Tsiru-sei Rising
By: Lisalu

The boy brushed his short-cropped, ivory hair from his eyes, clenching his teeth to keep them from chattering with fear and tension. There were key moments in time, Kassan had said, when the hope of everything that came after that pin point in time turned on the axis of one person's decision or actions, one person's failure or success. He had never expected or wished to be that one person at any point in his life. But there was no one else left to do it. He had stood for the better part of an hour, watching the events in the great Chamber of Shikaji unfold like plot points in a novel he'd read a hundred times.

1…An enormous, billow of smoke came tumbling out of the entrance of the ground floor infirmary: Jeiyce of Maiyosh ambushing Prince Vegita, Son Gokou and---and Bulma Briefs.

2…The boy craned his neck up, knowing that above him in the upper tiers, the Saiyan and Tsiru-jin Seats would have just fallen to the Arrak-jin.

The limp body of a young woman hurtled like a spinning missile across the breadth of the Chamber---Trunks had thrown the unconscious body of his new bride over the kilometers wide span of the house's center in a desperate attempt to save her life. But the throw was bad, and Trunks had been fading too fast to aim or judge distance. Son Pan would crash head-first into the sheer face of the other side of the Chamber's great walls…and snap her neck in her weakened condition. The boy hissed with effort, not stopping to think or judge the outcome of his actions, and pulled with his ki, slowing the young woman's speed, turning her in the air so she would land with her feet pointed downward, lifting her trajectory just a dozen meters… Pan crashed feet first into old Lord Corsaris' Seat. Goodgoodgood! Corsaris would take care of her if she were hurt.

3…Half a minute later, Jeiyce of Maiyosh emerged from the smouldering wreck of the medical offices, carrying a shrieking woman in his arms. The Ginyu swept right past the boy, taking no note him. There was nothing odd about a solitary Maiyosh-jin boy gaping at the aftermath of a firefight. He stared directly into Jeiyce's face for one horrified, fascinated instant as the man passed by, then looked away hurriedly, trying to block out the screams of the woman in his arms, crying desperately for someone, anyone, to help her. No one did. And he couldn't…not yet.

He punched the activation switch of the invisibility shield he wore, and whipped inside the smoking rubble of the infirmary. Prince Vegita was out like a light, but Son Gokou…he was trying to rise, brushing off the Arrak-jin who were seething over him. In less than a minute, he would be dead. The security soldiers would wound him mortally in his drained condition, and the Arrak-jin would feast on what remained. But if the big Saiyan lived past this moment…everything that had followed his death might change. The tic of the memorised events the boy had been counting off would cease, and the road that led to the end of everything would fracture and diverge…and the door to a new future would swing wide.

The white-haired boy shot forward, still invisible, and tagged Son Gokou with a neuro-trank from the small decapsulated pistol he held. The older man slumped back to the floor and into the arms of the warriors who had been on the point of killing him in a blind panic. The Maiyosh-jin warriors dragged the Saiyans away to a new fate. The boy stood transfixed, withdrawing into a shadowed niche in one of the Chamber's countless tiering window seats. Could it really be as simple as Kassan said? Just change one or two key factors---and be damn sure one of them was Son Gokou's death in the infirmary---and all the pieces would fly into the air, shattering into a million new possibilities. If Mirai Trunks could do it, you and I can damn well do the same, Kassan had said. A million new chances to defeat the Arrak-jin.

He watched the Chamber fill with people from a thousand worlds, all come to see the Saiyans in the arena put to the sword. He watched the drama unfold, as Vegita was condemned for his crimes before the screaming mob, as Son Pan leapt to Trunks rescue, changing into a giant, roaring mountain of power and fury. As she and Vegita tore the arena to pieces, and the others of their race came to their aid moments before the Arrak-jin pulled them down. He watched with his heart caught in his throat, as Prince Vegita sprang out of the arena an instant after someone shot out the bauble of artificial moonlight that hovered in the rafters of the Chamber's vaulted ceiling, and into the Maiyosh Seat…flying to his wife's rescue like a black, avenging angel of death. The recharge alarm on his wrist shrilled, and he turned away from the scene of mass destruction around him, skidding to a halt in a side sitting room, to decapsulate the Time Jumper. The pre-programmed co-ordinates would take him back to…somewhere. Not home. Not the world he remembered. The LTS line of code Nissan had written just days ago had sent him down a corridor in time that would enable change to his own timeline of origin. The changes he had just wrought at this turning point in galactic history would cause his own timeline to alter. Whatever he would find when he returned to his own time would not be a sideline branch of the original timeline that he had left behind. It was his own timeline, changed…hopefully spared another fifteen years to prepare for the coming invasion. Where space had not been collapsed in on itself. Where the last suns were not black holes that bled all the remaining energy from the lifeless, utter darkness of a dead universe. Where the Arrak-jin had not yet eaten their fill and moved on through the gouging holes they punched in existence, space, and reality in a way that even Nissan had never really figured out. Fifteen years ahead to a new future, a future where he had never been born, and the Saiyans of Chikyuu had survived the treachery of Shikaji. And lived to prepare for the coming of the Enemy. Where Kassan and Nissan would still be alive…

He caught sight of his own reflection as he punched in the launch sequence. Pale, white hair draped over hollow blue eyes, blood-shot with tears and strain. Red Maiyosh-jin skin so blanched with exhaustion he almost looked orange. No one would remember him…because now, he had never been. But it didn't matter, if the people he loved were all alive. If there was hope.

She lay on her back, restless and thrashing, tossing the covers repeatedly,

her breath puffing in quick little gasps. Gokou sat in the chair at the computer study desk across the shadowy bedroom, watchful and frowning, his face half-lit by the shafts of silvery moonlight filtering through the open

window. The light creak of the bedroom door, the soft padded sound of his wife's tread as she entered the room. Her worried gaze shifted from his face to the figure of the girl who lay tossing in the bed, drenched in a pool of her own sweat.

"Gokou-sa?" Chi-Chi whispered.

