A/N: I do not seem to have a description for Paine in my files (which is odd), and my skimming of the last dozen or so chapters has not turned one up within the story, either (which is also odd, though would explain the lack of one in my files). If anyone reading this remembers a previous description for her earlier in the story, let me know please. For the time being, however, I'm gonna use (perhaps a new) one for this chapter.

XXX

Chapter Sixty-five - Me, Myself, and I

It took a moment for the shock of what Paine was seeing to fade. The amount of raw power needed to cause a planet to fracture, even one as unstable as Malchio's world, was mind boggling. She'd felt the power the Mortal had put out but actually witnessing concrete evidence of its unrestrained might was something else. Swallowing and shaking her head a little to clear it, both of her shock and her fear, she turned her focus back to the Mortal. He was still kneeling at the crater as she took a deep breath and spoke.

"Hello?" she said, and instantly felt like an idiot for saying something so simple. Her voice caught in her throat before she could continue, however, as the Mortal turned to look at her and, seeing her, his eyes narrowed.

"You're the one I sensed Videl fighting back in Hell." he said.

She swallowed again and forced herself to press on, knowing it was likely the only way to avoid a similar fate to the others. "I don't mean any harm." said Paine. "I don't intend to attack you. Actually, I never wanted to attack Shinkai in the first place."

"Then why did you?" Gohan asked, standing up.

"Because I sided with Quietus and he said to." she replied. "You can't side with someone like him, accept a gift of great power from someone like him, and then not follow his orders. It kind of gets you killed."

"So why side with him?"

Paine frowned a little, glancing around at the ruins of the palace and at the still fracturing planet beyond. She knew she had to answer, to explain, if she wanted to get out of this, but the very thought of admitting the truth, admitting her weakness, sickened her. She reached a pale blue hand up and brushed a strand of her white hair off her face.

"Respect." she said after a moment. "I don't know how much you know about Makai, but I'm a Cleric Demon. Or was, before Quietus came along. A low level one, bottom of the ladder. Our duties are menial at best, our powers nothing compared to the rest of those who run the Realm, but we keep everything going. Without us the Realm would fall into disarray.

"The higher Demons, the Controllers and the Judges, recognize at least part of that. They know and admit that our existence, my existence, at least makes things easier and smoother for them, though even they don't truly understand our importance to the running of the Realm. The Mazoku, on the other hand..." She scowled but shrugged.

"Mortal's who have proven themselves worthy in life get to come here to 'live' out their deaths, training and boasting and challenging themselves. Clerics were only allowed here if summoned, and only summoned if Malchio was feeling lazy and wanted to dump some of his work off on them so he could goof off. All Demons were insulted, belittled, mocked, and scorned by the Mortals here and by the Mazoku, and I was sick of it.

"Quietus was a Demon, which alone was enough to earn my support because he wouldn't look down on the rest of us, on me, but the power he offered... The power I have now, it was a way to get respect from the Mortals here, from the Mazoku. When I look in the eyes of those here I don't see contempt, indifference, or condescension anymore, but recognition, respect, and even occasionally some traces of awe. I'm not ignored anymore, not seen as just a nobody, not treated as nothing more than trash, and that's all I ever wanted."

As she spoke, more and more power and passion working into her voice, Gohan's face relaxed and his scowl faded. She may have been the one to fight Videl, the one to have brought her here, but she hadn't fought him with the others. She hadn't played a direct role in Videl's death. And he could hear in her voice, and see in her green eyes, that she was telling him the truth.

"I'm sure there were other ways..." he began.

Paine shook her head. "Maybe where you're from." she said. "But around here the only thing that anyone respects is power. Why do you think the Supreme Mazoku sided with Quietus instead of Dabura?"

"Not all of them did. Nefaria stayed with him."

The Demon nodded slowly. "Yeah, she did." she said, her voice thoughtful. Suddenly there was a loud crack and crash as one of the still standing walls of the palace shattered and collapsed, followed by the six floors above it that it had been supporting. The collapse brought Paine's attention back to the quickly deteriorating state of the planet, and brought it to Gohan's attention for the first time.

"What the...?" he said, looking around. A massive canyon was snaking its way along the ground only a few dozen feet away. It had been the cause of the wall's collapse. As it continued to grow more of the palace buckled and disappeared within. "Is this... are dad and Vegeta's powers that high?"

"What?" Paine wondered, blinking, turning her gaze back to him again. "You mean, you don't...?"

"Huh? Don't what?"

"This isn't from them." she said. "It's from you."

"Me?"

