Duty

Chapter 3: Home

Age 761, Planet Bja

In typical post-mission fashion, Cagoria saw nothing of her team after returning to base. Each wing of the sprawling, black-walled complex, dark as space on the dark side of planet Bja, had its own landing pad. Vegeta's ship veered towards the training wing. Sashe's landed at the dorms. Kakarot's ambled towards the canteen.

Someone had once told her that holding post-mission team meetings would be good for morale. Couldn't remember who it was, though. Probably because she thought morale was fine as it is.

Her ship slowed, lurching around her as the thin atmosphere tried its best to slow it, then came to a full, abrupt stop once its bottom thrusters kicked on. From there, her descent to the operations landing pad was steady and unremarkable. Her ship's hatch swung up and open, and clambering out, Cagoria straightened in sync with the outdoor lights flickering on. Bright light illuminated the steel bridge connecting the pad to the base proper, and without a second's hesitation, she slid across it, shadowed like onyx in her darkened armor and white gloves and boots. Pale-faced techs and engineers, pining for her ship, scurried past her as she walked through the blue atmospheric barrier and felt her eardrums pop.

Once inside, she took a full, deep breath. The air of this planet- dead everywhere except for this base- had been artificially modified to be somewhat breathable in case the base's atmospheric integrity was at any point compromised. Nothing outside quite measured up to the amount of oxygen in the air within, however, and Cagoria continued to breathe greedily as she strode further inside.

Of the five main wings of the base- training, dorms, food and rec, and deliveries being the others- operations typically featured the fewest support personnel roaming the halls from one task to another. Access was restricted except to department heads and the Vanguard's leader, herself. Not everyone needed to know the big-picture goals and details. Hell, even Cagoria sometimes felt like it was a waste of time to do these post-mission reports.

Dodoria usually felt the same way; he sometimes didn't even bother getting her full account and instead relayed along one or two sentences of his own summary. Unfortunately for her, Dodoria was away, which meant that she had to report to his boss directly.

The sliding doors to the small, rounded chamber swept closed behind her as she dropped to one knee, dipped her head, and placed her hand to the floor. She gently prodded her energy and a series of lines, running in loops and shapes away from where her palm was, glowed blue across the floor. The lines weaved along pre-made grooves until, inevitably, each one reached a center dais, spherical and concave. Out of this pit the blue energy rose, waving into the air like spectral blades of grass, until they caught on each other and started coalescing. A voice echoed from the dais's base as a body took shape.

'Report?' Zarbon asked curtly, his projection still studying a tablet in his hands.

Cagoria's head was bowed. 'All Saiyans were killed. After-mission scanning confirmed that not a single ship left Planet Ysa once the operation began.'

'And are none still hiding?'

'The planet was destroyed from orbit before departure, as per protocol.'

'Good.' Zarbon's flickering blue form placed the tablet down out of Cagoria's sight. 'Secondary objective, then: was the target eliminated?'

'He is dead, sir,' Cagoria said crisply, 'though I apologize we were not able to bring back bodies other than his. Local conditions on the ground were poor, sir, and those of his cell that we killed definitively… there wasn't much left of them to take back.'

'It matters not,' Zarbon said. 'That man was a hundred times more valuable than any of his companions… though, that being said, he would have been worth even more alive.'

Cagoria's head incrementally tipped up. 'Did the mission not request that the cell's leader be killed?'

'It did,' Zarbon acknowledged. 'Though within any request, there are… conditions that I or Dodoria might prefer being met. You know the maxim as well as I do. Lord Frieza gives his word, and his lieutenants interpret it. If he desires to eliminate the Saiyans from the galaxy, then straightforward, literal murder as implied by that might not always be the best means.'

Cagoria dipped her head. 'Of course. I will keep what you've said in mind going forward.'

'It is a pity he is dead, though.'

'A pity, sir?'

Zarbon glanced at something off-projection- probably his tablet. 'My spies informed me that the Saiyan you killed was involved in the Saiyan regime on Planet Vegeta. As I'm sure you know, we only had a few scattered and untested sources informing us as to what the Saiyans were working towards during that time. Obviously, we have learned since then that some of their efforts were spent organizing their terror cells in anticipation of Lord Frieza's eventual destruction of their planet. But it would be foolish for us to assume that this was the only thing they were working on during that time.'

