The night air cloistered around me, pressed in by the trees and the thick silence. My shoulder seared despite that I was cradling my arm in order to keep its own mass from pulling on it. I'd capsuled my sword to avoid having that weighing on me too, but it didn't seem to be helping much.

Daikon still trailed along quietly behind me. He didn't have a heavy step, and if it weren't for the presence of his energy, and the occasional wet sniffle from his seemingly still-bloody nose, I'd hardly have known he was there.

It wasn't until I felt a tremble run through the ground that I halted in place. I glanced back at Daikon, his silhouette indistinct in the night, save the faint sheen reflecting off his eyes as he stared back until the tremors stopped.

"Did you feel that?" I said.

"Yeah." He looked away. "Do you think that's Ravi?"

I reached my senses out, but didn't detect any raised energy levels nearby—certainly not hers.

"I don't know. Whatever it is, the source isn't close," I said. "Maybe just an earthquake."

"Maybe."

Everything was quiet again then. I didn't move.

"What?" he demanded after a moment.

"I've been half expecting you to attack me in the dark," I said. "Or at the very least ditch me out here."

He scoffed. "It would take me all damn night to find my way back on my own. I had to follow that friend of yours to even locate you and Ravi in the first place."

"Hn. Fair enough." I shifted the position of my arm a little to alleviate the stiffness it was causing. "I kind of figured you'd be a little more pissed at me, though."

"I am pissed. At both of you. I swear, it's like you and Ravi have half a braincell each and when you put it together all you get is fucking bad ideas."

I let out a sound of dry amusement. "I'm not the one who started the fight."

"Doesn't matter who started it. You both chose to engage in a petty squabble that got you hurt because you're both too proud to concede. You had to have known that if we found the Saiyans that something like this would happen eventually. And neither of you were prepared to give even an inch of ground."

"I made her as good as queen just to avoid the kickback her apparent mutiny would've caused. There are some powerful Saiyans here who could put her or any of us in danger. What else was I supposed to do?"

He didn't seem to have an answer to that. We walked for another long moment in silence until he spoke again.

"Ravi and me," he began. "We've been travelling together for a year now. Two years by the measure of some planets, maybe three. I realized over time that she restrains some of her strength, but I've never seen… whatever it was she did today."

"I've seen it before. Or at least, I've seen what it's the precursor of—what that power turns someone into."

"Do you think she'll be alright?" There was a new inflection to his voice, a rapid departure from his usual sharpness. He was standing still.

I looked back at him again and stopped. "You could've gone after her."

"No. I couldn't have."

"What's stopping you?"

He let out a dry laugh. "I'm already walking a fine line, thanks to that stunt I pulled on SE-3, and if I go after her, she'll see through me. I'm not going to be able to play pretend. Besides, she probably doesn't want me around right now anyway." He chuckled again. "It does sound pitiful, doesn't it? I should've stayed standing alongside her. I must look like such a coward."

I let myself puzzle over his reply for a moment.

"Who am I kidding? She probably knows how I feel now, thanks to you. That's probably why she tried to push me away," he continued.

"Well, I… think I did mention something about what you said on SE-3, but—"

"Oh, shut up. I'm not blaming you. Not for that, anyway. I fucked up all on my own."

"All things considered, she's probably a lot less angry at you than at me. You were just sticking with the plan, and besides, you've been friends a lot longer. I can't see why she would stay mad at you."

"Tch. It's not about that. You remember what I said. That I promised to repay her. And I will. But it became more than gratitude for me, far too long ago." He put a hand to his face. "Fuck. Nevermind. It's not your problem."

I pursed my lips. "Have you ever… mentioned this to her?"

"Of course not. If you wanna talk about 'staying mad'—she'd never forgive me if she knew how I felt. Things could never go back to normal between us. I'm not worth the clothes on my back as it is." He took a long inhale this time. It sounded like he was still breathing through some blood. "Feh. But I guess things aren't normal right now, anyway. I'm even talking to you."

I felt compelled to say something—anything. But I didn't have the words, didn't have anything to say that I thought could help. Not that he would want it. I supposed it was my stubborn human piece that made me feel like I had to offer something regardless. So I said, "I'm sorry."

"Don't waste your pity on me. You'll need it for yourself. Just watching you hobble through the trees is pathetic enough."

"You sound like your nose might be broken."

"Think so. Sure fucking stings like it is."

"Why didn't you mention that before? We should probably fly the rest of the way back."

"My nose is enough to get you moving and not your busted arm? Must be the same stellar rationale that made you spare my life rearing its head," he chuckled. "Good to know we're both fucking stupid in our own ways."

I mustered my energy and levitated, slowly bringing myself up into the air. "Shut up. Let's go."

"So charming," he muttered, but nonetheless, he followed.

"I said shut up. I need you to listen for a few minutes while I explain something."

