Laki had dropped the barricade on the outer doors of the servants' quarters by remote, but the monsters were busily clawing their way through the shield doors as though they were balsa wood. Now they ran.

"What are they?!" A woman's voice was screaming. "Oh gods, what are they?!" The insects were tearing through the smoke and cinder-laded air. The Corporate Palace security soldiers were blasting away at the things all around them. The noise was deafening. So far, it seemed the only thing the warriors had accomplished was to set the entire Palace on fire. Nothing seemed to be slowing down the creatures' inexorable advance. Chi-Chi followed the Maiyosh-jin butler through the burning bole of the great tree, as he squirreled this way and that through the incomprehensible labyrinth, carrying Videl in his arms. She clutched both the children tight against her as they turned one last corner and faced a dead end.

"Oh no…" She looked backward only to see a dozen of the massive, black things ripping their way through the hall behind them. Laki was frowning intently, his face crumpled in an agony of concentration, both hands extended before him to the blank face of the wall they faced. A tiny burst of energy, one glowing blast of effort, burst from his fingertips, tearing a two-meter gap in the wood. Wind and night poured through the new exit.

How short were the days on this world that the sun could have set already, she wondered dizzily. Or maybe time just flew when you were having this much fun. They stood looking down from the fainting height of the palace's upper trunk on the city below.

"Can you carry all of us?" She asked the little concierge.

"I must," he said matter-of-factly. He had explained something of himself and his people in the tense hours they had spent watching the preparations for the executions of her family on the newsweb. His people, being the Maiyosh-jin servant caste. It was not mere decency or sense of right over-riding his loyalty to his Corporate Prince that had driven him to help them, though that was certainly part of it. It was that they, the Saiyans and all their families, had been placed in his personal care. By Burka of all people. But the bond of his personal honor, his obligation to what was nearly of religion of service, would not allow him to let his charges come to harm.

He looped one arm around her waist, holding Videl with the other, and dove down into the windswept night. And they saw to their horror, too late, that the air was full. Of people in air cars and cycles or flying under their own power, all tearing about in aimless panic. Of ships launched frantically without clearance, colliding with one another in the lower atmosphere, and careening down in luminous wrecks to bloom in brilliant fireballs on the ground level of the city. And of the black insects, huge and gape-mawed, and tiny and innumerable, all swarming after everything in the air like maddened hornets.

One of the big creatures swooped at them and Laki dodged desperately, but the dull backhand of one razored foreleg caught the Maiyosh-jin a glancing blow, and Chi-Chi was buffeted out of his grip. He spun around and down to catch her, but a blast of something hot and acrid-smelling--the backburn of a small space ship soaring up past them in its own desperate escape attempt, caught her in its cyclone updraft and hurled her miles away through the hellish chaos of the night. And then she was falling, both babies by some miracle still clasped in her arms, spinning down through the darkness night like a rock.

Something whipped out of the black around her like a white streak and caught her, and she finally found the breath to scream.

"Be quiet, you screechy harridan!" Her rescuer hissed in her ear. She craned her head around to see who had saved her and nearly screamed again.

"Your mate charged by the debt I owe him to keep you and the cubs safe!"

"Where are we going?" She cried.

The Tsiru-jin boy seemed nonplused for a second, as though he had not given that question any thought until this moment. "I will take you to the Chamber. There are still many Arrak-jin there, I imagine, but all your kin are also gathered there. The danger is greater, but our position will be more defensible with the others to fight at our back." They soared toward the glowing monolithic structure of the Chamber.

Gokou stood high and alone, eyes focused on the stars overhead, ears deaf to the screams and explosions miles below. He touched the edges of the insubstantial dragon balls of Shen Lon he had absorbed into himself three years ago, one through seven, pausing with a brief, sad caress at the four star. Ojjiisan's gift… He took one last deep breath. Then he raised his arms high and wide, and set the dragon balls alight. He began to burn like a star.

Trunks sat two screaming young girls down on the domed roof of the Chamber and watched as a dozen Arrak-jin tried to follow them out of the broken gaps, only to be speared and pinned with metal rafter struts by Radu and his sons. If you did not blast them or kill them, they had all learned belatedly, they could not multiply. The only way to fight them was to immobilize them. The little ones you simply blasted from a distance before they got close enough to drain you---though the nearly microscopic bits left by the mightiest of ki blasts would morph and grow into more before the hour was out. Routab and Coram had found that out the hard way. There were perhaps ten others of the Saiyan party who had simply dropped out of sight and Trunks was not optimistic as to their fates.

On the unshattered half of the Chamber roof, they had formed a kind of camp. Zoukin had set up a remedial triage unit for people too wounded to move, with his daughter and Skoy helping where they could. Goten sat nearby, a little removed from the others, holding Bra, speaking to her softly.

The Chamber was burning inside, everything not wrought of stone and metal seemed to be blazing. But Pan and himself, and nearly a hundred others were still pulling living people out of the inferno. The one blessing was that the Arrak-jin, for the most part, seemed to have abandoned the Chamber for better hunting in the city. The large ones, in particular, craving live physical meat in their secondary form, had swarmed the city in a shark-like feeding frenzy. Maybe blessing was a bad word to use, he thought grimly.