Cagoria hesitated, thinking. Zarbon had a verbosity that Dodoria did not. Their pink handler was more gruff, to-the-point, and a giver of orders rather than a formulator of them. The few times she had conversed with Zarbon made that clear; he was the real brains behind their operations.

'Any other details to report?' he asked, redirecting her attention to the present.

She belatedly realized that she had forgotten to drag Vegeta here to get his account of the fight- but that was something she could easily submit as a supplemental report later on. No point in dragging this out.

'None, sir- err, except for one thing,' Cagoria caught herself. 'In combat, the Saiyans destroyed our scouters. It seems that word is spreading through their network of our reliance on them in fights.'

'Is that so?' Zarbon's eyes flashed. 'That is unfortunate. I was hoping the bombing on Planet Yaras was an anomaly.' He paused. 'Your team will have to do more training without them, then. We can't afford to carry such an obvious disadvantage into combat.'

'Understood.'

'Anything else?'

'Nothing else, sir.'

Zarbon's projection shimmered. 'Contact me immediately if that changes. Zarbon out.'

Vegeta had disrobed, showered, dressed himself, undressed, showered again, dried himself in the cold air outside, and still, he felt unclean as he settled into his corner of the sparring floor, weights piled onto his head and back, arms held out to either side, and squatted. Everything of their mission to planet Ysa had left him filthy, not least the corpse he had shared a pod with on the ride back to base. From personal experience he knew the sour smell of death would follow him around for the next few days.

The only thing of consequence that Saiyan ever did. Even as Vegeta's legs pumped up and down on a gym mat, in some distant part of the base a body was being sterilized and quartered for research purposes. All sentient species within the PTO were subject to Regulation 29: any race that was found to have captured Emperor Frieza's interest was to be captured, killed, and researched in large enough quantities to his satisfaction. The Emperor could be aloof about his intentions, but his long-time lieutenants had long made it clear what compelled this: Frieza recognized strength in aliens he did not know or understand as threat, and tasked his people to study whoever caught his eye until they could be understood.

As the oldest among his five-person team, Vegeta had the most confidence in saying that the Saiyans have been in Frieza's crosshairs for most, if not all of his life in this regard. And he was sure this would remain so until he died… or until there were no Saiyans left.

It was no secret that Frieza's hatred for the Saiyans sometimes defied civility. The Emperor of all civilized space was known to quite literally explode when informed that some planet or base had been destroyed by his loathed enemies. For that reason Vegeta was happy that he never had to do mission debriefs with Cagoria. Very rarely would Frieza be present, but for those that he was, he usually screamed.

Better to leave him to his empire and Vegeta to his gym. The muscles in his biceps bulged as he pumped the slanted machine in front of him, arms straining against incredibly heavy weights tied to a cord inching upward. Metal pricked his skin, tasted as much in his mouth, but even as Vegeta spat out a blob of bloody phlegm to his left, the machine groaned as he called on an ounce of energy and yanked the weights upward- just easily enough that they didn't bust through the machine's top altogether. From there, Vegeta calmed his power, and with a grunt, let go, allowing the machine to bend back and the weights to clunk to the floor.

Vegeta studied his hands as he labored to turn them over. Calluses, cuts, and scars crisscrossed his skin like knicks in an old jumpsuit, so numerous that they all blended together in some spots. At the tips of his fingers- where the most skin was ringey, white, and thick- droplets of blood welled, balancing between the rinds of his fingerprints like drops of water clinging to a crack. With a flick, he cleared his hands of stray blood, and slammed them together, rubbing his finger-joints.

A grin came over his face. There was one last machine in here for him to conquer for the day- his absolute favorite one. In the center of the gym- which in reality was segmented into rooms large and small, round and square, some pools, a sparring ring, and a whole infirmary closest to the rest of the base- there was a round and concave disk as wide as ten people lying flat on their backs. Lacking any better term he had coined it the Scythe, as it could only do one thing. When lifted by its edge, the disk would rise into the air and start rotating. At the same time, the perimeter of the ring would detach from the rest of it, forming a continually moving shell that trapped whoever was standing in the middle by a blur of white. Then the real fun would begin as strips of the floor would detach and fly through the middle, sharpened, jagged edges leading, cutting through whatever it touched. Standing in the center, thus, was the ultimate test of reflex, agility, positioning- and confidence. Vegeta was proud to say that he'd received more injuries from using the Scythe than the rest of the team combined.

