hands on the table and leaned forward, a crooked grin on her face. 'You know the Kaioken. Recoome doesn't. You'd make a better sparrer.'

'No thanks,' Bez replied, face unenthused. 'I prefer going alone. Anyway- I also came here to tell you that we're near the relay. Come to the bridge in ten minutes.'

'Yeah?' Launch grunted as she stood. 'That was quick.'

'It's been weeks,' Bez grumbled, turning his head around as she walked away. 'How is that quick?'

Launch shrugged as she strode past him.

'You know the bridge is the other way, right?'

'Not if I want to go take a shower, it isn't!' She bit back as she disappeared around a corner.

0o0o0

Ten minutes later, while repeatedly jamming a finger into her ears to drain water from it, Launch walked through the ship's hallways, hair damp and white from patches of unwashed shampoo. The plumbing on the ship used an automated timer so that not too much water was used for showers and handwashing. Launch hadn't quite perfected her routine yet, and as a result, after every trip to the bathroom she had some kind of still-wet clump somewhere on her.

Not much I can do about that, she tipped her head to the left and smacked her ear. Bulma was very clear and very specific about the water rationing. Wonder if… well, I'm not very competent with electronics, or timers… or… math...

It wasn't often that Launch felt any sustained negativity towards herself. Usually she had enough stuff to do on any given day that she simply didn't think… at all, really. When staying at the shack, daily events had a pattern and rhythm to them that Launch enjoyed. Wake-up. Train. Eat Breakfast-slash-Lunch. Train farther away from the shack until Tien and Chiaotzu get tired. Go back to the shack and cook-slash-eat dinner. That took her from 6AM to 10PM. And then she slept. Rinse, repeat. She spent her spare energy pushing herself during training mostly because the rest of her lifestyle required no conscious attention at all.

She wished it was the same on this ship. Her body, damn it, liked to be sore for at least a day after really training in the gravity chamber. And even if she had a full schedule on the days she trained, which she didn't, she had nothing to do before or after. She couldn't eat more than was rationed or shower longer than was timed. The ship was smaller than it looked from the outside, and the sleeping quarters were packed close enough to the engines that it was hard to sleep. It could get both swelteringly hot and frigidly cold depending on how close you stood next to a window. And, those windows- by the Kais, she hated looking out them. Space was an endless expanse of nothing- a boggling amount of empty filled with only the farthest, dimmest stars. She wondered why Tien had never mentioned this to her. Leaving the Earth was a nightmare.

Though as Launch entered the ship's bridge, emptying her left ear of one last drop of water, she reflected that that wasn't a fair assessment to him, and going to space had been bad for him in different, more objective ways. To some degree, this mission was a vanity trip for Launch. So, she wondered- why aren't I getting any joy from this?

Her thoughts shook away alongside one of Mark's hand waves. 'Yo!' he cheered from the cockpit's corner, drawing Recoome's perpetually exaggerated and smiling face away from a console towards her. 'Take a shower?'

Perhaps she could give space more credit. It's the company you keep that makes or breaks a trip.

'Uph,' Launch grunted as she avoided Mark's gaze and stopped next to the console Recoome was hunched over. Nothing more than a window to space in Launch's opinion, as she saw the same as if she was looking out one. 'What's this?'

'The feed from a camera from the outside of the ship,' Recoome explained, eyes studying the contentless image. 'Bez told us to wait… and watch, you know?'

Launch eyed him. 'No,' she said, glaring back at the console, 'I don't. Where is Bez? I want to complain to him in person about this waste of my time.' Yes… my valuable time… hmm...

She was entertaining the non-obvious hypocrisy of her statement when she realized that, huh, a few seconds had passed without a response from Recoome and Mark. And, actually, they had crowded behind her, looking past her at the console.

Recoome pointed a stodgy finger to the feed's bottom right corner. 'Think that's him now.'

A white shape, head a sphere of silvery reflective glass propped up by a ribbony suit- goddamn, Bez was spacewalking! The purple alien, tether rope wrapped to a cinch on his waist, slowly sailed space, moving like a creeping apparition towards what she could now recognize was a flat-boxish satellite set in the center of the feed. It had been painted to be nearly indistinguishable from the cosmic background- black with tiny spots of yellow, white, and blue- which was odd, considering that it was a communication satellite and Bez had found it easily with the ship's sensors. Why camouflage something likely to be found?

'That's a classic relay, alright,' Recoome chuckled, satisfied with his own recollection. 'Painted just like the PTO likes it. Indistinguishable from any type of visual sensors, but easily tracked by the appropriate tech.'

Launch whipped her head towards him. 'Appropriate tech?'

'Anything made by the PTO or with their cipher,' Recoome elaborated. He patted the console. 'Bez told me this was reworked from the electronics onboard a battle pod, so it'll have all the right keys, codes-'

'Were you reading my thoughts?'

Recoome threw her a dumb look. 'Huh?'

She sneered at him and swung her attention back to the console. 'Nevermind.'

They watched Bez traverse the deceptively small black background illustrated by the feed. After a second spent studying him, Launch realized that his suit had no source of propulsion like a booster pack- so how was he moving? She watched his hands waver slightly, almost as if he was passing through a film of smoke or fog for a split-second. He might be using his ki to fly in space- which, now that Launch thought about it, was more plausible than she had initially thought.

Once Bez grasped the satellite, he killed his momentum and started edging around it. Half out of view, his hand ran across its casing, stopped, tugged, and then plunged inside.

'That guy sure is something,' Mark whistled, tilting the upper half of his body back for emphasis. 'Just, uh… just something.'

