CHAPTER VI: Desperation

 

"My Lord!" Surita shrilled directly in his ear. Gohan jumped and turned to the old Tsiru-jin irritably. He had used his speed to re-enter the Chamber faster than he hoped anyone's eyes could track. Now they stood staring down into the coliseum from a dizzying perch nearly in the rafters of the enormous structure.

"I can sense him again!" Surita said, keeping his voice lowered.

"I can sense them all now, but it's very faint, as though they were all asleep," Gohan growled. His eyes burned downward on the spectacle unfolding below. In the center of the great arena, Vegita-san was chained and suspended in what was nearly a crucifixion pose, his face blank and stoic, his eyes burning with a terrible concentration, oblivious to the roaring of the hundreds of thousand of people in the Seats and walkways above him.

"Can you lock in on Gurasia?"

"I…cannot." Surita followed his eyes downward, then turned back to the Chikyuu Saiyan's face fearfully, perhaps realizing that his "beautiful little Lord" would very probably shortly be suffering the same fate. The Chairman of the Chamber began reading a list. Of worlds Gohan had never heard of, of population censuses. It went on and on, innumerably long and unimaginable in scale. Oh gods… It was a tally of worlds and peoples destroyed personally by the man who hung chained in the arena. The man his father called friend, the man his brother had always called Jisan with an ease he could not conceive of himself. But then Goten had never known the other Vegita, the mad, murderous killer who had landed on Chikyuu nearly thirty-five years ago. Gohan remembered that man very clearly. Did having had a hand in saving the galaxy, perhaps the universe itself, absolve Vegita of all his sins? The list was so long…so very, very long. He was not the man he had been, but did the rule of law, and more important, the survivors of his deeds, not have the right to call him to account for what he had done? Bulma-san's husband, Trunks' and Bra's and Gita's father…grandfather of the children Pan would one day bear…Gohan hissed through clenched teeth.

They did NOT have the right to call everyone of Saiyan blood to account for the sins of their forefathers!

"It is a new thing for you? To be hated simply because of your race?" Surita murmured. "It is a frailty common among thinking beings, I fear."

"It doesn't have to be!"

"Ah. And do you not have anger and hatred in your heart for me, Son Gohan? Simply because I am Tsiru-jin?"

Gohan stared at him, and slowly felt his face begin to burn with shame.

The old man only smiled sadly. "I have watched the histories of many civilizations and peoples unfold in seven thousands years life. In my library on Tsiru-sei, I have gathered the accords of countless others, spanning back into antiquity. It is an old, old tale, where one side takes revenge on the other for ancient or recent evils, and war of attrition is only ended when one side utterly annihilates the other."

"It doesn't have to be that way," Gohan said softly.

"No," the old man replied. "But the remedy is always a sacrifice of some kind." His eyes lit, and he trilled suddenly with triumph. "I have found him!"

"Show me!"

They blurred down and through a cobwebbed port in the ground floor, through an interconnected series of tunnels beneath the arena floor. Gohan smashed the steel door that barred their entrance into the prisons beyond with one fist. He strode into the large, dark room, Surita trailing furtively behind him. His vision adjusted and he saw them. In the center of the room was a giant cage, containing everyone who had been in the Saiyan Seat when it fell.

"Nissan!" Goten's weak voice came out of the darkness. "Stay back! Stay--" The black things swarmed them from all sides and beside him, Surita doubled over and nearly fell. Gohan caught him, supporting the old man with one arm, edging back----but they were on him in an instant. Idiot!

Idiot! He was going to be taken in exactly the same way the others had! What the hell had he been thinking, just barging in with no plan of action whatsoever, trusting the strength that was even now being sapped out of him! He sagged to his knees, and suddenly howled in rage at the injustice of it all, at the dead men who would have killed his mother and wife and sister, at the blood thirsty crowd outside, at the abject treachery of the day…

"Get…offfff!" He cried at the black things crawling all over him, and a wave of horror and fear surged up, bundled with of burst of incendiary heat that burned the things to crisps. Another wave of them rolled toward him across the cold, dark floor and a sudden flame of his father's ki burnt them in a ball of chittering fire. Gohan tried to stand. "Is everybody okay?" His father was there now helping him stand.

"They took Trunks out to execute him!" Goten cried. "We've gotta get--"

"Pan-chan? Where's Pan-chan?" No one said anything, and his father's face grew dark.

