Thanks to Adli for making the chapter digestible :D

A/N - Warning - this chapter is a bit on the gruesome and depressing side, though it's necessary for the story to progress. If you don't like these factors, please, don't continue reading.

Contending with Darkness

Chapter 13

"Chichi."

Again, at the notion of her fellow Earthling's life force, the woman's eyes lit up substantially from their previous glum, lifeless cast of grey. Vegeta stood aside as she, breathing heavily, slinked past him, and bolted out into the graveyard, where the two easily distinguishable figures limped from the near distance. A stabbing urge to go after her taunted him, to run after her and restrain her from what she was about to witness, but he wouldn't allow himself to slip down that hole again, only to have to crawl back out, more battered and bruised than the last time. But, with that said, he had no choice but to keep a close distance from her falsely excitable frame, as he had done throughout the majority of this charade, though now it seemed more of a necessity than it had before. A superfluous gripping in his stomach occurred every time she persistently sidled out of his reach.

They had been six hours—a lot longer than he had anticipated for such an inadequate battle for the likes of Raditz. Nevertheless, they had returned with an air of deflated success, under what circumstances, he didn't care to find out. He stood tall, letting the daylight touch his skin as he stepped from within the shadows of the crypt, crunching against the numerous shards of disembodied headstones, keeping a close, peripheral eye on Bulma. She jogged to her friend, stopping before Raditz, gazing up at him like he was such an intriguing specimen to her, an anomaly, a subject.

An odd fluttering in his chest occurred when Raditz landed a blood slathered hand on her shoulder, shoved her out of his pathway with a brutally lethargic nudge from his palm, and stepped over her as she sprawled like a invertebrate across the floor, inches away from cracking her skull on a chipped headstone. His fingers twitched as he watched on, stoically narrowing his eyes at the frailty of the female creature. Oxygen seemed to pile into his lungs when she got back to her feet with no more than a couple scratches to her forearms, dusted herself off, and united with the other woman, who was, frankly, an atrocity. The feeble, raven haired human was draped in a sheet of blood and soil, with a gaping, puss engorged wound right above her left collar bone.

The shattering in Bulma's composure was almost audible. A heavy thump in his chest grappled him back down to the most important matter. The Dragon Balls.

"There you go, your highness," Raditz said, throwing the glinting orange sphere into Vegeta's chest, where it was easily caught.

Raditz did right to keep a safe distance, as Vegeta wrapped his fingers around the Dragon Ball, wordlessly claiming it as his own, without disregarding the palpable bitterness in the air between them. It teased his taste buds.

"And the other warrior?" Vegeta said, his eyes eventually leaving the hypnotic glow of the precious treasure, to land on the unsightly, heavily wounded body of his subordinate, seeing the missing chunk of armour in his Saiyan chest plate. A heavy, fetid stench wafted over from him, forcing Vegeta to wrinkle his nose.

Raditz' eyes widened in mock astonishment, and he fruitlessly attempted to cross his arms, but was stopped by an overbearing ailment in his ribcage. "Who? You mean Nappa?" he said, pausing to hobble back into the confinements of the crypt. Deep into the hungry darkness, Raditz turned, flashing his canines. "Oh, but you already knew that, didn't you?"

Appalled by his lack of respect, Vegeta struggled to grasp a handful of words to form a response. That, and he would not bite down on the bait, regardless of the cold sweat trailing down his spine. Keeping his eyes on Raditz, Vegeta tried to ignore the scuffling of Bulma lumbering the other female into the far corner of the room, whimpering to one another.

"There's a lot you already knew," Raditz stated, staring boldly into Vegeta's eyes, grasping for any glimpse of truth.

He was wasting his time.

Tearing clothing to pieces had always looked so easy in all the films, but when it came down to it, positioned in front of a writhing, suffering human being, Bulma had abandoned all the strength she had left to give, fumbling with kitten-weak arms. With a heave of oxygen and a swift twist of her wrist, the damp, filthy sleeve of her hoodie finally gave way and ripped down the middle, catching at the cuff, where she then used her canines to tear the fraying threads.