"That attack you unleashed." she explained. "The explosion set off a chain reaction in the planet's fault lines. You caused probably around five or six thousand different quakes to go off all at once, which triggered thousands more of them in quick succession. A continuing chain that still hasn't, and wont, let up. This world is ripping apart at the seams, and with Malchio dead there's nothing and no one to stop it."

"I... did this?" he said, shocked, as a massive spire of rock, forty-five feet across, suddenly erupted a good seventy or eighty feet into the air just a few feet behind him. "I barely even remember attacking..."

Paine stared at him for a moment, then turned and looked up at where the other two were still fighting. "Who are you people, anyway?" she asked after a moment, turning her gaze back to Gohan. "How did you all become so powerful? I've never heard of anyone in Makai being even remotely as powerful as you, and we're supposed to be the stronger Realm."

Gohan shrugged. "We're just people who've constantly had to push ourselves to become stronger just to survive." he said. "Fighting off one threat after another."

She shook her head in mild disbelief. He said it like it was no big deal, like it was just some typical every day thing that was perfectly reasonable and normal. It was clear he didn't understand just how... absurd his power was in the grand scheme of the universe. Though, if he was constantly dealing with threats anywhere near his level, if he'd had to contend with that Cell creature, she supposed it would seem a little more normal.

It still boggled her mind, though. As did the fact that these beings could apparently gain an incredible amount of power simply by changing the color of their eyes and hair. When she'd knocked the girl out her hair had turned black and her power had dived. The boy's hair was black now and his power far lower than anything she'd felt from him before. So strange.

Her eyes widened a second later as one of the powerful warriors, the one in orange, suddenly came surging down toward them.

XXX

About three hundred feet above and seven hundred feet south east of Gohan and Paine's location, Goku and Vegeta were continuing their battle. The latter had put Gohan's power spike out of mind a second faster than the other and lunged in, catching Goku off guard and landing a solid right hook to his jaw in the process. The Sai-jin Royal went to follow it up with a kick his side but his opponent managed to deflect it at the last second and counter with a elbow to his face that knocked him back and left him open to a follow-up open palmed blow to the chest.

The impact knocked Vegeta back but he thrust an arm out firing a blast of purple energy at the other Sai-jin. As Goku deflected it away he saw Vegeta charging toward him. He managed to slip around the Royal's first punch but the second slammed into his ribs and then an elbow pounded into his gut knocking the wind out of him. Reaching out Vegeta grasped the back of the other's head and thrust it down as he brought his knee up, smashing it into his face.

Though dazed from the blow there was a flash of gold as Goku released a burst of ki that knocked Vegeta back. As the Royal was being knocked away Goku backflipped where he floated, slamming both feet up into Vegeta's jaw sending him up into the air. An instant later there was another flash of gold as Goku charged up after him. The Sai-jin reached him quickly, thrusting both arms up at the same time and slammed into his stomach, fists first.

Vegeta's eyes and mouth snapped open wide in pain and shock as Goku drove him up another hundred feet before slipping out from under him, shooting up beyond him, and then aiming a kick down at this back. The Royal was already turning, however, and the kick missed it's mark as Vegeta grabbed his ankle, continued his turn, and then pitched him off into the distance. Scowling, he quickly sent a volley of ki blasts after him.

'Stop being so soft.' a voice echoed inside his mind. His own voice. He'd been hearing it faintly since he'd first awakened here. It was the voice that had told him how to gain more power, how to draw the dark energy around him into his body. Darkness Infusion, it had called it. It was abnormal, he knew, to have his own voice talking to him, independently of his thoughts, and presenting knowledge to him that he did not possess. Peculiar though it was, it was no more so than the rest of the day's events, and he'd taken this development in stride.

Now, however, the voice was louder, stronger than it had been before. It had been ever since he'd used Darkness Infusion to increase his power. Prior to that it had been more thought than a voice, but not anymore. Now it sounded like someone was talking inside of his mind. Though it was even stranger than the thought voice had been he took this new development in stride as well. Maybe it was the first signs of madness, maybe it was something else, either way it didn't matter. All that mattered was winning the fight.

Ahead of him Goku had recovered from being thrown and was dodging and deflect the last dozen or so of the hundred ki blasts Vegeta had sent after him. The Sai-jin Royal took this in stride as well and shot in toward him. He reached his opponent just as Goku was deflecting the last ki blast. His left fist shot out and caught him squarely on his right temple and he followed it up with a spinning kick to the opposite side of his head.

