(Author's Note- I made some edits to chapter 35 to make it feel a little smoother, the same information is conveyed and it's not required reading if you've read its previous iteration, but I felt it worth mentioning. Here's 36)

How did it all happen so fast? Was it her own weakness that lead her people astray? Some failure of the engineers or flight crew to leave them open to such failure? Kerva did not know, but nevertheless she was kneeling before a red skinned welp of a male, surrounded by the corpses of her lieutenants and covered in superficial wounds.

Superficial. She had been deliberately kept from being too wounded. Her attacks and techniques had brought down dozens of chaffe soldiers before the leadership of this "Freeza Force" Vessel found them. But when these beings came aboard the game changed. Her soldiers died in droves, and she was left reeling into a fight she couldn't hope to win.

It was a humiliation she hadn't even conceived of. It had been all but unbearable when the men and women who had been raised alongside her, educated and tested for the self-same command she had earned nearly two years ago, began to die one by one to a cabal of all too casual xenos. The abominations grinning as they struck down hardened warriors with simple, practiced ease.

It had been maddening when she was left alone to duel their leader. The blood of her bond mates staining the command deck with its stench even past the burnt oxygen failing to recycle through their vents and the crushed electronics exposed to open air. She could hear the screams of her own people over the intercom as the battle grew more and more untenable by the second. She could taste blood and bile as every attack, every blast of energy, and every dirty trick was either evaded or ignored with a sly grin and a flash of red and white as the male ducked, dodged and weaved through them with the ease of an exhale.

She had honestly thought she was all but numb to this nightmare unfolding around her when he began to fight back in earnest. Then just as he twisted away from a kick to the groin a backhand met her face, and as she staggered back she felt a disgusting alien paw reach its way to the collar of her shirt and tear at her command vest, leaving her partially exposed to a cheering crowd of animals. A chilling cold slithered and roared its way through her spine.

It was then and only then that Kerva began to understand. This was barely a game to them. A way to pass the time. To them she was little more than vermin, and now she was being poked at by a group of rowdy cadets. A whore to entertain them as she struggled against it.

While the seconds ticked by, more and more of her officers' uniform tore away, and more and more she was reduced. Made less than what she had been all her life. In an instant the beauty Kerva had been proud of her entire life was made into a show for beings she could only guess at understanding. For the first time ever she wished she was an ugly toad of a woman, a disgusting wretch with only a rank to earn her a properly bred life-mate.

Anything would be better than the laughter that met her ears just after a small fist met her abdomen, and she was left gasping to stare a puddle of second in commands blood. To look up from her knees to see the leering gaze of an under-sized xeno she had been charged with slaughtering. In that moment Kerva wished she had it in her to die right then.
She refused to look away from the eyes of the red male, his alabaster locks falling across his face in a way that might have been comely on the face of a Reyallow. Even his scars seemed placed in such a manner to make him seem more hated him all the more. Kerva barely flinched as one of the spectators spoke in their vile tongue, still not looking away.

"Look at the tits on this one captain! Big even for our giantess here!" His words drew another wave of laughter from his fellows.

The red captain smiled, the strange eye piece he wore pinging as lines of text danced their way down his field of view. His voice was rough like gravel, and she could hear the slight accent of it past even the foreign nature of the language.

"Every victory over a civilized world has its share of good prizes. This one would have been special at half the cost and for a full campaign." He looked around the room, hunting now for challengers. "Our new guest belongs to me."

Barely a grumble met his declaration. Somehow it still surprised her. The only sign of any dissent seemed to be in that they couldn't share her. Not a hint of honor, not a whisper of dignity in any of them.

Still Kerva did not look away from her captor, her burning gaze committing his every feature and flaw to memory.

The red captain would die screaming, and he'd do it calling for her mercy.

"Gather what's left of the survivors. We'll make a display to the new meat."

"What does he want?" Apara asked, grumbling as she poked at a burn on her face showing just a hint of cheekbone. It would likely scar if she didn't get it healed by the end of the week.

I sighed. She could sense as well as I could that people from both sides of this conflict were gathering at one particular location on this ship. One group by hook, one group by crook. As we passed the threshold of one hallway into the next we watched as a mismatched group of warriors dragged several prisoners in the same direction we were going.

"I've played this game before." I said, massaging one of my shoulders as we walked through the obsidian halls of the enemy vessel. I overdid it a little bit in that last fight, pouring too much energy into my upper body as I broke the last of the orange men and women fighting in my section of the ship. I don't think I had ever had a fight that easy before. It was a struggle that didn't feel quite like "life or death". I guess the training was working then.

