The Veil

Chapter One: Remember

January 23rd, Age 762

"Again."

Gohan rolled his head to the left to look at Mister Piccolo. The craggy surface of the rocky ground beneath him jutted into his back as his torso expanded along with his desperate heaves for breath. If he weren't so exhausted, he might've been bothered by the bits of dirt being blown into his face by the cool morning breeze. As it was, though, finding the strength to pick himself up was more pressing of an issue.

"Again."

"Please... Mister Piccolo..."

"You're going to get up and you're going to attack me again, boy! You don't get to go back to your parents until you learn to not give up!"

He had been unsure before, but now he was certain - Mister Piccolo was totally insane.

It had been about two months ago, when his training was just getting started, that he had tried to run away from one of the early instructional sessions they had had as a group when his daddy had accidentally hit him too hard and made him cry. His mommy had come out of the house and proceeded to scold both his daddy and Mister Piccolo about it.

What else was he supposed to have done? Getting hit in the face hurt really bad.

Then, Mister Piccolo had yelled at both his mommy and daddy about 'coddling' - whatever that meant.

All he knew was that he would rather study with his mommy breathing down his neck than take another fist to the mouth. So, he had done what he assumed any other proper five year old would do - throw a tantrum until the adults gave up.

In retrospect, Gohan was wrong to have underestimated Mister Piccolo's persistence. The green man had grabbed him by the collar and tried to fly them both off of the mountain without his parents' permission.

Needless to say, his daddy wasn't thrilled with the idea of Mister Piccolo abducting him. He had gotten really mad and a started a fight with the green man when he had refused to change his mind about taking him away. It was an eye opening experience for Gohan; watching the two men fight as opposed to working together.

It was the first time Gohan suspected that the two hadn't always been allies. The way they had traded words as sharply as they traded blows was proof enough. There had clearly been some animosity between them; and Mister Piccolo apparently was still sore about losing to his daddy in the past. It was at least good to learn that his daddy was indeed the strongest.

He hadn't expected them to end the fight with a draw, though. And he really hadn't expected Mister Piccolo to convince his daddy that it was for the best.

The last words his daddy had said to him before letting Mister Piccolo take him away drifted into his mind's focus.

'Don't cry, son. It's gonna be okay - it's only for a little while. Piccolo was right about me. With the kind of power you're hiding inside of you, I'm not doing you any favors by going easy. I just don't have what it takes to push you that hard - not this soon anyway. Listen... when things get tough again - because they will - you need to be able to protect yourself and your mother in case I'm not around to do it. You're my pride and joy, Gohan. I believe in you. Even if you don't believe in yourself.'

Gohan groaned as he rolled off of his back and got his hands under himself. He pushed up off of the ground, finding a little strength he hadn't realized was still there as he struggled.

'There's no doubt in my mind that you'll grow up to be even stronger than me. Heck, you're already smarter than me.'

He grit his teeth as he pulled a knee under him. Then he straightened his back and lifted his head to stare Mister Piccolo in the eye.

'When the training gets to be too hard for you, just try and remember what you felt like when you thought Raditz was going to kill me. You used that power to stop her from hurting me. That's the power we need you to harness, son.'

Gohan found it just a bit easier to climb back to his feet now. He took a low stance with his feet shoulder width apart and his arms bent at his waist. His shaky hands curled into fists as Mister Piccolo looked down on him with smugness.

The wind was strong this morning. It kicked up a small cloud of dirt from the rocky soil between he and Mister Piccolo, carrying it into the air above their heads. Gohan followed it with his eyes and spotted the branch of a tree root jutting from the cliff face behind the man. At the end of it was a birds nest bustling with activity. Three or four hatchlings - he was too far away to be sure - were chirping up a storm as the much larger mother was trying to feed them.

Then he spotted something else moving against the otherwise still surface of the rocky outcropping.

A snake, with a head nearly as large as the mother bird's body, was slithering quietly down from up above. The mother was so preoccupied with feeding her young, that she didn't notice the other hungry mouth closing in on her and her babies.

'Gohan, there's no reason to be afraid of using your natural gifts. Sometimes fighting is the only way you can protect what's precious to you. You already demonstrated that kind of spirit before. It won't always be easy, but standing up for those who are hurt or can't defend themselves is worth it. You'll see.'

He raised his right hand - aimed above and to the right of Mister Piccolo's head - as his brow furrowed with concentration. Even though he knew what he was trying to do, it still came as somewhat of a surprise when the small orb of energy shot from the palm of his hand and landed right on target - blasting the snake away from the family of birds.

"I'm ready, Mister Piccolo."

How long had she been here?

