Chapter 14.
Thicker Than Water.
It was just an ordinary day under the red skies of the recently named planet Vegeta.
Rhuba looked at the mountains and forests she used to call home, but just a year after the Saiyan Tuffle war ended, everything she knew would change forever when aliens landed on the planet.
It was learned shortly after, that the aliens had sent an envoy to the planet first.
All the Saiyans saw was a flying vessel and assumed it was a Tuffle survivor, so promptly smashed it out of the sky.
A few months later, the alien King's son, Lord Freeza landed right in front of Chief Vegeta's layer.
Everyone was told that Vegeta was recognised for his greatness and strength, but since full colonisation with the extra-terrestrials, the word is that Vegeta charged at Freeza and found himself under the alien's heel and before he even knew what hit him, all of his top men were dead with cauterized holes through their chests. Each hole was about the diameter of a finger, which was consistent with the clean-cut holes found in the walls behind where they stood.
The Saiyan 'Monkeys' were told to abandon their savage ways and evolve.
The Alphas and the Dirt Dwellers were redubbed as the Elites and the lower-class garbage, or trash. They always had to get their dig in.
No longer would the Saiyans wear pelts or fur, but were handed colourful uniforms to wear instead.
When Cressin, Rhuba, and Garagus were found and informed of what was going on, there was resistance.
After being captured and forced to wear the thin garments the Tuffles put them in, no one was thrilled about these new clothes.
However, at least they were being handed over by fellow Saiyans.
The first few weeks were the hardest for adjustments. Again, it was like being in that Tuffle base.
No more caves or dens, but houses. Built by the colonisers.
The Saiyans were allowed to govern themselves as always, but Chief turned King Vegeta would answer to a higher authority.
Though not Lord Freeza, the muscle of the forces, but King Cold. For the time being at least.
Five hundred Saiyans were taken into the Cold forces for training off-world.
They saw other planets. They did battle against other aliens.
And when they returned with stories of what they'd done, nearly three-quarters of the Saiyan population had volunteered for the privilege.
Garagus was curious of seeing what was out there. But rather than join a kill team, he found work in bodyguarding Captain Granate while Rhuba and Cressin found work in the newly rebuilt cities.
Cressin struggled to adapt to the new way of life. Construction sounded like something she'd be good at in theory since she was the one who made all the dens.
But she couldn't read the design plans, so she simply carries loads and supplies about.
With more than half the Saiyans off-world, a mix of aliens arrived on the planet. Most struggled to stand under the immense gravity and returned to various space stations. Those that could hold their weight helped run the day-to-day needs of the planet's new economy.
It was all so complicated now.
Rhuba and her mother like a few other lower-class Saiyans yearned for the days when things were simple.
Every now and then a rally would stir where some wanted to try and get out of the agreement with King Cold.
But the pros outweighed the cons so far.
"Well apart from the hot showers, the healing tanks, the new learnings, the booze, making it so the Alphas and Elites can't just kill us for fun, the crop farming, water purification, and heightened quality of life! What have these Cold Forces ever done for us?"
"I'm bored." Cressin sighed as she walked away from the rally with Rhuba at her side. "Garagus is taking off again tomorrow, isn't he?"
"Actually it's tonight."
Cressin cursed herself. "I wanted to have him over. I was going to make dinner."
Rhuba giggled. Things really had changed for the better in recent years.
With him being in space for so long at a time, they really did miss him being around, but to actually hear her say it.
"How does he feel about being gone for months at a time?"
Rhuba shrugged. It's not as though they can't stay in contact while he's gone. But the first few nights back is proof enough that she was missed just as much.
"He enjoys it. If I wasn't scared of those ships, I might go with him."
"Hmm." Cressin looked around at all the Saiyans on domestic work like her and Rhuba. "You don't see many runts these days."
"I guess not?" Rhuba only recalled being around other children during gatherings. The tradition stopped years ago when the war against the Tuffles started. There was a brief period where they tried to get it going again, but it's lost its value ever since living in cities became the norm.
