Rating: PG-13 - Cause I said so.

Disclaimerer: Nope. Not mine. Hey, not yours either.

'- thinking

"-speaking

Blah blah italics represent blah blah.

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Enter:Prince Vegeta no Ouji /Location: *sigh*

The week following Frieza's arrival on Planet Earth went by fast for the hasty Prince. He could feel his strengths enhanced definitely, his senses sharper than ever. Perhaps absence from the woman was a blessing in disguise.

The breeze blew through his flame of black hair as he stood, dignified and proud on a cliff. There was not a patch of green in sight at the rocker area, causing his dark presence to stand out even more. With his eyes closed, he waited for it to strike. He waited for hours, stripes of red struck through the setting sky as the wind got even heavier.

He would be ready for this, he vowed on Frieza's soon grave that he would be well prepared.

But there was one thing he wasn't counting on that evening.

"So...What happens when you sleep with the enemy? Game over...?"

He instantly stiffened up at the bell-tone voice and that reference to something he wasn't quite ready to be reminded of just yet.

"Oh, don't give me that, Vegeta. Nothing's changed."

"Correction, everything has changed. There is no returning now."

"Oh, but why? Because we finally realized what was happening between us for so long? Because we acted upon what we have wanted since forever?"

"Speak for yourself."

She took in a breath, questioning herself, questioning if she was ready,"I will. I am. You have already admitted it. You've already opened up, Vegeta. I have too. Why the sudden snap in directions now?"

"I have a battle to win. This does not concern you."

"Oh I think it does. You really don't think I have enough weakness and sensitivity to allow you to walk in and out of my life as you please, do you?"

He scoffed,"You'd be sensitive and weak if you didn't."

"No. I wouldn't let you take stabs at me all the while questioning why you don't stay. Is it your past? Is that what it is? Your pride? Ahh, but your past IS your pride, right? You can't let that go. Not for a human, not for someone who sees through your mask."

"Yes, Bulma. Keep guessing and throwing blank shots."

"You wish it were so. Why do you do this? Why? Just say it and I won't have to guess anymore."

He was silent.

"Okay then I'll keep guessing. I think...That since you try so hard for everyone, for everyone to respect you, that me seeing who you really are is too much for you to handle. That I'm not the right way to feel it, to feel the rush you get every time I speak...No. It's supposed to be the rush from ruthlessness and destruction, isn't it? That's what you've been shown, and getting the rush from me, and everyone seeing that, would make it a weakness for you. A chance at getting hurt by giving yourself to something you have no control over. That's why you avoid me and go into your little bouts of your proud past."

His breath had gotten heavier with every word she said. Every word she spoke was truth, something he always fled if it didn't suit him, but she always threw it back at him. Yes, she saw him, and she let him know, but no one else dared.

He could see her eyes as they fell onto the rocky ground, he could smell the tears gathering in those aqua orbs, but the funny thing was he had never been able to see or smell anyone before this prodigy.

"Kami! Vegeta...Just...Please, I can't-" Then she brought her head up, pushing the sobs and tears back down as she did so.

She softly exhaled, her still-glistening eyes piercing into his back persistently,"Okay, Vegeta. Alright. You win. Your pride is all yours. Take it and everything you have. Kami knows how much that will be after I'm gone."

He said nothing. He thought nothing, and tried hard to feel nothing as well.

"My best wishes to you after you battle Frieza, if there is an after. I'll pray Vegeta, I certainly will," She added with a grey, somber tone that glazed over his icy self like liquid guilt. There was no more fire, only ice.

He couldn't help but snap back and look at her. When her eyes reached his, they held a solid but sad will to them that almost shattered the pride she had left him for. Or he left her for.

'No. I never left her...She did this herself,' he thought stubbornly.

But she was right all along. He was still tied to his customs as an unattached Prince.

'Absolutely not...The Prince is not tied,' he thought furiously.

It was a few moments before he realized that she had left him there, in that whistling wind in front of the sunset, the familiar feeling of being alone suddenly too cold for him again.

