A/N: Holy hell. I just decided to update this last night to finish things up. Hooooly hell. Yes, there will be an epilogue. :) It's not gonna be tomorrow or anything but I'm definitely going to post one. Sorry about not clarifying that.

Warnings: Mild gore.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Ball Z or anything affiliated with it.

-MalRev

The Ties That Bind

19

There wasn't a word from Goku or Vegeta during those trying days. I was at my wit's end, constantly peering out the window to see if any demons were descending on Earth and Bulma was smoking five packs of cigarettes a day. We discussed our plans for the invasion so many times that I began dreaming about them during my afternoon naps. Goku wormed his way into my head every so often but I tried my best to put him aside and focus on the daunting task at hand.

For a long while, there was nothing to do but wait and worry about the men. I wondered if they would ever come back like they had promised or if Bulma and I were destined to be alone during the coming apocalypse. My connection with Goku faltered frequently to the point where it didn't keep me up at night being without him. It crossed my mind that the universe might be letting me off easy.

Who was I kidding? The universe was desperate to fuck me over.

On Friday afternoon, as I was resting on the porch upstairs at Capsule Corp., I heard someone knocking on the door downstairs. Bulma was out with the younger boys and Videl had gone away with Gohan until it was time for all of us to fight. I sighed and lazily got to my feet to answer it, secretly praying it was Goku and Vegeta coming back from their training. The sooner we could get the business overwith, the better. I wanted everything to be normal.

How normal could I be if I was involved with an alien who was twice my age that could cross dimensions and had a tail at some point in the distant past? Everyone's perception of normalcy varied but mine was absolutely insane. I would've laughed if my heart wasn't weighing me down so much.

When I pulled open the door, a familiar face was standing in the sunshine. Unfortunately, it wasn't someone I should've been seeing in Goku's realm. I squinted to make sure I wasn't hallucinating and began thinking of stories in my head that could explain where he was. He was dreaming. I was dreaming. We were both in "Inception." Someone slipped him some roofies.

Craig just smiled. Eerily.

"Hey," I said stupidly.

He kept smiling. I uncomfortably rubbed the back of my head much like Goku and Craig's eyes roamed down my body to settle on my abdomen. How the hell did he even get to Goku's world? The only person who could cross the barrier was Goku himself with instant transmission. He could bring passengers but as far as I knew Craig wasn't included on the VIP list.

"You never knew?" Craig asked. He sounded amused.

"Uh… I'm sorry, what? How did you get here?"

"Humans are insipid little creatures, aren't they? Let's chat, Naomi."

I tried to close the door and he wedged his foot in the way, soon pushing inside. When we were both in the house, he shut the locked the door behind himself. He leaned against it and stared at me for a few moments before stepping forward. My foot immediately moved back. His smile widened into a grin.

"Don't you know who I am?" he asked, putting his hands on his hips. "We've met several times in your dreams. You always ask me for answers that I won't give and I always demand things of you that, ironically, you also refuse to give." Craig's eyes began to flood red. "Luckily, you finally have what I want. I don't need to keep up this game any longer."

No. It couldn't be. Craig was a nice guy, not the host of a demon hellbent on commanding the entire universe. But his face began to change and I realized how very wrong I was. You couldn't judge a book by its cover, especially when there were horns sprouting out of its forehead.

"You're… Scoria?!" I shrieked.

"Oh dear, I see you're surprised. Tsk tsk, such is the curse of mortality. Yes, I am Scoria. This is the heap of flesh I use during my time on Earth, when I shift between worlds. It took on a mind of its own during my absence, falling all over you like an abandoned puppy dog." Scoria dusted off his jacket and stood taller. "Years ago, I attempted to impregnate you myself in this body. Our species are largely incompatible and it clearly did not work as planned, which lead me to Goku.

"It's all so perfect. Now I see why mortals worship gods. Playing him has certainly given me a taste of that overwhelming power that will soon be mine. I can permanently discard this form and lead me hordes to your planet when the barrier is broken. Goku helped speed things along quite nicely."

We were performing the intimidation dance—he walked forward and I moved backwards. It was unreal. Craig was actually a blank host for Scoria? Goku was right when he said something didn't feel right about the guy. Even worse, I slept with him a few years back! I swallowed bile and chased the thoughts from my mind while tugging ferociously on my connection with Goku. It would be great for him to show up.

Scoria wasn't telling me everything to be a helpful neighbor. No, it was all about to end for me. He liked the fear, though, and I had a feeling he'd want to taunt me for a while before delivering the final blow. Maybe Goku would sense me in time and be able to pummel his demon face into the ground.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

The demon raised an eyebrow. Craig's flesh was falling off him in large chunks and covering Bulma's floor in blood. It was exposing the tanned skin beneath that was part of Scoria's true form. He idly reached over his shoulder to peel some particularly sticky skin off his back. I covered my mouth when he flung it on the floor and a whole sheet of flesh fell off his hands.

