Gohan mustered a smile as his wife left with Chi-Chi and Skoy's wife Enga, Gita balanced firmly on her hip. She looked exactly the same age as she had actually been when Pan was that size, he thought with a warm surge of contentment. He returned Gita's wave of bye-bye, wondering absently how a child who looked so much like Vegita could have turned out so cute.

"Nissan!" His brother gripped his shoulders in a rough embrace. Goten's face was lit up with a smile that made him look more like the tiny boy who's hands he had held as he took his first steps than he had in…well, in three years. "We did it! Trunks did it!" He gripped the "Saiyan no Ouji" around the neck in a sideways hug that would have snapped the neck of a T-rex.

"No yet, Goten," Trunks said soberly. "The vote hasn't been cast."

"They wouldn't vote us down in a million years now," whooped one of Skoy's sons. Rencha, Gohan thought the teenager's name was. It was difficult to keep track of all the new cousins. "They wouldn't dare!"

"Not if they know what's good for them," Goten said shortly. Gohan frowned at this, and he felt something like a pang a grief for the sweet little brother he'd often dispaired of ever truly growing up. In many ways, it was as though that boy had died with Gurasia's touch. And that thought brought a rush of black anger that he could barely contain, at the very thought of the little monster sitting calmly less than a mile from where he stood, unchecked…and unpunished for all that he had done to Goten and Trunks.

For all that he had done to Pan. None of this showed on his face though, as his eyes lingered on his brother. "I wish there had been another way. Something we could have done other than scaring them half to death."

"Safety lies in strength, Nissan," Goten said. "Strength enough to keep people from even wanting to hurt us."

"Be strong and you won't have to fight?" Gohan's mouth quirked. "That's one of Piccalo-san's sayings."

"I noticed you looked kind of shocked when you saw him with Gurasia,"

Goten said. "I know Little Pasty's a Tsiru-jin bastard, but he's on our side in this, Nissan."

"I know," Gohan muttered, remembering his father's words about the needs of all possible futures. "I think…Piccalo-san has some kind of Kai-type agenda with the boy."

He watched as the boys were abruptly ushered away by Radu to greet a small group of Allied Trade World delegates anxious to congratulate Trunks on his debut in the Trade arena. Not boys, Gohan amended with a wry grin. Men. So, the domino effect had begun already. These worlds were feeling Trunks out about possible defection from Maiyosh or whatever House they were beholden to before the Council was even concluded.

He moved through the fascinating crowd of faces around him, features very like his own, but each set in the palates of the colors of their mother's races.

It was simultaneously heart-warming and unnerving. Radu, in particular, was the living image of his father Raditz. Nice enough fellow though. Saiyans always breed true…Gods, in the light of that knowledge, was it even ethical to remain on Chikyuu, repopulating the planet out from under the original inhabitants by simply intermarrying with them? His stomach growled, embarrassingly loud. Another very Saiyan feature. He noticed suddenly that his father was nowhere to be seen. Gohan grinned. Probably getting the drop on everyone else for the lunch spread. The little Maiyosh-jin butler, Laki, had paled to pink when Kassan had given him her best estimate of how much food it would take to feed this many Saiyans for even one meal. Hmm…Maybe getting the jump on everyone wasn't such a bad idea, he thought, as his stomach rumbled insistently again. He began retracing a route through the corridors that seemed to lead in the general direction of the flyer deck, musing about the genetic aberration in his blood, in all their blood, that Zoukin had just confirmed for him moments ago.

He had been on the point of voicing the idea of another baby to Videl, had almost raised the subject last night. Should he not? Would it, in fact, be unfair to the people of Chikyuu?

No! He shook his head emphatically. Whatever the actual alien origins of his children and eventual descendants, their hearts and minds would be human. It was a case of nurture transcending nature, which was always, had to be, the dominant factor in the behavior of any thinking race of people. It was…He stopped, looking around. He was lost.