Launch ignored whatever point Mark was trying to get across, as did Recoome, who seemed more intent on studying her reaction to what the feed was showing.

He nudged her on the shoulder. 'What are you thinking?

'Huh?' She shot him a look. 'What?'

'You know.'

'No,' Launch said, increasingly annoyed, 'I don't.' She stood to her full height. 'Do we have a problem?'

Recoome did the same as her and ended up about two feet taller. He crossed his face in thought. 'I… don't think so,' he decided. 'Just hard to get a read on you.'

'Oh, really?' Launch said dryly, crossing her arms. 'What's so difficult about it?'

'Dunno,' Recoome answered. 'Just, uh- I feel like we could learn a thing or two if we sparred, you know? And considering that you go into the gravity chamber alone, and the rest of us can't use it while you're-'

Before Launch could bat away the friendly hand Recoome was proffering towards her, Mark rushed between them. 'I think what Recoome is wondering why you don't seem to talk to us much.'

'How can I when I'm training?'

Recoome made a happy little face, like he'd solved a complex thing of algebra, and flustered, Launch turned back to the feed. 'I like my space, as I'm sure you like yours,' she snarked. 'Which also means that I shouldn't find any of your dumbbells in the chamber when it's my turn- hold on.'

Bez had emerged to the feed, tether gone from his hip and free hand waving towards them. On that hand...

'He's giving us the thumbs-up.' Recoome looked away from the feed. 'So we can-'

Launch was already stomping away from the console. 'I know what a thumbs-up is,' she spat.

0o0o0

Once inside and assisted in stripping his suit off, Bez led them back to the cockpit and took a seat as information flashed across the cockpit's wide viewing port. The PTO's communication network was transmitted in a cipher, but Bulma and her father had cracked that years ago, and as they watched, the ship's computer translated the seemingly unintelligible wall of nonsense into words, phrases, and sentences.

Bez couldn't help but feel some satisfaction as the ship's computer made short work of what would have been impossible on their own. He knew how hard Bulma and her father had worked on cracking the PTO network a few years back. This entire mission was the result of their countless hours spent studying circuitry and nondescript symbols, and, thank goodness that they had, because-

Fast as the unraveling text before him, Bez's good mood evaporated. Thanks to them, he was stuck out here in space, leading a tribe of goats. Lucky me.

'Alright,' he groaned, standing, and typing a command into the console. A second later, the still-translating text flew from the viewport and formed a circle around the four of them. He gestured for them to stand. 'Come on- help me sift through all this.'

They each took a corner, one slice of the circle surrounding them. Spread out in such a manner, the floating text glowed blue and cast shimmering light onto their clothes and skin.

He expected that physically combing through information in this way would keep everyone silent and well-behaved for… he didn't know, at least a minute. No luck there.

'Huh,' Recoome grunted. He stared at a particular sentence floating in the air. 'So… I think I can say something big has happened in the galaxy.'

'Hmm?' Bez turned away from his section. 'What?'

'You remember that Frieza guy my old boss Ginyu liked to talk about?'

Launch threw a blank look at him. Mark didn't even try to pretend he understood what he was talking about. Shifting his shoulders, Recoome turned to them. 'Frieza? Doesn't ring a bell?'

'Could you tell us already?' Launch grumbled.

'Frieza's the ruler of the known galaxy,' Bez said from her right, seated again, hands folded and rigid in his lap. His gaze had settled on a particular, unremarkable spot on the wall. 'He's done a lot of bad things, in short.'

'Used to,' Recoome said, stepping aside and pointing towards a small thing of text. 'I can't find a thing with his name in it. He must have been kicked off his perch by this… uh…' he squinted at the shimmering sentence. '... Cooler, whoever that is.'

Launch frowned. 'Cooler?'

Recoome gestured to the wall of text. 'His name pops up all over the place. But this message- "Emperor Cooler Visits Western Quadrant Bases"- seems telling.'

'So… he's an Emperor?' Mark repeated. 'A Space Emperor? Wow. Just, uh, wow. He must have, err…'

The others stared at him. 'What?' Bez asked.

'Uh… he must have been…' Mark said haltingly. 'He must have been… a lot cooler than the last one.'

The whine of the oxygen pumping into the bridge framed the utterly unentertained expressions on Bez and Launch's faces. Recoome, however, could always be counted on for support. He gave him a thumbs up. 'Nice one, bud!'

'Is it too late to turn back?' Launch said loudly, looking and talking to no one in particular.

'Are you nervous, Mark?' Bez asked, leaning forward with a look of bewilderment. 'I mean- what was that?'

'I, uh…' Mark pressing the tips of his pointer fingers together. 'This all seems very serious, and well, I'm here, I just feel a little… out of place. Sorry. Sometimes I make bad jokes to feel less anxious.'

To his surprise, Bez settled back into his chair. 'Okay. Fair enough. But, please-'

'Can we get back on topic?' Launch whined, swinging a hand through the project wall of text. Her gaze shot to Recoome. 'Is this change-up with Ferbie and Kubert-'

'-Frieza and Cooler-' Bez corrected.

'-have any bearing on our mission?'

Recoome shrugged. 'Dunno. Do they have any connection to the Saiyans?'

'Do they?' Launch questioned.

'Yeah, do they?'

'No- I'm asking you. Do they?'

'I wouldn't know- I thought you would. So- do they?'

'I don't know,' Launch growled. She turned. 'Bez, do they?'

Bez shrugged. 'Remind me what we know conclusively about the Saiyans again.'