"I was just thinking, if you were ever to have a baby…"
"No." Rhuba ended that in its tracks. Garagus brought the topic up once before, only this time Cressin doesn't have a set of balls to kick.
"Remind me why not?"
"You said it hurts."
"It does."
"You said it's like being punched from the inside while trying to shit out the arm trying to punch you."
Cressin pulled a face while stopping Rhuba's thought.
"I may have exaggerated a little." She sighed. "I'm just worried that the Saiyans are changing so fast. I'm not saying things were better when we lived in burrows, but we were tighter."
Rhuba knew what she meant. Garagus, who used to sleep with them both every single night isn't even in the same star system most of the year now.
"If you had a little baby, I'd have someone I could teach the old ways to. Borrows and gathering… away from the cities."
"Why does it sound like you're planning to kidnap my baby who isn't even born yet?"
"Now you sound just like your real mother."
"my WHAT?" Rhuba's face turned bright red as Cressin laughed her lying tail off. "I'm, going to find Garagus!" Rhuba boomed before storming off into the market area.
Most of the stalls were selling food due to Saiyans having a fast metabolism and can burn calories quickly. But some stalls were selling keepsakes and other worldly accessories.
Rhuba didn't often take to those kinds of things, but she was staring at one broach for a moment.
It was during this pause and laps in awareness, that she was hoisted off the ground by a set of strong arms wrapped around her waist.
"Ah! G-Garagus, don't do that~!" She laughed as she was flown over the rooftops.
Only to be suddenly dropped.
It didn't feel real at first. He never drops her.
No, that's not true. He dropped her once over a lake, for fun.
But never this high, not over solid ground.
He'll catch her. He always catches her.
"AH!" She screamed when someone grabbed her tail out of the air before letting her finally land on the roof.
She lay there holding her tail with shot nerves pulsing all over her body as he slowly landed at her head.
"You've all grown up." He said in a calm voice. "I almost didn't recognise you at first, but your cute face, that voice, the skinny arms, you know my brother, You're definitely her."
"R, Russell…" Rhuba coughed, struggling to get her breath back.
"Oh good. I actually wasn't all that sure. It would have been awkward if you were talking about another Garagus."
"What are you doing here?"
"Remember my father? Nitch? He's one of King Vegeta's elite guards."
Rhuba tried her best not to react honestly to what he was saying.
On one hand, she honestly and literally, couldn't care less about his father. Plus, Alpha Saiyans are already called Elites now. So King Vegeta's 'Elite' guards is a new layer of redundancy.
On the other hand, voicing either of these thoughts will piss off the Seven-foot superiority-complexed toddler even more.
"Doesn't matter anyway. Point is, I want my brother back. You've had your fun with him, now give him back so he can stand in the palace where he belongs."
And there's the other element. He's a prick.
"Do you hear yourself?" Rhuba climbed to her knees. She still hurt, but she didn't want to back down to him. "We took your brother in when he was just a boy, you come here nearly fifteen years later and demand him back?" Rhuba did a quick sum. "In fact, wasn't he ten when you all went off to war? He's more ours than yours at this poin-"
He hopped. That was all it took for Russell to stick his boot down on her shoulder, pinning her to the ground.
Holding in her screams, Rhuba soon realised she'd never get his foot off on her own. But a loud cry escaped as she finally submitted.
"okAY!" She screamed clutching his ankle. "Okay, I'll leave him alone…"
"Good girl." Stepping off her, Russell walked towards the edge and looked over the docking port that hung at the cliff edge. "Oh, I'll need to borrow your scouter."
Rhuba felt too tired and weak to argue. Reaching into an inside pocket between her elbow and ribs, she pulled out the device she only really uses for long-range transmissions, and it can also be used to track another registered scouter's ID.
With it, Garagus will be easily found by his long-lost brother.
"now I just gotta knock sense into him…" Russell muttered mostly to himself as the scouter tracked Garagus for him. He then shot off, blowing a mist of dirt and dust in Rhuba's face as he went.
"asshole…" Rhuba growled as she went to the edge, holding her bad arm. It didn't feel broken or dislocated, but it definitely felt bad.
