She had never thought herself short. In fact, on Earth, she could have made a run for her money as a super model with her perfect curves, long legs, narrow waist - and her height, even without high heels. But compared to the monstrously sized aliens who towered above her, and likely outweighed her by hundreds of pounds, she felt utterly miniscule. She hardly stood to the elbow of a good number of these oddly shaped, creepy colored, bizarrely appendaged extra-terrestrials. She was terrified of being squashed between the sea of moving bodies. Thank God she was nimble and that the sheer press of bodies prevented anyone from moving at ridiculous speeds she couldn't hope to match. And, she supposed, she was "small" enough that she could actually squash herself between the angular, negative spaces left from bony protrusions, scaly hides, and horned spikes. Hopefully she wouldn't get impaled on someone's harpoon-like thing or sliced on someone else's – whatever those were.
As the swarm of bodies shuffled towards the exit, she tried pushing her way through legs, under tails, and around appendages. When she had awoken this morning with a headache so massive her vision was doubled and her teeth hurt, everyone had been up and moving. Looking around, she had seen the spot where the Saiyan had been the night before was empty. With her heart hammering in her throat, she had taken off in search of him, not wanting to be left behind. Part of her considered it may be to her benefit that he had left her. But something deep and primal inside her – something she had never known before and would never have trusted a year… a week ago – had screamed that her life depended on finding the Saiyan.
Every moment that passed was another moment panic grew. She didn't question that despite all she had survived so far, she couldn't make it alone. Even if she managed to live… she knew everything that made her fundamentally who she was could – would – disappear if she were on her own. With no one besides herself for checks and balances, she'd start with small compromises; telling herself she could accept something just one time, or that it was ok if something she did or didn't do were the lesser of two distasteful evils. But eventually, more and more often, she would sacrifice morality for survival until there was nothing of herself left. Broken soul, shattered mind, empty of humanity and hope, she wouldn't even able to mourn the losses of those things.
She wanted to remember the feel of sunlight on her face; Earth's perfect, life-giving, golden warmth. She could fight, she could hope – she could be – with nothing but the memory of blazing sunsets painted on the sky behind her closed eyelids.
But she had to find the Saiyan. If she could become his conscience, whether or not he wanted her to be, she'd remember what it was to be human; she would stay herself and eventually – she could fight back. Though he would do everything he could to resist and ruin her, she had felt that lost and lonely beast; stunted, frightened, and crying like a child, crushed beneath the weight of darkness thrust upon his soul. It was enough for her to hope there may be goodness in him, even if he didn't know it himself. If she could be there to teach him what it was to feel with a human heart – hers, since he wasn't human – she could live as well as just survive. And maybe, so could he.
She had no idea what she was doing, no clue why she was risking everything for a frail inspiration. She was going on malformed impressions born from a half-dead Saiyan's buried childhood fear, only shared with her accidentally during a time of pseudo consciousness. She couldn't even be sure they were his. It was possible that she had projected her own desperation and fear into something she could hang onto. It was all she had to work with, and true or not, she fought with everything within her to keep it. Hope meant life, even if that hope was false.
Besides, giving up would cut her more deeply than desperation and fear ever could.
Just then, there was a disturbance ahead of her. She couldn't see had was happened at the source, but the effects were rippling back through the stream of bodies in the form of pushing bodies and jabbing extremities. When the scuffling and prodding reached her, she was no match in size or strength to resist and was forced to the ground. Like a stampede, the horde of aliens plodded over her not seeing, or, more likely, not caring that she was there. A scream both erupted from her throat as it was choked off when a plated foot kicked her in the side, causing her to roll – painfully – towards the thickest element of the surging crowd.
Like a pinball, she was bounced and flung from foot to hoof. With her arms trying to feebly protect her head, and curled as tightly against herself as she could, she mentally scoffed that likely, she was being used purposefully in this manner, as if they really were playing such a game. More than once she felt her bones crack under the weight of so many passers-by as they stepped on her, and several times her consciousness faltered just to be snapped back when something scathingly painful pulled her from the brink of darkness.
