A/N: I was inspired to write a chapter to this story which I haven't had time to touch in nearly 1,5 years (sweatdrop)... but I updated at last. I could say this is dedicated to Kuririn Fan for being such source of inspiration and encouragement... Read on!

Disclaimer: Thou shall plot and plan, yet thou will never own...

Chapter V – The Arrival

The wind rushed past her in gusts and her ears were popping from the quick pressure change; Bulma fell like a rock, the trip to the bottom of the ravine seemingly taking forever. Yet, she was quite content. She had not been killed by the Yarogajins and those nasty abominations hadn't caught her, either. The miscolored female Saiyajin still hated the feeling of helplessness. She was perfectly capable of flying on her own and sending most of the people in universe into oblivion with her powers and here she was: plummeting downward to her impending, painful and rocky death...

Free falls had never been Bulma's thing, anyway.

But this was the outcome of her last chance. ' I'll see you, my comrades, in the eternal battlefield, in the otherworld. There's no chance for our survival, I know it...' she let the thought go as she sensed the ground getting closer. It was funny how and what you could think when you were about to di---

SPLASH!!

All the air in Bulma's lungs was forced out by the impact as she hit the surface of the icy cold water back first. Her blue eyes had only time to widen in surprise before she lost her sight and everything went black for a moment. Hundreds of needles seemed to pierce her tough Saiyajin skin and she wanted to scream, her sense of direction spinning around wildly.

It was fucking cold!

' A river... there was a deep river on the very bottom... but Yarogasei doesn't have any rivers...' her hazy thoughts told her as she was swept away by the strong current like a rag doll. Her lungs burned, her head ached where she had received the cut and she was downright panicking. Because of the lack of any big seas and lakes on Vegetasei none of the Saiyajins really excelled at swimming. Like the monkey they were often referred to as an insult, Saiyajins didn't like to swim and tended to avoid any watery planets or water altogether... it was another deep-rooted instinct of a primal animal their race possessed from the very pre-historic era: water killed if you went too deep.

Water was maybe their only another weak spot besides their sensitive tails to some extent.

The current swept her upwards suddenly and her head popped over the surface. Quickly she drew deep breath, filling her acing lung with sweet oxygen. It hurt like hell, but at the same time no other time in her life had breathing felt so good. Bulma managed to struggle and hold herself up on the surface, desperately trying to remember what she knew about swimming and the techniques in water. The coldness of the water was making her body stiff and she wasn't sure if she could feel her toes and fingers anymore.

" Shit..." she cursed as she swallowed some of the water and began hacking furiously, trying to get the water out of her throat and lungs. ' If I only could fly...' came the bitter thought as she fought against the rushing water masses only to be pulled under the water once again. The whirl of water caught her and easily began throwing her around recklessly and all the female Saiyajin could do was to hold her breath and wish the water would let its grasp go of her body.

Rocks and walls of the tunnel she suddenly realized she was in, scarped her arms and legs and the oppressive weight of the earth surrounding her became almost mind-numbing. ' Underwater tunnel... I'm being pulled underground...' For a moment Bulma had thought she might survive after all but this seemingly was not to be the case. She lost consciousness when she was slammed against the stone surface of the tunnel due to the vicious current.

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The hiss of the mechanics on the the pod's door was the only sound in the air and soon three people had stepped out of the pods. They stood awkwardly for a moment taking in their new surroundings and noted the five empty pods nearby in their own craters. Vegeta's scowled deeply at the new environment: the air was humid and he was already sweating like a pig despite being used to high temperatures. The blood red sky and the barren land didn't impress him and the greenery at the distance looked intimidating enough even to him.

ChiChi and Juuhachi looked around curiously, even a bit fearfully, glancing suspiciously at anything. There was no sign of the purgers.

" Could they be dead, already?" ChiChi voiced their shared and unspoken question.

The only answer was Vegeta's murderous glare.

" Yes, shutting up, your majesty..." ChiChi muttered and kicked a stone on the ground absently. She had never been off-planet before and these new surroundings were creeping her out. No matter how she angled her thoughts there was something utterly wring and dangerous about this planet. She knew, as every else Saiyajins did, that Yarogajins were the nightmare of everyone and the purge of the planet had been in the pool for years. Yarogajins were said to be strong and nearly unbeatable bastards and the value of the planet was one of the highest in planet trade's history...

" Well, two of them are," the blonde Saiyajin's cool voice pierced the air as she pointed to the horizon where two bodies lay still. " My scouter can't detect them. They're goners."

" What..." Vegeta murmured and the trio hurried to the site of the dead.

" Holy...!!" ChiChi almost shrieked and Vegeta and Juuhachi could only stare in shock. The bodies were mutilated in the worst way possible, the intestines spilled around them in gory show of cruelty, blood covering every inch of the area. The bodies were totally ripped apart, their mangled faces still portraying the horror of their deaths.

String of curses escaped from Vegeta's mouth. He had seen many gory sights in his life but this certainly took the cake and he felt sick to the stomach for the first time in his young life. He could only stare as the grotesque picture was burning to his retinas, probably to be imprinted to his mind forever. ChiChi closed her eyes in pain and turned around, unable to bear such gruesome sight any longer.

Juuhachi breathed through her teeth, eyes closed in concentration. These two didn't have anything to do with her vision since her mind's eye stayed blank and no indications of the future came to her. ' I might have felt the something earlier if they did have something to do with the whole sorry business...'

" Yarogajins are capable of this caliber of violence?" she asked aloud from herself. Vegeta snorted regally.