"Come now," he said, "even you should know the answer to that. You have what I want."

It dawned upon me like a creeping sickness. Goku's attack hadn't been in vain. Part of him had taken root in me and Scoria was here to collect.

"You… you can't just rip it out!" I said, now protecting my abdomen. "It's only been… I don't know, a week? Don't you have to wait until it's older?"

"Don't be silly. I'll simply give your bundle of joy a bit of a growth spurt so it can meet the world a bit earlier than planned. When it's ready, I will rip you in half to remove it. You're nothing to me, Naomi. All I want is the microscopic anomaly inside you."

What was taking Goku so long? I grabbed one of Bulma's many potted plants and held it out as a weapon, making Scoria roll his eyes again. We were making our way out to the kitchen where he'd have a whole array of knives to cut me open with. How did he know I was pregnant before I did? More importantly, I was pregnant?! That was a complete game-changer! I had to settle down and stay home instead of going out with my friends.

That was all dependent on whether or not I could survive my encounter with Scoria, which was looking like a big fat "no." I hurled the plant at his head and he was on me in a flash, pinning my frail human arms to the cold linoleum with his huge teeth jutting out of his mouth. Another pair of hands took mine from his grasp to hold me down so he could place his palms against my lower abdomen. I twisted my neck until I could see Fiamme kneeling above my head.

"I thought you couldn't break the barrier," I said. I needed to stall, big time.

"Your impregnation weakened it." Scoria's hands began to glow. "Soon, it will shatter and my army can come forth from the planes Beyond. Hold still, human. You're going to become a part of something the entire universe will never forget."

"Please let me snap her neck," Fiamme begged. "I've been waiting for so long."

There was an uncomfortable swelling in my stomach. Whatever these creatures were, they already seemed to have powers that rivaled gods. Scoria was defying time and speeding along my pregnancy at an impossible rate after he had already broken a hole between two completely different realities that existed on parallel lines of time. The laws of nature were playthings to them.

Excruciating pain made it hard for me to keep focusing on what I was gonna do. I screamed and neither of them made an effort to cover my mouth, but Fiamme started laughing shrilly and dug her talons into my wrists until I bled. Scoria's eyes widened as my body kept bubbling up; pregnancy hurt like hell normally and it was a hundred times worse when you were being forced through it. All the pain, stretching, and other nasty side effects were being compounded into a few minutes.

By the time I was fully ballooned, I was too delirious from the intense pain to really care. One of Scoria's long nails elongated into a talon and he drew it in a slow slice across my stomach, making blood seep out onto the floor. Bulma was not gonna be happy when she came home to so much gore. His claws tore my gut apart and I noticed tears were streaming down my face. Where was Goku? Why was he letting me die? I knew he could sense that I was in danger.

A baby was crying. Fiamme released my arms and gasped.

There was a loud crash and the two demons got to their feet. A few people were standing in the door, shouting something at Scoria. My vision was hazy and turning black—what was going on? I weakly raised a hand to feel the damage done to my stomach and choked on my tears. It was wide open; my insides were sticky and warm. Scoria had literally torn me to shreds in his haste.

"Naomi? Naomi, please… oh kami, I knew I shouldn't have waited." It was Goku. I could tell by the voice. He gently cradled my head and I felt another pair of hands resting over my fatal wounds. "Dende, do you think you can heal her?"

"If I can't, it may be better to end her life quickly and let Shenron bring her back to life."

People were fighting outside as the new guy named Dende began putting my mutilated body back together. The gentle caress of death faded away slowly and I was soon well enough to look up at Goku without wanting to faint. His eyes were brimming with tears but he waited until Dende was finished to scoop me up into his gigantic arms. I spluttered for air and Dende told him to let go or I'd pop open again and spill my organs all over the floor.

I wanted to greet Goku properly but I really needed to thank whoever saved my life. When I turned to Dende, I was surprised to see a green man with pointy ears and absolutely no hair. He smiled at me and wiped my blood off on a rag as I tried to comprehend what I was seeing. Then again, why did I care? I'd seen much weirder things ever since I met Goku.

"I'm glad you're okay," Dende said. "Just to warn you, there's another green man outside named Piccolo. I don't want you to have a heart attack after I repaired your body."