"It's starting," he said softly.

"Are you---are you sure?" Chi-Chi moved quietly to touch the girl's burning forehead. "Gokou-sa, she never even…she hasn't even started menstruating yet. How can she be going into heat?"

He shook his head. "I think it'll all begin hand in hand for her. And she's seventeen, Chi-Chi. Two years older than Pan-chan was. I asked Vegita a couple of years ago if taking her off world---to a world without a moon---would be harmful to her if the process were already in motion. He said how the hell should he know, and to ask Zoukin. Zoukin went through this with his daughter Wassti four or five years ago. I called Zapria-sei on the hyper-wave vid phone Bulma gave us, and he said his research showed it wouldn't hurt her."

"What happened with Wassti?"

Gokou's mouth pulled down. "Radu was visiting Zapria-sei with his two boys when it happened. The kids all went camping together. They found Gera out cold, and Torc and Wassti were, um…"

Chi-Chi was silent for a moment. "How old was Wassti?"

"Twenty." He shrugged. "They seem happy enough. But…dammit, I won't except it as inevitable. I know all the kids are very happy in the matches they've made. But, I'd like… I want her to have what you and I had, what Gohan and Videl had. Meeting someone and falling in love and growing closer with time. Not this…this primeval animal compulsion!"

She put her hands on his tense shoulders, kissing the furrow in his brow.

"What did Gohan say?"

"He dug through the medfile histories on Tsiru-sei and found dozens of volumes relating to Saiyan physiology and the moon. Almost nothing on the lunar mating frenzy, and absolutely nothing on how to prevent it. Gohan seems to think the Tsiru-jin anthropologists and physicians found the whole idea of non-asexual reproduction so revolting they shied away from even documenting facts regarding female heat cycle and male rut."

The girl on the bed sat suddenly bolt upright with a cry. "Where are you?!" She screamed. "Where are you?!" She launched herself toward the window, and Gokou leapt forward and caught her easily.

"Go-chan? Go-chan!" Her frowned, staring down at her glazed eyes. "Wake up!"

She shuddered, blinked, and suddenly seemed to see him. "Toussan? What---?" She ran a hand over her damp face, her eyes growing wide. "Is it…am I---?"

"Tomorrow night." Gokou told her. He regarded her another moment in silence, watching the look of dismay and vague fear wash across her features. And he came to a decision. "Go-chan, how would you like to go to Madran with Pan-chan and Trunks tomorrow?"

"Gokou-sa," Chi-Chi said uncertainly. "There will be lots of Saiyans on Madran. Lots of young, unbonded, unmated Saiyan men…"

"Madran has no moon," Gokou replied. "If Zoukin and Gohan's research and what little Vegita can remember from his childhood is true, that should put her into a sort of remission."

"Toussan," his daughter said slowly. "That means I can't come back to Chikyuu until I…get married, doesn't it? If I do, every month when the moon gets full, the whole thing'll just start all over again. I can't live on any world with a moon!" She sat down on her bed, long legs drawn up to her chest, a tall, slim athletic girl with a spiked crown of black tangled hair fanned out in the same pattern as her father's.

Chi-Chi's eyes crinkled in sympathy, but her lips turned up, masking the worry and helpless anger of seeing her child's own body betray all the girl's plans for her future. "Well," she said crisply. "you could always stay here and marry Gita instead. He has a terrible crush on you, and----"

"NO!" The girl's indignant shriek cut off sharply as she placed a horrified hand over her own mouth. Gokou could see his daughter vividly remembering the last time she had been so foolish as to raise her voice to her mother, and nearly chuckled aloud. The first and the last time. But Chi-Chi was having a hard time hiding her smile at the girl's aghast expression. Slowly, Go-chan took her hand from her mouth, her face dissolving into sheepish grin as she read the amusement on both her parent's faces.

"Sorry, Kassan," she mumbled.

Chi-Chi eyed her a moment, then kissed her daughter's hot face. "That's settled then. We'll leave tomorrow. We're lucky Bulma and Vegita-san just happen to be on Chikyuu right now to supply us with a ship. They'll be leaving for Madran themselves within the week." She gently pushed the girl back down onto the bed. "Try and sleep a little of you can, sweetie. Toussan will keep watch so you don't run off into the night or hurt yourself."

"Okay…" Go-chan said, her head sinking deep into the pillows. "I dreamed…" She muttered drowsily, as her mother pulled the cover off the floor and tucked it around her.

"What did you dream?" Chi-Chi asked soothingly.

"There was a boy…a pale, white boy…"

Gokou felt a faint prophetic chill course down his spine. A name leapt to his mind, a formless flash of insight. "Gurasia?"

"How in the world can she remember Shikaji?" Chi-chi said, still fussing over the tangled sheets. "She wasn't even three years old."

"What did he do in your dream, Go-chan?" Gokou asked softly.

She sighed, teetering on the threshold of sleep. "He went away…" She breathed sadly. And fell into sleep.

Go-chan stomped into the bathroom just off the main hanger, grinding her teeth in claustrophobic irritation. In the full light of day, she no longer felt feverish, weak and weepy---though that seemed preferable now to this burning compulsion to scream and break everything in sight. And on top of everything else, no one would give her a single minute's privacy! Her mother had eyed her doubtfully when she tried to excuse herself, and would have followed her to the bathroom if Bulma-san hadn't been giving both her parents a crash course in the ins and outs of the new navigation system she'd just installed in their ship. Go-chan didn't understand why the hell they couldn't just all go in the same ship to Madran together, though it seemed there had been a very good reason why her family and Gita's shouldn't travel together. She just couldn't remember what it had been right now. It was so hard to think today!

"Five minutes," Kassan had said sternly. A veiled threat that if she hadn't returned by that time, Chi-Chi would come looking for her.

