Chapter 44

The day following Vegeta and the other adult Saiyan's leave passes quickly and with little incidence. Yamcha and Washu patch up the window in the Juraians' room with minimal effort, much to the satisfaction of Kiyone who does not want to spend another night sleeping with her best friend. Afterwards the newly engaged scientist and her fiancé get into a discussion concerning Earth's traditions, Yamcha's opinion on matters and how much Washu will compromise on her idea of the perfect wedding. She is wasting no time in trying to get it all planned out. Following millennia since her last proper relationship her eagerness is understandable. However, somehow during their talk and having gone back into her lab Washu has one of her plans well and truly foiled. Yamcha has gotten wise to her, her habits and the twinkle in her eyes when she is about to spring some trap. An unimpressed Washu struggles against her own restraints as the scar faced man who used his speed to turn the tables on her chuckles to himself as he etches the word 'Matrimony' into the shackles binding his fiancée. He continues the talk about their marriage as he enjoys this moment of the boot being on the other foot and for some reason Washu is more willing to listen to what he has to say and comply to what he wants whilst she grumbles and sulks about wanting to be let out, which eventually he does.

Having asked her sister the previous night, Ayeka spends time with Sasami in the kitchen. She does not make a bother of herself by attempting to aid in the meals and tries to stay out of the way as she practises the fundamentals of cooking. This is not the first time she has attempted to learn this skill but the princess feels with a clear goal set in her mind it will aid her in finally being able to produce a meal made from scratch that is actually edible. Her studiousness and quest for perfection in each and every single element proves the downfall for many of the dishes she tries; timings getting thrown to the wind as she spends far too long on something trivial that should take a third of the time she takes on it, combined with her slim knowledge of ingredients, unfamiliarity with all Terran cooking devices and apparent natural incompetence at all culinary skills renders all her efforts null and void. Sasami does spend time helping her elder sibling and teaching her the correct way to do things and which foods go with which yet even that cannot stop Ayeka from performing the alchemy of turning all food she touches inedible. Ayeka does not give up though, she keeps on trying at it.

After 24 hours of not having seen the man they love and with the second Sun rising since his departure, the two women really start to feel Vegeta's absence from the household. None of the others were truly informed as to him leaving and so Ayeka does get questioned by the two police women and her sister as to why he is not there. She avoids the question as best as she can, passing it off as some part of his training regime, but Kiyone spots that she is lying and when pressed further the princess looks to Trunks for help. The son has a rough understanding of why his father is not here and has been fulfilling his role in protecting Ayeka by checking on her and Ryoko every now and again. He answers much the same as Ayeka. Kiyone drops it seeing she is not getting anywhere and she is not complaining at all that the Saiyan has left, her days have been quite good without him as a worry on her mind.

Trunks goes back to some training. Without his father hogging the room and training at levels that he cannot withstand, Trunks takes a few hours out of his day to do what his father demands of him. The other thing that was asked of him, to act as guardian to Ayeka and Sasami, seems pointless to him, nothing has happened in which he is needed. At most Ryoko has teased Ayeka about her abysmal cooking and the Juraian quickly countered that it is at least a skill she can learn no matter how bad she currently is at it unlike a pirate with no sense of taste. Ryoko feels no want to push matters further, only having done that to try and alleviate some of her boredom. With no Vegeta she finds there is little to do to entertain herself and she has no-one to really talk to. Spending her nights wrapped up with the smell of Vegeta is only serving to feed her want to see him again. Both women are missing him. Ryoko a lot more so than Ayeka.

As she busies herself once again in the kitchen with the aid of her younger sister, Ayeka has no want at all for Vegeta to return early. She knows why he has gone and after that glimpse of his bestial nature she will easily bear this emptiness he has left. It scared her. Taking these few days has helped her sort things out in her mind and deal with the stolen kiss, the date she had and the constant problem of Ryoko. Her jealousy she keeps in check by reminding herself that she is guilty of what Ryoko calls her, she did copy her idea, though that does not make her feel any better. Unlike her rival she is not pestered by loneliness as she has her sister, Mihoshi and Kiyone to talk to and be around. She tries to talk to Trunks but he is uncooperative, not liking his father going on dates with other women at all. Ayeka understands and seeing his unwillingness does not push her company on him lest his residual hostility re-emerges.