When she was a child, she had always loved playing doctor with her mother. They would sit in her father's lab for hours, just pretending to diagnose diseases, cure serious illnesses and save the lives of a few test dummies. She remembered the bright lights, which, after a couple hours, always left her with painful headaches, and the humming of all her father's equipment in the lab. After a few years, at the age of nine, when Bulma had surpassed her mother's mediocre medical knowledge, she had come to find that playing a hero didn't always work out the way she had wanted. Taking their charade further, mother and daughter would trawl the Capsule Corp grounds for injured creatures to rescue, but time after time their injuries would be too deep, gone far within the reach of a nine year olds capable hands, and they would die. She could never detach herself from them, unravel from a yarn of empathy, and simply do what a job entailed. Even at that tender age, Bulma knew that her love for living creatures had too much depth. That was why she turned to machines, but even then, when revealing a new invention or creation, she would coo and coddle it as if it were alive.

The image of her mother's face was disjointed now, like peering down a dark alleyway at night, where one single light had been carelessly left on at the very bottom. She could vaguely tell you what is was, but not exactly. Like, she knew her mother had baby-blue eyes, knew how they could stop men in their tracks with a single glance, but she couldn't tell you how they smiled, or darkened when she was upset. It was as if it had been vacuumed, leaving only a small clump of indecipherable dust in its wake.

Chichi was sat in front of her, back pressed against the marble wall, chest rising and falling rapidly as she tried to grasp at the will to stay calm. Bulma's eyes slid to the gory wound on her neck, and she tried to force back the need to grimace at it.

"What happened?" she said, gathering the material of her hoodie into a loose rag around her hand.

An indignant fire blazed in Chichi's eyes, the anger pushing her upright against the wall. "What do you think happened? We were attacked," she shouted, managing to narrow her eyes despite all the discomfort.

As she moved, a gush of blood rushed down her neck and onto her pale chest, the weak material of her t-shirt unable to drink the liquid as it continued to pour.

"I know … I'm sorry—stay still."

Bulma leaned in, and pressed the material against the wound, pressing and pressing until she could feel the slight throb of Chichi's pulse. The wound was a mess, too hard to justify its ferocity for all the disorganised ribbons of flesh criss-crossing the mouth. The main prognosis Bulma could deliver was that it was serious enough to end Chichi's life. Any injury of this degree inflicted on the throat or neck was—nine times out of ten—the means for fatality. But the moment was fogged by the slim chance of Chichi surviving, and that was all Bulma could see. It was all she could ever see. Where there was a glint of hope at the end of that dark alleyway, whether it was concealed by dark pessimism, she would try her best to seek it out.

Her friend's breathing became heavier, slower, the sound of mucus rattling in her chest. Bulma kept her eyes on the material, compressing the wound as best as she could, flipping the compressor over, folding it again, and pushing it back down, willing the bleeding to stop.

"It was that thing," Chichi hissed. "The thing from the ship. The creature who didn't speak to anyone." There was still a splinter of that old attitude in her voice.

Bulma frowned, as the memory of the strange, blue creature with razor-like teeth formed within her mind's eye. She remembered the many times she had tried to converse with the creature, only for it to shun her like she was too common for it. It didn't have to say anything to give off that odorous attitude. Its teeth were what she remembered the most.

She gingerly peeled back the blood soaked material, and peeked inside at the wound, able to see the numerous lacerations that could only have been made with teeth. The creature's teeth.

"It sprang out of nowhere. It bit me," Chichi said, wincing as Bulma covered the bite wound.

Something she saw set a lump in her throat, blocking any response. Along the outside of the bite, there were traces of blue liquid, with an iridescent glint. She'd seen it before, and knew that anything unusually coloured, harboured from an unusual creature as a defence mechanism, only screamed one thing—poison.

She was suddenly shoved aside by Chichi's frantic arms, which then reached up to claw at the wound, pulling the compression away.

"Stop. What are you doing?" Bulma said, panic flooding her body, as she fumbled to grab Chichi's flailing arms.

"Get off me," she screamed, and shoved Bulma backwards onto the floor, while she tore at her neck, digging her fingers into the severed flesh, slicking them with crimson.

Bile rose in Bulma's throat as she watched, with tears brimming, her friend behave so psychotically.

Chichi's pupils had dilated, and the feverish way her fingers dug deeper into her neck told Bulma that she had slipped far beyond herself, acting like an enraged animal. Chichi seemed unaffected by the pain she was inflicting on herself, with only dark determination showing in her face, as her knuckles disappeared into her neck.

Tears ran down Bulma's cheeks, and she got up from the floor, charging to her friend, screaming.

"Stop!"

"Before I destroyed my own comrade," Raditz started, "he let me in on a few little secrets." He paced the floor, back and forth, back and forth, with a slow, steady, predatory rhythm, keeping his eyes on his one target—Vegeta.

