(Hey everybody, Individual Lies here. I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who genuinely like this story and that continue to read it. Also I wanted to say thanks to everyone that has put my story on alert. And I would like to welcome reader Jimbo to the ride. And without further…uhm…something or another…I present to you…)

Chapter Six: Remnants

"Scum begets scum, I guess." Bardock growled as he stared into a darkened hospital room from behind mirrored glass.

"He won't last the night," the short doctor beside him murmured as he stared into the room, as well. One hand pulled idly at the long white beard that stretched to his chest; the other was held behind his back.

The much taller man cast the doctor a sour glare, "You think I need you to point out the obvious?"

The doctor chuckled, closing his eyes as he clasped his hands together behind his back. "No, of course not, old friend." He glanced up at the saiyan with a gleam in his eye.

Bardock snorted and folded his arms across his chest as he returned his gaze back to the darkened room. He was staring intently at an unmoving figure on the bed in the center of the room. Beside the bed was a clear chamber in which he could just make out the small shape of an infant. Like the figure in the bed, it was unmoving.

The doctor glanced down at the unmoving infant and he frowned. "What are you going to do?"

"Nothin' I can do. The king's word is law, and he says that any infant born too early to survive on its own must die. 'I will not tolerate weakness among my people'," Bardock said, deepening his voice and making it gravelly to better mimic his king. He snorted again and glanced down at the doctor. "Why do you even care?"

"I'm your friend, Bardock. Plus, I can treat your son." he said with a shrug, not looking at his friend.

"What would the point of that be?" scoffed Bardock. "As weak as he'll be it's unlikely he'll survive his childhood."

"Then volunteer him to be sent off world. Make sure he goes to a weak planet and he'll surely survive. He might even exceed your expectations."

"I don't expect nothin' of him."

"Exactly. It's your choice, though. I can make it so no one, not even King Vegeta, will know what happened. All they'll know is that he was born a healthy, lower-class saiyan." The doctor smiled and glanced up at his old friend. "What do you think?"

"I think it's pointless." He fell silent and so did the doctor. He stared into the blackness of the room, his onyx-eyed gaze never wavering from the too-tiny infant in the chamber beside the bed. Too tiny to even be held by its mother, who was sleeping less than two feet away.

He glanced to the bed and sighed quietly. She was going to have a hard time handling it, he knew. She knew the brat had been born premature, but he also knew that she wouldn't care about that. She would throw a fit once she found out that her son had been thrown into the incinerator. She would raise more hell than the child was worth and probably end up getting herself exiled in the process.

Bardock sighed and leaned forward to press his forehead against the cool glass. He was still surprised by how much he worried over the girl. He had put her through so much hell in her eleven years with him and watched her handle life or death situations unfailingly. No matter what he threw her into she always prevailed and came out on top. It was why he had chosen her out of the dozens of promising new enlistees. Before he met any of them he had looked into their assessments and of the ones he looked at, only hers had caught his attention so fully. She had had a low power reading but despite that she had scored the best, even compared to others with twice her power.

Now all these years later she was a grown woman who had somehow found her way into his heart and had even given him a son. A pathetic son, but…How had she done it? He didn't know when it happened, because before he knew it he had developed a fondness for the girl that went beyond just training her. Somehow she had completely captured his attention. Not only did he train her and lead her on missions, but now she was his mate. She was the only woman he had ever met that was more than deserving of being his mate. She had been the only woman to ever fully interest him and impress him. She meant more to him than anything else in his life.

Bardock frowned and growled low under his breath. Were it any other woman he would have left her the instant he'd found out about the weak son she had given him. But it wasn't the child that he had cared about, he realized. She was the reason he was here and she was the reason why he was going to go against the king's will and do something that could get him executed.

Possibly.

Bardock smirked. If there was one thing he was confident of, it was that no one, not even the royal family, would dare mess with him the way they had his mentor so many years ago. He wasn't anything like Tettuce, and even King Vegeta knew it.