He moved to the edge of the stone half-wall he had been following. It had seemed to run in a winding, downward circle to the parking deck, as it wrapped around the entire Chamber. He peered over the side, trying to get his bearings, gazing down into the arena hundreds of meters below where thousands of people moved here and there across the open ground floor.

A muffled explosion and a half-smothered billow of smoke rolled out of

a small niche in ground floor, followed by a sharp spike of his father's ki----which without warning, fell away to nothing. Toussan! Gohan leapt up onto the burnished stone of the balcony wall without thinking, preparing to plunge downward.

A cold, icy hand jerked him back from the edge with a sharp snap. The old creature's white face was covered in purplish blood, frozen in a mask of abject fear and grief. Gohan nearly growled aloud. Tsiru-jin…

"Get your hands off me," he said harshly.

"You cannot help him," the old man rasped. "We are all betrayed! Maiyosh has a weapon. Something that eats ki. My Lord…they took my beautiful little Lord! Please…please help me!" The cold, trembling hands clutched at him and he batted the creature's hand away in disgust.

"My family---"

"The Saiyan Seat has fallen. They are carrying out the bodies as we speak. Sir, we---"

"Bodies?" Gohan choked. Pan-chan…Goten, Trunks…

"They are all unconscious," the Tsiru-jin said. "Nearly comatose, but alive.

And he had felt nothing. Nothing at all, no warning. The attack had been so swift and so effective no one had even been able to cry out! "What kind of weapon?"

"A living thing…things. I know every species of living creature on a hundred thousand worlds, and I have never seen its like. They attacked your folk and mine in the same instant." Which meant they would have also attacked the wing of rooms Maiyosh had assigned them…Videl…

Something clicked on the floor beside his shoes and the Tsiru-jin uttered a high trilling shriek. And Gohan felt a faint…lessening, as if something were pulling at him somehow. On instinct, he brought his heel down on the tiny obsidian thing, crushing it.

"We must go! Now!" The elderly Tsiru-jin said frantically. "I think they may have a hive mind, which---" As if in reply to the old man's words, there were suddenly skittering, clattering noises from all around. Could the things…smell them? Gohan didn't stop to ponder the question. He grabbed the old man by the scruff of the neck and swept over the balcony, burning the air around them as he moved faster than the shrill, frightened noises his passenger was making. He smashed a tiny hole in the Chamber ceiling, and shot up into the sky in the direction of the Maiyosh Corporate Palace like a rocket. Videl and Kassan and…oh Kami, the babies! Oh gods, please don't let me be too late!

The Maiyosh-jin concierge watched Chi-Chi move from dish to steaming bowl to boiling pot to fryer, Go-chan tucked securely under one arm, his face a study in wonder and envy at the way she orchestrated every part of the titanic meal she was preparing. He moved and carried and stirred as instructed, right along side Videl and Enga at her command, eyes curious and watchful.

"I was appalled when you said you would see to this task yourself, Mistress Son," he was saying. "As a boy, I worked in the kitchens of Maiyosh Prime's Hospitality Grand, and the entire staff, chef and all, would generally turn to pudding at he prospect of feeding a platoon of Saiyans."

"Hmm?" Chi-Chi tasted the soup, adding a dash more fish paste and salt.

"I started slow, with just one Saiyan to feed. As my family grew, I got better at planning banquets. And I couldn't let you cater this. You've been so much help already."

"It is my vocation to be of service, Mistress. But would you be willing," he asked eagerly. "to share one or two of these Chikyuu recipes before you depart? I think they would be very well received----" There was a very loud thunk from somewhere out in the corridor.

Videl grinned. "Sound like someone is very hungry." Laki looked slightly bemused as she set Gita in the arm he was not using to slice bread, as she moved to lift a pot of boiling noodles off the burner.

"I'll go see who it is," said Enga. Chi-Chi found she truly liked this quiet, gentle-voiced niece-in-law she had known less than two days. She wondered if they could convince Skoy's entire family to visit Chikyuu soon.