" They were third class. Third classes are expandable: always will be, always been! Let's scout around. Will find those remaining three faster by flying," Vegeta ordered nonchalantly, ignoring the gasp of indignation coming from the black-haired Saiyajin female. 'The bitch takes offense on stating the truth about third classes? Weird woman..' he thought absently. The scenario in front of their eyes disturbed him more than he cared to admit by a long shot.

" Very well," the Queen's bodyguard agreed impassively and prepared to fly only to realize she wasn't flying anywhere. Slight panic settled in immediately only to be heightened by ChiChi frightened words.

" What is this? I can't fly! I can fucking even lift myself an inch off the damned ground!"

"What the hell is going on on this planet?" Vegeta roared as he struggled to fly but in vain. A scary thought entered his mind and he slowly lifted his hand. Carefully spreading his fingers and tensing the muscles in his arm the prince of the Saiyajins found out he couldn't produce even a single chi blast. It was strangely disheartening experience for the second strongest Saiyajin alive right after King Vegeta.

" I am... powerless?" he whispered and the seriousness of the situation settled in.

" We're on enemy territory without our powers... and the enemy is capable of much more than we combined could at the moment..." he mumbled. " How this can be... the data bank didn't have any information about this particular planetuar feature..."

" This is certainly no good," ChiChi remarked dryly, her black eyes wildly scanning the horizon, while listening to Vegeta speak to himself. They were sitting ducks at the moment and the Yarogajins could kill them on the spot. Judging from the tortured expressions on the two fallen Saiyajin purgers' faces they death would not be quick one... She looked down, trying to contain the shameful emotion of uncontrolled fear bubbling inside her. She was a Saiyajin for Kami's sake and...

" Footprints? Bulma's footprints?" Her eyes widened.

" What was that, woman?" Vegeta barked as his eyes caught the woman muttering something seemingly unintelligent.

" Footprints! These are Bulma's footprints: only she has feet this small and the double cross pattern on the soles of her boots look like this!" Her eyes followed the direction of their trail. " They've run into the jungle..." She paled in realization. The flame-haired prince knelt to inspect the prints on the sandy earth. Definitely Saiyajin's combat boots' imprint...

" As we should also... Prince Vegeta, I humbly suggest we run for our lives in this instant as cowardly as it may seem," Juuhachi told them in her cool nearly emotionless voice.

" WHAT!" Vegeta roared, appalled at such disgraceful thought but when he looked up and behind the blonde seeress' he quickly agreed. A horde of the most demonic looking creatures was rushing their way and the short male didn't need to check his scouter to feel the powerlevels of the horrible natives. Fight would be their downfall right now... Crossly Vegeta reminded himself that flight too had its place in battle and those who lived to see another day live also to to fight another day: lose the battle, win the war, as the age-old adage went.

" Fine..." he admitted and turned to tell the women they were about to run away only to find the two females missing. He spotted them already running for their lives at the distance , tails trailing behind them in fright. His blood boiled.

" HEY! YOU DON'T LEAVE YOUR PRINCE BEHIND LIKE THIS, YOU FUCKING HEAR ME WENCHES! COME BACK HERE...WAIT! JUST KEEP RUNNING I'LL JUST CATCH UP WITH YOU!"

' Damn this to hell...'

His sprint left a considerable cloud of dust in his wake.

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Kuririn felt like someone had just beaten him with a spacepod on the head dozens of times and the ran over him with it. He stumbled forwards his will alone keeping him standing and keeping going. Previously he had ran through some thick bushes and now he was suffering the consequences of that rash action. The pollen the bushes had given off when he had broken through the plants was obviously extremely poisonous since it even managed to affect his durable Saiyajin body. His head throbbed and his breathing was slow and labored and his hand and legs itched like hell.

" Gah... no can do anymore..." he fell on his knees, the soft moss under hands and legs traitorously inviting for sleeping. He was already running on his extra reserves of power: that stock of energy which could be used in conditions such as these. When you have lost all your power and were practically helpess and your will keeps you standing the energy to do so comes out of nowhere.

" If I ever get outta here alive I'm gonna slug that king a good one straight to da nose..." he crawled forward, crushing the moss in hi clenched fist. The image of the disgusting beasts almost breathing at his neck made him move onwards on four just concentrating on moving when his sensitive nose caught a whiff of familiar smell.

" Kakarott?" his second in command had been on here... His hand met emptiness and he lost his already challenged equilibrium. His body tilted down and he plummeted down to a hole on the ground. Arms wisping he tried to grasp something, anything, to stop his fall and to his utter shock he fell on something semi-soft which broke his fall considerably. Rolling groaning in pain off the animal of whatever he had landed noticed he was in a cave of some sort. Shaking himself off and fighting the nausea threatening to overwhelm him his eyes quickly adjusted to the limited light in the cave.

The cave was spacey with stalactites and stalagmites decorating the walls, floor and roof and a still black underground lake shimmered ominously at the end of the cavern. It smelled like lime and dry chalice and the air was quite stagnant and he also smelled the scent of Kakarott?

" Wait... I fell on him?" he asked himself and quickly scrambled to the body lying directly under the opening in the roof. It was his second in command laying there, definitely unconscious. Keeping his cool, Kuririn inspected his possible wounds on his friend and discovered the almost dried puddle of blood beneath his head. ' Shit... a head injury... there's no telling when he'll wake up and in what cursed condition he will be... at least he's alive and breathing, though.'

" This is so not my day..."

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A/N: Honestly, no idea when the next chapter is going to be up... but in the meantime leave a nice review, eh? JA NE MINNA-SAN!