I hadn't properly measured my power level since Naldinnas, but I estimated I was just under five hundred without pushing myself, give or take about six points I'd say 475.

The captain demanded my presence. He wanted to make a distinctly un-humanitarian impression on our new prisoners, and he was using me to do it.

"Nothing too special, just a show for the newbies. You'll see when we get there."

It was only another minute or so of walking before we could hear cheering, and screams. The hall opened up into yet another too dark room, this one large enough to act as something like an auditorium. Hundreds of Diligent Frost warriors and dozens of our large new friends littering the room without even a sense of organization or structure.

In some groups orange men and women watched through the half broken lenses of their combat armor as the wounded were forced to fight the freshest warriors, many of them already outstripping their top power levels by hundreds of points.

It was almost like a highschool lunchroom over a post victory assessment. A collection of cliques only loosely formed together as people found new allies in the chaos of battle. Racial groups once hesitant to interact were beginning to congregate together as they found individuals more palatable to be around after spilling blood together. A good thing maybe, at least until you looked at what was bringing them together. What was being celebrated and how.

Other unfortunate souls witnessed as trusted friends were tortured, workplace romances gangraped in front of cheering crowds of alien beings, creatures now basking in the afterglow of their own survival.

All the while the leadership would be eyeing them for traits they found agreeable in subordinates, searching both for new squad members and those in need of a good blooding, those waiting in the back of the crowds in disquiet and disgust. There were more of those than we usually had to deal with in one sitting. A collection of relatively innocent souls that in different circumstances would hesitate when the time came to kill those who couldn't fight back.

For that reason alone many of our opponents today wouldn't see a future in chains. Whether that was for the better might depend on how you look at it.

At the moment this new meat of our crew were just as much prisoners as they were allies. Flies caught in the amber of a crowd. The mentality of a pack fusing nicely with the animal high of winning a fight to the death. The kind of thing that would drive even a normally peaceable person to acts of depravity and cruelty you can only barely imagine until you've seen it up close. This kind celebration follows every victory, and its as much by design as it is a matter of instinct.

A breakdown of civilized nature.

Foreign alcohol and food was being passed around by conscripts, those lucky few who had survived through an experience in battle as the lowest class of slave. Disposable trash made witness to the humiliation and degradation of foes that could have reduced them to ash with an angry look and the right technique. Some might even be allowed to participate.

I never was, but maybe that was for the better.

I looked over to Apara, watching as the little girls eyes roamed across the room without a care. She stepped away from the grasping hand of an orange woman caked in blood and stripped of her pants, her boot stomping down on the offending appendage with a meaty crunch. Not even a scream met her act of casual cruelty. Just a whimper and tears no one would look to acknowledge.

"Dennis!" My eyes drifted upwards, towards what I assumed was this place's command deck. Jernus was leaning over a railing overlooking the festivities. He had barely a scratch on him, the only sign he was in a fight at all the bloodstains on his uniform, and the few splotches all too noticeable on the stark white hair draped over his pauldrons. He had a smile on his face.

I nodded towards him, a smile matching his own on my features. With a light flex of my knees I landed on the deck beside him, the Saiyan girl following suit. Most of the commanders stood or leaned around us, taking note of their duties before they joined in. Some were cheering at the revelry, most just didn't care.

"Captain-" I said, knowing what he wanted but asking regardless, partly for Apara's benefit, partly because this was the first time this had been done after Jernus was made Captain.

"- You called for me?" I followed his gaze as he looked over to the glaring form of the woman I knew was the pirate leader. I focused on her for a moment. An orange giant, roughly eight feet tall and beautiful in a way I knew would cause her no end of pain around here. She was on her knees, obsidian hair cascading down a well muscled back as she stared hard into the lines of Jernus' face. The toned muscle of her legs were quivering with restrained action, and while she was now making efforts to hide it, her torn uniform barely concealed a massive expanse of cleavage.

How unfortunate for her. It'll be some time before Jernus gets bored. My gaze turned back to the captain of my ship.

"What do you suggest, Dennis? For the display this evening?

"I'll make a show of whatever's left, make it clear to them and to the crew what's gonna happen to them, and afterwards I'll make something easy enough for the crew to forget what they're eating. " Even if they won't.

"Good." Said Jernus, already looking back at his prize.

My head tilted when I noticed the orange woman was looking at me for the first time since my conversation with Jernus' had started.

(Still Alive!)

Dennis PL-475

Apara PL-258

Jernus PL-1500