"Bassan!" Pan cried. Trunks saw the Tsiru-jin boy light on the roof a dozen meters away, setting down a bedraggled Chi-Chi-san. She was holding both Gita and Go-chan in her arms.

"Videl!" Gohan blurred out of the smoke and seized Gurasia, shaking him. "Where's Videl?"

"I never saw her," the boy replied, his gazed focused upwards, on the highest branches of the city above them.

"We got separated," Chi-Chi-san said. "She's with Laki, and he'll take care of her or die trying."

Trunks followed Gurasia's gaze, to the very peak of the tree that housed the Maiyosh Palace. At the tiptop crown of the great tree, a light was burning, growing steadily brighter, shining like the star on a Christmas tree.

"Ojjiisan…" Pan whispered. "What's he doing?"

"He is burning up the dragon balls he carries inside him," Gurasia said softly.

"What will that accomplish?" Trunks asked.

The boy was silent a moment. "I'm not sure…I think---"

A hundred meters away, Radu cried out sharply and fell back with his sons and the others to the protective circle they had formed around the wounded. Out of the gaping maw that had once been the southern half of the Chamber's roof, a seething mass of tiny Arrak-jin were spurting up like a cloud of bees. They were brimming out of every crack and gap in the giant structure beneath them, everywhere, around them, above them, to every side. Trunks felt the strength wrenched out of his power and body. He sagged to his knees. This was it. No way out, and no energy to fly if they found one.

He could not fight. He couldn't even stand. He could hear and dimly feel Gohan shouting his defiance, fighting the oncoming masses and, unbelievably, pushing them back with his great strength…then slowly failing, faltering, as he bore the brunt of the entire attack, as the Arrak-jin wore him down. As they swarmed over him and came for them all. Trunks felt a hand thread through his, warm and comforting. Far below, he thought he could hear someone screaming, a voice he recognized. He took Pan's face in his hands, kissed her one last time with the last of his strength.

"I love you, Trunks," she whispered.

"Pan-chan," he said sadly. "…wish we'd had…more time…"

A red star rose up out of the Chamber beneath them and burned the Arrak-jin to ash.

Vegita brought his foot down on Jeiyce's hand, crushing the bone to splinters, baring his teeth at the satisfying sound of the man's shriek. "You scream like a girl, Jeiyce." The smoke and fire were growing thicker and he knew he would have to end this soon. He could see Bulma peripherally, priming the settings of the rifle she'd been tampering with this morning, kneeling beside the groggy Arlian, who was apparently assisting her in its repair. He snarled at the thought of having to kill the man at his feet quickly and aimed another kick to his balls, sending the Ginyu slamming through the rubble of the wall, back into the Saiyan Seat. If he couldn't take the time to torture this piece of shit to death properly, Bulma was damn well going to get the satisfaction of seeing the Maiyosh-jin die. "Like of little girl," Vegita growled. "Just like you did that time you mother showed up on Tsiru-sei to beat you for not writing home often enough."

Jeiyce uttered an incoherent howl and turned on the offensive, and Vegita found himself knocked backward. The damned bugs had taken so much of his energy he had actually felt the blow. Time to stop fucking around and get Bulma out of here. He raised his open hand, drawing in a burst of power to atomize the red bastard just as he had done half a lifetime ago on Namek.

His foot skidded on something, and he glanced down in horror at the shifting black dust beneath his feet. The tiny, spec-sized bits of the blasted Arrak-jin were moving. They were----He stumbled and ground his teeth against a wave of dizziness as they began leeching at his ki, bleeding him of even the strength to stand. No…

A bloody fist drove into his stomach, and another blow crushed his ribs.

Jeiyce stood unsteadily and shoved him down and headfirst into a writhing mass of the black things that were suddenly all around them. Vegita screamed as they began to tear into the fiber of his life force, digging inward, ripping and shredding the edges of his mind and soul. In the space of a heartbeat, the pain became so unimaginable he couldn't cry out, couldn't breathe. He had never imagined this kind of pain was possible this side of Hell. And the worst of it was that nothing the bugs were doing blurred or dimmed his consciousness or lucidity in any way.

"Stay right there, Vegita old pal," Jeiyce cackled weakly. "I'll bring your lady love back here and fuck her in front of you while you die." The Ginyu began tottering unsteadily through rippling black mass beneath them. They were draining him as well, though not as quickly. Apparently they had developed a taste for Saiyan.

"Bulma…" Vegita croaked. Foolfoolfool! Why did you not kill him quickly?! Why?!!!!