Indifferent about the whole display, Vegeta was leaning against one of the coffins, his feet stretched out as if to relax, while he watched his subordinate try and take charge for once. Well, it was about time he did something like that. Not that he was talking much sense. But he would give him the benefit of the doubt for his own bitter amusement. Many times—countless, in fact—Vegeta had ordered the other two Saiyans to take charge, while he devised a more important plan, mainly for his own benefit. But did they? Of course they didn't. The lackadaisical cowards backtracked, abandoned their own plans, came grovelling back to him for help. And, being under Frieza's watchful eye, he couldn't refuse any mission given to him, so cleaning up after their shitty mess was something he had grown accustomed to.

Vegeta laughed, throwing his head back. "Is that so?"

Raditz stopped pacing, stopped to gawp at his prince, his face going slack with bemusement. "You … you're working with Frieza," he said with a high pitched strain, almost making the so-called statement sound like a bumbling question.

He considered this for a moment, considered the sheer stupidity of it. Of course he was working with Frieza. Weren't they all? However, if it was deeper than that, if Raditz meant he was working for him right now, then perhaps he wasn't as dim-witted as he made himself out to be.

"And you believe Nappa over your own Prince?"

A questionable silence hung between them for a few seconds. The incongruous wailings of the two female Earthlings was beginning to grate his skin, too. But he kept his eyes trained on Raditz, the way a wolf would a tender piece of raw meat.

The pacing started again, perhaps giving Raditz some momentum for his speech. "He also said that this whole thing has been set up—turning us against each other—destroying our race for good." The anger crept into his voice, a true hatred lacing his words, like he was using them as weapons, aiming them at Vegeta.

It caught Vegeta's attention, yet it still didn't unsettle him. This knowledge was stale to him. From the moment Frieza took Vegeta under his wing, the prince knew what was going on. He knew that bit by bit, like plucking a feathered creature, Frieza was erasing the Saiyans; the very few that were stationed on his ship. Until a decade ago, there were still a dozen or so Saiyans left. Now there was three. It wasn't difficult to comprehend what was happening. Somehow, the notion of his race dwindling to two didn't affect him like it should have. Should he have been lashing out, like his subordinate was currently doing? The Saiyans, the lost Saiyans, didn't matter to him anymore. They were just a rumour, so far gone into the past they'd been forgotten, unheard of. A benign tumour in the very base of his skull.

"You know he's just going to kill you, too. You'll never escape—be free," Raditz said, his eyes narrowing as his words grew heavy and tortured. "You'd be fucking stupid to think so, traitor."

A needle sharp pang of rage pierced his skin. "What did you just call me?" It was a test to stay rooted to the ground now, the audacity of the other Saiyan pushing him closer to the edge of restraint.

Without wavering or cowering, Raditz continued. "Your rightful name, you treacherous bastard," he spat, his fists balling, his stance tightening.

A smirk tickled Vegeta's lips. The sight of his right-hand warrior, battered and bloody, preparing himself for a scuffle, when, by the state of him, he could barely tackle one of those banshees, who were still sobbing amongst each other.

While purging planets, Raditz' main objective was to see how many mange-ridden whores he could fuck, how much money he could scavenge, and how much food he could consume. Everything beyond that, his lack of sense would hinder. Their operations always landed them two or three days post their target date, therefore earning them punishment by the hand of Frieza. But, oh, who was it who took the brutality into open arms? That's right. It was he. Frieza disregarded the other two Saiyans like they were no more important to him than shit on his shoe, and his eyes glimmered with the prospect of what he could possibly do to Vegeta.

'There are so many things I could do to you, monkey.'

Despite the mental and physical abuse, after being thrown back into his chambers, after accumulating cracked and shattered bones, Vegeta would only hear those words, around his head, like a violent tornedo, sweeping up anything else in its path.

His smirk waned, replaced by a firm frown, as he locked eyes with Raditz, ignoring his threatening stance. "You really were the most obtuse amongst our race."

Raditz' skin quivered with contained anger, the lid about to burst open. "I'm not the one slipping into the most obvious trap of all. You're too gullible, Vegeta," he chided, cocking his head in faint amusement.

"If you think, for a second, that I don't have an ulterior motive, then you are the fool," Vegeta said, his own rage getting the better of him now. Raditz' words were an insult, and not for their conspicuousness. The simple fact that he believed Vegeta could be left with the wool over his eyes in all of this, was as insulting as him not referring to him as his prince.