Ryoko finds herself in Vegeta's training room at one point after Trunks vacates it. She has nothing better to do and if it is empty there is no harm in her getting a bit stronger for the return of Vegeta. Something keeps on niggling at her mind though. Ryoko is suspecting Vegeta to be lying to her. She is not sure on this though. Whilst practising her combat abilities in some slightly heightened gravity her thoughts drift to ponder more on this that has occupied her mind for nearly two days. The difference between Vegeta's treatment to her and Ayeka whilst he lost his mind to his mating period is bothering her immensely and Ryoko is doubting its sincerity. Not being under any illusion that he does not have a mating period she is rather suspicious of the ending to her date. The whole time she tried to persuade him to give her that taste of his wild side he point blank refused yet it did happen and he had to have known it would since she teased him about his eyes falling to her cleavage. He was pushy towards her and it dissuaded her but at the drop of a hat he got himself back in control. It feels too convenient. It feels contrived and calculated. Ryoko believes he was lying to her, and to Ayeka as well. She continues training as this doubt niggles deeper within her mind.

It becomes late afternoon and Yamcha casually saunters out from the doorway under the stairs giving Washu time alone for her work and seats himself down besides Mihoshi and Kiyone as Ayeka quietly sits on a separate sofa. Only second to Trunks in time spent living with Vegeta, Yamcha knows full well why the three most powerful Saiyans are now somewhere on the closest planets with breathable atmospheres. As soon as he sits down to relax an eager blonde greets him and begins bombarding him with question after question about any small detail she can gleam about his engagement. He is happy to tell Mihoshi what has been decided so far and that she is indeed welcome to attend the wedding since she asked. Kiyone is not too fussed but joins in the conversation anyway. Ayeka stays uninvolved. The princess finds it sour to hear of this successful engagement whereas her own is less solid and real than a whisper in the wind. She finds it interesting to hear about Earth customs surrounding marriage though and wonders to herself what Vegeta's marriage was like and if her engagement becomes one which her prince fully agrees to then whether she would have to make compromises about the special day. Ayeka doubts the Saiyan prince ultimately cares enough about the traditions of Earth to argue in favour of them rather than Jurai's, neither of them are his natural customs.

Bang.

A slumped form noisily thumps against the large window of the front room. With her cyan hair in disarray her back slides down the glass as she slumps onto the floor, a red smear marking her progress and alarming those inside. Yamcha is gone, out of his seat and outside immediately. The pair of police officers are quickly rising even with Mihoshi being badly startled following the loud noise. Ayeka sits there frozen for a few seconds watching as she fears for the worst; could they be under attack, are they safe. Yamcha's expression turns grim and solemn. He takes off the white vest he was wearing and drapes it down respectively on the woman obscured from view. Hearing the motion of Mihoshi and Kiyone at the doorway and of Ayeka heading there herself, Yamcha goes back to the house and bars the door with his bare chested body.

"No, don't go making a fuss or a crowd now. This might be your job and all but I think it'd be best if only one went out, I gotta go tell Washu and you two can listen there if ya feel the need." Blocking the two cops from rushing out to the scene, Yamcha keeps his voice calm and looks towards Ayeka and nods at her.

He stands aside so she can pass. She stands there with wide eyes not sure of what to do or if she does want to go out. Her feet move her out the door and Yamcha goes back in, leading Mihoshi and Kiyone away from this most delicate of situations that they would not be welcome to. Kiyone isn't too sure about this but she knows Ryoko is dangerous and Yamcha can stop them easily if he wants to so she follows him towards Washu's lab whilst in a hushed voice she asks him what is going on and what is being kept from her.