"Doc."

The doctor looked up at Bardock as he straightened away from the glass, "Hm?"

"Treat the whelp and make sure he gets sent off world." He unfolded his arms and lowered them to his sides.

"You are sure you want to risk it? Is he worth it?"

"No. The boy ain't worth it. Seripa is, though." He responded quietly, his tone lower and softer than the doctor had ever heard from him before. "I won't see her sad, if I can help it. And in this case I can help it. So make sure the brat lives and get him off of Vegeta."

The doctor smiled and looked into the room again, "You are a good man, Bardock. Where do you want me to send him?"

Bardock snorted and turned away, "There's nothin' good about me, Doc. I don't care about the whelp and I don't care where he goes. Just get him off world. And don't tell Seripa—I want to tell her when we get back from Kanassa." With that he started down the long, darkened corridor, leaving the doctor to stare after him.

He smiled as the saiyan walked away and he turned to look at the infant, "You are a lucky little whelp…Kakarrot."

DBZ

Tettuce stared into a full-bodied mirror at the bare-fleshed reflection of his well-muscled body. His long hair was tied back into a wildly spiked ponytail. He was half naked, wearing only a pair of loose-fitting gray pants. His dark eyes flickered from his reflection and to the bed reflected behind him. He could see two pale blue pinpoints of light beaming at him from the darkness of the bed.

"Aurah, you should be asleep."

The lights flickered as she sat up; the covers slipping down her left side a bit, exposing her bare shoulder. Her silver skin shone with a light that reminded him of a full moon. It never ceased to bring a smile to his lips.

"As should you, love." She replied softly.

He turned away from the mirror and moved silently across the room to sit on the edge of the bed beside her.

"I will a bit later. I don't need as much as you remember?" he smiled and lifted a hand to caress her cheek.

She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch, smiling serenely, "Yes, I know," she sighed, but the smile stayed in place. "That is the only drawback of being half-gylderian, at least. Having to sleep so many hours in order to replenish my powers. You would think that the saiyan in me would cancel that out." She shrugged and opened her luminescent eyes slightly. "Oh well, I guess."

Tettuce chuckled and let his hand fall away to rest in his lap, "Yes." He fell silent as they stared at one another.

Aurah tilted her head slightly as she regarded her mate, "What is on your mind, love?"
He chuckled again, looking down with a shake of his head. "You know me far too well," he smiled up at her and was silent for a few minutes before he spoke again.

"I guess I'm worried about Bardock. It's been weeks since Frieza destroyed the planet. He should have contacted us by now." He sighed and looked down.

"You're sure he's alive?" Aurah said bluntly.

Tettuce looked back up at her with a slight frown. He shook his head slightly, but vehemently, "No, he's alive. I'm sure of it. If there's one thing Bardock had a knack for, it was surviving. He's definitely alive—he must be hiding somewhere." He nodded. "Yeah, that must be it."

"Where would he hide, though?"

He frowned again, "Damn, I don't know. Hm."

Aurah shifted herself toward him and she leaned against him, pressing her cheek against his bare shoulder.

"Why don't you ask Seripa when she's healed up? Maybe she knows where he would hide."

"I hadn't thought of that. That's what I'll do then."

She closed her eyes and lifted one hand to touch his shoulder softly. "When will she be done? She's been in there for three days now."

"The medical officer told me earlier that she has another day and a half to go. Her body is healed, but she drained her ki dangerously low."

"Mm." she said against his back, which brought another smile to his lips.

"Aurah, you should go back to sleep."

"Come with me," she whispered, slowly rubbing her palm against his shoulder, coaxingly.

Tettuce turned around in the bed, which forced Aurah to sit back up. She looked at him reproachfully and pouted her silver lips at him, which made him grin.

"Fine, fine." He stood up and lifted the covers to slide under them beside her. "Is this better?"