"Oh? And what's that?" he replied, flying behind me as we passed the treetops.

"I never told you about the Dragon Balls."

"Huh?"

"Dragon Balls. It's why we're looking for Namek. Or the Namekians Bardock mentioned, the ones Gohan and Goku are off looking for. Although, I guess to explain everything so it makes sense, I have to start at the beginning…"

By the time we landed, having seen me in the sky approaching, a familiar trio had gathered below. Lights—torches, perhaps, or lamps pieced together from bits of machinery—dotted around the parts of camp I could see from above. There didn't seem to be many other Saiyans still awake, although a few figures still moved along the ground.

As I descended, I could just make out the three as Yarrow, Raab, and Kassav. The former leader waved at me enthusiastically and he called out a greeting as I landed.

"You're back!" he exclaimed, striding over the remaining distance between us the moment my boots hit the grass. "What happened? You left so suddenly!"

I brought my good hand away from my injured arm so as not to draw any more attention to it than necessary, containing my wince as the pain flared once more.

"Everything's fine. I had a talk with Ravi, and she went off to… do some reconnaissance," I said, walking forward.

"Reconna—" Yarrow glanced at Raab. The old man returned the look before he spoke, the both of them following.

"I do not think that's wise," Raab said, "considering Molokia is out there. And he is not alone. Additionally, you only just arrived, so would it not be best for both you and your, ahem, queen, to—"

"The decision's already been made. If you feel so strongly about it, you can go try and convince Ravi yourself," I said curtly, not interrupting my pace.

"Your Highness, I ask you to reconsider." As Raab walked faster to catch up, he bumped past Daikon with little more than a distasteful glance, nearly knocking the other man aside.

Yarrow was talking next, bumping past Daikon more gently, but not with any more apparent intentional care. "As Raab says—you just got here! Don't you think—"

"This entire conversation can wait until morning," I interjected, still walking. Then I stopped, Yarrow and Raab nearly walking into one another this time as they halted.

"Kassav," I said, glancing back again.

She had been trailing the furthest behind, and she jogged up, passing into torchlight and back into darkness as she approached. "Yeah?"

"I want to talk to you alone. Daikon's coming too." I looked at Raab and Yarrow. "You two, leave. It's late. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

And then I continued on without looking back, thankfully only hearing two light sets of footsteps coming after me.

Aside from the gentle hum of the camp around us, things were quiet until Raab and Yarrow were behind us somewhat.

"Is there something I can help you with, sir?" Kassav said at length.

I looked at her through the sparse light. It cast harsh shadows on her scarred face. "Yes. You can show me where this doctor you mentioned is," I said.

"Are you hurt?"

"Yes." The pained exhale I'd been holding in escaped me. I felt like I could trust her, but I didn't exactly have a choice in hiding my injury for much longer. "Daikon too."

Kassav's eyes darted around our surroundings, then she moved to stand closer, shielding the awkward, tense way my right arm rested from any potential watching eyes. She gestured for me and Daikon to accompany her, taking us into a sharp turn deeper into the camp.

"Your friend can get away with a bloody nose, but it's best nobody sees you too badly wounded, if you can help it," she said under her breath. "Is it bad?"

"I don't know," I said.

A few eyes peeked out from the darkness as we moved, but nobody stopped or bothered us. It wasn't long before Kassav stopped before what looked to be a small, picked apart ship, the opening covered with a tattered piece of cloth.

"Our doctor stays in here," she said. She held the cloth aside and waved us in. The entrance looked entirely dark, a black throat into the unknown. I went in first, ducking my head a little under the low ceiling.

Almost immediately after passing through the shrouded threshold, lights greeted us after a gently curving corner.

The ceiling, mercifully, was much higher in the main room. Two yellow, electronic lights were on either side of the space. Along the walls were a few benches—some covered in what looked like makeshift tools, others lower, presumably for sitting. A single cot was in one corner, and another dark pathway on the other side of the room led off.

An indistinct figure stood facing away from us, near one of the benches, their head lifting as the sound of our boots on the metal floor drifted into the area. Long, black ruffles of hair tied into a ponytail hung down their back, their physique tall and lanky.

"I've got a guest for you," said Kassav for introduction. "The half-blood prince."

The figure turned, face coming into the light. A woman. She was perhaps middle-aged or a bit older—around a century, in Earth years—with a keen gaze and a narrow, freckled face. I was struck with an immediate sense of familiarity.

"Huh. So it really is you," she said to me, frowning. "We've met before, Prince of Saiyans."

"Have we?" I said. I did know her from somewhere—but where, exactly?

"Don't remember? I'm not that surprised. It was only a couple of times, most recently back when that council member was killed after your coming-of-age ceremony," she continued.

Suddenly, it clicked. "That's right. You were the doctor I met," I said. She'd been the one looking over that murdered council member's body. Thinking back on it felt like trying to recall an eternity ago.