Hesitantly, the princess takes small steps around the corner and towards her rival. All of her fears are confirmed within the first glance. Her dainty hands go to her pale face as she suppresses the bile rapidly rising in her throat, all she can do is stand there and look on in shock and horror at the trembling wreck huddled up with her face buried in her knees. She cannot get a clear view of Ryoko and right now she is thankful for that for she is struggling to prevent herself from vomiting out of disgust. One of the sleeves on the tattered blue and yellow striped dress that the pirate is wearing terminates well before the elbow and with it so does her arm. A burnt stump sticks awfully from the cinders of that sleeve and hangs limply by this broken woman. Though she does not want it to be true, Ayeka cannot fool herself about this, she knows exactly what has happened and who has done this to her.

It takes effort on her part to step up beside Ryoko. She can hear the faint and muffled weeping and see the violent trembles wracking through her. Ayeka holds no love for her rival but she cannot just stand here and spectate this, it is far too awful a scene to let her petty envy prevail over doing the right thing. At the sound of someone kneeling down next to her Ryoko recoils and flinches away, a look of terror shining bright in her golden eyes and her single hand clasps tight to the side of her head. Ayeka freezes where she is with the handkerchief she was going to offer to Ryoko fluttering down to the grass as all is now revealed. Yamcha's vest slips down from Ryoko's front. Ayeka slowly starts shaking her head in dismay and disbelief. The front of her dress has been shamelessly ripped open and if that were not bad enough the full extent of what has been done to her is no longer hidden. A nasty red burn covers her neck as do some other injuries, blood trickles down from beneath a hand holding her ear and somewhere on her scalp, abrasions and wounds litter her stomach, one of her eyes is blackened and her exposed breasts have bruises on them. Ryoko makes a pained cough as she stares back warily at the Juraian, inhaling too hard through a damaged throat. All she expects now is to be kicked when she is down, for her situation to be abused and to be broken even further than she already is. Leaning backwards to try and get some distance she falls onto her back and hits her head against the house. She went to support herself with her left arm that is no longer there. Staring up at the blue sky, Ryoko's tears begin to fall fast and thick as she lets out long and distraught wail after wail.

Ayeka is putting serious effort in controlling herself and her emotions watching her rival in such a pitiful state, she finds only abhorrence in this sight and each of those wails slices through her like a knife. A pathetic yelp comes from Ryoko as Ayeka delicately and tentatively places her handkerchief she has now washed and wet in the lake on the nub of the shorn limb. Feeling the cold damp against her burnt flesh stings. Wiping at her face with her remaining arm, Ryoko silences herself momentarily, sits back up and removes the handkerchief from her. Her feline eyes glance across to Ayeka still next to her. She moves her hand over her stump and closes her damp eyes. After a while of frowning in concentration a circle of white appears at the end of her arm and, as steady as she can whilst trembling, she traces this circle of ki 2 feet out into the air. Following the energy is a newly regenerated arm, so fresh and clean it contrasts terribly with the rest of her. She lets out a shuddering exhale as doing that tires her and she can not hold it back much longer. Ayeka would act shocked by this feat if not for all her mental capacity being focused on trying to deal with this horrible and irrefutable truth.

" … Ra … He – he … He tried to r-rape me." Admitting this destroys the remainder of Ryoko's soul and fresh tears flow like rivers down her face whilst she looks at the princess. It hurts her so bad, the physical pain she can manage but not this being done to her. Ayeka blinks a few times, hoping against hope that this isn't happening, and then her own composure disintegrates into a million pieces as the despair at this crime easily breaks her as well.

"No! Stop crying!" Before the first mewl can pass from Ayeka's lips she is silenced by a loud yell, Ryoko's voice cracking and tearing as she shouts. Staring at her rival with deathly vehemence her breath shudders out as she openly weeps. Startling her and shouting at her does not stop Ayeka from crying. " … You don't get to cry. Hell with your pity, fuck off. What … what right do you have to cry? He didn't do nothing to you. You weren't there! The-the-the laughter. You didn't see him, y-you didn't nearly get killed and raped by that bastard. … You weren't used like this, you weren't hurt, toyed with and broken, you weren't strangled and bound, you weren't shamed like this. … You … I … Why-he, no … You! You were the one he fucking called for. I- why – he asked for the fertile one whilst he was-"