'I'm asking you that!'

'I know,' Bez answered, cupping his hands in his lap. 'That was sarcasm.'

'Terrible. Mark!'

The pro wrestler nearly jumped at the mention of his name. 'What?'

'Saiyans?'

'Saiyans?... What, Vegeta, Nappa, and Turles? The three who attacked the Earth half a year ago?'

The bewilderment returned to Bez's face and debuted on Launch's. 'How do you know about that?' she asked, mouth hanging open.

Mark tentatively met her gaze. 'I read the files on the ship's computer Bulma had written up for the mission.' His expression tightened. 'What, did none of you read them?'

'I read them,' Bez answered, 'and... I guess I forgot them.'

'I don't like to read,' Recoome admitted.

'And I don't care,' Launch griped. 'Go on. Summarize them for us.'

Mark pouted. 'Well… the files- Bulma- suggested that the Saiyans were probably not associated with the PTO anymore, because the PTO didn't come before or after their attack.'

'So they're not working together?' Launch clarified.

'Yes.'

'Computer,' Bez said aloud, 'highlight all mentions of the word "Saiyans".'

The lighting in the room shifted as a yellow beam materialized, tracing over every sentence like a virtual highlighter. Much faster, too. The computer finished the request and returned the room to its natural lighting in a matter of seconds.

'None found,' the computer said in a flat, bright voice.

Bez lifted his hands into the air, gesturing. 'Guess that answers that,' he said, standing. 'The Saiyans aren't anywhere in the PTO communication network, so it's likely they aren't in PTO space, period.'

'So… Cooler probably doesn't concern us then, huh?' Launch said.

'Probably not.'

Launch threw her arms up like she was trying to toss something through the hull of the ship. 'Then why the hell did we enter PTO space?!'

Bez frowned and scratched his neck in the same motion. 'Never hurts to check.'

Launch snorted and stepped back, passing through the circle of text. 'And I could have been training.' She turned and stomped out of the bridge. Unbelievable...

0o0o0

Water poured down from the filthy, smog-clogged sky, staining the low-lying buildings of the city phlegmatic green and foul white. Through empty streets and around abandoned vehicles, Ginyu walked, undisturbed by the stinging rain falling onto his purple skin. This planet had been grand at one time. On another part- the part that had been terraformed, and with every year claimed more and more from the urban ruin it replaced- it still was, albeit in a different way.

There was nothing left for him in the galaxy- just as this city held nothing for this planet. He was disgraced. He had lost his squad, his composure, his battle, and his body, tricked by- by a phantom, a ghost, as he found out that his stalwart master, Frieza, had been deposed while he was imprisoned. A man Ginyu had only seen snippets of before, Cooler, now ruled in Frieza's stead, purging the remnants of his brother's loyalists and installing his favored vision of empire across the stars. Loyalists either disappeared or were made a bloody example of. It was nothing different from what Frieza had done to his father's appointments when he had come to power thirty years earlier. But, as a member of that old guard… it stung. It stings.

Ginyu had bribed, cajoled, and impersonated to understand how the galaxy has changed. Once he attained that knowledge, he was no happier. Even before Cooler's ascension, Ginyu's name had been expunged from the PTO by Frieza. Soldiers who disappeared before a defeat might as well not have existed. The same was especially true for the leaders and elites. And, without that- what reason did he have to exist? Service was all he knew. Decades had elapsed since his fuzzy, ill-remembered childhood on a planet that had ceased to exist a long time ago both in reality and his mind. There was nothing left of him from then- and nothing left of him now outside the PTO.

Shedding himself of his broken armor, Ginyu continued along the broken boulevard, clothed in nothing more than a fading and ripped black jumpsuit. His skin began to pucker and welt from the acid rain. He was ready to die. Oblivious to the ancient ruin around him, Ginyu stopped, knelt on a sloping piece of pavement, and laid on his back and spread his arms like an etching. Rain hit him, burned small bits into his jumpsuit, then skin. Pain- stinging, searing, eating- failed to push aside his sorrow. He took a deep breath, choking on his tears and despair, gagging like a thing flipping inside and out-

A sound of rubble crunching under a footstep snapped Ginyu out of his stupor. Sniffling, he scrambled onto his feet. 'Who's there?'

His voice warped once returned to his ears, mixing with the garish jabbing that rained down from the sky. He could have been hallucinating. The hooded man, cloaked in a large, lengthy black robe just short enough around his chest that Ginyu could see a light blue fabric underneath. Nothing of his face, hidden within the gloom, was discernible to him. It was likely.

The hooded figure stopped, unperturbed or unaffected by the patter of acid rain. 'Your despair… it festers like rot in a cave. You are a long way from purpose, Ginyu.'

0o0o0

About an hour after that inane cockpit meeting, and about fifty minutes after Launch had collapsed face-first onto the floor from pushing herself too far, too fast, bruising her jaw to boot, Recoome waltzed into the common area adjacent to the gravity chamber. He carried two cups full to the brim with something green on a metal tray.

Launch eyed him from the chair closest to the chamber. She wasn't ready to admit defeat and give up on training for the day… even if she hadn't successfully removed herself from her chair yet.

'The chamber's all yours… for now,' she said, looking across the room to avoid his gaze. 'No guarantee that I won't kick you out of it later.'

Out of the corner of her vision, she saw Recoome sit down at the table nearest to her and gently set down his tray in front of him. 'You know I'm not going to drink both of these, right?' he said.

She glared at a wall for a moment before realizing that he was looking back at her, and that she knew for sure what was in his two cups. Her nose squirmed.