Sometimes his blood ran a little too hot after missions and fighting for his life within the whirling blades would be the thing to calm him down. The rest of his workout up until this point- which weakened his legs and arms to the point where they trembled from any exertion- was to give the machine a fair chance. So Vegeta would gladly do this to get Kakarot out of his mind.

That imp has become even more annoying on missions of late, if that's even possible. Cagoria should have recognized what Kakarot is a long time ago- a troublemaker at best, and a fatal weakness in the chain at worst. There was no doubt in Vegeta's mind that Kakarot would cause the death of one of them soon. If he didn't kill him with his bare hands first, of course.

His mind settled into a blissful silence as he stopped at the disk's edge, eyes tracing the thin line separating it from the rest of the floor. Some technician long ago had told him that they had installed this thing by mistake; they would have never put in such a dangerous and, in his words, "malfunctioning machine" for use in an elite gym. But as soon as Vegeta forbid them from removing or even fixing it, their tone changed and they reconfigured the main chamber to be centered around the disk. Ample space was provided around him so as to make the Scythe the central attraction.

That was a simpler time when he was not too young to not be heard but not too old to bow to the demands of his four other team members. It was not like now, Vegeta reflected as his foot reached forward. When I am forced to suffer fools.

'Were you thinking of getting inside that thing, Vegeta?'

The question halted Vegeta halfway to the disk's center. With some reluctance, he backtracked and turned. 'I was strongly considering it before you came here.'

Cagoria frowned at a single splotch of dried blood at the disk's center. 'It's a deathtrap. Kakarot nearly lost an arm when you pushed him into it.'

'He pushed himself into it by being so aggravating, and he would not have been so aggravating if were he not so weak.'

'I'm not sure "Kakarot's weakness engineered his death" would hold up against Zarbon's scolding.'

Cagoria was the only person on the team who could get a rare smile from him- and even then, only for a split-second, and only when they were alone. He wished she would disparage Kakarot more when he was around.

'Are you here for something?'

'Filling you in,' Cagoria said, drawing back a momentary smirk. 'I finished my chat with Zarbon- before you ask, Dodoria is still in transit back to base. So, with my report given, there's only one more loose end to tie up.'

Vegeta made sure to hold her gaze. 'The corpse's words?'

'If you'd be so kind.'

After gesturing to Cagoria to sit on a nearby bench, Vegeta sat on the opposite end of it, arms folded against his abdomen. 'He didn't say much- nothing new at least. He parrotted the same lies as all the other Saiyans I've killed. That they knew me.'

'They always say that,' Cagoria muttered, pressing her back to the metal wall. 'No matter how close you beat them to death. Like they're a bunch of broken dials, stuck to the same response as they die. "I know you. I've seen you."' She grunted through her nose, stacked her arms, and closed her eyes. 'Heard it a hundred times.'

'Yeah.' Vegeta's arms began to rub against his abdomen back-and-forth like they were cold. 'This one- Gerkin- he added to the lie.'

'Oh?' Cagoria peaked at him with one eye. 'Do tell.'

'He said that I was a Prince.' Vegeta turned his head to her, wearing a wry smile. 'Funny, isn't it?'

Cagoria's brows pinched and sat straight. 'Funny how?'

'I am the Second of the Vanguard. I am your second. In a way, I am your Prince.'

Vegeta immediately recognized the strangeness of his statement in how Cagoria's head flinched back-and-forward. 'I mean- I'm the Prince to your Queen,' he corrected, 'as I would never imply that I had any sort of authority over you, or-'

'Please stop,' Cagoria held out a hand, her face offended by some absent odor. 'Just stop.'

He frowned, his face reddened, and he looked at the ground, skin sucking into his cheeks.

Cagoria stood, holding her hands against her hips as if Vegeta was some child that had to be scolded. 'You made it weird. I asked you a simple question, and couldn't give a non-weird answer. This is why we shouldn't talk outside spars.' She stared at him for a moment, looking like she almost expected an apology, but groaned instead and shook her head. 'Ugh. Alright.' Cagoria started walking off. 'Go back to training,' she called back.

Vegeta always had to make things awkward, didn't he?