She hardly noticed when something gripped her by the neck and flung her to the far wall. The contact was like a vacuum, sucking the air from her lungs as her ribs cracked against its hardness. She crumpled to the floor, and though she struggled to move, her strength felt like it was being pulled through a garden hose with a kink half way through the line. She was only able to sit up with her back against the wall when her blurry eyesight settled on him.
Though the crowd surged around him, he stood statuesque and unmoving, like an immovable boulder in the middle of a rushing river. Everyone broke around him to either side though he put no effort into directing their paths. Every so often, he would momentarily disappear behind the body of an alien passing by. He didn't seem to notice anything around him – though he faced her, his attention was focused downward. Slowly, as if he had known precisely where her eyes would be waiting, he raised his head and looked at – in – her.
Like waves parting before him, he moved towards her unscathed by the alien horde. He stopped when he stood directly before her. She tilted her head to look up at him as he tilted his to the side as if looking at a curious creature with keen but detached interest. Her lower lip trembled in time with her breath, but her eyes remained dry. Like they were once again in the alleyway, he crouched so that his weight was balanced on the balls of his feet. He peered at her, his face pulled into a strange cross between bafflement and exasperation.
His voice flowed over his tongue in something that would have sounded soothing if it weren't for a brief scowl that punctuated the end. When she didn't respond, he stood and glared down at her. Repeating his words more harshly, but still strangely gentle, he glared down at her. She blinked and shook her head, trying to clear it. She couldn't be certain – her head was throbbing worse now than it had been when she had awoken – but something from deep within her mind flared. She frowned. The thought seemed to come from the center of her brain – like it had popped from nothing into something. It wasn't a voice as she may have expected to be; it was more like a powerful urge that spread throughout her mind in such a way it felt like her head was being squeezed from the inside out.
Stand up.
She found herself responding without ever having made the decision to do so. Nonetheless, she struggled to stand using the wall behind her for support. Before she had fully recovered, his eyes had quickly surveyed her and he had nodded once. Whether it was directed towards her or at himself, she didn't know, but the thought floated away as he turned away from her and stepped into the crowd. She threw herself from the wall and rushed to follow. He was larger than her, more powerfully built and likely outweighed her by a hundred pounds or more, but stood only inches taller; she didn't know how he could so gracefully and effortlessly navigate through the mass of bodies.
Looking at his back as he moved forward, she realized that no, he wasn't navigating. Everyone else was moving out of his way. It was subtle – but it was true. By the time he approached anyone, they had moved just enough to be out of his way. Telepathy on me, yes. But he can do that on so many at once? She wondered. She wet her cracked and bleeding lips with her tongue. Most of the damage had been done by his teeth, but there were several new cuts among those healing. She ignored the pain and pushed herself to move faster. He may have prevented her from being trampled, but he certainly wasn't waiting for or helping her now. She practically had to run to stay behind him before the bodies of aliens he left in his wake collapsed back on her.
After a while, she noticed that they had been off the ship for some time. The corridors were as dark off ship as they had been on, and it took almost more concentration than she was capable of to notice that they walls surrounding them were actually rock. The dim light came from a glowing, organic-looking substance clinging to the craggy stones. The air seemed cooler, thicker, and much more humid. Her skin began to pebble despite the lack of draft. It smelled musty and wet, and the ground beneath her feet seemed to slope downwards. If she didn't know better, she'd believe they were in a cavern carved from centuries of exposure to water.
There was another disturbance ahead. Quickly, she huddled as closely as she dared against the Saiyan's back and braced herself. There was no jostling this time, though, and as they moved forward, she saw why. There were a group of aliens – including three of the four who had abducted her from Earth – up ahead who were separating everyone into groups. All the larger aliens were directed to go one way, and all those who seemed diminutive in comparison to the goliaths - like her - were directed to go another way. So, categorized by size had been her assumption until the Saiyan was directed to go one way – and she another.
Her heart fell into her feet. It didn't matter how much she feared his fierce eyes, stern face, and angry demeanor. He had already saved her once. Even if his purposes were completely selfish, they had served her equally selfish purposes – to stay alive. As she was being herded in the opposite direction, she watched him walk further and further away and panicked.