Chi-Chi froze, still as a stone. Something was…Gokou-sa… Something, a rush of pain and horror hummed through the link of the bond they shared.

"Chi-Chi, run!" Then the voice, the link, the entire sense of his presence in her mind snapped like a scissored ribbon, and she nearly doubled over.

"Videl!" She cried. "we have to get out of here!" There was a loud crash followed by a scream, quickly cut off, and a dozen armored Maiyosh-jin stepped through the door that led to the courtyard. Chi-Chi saw with a sick lurch of her stomach that one of them was holding Skoy's wife. Her neck was twisted at an odd angle, her eyes open and lifeless like a doll's. Chi-Chi caught the horrified look of shock on Laki's face---he had known this was planned. This was not an arrest. This was not a kidnapping. This was an execution squad. She met Videl's eyes in one bare instant of wordless communication.

"Officers," Laki was babbling. "This is not…this is not correct---"

Chi-Chi pushed him down behind her and thrust Go-chan into his arms.

At the same instant that Videl hurled the boiling noodles and water at the first soldiers like a cannonball, she lobbed the fryer, grease and all. She glanced around and saw with a thrill of fear that four more warriors had loomed up at the back entrance. The hot oil from the fryer splattered the men and set them screaming, and nicked the walls, catching fire. Chi-Chi faced the men at the courtyard and Videl turned toward the other four, Laki and the babies between them.

"Laki, when I say, give both the children to Videl." Chi-Chi snapped.

"What?" Videl began. "Chi---"

"You can fly, I can't!" She barked out. "If I can cut a hole through the front, you take them and go!"

On the floor, Laki was warbling softly to the children in a soft, panicked voice. "Hush now…hushhush…" Then the soldiers hit them simultaneously from both sides. She moved independent of thought and fear, thanking all the gods in creation that she had begun to train again with Gokou-sa, the need to do so burning anew inside her through the bond they now shared.

Gokou-sa! I can't feel him at all! She slammed her fist into the solar plexus of one of the armored assassins. These evil men had done something to her husband, perhaps to her sons. They had killed Skoy's sweet young wife as though she were nothing. They had come here to kill her, to kill Videl…to kill her baby…And she screamed, pushing up through a level of fighting power she had not suspected existed within her, finding a hair's breadth away from being overwhelmed by the men she fought, a mine of untapped power in the human mind and body that she knew only Krillan and Yamcha had drawn from with any real success. They came to kill my baby! My baby!!! She drove her foot into someone's chest, her fist shattered someone's jaw, her body and mind fused together in a way she had only understood intellectually as a girl under Kame Sennin and her father's tutelage---to move with the speed of thought. She could hear Videl screaming behind her, though not in pain. She had the sense that Videl was in her own private place of rage, could feel her making hash out of the four soldiers behind her.

And then it was over. She stumbled backward, almost tripping over Laki, who was hunched on his knees, huddled over the screaming children. The kitchen was burning down around them. "Outside! Now!" She grabbed the man and bundled him out the door that led to the courtyard. Videl followed, a little slowly.

A burst of golden light winged its way through the burning room kitchen to land behind her with the speed of a sunbeam racing from sky to ground.

"Videl!" Gohan cried. He caught his wife just before she fell. Chi-Chi saw with shock that the girl was wounded, blood streaming from her scalp and forehead. Her son irritably shook off the creature that had been clinging frantically to his back. With a chill, Chi-Chi recognized the pale, horned features of Tsiru-sei. "Videl! Oh Kami….Kassan---"

"We have to leave now!" Chi-Chi cried.

"They will have impounded the ships," her son's eyes were shining with unshed tears as he bent over his wife's bleeding face.