Confessing all of what happened to her, Ryoko breaks down into screams of heartbroken agony. Her old and her new hand claw at her exposed chest as she tries to rid herself of the source of her anguish before they go and clutch at her head, one covering her mauled ear. She cannot bear this torment. The torturous knowledge that she was not enough, that she could not satisfy his lust and whilst having his sadistic way with her he dared to call for another woman in her stead. All the mocking and jeering she suffered as well as the pain and the dark and the bondage, it all went so wrong. She has figured it out now. Vegeta's ruse at the end of their date, she knows its purpose. He put on the act of lust to scare her away but she saw through it and came to the wrong conclusion. In these two days of loneliness and missing him she did not think it would happen like this if she went to see him. None of his warnings and threats he said to her were lies, and none of them prepared her for the hell that awaited upon arrival. He asked her to bring Ayeka and laughed in her face as it destroyed her from the inside out, taking her heart in his hands and crushing it into oblivion and then for good measure he ripped the top of her ear. Her sobbing and wailing gives way to a coughing fit as her damaged throat starts gradually healing itself by her own natural regenerative properties.

In a stunned silence Ayeka kneels there. There is no joy or pleasure she takes in finding out her name was sullied by its use as a weapon. She never thought that a time would come when Ryoko lies defeated and Vegeta calls her name that she would want to deny it all. Vegeta did this to Ryoko. Given the opportunity he could have done the exact same to her, or worse. She never heard his warnings about his power or his lack of control during his mating period, this is all new to her and she does not want any of it. To think that her prince is still capable of these atrocities, that the man she loves purposefully did this to Ryoko, is upsetting her greatly. Her prince attempted to rape Ryoko. She has one question she needs to ask, she needs to know the reason why this nightmarish scene was brought before her eyes.

"Why did you go? … He was protecting us by leaving." She is not trying to place blame, she just wants to know why this happened. Her voice is hushed and is only heard because Ryoko is tenderly rubbing at her sore neck.

Golden eyes filled with hate and hurt lock onto the princess, if she were in better shape she would blast her for what she feels is an accusation. Ryoko cannot let herself hear words about him protecting her, she has to put all the blame and fault on his shoulders. Deep down she knows her actions are the cause but she cannot admit that, to her that would lessen her case of revenge against Vegeta and make her out to be some lovestruck fool. He has to be the one at fault, he hurt her more than anyone else ever has, she is destroyed already and cannot afford to have blame added to her broken soul.

" Because I lo – I missed him, so, so much. Why else d'ya think? I-I didn't think that it, it was a lie you see – he broke out of it before and so … If you could teleport you'd have done the same!" That word nearly escapes her before she reels it back in: 'love'. Shouting out she loves the man who nearly murdered her would just make her sound so stupid, like some timid housewife trapped in domestic violence. She might have gone there out of love but those feelings are dead inside her now, or so she wishes them to be so this disgrace would not hurt as much. Ryoko is not even sure now if she will stay here for his return, the want in her to forget this all and go back into space is strong yet her hate is keeping her anchored in place for the time being. If she goes now she cannot pay him back for this, he has severely hurt her and she will not rest until she has wreaked her terrible vengeance upon him. He sexually assaulted her, blasted her arm off and called for Ayeka. Ryoko will see to it that he suffers tenfold for this rape attempt.

"No. No, I would not. He terrified me back then, I … I am far too scared to place the trust in him you yourself did." Ayeka solemnly shakes her head. She does not understand what Ryoko meant by a lie but she is barely listening right now, her mind full of horror and dread. Remembering back to the beach she can recollect the surmounting terror that filled her as she was pinned to the ground at his mercy, so easily the same thing could have been done to her right there.

She picks up her discarded handkerchief and dabs at her eyes and face. The fabric is already wet from the lake and thus does nothing to cleanse her face of the tears staining it. This is a fresh hell that not even the dragonballs can revive them from.

" Ryoko, it's OK, I already knew about … about your problem." Just sitting there weeping together is eradicating the will and mind of the Juraian royal and so she tries her best to do what she can to make things better, this is all she can think of. She screams and falls over as a vicious backhand lashes across her cheek. Her purple hair falls over her face as she stays on the ground crying, peering through her fringe she can see death in Ryoko's eyes staring right back at her.

