Rights: All rights belong to Akira Toriyama, Toyotarou and Toei Animation

WARNINGS: A lot of death


Saiyans were a psychic species, using telepathy to communicate on the battlefield long before communications devices fell into their callused hands. Physical strength was not the only area the super-elite excelled at – their status as royals had been determined not by this factor but by their psychic prowess. The strongest of their line had been capable of knocking out or even killing their subjects using telepathic power alone. Prince Vegeta, renowned for his physical aptitude, was a prodigy in this area as well. The whole of the saiyan race was open to him – every sight, every smell, every sound and every sensation clearly transmitted to him at will via his telepathic link.

And sometimes against his will, for when a saiyan was in psychological distress Vegeta's mind would hone in on them and their plight, making Prince Vegeta a more sensitive royal than most of his line. His connection stretched out even across galaxies, like the greatest of his ancestors on their conquests, though he was still but a child.

His abilities were incredibly useful to him as the leader of his unit in the Planet Trade Organisation, allowing him to observe his subordinates' visuals and audio without the need for his scouter, which was frequently damaged in combat. He was able to read his companions' movements as if they were his own.

It helped him also to be sure that his subordinates were following his commands even when he separated from them, as he had done on this latest mission. He and his unit had been ordered to clear the newly re-named Frieza Planet #71 of its native inhabitants and ready it for sale to a wealthy merchant society. Due to time constraints he had been forced to split his unit to cover more ground, and had sent his troops off in pairs, except for himself. He, the strongest in their unit at just eight chronological years old, was alone.

Prince Vegeta sat heavily on a log, unaffected by the carnage surrounding him, bodies strewn from his part in the purge, limbs outstretched grotesquely in one last bid for life. For mercy.

But Vegeta had no clemency to spare. He had learned that the hard way from his master, Frieza, a far crueller man than the prince could ever be. As a saiyan, he was supposed to be desensitised to violence and its inevitable consequences, as his father had emphasised on many occasions.

Prince Vegeta thought his king would be proud of this latest mission, how smoothly it had gone, how Vegeta had annihilated all trace of resistance with ease, like a true saiyan warrior.

A true saiyan prince.

He could see his soldiers spread out across the planet, clearing the last of their respective areas.

He had a moment to take a breather, to bask in the alien sun and rest. Just for a little while. Because there was never a moment of respite on Frieza's ship – if he wasn't preparing for a new mission, 'training' with (more accurately being beaten up by) adults of other races far stronger than he, or being disciplined for an error of some such, then he was in the mess hall, ploughing through his meagre rations and fighting the pangs of hunger in his stomach.

They didn't provide enough for a growing saiyan child, but Vegeta had learned not to question the kitchen staff. Frieza hadn't cared to punish him personally for that transgression, so Dodoria had been responsible for it. Even so, Vegeta didn't care to repeat the experience. He could learn, no matter what derogatory comments were made about his species.

Speaking of rations, though, he was famished from the exercise, and wasn't about to eat cadavers. He sighed heavily, flexing his tail as he retrieved his bar, which was as usual in his least favourite flavour. Sometimes Frieza liked to torment him with the little things, like food he hated, or providing just enough to survive but not enough to stave off his hunger pains.

He wondered if one of these days he would give in to the barbarianism of his saiyan comrades and feast on the flesh of the downed. A prince should be above those things, though, so he would refrain from such a move.

For as long as he could.

They didn't look all that edible, despite what Nappa had assured him about the saiyan digestive system.

Suddenly Vegeta's mind flashed to the neighbouring galaxy, to the visuals of another saiyan. Another saiyan who was desperate, reaching out with his power, unconsciously calling his prince. The panic from this messenger reached him like a tsunami breaching the shore.

Vegeta stilled, watching from this saiyan's eyes as his people rose up around the unknown saiyan, spiky black crests still in the upper atmosphere of a planet he recognised like his own reflection. He could only observe as a familiar figure appeared in his ridiculous floating chair.

Frieza. Laughing, laughing like he did when he tortured Vegeta, as if the greatest enjoyment came from the pain and suffering of others. Ash and soot seemed to surround him, coating him in a hellish glow, as if the underworld were at his beck and call. A demon bent on destruction, torture, and for some reason profit.