He saw her standing straight and still as the Maiyosh-jin approached her. The Arlian was cowering on the floor behind her. Her face…oh gods, her face was like the ivory sculpture of some ancient Chikyuu goddess of war, pale and proud and cold and unspeakably beautiful in its wrath and mercilessness. She did not speak or threaten or posture as Jeiyce moved toward her. She only raised the rifle and fired. A ray of deep blue light struck the Ginyu in the chest and he seemed to…to glow for a second, his aura and his ki swelling monstrously. In the next instant, the unnamable, tearing pain vanished and Vegita watched in weak fascination as the black micro Arrak-jin sailed toward Jeiyce as though magnetized, latching onto him from every corner of the smoking room, drawing out everything inside him, mind, ki, life, into themselves as he thrashed and struggled on the floor, peeling out blood-curdling shriek after shriek, as they tore his life essence apart in a ravenous feeding frenzy. Bulma watched as they devoured him, her statement remote and immobile. They ate him piece by piece, and as it had been when the things attacked him, Vegita could see that Jeiyce was fully conscious through it all, limbs twitching, his eyes horribly aware until…until there was nothing left of him to be aware. Nothing at all.

Bulma adjusted the controls of her weapon once more and fired again. This time, the red beam of her rifle blew the Arrak-jin that still clambered over the Ginyu's dessicated corpse back into the nearly invisible bits they had grow from.

Then she was beside him, sea-hued eyes streaming, kissing his bloody face. "Can you stand?" She asked. "The bugs will recover in a minute or two. I used the null setting of my rifle to drain them but I don't think they can be killed so easily. They just get smaller, then grow back as they feed on the life around them."

"What…" He sat up weakly, searching for his ki, finding it, flowing slowly back from that hidden spring, filling him up again. She seemed to know what he was trying to ask.

"The positive setting on my rifle is a juiced up version of my brute ray. I turned it on Jeiyce and he was suddenly a lot tastier to them than you. Vegita, we have to go!"

"Did---did he---?" He choked on the question.

"No," she said softly, and he pulled her against him in a shuddering embrace, teeth clenched against the sob that rose in his throat. She touched her lips to his. "And now he's dead."

She gasped against him, and he felt a sharp pressure on his chest.

He stared down in slowly dawning horror at the black score mark, spattered with red, over his heart where an energy blast had struck him and disintegrated. "No…" He whispered. "No!" The bolt had passed straight through her. Her blood…her blood was everywhere, pouring her life out through the hole in her breast. Her face, so close to his, was startled, then sorrowful as realization struck. Grieving for him, left behind and alone.

"Vegita…" She breathed her last breath into his lungs like a sad, wistful kiss. And she died.

"Now you know, Prince Vegita," said the pale man who stood in the entrance of the Seat. Hiru of Ansou-sei. "Now you know how I felt."

The dead-eyed man turned the energy pistol in his hand on himself and calmly blew his own brains out.

"No…" A high, wispy voice. "Oh no…" The Arlian sagged to his knees, weeping luminous crystalline tears at the sight of the empty shell Vegita now held in his arms.

"Why do you, of all people, care, Arlian?" Vegita asked, stroking the soft blue fan of her hair. Everything had become distant and unreal, like images in a foggy dreamworld. Something was building beneath the mire of numb, unfeeling shock that had enveloped him. He knew in moments, it would penetrate the surface like compressed lava piercing a planet's crust. With a sleepwalker's dim perception, he knew the pain would be worse than anything the Arrak-jin could have ever managed when it finally struck.

"She did not deserve to be punished," the Arlian said softly. "For having a heart great enough to love one such as you." The insectoid man eyed him searchingly, the light from the flames that now encircled them flickered off the diamond-like facets of his great eyes. "I would have liked to see the man who destroyed my world executed today…but I think…perhaps he died many years ago. I think your lady wife must have slain him."

Vegita stared at him, wondering and nearly awestruck even through the paralytic void he was floating inside. Though not for long. He could feel the backlash beginning to break free. "Go," he told the other man hoarsely. "Save yourself if you can." The insectiod fled.

Vegita lowered his head, kissing her already cold lips. She had told him once, many years ago, that she had never imagined that she would not outlive him, even before Kakarott's wish to match her lifespan to his. She had always assumed she would one day see him die in some permanent fashion, long before her natural life was through.

The mantel shattered and burst, pouring up from the impenetrable fortress housing the center of soul, that cool, ever-flowing spring of his power that he had only ever touched fleetingly, a well so deep it was unfathomable. He had never seen the center in all the long decades of torturous striving toward the ultimate realization of his fullest potential, he had never even penetrated the walls of the barrier which he now saw he had erected himself, had begun building stone by stone, brick by brick before he was even old enough to speak or walk. This wall had been reinforced to steel by the time he had first begun his training. Another as layer added with each successive year of his life. One as he learned to kill. Another as he learned almost instantly to enjoy it. Walls of ice surrounding that as Vegita-sei burnt away to smoke and dust and the hell of his years on Tsir-sei began. It had never occurred to him that with the first layer he stripped away, in his rebellion against Frieza on Namek, with his first death in searing pain and bitter tears, his power had swelled beyond anything he had previously imagined possible. It had never occurred to him that his leap to Super Saiyan had been almost simultaneous with his hateful, grudging exceptence of the help and finally the love Bulma had all but rammed down his unwilling throat. Every astronomical jump or burst in his power, throughout the entire arc of his life had come hand in hand with another chink or breach in the outer fortifications of that wall. Rising in strength as he tore it down one infantescimal piece at a time. He had never seen or dared to imagine what lay at the center.