"There…there are the staff wings," Laki said suddenly. His eyes were wide and shocked, but his face was resolute. Chi-Chi had the impression she was seeing the real man who lay behind the constant veneer of professional courtesy for the first time. "I cannot hide Master Son or Master Surita for long. They will both be seen for what they are. But if we hide the children's tails, we should be able to keep yourself and the others safe indefinitely, Mistress Son." He frowned angrily. "Pulling down Madran Shipping in a corporate scuffle is simply business, but this…this cowardly assassination of non-combatants and infants is unconscionable!"

"Thank you, Laki," Chi-Chi murmured, feeling a sudden stab of shame at the hate for everything and everyone Maiyosh-jin that had begun to seethe inside her.

"We'll hide the babies with you," Gohan replied. "But we have to find out what they've done with the others.

"Come with me," said the Maiyosh-jin. He led the unlikely group of refugees through an exit in one of the walls Chi-Chi would have never suspected existed, and down a vine-canopied trek through the hidden halls and corridors within the walls, the invisible realm of the servant caste. The journey seemed to go on for hours.

"Poppa's gone," Gita whispered tearfully. Chi-Chi caught Gohan's eye and he shook his head.

"I can't feel any of them, Kassan. I don't know if they're…" He trailed off.

A tug on the edges of her consciousness, an elusive flicker of groggy anger and pain. She nearly sobbed with relief. "Gokou-sa's alive. I can feel him again."

"When…" The elderly Tsiru-jin's voice seemed to shudder. "When they took my Lord, I thought that the creatures had slain him at first. But I think all of our folk are alive, though just barely. The insects, the Arrak-jin my Lord called them, drained them to the point of death.

Gohan eyed him, then nodded. "Then we go get them."

"You go get them," Chi-Chi told him. "Laki-san is not a fighter. I have to stay here with Videl and the children. They'll be searching for us, and if someone comes, Laki-san won't be able to hold them off."

Laki led them at last to a series of modest rooms he said were reserved for his son and family whenever they visited from Maiyosh Prime. Gohan laid his wife down in the small bedroom, watching the Maiyosh-jin butler move to tend her with the practiced ease of a life-long care-giver. "She will be well, Master Son. Her wounds are all superficial." Gohan kissed her forehead, and turned to see the others at the newsfeed monitor in shock.

The galactic Council of Free Worlds had registered and tallied its vote on the Saiyan Question: The executions would begin in three hours.

Pan moaned and cried out, trying to sit up. A pair of strong, warm hands held her down. "Sit still, little bit," said a man's deep, gruff voice. "You're supposed to be dead."

"Surface area scan complete," another voice said anxiously. "The halo-dupe is replicated. I hope to hell you know what you're doing, Sire."

"What---" Pan whispered.

"Shush!" The frightened man's voice hissed.

Pan squinted to see four Maiyosh-jin security soldiers stride into the room. She stared as she saw what appeared to be herself, lying twisted and bleeding on the lush carpet of the Balcony Seat.

"You incompetent Maiyosh House bastards can't even pull off a simple arrest without endangering every by-stander in the entire Chamber!" The gruff, fat man said. Pan suddenly recognized him as the Regent of Corsaris.

He had sided with Trunks on more than a dozen issued this morning. Corsaris pulled the trigger of an energy pistol he had trained on her prone "body" on the floor, and incinerated it. "There!" He snapped. "One less Saiyan monster for you to execute. You can incarcerate her ashes if you want. Otherwise, get the hell out of my Seat!" The guards left I a hurry.

Corsaris's wild-eyed aid sat down beside her and began hyper-ventilating. "You're not paying me sufficiently for this sort of thing, Sire!"

"Consider your salary raised," the big man grunted.

Pan glanced down at herself in surprise. Her skin was red, the bangs of her hair falling into her eyes were pale ivory. She was wearing the green and brown livery of the Maiyosh-jin servant caste.

"I just blasted a cushion and a set of drapes wrapped in a halo-projector," the fat man told her. "You're wearing one as well so they'll think you're some Maiyosh-jin doxey of Pol's here." The aid shot him an annoyed look, but kept silent. "We can get you off Shikaji sometime tomorrow if you stay with us."