Vegeta was not quite so far gone yet as to agree. He liked his kills quick and clean. No need to drag them out like a psychopath. Like his worst enemy did.

Frieza raised his arm, finger pointing skyward as he summoned his power, calling forth a miniature sun, making Vegeta's stomach drop and heart burst into his throat.

No.

That was the technique he used when destroying planets.

And they were obviously in the atmosphere over Planet Vegeta.

Frieza was going to destroy Planet Vegeta. His home, his responsibility. His people, his everything.

And Vegeta was lightyears away, helpless.

He should be there with them. He should die with them. That was what a true saiyan prince would do. A true warrior future-monarch. But he would live on, he determined, to seek revenge for his people, to seek freedom for those that remained with him, unaware of the disaster unfolding so far away from where Vegeta now sat, chewing on the same mouthful, forgetting to swallow.

Then Vegeta knew no more except agony. Fiery tendrils whipped around him, engulfing him with pain as he lost all sensation of his own body, all connection to his own limbs, safe and still on a foreign world.

The pain was all-consuming, making him scream and scream as a billion bodies burnt in his mind, as the ground erupted beneath his feet at the same time as he was incinerated. He could feel the terror of those aware of their coming end, helpless to prevent their own demise. He could feel the roar of the mantle collapsing, of people turning, feeling the ground submit, feeling it implode.

Vegeta felt as if he himself had imploded, lost in an inferno of agony as the last throes of a billion saiyans swept like a solar flare through his brain, eliminating all other awareness, all other thoughts.

Just pain.

And the outlet of screaming.

Endless and eternal as a volcano tore through his mind.


The next thing Vegeta was aware of was a strange taste in his mouth. Funny, he didn't remember taking out his ration bar. He didn't remember killing all of these creatures, either.

And he didn't feel quite so disturbed by their rotting bodies as he was sure he had been just last mission. And every other mission when Nappa, that darn idiot, told him he would grow accustomed to it. When he tried to search for those feelings, the feelings his father and Frieza had both tried to beat out of him, the feelings so shameful to a saiyan, all he was aware of was a dull throb in his mind.

Odd.

For some reason he couldn't seem to work up his concern over that.

Something...wasn't right in his mind, he realised. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. The part of Vegeta's brain that allowed him to communicate, to share, to feel, had shut down completely. He could not even connect with the saiyans still living under his command on this alien planet.

For the first time in Vegeta's life, there was only silence inside him.

Where a billion voices had whispered for all his young life, nothing. Where phantom pains had plagued him, where worries and fears not his own had arisen, there was only an empty chasm, a giant, mournful gulf.

Silence.

Odd.

He had an itch which told him he had known, an itch which told him the answer was important, but he couldn't seem to care about very much at the moment. Not even the voices of lives he had been intimately connected with, now mute as his brain sizzled. He just focused on finishing off his ration bar, and waiting for the spots on his scouter to transform into his comrades.

Comrades...he cared about them, at least, didn't he? Yes, he thought he did. He was their leader, after all. He was a prince, he was going to be king, and ... something within him twinged.

He was going to be king, wasn't he? King Vegeta IV. It had a nice ring to it.

King Vegeta IV. Saviour of the saiyan race. The super saiyan of legend.

Yes, definitely. Absolutely. Hadn't his father always said so?

He rubbed the back of his head idly as his fellows came in to land.

Only to learn that his home planet had been turned into space dust. By an asteroid. On a normal day Vegeta would probably have found this suspicious, but his head was aching so he didn't bother thinking it through further.

He would never become king now. Never be the saviour his father had wanted, the one to free his people from their servitude and restore the great saiyan empire after Sadala LXXI decided to be an idiot and engender a planet-destroying civil war.

Never.

Because they were all gone.

...

That thought ought to have disturbed him more than it had, he was sure of it, rubbing the back of his head again. But the events certainly explained his lack of telepathic prowess. Billions of saiyans dying in his mind was bound to cause him a bit of a headache, to trigger him to drop his abilities for the time being.

Throb.

Alright, so he had to admit, it might have been more serious than that. Maybe he'd even developed brain damage. But that was fine, of course it was.

Brain cells grew back, right?