Shavneral

Chapter 3 – Kakarot

I watched the person called Vegeta walk away, unsure as to what I'd just experienced. Vegeta had spoken with what seemed like honesty, but he'd also fought back when I attacked him, and he had probably been lying. I'd seen it all before; you trust them and you pay the price. He's trying to deceive me, I thought with as much conviction as I could, he has to be, what other explanation is there?

Surely what this "Vegeta" character said wasn't actually true? I think I would know myself better than he would. Still, there was something haunting about his endless black eyes. He seemed to have seen his share of hardship, like I had; though I distrusted him no less for having that small fact in common with me.

Who was he to show up out of the blue and claim to know everything about me? He didn't know anything. He couldn't. Because knowledge was power; and I wasn't willing to give that much power to someone like Vegeta. Besides, the things he said made no sense. I didn't remember anything of the sort.

One of my earliest, clearest memories from before, when I was still new to this place – I assumed it was years ago; I had a hard time measuring time here - was waking up in agony; with fresh, ruthlessly deep slashes in my back from the crack of a whip, over and over. I had barely been able to open my eyes; I was in so much pain. It had occurred to me that I had no idea how I'd gotten where I was. There were people there; people I didn't recognize. They were talking amongst themselves, as if I weren't there – they probably assumed I was still unconscious or something.

I remember hearing their words. Most of what they said didn't make sense, but I remember panicking when I realized I didn't remember anything; andI remember listening to their conversation raptly, hanging on every word with the desperation of a dying man.

"…Such resilience," one man was saying in an undertone, "Had to whip him for days before he started to crack."

"What happened?" another asked quietly, "How did you get him to submit?"

"Well, it was actually simple." The first man replied with a self-satisfied smirk, "Manipulating him to come here was like taking candy from a child. And once he let down his guard, all it took was the right timing and the right amount of lashes."

"He resisted, I assume?" a third man put in.

"Damn straight," the first man nodded grimly, "Nearly tore my arm out of its socket the first day; and after that he still protested, mostly just verbally, though."

"And after that?" the second man asked in a hushed voice.

"He stopped questioning and making threats around day three," the first man answered slowly, not without relish, "I came to him in his cage on day four; he didn't even seem to know where he was. He kept repeating one word: 'Kakarot, Kakarot', over and over. I assume that's what his name was before,"

"Kakarot, huh? Interesting… Well, from the struggle he put up, I presume he'll make a kick-ass fighter." The third man said.

The first man just smirked and nodded. Then darkness had closed over my vision again and I passed out.

After that, my life was a living hell. I don't know what my life was like before, or whether I even had a childhood in the first place. Maybe I just appeared in this place. Maybe I was born here. I had no clue. I just concentrated on getting through each day, second by agonizing second.

The first few weeks of 'training' were the worst. I was whipped so many times that I think they messed up my nervous system or something. I was almost constantly in some state of pain. The men seemed to realize that, so they didn't threaten me with pain after a while. They threatened me with worse pain. I think the worst of it was when they found out I was afraid of fire. I didn't know why I was, but they took full advantage of it; burning my palms if I didn't do something right, brandishing torches at me if I snapped at them. Sometimes I think they induced fear and pain just because they could.

After I while I stopped caring and, for a short time, my state of 'holy fucking shit!' turned to a state of what might have been tolerance. I didn't care if they whipped me, because I knew they would stop sooner or later. I didn't care if they burned me, because they'd get bored of it eventually and they knew I needed my hands to fight. So three weeks went by where I just didn't care, and those short weeks were the easiest days, though they were by no means easy. They were just bearable.

Then they cropped my ears and nose. They didn't explain what they were doing, they just snapped shackles on my wrists and forced me to kneel while a man dressed reasonably like a doctor – and I say 'reasonably' because he was obviously not a doctor - ran a red-hot, razor-sharp blade around the outside of my ear. The heat was for cauterizing the flow of blood, I later learned. And you better believe it hurt. It hurt so. fucking. bad. It was worse when they cut off the end of my nose, literally with a knife. I wanted to scream, I wanted to attack my tormenters, but my 'training' and my chains allowed no such thing; so I just bit my lip hard to keep from making a sound and held still while my face was mutilated deliberately.

And then I lost the tip of my thumb in a fight with a wolf. Skin, flesh and bone, a whole section of the finger was just gone. I still killed the wolf; and when the men came over to me, they just glanced at the injury, muttered something about how 'accident happen', and walked away. I questioned them, asking them what I was supposed to do with just half a thumb, whether I would even be able to fight. They admonished me angrily for speaking out of turn, and two burly guards took me by the shoulders and 'escorted' me out of the ring. They threw me back in my cage without so much as a word of comfort, and I just hugged my knees to my chest, hung my head and cried.

I think that experience was what broke me. The fact that these people – the only people I knew, the only people in my whole world – could do such a thing, it just erased any trace of humanity I might have had in the beginning. I became an animal. I barely remembered how to speak, and when I did it was in a low, rasping, grinding voice. A voice raw from screaming and snarling. I saw everyone as an enemy. I hated the humans that bound me and tortured me. I hated the drugged, beaten animals I fought that reflected my own suffering. I hated the fucking rats that scurried across the floor of my cage. I think I ate those rats sometimes. I think I hated them enough to pin them to the ground and tear them to pieces before eating them, bones and all. I became something unfeeling and savage after a while. I became a monster. And when I mauled one of the guards that came to my cell one day, I was chained up, even in my own cage; the place I'd once felt remotely safe in.

All I knew afterwards was the feeling of cold chains around my neck and wrists, and the smell of sawdust, sweat and blood. I heard the growling, baying, and snarling of the animals that shared my prison every day. I heard the shouting of humans and the scrape of various objects as they were dragged or pushed across the floor. The sound of footsteps. The smell of animal waste and the taste of fear in the air. All I knew was what was in the moment. I knew no past, I saw no future.

And then Vegeta showed up and I was forced to contemplate the memories I had buried deep years ago. Memories I was afraid to examine because they had been so painful. So here I was, lost in the past, remembering.

I heard the snap of a whip behind me hitting the ground and I turned around, returning to the present. A man I didn't recognize – but they were all the same, so I didn't really care – was brandishing the weapon at me threateningly.

"Back to your cage, Kakarot," he said flatly, pointing to the gate at the side of the ring with the hilt of the whip.

I bared my teeth at him, my eyes flitting to where Vegeta had left a moment ago; then my gaze returned to the man in front of me.

"You know the penalty for your hostility," the man leered, "Now," he snapped his whip, "Are you going to go on your own or do I have to make you?"

I remembered how fearless I'd been around the man who'd released me from my cage this morning. All that confidence was just gone now. I hung my head and dropped to all fours tiredly, walking on my hands and knees fluidly as I followed the man back to my cell. He made to shove me inside, but I growled warningly at the approaching hand and he backed off. The man fastened my shackles around my wrists, and the heavy cuff around my neck, picked up the neglected food bowl from before and left without a word; closing and latching the door to the cage behind him.

I dropped my gaze to the floor covered with sawdust. I drew up a recent memory of Vegeta's face as he told his story. He'd seemed so earnest, but I couldn't make myself believe him. Not now. After all, even if he was telling the truth; why would he want to rescue me? I was just a worthless animal in an inescapable prison. And I guess I was bound here, body and mind. I don't know if I even knew how to live beyond the bars and chains.

But even though I told myself a thousand, no, a million times, that Vegeta was a liar and he would no doubt betray me if I believed him for a second, I couldn't smother the small, wavering hope that he'd come back.

TBC