There had been no warning, no time to react or fight. In the last instant,

When they had all seen the insect things swarm in from every side, from every nook and cranny in the entire Seat, she had heard Bra cry out once, felt the out-pouring drain of her life force, her ki, being sucked away.

She had seen Goten's mouth open in a soundless scream as one of the Maiyosh-jin soldiers, who were suddenly all around the crumpling, half-fainting Saiyans, slammed Bra carelessly against one of the stone walls, leaving a bright trail of blood behind her head as she slid bonelessly to the floor. Trunks had grabbed her, Pan remembered dimly, and with the last ounce of his strength, thrown her---through the sitting lounge, over the balcony of their Seat, across the entire breadth of the monolithic Chamber.

She must have landed in Corsaris' Box.

"My family…"

"Newsweb says your father's still unaccounted for. You mother, grandmother, the little ones, and one of Gurasia's people are still at large as well." He eyed her hardening face, then shook his head. "You're not going to leave with us, are you, little bit?"

"Would you leave your family here to die?"

"No," he sighed. "No I wouldn't. I can't go against Burka the way I think you're about to go against him, child. Precisely because of my family's safety. But I'll do what I can through proper channels. There are good people here today, Pan-sama. I'll try to organize them to block or stall the circus Burka's planning for as long as I can. Just…try to remember that most of these people aren't evil…just very afraid. And scared people can be manipulated into a mob very easily."

"I know that," she said. On impulse, she kissed his grizzled cheek and he blushed like a young man. "I won't forget that you saved me."

She rose and left his Seat without another word. They had been so confident in their strength, Pan thought dully, as she wandered through the babbling multitude of lesser delegates, onlookers and gawkers. Too confident that there was nothing in the universe that could overwhelm them if they stood together.

If the Chamber had been filled to capacity this morning, it was overflowing now. Every hall, nook and side room was so full it was difficult to move. She pushed through the people around her as best she could, gleaning from the smattering of the conversations around her that every representative, those from worlds too inconsequential or poor to be given a Seat or even sanctioned standing room within the Chamber, would soon be here. All of the delegations who had been content to view the proceedings from their quarters, or even from their ships in orbit, were in the process of arriving. All coming to see…the show. A sampling of the entirety of every civilized, space-faring race in the whole of the Milky Way would soon be assembled in this sky-scraping, hive-like coliseum that looked down on the cobbled stone of the ground floor. All some to see her family, her people, killed like dogs in the central arena. Her strength was returning, sluggish and slow. Now, as she looked around at the eager, flushed faces, another memory flash of Bra collapsing against the wall in a bleeding heap cut through her like a barbed saw blade. She felt a dim, beckoning call of a kind of rage she could only have imagined before today. Trunks-kun… She forced it down, willing her mind cold and still. Ojjiisan had always put rage and grief in some side pocket of his mind, storing it to burn like fuel for the moment of battle. Bulma-san always said, "Work the problem---take it apart piece by piece and solve it one step at a time. If you look at it whole, it'll overwhelm you." She closed her eyes to keep them from leaking. She could still taste Trunks' mouth, still smell him all over her… First step then, she thought, biting her lip to focus. Find Poppa, Momma, Bassan and the babies.

She found the Saiyan wing of the Maiyosh Palace a drenched, smoking ruin, and silently thanked Corsaris again for having the slyness to put her in servant's livery. Other members of chamber services were running here and there, collecting and moving anything not damaged in the fire.

"Did they catch them?" She asked a woman as she sped by with an armful of potted plants.

"The ones that were here?" The woman said fearfully. "No! They killed all the security fellows sent to take them and just vanished. So be careful!" The woman ran on.

Pan moved through the wings, room to room, casting about for some scent of familiar ki. They would be shielding themselves, she knew. She moved into the bridal suite she and her new husband of less than twenty-four hours had shared. Trunks-kun, I can't feel you at all…

She caught a whisp of ki, an unfocused sense of her father's angry face.