As Goku drifted to the side, slightly dazed by the dual blows to the head, Vegeta slammed both palms into his chest and then unleashed a point blank ki blast that sent him surging backward. Smirking to himself, Vegeta prepared to pursue his opponent but was brought to a sudden halt as a large boulder suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, shot up into the air in front of him, temporarily blocking his way before proceeding off into Limbo.

At first he thought that, somehow, his opponent had caused it, but a quick look around proved otherwise. The entire planet was ripping apart. Massive canyons were forming, new mountains were sprouting all around, and entire chunks were breaking off and spinning away from the whole. The chaos around him felt a fighting place for this battle, and seemed almost an outward manifestation of his fragmented thoughts.

'Forget about the damn planet!' the inner voice growled. 'Focus on killing Kakkarotto!'

/I'm not trying to kill him./ Vegeta thought to the voice that was and was not him as he shot after the Sai-jin in question. During his moment of distraction surveying the planet Goku had recovered from the last series of attacks and was waiting for him. /I only need to defeat him, killing him is unnecessary./

'Unnecessary? Unnecessary!?' the voice cried as Vegeta reached his opponent and resumed the battle. Goku slipped around the punch that had been aimed for his head and countered with one of his own, but Vegeta blocked it and shot a knee at his stomach. Goku managed to deflect it while simultaneously smashing his elbow into Vegeta's chest. 'After everything he's done? You need to kill him!'

/You don't tell me what to do./ he snapped back at the voice as he recovered from the blow to his chest. His left arm snapped out and he released a ball of purple ki but Goku swatted it away and charged in, only to find that his target was merely an after image. He'd just come to a stop, his arm half way through Vegeta's fading head, when a loud crack sounded as the Sai-jin King kicked him in the back.

'No, you never listen to me.' the voice said in irritation. 'Why do you think you're in this position in the first place? If you paid more attention to me this wouldn't have happened! YOU would have been the first to become a Super Sai-jin. YOU would have defeated Frieza. YOU would have been the one to stop the Androids. Not this low class nobody or his family.'

Goku spun around even as he was knocked forward and lashed out with his left leg, driving his foot into the royal's stomach. Continuing the twist he then smashed his other leg into the side of his head. The blow knocked him off balance and turned him over, upside down, and Goku thrust his left leg out again pounding his heel into Vegeta's face and knocking him back.

/Shut-up!/ Vegeta growled at the voice, his vision blurring slightly from the blows to his head. /I can't focus on the fight and your annoying prattle at the same time!/

'Fight? Fight? This isn't a fight, this is charade! A mockery of everything it means to be Sai-jin!'

/Shut-up!/ Vegeta mentally roared, thrusting both arms out and unleashing his anger at the voice by firing a massive stream of purple energy at his opponent, who'd been moving into to launching another kick. Goku's eyes widened, he was only a few feet away when the attack was unleashed. No time to block, no time to slip around it. He vanished just before the energy stream hit, appearing again a few feet behind Vegeta. The royal quickly spun and blocked the kick that had been aimed at his head and countered with one of his own.

'No, I will not be silenced. Not now, not ever again. You have ignored me long enough and look at where it's gotten you./

/I order you to shut the hell up, right now!/ Vegeta growled, his silvery eyes narrowing as he just barely avoided being clobbered again.

'Order me? YOU think you can order ME?'

/Of course I can./ he responded, catching first Goku's left hand, then his right, and then head butting him three times in quick succession, kneeing him in the stomach, and then smashing a doubled handed blow into his back driving him down toward what was left of the Grand Mazoku's planet. /I am the Sai-jin King and you're just a nagging voice in my head. You don't even exist./

'Sai-jin King my ass!' the voice yelled, clearly infuriated by notion. 'You are a weak, pathetic, worthless, cowardly excuse of a monkey trying to pass itself off as Sai-jin! You dishonor the true race and royalty just by existing, and even more with your sympathy, your lenience, your spinelessness! I am the Sai-jin King, you are just a child playing make believe, a usurper to the throne, and it is time you learnt your place!'

XXX

Goku tried to reverse his momentum, to fly back the way he'd come, but he was surging down toward the ground too quickly to stop and slammed into it, hard, a few seconds later. The impact rocked the weakened planet, shattering the surface and sending hundreds of tons of debris hurtling off into the sky. With the entire planet coming apart, the core destabilized, and the magnetic and gravitational fields out of whack the debris that had been knocked skyward did not fall back down but instead settled into various orbits above their heads.

"Dad!" Gohan cried, hurrying forward across the fifteen or so yards that separated him and his father's impact point.