"They incinerated her," said a young man's cool voice. Gohan did not recognize the owner. Someone cried out and the others who'd had the strength to leave the cell began to collapse around him as a dark skittering sound rose around them in the dark. His father hurled a ball of power at the oncoming things, but it wasn't enough, not nearly enough. The meager resistance he had somehow managed to achieve was deserting him fast. Gohan reached inward and pulled the draining sensation out of his chest, shoving the surging waters of the well of his ki upward. Pan-chan! He blasted them into nothingness. Pan-chan… He doubled over sobbing, feeling his father's arms around him.

"Goddess, I've never seen anything like that…" Someone was muttering. "It's like there's no bottom to his power…"

"Gohan-chan," his father was saying. "We can wish her back. She's never died before."

His vision began to clear slowly, and he became aware of the awestruck faces gazing at him.

"How…how did you do that?" Skoy asked, almost afraid.

"Nissan's power is different from other people's when he's angry." Goten was carrying Bra-chan, holding her unconscious, but apparently unhurt body, in his arms. "However much they took from him, there was still more left."

"Old fool," said the voice of the young man who had spoken before. Beside him, a young Tsiru-jin, the boy Gurasia, was kneeling beside the old scholar. The boy's face was unreadable, but his hands lay on Surita's chest, a pulsing flow of healing power flowing into the old man's body.

"I have sinned in pride and presumption, Holy Lord," Surita said in a rattling whisper.

"How?" the boy asked softly.

"I have wished on occasion," the old scholar smiled faintly. "In the silence of my soul…that you were my own child…" The old eyes closed and the labored breath ceased.

The boy sat utterly motionless, dark eyes wide and shocked. "His…his heart was too old. It simply disintegrated. I could not…I could not heal…"

He clamped his jaw shut and viciously wrenched his thin shoulder away from the comforting hand Gohan's father had laid on it.

"Gohan," his father said quietly. "I need you to lead everyone out of here safely, if you can. The Arrak-jin are everywhere and there are more of them than you can imagine. They'll be after us any second now. Move fast. I think they can…track our scent."

"What are you going to do, Toussan?" Goten asked.

Their father smiled. "Whatever I can."

"I will stay with you," said the Tsiru-jin boy. Gokou glanced down at him. "You are planning something crafty, Son Gokou. I wish to know what it is."

Gohan watched his father nod amiably to the boy, returned the bone-breaking embrace he gave Goten and himself. Then Gokou laid one hand on the Tsiru-jin boy's shoulder and the other touched his forehead lightly---and they winked out of sight. Gohan turned and surveyed the others. Most of them could still barely walk, let alone fly. "Follow me," he said grimly, and led the way out of the dungeon.

 

Vegita raised his eyes to the thousands upon thousands of Seats above and around him, but the roaring of the crowd was a dim buzz in his head.

His mind was focused inward, searching in a desperate, fevered frenzy for that power he had touched, barely brushed the surface of, an hour ago. It was…there was not a measurement for how deep that elusive spring of energy had been. He could sense it now, like the scent of water deep in the earth. It was buried, entombed behind a wall unbreachable, unscalable, unassailable. Any measure of strength he had ever achieved had been the tiniest of trickles, small streams of power leaking through the fissures he had managed to chisel in that barrier. And behind it lay…something beyond imagining. He squeezed his eyes shut against the tears of strain standing in them. "Oh God of gods, I have never prayed…But let me find it! Let me grasp it with both hands just once! Not for power, not for pride…Oh God, help me find the strength to save my family and my people!"

The roar of the audience became deafening as two Maiosh-jin soldiers dragged a limp form into the center of the arena, less than twenty meters from where he was chained, and dropped him unceremoniously.

"Trunks…" Vegita whispered. He watched in numb horror as half the Arrak-jin who twisted and writhed around his feet, and flowed like a river of army ants to surround his son where he knelt dazed and shaking.

"Trunks of Chikyuu," the booming voice of the Chairman of the Chamber rumbled. "Saiyan no Ouji…It is decreed by majority vote of this Council of Free Worlds that you and all your race be condemned to death for the safety and continued well-being of the galaxy in its entirety." The Arrak-jin poured over the boy. Trunks head snapped back in a soundless scream as the insects began…as they began to devour him. They had glutted themselves on the younger man's enormous strength, on all their strength, but this was different. Until this moment, the barbs of their psychic fangs had only sunk skin deep, feeding off the energy that flowed off the Saiyans like a river. Now, they were taking what lay beneath, the essence of his life force. Vegita could feel the pain tearing through every fiber of the boy's body and mind as the creatures began to consume him ounce by torturous ounce. Vegita ripped his right arm free of the manacles with a shriek of rage, without thought or doubt or will to seize his power.