"Much," she said happily as she snuggled her soft body against his dense muscles. A smile spread across her sleepy features as Tettuce wrapped his arms around her tiny body.

"We haven't done this much lately, love. I've been missing it," Aurah murmured against his chest.

"I'm sorry, my love. I know I've been distracted since Bardock contacted us that day. I've given the mission to find Seripa my full attention."

"Why were you so intent?" she asked softly.

"I've always thought of Bardock as a son, love. I—I would do anything that he asked of me, or expected of me. If he knew that Seripa had survived, he would expect me to find her if he was unable to." Tettuce closed his eyes and lifted a hand to gently brush back some stray dread-locks from his love's soft-skinned face, before wrapping his arm around her once more.

"I want to meet him," was Aurah's murmured reply.

"Heh," Tettuce chuckled softly and gave her a soft squeeze, "I think he'll like you. He was always fascinated by shiny things. Ow!" he laughed out quietly as he felt two very sharp gylderian fangs dig playfully into his chest.

"S'what you get," she mumbled sleepily.

"Yeah, I bet." He kissed her forehead softly, before gently resting his unscarred cheek against her cool skin.

It wasn't long before he felt Aurah's breathing relax and deepen as she finally fell asleep. Tettuce closed his eyes. It had been more than ten years since he'd last seen his protégé. He never had a chance to finish Bardock's training thanks to his exile. He thought idly of the x-shaped scar upon his brow and he sighed. Ginyu had fired a lethal beam of energy into his forehead in an attempt to kill him when he resisted. If it wasn't for his barrier technique he was certain that day would have marked his untimely demise.

Spared from such an abrupt death, he struggled to fight on, the whole while dazed. He had had no idea where he was when he was enveloped by a sudden darkness when Recoome slapped him.

The thought of being taken out by a simple slap to the face still made him cringe. It was an embarrassing defeat, and it left him shaken for several weeks. Thankfully Vogan found him and took him in, so he was spared a humiliating descent into madness. He had instead pressed on and pushed his limits to become one of the most powerful warriors in the universe. He knew without a doubt that he was nowhere near the level of strength that Frieza possessed, but he was at least on par with the likes of Recoome, and possibly even Ginyu, in a one-on-one fight.

He had trained and pushed his body beyond its breaking point on more than one occasion. He had surpassed many of the more famous of his kind. There was Vegeta the First, who was still considered to have been the most powerful saiyan to ever live, and the legendary twin brothers Curn and Korn. Not to mention his own mentor and idol, Turpin. He had not surpassed him until his mentor had been dead for more than thirty years.

He had trained Bardock for nearly nine years and the last he remembered, the man's power reading had been just under 2000. The training he had put the boy through back then had seemed harsh at the time, but Tettuce had breached so many of his limitations since then, that the memories of his struggles in his youth seemed almost laughable. He had trained so hard back then to reach a level where he was a threat to the royal family. And now thinking of the royal family as a threat was beyond laughable.

Aurah yawned in her sleep and rolled out of his arms, curling up into a tiny bundle with her back to him. He smiled and chuckled at her. He didn't even have to open his eyes to know that she was facing away from him. She did this every time they cuddled together. The gylderian half of her being wanted to be physically loving and endearing, but then the saiyan subconscious would rear its head and shun him completely. He loved her personality swings, because she was always unpredictable. She was volatile and she was a challenge. And he was very much in love with her.

Tettuce rolled onto his back and clasped his hands together behind his head. He opened his dark eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Aurah had activated the virtual window so she could see the stars while she lay in her bed. That was most definitely the saiyan side coming out, because 99.7% of all saiyans were claustrophobic. While they were able to cope with the disorder, most liked to be reminded that the spaceship isn't a prison, and that open space is just beyond a thin veil, as in the case of Aurah and her virtual window.