Gine asked herself that question everytime she had a moment of lucid thought but still was no closer to getting an answer. Granted, lucidity had become somewhat of a rare state for her as of late. The machine they had her hooked into most of the time made sure of that. The dimly lit and windowless room didn't help her situation either.

That, and the drug they had seen fit to pump her full of made making detailed observations about her environment very difficult. Although, being constantly sedated was probably the only thing helping her survive through the scorching pain she felt when they turned on their machine.

When they flipped the switch to make the cold table she was strapped onto slide into the tube of glowing and blinking lights, it was like being dipped into a lake of fire while a vice tightened around her skull.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

At first, she had thought it was just torture for the sake of torturing her. That was until, after some time, they had come to her with stacks of printed images - familiar images - asking questions. It was like they had peered into her dreams and plucked out stills of things she was still having trouble making sense of.

It had occurred to her after that first meeting that the frequency and detail of her dreams had increased in almost direct response to her exposure to their torture device. In one of her earlier moments of respite, she had begun to speculate on the meaning of her dreams. Then, so soon afterward that it couldn't have been a coincidence, she gets interrogated on those subjects.

Even in her pitiful state, she couldn't miss something so obvious. They were her memories, not dreams. Scattered and broken, though they may have been, they were still there floating around inside of her head.

These people, who still had not introduced themselves or given her any clue of her whereabouts, had been using that infernal machine to dig around inside of her head. They must not have been doing a very good job of it if they still had to come to her for help making sense of things. She had been almost as stumped as they were.

However, nothing they had done so far had given her any incentive to want to help them. She was glad for any sort of break from the torture, though, so she had chosen to drag things out as long as she could - even going as far as coming up with answers off the top of her head if they seemed believable enough. It wasn't technically lying since she didn't even know the truth herself.

Today had been no different.

The cold table she was strapped onto was raised to a near vertical position as a figure wearing one of the white environmental suits she had begun to grow familiar with stood before her.

There was a low table positioned between her and the person who had been asking today's round of questions. Laid out on the table was a spread of pictures with little sticky notes attached where the other person had added written details.

"What about this one?" they asked.

A gloved hand moved to uncover an image depicting the face of a being with pink skin who had a protruding white brow, large purple gem-like growth covering the top of its head, and two black horns jutting from opposite sides. Its mouth was twisted into a smirk but it was the eyes that really struck her. Those red eyes.

Gine felt her body seize up involuntarily as her eyes grew wider. She was aware almost instantly that she had regained a bit of extremely important information and that it was regarding the alien being in the photograph.

Her trembling hands curled into fists and her eyes grew cloudy with tears of rage as she spoke. "Frieza..."

Her breathing grew heavy and ragged as she felt a spark of something come to life within her. It was primal and instinctive - whispering to her without words to grasp onto and use it while promising the power to rend flesh from the bones of her enemies.

"Frieza!" She yelled his name at the top of her lungs as she suddenly found herself with the strength to fight against her restraints.

The singular dim light hanging from the ceiling of the room began to flicker violently in response to her anger. She could also hear sparks chirping from the machine behind her as its electronics began to short in a chain reaction.

Her interrogator was shouting at her to calm down when three identically dressed individuals stormed into the room. Two of them rushed over to try and manually restrain her movement while the third readied a syringe.

"No!" Gine shouted, focusing on the one who she knew was going to try and knock her out. She glared at the needle before exerting the repressed energy that was just starting to wake up.

The glass syringe shattered in that persons hands before she knocked said person off of their feet with an invisible push. The moment the other three flinched was all she needed to catch them with another burst and knock them all down as well.

With a heave, she flexed every muscle she had conscious control of and snapped off the metal straps that had cuffed her to the table. She slid off of the table and down to her feet - almost stumbling forward but managing to catch herself. Her head turned, eyes locking onto the ajar door. It was time to go.

Her leg muscles, aching slightly from being stood upon after sitting idle for so long, coiled before she started into a sprint for the door.

Gine burst into a brightly lit corridor before squinting her eyes against the phlourescent lights, white walls, and shiny floor. The blaring siren of a warning klaxon suddenly began to assault her ears as the bright white light was immediately joined by a flashing red.

"Emergency lockdown initiated," a feminine automated voice said over loudspeaker.

Gine looked in both directions of the wide hallway and saw thick blast doors slowly begin to slide into place at either end where it reached the intersections. She knew what that meant.

Deciding to go left, she pushed into another sprint and made it to the blast door before it was closed. She rolled under it just in time but got her loose fitting grey pants caught on the way out. She yanked her right leg and tore half of the fabric clean off before climbing back to her feet.

When she got her head up she quickly scanned forward, left, and right to see more blast doors closing ahead of her in all directions. She chose quickly and sprinted forward making it to the next junction just as the door was sealed shut in front of her.