A spark of fear and anguish, high above, one bright flicker in all the blood-mad darkness around them. Vegita looked up and saw her standing, screaming, barely restrained by the faceless men around her.

"Bulma!"

And he touched the well again, the unfathomable sink of ki at the very center of his being, another chink in the mortar of the wall that held it bound falling into dust as the power poured through. He hurled the Arrak-jin away from himself and Trunks, sending them flying like black pebbles. He pulled the other arm free of its chain, feeling the volcanic pressure of the surge of power pressing upward through the fissure in the wall that surrounded it.

He did not notice or hear that the cheers around him had dipped and turned to cries of consternation and fear. He did hear one voice, ringing out above them all, young and female and beautiful in the force of its mingled rage and love.

"Nonononono!!!"

Then sweet, silver moonlight burned through the mantle of his reason, and he roared.

 

Pan vaulted into the central arena without a plan, without any thought at all. Trunks-kun! She was beyond thinking. The only thing left in her mind was the image of his death, seconds away, in shuddering agony and terror.

She could feel every slice and needle-like jab as the monsters razored through his mind, cutting his soul itself to pieces for better eating. She tossed the silver bauble of artificial moonlight, Goten's wedding gift, high into the air.

"Nonononono!!!" She shrieked, and hurled a burst of ki at the bauble, illuminating it to full power. The world grew small around her, the domed ceiling of the Chamber low and confining. She snarled through fanged jaws at the mean, squealing things in the Seats, running here and there in panic. She looked down and saw the thing she was looking for, small and fragile and utterly beautiful. She picked him up in one giant paw, brushing the black things off his body in disgust. She staggered suddenly as the insects began leeching at her, draining away the energy she so desperately needed to save this precious thing she held cradled against her. An enormous claw gripped her shoulder, holding her steady. It was another like herself, huge and massive, red eyes searing into hers with violent, burning intelligence.

"Stomp them, girl! Squash the little bastards flat!"

"Ve-vegita-san?"

He raised his giant foot and brought it down with a thunderous crash, flattening several thousand of the black things under his heel. Pan brought her foot down, feeling the satisfying crunch as she smashed the Arrak-jin in to the stone beneath their feet. She grinned suddenly through razored fangs.

And she roared.

"My goodness!" Burka chuckled. "They're making a mess of the arena!"

"That's nothing compared to what they'll do when they get their hands on you, you bastard!" The Chikyuu woman spat. She would have hurled herself at him if Jeiyce had not caught her.

"You crazy bastard! She's right!" Corsaris thundered. "When they get through with the bugs, they'll probably burn this planet down around our ears!"

"You are mad!" Dahl cried. "We all were to think we could chain and destroy these monsters.

"Calmly, gentlemen," Burak smiled into their outraged faces. "Jeiyce, my lad, I think it's time to cut the lines so to speak."

Jeiyce was holding the comlink controller in the arm he was not using to restrain the woman. "Already done, Uncle." He threw the switch, and then casually crushed the device to pieces. The flood lights in the roof of the titanic Chamber flickered and went dim for a second, before powering up again.

"What…what was that?" Teslia said apprehensively.

"That?" Jeiyce grinned at him. "That was the communications satellite array going bye-bye. Shikaji is cut off from the rest of the galaxy for a while."

"Are all the exitways bolted and blocked?" Burka asked.

"Locked up tight as a drum," Jeiyce replied. He put his lips to the woman's ear, as he held her before him. "And the crawlies should have quite a few reinforcements any sec now. Vegita won't be able to squash them all, Lovey. So don't get your hopes up." The woman's reply was rude in the extreme.

"You…you barred the exits…" Corsaris's eyes were slowly widening. "You son of a bitch!" He whispered. He launched himself at Burka with a speed unexpected in a man of his size and girth. Dahl was struggling ineffectually with Jeiyce, trying to do the same. "You planned this all!" The big man's hands were around his throat. "You're planning to kill everyone!

You---"

Jeiyce was on him---a few seconds late in Burka's opinion. Dalh was on the floor groaning painfully. Maiyosh gasped with relief as the lad finally pried Corsaris' hands from around his throat. The two men struggled for a second or two before Jeiyce drove a sharp uppercut into the big man's jaw.