"I'm eternally grateful. Seriously, today is not my day to die." I looked up at Goku and scowled. "Thanks for taking so long to show up, you jerk. Scoria forced me through an entire pregnancy in five minutes and now he's doing god knows what with—"

"Honestly, Naomi, do you think I'd let some demon put his bloody hands all over any child of mine?"

That was when I finally lowered my eyes from Goku's face. There was a very alert toddler sitting beside him, watching me with wide blue eyes. The hair was a carbon copy of Goku's but it was easy to tell I was looking at a girl instead of a boy. She smiled widely and a furry tail flickered behind her. I stared in shock. That baby had been nothing more than a speck in me just a few minutes ago.

"We think Scoria stopped at about two years," Dende said, breaking the awkward silence. "Bulma wants to run some tests to make sure everything's in order but we don't have time for that right now. We need to keep her away from the demons and destroy them."

I stared at the little girl. "Hi."

She grinned and leaned on Goku, hiding her face in his bloodstained shirt.

"It's a lot to deal with, I know," Goku said, "but I need you to keep an eye on her so I can help the others get rid of Scoria and Fiamme. After that we can figure out what we're going to do."

"What… I…" I ran a hand through my hair, soaking it with blood. "This is her? This is the itsy bitsy thing that was in me ten minutes ago? Are you telling me I'm a mother now? That changes everything. Will she grow up in your world or mine? What school will she go to? For god's sakes, what's her name?"

"Relax," Goku said, touching my shoulder gently.

After giving me a quick peck on the forehead he was gone, along with Dende. I sat dumbly on the floor and stared at the little girl—my little girl—for another minute or two before getting to my feet. She sprung up, lithe as a cat, and even propelled herself into the air to hover in front of me. It was kind of nice that I didn't have to go through nine months of pregnancy but having a small child flung in my face was really daunting.

The girl took my hand. "Let's go, mama."

We made our way to the basement of the house to hide out while everyone battle it out upstairs. I felt pathetic cowering in the corner while the rest of the group had to take on the true evil. The girl sat beside me on the musty couch and blinked her brilliant blue eyes at me. As I tried to think of something to say, the door flung open and Bulma came down the stairs, smirking. She sat beside my daughter and whipped a stethoscope out of her lab coat to listen to her heartbeat.

"Goku has this one in the bag," Bulma said, listening intently to the girl's heart. "They don't need me and I'm very curious about this little one so I decided to come down here. I wish you could see it, Naomi. Your man doesn't kid around when he's really angry."

"We can see soon!" the girl said excitedly. "Daddy told me not to open the Door unless he said so."

"Your heart sounds great. I'll need to run some more tests but I don't think anything is seriously wrong. You're lucky. Carrying a half-Saiyan is even more painful than a normal pregnancy."

Time wore on. Bulma left a while later to check how everything was going outside and came downstairs to tell me it was safe to go out and see the damage. My daughter trotted along happily beside me. Thankfully she inherited Goku's personality instead of mine or she would've been a nervous wreck. We stepped through piles of guts and blood in Bulma's living room and stepped out into the bright sunshine to see how everyone was faring against the demons.

Trunks and Goten were sitting on the ground cheering as their fathers each beat the hell out of the invaders. Vegeta was covered in red fur and had a red tail twitching behind him. He had his foot on Fiamme's back and was forcing her to bend over backwards, making her spine snap in several places at once. He let her go and leaned down to twist her neck in one swift motion, ending one of the demons.

I covered my daughter's eyes and Bulma raised an eyebrow. "Trust me, she'll be used to this kind of stuff by the time she's five. We're all desensitized to it. Blood and guts and death are all in a normal day for the lovers of Saiyans. Speaking of which, I'm mildly offended Gohan and Videl didn't show up."

"They didn't need to," Vegeta spat as he kicked Fiamme's body away. "These two were weaklings, just as Kakarot and I thought. They wanted to finish their plans before we could get to them."

There was a shockwave announcing the arrival of Goku and Scoria. I was surprised to see Goku had changed in the same way Vegeta did: he was red and furry, with lines around his eyes and a tail flickering behind him. He grappled with the greater demon and finally threw him into the ground, where Vegeta fell upon him. Scoria howled furiously as the two Saiyans worked on holding him down so they could break his neck the same way they did Fiamme's.

"You're all fools!" Scoria hissed. "The universe itself does not want your unnatural union—"

A sickening crack was the end of him. Goku scowled at Vegeta, who had been more than happy to terminate Scoria. He scooped up the body and tossed it over to Fiamme's, then grimaced as Bulma raced forward to hug him tightly around the neck. It was over. I felt a tug on my shirt and looked down.

"Mama, it's gone," the girl said.

"What is?"

"The Door. There's nothing on the other side anymore."