"You selfish bastard," said Raditz, spittle flying out of his mouth, blood embellishing the white plate of his armour, his arms and legs quaking from either hostility of frailty. Holding his ribs, he threw himself at Vegeta, a thin strand of green energy twisting around his limbs.

Bricks and chunks of marble crumbled and crashed against the floor, shaking the entire building. A loud crack, followed by numerous, unintelligible bellows and howls, bounced of the decaying walls, and the whole room sank, rumbling and stooping as if it were being sucked underground.

Bulma turned, with sparse time to let the image before her focus, to see two faded figures, engulfed by a miasma of blues and greens, colliding against one another, sending strong quakes through the ground. The shifting body of the crypt groaned as it gave up, giving Bulma a few seconds to latch onto Chichi's practically lifeless frame, and haul her outside, making sure to sweep the backpack up on the way out. She barely grazed the afternoon-glossed graveyard, when the entire crypt collapsed into a heap of rubble. Thick moats of dust snaked into the sky, like disturbing an untouched, decade-old duvet and shaking up the blankets.

Cramp shot up Bulma's leg, taking away the strength to stay on her feet, and she fell forward, throwing Chichi forward into the dirt, her body scraping across the floor like an old, unwanted doll, thrown by an ungrateful, bratty five-year-old.

Covering her head with her hands, Bulma waited, with sharp, quick breaths, for a lump of rock to land on her head, killing her instantly. But it didn't. And before being able to wallow in the disgusting realisation of wishing for death, another eruption split through her eardrums.

Vegeta-

A subdued splutter almost echoed in her ears, separated from the raucous violence going on behind her. Bulma struggled to her feet, trundled over to Chichi, who was lying face upwards, eyes scrunched tight, mouth wide open and angry. The bandage must have slipped away when they had escaped, so now the blood was oozing freely, dripping onto the warm, grey dirt, contrasting sharply in colour.

Bulma mopped Chichi's hair off her face, and kept her hand on her blisteringly hot forehead. Chichi spluttered again, with rasping force, sending a sprinkling of warm blood across Bulma's neck and t-shirt, narrowly missing the corner of her mouth. She didn't wipe it away. There wasn't time for that. Her friend needed her to keep her alive, and that was what she was going to do. She owed her that much.

Chichi grimaced, sucking air between her teeth. "I'm going to die. I'm so sorry, Bulma," she whimpered, her eyes still closed.

Bulma's heart sank, a heavy thunk in her chest, followed by a vicious shaking of her senses. "Stop. You're not gonna die. I'm not gonna let you die." With another rag from the other sleeve of her remaining hoody, Bulma assembled a second compress, and placed it on the weeping wound, which was now spewing a thick, yellow mucus.

The white noise of the two warriors battling didn't faze Bulma. It was all like a dream. No matter how much they fought, even if it resulted in one of them dying, no way was Chichi going to die. It couldn't be possible. It wasn't. How … how could her friend die? After all this, Bulma knew that life would never be that cruel to take the one person she had left away from her. To snatch her away without remorse. Nothing was ever that hopeless.

"I'm sorry, Bulma," Chichi said, her voice petering into a whisper.

Bulma sat on her heels, her brow furrowing deeper as she put more pressure on the relentless wound.

"I'm so—"

"Chi, please," she snapped, sending Chichi a warning glance.

As Chichi exhaled, her breath was stilted, disjointed by bubbling sobs. "No, it's all my fault."

Bulma narrowed her eyes, rage pooling in them. "This is Frieza's fault, Chichi," she muttered, shaking out her aching wrists, then pushing her own damp, sweat drenched hair off her forehead. Who would have thought bangs were a good idea? What a stupid thing to ask for? They were manageable back home, but now they had grown out and they were fluttering in her face. Constantly. All the time. Fluttering. It was ridiculous.

"No … No—no … my fault," Chichi mumbled, her eyes cracking open to tiny, chestnut slits.

Absentmindedly, Bulma cranked her neck to see the two warriors, Raditz vaguely distinguishable with his face slathered in blood, a green ball of energy blazing in his palm. She squinted. Vegeta wasn't anywhere to be seen. Her heart thumped, almost audible, as her fate was being left to balance on the edge of a cliff top again.

"I told them—told them to find you," Chichi's rumbling voice said, bringing Bulma, blinking distractedly, back to her.

"What? Told who?" The blood clotted against the wound, finally giving Bulma some space to breathe, giving a shard of light amongst the dreary grey shadows. She bit her lip and kept pressing down until her own salty blood pushed its way beneath her teeth. Chichi was rambling about something, but she found it increasingly difficult to listen, not with the sound of her own pulse throbbing in her ears, like she had her head stuck in a bucket of cold water.