And now he saw. It was bare and blazing and pure in its radiant power, beautiful and terrible in its unfettered love and hate, joy and sorrow. It was the core of his own soul. And finally, here at the end of all things, he understood that Frieza, and even his own father and trainers on Vegita-sei, had hobbled his full potential by forcing him to build that barricade, cutting him off from feeling and the true source of his power in one fell swoop as they cauterized his emotions one by one. This was why Kakarott was and had always been the stronger. The veil around the center of the fool's soul was as thin as rice paper. Karkarott saw himself from the outermost to the innermost layer of his being in perfect crystal clarity. He had only ever had to reach through that veil to tap the well at his center, where Vegita had spent years, his entire life, battering his head and heart against the steel and ice of his wall. Now that wall was gone, obliterated to nothingness. Nothing, no obstacle, no shield, no cushion, lay between him and his power…or between him and his emotions.

He raised his head and screamed, body arched, throat raw, a sound of loss and sorrow that would have made the damned cringe, holding Bulma against him. His fault! All his…as he had always know it would be in that terrified dark pocket of his mind that knew, had always known, that she would one day be taken from him. That he would one day bring her to this. The full balance of the debt of all his sins come due at last. He had been right. Nothing the Arrak-jin could ever muster would hurt more than this.

He dipped into the well of power and drew out all there was----and even as he did, he saw that it was full again. A never-ending fountain of grief.

Up and up and up, past Super Saiyan 2, then 3, then 4….then beyond.

He rose upward, cradling her body in his arms, burning red and terrible, tears boiling to salt and steam in the swirling heat of his aura. The Arrak-jin were massing for an attack, surrounding his sons, his daughter, his people. He burned them away, strikes of lazered precision whipping out at the enemy, leaving his own untouched in their sizzling wake. He burned through the entire city and countryside, extended senses ferreting out the null sense of the insects' presence in every nook and cranny, setting them into the fires of his pain wherever he found them. With every ounce of power he had, with everything he was, he sought them out…and still, he knew, in the full light of the absolute truth shining on his dark, sun-starved soul, that it was not enough.

They would keep coming, renewing themselves from the atoms he had blasted them to with the nourishment from the life around them. They could sleep ten million years in the void of space and wake to feed off the first sign of life they encountered. They would overwhelm this world, then this system, then the entire galaxy…The only way to stop them was to take away their food.

He froze in the whirling cyclone of power he had already begun to draw up, in unconscious preparation for the deed he knew only he could do---there was only one other in all the of creation who might have sufficient power, but that other would never in a million years be able to bring himself to do what must be done now. He called out that man's name now in a voice like the thunder of the gods at war, poised on the brink of an apocalyptic burst a power that would sweep away Shikaji, its sun and sister worlds, and several surrounding stars in the ensuing fireball.

"Vegita…" The other Saiyan's voice was gentle and sad. "This is not the way."

"It won't work, Vegita. They cannot be killed." Kakarott's voice sounded like the echoing of temple bells ringing through the chambered hearts of hollow mountains. Vegita could hear in the chimes of the other man's voice, from the oddly familiar place of singing power he was wrapped inside, the chilling truth of his words---and for the first time in his life, he did not twist or turn in the face of a hard truth this old enemy, this old friend, had shown him. It simply was. "I'm going to use the dragon balls…there is inside their fabric, a component of the causality of the universe. I'm going to use it to…uncreate the Arrak-jin."

The dragon balls…Bulma…

"There are more than one set of dragon balls, Vegita. Bring her back…and live." The other man's voice began receding, a shadowy form swallowed up in a blinding white light. "Chi-Chi…" He heard the distant whisper of Kakarott's voice, faint and sorrowing. "I'm so sorry…"

The white light seared over everything and everyone, cleansing and agonizing and beautiful. The night and the city sunk into a stunned silence.

Trunks looked up to see his father burn the Arrak-jin to dust. No one cheered. No one wept. No one breathed.

"Super Saiyan 5," Gohan whispered, awe and a little fear in his voice.

"The gods themselves aren't that powerful," Skoy spoke in the same low voice.

Trunks squinted. He couldn't look directly at him, but his father…his father seemed to be gathering strength for another, greater attack. Vegita stopped, hanging motionless in the sky above them, and seemed to turn to face the white star that was blazing atop the Maiyosh Palace.

Then Chi-Chi-san stood, her face pale and covered in ash and blood, and screamed in a voice that Trunks knew he hear in his dreams all his days.

"Gokou-saaa!!!"

"Chi-Chi…I'm so sorry…" Worlds and ages of regret and love in those few words.

The world burned white.

Trunks staggered to his feet in the deafening silence that followed, Pan's hand still in his. The Arrak-jin were gone. A harsh keening cry, and Pan tore away from him to where her grandmother was kneeling in Gohan's arms. Gokou-san…

"He used the dragon balls," Gurasia said in a hushed voice. The boy's white face was paler than usual, all his ingrained Tsiru-jin malice and arrogance forgotten for the moment. Trunks noticed with a surreal wave of unreality, that Gurasia was holding both Gita and Go-chan, one child in each arm. Both children seemed perfectly happy with this arrangement for the moment. "He burned them up to make the Arrak-jin…be not. And himself as well."