Ayeka had not considered that this victim can still easily kill her if she wanted to and the danger she is in being so close to a woman who naturally loathes her and was wounded the most due to her name. If she wanted to Ryoko could kill her right now for many reasons: to get back at her rival for the disgrace done to her, to punish Vegeta for what he has done, to stop her from ever being used against her or to hurt her again, or just to try and make her feel the slightest bit better. However, Ryoko's outstretched hand convulses and retracts abruptly to her chest. A woman in tears after being savagely struck, Ryoko sees the cyan hair and hears her voice screaming for him to stop. She looks on at the violence she caused with open disgust as her mind insipidly replays her molestation over and over. Her anger is great and her mind is nowhere near a rational state but Ryoko cannot lash out at Ayeka, her anger belongs solely to one man and she will not become him by taking it out on some defenceless woman. She covers her breasts with her hands and arms. Not wishing violence on someone does not exempt them from mentioning the infertility that was callously rubbed in her face, to hear it from Ayeka's mouth as well, from her rival who does not have to fear such things.

" He had no right to tell you! You gonna gloat now? Go on, do it! You wanna, right? This is what you've always wanted all along. Go ahead and have your fun with me, why not, everyone else is doing it. Maybe now I'll-I'll be enough for someone." Ryoko tucks her knees into herself, she tries to put a front of strength and rage on but like everything else it crumbles and she huddles there in agony. Bleary eyed, she winces as a breeze blows air into her torn ear. The bottom of her dress absorbs the many tears she sheds. She turns her head to the side as Ayeka despondently rises and sits back down on her knees.

"I am not so low as to use someone's infertility against them. If I wanted to insult you with it I would have done so before now. … It-it wasn't Vegeta."

"But. It. Was. Him!" The half hearted mumble of Ayeka to try and comfort Ryoko stokes her blood as she seethes through her teeth the truth she will not let be hidden by a flimsy excuse. She was there, she saw him, she felt him, it was Vegeta who attacked her, there are no two ways about it.

"No, it is his time, he is currently not himself." Nervously biting at her lower lip, Ayeka tries to press some semblance of innocence onto her prince she loves. If it was not actually him then it is not truly his fault since he did teleport away for their safety after all, and if he is not at too much fault then maybe, just maybe, she can forgive him and it can be done with and in the past.

" Like I don't know that. Guy who won't lay a finger on me goes to town on my tits and you don't think I realise that? You're a fucking idiot, it's all you are, an idiot, a cunt, some stupid bitch from Jurai who's in her own little dream world – but hey, at least she's compatible or whatever. So what if Vegeta ain't himself, still his hands who did this to me. All him. His fault!"

Ryoko sees straight through Ayeka's coping mechanism for she tried to push that trail of thought onto herself, but it does not work. It might ease some of the pain in her chest but letting him off the hook like that just so the tip of the iceberg of her torture will vanish is not something she can accept. The fault will lie all at her feet then and she sees no justice in him getting any sort of free pass. She doesn't care whether his mind has been lost to his animalistic side, all she knows is he was hurting her and he enjoyed it. Seeing Ayeka timidly shake her head side to side in dismissal of the truth nearly makes her snap and attack her again.

"Coward. Keep playing pretend then, must be ever so nice to live with your head in the sand. You can't wipe away what he is, he's a Saiyan, a turd shat out of his filthy monkey mother's hole, and this is what he does. He kills, he maims, he tortures, he hurts and he does it for fun. Were you thinking all those billions dead were some mistake on his part? No. He loved it, that's what he is, this is what he does, and – and he don't love either of us. … You don't even love the true Vegeta, you're just a pretty little liar lying to herself." Venting her hatred at her rival doesn't make her feel any better. Pushing her suffering onto Ayeka alleviates nothing from herself, it merely causes Ayeka to start crying more heavily at these very hurtful words and insults she is being attacked with.

