Sizzling under the thick crust of oppressive heat, his body was trapped in a firestorm of volcanic lust. Vegeta struggled against the nuclear tide. Like a man just feet from the water's surface, he could see the sun's piercing rays reaching towards him. His thoughts skittered across the surface, waiting for him to break through and take that first, desperate breath. With frantic effort, he pulled away from the dark, greedy depths of pain and bloodlust –but only enough for his fingertips to caress the underside of the waves that held him trapped.

It was just enough.

He understood the partial reprieve was temporary. He knew the current would suck him under again – and he knew that this was the only chance he would get. He knew nothing of the ki-less human made from metal, but it was taking them to the surface. Under the heavy fog of painful arousal, Vegeta had been unable to form speech - but he had understood the 17 thing had said something about traveling by bending space. Nappa could no longer help him – he'd likely not admit the cause was lost and would try to rein in the Prince's wild ki rather than kill him. But that other Saiyan… he had no cause to save a Prince he didn't know if it meant the lives of those whom he did know were lost.

So, if the Prince was going to die, he would take Frieza and the Ice-jin's entire armada with him.

Vegeta knew his slowly shredding control was the only thing holding back the burning winds of total carnage. He needed to get to the surface. He needed to find that other Saiyan before he lost his mind.

Something metallic clicked, and like a switch, frozen flames seared through his muscles, twisting and snapping like an electric storm. The cold metal collar around his neck fizzled and sparked as it broke open. He staggered under the onslaught and dropped to his knees, panting as tidal waves of pure ki flooded through him. He caught the collar in a trembling had before it fell to the ground and peered at it with detached interest, understanding on an animalistic level that he was now free. Crushing it in his fist, he flung it to the side and slowly lifted his head to stare ahead of him with eyes utterly void of conscious thought. Enraged, the beast erupted, and he roared.

He needed to get out.

There was only one way to go.

OoOoO

An unholy, animalistic shriek hit her with such force, she staggered back as terror she'd never known twisted up her spine. The horrifying sound rebounded off the rock walls to assault her from all sides until nothing remained of her but fear. She knew what that sound had been.

Vegeta!

The world around her lurched, and Bulma was thrown to the ground. On instinct alone, she had time to throw her arms over her head as a cascade of rock broke away from the mountain above her, and to turn her head away from the death she could do nothing to prevent.

Yet, death didn't come.

Awareness floated on the edge of real and unreal, yet somehow all of her senses were thrown into a hypersensitive tumult. Time slowed and she could see individual dust particles as they drifted fat and lazy around her like snowflakes. Boulders that should crush her broke apart against an invisible shield and fell around her like rain. She felt the low hum of electricity pressing against her back and holding her to the ground. It shifted then, but rather than sinking into the abyss of unconsciousness from overstimulation, she felt the electricity peel away from her as the body behind her lifted her from the ground to press her against the wall. The force of it knocked the breath out of her lungs. Time, which had been slowed to an almost stand still caught up with her all at once and slammed into her with such force, her teeth rattled in her skull. A man was yelling at her; she could see his lips moving, but she couldn't hear what he was saying.

She tried to focus through the numbing haze and stars – her entire body felt on fire with trying to process too many sensations all at once. Like a voice hollering at her from underwater, she heard only the muffled echo of words. The man… 17?.. shook her and she felt her body slam against the rock wall behind her once again. This time, instead of knocking the breath from her lungs, a sweet rush of air filled them.

Reality came crashing down as she wheezed and coughed on the dust, and water flooded her eyes and nose to try and clear the sand and haze from her passageways.

"…you now, so snap out of it!" His voice was loud and full of panic.

She winced as his fingers dug into her shoulders and lifted her hands to his wrists. He got the hint and softened his grip but didn't let her go. It was a good thing else she might have collapsed at his feet.

She forced herself to swallow to wet her throat. "Vegeta?" It came out a croak, but 17 had understood her.

17 sagged with relief. He took a breath and his voice was calmer, but there was still an edge to it. "The collar died. The good news is we'll make it to the surface in about.. oh… 2 minutes from now. The bad news is, we probably won't survive once his ki breaks through and hits the atmosphere."

Bulma's face completely went slack. She took a breath to say something but it deflated. She attempted it twice more before she finally was able to speak.

"Well crap."

17 snorted but released her since he was fairly certain she would be able to stay on her feet. "That's all you've got? 'Well crap,' doesn't seem to cover it."

Bulma scowled. "Well, what do you want me to say?"

17 frowned at her. "That you have an idea on how we're going to survive."

"The only way we're going to survive is if Goku can get to the surface NOW. You said he can't –"

The rest of what she had about to say was swallowed as she choked off. Her eyes widened a fraction.

"You thought of something?" 17 was practically humming with desperation.