He was not very far away…moving back in the direction of the Chamber.

Probably going to try and rescue the others…Her foot connected with something that caught the light and tinkled musically. She knelt and picked up the silver ball in one hand, a slow, grim smile beginning to spread across her face. Artificial moonlight… She followed the trail of her father's ki.

There were moans all around him, a child's weak whimpering voice, slow movement in the darkened cell. Gurasia wheezed, tried to sit up and somehow managed it. He had no power to shield himself from the suffocating, lung-blistering heat these mammals thrived in. A low, raw voice, Son Goten's, was sobbing softly, rocking something still and limp in his arms. Gokou and the others who were conscious were gathered around him, their eyes dark with grief.

On all sides of the dull gray bars of the cell that enclosed them, the black insects swarmed, thousands and thousands of them, no bigger than his own thumb. He could feel them leeching at him even now, draining his power each time it tried to rally. There was no trace of Piccalo Daimo. In the bare fraction of an instant before the things had attacked the Tsiru-jin Seat, the Namek had fixed him with a cold, warning eye. "Harbinger of things to come, kid. Get ready. This is going to be a bad one." Then the Devil had simply vanished. Gurasia shrugged inwardly. He supposed the Namek had never really been there in the flesh at all.

Without warning, the elder Son rushed the bars, fell, and sank down on his face to the cool metal floor as the Arrak-jin drained him once again. After a moment, the Saiyan turned and crawled back to where the other sat.

Gurasia surveyed Goten coolly, cradling his armful of sea-blue hair drenched in matted red, his face twisted in anguish. A chance to even accounts.

"Give her to me," he croaked. All the Saiyans' head snapped around as one. Goten uttered an incoherent animal noise of refusal.

"Goten," his father put a hand on his shaking shoulders. "Give her to him. You don't have to trust him, but trust me."

Goten stared at him and Gurasia felt a roiling mix of hate and grief and desperate hope swirling inside the Saiyan's mind. Then he slowly shifted his dying mate into the boy's arms.

"You don't have any ki left, do you?" Someone said. Gurasia shook his head wordlessly. It was all he could do to just draw enough of the scalding air to breathe, let alone speak, and tell then that his healing ability dwelt in the house of his soul, separate from his power. The woman was dying quickly. He dipped inward, caught the receding flame of her consciousness, anchoring it, as he wove bone and brain and flesh back to health and life.

Her blue eyes opened, and Goten swept her up and away, sobbing like a child with relief.

"Bra-chan…Bra-chan…" Her eyes closed and she slept.

"Do not try to wake her…it is healing sleep," Gurasia rasped. "Is the debt owed to you by myself and Tsiru-sei satisfied, Son Goten?"

"Yes!" Goten gasped, rocking his wife in his arms. "Yes…"

"Thank you," his father said.

"I pay what I owe," Gurasia said coldly. "Now I owe him nothing."

The Saiyan nodded almost absently, stood shakily, and strode toward the bars again. And again he fell, pale and limp. The others pulled him back, and incredibly, he was laughing weakly.

"Gokou…Jisan," Skoy said urgently. "They'll kill you if you don't stop!

Every time you try, they leave you with just enough energy to keep breathing."

"Skoy," Zoukin murmured, holding his still-unconscious daughter close.

"Let him try." The usually stoic physician had begun to grin hesitantly. "There's a lot you don't know about Saiyan physiology." Gurasia saw the Madrani brothers stare in confusion at the red-haired doctor who was so obviously their sibling as well, then back at their uncle. The boy felt his own lips begin to curl at the corners. Each time Son approached the bars, the insects would bleed him nearly to the point of death. Not a wise thing to do repetitively to any son of Vegita-sei. He watched carefully as the Saiyan tried once more, to be sure he had not imagined what he had seen the last time. Gurasia hummed low and soft, a cold smile blooming on his white face.

This time, before he fell, Son Gokou came a full meter closer to the bars.

"Wake up, murderer."