Chichi kicked her legs out, as if she was trying to peel her plimsolls off. "I said you knew more about the Dragon Balls than I did," she said, her voice heavy with despair.

Bulma blinked, retracting some of the pressure on the wound, and sat further back onto her heels, feeling the flesh of her buttocks digging into the hard rubber of her boots.

"You—what?" she said, trying to comprehend what she'd just heard. But all she could hear was her heart beat bumping louder into her skull.

Chichi broke out into laboured sobs, her entire body shaking, knocking the compress off again. "He said I could bring Goku back. He told me the Dragon would bring him back to me." Mucus streamed from her nostrils and ran into her mouth.

Bulma stared at her mouth, the way her lips curled over her teeth as she cried. She looked a lot less like her best friend, and a lot like a new born baby wailing for its mother. She snapped her hands back, like she'd suddenly realised that the bite wound could be contagious. The same spiral of lies swept past her, back and forth like windshield wipers in torrential rain. The face of Yamcha. Her boyfriend, Yamcha. It popped into her mind. When she hosted the barbecue, and he cuddled her, brought her into his caring, selfless arms, and he explained that Chichi was unable to make it, but no one knew why. She tried phoning her, again, vigorously, but the line was idle—dead, as if she was evading being reached.

"Frieza found me," Bulma mumbled, more to herself. "He found me … because you told him where I was?" Her eyes locked onto Chichi's, wordlessly willing her to tell her that it was a lie, that she thought it would be hilarious to joke about something as traumatic as this, at such an indecent time. You never know; it might have earned a smile.

But Chichi shook her head, sniffing and wincing as she lay on the floor, helpless, vulnerable, spilling all her secrets. Something about it was pitying, regardless of the foul bitterness rising up Bulma's throat.

"He lied to me, Bulma. I didn't know this was going to happen."

"I—How could you be so—" She snapped her mouth shut.

"You have to believe me. I wouldn't have if I'd known."

Bulma scrambled back, her eyes wide like a startled rat. "But you didn't know. You didn't even know what Frieza was …" She stopped herself before she could even start. What was the point in letting the outrage kick in? Where would it get her? Nothing good would come out of it, and she was too tired of it all. Too tired of everything.

"I'm sorry—"

"No. Stop," she demanded, leaning over Chichi again, recovering the compress and squashing it onto her neck, feeling how easily it was slipping off with the amount of slop.

"Bulma—" Chichi tried.

"Shut up. We need to stop this bleeding," she shouted, wiping the tears away with her forearm, the bristle of grit tickling her sticky cheeks.

"It's pointless," Chichi moaned, pawing at Bulma's hands on her neck, her eyes closed, her shoulders slumping.

It felt like a rubber band had been snapped against Bulma's face, and suddenly her will to keep sane snapped along with it. How could Chichi do that to her? What in her mind told her that that was fair? And now she was just going to die, take the easy way out, and leave her to deal with the shit she'd left behind?

"Why, Chichi? Why did you do it? Look what's happened," she said, flinging her arms around to her surroundings, all to no avail, as Chichi couldn't even open her eyes to look at her. "Goku died—He's not coming back," she spat, feeling nothing other than hatred towards this dying woman, this person who was not the same person she had been friends with. This traitor.

Chichi keeled over, shrinking into a foetal position. "Raditz is Goku's brother."

"What?" Bulma hissed, clenching and releasing her fists.

"He told me—" Chichi said, opening her eyes, only for them to roll to the back of her head.

Bulma panicked, and slapped Chichi's face. "Stay awake!"

"Goku," she murmured, a small smile creeping across her lips. "He's alive."

A thump and cracking of bones resounded throughout the graveyard, killing any other flutter of sound in its wake. Bulma, sitting on her heels, twisted round to see what heralded the sick twisting knot in her stomach. Lying not even twenty foot away from her was Raditz' pliable frame, slumped to the ground in an awkward position, with his arm twisted behind his back; unmoving. Dirt rolled over him as the silence settled, weighted by trepidation. Bulma blinked, switching her gaze to a couple yards left, where Vegeta stood, one arm outstretched, remnants of blue flames streaming from his gloved fingers, like poisonous gas. She blinked again, this time the sting of tears moistening her eyelids, and her hands trembled, clammy and wet from squeezing them so hard.