'Take it back. That goop's awful.'

Now acknowledged, Recoome grinned a little. 'If you can come over here and knock your cup off the table, you don't have to drink it.'

Bulma hadn't been able to fit a full-body healing chamber onto the ship's limited floor plan, so she had done the next best thing- in one cramped closet filled to the brim with spare parts and switches controlling the ship's oxygen, water, waste, and filter system, a shockingly ugly green bottling machine stood at the ready. All you had to do was place a cup underneath it, press a button, and watch a disgusting puree of regenerative compounds and algae worm out. Better for painting walls or molding into a ball and throwing it than… consumption.

'Why algae?' Launch had asked.

'It binds everything together,' Bulma explained, in a way that explained nothing at all. 'It's needed.'

Launch was absolutely sure it was not needed the first time she had grabbed a cup of that stuff for herself. On their first day in space she had taken one whiff of it and shot it out the airlock. It was borderline inhumane. And now this meatbag of an alien wanted her to drink it.

'But, of course,' she said in a tired pinch of her voice, 'you know that I can't walk, and that I can't go over there and smash that tray into pieces.'

Grinning harder, Recoome stood and placed her cup of green goop on her table. 'If I'm drinking an extra-thick cup of that stuff, you can, too,' he said, falling back into his seat.

'Is that a challenge?'

'Will that make you take your medicine?'

Their gazes collided like antlers locking. For a moment Launch tried to be stubborn. Then she was tired again and drank. She immediately burped, gagging a little, and thumped her chest with her fist a few times. 'Uck! Uck. Yuck. Yuck.'

By the time she had collected herself, she noticed that Recoome had downed his entire extra-thick cup. The only evidence that the goop had ever been near him was the lick of smudged green curling out of one corner of his cheery mouth.

'Who told you to bring that in, anyway?' Launch, asked, burping again.

'Who do you think?'

'Bez?'

Recoome wiped his mouth with his hand. 'Mark. He said you don't train in the chamber every day- and on the days you don't, you walk funny.'

'Yeah?' Launch bristled on reflex. She didn't like the idea of someone picking up on the minutiae of her day-to-day grind and hobble. 'Very… perceptive of him,' she said, trying to sound displeased.

Recoome rolled his head on his neck. 'He sees things because he's got nothing else to do. Can't really use the chamber like me, and it's not like he can talk with you.'

Launch grunted. She wanted to change the conversation. She did.

'Why are you drinking that?'

'The goop?' Finding his grin again, Recoome bent over in his chair and started to massage the skin underneath his knees just above where the bionics fed in. 'Helps with the aches,' Recoome answered. 'It dulls the pain more than it makes me nauseous.'

'So you do find that goop… revolting.'

Recoome burped. 'Little bit. But it's nothing I'm not used to. I've eaten a lot of bad food with the PTO.'

'Yeah?' Launch's stomach jumped up and down in her torso. What she needed now more than anything else was silence or a mindless conversation she could zone out of to focus on not throwing up. Not that she's thrown up from the goop before. She just really wanted to avoid barfing in a closed environment. 'Like what?'

'Is there a problem between us?'

Recoome had spoken in the same tone he used just before that Launch actually did zone out for a few seconds. Again, it took her noticing Recoome moving around in the corner of her vision for her to re-engage.

His legs, polished with bands of blue and red, spun across the room and banged against the wall opposite of the open-air entrance to the chamber. Launch looked at the discarded limbs, then at their owner.

'I know I fought your friends on… Namek, right?' Recoome looked at her for confirmation. After a second, she nodded. 'So you don't have to listen to me. But I figure I should say sorry.'

'Sorry- why did you throw your limbs across the room just now?'

'To make sure I didn't run out,' Recoome said.

Launch made a sour face. 'Can't you fly?'

'In a room this small?'

'Point taken.' She pressed her back to the chair's back. 'So where's the apology?'

'Sorry.'

'What? That's it?'

Recoome tensed his shoulders up and down. 'That's it. What, you want more?'

'If you're offering.'

'I don't have anything else.'

Launch searched his face. As far as he was aware, he was telling the truth. 'So you want me to go get your limbs, now?'

'Please.'

'Sure.' Launch slowly stood… and sat back down. 'Sure, one more question, actually, since you're not going anywhere.'

Recoome quirked an eyebrow. 'Yes?'

'You fought my friends on Namek.'

'Yep.'

'With the PTO, yeah?'

'Yep.'

'But I don't really know anything about that.'

Recoome threw her a look. 'Why would you know anything about that?'

'Wow.' Launch crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. 'So no one ever got that story from your point of view, then? Because I don't know it, and the friends of mine you fought don't, either.'

'Story?' Recoome repeated, confused. 'Huh?'

'Why things went down as they did,' Launch explained, jabbing a finger in his direction. 'Your orders, given to you and your goons.'

'Goons?' Recoome bristled unexpectedly, losing his easy-going expression to something tougher, sterner. 'That's mean.'

'That's what you were,' Launch said off-hand. 'Goons fighting for the evil space Emperor.'

'Stop saying goons. Some of them were my friends.'

'Oh yeah?' Launch continued, idly glancing at the ceiling. 'The other brutes who killed Namekians and who-knows-what-else-'

'Shut up.'

Launch's attention flickered back to the red-headed alien. For the first time since meeting him in that Capsule Corp. gym, he looked genuinely angry- his mouth was twisted in an ugly, derisive little thing and his fingers were wrapped around the edge of the table next to him, imprinting into its gray steel. She didn't really have a reason to not antagonize Recoome, but then again, she didn't have a reason to antagonize him, either.