Trunks stared at the Tsiru-jin's weary, dark eyes. He found he could not find any of the hate he had harbored for this boy. Maybe he was just too tired. He lost the train of that thought as he turned to see his father powering down, half-falling to his knees on the stone roof. He was holding…

"Kassan…oh Kami, no…" Trunks knelt beside them shaking. His father did not look up from his mother's still face, tears streaking furrows of soot and blood down his cheeks. When he had been a very small boy, Trunks had wondered now and then, if he or his mother were to die, would his father cry for them. He had never been able to picture it or believe that he would.

"Kassan…" Trunks squeezed his eyes shut against his own tears. The dragon balls…oh Kami, now there was no way to…to bring her back…

"We will wish her back, Trunks," his father said. His voice sounded full of gravel. "There are the dragon balls of New Namek." A hand, callused and warm, on his shaking shoulder. "But she will probably be very angry if you do not weep for her." Trunks laughed through the shuddering release of tears and strain. Then Pan was there, filling his arms and heart with her nearness.

"Look what I found!" Zoukin cried, cold and angry, as he dragged something that twitched and struggled desperately, from the makeshift hospital he had set up for the wounded. The physician tossed the man down in the center of the ring of grieving Saiyans.

"Burka Maiyosh," Radu said, deadly soft.

"Please!" The man babbled, scuttling around the circle of dark, ominously threatening faces. "I--I--I only did what I thought was---was right. I didn't know that the bugs would----"

"He knew!" Corsaris limped into the ring and seized Maiyosh by the scruff of the neck. "He bragged about it. Your people are giving you over to a galactic tribunal for trial, you little rodent! If they don't, every world in the galaxy will declare boycott and embargo on your House. And until then, your ass is mine! You're going into the deepest, darkest dungeon on Corsaris, Burka." The fat man turned to regard Trunks steadily. "Rule of law, Trunks-sama?"

Trunks understood the man's words completely. He was offering him the option of killing the man here and now, with no questions asked. "Rule of law," Trunks said slowly. The words stuck in his throat, but there was more at stake than revenge.

"He's probably killed more than a million people with this night's work," Corsaris said. "I wish…" His voice faltered. "I wish we could have saved more of the people inside…" His eyes fell on Bulma's still body in Vegita's arms, and he shook his head sadly. "And your people as well."

"We still can."

Bra was walking slowly, assisted by Goten, She knelt beside their father.

"Momma," she said, and touched the long blue hair, turning her eyes to Vegita's face. "Poppa, don't be sad. I can fix it. I can fix it all." She touched the clasp of the silver choker she wore. It was strung with seven blue pearls…seven…Trunks' eyes widened.

"Arise," she said. "Arise, Blue Azu Ron."

It burst like a sapphire flame from the tiny glowing orbs, coiling around them like tangible blue smoke, deep golden eye glowing with timeless power.

"YOU HAVE SUMMONED ME FROM MY ETERNAL SLUMBER," the dragon said. "SPEAK YOUR WISH."

Bra took a deep, unsteady breath. Trunks was mildly gratified that his sister was inwardly far less serene than she appeared. He was still in shock by the magnitude of her achievement and the very fact that she'd kept it a secret. "I wish to…to return all those who were killed or injured today on Shikaji to life and health."

A heavy leaden silence greeted her wish. "A LARGE REQUEST…"

"Can you do it, or not?" Gurasia snapped irritably and, incredibly, Bra silenced the boy with one hard look.

The Blue Dragon seemed to…sniff. As thought the Tsiru-jin had touched its pride. "YOUR WISH IS GRANTED!" Azu Ron said huffily. He vanished. The seven blue pearl-sized dragon balls seemed to pull at the harness of the silver chain that bound them together, trying to scatter to the four winds, but the dainty metal, which was obviously something far stronger than silver, held them firm. They fell inert into Bra's waiting hand.

From the city, from the Chamber below them, from every direction, high and low, came cries of terror, then joy, as the dead and the dying returned to life.

"Goddammit, Vegita! You're squashing---" Bulma squeaked in surprise as Vegita pulled her to him and kissed her, uncaring of the eyes looking on.

She stared at him in confusion, then memory flooded back and a slow wondering smile lit her face. Trunks looked up at the sound of another glad cry. Chi-Chi-san was wrapped in Gokou-san's arms, her face buried against his broad chest, crying like a child.

"So, once more, all ends happily for the Saiyans of Chikyuu," said a cool, mocking voice at his shoulder. "Thanks to the miraculous, dare I say, magical, powers of the dragon balls. All hurts repaired, all sacrifices reversed. Even age undone." Gurasia sniffed. "Oh no, we could not have our great heroes wed to aging crones, now could we."

Trunks eyed the boy. "You mean my mother and Chi-Chi-san? They just have the natural lifespan of their husbands now. Everyone who marries a Saiyan, bonds with, mates with---whatever you want to call it---does now."

"A facetious use of power."

Trunks shrugged. "Jouten, the God of the Kais, told Gokou-san to wish for something nice for himself. So, he and my father chose this."

"Boy?" Go-chan said sleepily. "I have to pee."

Gurasia frowned. "What does that mean?" Trunks snickered.