"Strong old bird," his nephew remarked.

"Toss them over the side, laddie," Burka croaked, holding his throat delicately. He glanced down into the arena at the fray below and saw the full compliment of the Arrak-jin streaming into the center toward the two

Oozaru, surrounding them on every side. Good, good, good. It was all still under control. Jeiyce chucked Dahl and Corsaris over the balcony edge and down into the arena.

"Shit!" His nephew nearly screamed.

Teslia, the Arlian, and Hiru of Ansou-sei had apparently taken the opportunity to bolt during the confusion. Much good would it do them.

"Shit!" Jeiyce cried again and darted out of the Seat without a backward look. During the fight with Corsaris, the Chikyuu woman had escaped as well.

Burka sighed and turned back to the show. He could only hope the boy's appetites did not get him killed today. But it couldn't be helped. His eyes shown bright and wondering as the Arrak-jin began to overwhelm the two giant apes by sheer numbers. His hand was firmly wrapped around the controller that would release the chemical that Labtech had finally perfected, the stop-gap measure "Bug Spray" that made this day possible. For without it, the Bugs would have been far too dangerous to ever risk using in this way. As he watched, the insects began to change. To grow. Burka laughed softly.

 

Pan wobbled and sank to her knees, still holding Trunks cupped gently in one hand. Beside her, Vegita-san nearly staggered and fell. The inexplicable, resistance this form afforded to the insects' powers was wearing away and they were being slowly pulled down. It didn't matter that the were-change to Oozaru form was not directly linked to ki---it did them no good if they could not stand. Then…

All around her, something horrible was happening. She didn't notice it at first, so distorted was her sense of size and proportion by her own change. The bugs were growing, changing form as well, into something the size of a small car---each and every one of them. Scissoring incisors and blade-like fore-legs extended, they changed. And as they did, the draining sensation ceased altogether.

"Pan-chan!!!" A blast of radiant heat hurled the Arrak-jin nearest her through the air in a tumbling ball of fire. They were suddenly all around her, a dozen other giant forms like her own, screaming with battle rage, pounding the insects to pulp under their great fists. All the others, her family, her friends, and she howled with mad joy and renewed strength.

The Arrak-jin, huge and glutted, began to flow up the walls, into the Seats…and over the screaming spectators. And they began to eat them.

Someone, a soldier of Maiyosh security or some foolhardy by-stander, lobbed a burst of power at the shimmering bauble hovering near the ceiling of the Chamber, and the lights sputtered and failed. Pan fell to her knees gasping for breath, Trunks still held close in her arms---her little arms. She was small and naked and human once again. Around her, all the others had collapsed as well, shifting back to humanoid form.

"Get up!" Her father was crying. "Everybody get up! They're killing everyone!"

"Trunks…" Pan whispered, staring into his too-pale face.

He opened his eyes and coughed weakly. A faint, tiny grin. "…feel like Faye Ray." She nearly sobbed with relief.

"We can't stop them, can we?" Skoy was saying.

Her father's teeth were ground together as though he was still fighting the Oozaru madness for control of his mind. Behind her, Zoukin, Routab and all the others who'd had no tails to trigger the change, were pounding across the arena toward them.

"We can," her father grated. "I know everybody's pretty drained right now---" There was a low rumble of grim laughter from the men around him at his choice of words. "---but they're not pulling at us anymore. I don't think they can in this form."

Trunks stood up weakly, and she could feel him flexing and testing his strength as it slowly returned. He stared around at the dark, angry faces of his people. "I know what these people tried to do to us. I know you're all angry. But the payback had got to stop somewhere. And if we let one innocent child or adult die with a mob of half a million blood-thirsty bastards, it's as though we killed that one person ourselves." There was a long tense silence.

"Let's fry those crawling bastards," Radu growled. From all around came answering snarls of agreement, mingled with the burning call of the blood they all shared. The call to fight.

They began to kill the Arrak-jin.

On the highest, wind-tossed branches of the Maiyosh Palace, Son Gokou stood with his eyes turned upward. The boy beside him watched intently, straining the limits of his own great mental powers to hear the dialogue the Saiyan was casting effortlessly through the veil of eternity.

"Thank you, Shen Lon," the man murmured. "I know this means you'll never be able to return to the realm of Time."