Enter: Bulma Briefs /Location: Unknownnnnnnnnn

She stumbled through the rocky ledges as tears stumbled through her burning eyes. She hadn't meant what she said, she wasn't prepared to leave him, but it was all she could do not to run back and take everything she had said into her own shameful lips, the same lips that had scrutinized and belittled the one person who could break her guard down with a single glance, the same lips that had broken through the solid shell of a victim who would have only continued to victimize without her to guide him through it.

The same lips that had kissed his and taught him trust.

But it was his choice. Plus, Vegeta was smart, although his arrogance invaded most of the time, there were those split decisions that he had a knack for, after all that was why she was alive.

Pushing away all concentration on the matter, she got up and started hiking again. Soon after, she found the creature, standing ever so stiffly on a plateau. Her eyes focused on it, trying to figure out what it was doing. That's when she saw the silver light around it and everything so cold all of a sudden. She felt snowflakes lay softly on her forehead and arms as she shivered away.

'What is it doing? Powering up, but why? Unless it was threatened or - '

She gasped. She put two and two together, and in a second everything made sense. The first explosion from Zarbon and Vegeta's intrusion, the second, because of Vegeta's second coming. Now, because of Frieza.

She knew it all too well, because she too had experienced it herself. The cold, icy guard against someone you know will be able to harm you in a way that could provoke emotional corruption. It doesn't want to get hurt, it doesn't want to make it a possibility. This was how it prevented it, by destroying all cover, all of its true nature, and put up a stoic, destructive one.

That was why it never harmed her, because she knew emotion. But Vegeta couldn't. Not yet, and she doubted this Frieza character would even come close.

Then it came back to her...The creature was about to explode once again.

With sudden cold fear in every inch of her trembling body, she gathered up her nerve and started for the creature, the temperature plunging with every step. Her eyes moistened as she got herself up onto the platform. Her wet eyes peered at the electrified being, praying that it didn't recognize the distance it found in her before.

It wouldn't look at her. She tried to get real close to it, but it had an ice shield around it that deflected her attempts.

"Please..." She barely whispered, seeing with a new hope its antennae perk up at her soft voice.

The shield faded slowly, tears of new joy welling up in her eyes. She went to it again, but it still wouldn't look at her. Gulping with hesitation, she reached out her fingers slowly to it...

And she touched it.

Its eyes shot open, staring back at her and instead of sending her up that spiral of power like last time, it only lowered its raised powers down, easing her to the fullest as a relieved excitement swelled up in her chest. She had calmed it.

A small smile formed itself on her slightly blue lips, although the snow disappeared. Her eyes looked back into its own, a new understanding formed.

"Do away with her boys."

Suddenly the understanding had vanished, and the world underneath her did as well.

Enter: Prince Vegeta no Ouji /Location: Unknown

[Minutes ago...]

Still perched on the ledge top, he questioned a lot of things. He questioned why he couldn't be who he was years ago. He questioned what the hell was keeping Frieza from an early but well-deserved grave. He questioned if what had just happened between the woman and him had really happened. He questioned if any of this dreamlike experience had. He questioned a lot of things, still perched on that ledge top.

It struck him like a knife through his chest. The iced air pierced his face, arms, and hands, his eyes shot back to the woman's lost direction. The power had returned, according to his Ki detection. Instead of darting to its location, he waited, as if he hadn't done that enough through the day.

Interestingly enough, he felt a dramatic increase in the once cool temperature minutes later. Curiosity sparked in his ebony eyes as he felt it again, only...

It was not the creature's.

Eyes shot wide open with realization, he launched up in the air, panic erasing his worry about Ki detection, but only to see a sight that would forever etch into his mind and extend his nightmares. It was in fact Frieza, with two henchman at his side. The woman was smiling a the creature, her back to Frieza when one of his men shot a blindingly rapid laser through her upper back.

Her body shook ever so slightly, a tear falling slowly down a paling cheek. She fell limp then, the pound of her body hitting the ground echoing through his still mind.

He could still see the glittering teardrop frozen on her cheek, the last thing coming from the eyes that had given him the feelings he thought would never return to plague him.

But now that he had regained his feelings, he had lost her.

Before he could truly express the inflammation of his anger at that enticing moment, the Earth expressed itself before him.