Seripa had piqued his interest, just as Bardock had done so long ago, he realized. He grimaced at the thought of training her. Shortly after his exile he had sworn to never take on another apprentice, and yet he had already decided to train the woman. She deserved to be trained; there was no doubt about that in his mind. But with what she set out to do, not even what he had to offer would be enough. She was setting herself up to fail, but he still decided to train her. It went against his better judgment, and yet he still decided to train Seripa.

He sighed and closed his eyes wearily. Just thinking about it made his head hurt. He shuddered to think what his single-minded mentor would think. Although he did have to chuckle at the image of the old man about ready to blow his top off as he berated Tettuce. No doubt he would have also been beating him over the head with a jalossel the entire time.

But he also owed it to Bardock to finish what he started. He had told Aurah that he was sure his protégé was still alive, but the truth of it was that he was not so confident. He wasn't so naïve to think that he had gone to face Frieza and lived to tell about it. He wanted to believe it, though, and telling Aurah helped to somewhat convince him that there was still a modicum of hope left. That maybe Bardock would contact them in the near future or meet up with them on Gylder.

Tettuce had been telling the truth about one thing, though, and that was that Bardock had a knack for surviving. He was perhaps one of the most resilient warriors he had ever met in his lifetime. The man (more boy than man the last he saw him) had taken some severe beatings in his dealings with Tettuce and on missions. He smirked at the memory of one such mission.

It was still clear in his memory, as if the mission had only been just a few days prior. Tettuce and Bardock had gone to a planet that Frieza had been attempting to acquire for several years. He was on the verge of going to subjugate the planet himself when King Vegeta had recommended Tettuce and his team. Intrigued, Frieza granted the mission to Tettuce's team.

Unfortunately, most of Tettuce's team had been wiped out on a particularly difficult mission. Of the six original members of his team (not including himself,) only three survived. And of those three, two were supposed to spend a month each in recovery. Only the newest, youngest, and weakest member of his team was battle-ready due to his rather fortunate luck at being rendered unconscious early on in the previous mission.

He remembered being reluctant to allow the youth to accompany him on the mission, but the brat's stubborn attitude and sarcastic remarks convinced Tettuce that he was in need of an attitude adjustment.

Upon arrival they had gone their separate ways. Less than a half hour into the conquest, Tettuce had decided that he and Bardock were more than enough to conquer the planet. He was baffled as to how anyone could have had any trouble in taking the planet. What he hadn't known at the time, though, was the planet was home to two different races. One race was moderately powerful, but easily handled by even the lower class saiyan. The other race, though, was extremely vicious and extremely powerful. That race was so powerful that when Tettuce found Bardock, he was facing down dozens of these powerhouse beings in a battle for his life. Intrigued he had stood by and watched the boy take on one after the other, seemingly oblivious to his own blood pooling at his feet.

Eventually Tettuce had been forced to step in and finish them off when they finally overwhelmed Bardock. But not before he had decided that the newest member of his team would be the one he passed his knowledge onto.

Beside him, Aurah shifted around in her sleep, mumbling incoherently. He glanced at her in amusement, unable to resist smiling at her lovingly. She was going to be very upset with him for quite some time to come, as he would no doubt be spending a great deal of time training Seripa. In order for him to get her anywhere near his level he was going to have to devote a lot of his attention to that task.

He started as he suddenly remembered that two levels below him Turles was lying in a ki-restricting cell, still unconscious from the blow he was dealt. What was he going to do with that whelp? He couldn't very well kill the brat, despite his obvious desire to murder and destroy anything in his path. The fact that he was Bardock's brother was the only thing that had prevented him from killing the boy back on the 'Mother' planet.

It was a good thing he had refrained from killing him, because now that he thought about it, it was highly likely that Turles was merely misguided. He had an obvious advantage in strength over the boy, so perhaps while he trained Seripa, he could also try and get Turles to turn over a new leaf. It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility, because again he had told the truth when he said the boy acted just like Bardock had at that age. That meant that there was still a chance for Turles to change. And maybe even hone his skill and utilize his extraordinary strength sufficiently.