It was a mechanism she was told to use when she was younger. School was never her favourite place to be; she had to endure it for several years before she could take no more of it, and left for home tutoring. During those years, she was bullied on countless occasions. And what was she bullied for? Because of her heritage. No matter which school she attended, even the most prestigious, girls and boys would turn on her for no other reason than her family's wealth. So, by her mother, she was forced into school counselling, forced to sit and drivel about how hard her life was, and how to combat the anxiety that took over her body every she set foot inside a class room full of hateful glances. Counting to ten failed to work, as did inhaling and exhaling, or the classic slogan 'Keep Calm.' In the end, her counsellor advised that squeezing a stress ball had been proven to calm patients down dramatically. She didn't like that, though. Digging her nails into her own palms seemed to work just as fine, and sometimes she would dig into the skin so hard that everything around her became mute, like white, muffled sound, nothing more than a humming, drowned out by the drumming pulse in her head.

When Vegeta's eyes met hers, the thumping became louder, and she spun back round to confirm her worst fears—the frosted, cloudy eyes of her dead friend. It didn't hit on impact like she had expected, rather, it felt like she was sinking lower into the ground, deep enough so that she could hide from everything. Tears aimlessly wandered down her face, dripping off her chin in uneven patters, as she stared, wide-eyed at Chichi's body, how it looked no different than when she was alive, except, the pain was no longer painted on her face. Instead there was a smile, an eerie, but peaceful smile.

"What have you done?" she said, after hearing Vegeta's footsteps growing closer to her. She glanced at her nail-bitten palms, then back to her friend, and then instinctively, on Vegeta's approach, threw herself over Chichi, shielding her from this monster.

Vegeta said nothing.

"We could have saved her," Bulma howled, registration suddenly hacking into her brain.

There was a rancid, putrid smell oozing from the wound on Chichi's neck, like month-old fish left to bake under forty degree heat.

Vegeta's slow, calm breaths were so close she thought she could feel them on her neck.

"No," she screamed, not wanting to even glance in his direction. "Get away from me."

Her hand swung out to swipe at him, but slapped thin air, and landed back on Chichi's leg, her fingers grazing the cool metal of her anklet. A searing, sizzling pain popped through her fingertips from connecting with the anklet, forcing her to wrench backwards on to her behind, grabbing onto her hand as the skin on her finger tips blistered. Menacing yellow lumps appeared on her middle and index finger, already exuding transparent fluid. She supressed the urge to cry, swallowed it along with her despair, and shut her eyes tight, blocking everything out. The world grew so silent, she could have been alone if it wasn't for the short exhales of Vegeta. She didn't want him here anymore. She didn't want anyone here. Hell, she didn't even want to be here. Anywhere. Anywhere was better than this. She begged her mind to transport her to a blissful memory, but they were blocked with huge, towering metal gates, with no locks or way to get in. It was hopeless. The alleyway was now dark. No light flickered at the end. Just darkness. And she was swilling in it, stuck, unable to wind down into the depths.

Her hands throbbed, feeling like she had placed them directly onto a flame, but she didn't want to look at it anymore. If she opened her eyes again, Chichi would still be dead, her hand would still be blistered, she would still be sat in a graveyard on an uninhibited planet, forced to find seven Dragon Balls for an evil overlord. No. She was content with being marooned, sweating amongst her dwindling rationality, swimming amongst dark, harrowing thoughts of death.

'I need to get away from here. I need to go back,' she thought, staring at the inside of her eyelids, focusing on the tiny red veins branching across them, highlighted by the pale sunlight.

Why wasn't Vegeta saying anything? Didn't he feel any emotion at all? He'd just killed two people—a being from his own, practically extinct race. Yet he didn't feel any need to even throw an insulting comment her way, like cajoling her to get a grip of herself because this was out of both of their hands?

Her shoulders slumped. 'I need to get back,' she thought again, without knowing exactly what the thought entailed.

Within the echoing cavern of her mind, a whispering voice slithered towards her, though the words were unintelligible, until a flush of wind enveloped her body, beckoning her to peel her eyes open and look around. Standing dangerously tall, against the backdrop of headstones, was the Orling, gloriously draped in a long purple shawl. The sight was almost heavenly. Her eyes watered again, as he glanced down at Chichi's body, his face wrinkling with acknowledgement.

They slowly met Bulma's eyes, and he nodded solemnly, before saying, "As you wish, Bulma Briefs," pronouncing every letter perfectly, the 'b's bouncing from his white lips.

Just before the Orling knelt to press his palm against her shoulder, there was a warning grumble from Vegeta. But it was too late.