Vegita raised his head groggily, trying to focus his eyes on the figure before him. He was standing. His arms were stretched high and wide, each wrist manacled to a metal post on his left and right. They had stripped him to the waist and taken his boots. He tried to recoil as he felt and saw the dark piles of insects crawling over and around his bare feet, but his ankles were chained in place as well.

"So much of your physical strength," said the dark-haired, milky skinned man who stood before him. "Is tied to your power level. Telekinetic, pyrokenetic…whatever anomaly it is in the brain that gives some races the ability to ride rough-shod over others. The Arrak-jin are the galaxy's great equalizers." He picked one up, held it in his hand. "Ugly little bastards, aren't they? A Maiyosh research vessel discovered them in deep space somewhere in the outer southern rim, I think. R&D discovered their unique talents when they ate a couple of high powered members of the research team. My people, the Ansou-jin, have no discernible power level at all. So they are no danger to me at all in their present form. They're supposed to be intelligent, sentient, as well. Burka cut a deal with them. Said he'd give them the meal of their crawly little lives." The albino man smiled coldly. "That's you. You have no power while they drink from you. Now, you're just a man."

Vegita shook his head, growling weakly, trying to feel something, anything of his ki. There was nothing…nothing.

"It's frustrating, isn't it," the man said. "To be so powerless. So weak. To wonder what's become of your woman, your children, your kin…" Vegita hissed and thrashed, trying to break free, trying to touch his power…only to feel it slip away as they things drank again. He sagged in the chains. "I know just how you feel," the pale man said softly. "My name is Hiru of Ansou-sei. You don't remember me or my people, do you? It was so long ago, and you were very young, fourteen or fifteen at the most. You vaporized our major cities in you initial attack. Including the city where my parents and siblings had lived. But we were stubborn and well-armed. So, you subdued us---it only took you a day, you and that giant fellow, Nappa. Do you remember what you did to make us finally surrender and swear fealty to Tsiru-sei?"

Vegita stood motionless, meeting the man's dead eyes. "No."

"You went through the only large city you had not touched, where I was dwelling at the time, block by block, house by house, and executed one member of every household until we capitulated. You killed my wife and our unborn child personally. You made some sort of joke to your leigeman about two for the price of one."

Vegita stared at the white-skinned man, his face blank and cold, sifting through long-buried memories of the life that he had been fool enough to think he could simply walk away from. "I do not remember your world or your wife," he said, quiet as the grave. "There were too many to ever remember them all."

"I thought as much," Hiru said just as softly. "No matter. They will all have their justice this day."

"Your quarrel is with me---" Vegita began.

"Are you going to beg for the lives of the ones you love, Prince Vegita?"

Hiru smiled. "Do so. I will be as merciful to your kin as you were to mine. If I could, I would bring your beautiful wife to this cell and kill her before your eyes, so that you might know exactly how I felt. But Burka had given her to his nephew Jeiyce. I understand the Captain had a rather unsavory reputation in his dealings with the fair sex." He chuckled softly as the impassive mask slipped on Vegita's face and betrayed the sick fear he was feeling. He uttered a choked half-scream and lunged forward at the pale man, the spikes in the cuffs around his wrists tearing into the now-permeable flesh. Bulma…He screamed again at the thought, the images of what might be happening to her, of what she now remembered having happened, razoring into his mind's eye…and he touched…something. For a fraction of an instant. Something bright and terrifying and without any end to its depth. A power buried do deep down at the core of his being, he could barely brush it with his consciousness. But it was there….and it was…

He fell in the chains, dangling limply as the Arrak-jin tore into him again, leaving him half-conscious.

"Maiyosh has granted me the honor of executing you personally in a few hours," Hiru was saying. "But first we will haul you out before the crowd in the Council Chamber and you will watch as we execute every last living member of your accursed race. You will all die in agony, I promise you that. And you, Saiyan no Ouji, will die knowing that you are the last of your kind. You do not know how I felt on that day you took everything that mattered in my life from me. But before I send you to darken Hell's doorway, I swear to you, you will." He turned and left Vegita alone on the darkness with the Arrak-jin, weazing weakly for enough air to stay conscious. He dipped inside the deepest part of himself, searching in blind desperation for that well of power he knew he had not imagined.