Before she said anything else, she rose, strode across the room, and returned Recoome's legs to him.

He clasped them into place quickly as if in a rush, but simply laid back in his chair once done. 'Thanks.'

'Sorry,' Launch said, gesturing somewhat with her right hand. 'Didn't mean to rile you up.'

He looked calmer now, though the comfort of his old demeanor hadn't quite returned. 'I shouldn't defend them- but I remember them, you know?' he said, tapping his left temple. 'I remember them, and I remember being with them, doing what they did. Just…'

'Takes time,' Launch answered for him. 'I get that- I have a friend who was kinda like that. Though, to make sure you don't walk away from this conversation thinking that I'm a total saint, I do need to know your last mission.'

Recoome tipped his head, and strangely enough, the easygoing expression returned to him. 'Captain- my team's Captain- told us we were moving in to take over a mission from that pony-tail guy, Zarbon.'

'Take over?'

'Take over and kill him, yeah.'

Launch's mouth pinched downward. 'Didn't say that.'

Recoome spread his arms wide, smiling. 'That's the PTO for ya.'

'What were you told about his mission, though?'

'The mission?' Recoome scratched his fire-red hair. 'Uhh… I dunno. Something about securing some Saiyans, or something… to be honest, all the assignments sort of melted together after a while.'

Launch grunted. 'That's it?'

'That's it.'

'Alright. Last question, then: if you were a Saiyan… where would you hide?'

'What kind of question is that?'

'You interacted with Saiyans, right? Don't you have an idea of how they feel or think?'

'I made fun of them- not that there were many around in the first place,' Recoome said, chuckling at some unsaid joke.

Launch's face titled forward. 'Why do you say that?'

'There's not many Saiyans left. Their home planet was destroyed nearly thirty years ago.'

'Seriously?'

'It's pretty common knowledge among the elites,' Recoome said, puffing one cheek. 'The Saiyans made up the bulk of the PTO army for about ten years. Between them being discovered by Frieza and an asteroid splitting their planet in two.'

'Seriously? That's pretty dramatic.'

Recoome stood and clapped a hand on Launch's shoulder as he passed her on the way towards the room's exit. 'Way of the galaxy.'

0o0o0

The village offered pitiful resistance- if you could even call it that. Nappa had slaughtered bed-bound elderly who had put up more of a challenge than the five humanoids who had stepped out to face them, the foolishness of their decision written in the scarlet blue of their flushed faces. As he and Vegeta had learned, this planet had two species. The first, a weird spider-like one, had submitted to them as soon as they had commandeered one of their castles and all the lives inside it. The second, however, was a nomadic, dispersed, and space-favored race of big-boned and blue-skinned aliens. They lived in villages of no more than a few hundred, and even then, a significant chunk of their numbers were off-planet at any given point. Only the young and old were left- and, thus, only the old died.

Children shrank like shadows after as he and Turles seized food and machinery, loading it into a cart they dragged through the center of town. Anything that looked useful was thrown onto it, collecting into a growing pile of… junk, in Nappa's opinion. But Vegeta had commanded that any village that resisted his edict be stripped to its bones. So Nappa would do that.

It was never that complicated. Do what Vegeta commanded. He had the right. He was the Prince, the uncrowned King. There would come a day he would claim his mantle atop the galaxy, Nappa reminded himself. Someday, and then…

Nappa grunted, blinking, and saw that the cart was full- complete with a bored-looking Turles sitting on its crown.

Until that day came, Nappa would do what they needed to do. He spotted an onlooker and stomped over.

'You,' Nappa barked, jabbing a finger into the alien's chest hard enough that they nearly toppled over. 'You're going to pull.'

Their victim made an expression of abject horror, glancing behind Nappa. 'But- that cart- I can't do that by myself!'

'Then get your friends!' Nappa yelled, shoving them to the ground. 'Or you're going to join your dead ones!'

Terrified, the alien sped off, scrabbling against the ground and kicking dirt into the air behind them, heavy bones punching indents into the ground in their wake. He disappeared behind a round storefront; Nappa committed the alien's face to memory on the off chance they would have to hunt them down and kill them later.

'Hah.'

Nappa turned to Turles, still sitting on top of the cart like a sagging statue. 'Hah, hah.'

'What's funny, runt?'

'Nothing.' Turles idly examined the village. 'Just imagining what we're doing in an alternate universe.' His gaze flicked to Nappa. 'Probably nothing, right? Considering we'd be dead.'

'Shut up,' Nappa spat, turning away. 'You don't know what you're talking about.'

'That sure is true,' Turles said, stretching his back. 'When I'm with Vegeta, at least.'

Nappa kept himself in check. There was no need to verbally spar with a lower-class- especially since the last time he had let Turles speak long enough, he had doubted the one person he trusted in his long life. Vegeta was to be followed in all things and all places. Turles was a biting, rabid dog. Better to let him burn out on his own.

'Hello?' Turles called from behind him. 'I'm still here.'

'I know.'

'So you really don't think we'd be dead in another timeline?' Turles asked, cocking his head. 'Because, the way I figure it, there's a good chance we should have been on Planet Vegeta on the day it bit the dust, what with the fact that it was by complete chance that I was off-planet at the time, and- well, why were you off-planet? Either way, what with King Vegeta and his entire royal court getting their asses blasted there-'

'Shut up!' Nappa roared, snapping his head around. 'I wasn't ordered to let you run your mouth!'