"TIME," the dragon's voice said softly, "IS UNCOMFORTABLE AND MESSY." A deep, rolling chuckle. "BUT I WILL MISS YOU, LITTLE SAIYAN."

"Not for long," Gokou said, almost inaudibly. He turned eyes that were suddenly fathomless on the boy beside him, and Gurasia swallowed hard, trying not to flinch from that gaze that had just peered beyond the mortal plain. "These are the first scouts of an invasion, Gurasia," Son said. "The Arrak-jin travel from universe to universe, through…holes in existance, in a swarm the size of a dozen solar systems. They are legion…and everything that lives is their food."

"And they are coming…" The boy breathed. "When?"

"Not today or tomorrow. But soon. And when they come, you must be ready for them. You have to find a way to your full strength in the next few years. You don't have two or three centuries to grow up. You don't even have two decades. They are coming."

Gurasia hissed fearfully. The end…the end of everything…all life everywhere…

"Go," the Saiyan said gently. "If you're too close to me in a few minutes, you'll be killed."

"You're about to die, aren't you?" The boy whispered, almost angrily. Father and Surita and now this miserable monkey…all gone…

"I'm buying you the time to find a way to come into your power. The strength of a god, who can move and breathe and act in the physical plain. Strength and power…they're a shield and not a sword, Gurasia. Do you understand that?"

"I…" His stomach clenched with impotent fury at his own helplessness.

The damnable man always made him feel so young and confused.

"Do one thing for me in return." Gurasia's head snapped up. "Chi-Chi and the babies are in danger. Protect them for me until this is all over."

The boy's tail lashed furiously, his entire body shaking with too many emotions at once. "Damn you, Son Gokou," he said finally, soft and regretful. He dove downward, leaving the Saiyan to die his death alone.

 

The Prince of Vegita-sei set his feet on the balcony of the Maiyosh Seat, pointed one finger, and spoke gently to the trembling man in the delegate's Seat. "Where is she?" He asked softly. A giant chittering Arrak-jin scuttled down the wall above his head and he blasted it into glowing embers almost negligently.

For once in his life, Burka found himself at a loss for words. This was not one of those well-spoken, fair-playing Chikyuu youths, raised to never shoot in the back. This was not that arrogant upstart Radu, who he knew in spite of all the dissembling and propaganda he'd been spouting for the last two years, to be nothing more deadly than any cunning businessman. Burka was face to face with an enraged monster, one of the Saiyan warriors of old, who very often ate their enemies corpses after a battle if nothing else were available. This was one of the beasts all those fools in the stands had feared so much.

"Wh-who?"

The Saiyan seared off his foot below the ankle with a second shot.

"Where?" He hissed.

Burka uttered a gagging cry and shrank backwards into his chair. Damn Jeiyce! Damn the boy to Hell for not being here to defend him!

"..escaped…" He managed to say. "Don't know where…"

Something clicked under the Saiyan's foot and he snarled and stamped it. But there were suddenly dozens more, and Burka saw through the haze of pain, the cold horror on the killer's face as the pieces of the large Arrak he had just blasted morphed and reshaped themselves into thousands of the tiny black insects it had grown from. And began feeding off him. The monkey staggered back with a curse, and tottered over the ledge of the balcony, plummeting to the ground arena below.

Burka flipped the plastic casement on the control device he held, scrambling back from the tiny black things that seemed to be closing in on him, perhaps because his injury has raised his adrenaline and with it his ki.

He pushed the button and a wash of green liquid poured into the Seat from the fire sprinklers overhead, drenching the little Arrak-jin.

"We--we had a deal!" He screamed, not expecting a reply of any kind. He began crawling to the back rooms of the Seat, with no clear idea of where he would go from there. Perhaps…perhaps use the bug spray to barricade himself in…and…

Came a hollow, black chuckle from behind him. The Arrak-jin were shaking off the green liquid that had dissolved them in the Labtech trials like felines shaking off the unpleasant feel of water. They trundled toward him, and he limped back, blindly grasping the door. He wrenched it open and ran as best he could with one foot.

 

Vegita hit the stone pavement of the arena floor hard, rolled over and levitated unsteadily. "Fuck!" The power, the font of ki he had almost grasped had receded into nothingness now. He had a vague idea that he could not move or act and sense it at the same time. It simply took too much effort. And now that the fighting had begun, there was no time to sit and meditate and search. Dammit, he could barely fly now! A flash of Bulma's presence, the image of her face bloody, angry and afraid, stripped away all of his exhaustion in an instant. He streaked toward her, burning the depleted fuel of his ki like kindling.