He had made sure to discreet- as per her wishes. After landing, he spent a good half-hour in the canteen, getting his fill of braised meat and starch, until Cagoria entered the room and sat down at the metal table adjacent to his.

Kakarot burped, folded his hands on his belly, and cracked a wide grin. 'So,' he said into the air, eyes examining the ceiling, 'how'd it go?'

'How'd what go?' Cagoria blew on a spoonful of stew.

'The talk with Primhair.'

Cagoria stopped blowing. 'Last time I checked, I chat mission details with Vegeta.'

'You don't know? He gave his position to me. You're talking with the brand new Second of the Vanguard.'

She snorted hard enough to spill the stew in her spoon back into the bowl. 'I think Vegeta would toss himself into a star before he did that.'

'And who's to say he already hasn't?'

Cagoria laughed. She couldn't help herself. That was usually a problem around Kakarot. Lucky for her, she wasn't on a mission.

Without another word, Cagoria stood with her bowl, turned, and headed towards the dorms. Kakarot waited for a few heartbeats, and then perhaps a little too eagerly, he rose and followed.

Sashe's footsteps echoed faintly against the metal floor as she strode across the base. Wide and empty corridors opened up in front of her, walls yearning like open arms. A glistening shine was present over all things: paneling and ceilings and light fixtures and wires were all cleaned and polished, perfect and prim. The only thing missing was the people who made it that way.

When she was younger she wondered why she felt so lonely after missions. The team always separated, moving into their own little spaces across the base. That was nothing new. If anything, they talked less on missions. No: what she didn't realize then was the fear they commanded among the staff who maintained this base. She wasn't sure how their deeds had filtered to the regulars, but there was a clear correlation between the time after missions and the total lack of people moving through the hallways. They were afraid of them. They avoided them. Which would have been laughable considering the lack of places to hide if it wasn't so sad. Somewhere, technicians were flooding into a service shaft, all cramming to get a look at the same gnawed wire, just to avoid being seen.

Perhaps she would try and have another talk with Broly when he returned. If not for anyone else's sake but her own.

The lights dimmed behind her as the door into her quarters slowly side open, metal bottom catching on something in the track. She scowled as she bent down and set her meal down, a bowl of chunky mud-brown stew, and wiped her finger across the threshold. Not a single smudge of black came back on her gloved finger. It needed to be oiled. When she eventually spotted a technician, she'd inform them of it.

In her room was all she had: a plastic cot, a polished metal table, a series of wall hooks for her armor, and a personal device, glassy and thin, sprawled across one of the table's corners. Sashe let the door hiss closed behind her and scanned her tablet after picking it up and placed it back down neatly. Her bowl of stew was set in the table's center, a spoon's handle sliding against the rim.

She was hungry, but instead she folded her hands above her food and rested her head on them. Just as she knew what the unseen were doing in this base while she ate another meal in her quarters, alone, she knew what the seen were doing, as well. She had to know by now, considering how many times the four of them had in totality rejected her offer to sit a meal together. Vegeta was hogging the gym. Cagoria was probably taking a nap. Broly was, as usual, not here at all, and Kakarot-

'Ugh,' she groaned at the wall. 'Damn. I forgot.' Her frown didn't part as she lifted the bowl and gulped down her thickened brown stew in one go and set the dish back down. She beat her chest, burped, shook her head, and rose, leaving her quarters. The sliding door nearly caught on her left boot.

Kakarot was voracious by the time he slunk out of Cagoria's quarters. The hallways near her room were often sparse, untrodden, and as such he had no problem gliding unseen towards the commissary. It was a mistake to not eat more beforehand while he was waiting. His stomach had growled again and again. Cagoria even noticed and teased him for it.

It was odd to feel both affection and spite at a little thing like that. She had barely spent a breath wiring her eyes into something fun at his expense before it had passed. Too long to not be seared into his brain, he supposed. He could picture Cagoria as her face lifted with some high-minded mockery. He saw her rare, radiant smile as he grabbed a filled bowl and sat down at a mess table. She was swimming in lapping waves of brown, chunks of meat floating through her visage.

In his stew, somehow. Kakarot blinked a few times and saw nothing. Then a spoon plopped into it.

'You okay now?' Sashe was standing over him and the table, her arms crossed, meaning she had dropped the spoon at a weird angle or had assumed that pose as soon as the utensil started falling through the air.