Now, Go-chan stalked out of the restroom, slamming the door off its hinges behind her. She wasn't a baby, dammit! She could do what she wanted. A clang and a low, mild curse drifted down the side hallway that led to Capsule Corp's secondary smaller hanger. She recognised the voice, one she knew as well as her own. A slow predatory smile spread across her face. Just what she needed right now…a punching bag.

She tiptoed through the cracked shield door into the open gray space of the little engine bay. She stared at the figure levitating head down over the half-assembled pieces of some kind of…space ship thingy. Her eyes narrowed, tail flicking side to side. She sprang, catching the hovering boy and slamming him down on the hard metal floor beneath her. She knelt on his chest, glaring down at his dismayed expression triumphantly.

"Hi," he gasped.

"You missed my birthday party this year, runt," she told him. The spiky, troll doll hair he always pulled down and back in a pony tail against his neck had slipped free of its knot, making him look like a smaller, younger, scrawnier copy of his father.

"Sorry," he said, though something…something was different in his eyes suddenly. He didn't look sorry. He looked almost defiant. That wouldn't do at all. "We were on Madran during your birthday. Remember?" She narrowed her eyes at the arrogant, I'm-so-much-smarter-than-you-it's-not-even-funny tone in his voice.

"So?" She said, leaning down threateningly. And again, he reacted wrong. There was none of his sweet-natured jokes, trying and almost always succeeding to head off her temper before it reached a boiling point.

"Where's my present?" She grinned, hiding the consternation his sudden sneer, so much like his father's it was frightening, sent rushing through her…and the odd warmth spreading throughout her body that went with it. Her fever must be rising again.

"Get off me, you big horse," he said, narrowing his own eyes. She suddenly felt hot all over.

"Gita…" She bent down even further, nose to nose with him, feeling his heart begin to pound in his chest, feeling her own pulse begin to gallop in pace with his. "Gita," she whispered again. "Don't make me beat the hell out of you."

The room up-ended and she was suddenly on her back, staring up at him in shock. "Try it," he growled softly.

Then he kissed her. And…Oh Kami, a fireball ignited in her stomach as he pinned her down, as she wrapped arms around him, pressing into the kiss, feeling every inch of his body against hers----

Something snatched him roughly away, and she screamed with rage and would have launched herself at Gita, who now hung struggling in his father's arms. But her own father was suddenly there, his strong arms holding her as she thrashed in his grip.

"Let go, Poppa!" Gita was screaming, and the sound of his voice sent another wave of heat blasting through her. "Give her back!"

"Kakarott," Vegita-san sounded suspiciously like he was holding back a chuckle. The harsh, deep rhythms of his voice seemed to pull at her like a magnet. Strong…there is no one as strong as Vegita-san. Even in her half-hysteria, a part of her cringed in horrible, sick guilt as she felt a nearly uncontrollable surge of desire rise up inside her at that thought. "Drag your brat out that door, and I will take mine out this way."

"Calm down, Go-chan," her father was saying gently. His grip was unbreakable, and as the sight and sound and smell of Gita and his father began to dissipate, she slowly began to relax, then sag against him. She could hear her parents taking in hushed voices around her, as she sank down into a half-dream of fever and crushing embarrassment.

"Oh no…" She said blearily, as her father lay on the bed in one of the cabins on their ship, as her mother drew a cool rag over her face. "I kissed Gita…that's almost incest."

"Shh…" Toussan's voice. "It'll all be over soon, Go-chan. Sleep." She

slept. And dreamed again of the beautiful, pale boy who had gone away and left her.

Gita Briefs sat staring down at his latest creation, a black scowl worthy of his father creasing his brow. The problem with a "time machine" was that you couldn't exactly take it out for a test drive without risking life, limb and the stability of your own timeline. Not this sort of time machine anyway.

The mathematics said it would work flawlessly, and math never lied or let you down. But Kassan had told him flatly he was not to take his new invention out for a spin, so to speak---and that if he did, and managed to return home in one piece, she would make him wish he hadn't when he got back. But what was the point in building something if you weren't allowed to put it to any use? She was probably just mad he'd written the routing code

to navigate the linear paradox that kept a tachyon powered time missile from spontaneously jumping to separate timelines as it swam upstream in time. Mad that he'd come up with the solution before she had, he thought uncharitably.

He rested his chin on one hand, staring at the time pod. The temptation was burning a hole in his brain. He drew back sharply as a rush of adrenaline hit his system, sniffed his sleeve and the mini-comp on his wrist. He pulled the wristband off. It smelled like Go-chan.

In retrospect, it was fascinating to have experienced a small fraction of what his siblings had with their Saiyan mates when they had bonded. From a purely mental standpoint, fascinating. From a "this could have been the rest of your life" standpoint, it was horrifying. He had lost every ounce of reason and control he possessed within seconds of touching her, of breathing her in. If Poppa and Gokou-san hadn't stopped them…He shuddered.

The Saiyan bond was forever.

He liked Go-chan. Loved her really, as though she were one his own family. She had always been there, always been a part of his life, conceived on the same night, born on the same day. On and off, for the last few years, he had sometimes thought he felt more for her that friendship. Hormones. The moment he had begun noticing girls, she had been the only girl who was a constant in his life. But she was wrong for him. She was…gods, she was like a wild thing sometimes. She had been raised by gentle, loving parents, raised with Chikyuu-jin mores, morality, culture. But, even so, she was a kind of behavioural throwback to Vegita-sei in some ways. Poppa said she was, anyway. Gita smirked. If he did not so closely resemble his father in face and form, if he had not inherited the full measure of his mother's genius, he would think that he and Go-chan had been accidentally switched at birth. Jisan Gokou's house was so quiet and peaceful. When Go-chan wasn't home anyway. He cringed internally at the thought of how it would have been if he and Go-chan had finished what they started. Of being so much weaker in strength and fighting power than his mate, of knowing she would never understand, or care to understand the wheels and gears and engines that fired his imagination and passions. And of knowing she would beat the shit out of him whenever he made her mad.