Chi-Chi-san was there, pulling the protesting girl from the Tsiru-jin boy's arms. "It means you should let me have her."

"Momma?" Gita said plaintively at the sound of his mother's voice, squirming to be let down. Trunks was nearly flattened as a burst of smoldering red heat struck the boy. He blinked to see his father holding Gurasia pinned by the throat with one hand, his little brother curled protectively in the other arm.

"If you come within a dozen parsecs of any of my children again, Tsiru-jin," his father snarled. "I will kill you in a manner deserving of the son of Frieza!"

"Vegita-san!" Chi-Chi cried. "He saved Gita, along with myself and go-chan. He saved our lives!" Vegita stared at her as though she had suddenly grown a horn out of her forehead.

"It's true, Vegita," Gokou said quietly.

Vegita slowly, reluctantly, let the boy up. "The warning still stands, boy," he said balefully.

"What's that old Tsiru-jin saying, Gurasia?" Goten smirked. "No good deed ever goes unpunished?"

The boy glowered at him and slithered over to the relative safety of Gokou-san's side. The older mad began speaking to him in a quiet, serious voice that made Trunks itch with curiosity. Whatever Gokou was telling him, the boy was not liking.

"We will reconvene Council when this mess is all cleared up," Corsaris was saying. "And things have settled down a bit. I wouldn't blame you if you don't want to---"

"I'll be here," Trunks said firmly. "Contact me on Madran or Chikyuu and let me know when. Maiyosh is going on trial and I'll be there to see that he doesn't wiggle out of it."

"They don't all hate you, you know," Corsaris said solemnly.

Trunks laughed mirthlessly. "No. Just 67% of them. Maybe…maybe today changed that a little."

Around him, the sights and sounds of the others, Chi-Chi-san changing Go-chan as the baby fussed and demanded to be let up, Gokou-san standing with his mother and the Tsiru-jin boy, frowning implacably at Gurasia until the boy grudgingly touched Bulma's fingertips---quickly, as though he could barely stand the thought of whatever the hell he was doing, moving to stand in the big Saiyan's shadow as Vegita advanced on them and nearly yanked his mother away from the boy. His mother, eyes burning with curiosity, closed in on Bra, and began drilling her about her "studies" on New Namek.

Trunks noticed that both women were growing progressively more irritated by the hovering behavior of Vegita and Goten. Both men were acting as though Bulma or Bra would simply evaporate into thin air if they let either of them out of arm's reach for and instant. Gohan and Skoy were rising up into the air to meet their wives as they approached from different directions.

Videl was still being carried by the Maiyosh-jin butler Laki.

All made better again, just as Gurasia had said. But…there was an undercurrent of worry that bordered on dread in that thought. A lack of balance in the cost of such a victory. And he believed Gurasia had sensed it as well. Shen Lon's dragon balls had begun to crumble and fissure under the weight of having "made everything better" too many times. Too many mass resurrections, too many revivals of lost loved ones, too many repairs of the scars and damage done to Chikyuu itself in the aftermath of battle.

They had never paid the price in full for a hard won victory against evil. Not once. And Trunks suddenly knew with a cold clarity that one day---not tomorrow or the next day, but soon---the full tally of the bill the Saiyans of Chikyuu owned would come due. The scales that balance such things in the universe would not let it be otherwise. We were spared…our day of atonement was rolled forward…because we will be needed to fight when the war begins.

The Arrak-jin were coming.

A soft hand touched his and he nearly jumped out of his skin. "We have to find out what Burka knows about the Arrak-jin," Pan told him quietly, voicing the thought that he had not had the stomach to utter.

"Gurasia can pull the information out of his surface thoughts." Trunks peered down at her dirty, grime-smeared face. "What do you think of our honeymoon so far?"

She began laughing softly, her dark eyes shining, brushing away the cold knot of worry for the future with nothing more than her smile. They would prepare for the coming threat, Trunks thought. They must. But in the meantime, they would also live.

"It's been exciting," she said. "Even for one of our families' outings."

"I love you," he said, soft and low. He didn't think he could ever say it enough to make the words adequate to what he felt for her. She wove the warmth of her heart and mind through his, braiding her love inside his, a tapestry of thought and feeling. And she kissed him.

No one had noticed or paid him any mind in the confusion of mass resurrections and reunions all around him. He was not confused…but, then he'd been dead before. He'd kept his ki low as he scrambled through the rubble of the spaceport, to the berth of a modest-sized yacht that bore the crest of Maiyosh House. Moments later, he heaved a heavy sigh of relief as the ship shot up through the atmosphere, clearing the planet's gravity in seconds.

Now he sat watching the receding glow of Shikaji grow smaller with every passing second, wondering to what dark god he owed thanks for such unimaginable luck. And more than that, wondering what the hell he would do now.

There was a tiny colony of the bugs, locked tight in a stasis void drum, left on the research station in the care of a team of Maiyosh's most trusted R&D scientists, on a small, out of the way world on the southern rim. Amshah System… The very first fucking thing he would do would be to dump a vat of the green "bug spray" that Burka had apparently not had the chance or the time to use when all hell began to break loose on those little crawlies and put an end the whole bloody race forever…Gods, what a cluster fuck today had been.