Even if there was a ladder to the ground or even a lower ledge with a door, Rhuba didn't feel excited about facing the drop with one good arm to keep her from falling.
Her first time in a Tuffle city back when she and Garagus got captured wasn't her last time. Their migration to find other Saiyans, though ultimately fruitless, did lead them through the desolate ruins of several cities.
When Tuffles constructed tall buildings, there were always safety rails and escape ladders.
Here, now, not so much.
Most people who work this high up can fly naturally, so ladders are an expanse no one is willing to pay.
So she's trapped with no way down.
Having completed her second lap of the roof edge after her calls down failed to get attention from the melting pot of aliens and Saiyans below, Rhuba weighed up the notion of shooting an energy blast down there to signal for help.
Now starting her third lap, she was once again eyeing up the roof along across the street.
Can she jump that far? Maybe.
And survive landing if she reaches the other side? Yes.
Will the landing hurt and leave her with nasty scrapes? Without a doubt.
And what will her state of being become should she fail to make the jump? Soup.
"Don't be stupid, Rhuba…" She backed away from the edge and rested against a generator. If it comes to it, she can just kick the generator to death and explain the situation to whichever engineer comes to fix it and hope he's understanding about it.
With an instruction manual in one hand, a box of tools at his knee, and Captain Granit looking over his shoulder, Garagus looked at the red canister and the blue canister, trying to solve which one was filled with a volatile fuel, and which one was filled with harmless water.
"That one's the fuel," Garagus stated pointing to the blue canister.
"Okay, but tell me how you've reasoned this?"
"Because water is red," Garagus said with weak confidence.
Granate chuckled.
"Well, you're not wrong." He turned the canister ninety degrees to show the universal symbol for Incineration on Contact marked on the blue bottle. "Just, don't let that be your rule of knowing which is water. Remember, the ocean takes whatever colour the sky is." Granate looked up from his assessment of Garagus' work just long enough to watch him walk towards the open airlock and check for himself.
He knew the sea and sky were both shades of red, he just never put together there was a cause-effect relationship.
"If I don't bend your mind, can I really call myself a teacher?" Granate laughed to himself as Garagus looked back at him with wide eyes. "Anyway, you need to learn how to deal with hull breaches now."
"Beaches?"
"B-Reaches. When there's a hole in this outer hull." Granate took Garagus through the probabilities of that happening and luckily they're quite small. "The downside is it'll kill the occupants of whatever room suffers for it. But every room and hall is airtight and pressure is controlled by individual smart vents. So follow me and I'll show you how the overrides work."
"No need for that!"
Hearing the sudden voice, Garagus stepped in front of his captain to protect against the intruder.
"Russell?" It had been over ten years, but he could recognise his older brother anywhere. Stepping away from Granate, he ran up to Russell and both of them threw her arms around each other, crushing until one, both, or all their ribs gave out.
"Okay! Okay, you win!" Garagus wheezed.
"Always do." Russell laughed. "I've come to take you home, baby brother. Prince Vegeta is needing staff for his training, that could be us."
"Prince? Oh, the baby."
"He's three, and already he's stronger than we were at ten." Russell had seen the boy fight first-hand. He's a protégé just like his father predicted. "Rumours are stirring, we might see a Super Saiyan in our lifetimes."
"Wouldn't that be nice." Garagus could feel his hairs standing at the mere idea of the legend coming real. It would be a royal if anyone. Their bloodline is so incomprehensible, and going Super will fuel that like nothing else. "Did you say training?"
"Still as slow as ever I see. That's why we need you back." Looking to the Freeza captain standing in the back of the bridge, Russell scoffed. "This work is for the lower classes…" Seeing his brother's attention already drift away, Russell pulled his head back towards him. "Look at me, we're Elites. Your place is in King Vegeta's palace with us."
"I saw a planet a few months ago. The magnetism with the red star made these orange lights dance across the sky at night." Garagus mused, remembering it fondly, even when telling Rhuba about it. She too was so mesmerised by it, he didn't want to abandon what was out there to stand in a courtroom all day. "Besides, I don't think our king would be happy about me bringing Rhuba into the palace."