"... But he stopped. He stopped, Ryoko, he – he let you escape." Ayeka's retaliation to the verbal assault is the one true thing she can say. Vegeta's power eclipses things that eclipse them and there is only one person who possibly could have stopped the rape attempt, and Ayeka clings to this last shred of hope and faith with all she has. With but an accidental waft of his hand Ryoko could have been ripped asunder, bar her arm none of the injuries she can see are serious. Vegeta is the one who stopped himself, who restrained himself and held himself back long enough for Ryoko to teleport back to safety away from him. If he was not fighting for control then Ryoko simply would never have returned. She has to believe in him this much, she has to have this candle in the darkness to save her love from being forcefully extinguished. Being so harshly reminded of the life of sin Vegeta indulged in is tearing at her, yet she recalls her arguments with him about his evolving identity and she will not believe all of that to be some lie. Though it pains her she will agree with what Ryoko says about her sometimes preferring to blind herself to a hard truth but surely she could say the same of Ryoko and her fanciful thoughts that led her to venture out looking for Vegeta, she dare not speak that though for want to keep her head.

"And he took his sure sweet time getting round to it, what difference does it make now, he should have killed me and spared me this." Ryoko glares back at Ayeka and then harshly whips her head side to side to dispel the salty tears from her face. Using the wall and window behind her for support she pushes herself back up onto her feet and lowers her arms to brazenly show off her wounds as if it were some rebellion against the man who inflicted them.

"Don't say that, please."

That final comment makes Ayeka's heart weep all the more so as she closes her eyes tight and shakes her head adamantly. She whimpers as she feels the searing heat of one of Ryoko's crimson swords pointed to he throat. Her ruby eyes open and plead through the blinding wetness at the woman stricken and scorned. Ayeka's breath catches as she feels the blade edge closer to her skin.

"Shut it or I'll do what he wa-wants and teleport you there, you both deserve each other. … I'm gonna kill him when he gets back! I will never, never forgive him for this! Bastard! I'm glad he destroyed that machine, fuck him, let him rot in space. And if you come near me again bitch, with your pity and false sympathy, well your little sister … you'll both go and have some fun with your prince. How 'bout it? No?! Well go have fun celebrating your fucking win." Crescendoing into a frenzied roar as she spits threats and venom at the woman Vegeta can conceive a child with, Ryoko lets out one last scream and then vanishes. Ayeka lets out a loud and shuddering exhale as the sword held to her disappears. Her panting breaths give way into sobs immediately. In front of her she sees a small pool of blood and a smear down the side of the wall, unbeknown to her the scar on Ryoko's back was reopened and thus caused most of the bleeding.

There is no victory here for Ayeka.

She gets her hands out beneath her and the touch of something solid steadies her slightly as she attempts to stand up. She does not manage it the first or the second time. Eventually, the delicate maiden stands though her normal poise and elegance are all gone, she staggers and shuffles off away from the house and towards the treeline. As soon as she reaches the first trunk she leans heavily against it with both arms outstretched and her face contorts in pain and grief. Ayeka throws up heavily and then gags and wretches at the bile in her throat. Her handkerchief comes back out to clean her mouth. The terror running rampant through her has seized complete control. Ryoko's hellish threat has horrified her already badly shaken and panic-stricken self beyond all her body can cope with. Massive amounts of trembling course through her limbs and all the while her sobbing gets more and more pronounced. With a loud thud her head rests against the tree and she lets wail after wail erupt from her throat. Her prince and her fiancé nearly raped and murdered another woman. Vegeta almost defiled and killed someone who he sees as equal to her.

"What's wrong Ayeka?"

The princess freezes as her sister's voice calls out from behind her. Sasami has been hearing the raised voices and commotion but Trunks took the role of keeping her away from it all whilst the adults were discussing matters in Washu's lab. His priorities shifted though when Ryoko started teleporting about, he leaves Sasami to stop the shamed woman from causing damage to his house and his father's things much to her chagrin. Sasami has no idea what is going on as she jogs up to her crying elder sibling, distressed at seeing her hurt so. Her pink eyes look about the scene and see the sick on the floor, luckily in her hurry to get to Ayeka she did not notice the blood stains. With a lot of effort, Ayeka turns her head around and makes a weak smile appear on her face, a terribly pained and forced smile that fools nobody about the pain she is suffering.