"I'm alright." Goku said, climbing to his feet again. Gazing up at the sky he blinked in surprise at what he saw. Vegeta was not surging down to continue the fight. Instead, he was breathing hard, had one hand pressed against his forehead, and seemed to be grimacing in pain. /Maybe he's finally resisting this Dark Awakening thing./ he thought. Keeping Vegeta at the edge of his vision he turned his head and gazed toward his son.

"Did you find Videl?" he asked.

Gohan swallowed and closed his eyes. "Yes." he said. "But... I couldn't..."

"So, that was the trigger." Goku said in understanding, turning his entire focus back to Vegeta. "Gohan, I want you to go back to Shinkai."

"What? No! I can't just leave!"

"Your grandfather and I can handle things here. You're need back in Shinkai. Now that we've met the Mazoku, know just how strong they are, we can't leave the others unprotected, they wouldn't stand a chance if one of them attacked them. Mikomi can't be everywhere at once, and wouldn't be able to handle two or three of them at the same time by herself.

"Bardock's helping Dabura and I have to deal with Vegeta, so you need to go back. I felt how strong you are, you're the only one with the power to deal with the Mazoku one on one. Working with Mikomi you could take all three of them together if you had to."

"But... I can't use that power whenever I want."

"Yes, you can." Goku said. "You just have to believe in yourself. Just let go of the fear that's holding you back and you can do it, I know you can. I have faith in you, Gohan." Above them Vegeta's grimace was fading, his breathing returning to normal. "Go, now!" he cried, and then lunged back up toward Vegeta who had now fully recovered.

Gohan watched him go for a moment. /I wish I had your confidence./ he thought. It made him happy to know his father believed in him, but it also put a heavy weight on his heart, a fear that he couldn't live up to expectations. As his father reached Vegeta and the fight resumed again he turned to face Paine.

"Looks like I need to get back." he said. He may not have the faith in his ability that his father did but he knew that Goku was right, if any of the Mazoku attacked, especially if more than one of them attacked, they'd need more help than just Mikomi. Whether or not he'd actually be of any help remained to be seen, but he at least had to be there. "Only, I'm not sure how to find the way on my own. Could you show me?"

Paine stared at him for a moment, glanced up at the fight above, then back at him again. "You wouldn't be able to cross through to the other Realm your own, either." said Paine. "I'll take you through to Shinkai, but on one condition."

"What is it?"

Paine pursed her lips for a second before answering. "I want you to understand I'm no coward. I would gladly and willingly give my life for a cause I truly believed in..."

"But you don't believe in this one?" asked Gohan.

The Demon sighed. "No." she said. "Not this way, at least. I believe that Shinkai and its ways are weak, that we of Makai are the stronger and superior people, but I have existed for six thousand years, and as a Cleric Demon I recognize the necessity of order. The balance exists for a reason, good and evil, weak and strong, both are needed to create a whole.

"I may not think much of Shinkai or the Kais, but I realize that they are required in order to keep existence from falling into chaos, much like we Clerics keep Makai working. I believe in the principle of our rule over all but know that removing the Kais, even just imprisoning them, would lead only to harm to both Realms."

"I get it." said Gohan. "You're talking about this balance stuff that Dabura, Nefaria, Kibito, and Mikomi told us about. So, what's your condition?"

Paine hesitated for moment. As with admitting her weakness, the lack of respect she got and her desire to have it, even thinking of making this request was distasteful. Still, she felt she'd gone as far as she could on her current path. She had to stick with who she was or there was no point in existing, and she wasn't this.

"Asylum." she said at last. "A guarantee that you and your allies let me be."

"That we wont kill you, you mean." Gohan said, a little surprised. But then, he realized, something like that would probably be a reasonable concern in this Realm. "Don't worry, as long as you don't cause any problems we'll leave you alone. I can't make any promises about what will happen once this is all over, I don't really know how a Demon in Shinkai would work out or anything. Not really my field of knowledge."

Paine nodded. "That's fine. I have no intention of remaining after the war, win or lose, but my soul tells me to protect the order, not my pride." She held her right hand out, then. "Take my hand, I will transport us to the path to the Dead Zone."

"Thank-you." Gohan said, doing as asked, and an instant later the two of them vanished.

XXX

Vegeta pressed a hand against his head and shut his eyes tight against the sudden rush of pain that had flooded his mind. This was a new and, most assuredly, unwelcome development. A phantom voice talking to him was fine, he could live with that, but the same phantom voice wracking his body with pain and paralyzing him in the middle of a fight? That just would not do.