He frowned again, fingers meditatively stroking the pattern of switches on the control console of the egg shaped Time Jumper. If he was very quick, and no one knew he was gone---

"Don't even think about it, young man." He had been so lost in thought he hadn't even noticed his mother enter the engine hanger.

"Okay," he said glumly.

She turned his face around, staring into his eyes. "She's not right for you,

Gita-kun."

"I know…I think it took holding her like that, even if it was only for half a minute, to realise that completely."

She grinned. "Your Poppa will be glad to hear that. He said he'd like to have 'at least one brat that didn't mix his royal blood with Kakarott's offspring.' " Gita laughed.

The LTS chirped, and they both jumped. His mother stared down at the readout, then back at him. "Gita…"

"The pod isn't charged, Kassan," he said frowning. "I didn't even power up the cells! Kassan, it's---"

"It's a warning code, a signal that the pod is on approach." Kassan murmured. "Someone's coming through the timestream to these co-ordinates.

In this pod." She gestured vaguely at the time pod he had been mooning over for the last hour. She stepped forward and encapsulated the time pod, shoving the tiny capsule in her pocket. When the time machine materialised---the "other" time machine---it would appear on the launch pad…in the same place Gita's version had been occupying. When two objects tried to occupy the same space at the same time, the result was usually an enormous bang.

"Oh, gods, Gita…" Kassan was pale as a ghost. The hanger door was flung off its hinges as Poppa came rushing in, probably sensing the sudden rise in both their ki's, and their growing fear and apprehension. Gokou-san and Chi-Chi were right behind him.

"What has happened?" His father snapped.

"The LTS is coming through the timestream."

Poppa stared at her. "Someone has stolen it?"

"Not yet," Kassan shook her head. "It's in my pocket…but it's also on it's way to the launch pad. Vegita…Gita's improvement on Mirai Bulma's timeship enables a traveller to effect changes in his own past in such a way that changes the future he came from…stabilising the changes, and creating a new reality in the timeline he originated from." Poppa frowned at her furiously. He had no idea what she had just said. "It means," Kassan went on. "That whoever is on approach may have just changed our history, our reality." Her eyes were bright and full of fear. "We wouldn’t even know the difference, because when our history changed, we would have changed with it." His father's eyes narrowed with apprehension, and they all waited in silence to see what sort of creature, friend or foe, would appear on the launch pad.

The counter ticked over to zero after what seemed like an eternity. And the Jumper was there. No puff of smoke or slow theatrical fade in. Gita stepped forward, brushing away carbon resin from the little craft's one window. Toussan was right beside him, ready to pull him back if anything jumped out at him. Gita popped the pressure lock and slowly lifted the hatch door. A red streak leapt forward and locked its arms around him…and began sobbing like a child. His father checked the arc of the blow he had been poised to deliver. They all stared in shock at the weeping young boy who was embracing him like a long lost friend. He was young, thirteen or fourteen years old, with short ivory hair and red skin…

"Maiyosh-jin," his father muttered darkly.

Kassan tried to peel the boy off Gita, speaking gently, only to have the Maiyosh-jin boy sag into her, falling to his knees, clinging to her as like a life raft.

"Is he hurt?" Gokou-san asked, kneeling down beside Kassan and the boy.

"He seems to be okay," Kassan said, patting the trembling boy comfortingly.

"You're alive," the stranger whispered. "You're all alive!"

Kassan gently disengaged herself from the youngster's arms and brushed away the tears streaking down the boy's face. Her eyes were intent. "Were we not before? Did you go back and change something?"

The Maiyosh-jin boy nodded. Poppa was staring at his face strangely, as though he were trying to place a familiar set of features. "Tell us what you have done, boy." He said sharply. "Did you steal the Jumper?"

"No," the boy mumbled, not meeting Poppa's eyes. He turned back to Bulma. "You sent me back."

"I did?" She blinked in surprise.

"You would have sent Gita…but he was dead by then." The soft reply sent an arctic chill rippling through the hanger. The strange boy was breathing in quick little gasps, and Gokou-san put a hand on his shaking shoulder.

"Take your time," he said.

"I went back fifteen years," the boy said after a moment. "Back to the day when Burka of Maiyosh used the Arrak-jin to execute the last of the Saiyans on Shikaji. And unintentionally set the Bugs lose on the whole galaxy. On the whole universe. And because the Saiyans and Gurasia died, there was no one to stop the Arrak-jin from spreading beyond Shikaji."

"And they ate everything," Poppa murmured.

The boy nodded. "You survived," he told Kassan. "You ended up on Maiyosh Prime with the few hundred people who got away. You and Gita.

He was the last of the Saiyans. Lord Burka tried to stop the Arrak-jin. He had wanted to rule the galaxy, not destroy it. He thought he had a chemical that would kill them initially, but they developed a tolerance to it almost immediately. Maiyosh mounted a moderately unsuccessful war against the bugs for a while, but couldn't unify the forces outside of Maiyosh-jin ownership because the whole galaxy knew the Bugs had been Burka's fault, and no one trusted him. Two years later, you…you killed Lord Burka. Then you merged Capsule Corp with what remained of Maiyosh's assets, and pulled the rest of the galaxy together against the Arrak-jin."

"I--I what?" Kassan looked both horrified and vaguely impressed with herself.

"You spear-headed the defensive war against the Arrak-jin," the boy said.

"With your machines and weapons and one unified front against the Enemy, we held them off for another thirteen years. We nearly beat them. Then the swarm came. And we learned that the Arrak-jin who had spread out from Shikaji were just the tip of the iceberg. There were more than you can imagine…so many… We kept on fighting, even after we knew it was hopeless. Near the end, Gita built the Jumper as a prototype. As a last line of defence, if everything was lost. He also built a model of the old Time Ship that Mirai Bulma built to mass-produce on Madran. To try and send as many people as possible back into timelines where the Arrak-jin didn't exist. But they tore Madran apart before he could finish it. And Gita died…The Enemy was almost on top of Chikyuu when you sent me back. To try and change it, to make it all happen differently."