He blinked at her a few times, too. 'Hmm? I'm fine.'

Sashe sat down opposite him, arms still stacked. 'I'm not so sure. You forgot to grab a spoon.'

He had forgotten to get a spoon. He fished out the one given to him and plopped some stew into his mouth. 'I guess I'm fine with being distracted, is all.'

'Uh-huh.' Sashe stared at him as he ate. It was also hard to notice that she had come in full armor. He was in his jumpsuit. 'Distracted by what, exactly?'

'wh-what boozness-' he swallowed, '-is that of yours?'

'Why do you goad him?'

Kakarot's spoon plunged into his stew again. 'Goad who?'

'You know who. What do you have against Vegeta?'

He swallowed again, and shoved the bowl to his left, clearing the table between them. 'Isn't it obvious? I hate his guts.'

'It is obvious.' Sashe's gaze narrowed. 'Too obvious.'

Kakarot smirked and crossed his arms in imitation near enough to Sashe's to be mockery. 'I'll admit that I enjoy making him hate my guts, too. That satisfy you?'

'No.'

His pose shifted slightly. He cocked his head. 'Really?'

Sashe fixed an incredibly stern expression on him. Her short-cut hair silhouetted her face, magnifying everything between folded pleats of dull black. 'You eat, sleep, and breath pushing Vegeta's buttons. A normal person would, at most, breathe that. But you've turned it into a full-time job.'

'Oh?' Kakarot gently smiled, nudging a few clumps of hair out of their staked angles in the air across his face. 'What if I told you I'm a mean person, and the only reason I tolerate any of this life is because I can get Vegeta flustered on command? That is my greatest joy here, and while there are some other things I tend to like around here, a lot of it I don't.' He made an exaggerated gesture with his hand towards her, eyes rolling and smirk widening. 'For example.'

She continued to study him unperturbed, unreactive to the point of reacting to something entirely different from his concluding point. Finally Sashe leaned back, sighing. 'You're impossible. I don't see what Cagoria sees in you.'

'She sees my winning personality and likes someone who can make her laugh.' Again, he gestured to her. 'See exhibit A, and exhibit B in the gym and exhibit C wherever they are. You are the dourest people I've ever met- which isn't saying much, admittedly.'

'I pity Vegeta.'

'Someone has to.'

'And I pity you.'

'Someone has to.'

'Stop goading him. Seriously. He doesn't deserve it.'

'He deserves what I say he deserves. And he deserves to be goaded.'

Before Sashe could speak again, Kakarot abruptly raised a hand. 'And, now, I will put my words into my mouth.'

'What?'

A clang of a bowl followed by a sound of stew pouring came from somewhere behind Sashe. Twisting around, she saw Vegeta, freshly washed, fresh white linens fit around his body, standing… scowling towards them. Of course he'd come at the worst possible time. He always came at the worst possible time.

She twisted back, glaring. 'Kakarot, I literally spent the last five minutes telling you not to do what you're about to do. You pushed him too far during the last mission. Give him time to cool off, at least. You're going to fuck up a huge chunk of this base and whatever weird respect Cagoria has for you if you rope Vegeta into a fight.'

'And I'm gonna do it anyway.' Kakarot said, eyes closing with confidence, his smile carrying through the air as he stood and stepped away from the table. 'Way of Kakarot, Sashe. Outside of Cagoria's purview, I do what I want, when I want, and after this fun conversation... Hey, Geets!'

A visible flinch went through Vegeta, body tensing as if he'd heard a pod crashland through a canyon. 'Kakarot.'

'Vegeta!' His loathed, baseless, insufferable fool waltzed across the mess, brushing past tables and benches. 'And here I thought you'd have eaten by now. Lucky me!'

'Urgh.' Vegeta grunted as he turned towards a table to his left, but Kakarot stepped that way, too. 'Urgh… Nothing lucky about this.'

'Sure there is!' Kakarot wrapped his hands around his upper arms. 'Because, as you know, usually you spend so much time laboring away in the gym- hogging it really- that we never get to chat.'

Vegeta's gaze moved rightward: Kakarot stepped in that direction. 'There's a reason for that,' he said dryly. 'Do you have anything to say, Kakarot, or are you going to keep breathing on me?'