Turles let loose a laugh, high and free. A few heads quickly snapped towards and away from them. 'Oh, but you were, considering that Vegeta put us on a mission together!'

'Prince Vegeta,' Nappa corrected him. He turned, flexing his hands. 'Do I need to shove my fist into you like a puppet to make you shut up?'

'Be calm, general,' Turles said, laying a hand on the pile he was sitting on. 'We wouldn't want to disturb our careful and methodical plunder with a fight.'

'Is that a challenge?'

'It's a defense.' Turles paused. 'A defense of addressing our overlord however I want, so long as I can't do anything else to him.'

Nappa's hands continued to flex, but a degree of control spread across his face. Eventually, he turned away again. 'It was wrong of Vegeta to take on lower-class trash like you. He should have killed you with your squad.'

The older Saiyan couldn't see Turles's reaction, but judging from the tone of Turles's next words, he assumed it didn't exist. 'You're denser than I thought if you can't understand why Vegeta spared me.'

'Meat shield, maybe.'

'So you do know? Good. We wouldn't want everyone not aware of what they're worth to that man.'

A long, grinding silence, like the kind that covered an eon where time leveled a mountain into a plain, choked the space from Nappa's back and Turles's lofty position atop the cart. Nappa considered a question. Then another.

Then, finally, 'That is what you think of me? A meat shield?'

'No better and no worse than me,' Turles replied. 'Otherwise, we both wouldn't be here right now.'

'And you think I'm stuck in this role, just like you? Until Prince Vegeta decides differently?'

'The only way we leave that man's service,' Turles said in a low, tight voice so as to not be heard by an encroaching crowd of blue aliens, 'is by entering someone else's or letting that man use our bodies as a stepping stone to his throne.'

Nappa pressed his arms so hard against his chest that he felt his ribs shifting. 'You know nothing about Vegeta.'

'Probably. But I don't think you do, either.'

Turles snuck in the last line to their conversation as about ten or so blue aliens walked up, exchanging nervous glances among themselves, and stopped before Nappa. The older Saiyan tried to ignore the words reverberating in his skull as he grabbed an alien at random and flung them to the ground, snapping their neck. It didn't make him feel better, and it did not dull the echo in his skull.

He whirled on his feet, spittle flying from his lips. 'START PULLING!'.

0o0o0

'Vegeta… it's- he's gone. You must think something.'

The scene was different. The planet was missing. They were in a ship, cool air caressing what was flame-touched skin, but otherwise, the odd script had resumed at the exact point it had left off.

'I feel nothing,' Vegeta murmured, half as short as Nappa or any other PTO soldier present, 'and expect nothing. If it is true the planet was destroyed by a freak accident, then the galaxy has sent a simple message- the Saiyans were too weak to exist any longer. A correction has been made.'

'But everyone?' Nappa circled him, his face blurring across other heads like a single cloud passing across a clear sky. 'All the elites? Your father? They were all too weak to survive?'

'In a way,' Vegeta said quietly. 'Otherwise…'

'Otherwise what?'

'Otherwise, they would have lived.'

Vegeta despised doubt. He had known it from a young age, like a phantom dogging his steps, hiding in his shadow, willing to become more than what it was- an illusion. His father had despised it, too, but could and did shrug it off with the aid of reality- he was the strongest Saiyan alive, and would be King until that was no longer true and some other Saiyan recognized that. Vegeta knew the ancient ways of the Saiyans. The right and responsibility to rule over his race was gained through dueling, and made the old palace as bloody as any battlefield. But his father was the first ever child of a Ruler to succeed their parent. When Vegeta's grandmother died, there was a brief vacuum of power within the palace as nobles, generals, and super elites killed each other to rule. King Vegeta, however, rose above their corpses and claimed his mother's throne for himself and his bloodline. Dynastic succession had been expected whenever in the future Vegeta's father died. But Vegeta did not want to rely on expectations. He wanted to be the strongest on that day, and until then, he had to ignore doubt.

So Vegeta opened his eyes and did not acknowledge the worn, almost tired expression on Nappa's face. His bodyguard wanted him to join in his rumination.

'Leave us,' the Prince said in a stern voice. The other PTO soldiers didn't need much more prompting than that. They bolted for the room's exits to their left and right, front and back.

'You are the strongest among us now,' Nappa said, voice muted, as if spoken through a heavy sheet. 'No Saiyan will ever challenge your birthright.'

'I understand.'

'There will not be many of us left. Most were on Planet Vegeta for Ascension Day.'

'I understand that, as well.'

'You may be Prince forever.'

Vegeta breathed. His chest felt tight. He loosened like one loosens a knot. 'Forever until the King of Saiyans returns.'

'Your father is dead,' Nappa repeated, face bleeding away from the edges of his head into the air around them. A visual moan to accompany a rhythmic pounding, beating hollow against the ship's bones.

'My father is dead,' Vegeta said, inflectionless. 'What more do you want me to say?'

'Say it again.'

'My father is dead.'

'Again.'

'My father is dead.'

'Once more.'

My father… is dead. And I… I am his son… the heir… the heir, to…

0o0o0

With a quick shake of his head, Vegeta awoke, shrugging off his sheets. He felt wet- sweat stained his jumpsuit and bed, filled the room with his scent. He took a precious second to catch his breath, laying a hand on the stone headboard, and listened to his heartbeat. Soot-colored rain pounded against the room's foggy window. Ba dumph. Ba dumph. Dumph.