"Why would she stay behind if she could have escaped with you, boy?" Poppa said harshly. What was wrong with him? He sounded furious.

"She said…she said she was tired," was the soft, sad reply. "Tired of fighting. Tired of being strong all the time. Tired of missing you, Vegita-san." Poppa's face flinched almost imperceptibly. "I think she only stayed alive, because there was only her left to try and save everything. But when the main swarm broke through the fabric of our universe, the not-matter that lies between began to pull at everything, space and time itself, like a suction hole. We never found a way to patch the breach. So, even if we had somehow managed to kill all the Bugs, there still would have been no hope in the end. When Gita died…She said she wanted to be with you, Vegita-san. That she was tired of being alone. And tired of being alive."

The silence in the echoing emptiness was deafening. Finally, the boy spoke again. "So, I went back to the point in time you thought had been most critical," he told Bulma softly. "Shikaji. And I changed two things.

I kept Son Pan and Gokou-san from dying in the initial ambush. Then I came back the same time/space co-ordinates I left from."

"And because of the LTS," Gita said. "Your own timeline---our

timeline---changed. We are the same reality you left behind…only now, because of you, we're all alive." He grinned faintly. "Thank you is kind of a weak word to use." Everyone except Poppa laughed nervously.

"So," his father said coldly. "We were all betrayed to our deaths by the Maiyosh-jin on Shikaji. Bulma and Gita ended up on Maiyosh Prime. Why not Chikyuu?"

"Vegita---" Gokou-san began. For some reason, he had moved around to stand almost directly between the strange boy and Vegita.

"Shut up, Kakarott. You said Bulma killed Burka two years later and took control of Maiyosh House's corporate empire, to rally the galaxy against the Arrak-jin. What was she doing in the two years prior to that, boy?" The red-skinned boy was silent, frozen in the Saiyan Prince's black, hate-filled glare.

"Vegita, stop badgering him," Bulma snapped. "He's been through enough---"

Poppa knelt beside the Maiyosh-jin boy, who was now shrinking back against Kassan, and spoke in a deadly, gentle voice. "How did Bulma take control of Maiyosh House and sway the corporate board to support her?"

He hissed. "She had them proclaim you Burka's heir and then took power through you as your regent, did she not? That is the only possible reason she would not have strangled you at birth, you filthy little abomination!"

"Goddammit, Vegita!" Kassan screeched. "Just because the boy is Maiyosh-jin, doesn't mean he's our enemy---"

"Bulma," Poppa said, still soft. "Maiyosh-jin do not have blue eyes."

Gita watched in alarm as the angry frown on his mother's face faded away into white-faced shock. She stared down at the red-skinned boy, and then, almost unconsciously, shrank back from him. One hand fluttered up to her mouth, as though she were on the point of a scream, but no scream came. Then she collapsed. Poppa caught her, lifting her up in his arms, as she weakly batted at him, mumbling that she was all right, and that it wasn't the boy's fault. Gita stood, nearly frantic with worry, gazing from his parents to Chi-Chi-san's confused face, to Gokou-san who was holding the Maiyosh-jin boy now. The strange boy had doubled over, shaking apart with a renewed storm of tears.

"Gita," his father's voice was hoarse with barely suppressed rage. "Show Kakarott the rest of the launch/land sequence for the new navigation system." He turned to go, with Kassan still in his arms. She was beginning to protest loudly, beginning to recover from the initial blow of whatever shock she had just received. Poppa was pretending not to hear her.

"Vegita." Something in Gokou-san's voice made his father pause. "This boy has spent his whole life fighting the Arrak-jin first hand. He knows things about them that are going to be invaluable. He may even know the exact point in space where the swarm will emerge. I'm bringing him with us to Trunks' war council on Madran."

His father stood motionless for a second or two. Then nodded shortly. "Just keep the little bastard away from me, Kakarott. And away from her."

Gita watched his father leave. Kassan was giving him an earful now, telling him he'd better put her the fuck down right this minute if he knew what was good for him. He didn't.

"She doesn't hate you," Gokou-san was telling the boy quietly. "She was just…really, really shocked."

"Would someone please tell me what the hell is going on?" Gita burst out.

"What's you name?" Gokou-san asked the boy gently.

"Johns…Johns Briefs," The boy whispered. "Johny."

"Gita," Gokou-san said quietly. "This is Johny. He's your brother."

Bulma managed to work her leg around to a position to deliver a hard, healthy, attention-getting kick to the side of her husband's head by the time he entered their bedroom, still carrying her. "I swear by all that's holy, Vegita, if you don't put me down this instant---" He sat her on the side of their bed and knelt before her, staring at her face, eyes searching hers. The smoking, black anger he's directed at that lost, heart-broken little boy in the hanger was gone. Now he only looked worried, and for some reason horribly afraid, behind the stoic mask of his motionless, frowning features.

"What do you remember?" He asked slowly, as though he were almost afraid to hear the answer.

She slowly relaxed, understanding at last. Gods, it hadn't helped that she had just passed out like some delicate, fluttery heroine in a Victorian melodrama. She took his face between her hands and kissed the hard, anxious line of his mouth gently. "Nothing," she said. "Gurasia put on seal on the memories of Tsiru-sei, Vegita. They can't ever resurface."

"I don't mean Tsiru-sei," he said bleakly. "Woman, you---" He took a deep breath. "After the Red Dragon Balls were destroyed, those events were unmade, yes?" She nodded. "Yet when we encountered Jeiyce on Shikaji, you remembered everything that had happened there, and no matter that it had all never happened. In a sense, that--that boy has brought about the same set of circumstances you achieved when you unmade the Red Dragon Balls. He unravelled one history and replaced it with this one."

"And he saved us all," she said emphatically. "He gave us all a second chance to live, and to win this war. We owe him---"

"Bulma, you will not see him again!" He said flatly.