She made a fist, reeled it back, and then smashed it against the metal door with all of her might. A huge dent deformed the metal around her small hand but didn't move the door. She swung again and did more damage - this time managing to make the edges curl away from the borders of wall, ceiling, and floor. One more hit and it was knocked clean off before falling to the ground.

She stepped over the fallen slab of metal as she passed through the threshold and jogged up to the next one before repeating her three hit door unlocking procedure.

Four more blast doors went down on her chosen path before she was confronted by an armed squadron at the fifth. When they opened fire, it was with a combination of energy projectiles and sharp metal bullets.

Gine had no trouble flexing her invisible energy to deflect the bolts of light away from her. The bullets, however, must have had more mass than she anticipated because a few of them managed to carry on and blow through the edges of her baggy grey tunic before grazing her skin. She embraced the pain, enjoying the way it seemed to sharpen her senses against the lingering sedative still in her system.

Her right arm lifted and she discharged an orb of white energy, the size of an average person's head, straight at the group of men. The blast exploded on contact, knocking the men to the ground and blowing the door behind them off its track.

She paid no mind to the cries of the injured soldiers as she stepped over their fallen bodies and proceeded through the opening she had made. However, as she stepped into the next intersection, she was taken by surprise when something large struck the right side of her head with a significant amount of force. She was hauled off of her feet by it and sent crashing through the closest blast door to her left.

It took her a second to blink away the spots that had formed over her dazed vision but, when she did, she quickly snapped her eyes back in the direction the hit had come from and saw a man wearing some sort of exoskeletal robotic armor marching slowly toward her. He had his right hand lifted and aimed at her while cartridges spun around his forearm to reload a large barrel below his wrist.

Gine didn't think it would kill her, but she did want to avoid taking another hit if possible. So, when the next round came shooting at her, she used her superior speed and reflexes to push herself off of the ground where she had fallen - avoiding the large projectile at the last second.

She carried her momentum, rebounded off of the ceiling, and dove into a full sprint toward the new assailant. The man was wholly unprepared for her level of swiftness and could do nothing to stop her from thrusting a fist crackling with energy through the chest plate of his suit.

Like his comrades, he also wore a protective helmet and saw from behind a tinted visor. So, his shout and gasp came out muffled to Gine's ears before he and his machine suit collapsed into a heap on the floor.

"I won't be held captive any longer! You hear me!?" she shouted into the vacant corridor. Whether it was someone nearby or someone listening in remotely, she was sure she would be heard. "Either you people let me out, or I keep this up until all of you are writhing in pain at my feet. One way or another, this ends today!"

Neguro sat behind his stainless steel desk with his elbows resting upon the surface and his fingers laced together under his chin. His eyes were narrowed at the footage being projected into his utilitarian office.

The alien woman was crazy if she thought he was actually going to stand down and let her walk out of here. She was one of the most valuable pieces in his game of chess.

He watched as the rest of his Battle Jacket operators closed in on the woman from every direction and engaged her with their high powered projectiles. She dodged every single one and even caused some of his men to fall from friendly fire.

"Damn you, Gero..." he muttered, cursing the doctor again for leaving and forcing him to rely on inadequate stand-ins to act as his engineering team and every other scientific department the man had single handedly served as.

The old mark-one suits just couldn't cut it against the likes of these ki wielding types.

He dialed Kobo Rend's lab and waited for somebody to pick up. "Hello?" It was one of the lab assistants he had contracted from the outside.

"Put Doctor Rend on," he ordered, sternly. He heard the assistant shuffle away before hearing the voice he wanted a few seconds later.

"Yes? Who is this? I'm kinda busy at the moment," Rend's voice spoke. Neguro could hear the irritation at having to deal with a distraction come through in his tone.

"It's me," Neguro replied, unperturbed. "What's the status of the weaponized delivery system for the sedative?"

"Oh!" Rend replied, changing his tone upon realizing who he was speaking with. "It's almost done, actually. The armory technician you sent down is helping me test fit the cartridge into a sniper rifle barrel. I'll be honest with you; I don't know how the casing is going to hold up against the explosive pressure. Also, we had to cobble this thing together on short notice, so your sniper will only have two shots."

"He only needs one," Neguro replied before cutting the transmission off.

His eyes focused back to the footage and he noticed, with a great amount of disappointment, that all of his Battle Jackets had fallen. The alien was now moving uncontested through the lowest halls of his facility's interrogation department.

I want to thank everyone who has read this so far. I'm actually proud of this story because it represents a change in my style of writing which I think is pretty interesting. It's not perfect by a long shot but I feel like I've improved in certain areas. Please leave a review and let me know what you all think.

-dS