Tettuce smirked as he thought about the damage that Turles could have done to him if he had had just a bit more experience. If he'd used his head he could have put Tettuce on the defensive right out the gate and could have held the upper hand for a few minutes. If he could convince him to change his ways and agree to help in the defense of the last of their kind, then the boy would prove to be a valuable asset in the future. He could train the boy and train Seripa, which would help speed up Seripa's progress.

He nodded approvingly as he finalized his plans. Just as soon as Turles was conscious, he would speak with him and see what the boy thought about it. Of course, initially the brat was most likely to reject the offer vehemently. There would probably be a demonstration of hatred and anger as the teenager would no doubt throw a fit and would most likely proceed to act like a complete maniac.

Tettuce grimaced at the thought of dealing with that and sighed. He hated children; he hated teenagers even more. They were stubborn smartasses who thought they were smarter than adults many decades their senior. Bardock had been that way; Turles was that way; even Tettuce had acted the same way when he was a teenager. It had taken six years to straighten Bardock out; he shuddered to imagine how long it would take to change Turles in that case.

Taking that into consideration, he was now having second thoughts about training Turles. He closed his eyes and sighed again, shaking his head slowly. He was daft and a fool for being willing to attempt such a feat. He knew he could handle Seripa moderately well. She was just as stubborn as Bardock, but she also seemed to be much more reasonable than his hard-headed protégé had been.

No, wait, scratch that. She was just as unreasonable as Bardock had been to so adamantly demand training, despite knowing she was severely out-classed. She had witnessed the destruction of Planet Vegeta first-hand, so she had personally seen that Frieza was at a level that she couldn't even dream of, yet.

"Gah," he said quietly as he scratched both sides of his head irritably. He had every right to be irritated! He had just decided to take on two—not one, but two—new apprentices and he knew that there was no way he could back out of it now, even if he was the only person who knew of his decision. He would never forgive himself if he backed out of something he recognized as a challenge. Never before in his life had he backed down from a challenge; there was no point in stopping now this late in the game. He knew it was foolish, but he had no choice. No saiyan—male or female—could go against their pride.

He yawned and rolled onto his side and shifted over until he felt Aurah's warmth against his bare chest. He wrapped his arms around her tiny form in a gentle, but protective embrace, and still cursing his foolish self, Tettuce slowly drifted off to sleep.

DBZ

Tettuce grumbled as the ship shuddered lightly. He had just finished dressing for the day when he was alerted that both Aurah's ship, and the damaged ship had come to a dead float because the latter needed immediate engine repairs, which happened to be one of Tettuce's specialty's and no one else's.

It was a frustrating and alarming situation, he noted sourly as he stood before the airlock hatch, waiting for the pilots of the two ships to finish docking them together. To think that it was allowed for someone as important as Aurah to travel anywhere without anyone among her crew who knew how to maintain the ship. It was inexcusable, and he was going to make sure that was changed once they made it back to Glyder. For now his expertise would have to do.

The hatch to the airlock suddenly split open with a loud hiss, interrupting his thoughts and catching him by surprise. A cool flow of air blew through his hair as he waited for the doors to open completely, before he stepped into the hatch. He closed the door behind him and stared across the chamber at the hull door, less than five feet from him.

When the doors finally shut with an accompanying hiss, he closed his eyes. This was always his least favorite part. The hull door opened, and the air was suddenly and violently sucked out, almost pulling him against his will towards the now open door. An instant later the experience was over and he opened his eyes with a sigh, as he stepped out into a clear tube that connected the two ships together. He had gone through the chamber aerating numerous times before, but it never failed to freak him out. Despite knowing that the airlock doors would never open if anything wasn't sealed properly, he still had to deal with those 'what-if' thoughts going through his head.

Keeping his eyes on the open hatch of the other ship, Tettuce managed to avoid looking out into space before reaching the safety of the other ship. He finally emerged out of the airlock on the other ship and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Then he remembered he'd have to do it again when he returned.