Another dream. For nearly a decade due to the deadened sleep given by his ship, Vegeta hadn't dreamt at all, and now that he had moved into this gaping, echoing castle, he had dreamt for months on end. Some were of old places, faces, of specters long dead. Some were of newer worlds, people, some imagined, some familiar. And some were pure nonsense that, despite never making any sense, kept Vegeta in bed minutes after waking.

But there was one particular dream that kept returning to him, over and over, like an old phobia. How many times, now? Five? Ten? Perhaps ten times he had dreamed of that pivotal day in his life- the day his title as Prince-in-waiting was enshrined forever into his being. He wondered how he felt about that some days. He enjoyed knowing he'd be the first, last, and consequently only Prince of Saiyans to ever live. He regretted that the Prince would never become King.

I wasn't there on Planet Vegeta. I was on a mission. Slowly, Vegeta rose from his bed and strode over to his window. His armor, repaired and polished to the best of a local armorer's abilities, rested in a neatly folded pile on a table under the glass. Vegeta flashed his ki, evaporating the sweat congealing on his skin and thready brown sleepwear, and dressed himself while looking out the window. Oddly colored grain wavered in the fields below.

This planet was putrid, dirty, and disgusting. The people who lived here were backwards and insufferable, usually at the same time. Vegeta had made sure to resume training once fit enough to keep his body honed, but the longer he stayed in this festering castle, the more he felt his mind wander, entertaining useless thoughts and questions resolved long ago. So what did it matter if he would never become King? He had known that for more than half his life. He had felt no frustration on the day he learned this. He had accepted it.

It didn't make sense. Why was he now doubting the one reason he had for living?

0o0o0

Ducking underneath a low sulfur-stained white arch, Bardock quickly straightened so as to avoid tipping the pile of metal parts collected in his arms. Getting this stuff from a bunch of oddly accented vendors had been bad enough- picking it all off the ground of a crowded street would be nearly impossible.

His son hovered close to his back. 'This place stinks,' Kakarot grumbled.

Bardock couldn't disagree with that. This entire cloudy marble of a planet reeked of stagnation and living standards just good enough to qualify as living. Nothing Bardock hadn't seen before, of course. He was just used to destroying planets like this one, not shopping for supplies in their markets.

Whatever. Bardock snorted air out of his nose. Soon he'd be gone from this planet- every one of these sad, sad, planets- and on his way to Earth… wherever that was. But that was what the records base was for, and for the records base, that was what these supplies were for. Bits of steel and aluminum jostled in his arms. Their ship, as zippy and useful as it was, didn't have any weapons that could force entry into an old and locked down records base. Bardock was never any good with ship machinery- his wife, Gine, had always been better at that stuff than him- but he remembered a few tricks from watching some crazy Saiyans illegally modify their assault shuttles back in the day. If you had enough scrap metal, you could weld a big horn to the front of your ship and pierce a station if you hit it fast enough. Of course, if you did that, you had to make sure the rest of your ship was up to snuff, otherwise the entire thing would break apart when its momentum stopped dead against the station. Bardock had some confidence in their ship's sturdiness to withstand that… but not enough that he hadn't been teaching Kakarot how to hold his ki around him in a vacuum so that he could breathe for a few minutes without air.

'Tomorrow's going to be a big day, eh?' he said, tilting his head half back towards his son. 'If all goes to plan, we'll be on Earth a few months from now.'

Kakarot, as if unaware he had spoken, barely tipped his head up from the ground. Bardock grunted, turned away, turned back, and spoke again. 'You look distracted. Not excited to learn about what happened to Raditz?'

He attained his son's attention at last. Pensive. 'This entire planet…' Kakarot mumbled. 'It's pitiful.'

'So?'

'Just as pitiful as the planet before it, and the planet before that.' Kakarot's frown deepened. 'All these planets are… horrible. People are dying and starving all the time.'

Bardock grunted again. 'Well, that's what happens when you don't have the PTO around. For all the killing they do, they do know how to clean up a planet afterward.'

'So all planets outside PTO space are like this?' Kakarot asked, eyeing a few run-down buildings to their left and right.

'Pretty much.' The settlement was starting to thin out. Bardock could afford to hold out his elbows without the inconvenience of knocking someone to the ground and potentially spilling his pile.

'Why?'

'Just the way it is,' Bardock replied. 'Would be true of these planets even if the PTO didn't exist.'

Kakarot craned his head to him. 'Huh? What's the PTO got to do with it?'

'Places like this exist outside the PTO. That means that they can't trade with any PTO planets.' Bardock blew air up his face to push a strand of hair out of his eyesight. 'Trade- consensual or not- lets shithole planets become less shithole. Out here, outside PTO space and on the edges of the galaxy, these planets are on their own.'

At least, that was how Bardock saw it. Many other Saiyans liked to kill if given the chance. Bardock wasn't necessarily different, but he did find himself thinking about his killing from time to time. Not that he regretted slicing his hand into people's guts- no, he just wondered why he was doing it sometimes. Or he wondered who gets the chance to kill and who doesn't.

Either way, Kakarot was silent until they reached the very edge of the settlement. Not too long and they'd be at their ship, unharassed. Walking as opposed to flying sure had a way of making them seem extremely unremarkable.

'It's nothing like the Earth.' Kakarot said as he came up to his right side. His eyes tracked something unseen passing through the dull air above them. 'Not nearly.'

Bardock made sure to disguise his snort. Judging by how his son had talked about that planet, he expected it to be just the same as this place except with a prettier sky. No planet in the galaxy grew great by itself. All the greatness the PTO had was stolen from others. Theft on a galactic stale. Bardock would give up meat if the Earth was any different.