"Vegita, you---"

He cut her off. "If Jeiyce's presence could bring back your memories of Tsiru-sei, what memories will that Maiyosh-jin brat dislodge?" His voice was so barbed with strain, it cut through the angry, indignant words she had drawing breath to utter. At being interrupted so rudely. At the hard note of command in his voice, which he had long ago learned was the precursor to a shouting match, and would most likely propel her into doing the opposite of what he had ordered. His words begin to sink in. "Do not say the past he just unmade never happened. Neither did the Red Dragon---and still the memory of it nearly destroyed you. Woman, think!" He grabbed her shoulders, shaking her lightly. "You heard the boy's tale. Two years on Maiyosh Prime before you seized power from Burka and threw him down.

Two years under the hand of Jeiyce of Maiyosh, of doing anything and everything he asked of you for the ransom of Gita's life. Of--of bearing his son." He spat the words out like a mouthful of poison.

Her heart seemed to have stopped in her chest. He was right. Oh gods, she hadn't been thinking. He doesn't have to die, you know---your little son… She did not remember any part of what Jeiyce had forced her to recall on Shikaji, would never remember. But she remembered Shikaji, and the nauseous, debilitating fear his hands on her body had sent tearing through her. The sadist look of fulfilled pleasure on the Maiyosh-jin's face when he had broken her wrist and kissed and…Her breath was becoming unsteady. And she remembered all too clearly how it had felt to remember those things, even if she could no longer recollect what it was she had remembered. Two years…

"I will not see you remember that, Bulma!" He hissed. "I will not. And I will kill that little misbegotten bastard before I let him come near you again!"

He head snapped up. "No, you will not." She was startled by the cold, hard not in her voice. "And you're going to give me your word that you won't harm so much as a hair on his head. Ever."

"Woman---" He began angrily.

"No." Her voice was softer, but still as implacable. She saw on his face that he recognised the immovable stone wall of will she was erecting against him. "If his presence was going to affect me the way you think is might, it would have given me flashes of memory the moment I realised who he was. Vegita, he took away that hell you're talking about. He gave you and everyone I love back their lives and made that two years of---of torture and hell not happen. He deserves something better from both if us, from all of us, than hate, and---and…" She leaned forward, feeling overloaded with too much jarring revelation in too small amount of time. She rested her forehead against his, this man she loved more than her own life. "Oh gods, Vegita…every year I have with you is better than the last. I love you so much…" His arms slid around her, tightening, his eyes still shadowed with terrible fear for her. "And I have that boy to thank for it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to love him. He's like a living image of his---his---" She broke off, shuddering with the effort to hold in too many emotions, none of which she seemed to be able to sort out at the moment. "But I want to know him.

I want to try to give him whatever I can. Even if---even if I can barely stand to look at him right now." And then the tears she'd been determined not to shed tore free and she clung to him, rocking inside the unimaginable strength of his arms. "Vegita…promise me."

He seemed to tremble with the effort it took to speak the next words. "I will…not harm him, Bulma." She slumped against him, and he spoke again. "But you will swear to me that if you experience so much as a half-instant flash of a memory you cannot place, you will not see him again."

"All right," she sighed. A compromise. How many years had it taken both of them to learn that this was the only solution to an impasse between two such indomitable wills. She leaned against him, feeling the corded tension in his chest and shoulders ease slightly. "It's almost over, isn't it?" She whispered after a moment. "The waiting, the watching. Peacetime." The boy had arrived like a herald of the coming storm. The Arrak-jin were close. And the fight would begin…perhaps any day now.

"Kakarott thinks it is so," Vegita rumbled against her hair. "He says he 'feels' them drawing near."

She shifted in his arms, to face him. "I won't lose you." And merely giving voice to that fear sent a chill of premonitory terror coursing through her. He was right, that son I never had to suffer bearing. I wouldn't want to live without you.

He didn't lie and assure her it would be all right, or promise they would win and live to see all the good years that lay beyond the war they faced. He only held her.

The warm, sweet air of Madran filtered through the open hatch of Gurasia’s bleached Tsiru-jin flagship, filling Gohan’s lung’s with the half-forgotten scent of spring flowers. Two years spent in the gruelling, bitter cold of Tsiru-sei’s endless winter made that first breath of air from a green living world all the more heavenly.

"You will stand up straight and walk a pace behind my right shoulder," Gurasia’s voice was slightly muffled through the half-open door of his presence chamber. What had he been doing in there for the past hour? Primping? "We will honour the custom of the country and abjure proper obeisance for a brief time."

"It is indecent, Holy Lord, wherever we make our berth," Surita grumbled mildly. Grumbled and tutted disapprovingly that his Lord should command him to stand at his shoulder like a trusted advisor and not grovel at his feet like a slave.

Gohan shook his head, wondering if cross-culture contamination could make a dent in the mores of a people so ancient and set in their ways as Gurasia’s. Probably not, but then the Tsiru-jin culture, ideology, mores, their entire sense of right and wrong, turned on the axis of their Lord’s whim. If he commanded them to change, they would do it. He smiled down at Videl, shaking off his reverie as he felt her warm hand slip into his.

"I’m sorry, Videl-chan."

"For what," she asked softly.

"For the last two years. For the last fifteen years spent running back and forth between Madran and Tsiru-sei. I didn’t have to accept Trunks offer to be ‘ambassador’ to Tsiru-sei. And I know it’s been hard on you."

She stood on tip-toes and kissed his cheek. "We were doing what needed to be done. You needed to help Surita research the Great Library for any mention of the Arrak-jin. Both you and Gurasia needed to spar with someone strong enough to keep you on your toes in order to grow stronger. And there needed to be communication between Madran and Tsiru-sei. You and your father are ‘the only monkeys whose company he can stomach’ according to Gurasia. But," she smiled brightly, her eyes glowing with anticipation. "It will be so good to see Pan-chan and Trunks and the rest of the family. And to be warm."