"Looks like we both survived Frieza. So far, anyway." She looked me over, stopping when she noticed the strange way I held my arm, and her expression became focused. "Ah. This isn't an introductory visit, is it? Come sit over here."

I moved inside, Daikon trailing behind me. Kassav told us she would wait outside and let us be as the doctor gestured us further in.

"I'm sorry, I can't remember your name," I said to her as I sat where she pointed.

"Rutaaga," she replied. "Just Ruta is fine." She glanced at Daikon. "And you?"

"Daikon."

"Alright, Daikon, go sit over there. I'll take a look at you as soon as we're sure the prince doesn't need any emergency procedures."

Daikon did as requested and plunked down nearby, watching us silently. Ruta stood next to where I sat and frowned at me some more.

"You're filthy," she tutted, gently grasping my arm by the wrist and elbow to inspect it.

I blinked. "Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I haven't had time to—"

"Don't worry about it. You're young." Her gaze travelled up my arm to my shoulder. "What happened?"

"Um… I got into a scuffle. With, uh—my intended," I finished hastily. What exactly was I supposed to refer to Ravi as? By technicality, Saiyan kings and queens were married, but that wasn't really the word Saiyans would use, even though most had an idea of what it meant. Not to mention I was only temporarily in my father's role, and I had no goddamn clue when or whether Ravi was going to come back.

"Your intended, huh? Good grief," Ruta sighed.

"She struck me here by accident." I used my good hand to point at my shirt overtop of where my scar was. "It hurts at the top past my shoulder, but the rest is completely numb."

"It'll be easiest for me to look at the injury if you take off your shirt."

I nodded, and she helped me get it off, pulling it over my head before gingerly manoeuvring it down my arm to remove it.

She sat down next to me and began inspecting the wounded area. Her eyes came to rest on my scar.

"This scar tissue is old. How did you get a wound like this, originally?" she said.

"A sword. The blade was broken pretty far down, so it didn't go through the other side. I stopped the bleeding by burning it shut with my ki."

"You did quite the number on yourself." Her gaze flicked up to meet mine for a moment. "You didn't see a doctor afterwards? Or use a rejuvenation tank?"

"No. My father gave it some initial treatment and it was left to heal on its own for a few days, but after that, it was, ah… rapidly healed with a piece of technology." (I wasn't going to try and explain what a senzu bean was to her. Not yet, at least.)

"How long ago was this?"

I told her the Standard measurement of what two Earth years was. The Time Chamber had given me an extra year and a half of life, on top of the regular time between then and now, so I was roughly on the mark.

She narrowed her eyes, but seemed to accept the statement. "How much movement do you have right now on your own?"

"Not much. I can move my fingers a little." I demonstrated to the best of my ability.

She lifted my arm a little, then again more gradually. "Does this hurt?"

She stopped when my arm was almost straight out and I winced. The tug sent the fire back through, enough to make my eyes sting. "When you get it up to that point, yeah."

"Hmm… If I may, I want to look closer." She set my arm down and raised her hand, a thin layer of white ki coating it. "I can use my energy to feel out some of the damage beneath the surface. It won't hurt you."

I nodded my assent. She brought her hand to my scar, hovering just over it without touching as the ki in her palm glowed brighter. Several quiet seconds went by, and I began to notice the pain slowly dimming.

"I didn't notice you at the gathering today, when I first arrived," I said.

"I wasn't there. I prefer to stay in here most of the time and do my job. There's always someone who needs my help more than I need fresh air."

"How did you find yourself in the safe haven? I haven't seen anyone so far that I used to know who worked in the palace."

"I assume most of them died on Planet Vegeta when it was destroyed. After that attack on the palace and your family's disappearance, I left the planet. Wasn't going to stick around for the ensuing chaos your absence would cause. Managed to get in contact with some other Saiyans who had the same idea. When Frieza started killing us, doctors and medical technicians were some of the first to go, and I was lucky to find Yarrow's group here before that happened to me." She seemed to be about to say more, but her features tightened and she lowered her hand.

"Did this ever cause you pain after it was healed? Before you just injured it again?" she said.

"Yeah. Sometimes. Especially after training or fighting, but sometimes at random."

"I would've been surprised had you told me anything else. There's something lodged in there."

A thrum of adrenaline went through me. "What?"

She pointed at the upper portion of my scar, just underneath my clavicle. "There's a foreign object embedded within your muscle, practically resting on your brachial plexus. That's the nerve network that goes from your spinal cord," she said, tapping my neck with a finger and gesturing in a line down across my collarbone and towards my armpit, "to here."