Bulma squawked, indignant. "I'm such a fucking cheese eating gnome! And you're a purple headed yogurt flinger! God, it's so simple and neither of us thought of it! Jesus, it's how everyone lands here for fuck's sake!"

17's features twisted in incredulous disgust. "…a purple headed what?"

"Tell your sister to turn off the engines and coast the ship so they can land – by the time we get to the surface, they'll be able to course correct and glide to somewhere close by. They don't have to teleport down. We just have to teleport back up."

The android's expression hadn't changed. "…are you calling me a dick? Or implying that I masturbate?"

Bulma scowled in revulsion. "I don't give a flying pickle whether or not you have a dick or what you do with it! Now deliver the message!"

She turned in the direction Vegeta had gone and started to run as fast as she could in the darkness over rocks and boulders. "Are you coming?" She shouted down from somewhere unseen. A second later, she added "No pun intended!"

17 rolled his eyes and ran after her. He scooped her up, threw her over his shoulder, and increased his speed, satisfied at the pissy noise she made. "Caveman…" she muttered darkly. He grinned.

OoOoO

Nappa's hard eyes followed the movements of the green man's hands with fevered focus. Knuckles faded to a pale jade under the strength of the Namek's grip on the ship's manual navigation controls, and the typically limber fingers fought to maintain control against the jerky turbulence. The ship lurched violently as it screamed through the flammable haze that threatened to shred the hull into strips.

The woman's terrified whimpers slipped through a jaw she clenched so tightly, he could see the tendons in her neck flex. It caught the attention of the other Saiyan who turned away from Nappa's own cold gaze to comfort her. Nappa took the opportunity to study the other man. After a year, he still found the G'Brraugk* unsettling. At times, his behavior was so typically Saiyan, Nappa forgot himself and said or did something to which the 3rd class would peer at him with confused curiosity. Most of the time, the idiot was more Earther than the Humans. Mostly, Nappa just felt fucking awkward – almost as though half of his senses were telling him one thing while the other half told him the exact opposite. He didn't know what to make of the one everyone called Goku and found himself responding with gruff exasperation.

He wanted to find common ground. He just…. hadn't the first clue how the hell he was supposed to do so. Sometimes he felt the other Saiyan was offering up ways, but Nappa would not compromise his integrity, his heritage, or his nature. For fucks sake. Why would any Saiyan encourage a cub to be so dependent on affection? What would happen if one or both of his parents were to fail to return home? Life was no guarantee. Younglings must be able to survive and teaching them to expect safety and protection was a disservice.

Yet, after decades of having only two companions to rely on for telepathic reinforcement, he found himself adjusting to human ways against his efforts because he had no choice. These humans didn't communicate in the typical Saiyan way of sharing impressions and images. Their minds weren't completely closed – they could receive if he focused his thoughts. He could pluck thoughts out of their heads, as well, but the thoughts were unfocused and uncontrolled. The Saiyan and his offspring had telepathic abilities which were sourly undeveloped. When the older Saiyan found his thoughts reaching out, as was habit for Saiyan to Saiyan communication, his mind staggered as though it had missed a step after no other mind had reached back to his.

No. This group did not use telepathy to communicate. Rather, they used their own bodies. His eyes darted to the cub who, despite the heaving ship, sat calmly. When the boy caught the older Saiyan studying him, he smiled softly. Nappa narrowed his eyes and the youngling looked away. It had taken the burly Saiyan awhile to understand the need these beings had for physical contact; such a thing was meant for fucking or fighting. For that reason, it had been an unholy shock that first time – and even after a year of the child embracing him in a nightly ritual - he still felt unease every time the child did so. It was more than a little uncomfortable, but it was brief, and he tolerated it despite understanding it for what it was.

The child cared for him.

Radditz and Vegeta had had been his comrades and they all had respect for one another. As the last three of their kind, they needed each other. More importantly, they trusted each other – the highest honor a Saiyan could impose upon another. Nappa knew and understood this. What he did not understand was the strange sense of warmth that bloomed within the chest of the cub every time he threw his arms around his 'uncle' and said the words good night. And yet, Nappa allowed the ritual to continue.

After a year of infiltrating the minds of these humans, the Namek, and the odd Earthling-Saiyan pair, he experienced their emotions. After a year, though he still didn't understand these feelings, he had learned to appreciate them as much as he resented how they baffled him. Anything that could be so frustrating, so utterly consuming, so controlling, must be respected. Though he'd personally do without, he was becoming oddly…. tolerant.

He often wondered at this. He was barely skimming the surface and yet Vegeta had been inside the head of a human for coming on two years. Since the woman with him still lived, it seemed Vegeta was defying nature and all it meant to be Saiyan to keep her that way - all because of these irrational, powerful, human emotions.