A blockish shape lorded in the horizon. The lone house they had passed on their way into town, if he remembered correctly. Not too long until they got to their ship. Damn did he enjoy flying that thing, even if it was a hunk of junk. Hell had made him way too stir crazy. Even though it's been years since he'd been revived, flying through space still gave him a thrill.

Perhaps whoever lived on Earth- I don't know, Earthlings?- built good ships. Unlikely as hell and the fact he was alive, but-

'Dad, move aside. A cart is coming.'

Bardock blinked and did just that, stepping out of what was not a house but a huge horizontal wagon carrying a pile of junk and spoils, loaded on top of each other even more haphazardly than the bits of metal he carried in his arms. Nine blue aliens, same as the ones they had seen in the settlement, were pulling two metal prongs at its front, laboring and tripping over each other like slaves.

Slaves. The thought stuck in his head. Wait... I haven't seen any slaves on this planet so far…

Kakarot had continued walking down the road's end- and froze like ice once he walked past the cart's edge. Through a thumping haze that fell onto his consciousness like the clearest inexplicable alarm he had ever felt, Bardock dragged his gaze away from his son and looked across the cart at his end.

A figure rounded the cart's corner. Someone Bardock had joyfully assumed had died on Planet Vegeta with him.

Even as his muscles snapped taut like cable threaded through winches, the single biggest bastard in King Vegeta's court still dropped the burlap sack he was carrying. That thud reverberated in the air for a moment before a snarl drowned it out.

Nappa's entire body seemed to tighten up and die. He said a word.

Bardock bit his lip, tasted blood. 'Aw, fuck.'


A/N: Wahoo! Space chapter is done. Another cliffhanger, but, you know, I gotta make you come back!

Quick note on schedule. This chapter came out two weeks after the last chapter. Unlike regular chapter postings for the past year or so, however, I have a significant chunk of next chapter done, and I have had this chapter done for a few days. The reason for why I waited to publish was, to be honest, the lack of reviews, follows, and favorites for recent chapters. Getting positive attention in the form of those things motivates me to write and publish faster.

This isn't to say that I'm not going to continue working on this fic without that positive attention. Work will continue on this fic in one way or another until I finish it. But, the way I figure it, if there isn't a clamoring for a chapter every week, then there's no need for me to really push myself to do that (not like I've met that deadline what with the chapters getting longer, after all). Conceptually and historically, I enjoy having two chapters ready to go before publishing so that I can work on the pacing and plot threads between chapters. So, going forward, I think I'll try to meet either n every other week or a tri-monthly chapter publishing rate. Hopefully, this'll let me build up a big reserve of chapters and enable me to publish weekly whenever a particular arc or fight is coming to a climax.

Realistically, this won't change anything on your guys' end. Just thought I'd give an update for all who are curious.

Reviews:

Transformers g1's-Prime: Interesting theory about Rush! I cannot confirm or deny :^)

Shadiness may or may not be the theme of what's going on on Earth at the moment…

Thank you for the review!

TienFan99: Glad you enjoyed the chapter and the approach for the next few chapters! I agree with your view- it definitely allows me to do characterization that I wouldn't be able to do otherwise.

Confrontation is definitely coming between Yamcha/Bulma/Chi-Chi/Kakarot… just a matter of time, ofc.

Good point about Tien and Piccolo! I've thought about them in that regard a little bit. Obviously can't say anything more, but they're definitely on my radar!

Oh yes, Chiaotzu! He's a little hard for me to write, but I've definitely got something in mind for him.

Just Krillin, Yamcha, and Launch would build the Roshi memorial? What about Rayne, Chi-Chi, and Retu? Haha.

It would be interesting to see Kakarot and Krillin throw down. Not sure who would be stronger… :^)

Interesting that you think a confrontation is coming between both Kakarot, Bardock and Raditz AND Vegeta, Nappa, and Raditz.

Your fingers are crossed for Tien's technique workshopping, I'm sure!

Thank you for the review, as always!

Cityracer: Marron's gonna get involved eventually. And, also- she had some character development! Don't you remember her captivating performance of repeatedly calling Gohan a liar xD

Hey, you never know what I might have in mind for a sequel :^)

Full-power Kaioken? I have some idea of what you're talking about, but not a comprehensive one. Could you elaborate on it? I checked out "Dragonball Elsewhere" (the comic with Yamcha?) and I could find a clear explanation as to what you're talking about.

I do agree with your thoughts on Tien, though- of everyone, he would be the first person to see a potential block or stumbling block with a technique. He's cautious, measured, in that regard.

Glad you enjoyed reading the Chi-Chi segment! I had a lot of fun writing it- and, of course, her and Yamcha's relationship.

Yes! That seems to be what the story is hinting at, isn't it! There are a lot of moving parts right now, though… I wouldn't count anything out.

You'll probably have to wait until Chapter 81 for an answer to that villager labor question. As for the stuff on Rush- interesting theory! As usual, RAFO :^)

Oh yes- Kakarot was no shining diamond for his entire presence in Volume I. I agree with your characterization. Started pretty typical at the beginning, got a bit more nuanced, and got a bit better at doing what he wants. He's trying to do better. I guess the question that, then, becomes whether he's around the right people to positively change… i.e., Bardock?

Very true comment about him not turning out on top. I'm not sure Kakarot has turned out on top of ANYTHING in this fic so far, lol.

Also, your comment about Kakarot not being one of those cold, silent, brooding types is pretty funny. I could never write a character like that, lol.