High above the melee in the Chamber, Goten sat on the domed curve of the giant structure's roof, rocking his mate in his arms, singing a soft, growling lullaby he could not remember having heard before…not in this life anyway. He should be fighting beside the others. He should be trying to save the lives of the thousands trapped on the inside. Every instinct in his being told him to rise up of follow wild call when battle was joined. But is he left Bra alone in this condition, she would die. And if she died, he would soon follow. And there was more involved in protecting her than the worth of either of their small lives.

"Wake up, Bra-chan." He kissed her. She was no better at keeping her secrets than he was. And he knew that if he could only rouse her, she could end this in a heartbeat. "Wake up," he whispered again. "We need you."

 

Pan spiraled down, speeding toward the familiar face. She swept the man away from the slashing things that surrounded him, rising into the air again. Chunks of masonry and stone were crashing down around them. Gera and Torc had begun blasting bus-sized holes in the ceiling and walls several moments ago, and thousands of people were pouring out of the new exits like rats deserting a foundering ship. Unfortunately, the Arrak-jin were following them, flowing out of the Chamber, and into the city around them.

"I can fly, little bit," Corsaris said. "Just barely. I was just stunned for a second or two." He gently pulled free of her hold. "Go and save someone who can't." The fat man dipped down and pulled a wounded woman from the rubble below them before shooting up toward on the the holes in the roof.

"Don't blast them! Don't blast them!" Radu's voice was calling somewhere through the smoke and noise. "Just swat them down and disable them. If you blow them away, they turn into thousands of the little ones!"

All around her were screams and painfilled wails of the wounded and the dying. Some people were flying upwards to safety without a backward look. Others, a surprising number, were shooting back and forth, pulling friends and total strangers to the relative safety of outdoors. Corsaris had been right.

Most of these people were not evil. Even the ones who'd been screaming the loudest for Trunks' death an hour ago were operating mostly on fear and misinformation. Trunks bulleted down out of someone's abandoned Seat and thrust one foot into one of the big Arrak's chitinous side, sending it rolling to land wriggling and helpless on its back like an over-turned turtle.

She spun round beside him and touched down. "Are we winning at all?" She cried. "I can't tell."

His face looked bleak and exhausted and horribly pale. "People keep blasting the big ones, making more of the little ones, and then the new ones run people to ground in the back rooms and corridors and grow large again…and…" And the cycle kept repeating itself as everyone tried desperately to defend themselves…and as it did, the Arrak-jin only increased in numbers, growing stronger…"They're all over the city now," Trunks said. "Soon they'll cover the entire planet…"

A stream of the tiny black ones surged toward them, and as they lifted off to avoid the assault, they discovered a secret the insects had kept to themselves until that moment. The Arrak-jin could fly.

 

The numb lethargy she had been slowly drowning inside after the release of that one brief burst of emotion in the Saiyan Seat had burnt away into shrieking rage at the first sight of Jeiyce in the infirmary, at the first hint of danger to Vegita and Son-Kun. As the soldiers bent over the limp bodies of her husband and her friend, the Ginyu had carried her scratching, kicking and screaming her head off, past hoards of gaping delegates, not one of whom had lifted a hand to help her. They had all assumed she must have had something to do with the explosion.

When Jeiyce shut the door to the suite of rooms behind the Maiyosh Seat, pushing her down shrieking beneath him onto one of the divans in the office lounge, he had gotten a nasty surprise. During the sleepless hell of the early morning, she had turned nearly every inch of her body into an encapsulated mine field of pressure sensitive micro explosives, primed to respond repeatedly to the personal electromagnetic field of anyone they were not programmed to recognize. After two or three extremely painful attempts, he had cursed angrily and bent her hand backward, snapping the wrist.

"Deactivate your gadgets, Lovey," he said, eyes drinking in the pain on her face avidly. "Or I'll crack every bone in your body, one at a time."

"There's nothing you could do to me that would be worse than having you touch me, you piece of shit!" She spat at him.