"Then let us not delay this precious, heart-warming reunion a moment longer." Gurasia stepped out of the presence chamber clad from head to toe in ivory, skin-tight Tsiru-jin armour. Battlesuit and armour in one, it was a second, nearly indestructible skin and a second friodon layer of protection against the pleasant warm day outside. On Tsiru-sei, Gurasia and his people tended to wear…well, nothing at all. Unless, like Surita, they wore robes indicative of their profession. Guraisa, however, had taken to wearing clothing of some kind without cease since his last and almost disastrous

Im-saktu. Very probably because, unlike the rest of his people, whose natural state was genderless neuter, Gurasia now had an embarrassing set of male genitalia to hide. Gods, that must be mortifying, Gohan mused, especially given the boy’s all-consuming pride.

Gohan frowned suddenly, a faint shiver creeping up his back. And with that unnerved chill, came an immediate surge of annoyed anger. Gurasia’s armour was pristine except for small splashes of colour here and there. Over the heart, at the joint of each of his four limbs, on each shoulder and cresting the top of his head, were patches of deep purple, the colour of Tsiru-jin blood.

It was Frieza’s armour, an exact replica. Same design, same…everything. The obnoxious, arrogant…

Gurasia smile coldly. "Shall we go, Son Gohan?"

Gohan smiled back, refusing to rise to the bait. He let go of tension, of worry and suspicion. There was a monumental obstacle ahead of them all, but today…today he would see his family and be happy in the simple fact of their presence.

A small blue whirlwind struck him in the midsection as he stepped off the boarding ramp. "Jiiiiiiisan!!" The girl shrieked.

"Roma-chan!" Gohan gasped, stepping back to look at her. At eleven, his brother’s daughter was already half a head taller than Videl, her wild Saiyan hair bound up in a blue braided top knot. He smiled gently at the other two children who were hanging back a bit as Roma-chan moved on to give Videl a painfully enthusiastic embrace. "You’re Prallin and Haysel, right?" Both kids nodded wordlessly, the girl out of shyness Gohan suspected, the boy out of sullen distemper born of their recent loss. Gods, it didn’t seem possible Yamcha-san was really gone for good.

"Toussan and Momma were just over there," Roma-chan was saying, "And Jisan Trunks is here and the other Jisan Trunks. Ojjiisan and Bulma Bassan and Gita will be here any minute Momma said, and Jjiissan Gokou is already here, but he and Bassan Chi-Chi are talking to Zoukin-san and this Madrani doctor because Go-chan went into heat last night and they caught her and Gita making out in the mini hanger at Capsule Corp. Isn’t that gross? They---" The flood of words tumbling excitedly out of the girl’s lips halted as she stared up, past Gohan and Videl, at the Lord of Tsiru-sei who had silently made his way down the boarding ramp.

"Wow," Haysel-chan said softly. Her twin sniffed and tried to look bored.

Goten and Bra-chan’s daughter only stared wide-eyed and speechless---a rarity for her---for ten full seconds while Gurasia favoured her with his most mocking, intimidating sneer. "You’re Gurasia-sama, aren’t you?" She said finally. "I’ve never seen a Tsiru-jin before."

"No?" Gurasia said with soft, cold menace. "And what is your first impression, girl?"

Both girls studied him thoughtfully.

"You look really scary," Haysel-chan said meekly. "I like the red eyes."

"Yeah," Roma-chan agreed. "They make you look really evil. That and the horns and tail. They’re cool!"

Gurasia stared at both children blankly, at an utter loss for words. Gohan hid a laugh with a feigned cough, blinking innocently at the Tsiru-jin’s suspicious glare. Beside him, Videl wasn’t hiding a grin. Her face was distracted and full of worry.

"Roma-chan, did you say Go-chan’s gone into heat?"

The words which hadn’t registered until now struck Gohan like a cold bucket of water in the face.

"Uh-huh," Roma-chan said. "Momma said it started last night."

"Did it indeed?" Gurasia murmured, apropos of nothing.

"Where is the medical complex?" Gohan asked grimly.

"It’s just east of the main city square," said an eerily familiar voice. "Gokou-san bundled her there the second they landed so Zoukin and his team can make sure she goes into remission away from any lunar influence."

Gohan felt a surreal sense of mismatched happiness and grief wash over him at the sight of the man who had just spoken.

"Trunks," he said simply.

He could never in a million years express his joy at the sight of this older, grimmer Trunk from that dark future timeline where and evil Juuhachigou and her mad twin had reigned so long. And there were no words that could be summoned in ten times that amount of time that could adequately express sympathy for the other man’s loss. He fought so hard to become strong enough to defeat the androids and Cell in his timeline. And in the end, it was all for…what? A few more years of life for his mother, his world, his entire damn universe.

There were no words of comfort in any language to address such a loss. And something in Mirai Trunks’ eyes, in the veiled, hard set of his features, told Gohan that this Trunks would take any expression of sympathy with only a little more grace than his father received such gestures. So, Gohan only said, "I’m glad to see you again."

Trunks grinned, a minute, very Vegita-like upward twitch at the corners of his mouth. "You grew up, Gohan." The sharp blue eyes turned to the three children who were trying to edge away from this little reunion inconspicuously. "Haysel. Prallin. Your mother is looking for you. She’s told you twice already not to go wandering around the city alone today."

Haysel stared down at her feet. Prallin shrugged, looking vaguely rebellious. "We can take care of ourselves, Trunks-san. Haysel and I studied combat and ki manipulation under Jisan Yamcha our whole lives.

Until you came."

The unspoken accusation struck Trunks like a physical blow. Though Trunks’ expression betrayed nothing, Gohan saw the words had cut the other man to the bone. Trunks almost certainly blamed himself for the deaths of Yamcha and his own mother already. The boy’s cold black cat eyes, still so full of deep grief and helpless rage over the death of the only father he’d ever known, glared up at Trunks, defiant and full of pain. It didn’t help matters that Prallin was almost a mirror copy of Junanigou, Gohan mused.

"It wasn’t Trunks-san’s fault that Jisan died," Haysel said softly, fiercely. "It was the bugs!"