"I'm supposed to go with that group!" She struggled and tried to push against those forcing her to move in the wrong direction. Fumbling to open her cargo pocket, she pulled out the energy pistol and pointed it at the slug-looking creature preventing her from moving the direction she wanted to go. When he – it? – didn't stop pushing her, and instead shoved the very arm holding the pistol at its face – or at least the globular protrusion in which its eyes emerged - she accidentally pulled the trigger.
Time slowed right before it exploded.
The orange eye stalk was torn off in the energy blast of her pistol and arced through the air. It hit the alien she recognized as apple-something in the chest before it plopped to the floor like a worm spouting purplish, steaming goo. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the goriness but somehow, found that her vision had tilted and instead of looking down at the severed eye, she was looking up at the cave ceiling.
All at once, she found herself pinned to the rocky, cold ground while trying to futilely protect her face with arms that were already fractured in several places. She wreathed on the ground as again and again agony seared her flesh. Lash after lash bit her. She didn't know what the whip was made of; it both scalded and flash froze her skin, but worst of all, she felt her life drain away every time the sizzling crack came into contact with her. It was literally sucking the life out of her.
And then – nothing. It took her an excruciating minute more to realize she was no longer being struck, though the sounds of her screaming still filled her ears. They only quieted when she ran out of strength to pull in more air. Trembling and full of fear, she tried to drag herself away but only succeeded in flopping on her side. Through the blurriness of her vision, she saw her unlikely savior. Again.
Standing over her was the Saiyan. Wrapped around the arm held defensively in front of him was the crackling length of the energy whip – but the only apparent pain he suffered was the promise burning in his eyes; a challenge to those before him, daring them to provoke his fury. The purple one –Appule she remembered – grinned widely and nodded to the mass of jelly that now had only one eye. He spoke – in English – likely for her benefit alone.
"If she wants to join the side meant for the strong, let her learn it is a mistake on her own." The orange blob-creature undulated a slimy appendage in response, and the whip let go of its prize and retreated. The purple parasite looked down at her with predatory glee. "You see.. had you done as you were supposed to, you'd be in comfort with your peers. Now instead of escaping pain while you are enhanced…" He grinned ferally at her. "You may not even survive the changes."
Glaring at the Saiyan, he bowed, spread his arms, and stepped back - a clear statement that they would not receive further resistance.
The Saiyan stood motionless a few moments longer, glaring at Appule in wary suspicion. Upon the submissive bow, he hissed with unmistakable distrust. Yet, when everyone had seemed to purposefully forget him in favor of conducting their business, he relaxed his stance just enough to shift his stance and look down at her. He spit something intelligible at her. She didn't know if he spoke words or if they were just angry Saiyan sounds, but she was too choked with relief to care. Such was the sudden and absolute retreat of her remaining strength that she lay boneless on the ground, half laughing and half crying in shock. She didn't want to consider the alien's taunting words to her. Changes? Enhancements? What the fuck?
She didn't know how she found the strength to stand, but she wasn't going to test the Saiyan's patience. The moment she was on her feet, he sneered at her, turned away, and started walking. She followed, and this time, no one challenged her. It was like no one saw her. Dizzy, thirsty, stiff, sore, and exhausted, she trudged after him, forcing herself to keep going. All thoughts faded and everything fell away. Nothing existed except to stay on her feet and follow.
When he suddenly stopped, she barely registered that they were in a large cavern, not unlike the guts of the ship. Here and there, aliens dropped to the ground where they stand as if staking a claim that was to be their personal space. Understanding hit her and her relief was so great, her knees buckled under her. She pulled herself to the rocky wall and put her back to it. Panting, she looked up at the Saiyan who was watching her with a vexed expression.
She tittered, but it came out more gasp like than laughter. Wincing, she grabbed her side with one hand. The adrenaline was fading, and she was starting to acutely feel her cracked ribs, gashes, bruises, and the still hot but slowly fading lash marks. She bit her lips to swallow a moan. She hurt, but blubbering about it would do nothing but annoy the Saiyan and embarrass her.