"Garagus. It's time to move on. Put that stuff to rest and be with us. We're family."
"Rhuba's my mate. I'm not abandoning her."
"Excuse you?" Russell thought he was merely playing with her all these years. Having her for fun is one thing, but committing to her is a whole other. "She's Dirt, Garagus!" He roared. "Lower class trash! She'll always be beneath you!"
"Not always, sometimes I'm beneath her~" He laughed. "But real talk, You're my brother and I love you. But you'll not talk about her like that."
"Or what?" Russell demanded. "What will you do? We're blood, she is filth."
"Goodbye, Russell." Garagus returned to his work. "Tell mother I'm thinking of her, congratulate father on becoming King Vegeta's elite lapdog."
Russell was fuming. The audacity of his younger brother turning his back on him was outrageous enough, but to degrade their father's position and choosing a Dirt Dwelling lower class wretch over his own family.
His fist tightened. Someone needed to pay for this.
"You're my brother and I love you," he growled. "I'll see you at the palace." He was just about to leave.
"Russell, isn't it?" Granate asked, approaching the elder Saiyan sibling. "How exactly did you find us?"
Russell looked down his nose at the old captain.
"Checked the shipping log." He muttered before flying off.
As soon as he left, Granate grabbed Garagus' scouter off the table and set it to track.
"What's wrong?"
"His smell," Granate muttered. "There was a scent of fear, adrenaline, like a body reacting to shock and pain."
"Maybe he's just that scared of telling father I'm not coming." Garagus chuckled.
"Not a man's," Granate honed in and tracked, then, sure enough, it fixed on Russell's movement. "He has Rhuba's scouter!"
"Mother will call. And when I don't answer, she'll call Garagus. Then he'll call. Then he'll come looking for me." Rhuba sighed, her back feeling numb to the light hum and vibrations from the generator. "But he'll never find me, because I'm as out of place as up here a fish on a mountain."
As she said it, she remembered the fish that swim upstream to reach high hillside and mountain lakes. "Fish can get up mountains better than I can get off a roof…" That thought depressed her more.
Her arm still hurt, it felt numb in the bone.
Nothing will be solved though if she sits there doing nothing, and the chances of Garagus finding her is slim at best and non-existent at worst.
There is a chance, however, if she were to learn how to fly like Garagus always said to.
He always made it look so easy, but standing there at the edge of the roof, Rhuba felt like she was about to become soup on the ground.
"Someone!" She screamed louder. "HELP ME!"
The tiny freckles of people walking below didn't change direction or even stop for a moment.
"King Vegeta is a Bitch!" Risky play. She knew it could backfire.
Swallowing hard, eyes at the next ledge. Either she flies, lands hard on the next roof, or she soups.
Running as fast as she can, she leapt from the edge. For a moment, it felt like she was flying. For a moment. But gravity is an unrelenting force that Hates Rhuba.
She landed harder than when Russell dropped her. Her knees buckled from under her, and she rolled along the hard rough surface of the roof.
Her skin scraped and burned all down her leg and elbow.
Not worried about crying openly in private, Rhuba clung to her bleeding arm tightly as tears soaked her lashes.
"I'd say you've got a real pair on you, but…" Russell landed right behind her. "you don't really have a set."
Gritting her teeth and wiping her tears away, Rhuba choked down her sobs and tried to find her voice.
"No I do, they're attached to your brother but everything down there is my plaything." She smiled to see him physically flinch at the thought. "Why does that make you shy?"
"You're fowl. Your birth was a mistake!" Russel growled.
"I'm an only child because my mother got it right the first time! But you're a big brother because your parents needed a second go, and unless I'm wrong, they stopped after Garagus. But everything good in him came from me and my mother."
Even as the fist came her way, Rhuba closed her eyes and smiled, knowing however much this would hurt, she'd already hurt him more.
"Filthy Dweller, shut your mouth!"