/Go away!/ he mentally cried, trying his best to try and force the pain to stop. His body, however, seemed incapable of reacting to his commands at the moment. /Are you trying to make me lose!?/

'No.' said the voice, echoing in his mind and, seemingly and impossibly, in the air around him. 'You are perfectly capable of losing all on your own. It seems to be something you excel at quite well.'

Vegeta growled, but didn't otherwise respond to the words. The pain was starting to fade and he lowered his arm and opened his eyes. His vision was blurry, but clearing, and he cast his other senses about for some sign of his opponent, sure that he must have recovered by now and be nearly on him, but felt no trace of him anywhere.

His confusion grew as his vision cleared and revealed he was no long floating above the disintegrating world he'd been on just a moment ago. He was standing on the surface of a world that was not in the verge of obliteration, in the middle of a wide stone road. Above him was an orange sky that held, almost directly overhead, three suns.

One was massive, at least six or seven times the size of the sun on Earth or Planet Vegeta. The other two were small, less than a quarter the size of those of Earth or Vegeta. They were more like large stars than suns, but suns they clearly were for one of them floated in front of the red sun, near the bottom of it and nearly lost inside its glare.

The other small sun was just north of the equator of the red sun, off about a hand's width to the right of it. It seemed to shine more brightly than the other blue-white sun, but that was likely only illusion, its greater distance from the red sun preventing it from being as outshone as its brother. Though the sight seemed somehow familiar to him he knew he'd never been on a world with three suns like these before.

Looking around his more immediate surroundings he found that the road he was on lead back behind him to a large mountain range of red and black stone. To his left and right were fields covered in some sort of knee high yellow grass, some red and blue bushes, and what looked like four foot tall yellow palm trees. Vegetation unlike any he'd seen before.

Ahead of him, about forty yards away, was a massive set of metal doors standing at least two hundred feet tall. They were set in a metal wall at least twice that height that stretched on for miles to his left and right. The metal of the wall was dull and rusted, but the door shined in the redish-orange light.

The metal was so polished it was like the glass of a mirror, reflecting back the world around him. And himself. He knew that the magic used on him by the Grand Mazoku, as well as the Darkness Infusion technique he himself had used, had altered his appearance, but looking at his reflection now he saw himself as he normally was. And instead of the sleeveless blue body suit he'd been wearing he had on a black body suit with long sleeves and pants, and his red and white royal armor with the flowing cape and his family crest on the left brest plate.

"What is this?" he wondered. "Where the hell am I?"

"Home." said the voice, and this time it was entirely outside of his mind, seemingly emmanating from the air around him. "In a manner of speaking, at least." The air in front of him shimmered, about halfway between where he stood and the large metal doors directly in front of his reflection, and a form emerged from that distortion. The figure looked like him, and yet it did not.

The apparition was the same height and build as him, had the same general facial features, but his skin tone was several shades darker. Like he'd spent years living out under the sun, or suns given their present location. The man's eyes, also, were different. Even from twenty yards away Vegeta could make out his brilliant blue eyes. Directly above the eyes, his eyebrows lacked any hair and the ridges seemed to jut out an inch or two more than normal.

Though, most striking of all, was the wild mane of blood red hair. It didn't just stick straight up, as his own did, but there was more of it along the sides, spilling down over the man's shoulders, and in the back reaching about half way down the man's back. The extra hair was just as unrully as the rest, sticking out every which way.

His clothing was simple, and sparse. No shirt, a pair of baggy white pants with a red wasit band, and black shoes. For added decoration he had on a necklace made of the large, sharp teeth of some animal, each about the size of his thumb, and gold bands around his wrists and biceps. The gold bands seemed to have something engraved on them, though from where he was Vegeta could make out no details.

"This is where you are from." the figure continued. "Or rather, where I am from. But as we are, unfortunately, the same, I a part of you and you, well, so much less than I but sharing my blood and soul all the same, this is your true home as well. Have you really fallen so far you do not even recognize it?"

"Do I look like I care?" Vegeta asked, scowling. "I don't know how you brought me here, but send me back right now! I have a fight to finish."

The figure shook his head. "Don't you worry about that fight." he said. "It's still going on, you're still fighting it. I merely... split part of you off, so that we could have our own little... chat."

"I'm not interested in anything a delusion has to say."

"Deluded thought you are, I am no delusion. I am power. I am truth. I am the you that once was, the true and rightful Sai-jin King. And I intend to reclaim what belongs to me."