The ship dropped violently and tumbled through dead air for close to 7 seconds – in this atmosphere, likely close to 4,000 feet. Nappa was too used to flying at terminal speeds to be troubled on an instinctual level. However, he knew that ki meant instant inferno on a planetary scale. If he flew here, he'd be either incinerated by the benzene or suffocate in space were he to survive the exploding planet.

Suddenly, the vessel tore upwards as it punctured through the pocket. The ship leveled out as it drifted suspiciously free of turbulence.

"We've made it through the benzene layer. Though the air near the surface is breathable, I wouldn't recommend staying outside for long," Piccalo tossed over his shoulder. He glanced back to make a visual sweep and almost turned back to navigating when his attention was caught. His brow ridges pinched together and his lips tightened momentarily in a strange mix of concern and frustration. Nappa followed his gaze.

The human woman had passed out during their decent and didn't seem to be breathing properly, judging by the sound. Kakarot was kneeling beside her, gently laying her on her back and lifting her chin to open her airway. The monk rushed over to help, but the other human – the male with the scarred face – only glanced over, his features pinched with guilt and worry. Nappa curled his lip in distaste. This one always looked at him with accusation and a seething anger. The human felt a deeply rooted guilt that festered every time he came into contact with the Saiyan. Then, for hours or days afterward, he'd avoid everyone in a dark, brooding silence.

No one ever explained this behavior, nor did Nappa give a fuck.

He turned back to the Namek and raised his hand to the scouter over his eye to activate the translator. He understood their words better than they his, though most of the time he had to ignore half of what they said to gather their meaning. Learning to speak the human language was so ridiculously exasperating, it was hardly worth the effort and he tried to do so as little as possible.

The scouter hardly fared any better – even after a year of the thing adapting its translation program, more often than not it caused more confusion with its translations than it solved. Apparently, Vegeta's human had been able to modify Radditz's scouter, but it had been lost when she had been abducted with the Prince. Not for the first time, he wished she had left it behind. There simply could be no way the human language was as nonsensical as it sounded, and he was certain by the looks they directed at him that his language sounded equally as strange. There could be nothing done for it, so he tried to speak as simply as he could. At this point, he didn't give a shit if they thought him an illiterate idiot. It just wasn't worth it to prove otherwise. What he said was,

"Kakarot will be distracted with thoughts of the injured female. He will stay. I will go to the surface and bring Vegeta and his woman," before turning to the blond woman and asking, "Where has your sibling instructed us to land?"

What they heard was,

Kakarot's hurt female confuse his thinking. He Stay. I go to top, find Vegeta's wife. Where land brother's directions?

Either way, the scarred one threw himself from his seat and stalked away, anger crackling around him as though it were a flare of ki. Nappa ignored it.

The android considered his question and looked back at him with cool nonchalance. She cocked her head and looked at the fingernails of her right hand. "About 80 kilometers from here. But it may not matter," she looked up, her face bland. "Vegeta is no longer wearing a collar. He'll be at the surface before we'll make it."

Nappa understood well enough. He tore the safety constraints from his chest and launched himself to the ship's hatch, about to kick it open when a grip on his bicep stopped him. He growled menacingly at the other Saiyan, but waited.

"We may be under the flammable stuff, but it's still a bad idea to fly. Piccalo will get us close to the surface and you can jump down. It will actually save time since we won't have to land first."

Nappa looked at Kakarot from the corner of his eye and paused. After a moment, he inclined his head and the younger Saiyan released his arm.

"If you're going to jump, now would be the time," Piccalo spat through clenched teeth. There may have been a comparable lack of turbulence, but precision guiding a space craft without engines at their speed was difficult.

Goku reached forward and unlatched the hatch. He looked back and caught the eyes of Krillen and 18. Krillen removed a metal insert from the frame of the floor, covered Chichi with his body, and gripped the plating with his free hand. The android wrapped her fingers on the edge of her seat and Tien braced himself by extending his arms and putting force against the hull supports to either side. He didn't know where Yamcha had gone.

Satisfied no one would be pulled out, Goku opened the hatch. The pressurized oxygen burst from the ship like an over inflated balloon and was gone in seconds. The incredible roar of wind was astronomically and unbearably loud, but if anyone screamed, the sound was torn from their lungs and swallowed – either by the explosive noise or by the sudden and absolute loss of pressure. Nappa's unreadable eyes took the younger Saiyan in for a moment before the giant simply turned and disappeared through the door.

Goku shut the hatch.

OoOoO

They had caught up to Vegeta just in time. She could feel the breeze from the cracks in the rock walls, but Vegeta hadn't yet broken through. His ki was monumental and it was a miracle he hadn't already blown the planet to dust. Even looking at him was difficult; painful, electric bolts of white-blue fire licked and popped around him in an angry aura like it was a living, breathing thing. As they ran through the tunnel to catch up, 17 had assured her he wouldn't hurt the Saiyan – but it wasn't Vegeta she was afraid for as she watched them fight. If they were even fighting. It looked to her that 17 would start shitting his own teeth any moment now with the force of the punches he was taking to the face.