Kakarot's mouth turned more jagged, sharper. 'I have something to ask, actually. That mission we went on? The one you rode back from with a corpse? Not that you'd forget, because of your smell-' He pulled back, judging by Vegeta's flickering features that he was going too fast, too quickly. '-But I'm curious; what did that ingrate whisper in your ear?'

'What?' Vegeta barked, head incrementally inching away. 'What nonsense are you going on about now, Kakarot?'

'Oh, come now.' Kakarot placed his hands on his hips and leaned his torso forward. His face came within a foot of Vegeta's. 'You're the one who killed him, right? You rode him from life to death to however many pieces he's in now. So I'm sure you've had time to mull over what he said to you while his corpse was pressing against your seat. What'd he say?'

At last, Vegeta put his plate and bowl of stew down, clearing the space between them- and their fists. 'And what makes you think he told me anything at all?'

'You tell me… Prince.'

It happened quicker than Sashe could guess. Vegeta's leg slid forward, left arm parallel, and with a well-anchored yoink, Kakarot was collared forward and placed into a headlock. 'What did you say, runt!?' Vegeta shouted into his face.

'That is your title, isn't it?'

'You're speaking like a traitor!' A lash of dark blue erupted into the air around Vegeta, sweeping his tray-and-bowl of his food off of a nearby table. 'You're speaking like the enemy! Like a Saiyan!'

Kakarot hadn't lost an ounce of his composure. Even in Vegeta's grip, his materializing light blue aura was as calm and collected as his carefully measured haughtiness. 'And your thin-skinned anger speaks volumes. But what exactly did that guy say, anyway?'

'Why would I tell you, clown!?'

'Because I addressed you all proper.'

'That's it!' Vegeta's arms bulged, muscles wrapping around Kakarot's neck. 'I don't know who ran their mouth, but this time, you're going to get what's coming to you! I'm going to pound you into dust, Kakarot!'

'Vegeta!' Sashe ran forward. 'Not here-'

'Yes, here! If I let this one's disrespect stand for one more second!...'

'You know…' Kakarot said in a sing-songy voice… even as his aura whipped into a frenzy. 'I always wondered what it'd be like as second-in-command to Cagoria…'

'You'll be second-in-command to my-'

'ENOUGH!' A roaring voice flooded across the room. 'BOTH OF YOU!'

Vegeta and Kakarot's heads both shot past Sashe, past the tables, to the mess's main entrance. In the doorway Cagoria panted, hastily and clumsily dressed in her black jumpsuit, but no less intimidating for it. 'Don't finish that sentence, Vegeta. Not a single inch of either of you will be hit,' she hissed.

'He started it!' Vegeta groused. 'I came here to eat my meal in peace!'

'Oh, as if anywhere you'd go would be peaceful-'

'Shut up!' Cagoria's voice shook them into silence and their auras into nothing. 'I'm officially making today a no bullshit day. I just got word a few minutes ago that Dodoria's on his way here.'

'Now?' Kakarot's question loosened Vegeta's headlock and gave him the chance to wrench out of his grip. 'Wasn't that supposed to be- be a few weeks?'

'Yes!'

Vegeta bit his cheeks. 'That's bad, isn't it?'

'Considering he's accompanying Broly, yes!'

They froze- Vegeta and Kakarot and even Sashe. Cagoria's gaze took an interest in a plain wall behind them.

'His mission wasn't supposed to finish for another month.' Sashe closed his eyes, sighing. 'I see.'

'Broly... had an accident,' Cagoria admitted, sensing Sashe had stumbled upon what she had hoped to avoid revealing. 'So he's coming back to heal.'

'Accident means what?' Kakarot asked.

'He's injured.' Cagoria opened her mouth, but closed it, pressing her attention to the floor. 'We'll know more soon. I want all of you to eat, get dressed in full armor, and report to the main landing pad.'

The floor sounded hollow as she turned their back to them. 'And…' She walked off. 'That's it.' And the door behind her echoed dull and low once closed.

Reviews:

TienFan99: More interactions between Vegeta and Kakarot here! And thank you for the spelling check!

MrSquaad: This will probably be darker and grittier than SoM. As for what's going on with them thinking they're not Saiyans… you'll see. Thank you for the review! It definitely isn't dead in the water! I just like to take my time with this compared to SoM!