"No?" He laughed softly. Then he twisted her wrist, grinding the shards of the broken bone together, leaning down to kiss her roughly as she screamed against his mouth. And his other hand snaked around the back of her neck and pinched a nerve, an acu-pressure point that…

Oh Kami, no…

And suddenly she remembered the one thing, above all the other things he had done to her on Tsiru-sei, that had magnified and sharpened the agony of all his other obscenities, that had been worse than all the other sickening tortures combined. Each time he'd had her, no matter how monstrous the things he had done, no matter how badly he hurt her, he had always touched her there at the end, triggering that neural pressure point, and made her…made her…She felt the world, reality itself, begin to slip free of its anchor, as the shuddering, helpless orgasm he forced on her, simply by pressing that one point at the base of her skull, lanced through her body. Nonono…

Vegita…

They had taken him prisoner…and Son-kun and Trunks and Bra and Gita and all the others! The world came careening back into solidity, and the cold, thinking engines of her mind roared to life and thrust emotion aside with a ruthless shove. She was very probably the only person in the Saiyan Seat not incapacitated by the Arrak-jin's attack. She might be their only hope. And that one thought buried the shock and nausea and blinding terror that Jeiyce's touch, his very presence, instilled in her, and numbed the aching wounds of what he had done to her before, if only for now. He had access to machines that could strip her of all her capsulated defenses, she knew. That fact would occur to him any moment now. Her only hope was that he would trip one of the lethal poison injectors that she had interspersed liberally with the micro-explosives all over her body. He had so far been lucky enough to miss them. She had to kill him quickly and escape before they did whatever they were going to do to her family and the others…And then…and then she would spend a an hour or two in the back store room of the Maiyosh Technical Supplies store, building and reconstructing and calibrating…

And then, gods help anyone who got in her way.

"Go ahead and break me in half," she said, her voice full of cold, calculated contempt. "Since your not man enough to fight your way through a few fire cracker burns."

The habitual grin on his face vanished, and he dealt her a blow that set the room spinning. With a snarl, he began tearing at her clothing, ignoring the sizzling bursts of the micro-bombs each time he touched her bare skin.

He was perhaps a fraction of an inch from tripping one of the poison caps when his uncle and an entourage of Trade House heads strolled back into the Seat. Burka had snapped something irritable about work before play, and her one chance to kill the Ginyu was lost as Jeiyce vanished in an angry huff to see to some last minute arrangements for whatever Maiyosh had planned for her family and friends. Burka eyed her a moment, much annoyed by her presence and the question of what to do with her until his nephew returned.

"Why do I feel," he said, having noted Jeiyce's smoking, singed appearance, "that you are literally bristling with weapons, my dear?"

Ten minutes later, as the kangaroo court of the Council reconvened, and began to vote on the Saiyan Question, carrying the motion by a 67% majority, she sat trembling and defeated as two Maiysoh techs swept her from head to toe with a pulse fragmentation beam that turned the contents of every micro-capsule she wore into metallic scrap and dust. The House CEOs departed at some point and the leaders of several survivors' groups of Saiyan and Tsiru-jin conquest and purges, all of whom Burka had used to gain the votes of fence sitters, trooped in heralding Maiyosh as the hero of the day. The fat Regent of Corsaris had stormed in moments later with the signatures of several thousand delegations under his belt, all demanding a stay of execution for the prisoners held below, all demanding a separate vote in regaurds to the fate of all members of the Saiyan party under the age of fifteen. And the shouting had begun. She had watched them sadly from where the techs had cuffed and strapped her to her chair, thinking that of all the manipulative, bastardly things Burka Maiyosh had done today, using these people to ensure his monopoly of the shipwright trade was the lowest.

Then Jeiyce had returned, looking happy and relaxed, and knelt beside her chair with an almost loving smile. He stroked her cheek, his burnt, blackened fingers tracing down the line of her neck. "I can save your baby, you know," he whispered in her ear. His lips brushed her cheek and she clenched her teeth against the scream rising up in her throat. "Your little son…" he went on. "He doesn't have to die."

Her breath had stopped in a choking gasp. "Gita.." She squeezed her eyes shut. Oh Kami, he has my baby! "What--what d-do…" She couldn't say the words. Oh gods please no, this can't be happening…my baby…

"What do I want?" He breathed. "You do whatever I ask. When I say. How I say. You work as hard as you can to please me. And I let the boy live. If you're especially nice to me, I'll even let you visit him."

Gita…

"I will not countenance this kind of sickness!" The Arlian's voice had cut through the quicksand of horror she had been sinking in. And then Teslia, this man she knew must have lost his family, perhaps his entire world to Saiyan hands, had come to her rescue. The unequivocal, unconditional decency of the insectoid man left her nearly awestruck.