And then…Dropping out of sight for a good long time seemed to be a very good plan at the moment. Then he would see. He cracked open a bottle of well-aged Maiyosh-jin ale, musing on the prospect of having used up the full allotment of good luck any man could ever hope for in one night.

Unlike those newly revived bovine fools stumbling around the planet behind him in euphoric joy, he had a pretty good idea what had just happened. He raised his flask in one red-fisted hand.

"Gods save all dragon balls everywhere!" said Jeiyce.

She stood with her head resting lightly on his shoulder, the warmth of his body driving out the chill that still lingered in her bones.

"I promised you I'd never leave you again," he said, his soft tone driving away the pensive run of her thoughts. She turned and faced him. Neither of them had spoken of this harried aftermath of clean-up on Shikaji, or during the journey home.

"You can't promise not to die, Gokou-sa." She stood on tip toes and kissed his forehead. "Sooner or later, we'll both do that. It's the nature of mortal things. And as bitter as the loss is…it makes life all the sweeter."

Her eyes seemed to be trying to memorize every nuance and plane of his face. "But I'm glad…" She nearly choked on the emotion in her voice. "I'm very glad to have you back!" He put both arms around her. The crisp, clean smell in the evening air and the flurry of motion of the birds in the forest sang a song of the coming autumn. Of migration, of leave-taking. Of change.

Gohan and Videl would be leaving again in a week or two. His son would soon be aiding the aging scholar Surita as they poured through the vast wealth of the histories of the library of Tsiru-sei, searching for some hint or scrap of knowledge regarding the origin, nature or history of the Arrak-jin. Vegita and Bulma had not yet returned to Chikyuu, and Trunks and Pan would be staying on Madran for the time being. Goten and Bra were coming home to visit soon, but…they would not stay. So many changes. Something Chi-Chi, for all her resilience, had never coped with well…not where her family was concerned.

He held her against him, marveling as always at the perfect way she molded to his body, soft and warm. Whatever lay ahead, he would live his life to the limit of every sweet moment until then. "I'm glad to be back," he told her softly. He drew back, examining her face, reaching a decision about the question he had been wanting to ask for nearly a year now. "I think Go-chan is getting spoiled, Chi-Chi." He couldn't hide a faint grin at the look of completely derailed thought his non sequitur put on her face. "I've been thinking she might need someone to play with. Like a little brother or sister.

What do you think?"

The light of her smile through happy tears was all the answer he needed.

He picked her up in both arms and carried her into the house.

Gita had sunk almost instantly into the deep, dreamless sleep of the very young. She laid him gently in the capsule bed she'd unpacked an hour ago.

She brushed the boy's fly-away bangs, the fast fading, last vestiges of his babyhood, from his eyes. His tail twitched at her touch, but he did not stir otherwise. She turned and left quietly.

The sky outside was a deeper blue than Chikyuu's, almost indigo, darkening now to burgundy as the two suns slowly dipped out of sight.

The horizon was an endless color-strewn skein of moors and gently sloping dales, falling away from the ruined castle they would be making their own for a few days. Bulma walked out onto the wide stone ledge of the ancient watchtower and the man who sat silently watching the suns set. Not the faintest echo of a voice or an engine in any direction. They were completely alone on this world whose inhabitants had departed centuries before. She knelt behind him, fingers kneading the knotted tension of muscle and sinew in his back, her breath warm on the nape of his neck.

"It's beautiful here," she murmured. He made a wordless noise of agreement. She pulled him back against her body and he tensed slightly, turning to face her, dark eyes troubled. "Son-kun will have to catch up to you this time," she said.

One corner of his mouth threatened to turn upward. "Super Saiyan 5..." He snorted irritably. "He does not and never has given a damn about being stronger than me. It is what makes him all the more infuriating. He will catch me up one day, I have no doubt. When the need arises, he will simply do it."

She stared at him, shaken by the words, things she had seen in his eyes and known he saw as truths in his heart…but that she would have never in a million years expected to hear from his lips. Had losing her, even for the space of an hour, changed him so much? "Just like you did on Shikaji."

His face darkened. "I…I would give all this power and more to have never seen you die, Bulma, however briefly…" He started to touch her face, paused, then began to pull away gently, his face a blank mask if submerged, hidden pain. She caught the hand in hers searching his face for what was troubling him. She saw it suddenly, and cringed with shame and anger at herself for not realizing what it was…and for not telling him sooner.

"The memories are gone, Vegita," she said in a soft voice. She put one hand on his mouth before he could speak. "When I killed him…when I killed Jeiyce, they began to…dim. And when I woke up after Bra's wish, they were like the leftover half-memories of some old nightmare. Now…I remember that I remembered, but not what I remembered. And…" She hesitated, weighing the wisdom of telling him the rest. "And then Son-kun made Gurasia put a "cap" on them. He sealed them away in a locked room in my mind so they can never come back----" She stopped him again as he tensed, ready to explode. "He owed me his life, Vegita. It was Gurasia's way of making sure he owes me nothing now. I'm…" She smiled wryly at the word she used next. "I'm fine. I don't remember any of it."