Had 17's confidence been so misplaced? Or was Vegeta really that strong? Had he always been that powerful? She couldn't fathom it. It didn't even look like the Saiyan was trying. When another fist to his face caused a spray of blood to splash against her, she jolted. She had to do something.

Vegeta was going to kill him!

It was the rocks that gave her the idea. Not the tons of it surrounding them on all sides– the rocks that 17 had chucked at Vegeta to show her just how keenly aware he was of her. For the lack of a better idea, she dropped to her knees and scuttled around on the ground like a beetle until she found what she was looking for - a throw-sized rock. With a triumphant HA! she plucked the stone from its resting place and flung it at the Siayan's head.

At least, that's where she had been aiming.

Instead, it smacked 17 in the cheek – but it wasn't her fault he had gotten in the way! – and made a shocking clank sound as it bounced off the metallic substance that served as the teenager's cheek bone. The Saiyan's reaction was instantaneous. It was as though 17 had been utterly forgotten. Enraptured, Vegeta merely dropped his arms to his sides, allowing 17 to pull his shirt free from the Saiyan's clutch. Confused both by the rock that had come from out of nowhere and it's sudden and drastic effect on the half-crazed beast he had been fighting, 17 watched as Vegeta's eyes followed the stone on its journey through the air. The freakishly loud, high-pitched noise it made as thwacked against the Saiyan's armor before it plunked to the ground had lasted less than a second but seemed to stretch for decades. The effect as it fell to the ground was like a reboot switch.

The entire world heaved around them as though they were moving outside of time and space.

17's eyes flew wide as he was shoved aside by nothing more than air displacement as the Saiyan moved. He found Bulma's equally shocked gaze moments before Vegeta's broad back interrupted his view. He hadn't even seen the Saiyan move.

Bulma had even less of a warning.

One moment she was watching 17's face freeze in astonished terror and the next she had been flung from her position on all fours to a bone-jarring, supine heap on the ground. With the wind knocked out of her, she couldn't breathe and her vision swam. Too shell-shocked and numb to feel pain, yet, she knew it was coming and the sarcastic voice in the back of her head applauded the brilliance of inviting a broken back. She didn't have long to ponder this, though, as the Saiyan's feral, fevered eyes stole her ability to reason.

Her guts froze as the personification of sex and violence loomed over her. A subsonic, rolling noise reverberated from deep within his chest, so low and bestial she wasn't certain if the sound was heard or felt in her bones. His face came within inches of her own and his hot breath scalded her skin as he breathed. Her heart fluttered so erratically it started skipping beats. Her blood screamed through the muscle as it pounded, desperate to keep up with the body's demands for oxygen from lungs empty of air. In moments it would seize, but she couldn't remember how to draw breath.

His weight lifted from her, but she felt his hands claw at her chest. From somewhere far away, she felt a tug and heard a rip. Her eyes were open and glued to a spot directly above; the light of his ki cast undulating shadows which danced on the ceiling. It seemed… familiar somehow… like the reflection of moonlight on water. Something in her mind fractured and oozed out of the crack.

Vegeta..

He jolted as though he had heard, and in renewed frenzy, abandoned her clothing in favor of filling his hands with her flesh.

Existence narrowed until all that remained were echoes of those bright sparkling lights at the edge of her vision and the sensation she couldn't decide was fire or ice on the skin where his breath rolled over her. He paved a hot, twisted path over her hip bone, up her stomach, and across her ribs with his tongue. She felt the needle pricks of his teeth as he bit down on the inside of her left breast –

And a meaty, wet sound filled her ears as his mouth was torn off of her.


AN: G'Brraugk - Saiy-go for Goku's class. Not 3rd class, persay, which pertains to strength - more like the difference between races like latino, white, black, etc.

Almost to the end! The next chapter will be a challenge for me. In fact, the whole reason this chapter was so long in coming is because I've been dreading the content of the next chapter. The idea about Vegeta's uncontrollable ki came from this scene and since the beginning, I have been writing with it in mind. It doesn't help that I've been found out. One of my real life friends discovered my online persona and has been reading this! How embarrassing! It's one thing for a female to read female smut, but for a dude (whom I know!) to poke his nose in my shit…. That's just rude! You asshole! I know you're doing this just to ruffle my feathers! Well fuck you! I'm going to write it, anyway! Go ahead and laugh at me (cuz you know I would if the situation were reversed, god dammit). But you better leave a review you perv!

Much love and obnoxiousness to my real fans.

PS The "purple headed yogurt flinger" is real. I er... come up with some really interesting insults on the fly. They're always so dirty, though. Especially for such a clean-minded, upstanding citizen such as myself.