Enter: Prince Vegeta no Ouji (again) /Location: Unknown

Eyes opened with a start. Blood pumped rapidly in still veins. Every open and bleeding would only seared him with golden energy. Sat up instantly. Eyes, bloodshot, darted in every direction to collect environment. Pain pulled down head and muscles ached. Fatigue swept over, but all of this was easily conquered with the Saiyan Prince's immunity to weakness.

It all came back to him in a flood of consciousness. He did remember the conditions of those days, he almost felt he was reliving them, but he himself felt different. It was like smelling the memory, but not being able to taste it.

Immediately, he knew what it was that had changed him.

It had always been her pride...

"Yeah...You know, I doubt you would be able to see in this-" Bulma was cut off.

"Shut up, woman! I never asked for your input!" He felt shock run through him when she stood, a look of fury on her face.

"How dare you call me that! I don't care what you asked, you sexist baboon!"

His eyes widened slightly, but then he registered what she had just called the Prince of Saiyans, and he too felt rage course through him,"Do you have any idea whatsoever who you are speaking to, you insolent human?!"

"No, and I don't care either!"

It had always been her voice...

She shrugged and went a few steps toward the house to get everyone, but stopped and said,"Are you always this anti-social in the morning?"

"Is your voice always that deep in the mornings?"

He could sense a sheet of crimson creeping onto her cheeks, even with her back to him,"...Whatever. I can't help it that I have to stimulate my throat after hours of not using it. You still haven't answered my question."

It had always been her eyes...

"I'M the one who should be glaring, mister! You're the bastard who took me from my home, from my loving parents, and put my life in fucking danger! I remember it all, you ass! I KNEW I had seen you before!"

"I have always been prepared to see you. Always," Her gaze grew more intense, more alluring in something of an unrealized passion sparked in her reddening azure eyes.

It had always been her vision...

"No," She calmly started,"I do not symbolize myself as a powerful, egotistical enemy, constantly making them and chasing imaginary goals and dreams to make something out of a forgotten life. I do not draw these lines to wow everyone so then I have something to throw in everyone's face when they figure out my problems."

He was silent. For the first time, he felt the stab and said nothing.

It had been her compassion...

A scream flew from her heart to her mouth,"NO! Stop!"

Dodoria looked up at her, eyes wide and startled,"Huh?"

"No, you can't! Come on, he's done nothing to deserve this!" She cried, her eyes welled up with tears.

It had been her passions...

"I need you," She heatedly rasped in his ear, somehow finding words in the storm of sensations flooding through her in his arms. Once on the pad, she brought his lips down to hers again, her desire for him too much for her to pay any attention to patience.

It had been her love...

She choked a sob, trying so hard with all of her will to keep it down. To show such an emotional lack of control would disgust him, and she wanted anything but that. He gave her an amused gaze instead of a revolted one.

"Woman...You shouldn't waste your tears."

"No, Vegeta. You aren't a waste, not after what you just did for me...," She said in a soothing voice, low enough to make his skin chill with something he couldn't recognize.

Yes, it was her now, it always had been. She alone replaced the source of what had driven him so violently with adrenaline.

Yes, he could finally say it.

She had replaced his pride.

No, she had been his pride. For the past three months he could find nothing more irresistible, more identifiable, more intriguing than the individual he once declared weak and incompetent. He pitied his past self, the self that had rendered the woman useless. He pitied his past self because it was about to experience a change that would have been prevented if he could.

No, he wasn't ashamed, but the confusion of the past three months of these feelings that were at once startling and charming was certainly not worth it. All the self-questioning and reflection of what he had become and how that would change.

The woman had taught him emotion, she had taught him how to feel something for another.

Now he would show her.

Vegeta got to his feet, oblivious to his various injuries. The purposefulness in his strode to the battered woman would have sent chills down Frieza's spine, and it probably did if he was watching. Vegeta's mind was cleared of all explanations and questions when the woman's life entered it. He picked her up in his arms, her clothes burnt in certain areas where her skin wasn't. Her face was sheened with icy ash, not a black shade, but a clear brown one.

He carried her through the darkness of the smoke, and into the light of the sunless yet white clouds above them. His heart was hammering madly as he let her down, immediately checking her pulse that if absent would send him through the rampage of his life.

Sure enough, it was thudding ever so softly against his fingers. She was alive. This flame that had burned too much of him to desert her was still flickering ever so passionately.