He choked and crushed her against him, and she saw now that his odd behavior in the last few days, a disturbing, stand-offish mix of distance and solicitousness, had come from the belief that she was broken and maimed inside, and the helpless misery of not knowing how to help her. She cursed herself for a fool again for not having spoken sooner.

But now he was kissing her, lifting her and carrying her inside, their clothing vanishing in a blurring heatstruck instant. He lay her down on the bed and set her alight with his hands and mouth and the burning heat of his skin on hers. And when he moved inside her, she pulled him forward, locking arms and legs around him, holding him deep inside, unmoving.

"I don't think we've ever gone five whole days without being together," she breathed against his lips. "We'll have to make up for it."

"You'll give out long before I do, woman," he rumbled softly, through the tears choking his throat.

She smiled wickedly. "We'll see."

He stood in the dark room, contemplating the dozens of possible outcomes to this course of action---all of them unpleasant---for the hundredth time. He could think of no other solution to the problem Son Gokou had posed him days before. Not one that would bring him naturally to manhood in the time allotted.

Bra had been his first thought. She had known his errand before he even spoke the words. Unnerving woman. Her mental powers were closer to his own in strength than any he had ever encountered, though she was cagey enough to hide that from all her kin. She had explained to him that the Blue Dragon Balls were a weak shadow of what the ancient masters of Namek had wrought, the first ever successfully attempted by a non-Namekian. Azu Ron's dragon balls had only one wish, and it would be ten years before they could be used again.

So, he had then turned his sights to New Namek. He had been unceremoniously ejected from that world without so much as an opportunity to explain his purpose. He supposed he could have killed them all and taken what he needed. But he had gleaned from the surface thoughts of the trembling Elders who had greeted his arrival, that at the first warning of his approach, the Namekians had deposited their dragon balls into a "pocket dimension" with a time retrireview delay. He wasn't sure what sort of quantum engineering that entailed. He only knew that it meant that neither he nor anyone else would be able to use those dragon balls for years to come.

Which had brought him to where he stood at this moment, on the edge of a choice that might damage him, and would certainly change him, permanently. Himself and one other. They are coming…And I have to be ready when they arrive! He cocked his head, listening without ears to the two adult occupants of the house, locked together in the final throes of something fierce and sweet and utterly incomprehensible to him. He had chosen this moment well, at a time when he would not be noticed. He set his jaw and reached down into the crib before him, lifting out the tiny occupant gently. Her eyes opened.

"Boy?" She said sleepily. She smiled.

"Yes," he whispered. "I am a boy. But I must become a man. And soon. Or we will all die together when the enemy comes." He touched a hand to her forehead, sifting through mostly wordless thoughts and images, to the trigger in her mind, lying dormant and half-formed, yet already laced throughout every facet of her still waking consciousness. He took a deep breath. Then he threw the trigger.

She was warmth and clear, bright colors and unfettered emotion, living inside each moment in the way only the very young are able, with almost no sense of the turn of the hour hand. From her mother, there was willfulness and deep love already full wrought in a personality still taking shape. Unquestioning acceptance of difference and no sense anywhere, in any corner of her soul, that anything, anything at all, was impossible---Son Gokou's gift. She blew through him like a gust of spring wind, leaving him trembling and breathless. And not alone. As the initial images dimmed, he could still feel her there, woven permanently into the fabric of his mind and soul. The Saiyan Bond.

Her wide dark eyes regarded him wonderingly, and he saw himself as she saw him: Strong and trusted and beautiful and utterly good. And utterly loved. All those bonded to anyone of Saiyan blood were given the natural lifespan of the Saiyan race through the power of her father's wish. "As you grow," he said shakily. "So shall I." He tried to set her back down, but his arms wouldn't respond at first. She seemed to sense what he meant to do and clung to him tightly. Foolfoolfool! To have thought that the sword of this bond did not cut both ways! It was…it was something akin to, yet entirely different from the love he had felt for his father. And it was forever.

He sat her down in the crib with a gasp of effort, ignoring her outstretched arms, ignoring the irrational, mad impulse to simply pick her up and run. He laughed dryly. Men a thousand years hence would cringe of the tale of his death if he were to steal her. He began backing away toward the open window.

"Don't go!" She cried. The words were like a knife in his chest. Gods of my fathers, what have I done to myself…and to her?!

"I will come back," he said, his voice cracking. "It will be a long time, years from now. But I swear I will see you again. I…I am sorry…" He turned and fled through the window, trying to block out the sound of her heartbroken wails. "I am sorry," he whispered again as he stumbled blindly into the tiny cloaked ship he had hidden in the forest. He sat stunned and glassy-eyed as he launched the craft into the night sky, seeing through the receding impressions of the link, the girl being hefted up in her mother's arms, her father beside them, rocked and soothed slowly back to sleep by both parents.

"…must have been a nightmare," the woman murmured. "She had too many bad scares back o Shikaji."

"She seems to be okay now," said Son, kissing the windmill spikes of the child's dark hair.

She was safe. She was well. And he would see her again. He pulled himself up and straightened his shoulders, smiling grimly. And in the meantime, there was much to do.