Damn.

DBZ

Bardock sat miserably with his head resting against the headrest of his pod seat. Blood flowed freely down the sides of his face from a blood-red bandana wrapped around his forehead. His signature black and green armor was barely clinging to his body via the lone left shoulder strap. Blood and filth covered his tanned and toned muscles.

His onyx eyes stared dazedly at nothing; his broad chest rose slowly and laboriously with each worn out breath he took. Slowly he lifted his right hand, in which he tightly clutched a small black box. He gave the box a gentle squeeze and a light flashed between his fingers, before a tiny holographic projection of him and his team appeared, with a young boy standing at the forefront. He focused his glassy eyes on the young boy and his eyelids twitched.

"Raditz…" he closed his eyes with a sigh, clicking off the image as he did. "Grow strong. Kakarrot, you, too…My sons…"

He sighed again and set the box aside. Opening his eyes he leaned forward to press a button on the console of his pod door.

"Tettuce." He said in a low, weary voice.

"Bardock?" answered a sudden stern, bewildered voice from the console.

"Yeah, it's me." Bardock sighed as he leaned back in his seat once more.

"What do you think you're doing opening a channel like this? You cou—"

"I don't fuckin' care," he snapped, interrupting his former mentor.

Silence…

"There better be a damn good reason why you just disrespected me, Bardock," Tettuce responded dangerously over the intercom.

Bardock snorted and said through clenched teeth, "Don't waste your breath threatening me, old man. There's no point and no time."

There was another stretch of silence over the intercom, and then Tettuce responded in a much calmer voice, "What do you mean?"

Bardock smirked at the change in his teacher's voice. He had obviously recognized that this was an emergency. If Bardock thought it was an emergency, then damn it, it was an emergency!

"You can threaten me, but I doubt you ever get another shot at kickin' my ass. I just fought Dodoria and his personal lackeys back on a planet called Meat." Bardock sniffed and lifted a hand to rub a trickle of blood away before it could drip down to his lips. "My team's bodies are still there. That's why I contacted you, actually."

"What?" Tettuce's voice was tense and confused. It was obvious he had no idea what was going on.

"I'm on my way to the home planet, old man. Frieza is headed there now to destroy our home. I gotta stop him. Swing by Planet Meat and honor my team, for me. They were a good bunch. Strong, loyal, stubborn…" he trailed off into silence.

Just as Bardock heard his former teacher speak, he spoke, interrupting him again, "They killed my apprentice, Tettuce."

The surprise in Tettuce's voice was apparent when he said, "I never thought you'd take on a student. He must've shown serious potential."

Bardock smiled, "She did." He chuckled when he heard Tettuce exclaim "A woman?" in surprise. "Yes, a woman. A very…unique woman. She wasn't one of the stronger members of my team, but she was definitely the smartest. She may have been lacking in strength, but she was so clever in battle that it was very difficult for her to be taken down, even by enemies twice as powerful as her."

Bardock chuckled, "Seripa…her power reading may have been low, old man, but…" he trailed off for a moment, then smiled and closed his eyes. "But she was the strongest person I've ever met."

"Sounds like she was a promising student, indeed." Tettuce murmured in response. A silence stretched between the two of them.

"Tettuce, I need to ask another favor of you." said Bardock quietly.

"Anything." His former mentor said automatically.

"My son, Raditz. He was off on the Cadet planet, so he'll be away from the battle. Find him and train him, like you trained me so long ago."

"You know I swore I'd never take another protégé." Tettuce replied quietly. "But I will do you this favor." He fell silent again.

Bardock grinned to himself, "You haven't said a word to try and stop me from going after Frieza."

"Not because I don't want to. I know it's useless to try and talk you out of it, Bardock. You've been thick-headed your entire life. I don't expect that to have changed, so there's no sense in wasting my breath. Right?"