His sharp, onyx eyes sparked with pride. Of course she was alive. Nothing could kill that stubborn spirit of hers.

He felt a light lift at the irony in that thought, but it faded when the true cause of everything crossed his mind again.

Frieza's Ki was detected in minutes, only miles away from the explosion. Vegeta wondered if the creature was still alive after self-destructing itself, but then he remembered this happening before. the last time Frieza was around and when he had arrived on Earth.

He recalled Bulma's own explanation...

"That is what it had a hard time with, because you Saiyans can't feel, because you refuse to submit to emotions...That is why the creature feels so threatened and opposed to you."

It most likely felt the same to , he guessed, snickering inside at the obviousness at that. Of course it did to Frieza, of all people. But no wonder it had confided in her, she was an emotion queen at that. Although it had earn her survival, Vegeta wondered if it was always a good thing or not.

He sighed. He could be handing himself his own death by doing this, but when he looked back down at Bulma's unconscious face...

It was the last thing on his mind to stop.

Enter: Frieza /Location: Unknown

He was aware that most of his energy was down as he got to his feet. Rage coursed through him at the thought of losing all that energy, and not one injury had been inflicted in the cost of it. Spitting on the newly formed ashes, still smoking, he growled, but was pleased that at least he still had enough power to unleash his newest weapon.

With a smirk that fell into a frown, he noticed his handymen had deceased from the explosion. Indifferently, he scanned the area for any Ki.

He could not find the source of the blast, and that bothered him immensely. It was almost enough to strike fear in him at the possibility of not being informed about something with fatal power, and he also wanted to see if the thing could be useful to his advantage.

Scowling, he located the Prince's Ki, accomplished by another that was barely flickering. A wicked smirk played along his coloured lips at the mere idea of Vegeta being drawn to a weak creature like that. He had heard of the girl with the odd-coloured hair that was at the planet where was defeated, and by the same explosion that occurred merely minutes ago.

Suddenly an idea that the girl was connected to that blast struck his mind like a bullet. After all, it was his men's laser that had hit her the second before the explosion came to be. A cold hatred settled upon him at the thought of a lowly human harboring the control to defeat HIM, an invincible King-to-be, but that hatred was what triggered another idea...

That power shall be no more, if she was to be no more...

Enter:Prince Vegeta no Ouji /Location: Unknown

His heart was racing, almost more rapidly than his veins as a bold high of adrenaline sped through them. Once pushed away images of the one that triggered a forgotten feeling filled his mind, like a film inside his head of every glimpse he had caught of her. Her voice, her eyes, her hair. It was all he could see, it was all that blinded him from everything he had once known.

And he loved it.

He relished in it just as he would to the idea of murder, destruction, chaos that he inflicted upon the many people and planets in those faded years, but this one was quite real to him. He felt more alive, more driven and the high lasted longer than any other murderous energy he had felt before.

He found Frieza not long after he had left Bulma. Surprisingly, Frieza was airborne as well.

"Well, well, well...If it isn't the Prince that ran," Frieza greeted mockingly. Vegeta only smirked.

"And for good reason. Such idiocy may be contagious."

The smirk vanished on Frieza's face as it turned even icier,"So you picked up a humour along the way. I thought I brought you up better than that, Prince."

Vegeta shrugged,"Then you thought wrong, not highly unusual of course."

Frieza lifted his head stubbornly to hold his dignity,"Alright, enough comedy Vegeta. I am a very busy person and-"

He stopped, knowing he was about to go too far. If he let Vegeta know he was distracted by something else, something of Vegeta's, then he would never get to what needed to be done with Vegeta there.

'Best to distract the chicken before striking its egg...'

"Yes, you must be busy with me not there to do the work for you. That laziness has always repelled me as well."

"I said enough! Now, will you quit fighting with words or will you disgrace yourself some more?"

Vegeta said nothing, getting into fighting stance. Frieza's lips curled up a bi again, confident as ever that the mouse was following the trap.

Frieza got into fighting position as well, and it was a seconds eye contact that began the battle of their lifetimes.

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Cliffhangercliffhangercliffhangerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Heehehee sorry about those. Just such goodness hm? Like the reviews I will get. Thanks for those, by the way.

Til next time.

~Jckash033333333