Now, the Arlian flew chirping and whirring in terror as Bulma clung to his pale thin shoulders for dear life. In the first seconds of the row between Corsaris and Burka, Teslia had caught her eye and virtually yanked her out of the Maiyosh Seat rooms. "I only ever wanted to see the man who destroyed my world brought to justice," he had said frantically, the fragile, sensitive planes of his face twisted with misery. "Not this! Not any of this!"

She clung to him as well as she could with one good wrist, as they whizzed around the screaming, stampeding masses, running aimlessly in fear of the two Oozaru in the arena, piling up at the blocked exits, pounding desperately on the sealed doors.

"There's no way out!" He cried.

"There will be," she said. "Sooner or later, Vegita or Pan will punch a hole in roof or the walls----turn left!" A sudden idea, the almost lost recollection of the weapon she had nearly finished building back at the Saiyan Seat, that she had meant to use to disrupt and cripple Jeiyce's fighting power and strength…"In there!" He careened sharply into the abandoned Seat, setting her down beside the scattered pieces of her "ki gun."

"Mistress," he said, glancing out through the balcony Box down into the arena, where a dozen more Oozaru had just joined Vegita and Pan in their bug stomping party. "The Oozaru---!"

"They won't hurt us," she said almost absently, hands dancing over the jumpers of the internal system board of the weapon she held. "But Corsaris was right. Burka has some kind of plan to kill everyone here tonight. Probably using the Arrak-jin."

"He cut all communications with the outside galaxy, all the other systems who were monitoring the Council from home." Teslia's eyes suddenly grew huge. "He means to kill everyone, all the delegates, and then take over in the confusion that will follow the death of nearly every planetary head in the galaxy. The man is monstrous!"

"And he'll blame it all on the Saiyans," Bulma said grimly. She held up the rifle and checked the adjustments of the polarity. It now bore the vital components of the Tsiru-jin ki damper and the brute ray she had built three years ago. She had configured it with two settings. The negative pulse setting would cripple and blast apart the ki and of anyone or anything it struck in the same way her inverse brute ray had---with the added factor of the Tsiru-jin damper giving it an extra, nasty kick. The positive setting would jump start the energy and power level of whoever it struck, in much the same way her brute ray had pushed Vegita over the threshold of Super Saiyan 4 three years ago.

"But…" Teslia was saying. "but the people on Shikaji will know…"

Bulma stared at him bleakly. "I don't think Burka means for anyone on this planet to survive the night." The screams of fear all around them had suddenly turned to agonized wails of pain. Something had changed in the arena. Without warning, something huge and black, sword-sized pincers slashing, clawed its way over the outer edge of the balcony. Bulma and Teslia both screamed in unison, and she stumbled back, firing almost accidentally. The rifle's ray struck the thing dead on and it…it shriveled, crumbling into thousands of tiny, dark pieces that writhed weakly on the floor. She shot the dusty-looking, almost desiccated pieces and they blew away to black dust. The black specs were now smaller than grains of sand, but they still seemed to twitch with some kind of live.

"Tough little bastards," she muttered and cocked the rifle to fire again. It was as she had thought though. The bugs ate ki, and the negative setting on her rifle dampened and blasted it. In theory, she should be able to shoot them until they died of starvation, but---A weak laugh from the Arlian crouched fearfully beside her made cut through her thoughts. She stared at him curiously.

"I had wondered how a woman with a power level of less than one could have survived marriage to a Saiyan, Mistress," the insectoid chuckled shakily. "Now I know."

She felt an answering grin begin to pull at the corner of her mouth, was about to reply, when the rifle was knocked from her hands with numbing force. Jeiyce swatted Teslia down with one negligent blow and grabbed her in both arms, pinning her against him. He slammed her against a wall and pressed his mouth to hers with bruising force. No weapons left, no one to help, no way to get away…She couldn't even scream.

"I like a courtship chase as much as the next fellow, Lovey," he whispered, his hands beginning to rip at her clothing. "But no more running now."

He was suddenly hurled into and through the far wall by a blow that would have torn an ordinary man's head from his shoulders. She opened her eyes and sobbed. His face was dark and bloody and terrifying with a level of fury she's never seen before.

"Vegita…"

His lips brushed her forehead, her cheek, his arms around her for the briefest of moments. Then he turned and began a slow and methodically sadistic process of beating Jeiyce of Maiyosh to death with his fists.

* * * * *


Table of Contents
Chapter 5
Chapter 7