Bardock laughed out loud, holding the side of his bloodied head with one hand, "You still know me far too well, old man. You're right, though," he said with a much more serious tone, but a smile remained on his face. "I've already made up my mind. I owe it to the lizard for what he did to my team. But most of all, I owe it to them." He suddenly sighed. "I wish you could have met them, old man. Especially Seripa." He chuckled and shook his head, "I'm gettin' soft in my old age, ain't I?"

Tettuce didn't respond, but Bardock hadn't expected him to. He had said the exact same line shortly before his exile.

"See you around, old man." Bardock said as casually as he could. He leaned forward to kill the connection. Just as his finger touched the console, his former mentor replied.

"Goodbye, old friend."

Bardock killed the connection, his onyx eyes staring intensely out the red-tinted port hole of his space pod. Vegeta loomed in the distance.

As well as the ominous form of Frieza's awaiting ship.

DBZ

"Strange," murmured the young, female gylderian medical officer that was monitoring Seripa's recovery. She was standing next to the recovering saiyan female's tank looking over her vitals, her pale yellow brows knitted together, creasing the smooth surface of her dull silver skin. Her red-pupil and green-iris eyes left the screen and peered into the clear liquid at the sleeping form of Seripa. For all intents and purposes she looked to be recovering peacefully.

"Her brain-wave patterns are erratic," she mumbled to herself as she returned her gaze to the screen, carefully sifting through the vital information. "And according to the history these patterns are becoming increasingly erratic. Hm…"

She stepped back and folded her arms across her stomach. She lifted one hand to tap lightly on her chin as she stared thoughtfully at the sleeping woman.

"Those must be some intense dreams to be causing those kind of fluctuations." She continued to stare at the chamber quietly for several seconds, before she finally shrugged. "Oh well." She turned away from the tank and found herself face-to-face with a young man sporting some of the wildest black hair she had ever seen.

Stepping back, she let out a small gasp of surprise. She regarded the boy for a moment before finally recognizing him as a saiyan.

"Oh, you startled me. You must be from the other ship, right?"

"No. Actually, I just broke out of the brig on this ship," Turles said with a grin.

"What?" she had time to say in surprise before he backhanded her across the room. She slammed into a cluster of medical equipment, causing a shower of sparks to rain down on her as she lay unmoving in their midst.

He stared after her with a grim expression on his face. He sighed and stumbled over to Seripa's chamber, placing one hand upon the smooth white surface of the tank and the other against his head. He stared into the tank with the same grim expression.

"I'm still rocked from that blow that bastard dealt me," he grumbled to himself. His head was aching and his stomach felt like it had been hit by a space pod at full speed. Tettuce had indeed done quite a number on him.

"But the stupid fool left me alive. And he left the ship." He chuckled as he looked over Seripa's naked form. "My brother had good taste in women, at least."

He took a deep breath and drew away from the tank. Raising his right hand he smirked at her, "You'll wake up eventually, but it won't be in time to stop me." With that said he drove his hand into the control panel and immediately ripped it back out with a handful of wires clenched in a tight fist. Sparks flash from the damaged panel and the word 'Error' flashed repeatedly on the control display.

"Later bitch." He turned with a laughed and hurried out of the medical bay.

Inside the chamber, Seripa's eyebrows suddenly knitted together and air bubbles escaped violently from between her mask and her cheeks.

Trapped within the damaged chamber, she is left with no reprieve from her continuous stream of nightmares.

DBZ

Tettuce was pissed.

He had barely set foot on the bridge when he and everyone else was sent sprawling by the ship bucking wildly out of nowhere. After the first few initial moments of shock it didn't take long for him to realize what had happened, and even less time for him to become extremely irate.

Aurah's ship was gone; the sudden bucking had been caused by the other ship's sudden transition into hyper-space. Tettuce's mood didn't improve when he realized that in order for him to give chase he had to repair the busted engines.