First, it was the left side of her head being whacked, then a lesser hit on her right. When her eyes opened it was dark, there was a loud hissing as hot steam vented through her hair.
Her head spun as she tried to regain focus. When she tried to stand up, something sharp pulled on her cheek, making a metallically rich tasting hot water flow over her tongue.
It hurt too much to keep trying, even when she heard Russell's raised voice, followed by an enraged roar.
Suddenly, cold air and light hit her face as a loud ringing clanged in her ears.
When she opened her eyes, she saw Russell's face staring back at her.
"Rhuba?" The metal entrapping her face was pulled apart and she saw the red face of Garagus staring at her.
Garagus' hands trembled as he held her. She was fading in and out of being able to focus, the only thing that remained throughout was her weak smile.
"You'll choose her, over your own blood?" Russell asked, pulling his head from the same steam vent he'd knocked Rhuba into.
With nothing to say to him, Garagus just carried Rhuba away and lay her down.
Har hand clung to his arm, sliding down passed his wrist before finally losing grip of his fingers.
Through a half-closed bloody eye, Rhuba watched the two brothers brawl there on the roof.
The better-trained Russell had a head start in landing the first seven punches, but Garagus merely biding his time, putting up a hard defence and blocking as much as he could, then took full advantage of the first opening he got and cracked Russell's ribs hard then sweeping his feet away and slamming the older sibling on the roof so hard that they fell through the attic storage, and through to the floor below that.
The Saiyans fought back and forth, smashing the framed photo of the manager with King Cold, reducing the glass Koohii table to shards, and worst of all, the imported desk from the seventh planet of the Malchior system was also destroyed.
All this carnage and more was topped and ended when they ejected themselves through the window.
The lift opened as the manager was welcoming investors from other words. Stepping cautiously through the wreckage, they observed through the broken window a fight between two Saiyans twenty-seven floors up.
"Our insurance does cover this, and I assure you that under Lord Freeza's rule, this is the most destruction that'll ever happen on planet Vegeta." She knew it was hopeless, her scared investors backed away into the lift. "I hate this planet…"
Garagus and Russell landed blow for blow, kicking and punching until they drifted close enough to the building Rhuba was on.
Swallowing the blood in her mouth, Rhuba leapt off and pulled her arm tight around Russell's neck.
Chocking, and unable to get her off, Russell suffered punch after punch from Garagus until he finally lost the power of flight and began to plummet.
Garagus pulled Rhuba off, and grabbed Russell by his tail.
"Let him drop!" Rhuba coughed more blood onto her hand as she spoke.
"I'd love to..." Garagus growled, shifting Rhuba up a little for a better grip before taking off towards the palace.
Russell in tow, Garagus flew to King Vegeta's palace and simply dropped him off at the main entrance.
"Who are you?" Demanded the guards, preparing to fight the unknown intruders.
"He's my brother. He attacked my mate, I'm simply returning him." Garagus explained as Rhuba rolled Russell over and retrieved her scouter in case he ever tried to track them down again.
"Garagus!" Boomed a loud voice from the palace steps.
Rhuba averted her swollen face from Tunipy. Of all of Garagus' family, his mother was most vocal but least aggressive about her son's pairing with a dweller.
"Is he alive?" Tunipy demanded, eyes locked on her unconscious son.
"Unfortunately…" Garagus hardly finished the word before a punch to his stomach put his lights out.
Wiping the damp blood from her hand, Tunipy stared at Rhuba.
The dweller girl knew better than to resist as the matron of Garagus's family grabbed her jaw, forcing her to turn her head.
"Russell do that to you?" Tunipy asked, staring at the marks on her face.
Nodding weakly, Rhuba didn't know what to expect.
But Tunipy looked at her sons with disgust.
"Guards, bring these two in and get them cleaned up." She called out. "You follow me, Rhuba."
Rhuba was still hurting all over but forced herself to walk at the same pace as Tunipy who led her into the palace and into the servant's quarters.
A corridor overlooked a gymnasium where Rhuba could see a child with tall spiky hair in a blue bodysuit fighting tiny green monsters.