"It's all OK, Sasami, it's all OK. … L-looks like some of my cook-cooking disagreed with me, that's all it is." She lets go of the tree as she turns about to face her sister worriedly staring up at her. Luckily she can easily come up with an excuse for her vomit so that Sasami will not fret about any possible illness, but her words of reassurance are empty and hollow as she stands there silently weeping. Trying to hold it in so that her younger sister does not have to share in this sorrow, Ayeka is failing horribly at raising any semblance of a facade. Instinctively Sasami goes and hugs her sister tight around the waist, Ayeka shudders at the touch that is both welcome and frightening for Ryoko's threat.

"Why are you crying though? Ayeka, why is everyone sad and shouting, what happened? Did something bad happen?"

" … Yes. … Oh by Jurai something bad did happen. … Lord … L- Vegeta, he … . Vegeta has done something very, very bad. But, but it's all OK Sasami, do not worry. It's all OK, you are safe, we are both safe, and it will never happen again, never, never." Dropping the honorific and caving in to her sister's question, Ayeka abruptly drops down to her knees and embraces her sister. Her nails dig into Sasami but the young girl is wise enough not to complain or to probe any further as her elder sister latches onto her for comfort and grieves for her wounded heart. All the crying is upsetting Sasami and she can feel moisture growing at the corners of her eyes and so she tightens her hug on her sister and echoes her words of reassurance back to her. The two Juraian princess of purple and blue cling to each other in the shade of a tree and comfort one another.

Several bottles of sake and other forms of alcohol carelessly clatter down onto the tiles of the bathroom. Trunks did stop Ryoko and she hated every second of it, of being overpowered again and him sharing a similar face and smell to her would-be assailant did not improve matters. She wants a bath. She needs to clean herself, lick her wounds and wash this from her. Ryoko makes no effort to get undressed though and enters the water as she is. Stripping down and baring her body, which she is normally so eager to do, is something she simply just cannot do right no. She won't complete Vegeta's work of tearing her clothes from her and she is feeling far too vulnerable to be exposing any more of herself than she already is. Looking down at herself and seeing her breasts with their shrinking wounds, Ryoko gets back out of the bath and wraps a towel over the top part of her shredded dress and then climbs back in making sure to take some bottles with her. Drowning her sorrows and washing away the filth, one bottle gets consumed in less than a minute and recklessly thrown and discarded, smashing into shards. As this bathroom was created by Washu, several small and insect sized droids crawl out from between the tiles and break down the hazardous pieces of glass before disappearing again.

Ryoko's physical wounds are healing, her flesh knitting itself slowly but surely back together. She does not want them to though, she wants the scars and injuries to stay so she can shove them back in the face of the Saiyan who gave them to her. The warm waters and alcohol rapidly affect her head just as she wants and continues drinking in the bath well past the point where she would normally utilise her ki to diminish her drunkenness. Ryoko shouts loud curse after curse after insult after slurred threat to the ceiling and Vegeta. Fat tears still drift from her feline eyes, unimpeded by her intoxication. A bottle spills and she loses most of its contents to the bath water. The drinks are gone, either consumed, spilt or smashed, and at this point Ryoko curls up in the shallows of the pool she is in.

'Why?! Why did you say her name? Why am I not good enough for you? Why couldn't you break free from it like before? Why did you have to call for Ayeka over me?' These are the questions she fails to ask but circle around and around dizzyingly in her head. She hits the water in frustration. Ryoko has to ask him and she does not want to ever speak to him again, she has to know but she does not want to care for the answer. She needs to know why he called for Ayeka and not her, whether he was lying the whole time about her infertility, whether he was just doing it to hurt her more or whether he truly does prefer the princess over her. That last option she tries not to let her inebriated self think on, she wants all her love and affection and ties to him gone and eradicated but it is never that neat or tidy. All she wanted was some affection, some attention and some company, she cannot see how her desires were unreasonable or why fate demanded her this punishment. A kiss and a conversation, nothing more than that was what she went there for. She liked the idea of escalating dates and so was all for that pace of building up to more intimate kind of actions. She never wanted this. She never wanted more pain, pain greater than when he died and she had to mourn his passing, pain purposefully inflicted upon her by the man she cares about the most. Tears and alcohol pollute the bath water.