"Bulma…"

He wasn't even aware of having said her name aloud. And distant and fleeting, he saw it, brushed the edges of it with his fingertips. His ki surged up again and he tore furiously at the chains that held him, before the wrenching suction once more sucked him dry. He did not notice as the insects pulled him down into darkness, that this time, he had torn one of the bolts that held his right arm chained free from its mooring on the post.

Burka Maiyosh stared at the group of men arguing before his desk, his pleasant, slightly concerned statement reflecting none of the annoyance he was feeling. One or two more hours and this would be over, he consoled himself. After today, he would be free---free to do and be and say whatever he wished to whomever he wished. That most coveted and elusive state of existence. The latticed doors that led to the Maiyosh Seat and the Chamber beyond did not muffle the roar of the crowd as the first and foremost of the Saiyan monsters was brought out for display in the arena.

"You are out of order, Corsaris!" Said Dahl of Shik, fairly trembling from head to toe in righteous rage.

"And you are out for revenge, not justice" Corsaris rumbled. "Prince Vegita of Vegita-sei deserves to be strung up on a sharp hook for the things he did as Frieza's soldier." The fat man went on. "No one will argue with that. But this wholesale extermination of an entire race----"

"The Council of Free Worlds has voted and carried the motion as law,"

said Hiru of Ansou-sei coldly.

"Their children---" Corsaris began.

"One Saiyan baby can lay a world to waste on three days," said Dahl. "Ask Cros about the danger one of the little ones pose."

"And their spouses?" Teslia of Arlia said quietly. The insectoid had been gazing steadily at the pale face of the woman who sat, hands bound tightly in a pair of energy cuffs, strapped to a chair in the back corner of the office lounge. Burka frowned inwardly. His nephew had been in a fine temper when Burka had returned and ordered him from the Maiyosh Seat to complete the last of his duties in preparation for this evening's festivities.

Jeiyce had been displeased, to put it mildly, at having been interrupted in what he had been doing---or trying to do. From the looks of things, the only thing the boy had managed so far was to get most of the skin on both hands burned off. Then the lad had simply dumped the woman here on his hands as he went off in a snit to see to his work. Now, his fool nephew was kneeling beside the woman's chair, speaking softly to her, stroking her cheek, a besotted smile on his face. Couldn't the impatient boy wait another two damned hours?

"She is not Saiyan," the Arlian said. "And she is not a criminal."

"You gave her to him as a prize, didn't you, you bastard?" Corsaris said disgustedly.

Maiyosh sighed. "He has become entranced with her, it seems. He only wishes to keep her safe from the mob---"

"My hearing is better than yours, Lord Burka," Teslia cut him off. "He was telling her just now that he will spare the life of her infant son if she does all that he asks of her. I will not countenance this kind of sickness!" The insect stood, thorax quivering with rage, strode across the great room, and carried the Chikyuu woman, chair and all, back to the Maiyosh desk.

Burka gave Jeiyce a warning eye and miraculously the lad stayed his anger at having his new toy so unceremoniously snatched away. "Wait!" Burka's look said.

"Let us discuss this after the sentences are carries out," Maiyosh said in a placating tone of voice, watching the Arlian and Corsaris unbind the woman from the chair and cuffs. Hiru of Ansou-sei was eyeing the woman closely, an odd gleam in his eyes. "You will all agree that she is at least under house arrest until then." He stood and motioned them all graciously to take a place in his own Seat. Teslia and Corsaris were keeping the Chkiyuu-jin protectively between them. As they filed into the Balcony Box, she gasped at what she saw in the arena below.

"Vegita…" She whispered, soft and sad.

* * * * *