She almost squawked, though, when he dropped to one knee before her and grabbed a handful of her hair. Sure only that she was about to receive more injuries, her heart slowly gave up its panic as he investigated. HUH? But, yes – that's what he was doing. His fingers sifted the strands of her hair as if testing to see if the color could be rubbed off. That was the last straw. Her brain broke and she did the first thing that popped into her mind. She stuffed her fingers into his hair. His eyes popped open in surprise, but his eyebrows quickly lowered and he barked out a quick warning growl. She raised an eyebrow and frowned at him in challenge. If you can do it, buddy, so can I. Even though I'm scaring the shit out of myself right now…
His growl became trite, and it finally gave up on itself and was silenced – like he had accepted her action but wouldn't admit it. Probably because denying her curiosity would prove that his own was distasteful. Softly smiling, she allowed herself to actually feel the texture of his hair.
"It's soft!" She exclaimed quietly, genuinely surprised.
"Ss-schoffft-t" he whispered, still enamored with the color of her curls.
"I thought your hair would be rough. Like Goku's." Her eyes were snagged from his hair down to his face just as he pulled away, sneering. Then she flinched when she realized he had just spoken to her in English. Or had tried to. And she had ruined it by mentioning –
"Why don't you like Goku?"
He sucked in air between his teeth and turned his face away. A moment later, he shifted his gaze and focused on her from the corner of his eye. He spoke slowly and softly, as if she could distinguish the words if he spoke in such a way. She fought a wave of dizziness. Her body was drained and she wanted nothing but sleep, but her mind was spinning. She fingered the capsule bracelet on her wrist as was her habit, but mourned the loss of her pistol. And this strange Saiyan suddenly wanted to talk to her.
She forced her eyes open and focused on the alien before her. Somehow, she thought she understood what he was trying to say. Not the words – but… he was so regal. And Goku was… Goku. She blinked lazily at him.
"So Goku isn't important like you."
He cocked his head at her. Taking that as encouragement, she chewed her lip as she thought.
"You're a leader of some kind? A general?"
He crossed his arms.
"I suppose not, then. At least, that's not all you are, is it? If your whole planet is full of warriors, generals must be fairly common."
He stretched out on his side and leaned against the wall opposite her. She'd have thought they were lucky to find a carved spot in this cave – one with two complete sides and part of a third – but she supposed it was left for the Saiyan. People seemed to give him wide berth. Even when injured, she thought wryly.
"I can't see democracy being very popular on a world where strength trumps everything else – any kind of politics seem farfetched, actually, so an elected president is out." Something clicked. Oh.
"A King, then?"
Nothing changed, but she suddenly sensed he was heavily focused on her words. Had he understood? Something in her mind shifted and she felt pressure. Oh. He was invading her brain again, shifting through the thoughts and pictures there to interpret what she meant. She'd be offended that he could presume to do so, but she couldn't be bothered about it now. She'd just resurrect her mental barriers when she had more energy. Instead, she calmed her thoughts and allowed the sensations to float up to her. Why this was so difficult, she couldn't fathom. Sharing thoughts before had been so easy, they had been doing so accidentally. What was different? Trying to open her mind now to him seemed forced - like she was opening a door that resisted.
So, she relaxed and tried to let it come. Forcing it wasn't helping. After drifting a minute or so, she almost fell asleep – but jolted awake when a thought popped into her consciousness, surprising her so much she started to laugh. She opened her eyes and grinned at the confused Saiyan.
"I'd been thinking of you as a prince in distress. I never actually thought you were a real Prince!" She giggled, but swallowed her mirth when he scowled at her. As if suddenly reminded that she was human baggage he neither wanted nor could tolerate, he stood. Narrowing his eyes, he scowled down at her in obvious disgust. Looking up at him, watching as his expression changed from curiosity to be replaced by anger and vexation, she remembered who he was and just how little her worth was to him. She knew what he was thinking perfectly just then.
She didn't know why he had come back for her, either.
But…. It didn't matter.
He had come back.