Then she held up her thumb and forefinger roughly three or four inches apart. "The object's about this long, but quite narrow. Not organic material… It almost looks like shrapnel. Your muscle is healed around it strangely. Compounded with the scarring and how close the object is to the nerves, it's certainly what was causing your discomfort. But the direct hit you sustained compressed the area and likely pushed the end of the object into the nerve group. You should consider yourself lucky that this hasn't happened until now—it's right next to it."

I looked down at my lap. My pulse boomed in my ears. The image of my broken sword hovered in my mind's eye.

"It… It must be from when I was stabbed," I said. "It must have broken off…"

My father was no doctor; I wasn't surprised he hadn't found it in there. Not to mention I'd both burned the wound shut and later taken a senzu bean to forcefully heal the lesion.

All this time…

"Regardless of how it got there, we're left with good news and bad news," Ruta said. She leaned back, folding one arm and raising her other hand to scratch her chin. "Good news is I can probably take the shard out. Bad news is I won't be able to do that for awhile."

I felt a lump in my throat. "Why?"

"Because of how close the shard is resting, it's too risky to open the wound back up before your nerves heal somewhat. Not only that, if you tear them too hard again before they recover, they could be severed from your spinal cord. You could lose permanent function of your right arm."

"For how long?" I curled my working hand into my pant leg, as if it was enough to ground me. "How long do I have to wait?"

"I'd say about three months for a complete recovery without help, but I can probably operate a little earlier… that is, if you heal as fast as a full-blooded Saiyan does."

"You can't heal it faster?"

She sighed again. "One month if I gave you treatment every day. But to be frank, Your Highness, working with as many patients as I do leaves me with a continuous drain on my energy. My power level was never remarkable in the first place, and this isn't like healing a cut or broken bone. I can help speed it along, but your own body will do its healing work best."

"What if I had a way to heal it faster? You could take the shard out sooner, right?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Yes, hypothetically. But we have no regeneration tanks. Even if we did, rapid healing may cause it to reheal temporarily worse than it was before. And you'd still have to recover from the surgery after removal, although that would take significantly less time."

"I see…" I stood up, picking up my shirt as I did so before gingerly getting it back over my arm and head. Senzu beans. It's my only option. Goku left us with a couple, just in case. If Goten doesn't have them, then they must still be on the ship.

"I can't tell you what to do, but if you value having two working arms in the future, you ought to avoid heavy sparring for awhile. If you do any kind of physical activity strenuous to your upper body, you'll need to use a sling of some kind to keep your arm in place," Ruta said.

"I'll do my best." I finished tugging the hem of my shirt down. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me. I would've done the same for anybody." Finally, she turned to address Daikon.

"Alright, your turn," she said after rocking back onto her feet and approaching him. She analyzed his face for a second. "Hm. Looks like your nose needs to be reset." She raised her hands to his face. "Impressive. It takes a good hit to break a Saiyan's nose, unless you're particularly weak. I'm going to get you to count to three, alright? I'll reset it on three."

"Hmph. While you're at it then, could you give me a nose job?" he said with more than a little snark. "I'd like it if you could make it smaller, like, half the size of yours—gah, fuck! I didn't even get to count!"

"Don't complain. It would've been worse if I'd waited. Now, let me clean some of that blood off." She reached to a nearby bench and plucked a scrap of fabric from its surface, dabbing his face with it.

After a moment, she stepped back. Daikon stood, gently probing his nose as he did so. He stared at the Saiyan woman, a faint frown on his expression.

"Your nose should be fully healed in a week at most," she said, as he spent a longer than usual moment continuing to glare.

"Your name's Ruta, you said?" He narrowed his eyes.

"That's right. What about it?"

"Nothing. Thanks."

She only gave a dismissive wave of her hand, signalling the end of our visit for the time being.

As I was on my way out, my mind was already ahead of me. I was best off locating Goten first thing tomorrow morning, in case he had the senzu beans, and if not, I would fly back to the ship and dig through until I found them. In case some major healing was needed, it was best to have the beans where I could access them close by.

I only hoped that we had brought enough. I didn't know who else might need them, and when—and until Gohan and his father returned, our supply was even further limited, since they had taken some.

At that thought, another, more concerning one came in tow.

If there are only a few left, would it really be a good idea for me to take one at the expense of someone else needing it?

I quickly pushed the thought away as I stepped out into the open camp. Don't worry about it right now. Tomorrow, I promised myself. That old tiredness had set in again, an ache that spread throughout me.

Tomorrow.

A/N: Hey all! I decided to make some major changes to the outline I had for this arc going forward, hence my longer-than-usual delay. Considering how long I've been working on it—and the series in general—I really want to finish Prince of Slaves before I graduate and move on to more demanding studies. The changes shouldn't come across too jarring, because they're taking us to the same ending arc anyway, and they ought to keep the plot more concise.

On an unrelated note: for clarification, the Ruta in this chapter is the same one in A Drop of Royal Blood, chapter 3.