And now, more than two hours later, the ship was barely sustaining the minimum speed required for a hyper-space jump. They ship rocked and groaned as Tettuce grumbled under his breath.

Beside him at the helm, Lessbru piloted the ship with a skilled hand. Every so often he was making adjustments to the output of the engines.

"What is our speed, pilot?" Tettuce asked suddenly and very irritably.

Lessbru winced and barely suppressed a groan. That had to have been the tenth time he'd been asked that question. And for the tenth time he responded, "Hyper 1, sir. Engines are running at 68%." He glanced up at the taller man apologetically. "I am rerouting power where I can, but I don't think I can manage to get more than 72 to 73% out of them. They've taken too much damage and abuse recently."

"At this speed we'll never fucking catch them!" the warrior suddenly snapped.

"I doubt that's going to matter, sir," said Lessbru quietly. He had happened to take a glance at the radar and now his eyes were glued to it.

"Oh? And why is that?"

"There's a ship gaining on us. They are in hyper-space, too."

Tettuce looked to the radar sharply and his lips drew into a thin line suddenly, his brows coming together sharply.

"Frieza…"

DBZ

Amotto stuck her head out in the hallway and glanced around, before retreating back in the medical bay.

"Still clear?" asked Broco from where he crouched in front of Seripa's tank, his thick fingers expertly picking amongst the torn, frayed, and burnt wires. All around him lay piles of stripped circuit boards and crystals that he had torn from some of the various pieces of medical equipment strewn about the room.

She glanced at Broco before moving over to kneel beside the young medical officer Turles had knocked around earlier.

"Yeah. I'm sure he's pretty preoccupied with Lady Aurah at the moment. How do you feel?" she asked of the medical officer.

The woman ran a hand through her long, yellow hair and groaned quietly. "I'll live."

Amotto nodded to her, and stood and walked over to Broco. "Any progress?"

He shrugged his massive shoulders with a sigh, "I can only do so much, but yes. I think I'll be able to open the door—quarter to a half hour at the latest."

She nodded and sighed as well, "I suppose we should be thankful that he didn't destroy the chamber with her inside it."

"Yeah, I'm surprised he didn't." Broco admitted with a frown. His single eye flashed to her briefly, before returning immediately to his work.

"Me, too. That's why we should be thankful." She looked into the chamber at Seripa. The trapped woman had wrapped her arms about herself as if she were cold. Every few seconds her eyelids would twitch. Sometimes the twitches would coincide with a stream of bubbles releasing from her mask.

Amotto frowned. "You think the three of us can take Turles, Broco?"

"Not really, to be honest." He sighed. "But that didn't stop Seripa from fighting him before, so I don't see how backing down would be an option." He paused in his work and glanced up at her with a fierce grin, made twice as fierce by the gruesome battle scar across his left eye. "I don't know about you, but I feel stronger than I've ever felt before."

"Yeah me, too." Amotto admitted. They had both just left recovery themselves, having had to spend a day each in a chamber.

"It might not be much, but every little bit will help." Broco returned his gaze to the circuit boards and naked wires.

"Yeah, that's true." She sighed again. She sat beside him for a moment before standing and walking back to look out into the hallway.

"Let's just hope it'll be enough."

DBZ

(Uh oh, Frieza has entered the mix. What could his appearance possibly mean for our heroes? Probably certain death, but hey! They might luck out. Right?….Right?...Damn. Next time all hell just might break loose…IN SPACE. O.o As always, reviews are welcomed! Until next chapter, Individual Lies out! Update: Sorry about this. I'm sure some of you are wondering why i started referring to them as saiyans in this chapter, rather than saiya-jin. Well, to be honest...I got tired of typing saiya-jin. . Plus, that's the traditional japanese reference, and while I like to pay my respects to that version as much as I can, not referring to them as saiyans just didn't fit the rest of the story in my mind. I don't know, it might be my ADD acting up here, so yeah...I dunno. lol I apologize for any confusion.)