"Prince Vegeta will have need of me after he's finished in there. You can sit in my room and wash up. Take what you need."
After a hot shower, be it stingy shower, Rhuba changed into clothes better suited for people with much thicker limbs.
It was easy to assume that the difference between the elites and lower classes was night and day. They were simply built differently.
When she returned to the main living room with twin beds pushed together, Rhuba looked around the décor.
There were pelts hung on the wall, as well as a set of fangs larger than Rhuba's arm.
Tunipy clearly wanted to remember a simpler time before the aliens came.
Rhuba could relate. Now that she was dried off, all she wanted to do was snuggle into her favourite white fur and sleep the pain away.
The door slid open and in came the last person she wanted to see.
"Sit." Nitch ordered, pushing Rhuba onto the bed when she didn't act fast enough.
He pulled out a case and brought a small flashlight to Rhuba's eyes.
"he hit you good," He muttered, staring at her pupils. "follow the light."
"It didn't feel good…" Rhuba muttered.
"you're not dead, it's as good as you get." Nitch put the light away and pulled out another device that checks for internal damage. "Tougher than you look, no breakage."
Rhuba sat quietly while Nitch finished his brief examination. Tunipy then entered to announce that Garagus is awake, making Rhuba look more alive than she had all afternoon.
"He says he's not staying here. He wants to buddy around with his captain up in space." Her eyes locked on Rhuba. "He also said he's no intention of leaving his mate behind this time."
Looking at the dweller woman sitting on the bed, Nitch couldn't understand what his son saw in this frail petty excuse for a Saiyan. Nitch growled before getting up and heading out to examine his sons.
Tunipy stared daggers at Rhuba.
Her youngest vanished for over ten years, when he finally showed up he and his brother knocked each other bloody, and now Garagus has pretty much renounced his right to live with the Elite Saiyans, all because of this lower-class girl.
"Enjoy space." She muttered on her way out.
At the ship, Granit was watching the skies, waiting for his one-man crew to return. Cressin even showed up looking for them and had been sitting at the console for nearly an hour waiting.
"Still at the palace, what in the world are they doing?" Getting ever impatient, she tried to send another message to Rhuba. But as she was typing one key at a time with only her index finger, Granit called her over, announcing that both their scouters were together and moving fast towards the ship.
They were shocked at the sight of them. The blood had been washed from their faces but there were clear signs of battle.
They heard from the pair what happened, and although Cressin wasn't thrilled to hear that Rhuba was going with Garagus on his space ventures, she did understand and share his fear for her safety.
"My parents assured me you'll be safe," Garagus told Cressin. "Russell doesn't even know what planet he's on, so I doubt he'll be able to track you down. And apparently, attacking your in-laws is bad form for palace staff."
"Oh Really!" Cressin's blood boiled. She wanted to kill Russell. But it sounded like Garagus and Rhuba were able to deal with it themselves. "Are you two leaving, tonight?"
Granate looked at their schedule. They could recover from one day's delay.
"Let's go get food." He suggested to Cressin. "Let these two recover until we get back."
Cressin was planning something to that effect anyway, having it on the ship will give them more room. She just didn't think afterwards she'd be completely alone until they came back.
Both looked like they just wanted to lick their wounds in peace.
In addition to buying dinner for everyone with Granate, she also made a note to pack Rhuba's belongings for her.
As she followed Granate out the airlock, she looked back at the dazed Rhuba and Garagus. Rhuba had her face buried in her hands while Garagus reached for a sip of water.
"When you get back from space, I expect to see a grandbaby…"
Rhuba hardly had time to process her mother's parting words before she found herself drenched from Garagus' water.
"uch…" She shivered, wiping her face clean.
Holding his mouth, desperately wanting to apologise but finding it too hard while fighting laughter, Garagus decided once and for all to end his life.
"Well, we're off to a good start."
"Don't you d-, Don't you Dare!" Rhuba threatened.
"Now that I've already got you wet~"
Everything went dark after that.
But when his eyes opened, the room was flashing red.