"Come on, kids," Videl broke the tangible tension with a crisp motherly voice. ‘You’re all coming with me to look for you parents." She smiled, looking both loving and threatening, a curious mix of expressions only mothers can seem to achieve. "And don’t even think about giving me so much as a dirty look, young man. Or I’ll drop you off in the care of Bassan Juuhachigou instead of Marron." The alarmed expression on both twins faces seemed to indicate that they thought this would be a very bad idea.

Videl swept them away with a rush of words and a promise to meet Gohan at the med complex within the hour. Gohan turned to see what snide comment Gurasia would make after witnessing this little family drama. But the Lord of Tsiru-sei was gone.

Go-chan sat tense and embarrassed while Zoukin-san and other doctor gave her a complete physical exam in full view of both her parents. Kami, she was going to drop dead of humiliation before this was all over!

"Okay, you can get dressed now, Go-chan," Zoukin said after an eternity of poking, prodding, and taking samples of every body fluid she possessed.

"Your physical stats seem to indicate that your heat cycle is going into dormancy away from the stimulus of lunar light filtration," the Madrani doctor said kindly as she pulled on her clothes, her face flaming with humiliation and impotent fury at---at everything. The words struck her suddenly and she met the Madrani’s mild dark eyes, a hesitant smile on her face. Zoukin-san was a nice man, family really, but he had spoken to her parents through the entirety of the exam as though she were a small little girl. Something told her the Madrani knew this bothered her and had made a point of addressing her directly.

"It’s over?" She asked, breathless with hope.

"We---" The Madrani glanced at Zoukin and nodded in agreement. "We aren’t absolutely sure. Your body temperature is lower, but still too high. Like a low grade fever. Your hormone levels are dropping, and your metabolism has slowed. But both are higher than they should be. Now, this could mean your cycle is falling dormant, but the stats also match those the Chikyuu-jin medics took from Son Pan during her three-year period of semi-bonded limbo. The bio scan says the centers of your brain and nervous system that seem to house the telempathic moonbond burst to life initially when your first went into heat. But now…like the rest of your symtomology, they’re not normal or overly indicative of heat cycle. Almost as though they are in a kind of holding pattern. We believe this could mean one of two things. Either these are the signs of interrupted heat cycle which is now going into remission away from a lunar presence. Or these are the symptoms of an unconsummated moonbond. Go-chan, you’ll be the best judge of this. Do you think you might have partially bonded with Gita back on Chikyuu?"

"I---" She felt a cold knot of horror twist in the pit of her stomach. Bonded to Gita Briefs for all time… She loved Gita. She knew that when she was being honest with herself. But as a sibling, not as a husband! She gritted her teeth the stop her shoulders from shaking, to stop the tears that would be the final humiliation of the awful, awful day.

"There’s one way to find out for sure," Toussan said grimly. He rose to his feet and lay two fingers to his forehead. He was gone for the space of maybe ten seconds. The Madrani doctor dropped his bio scanner when Toussan reappeared with a shaken looking Gita at his side.

"That’s a handy talent," the gold-skinned man said.

Go-chan’s eyes widened with apprehension as her father gently pushed Gita toward her. The stark terror in the boy’s eyes didn’t help matters any. Gita reached out a shaking hand, taking her numb, trembling fingers in his own.

And nothing happened.

There was no fire, no passion, no raging thoughtless need to have him, to have every part of him. He smiled tentatively with sweet wilting relief. "I don’t feel anything." Gita’s soft voice was startlingly loud in the tense silence of the exam room. "Do you?"

"No," she breathed.

"No reaction at all," Zoukin said, staring down at the gages of his med stat computer. "No rise in hormone levels, respiration, heartbeat, or telepathic brain activity. Allowing for the fact they were both scared witless just now. They’re not moonbound."

"Oh, thank sweet Kami!" Gita said, his voice cracking like a thirteen-year-old boy’s. He looked a little sheepish as a wave of relieved laughter swept the others in the room. Go-chan found herself joining in. She felt giddy with relief.

"I’m really okay?" She asked, smiling as her mother hugged her in a flurry of kisses and happy tears.

The Madrani doctor grinned, glancing from Go-chan to her smiling parents. "It was one diagnosis or the other, Go-chan. We’ve just proven the least attractive one false, so…"

"So, based upon that," Zoukin said, "we’re going to conclude that you are in remission. The symptoms should continue to fade. You’ll have to remain on Madran for the next three months until your heat cycle is over, but in all probability, this will be the end of the matter. At least for four more years. The two tidbits of useful information Gohan found in the Great Library of Tsiru-sei gave us those two time frames. Three month heat cycle, once every four years, give or take a month. Hopefully, by the time Roma-chan hits puberty we’ll be able to predict precisely when her cycle will begin."

Go-chan gave her parents a full ten minutes of unadulterated relief before she broached the subject of going out to see the Bazaar.

"Hi."

Johny glanced up from the drippy ice cream cone he was working down. Gita stared down at him quizzically, trying to reign in his intense curiosity, but the other boy seemed to sense it nevertheless; he began fidgeting uncomfortably. He seemed jumpy, in general. Half-fearful of everything and everyone around him. Though he had more than just cause to be shell-shocked, Gita thought.

"Hi," Johny said hesitantly. "Gokou-san sent me out here so I wouldn't have to be near Go-chan until the doctors say she's okay to be around boys. I told him Maiyosh-jin don't normally reach puberty until they're 16 or 17, but he said better safe than not. He bought me some ice cream."

"I guess he’s right." Gita sat down on the bench beside the other boy in the garden courtyard just outside the capital's main Medplex.

The younger boy grinned hesitantly. "Can you imagine being mated to her forever? She's really pretty, but she's a whole head taller than both of us."

"I don't have to imagine it," Gita said with a huge sigh of shaky relief. "Gokou-san brought me here from Momma's ship to make sure we weren't already moonbound. We' re not, but I think I would have just laid down and died if---"

"Don't say that!"

Gita stopped, staring in consternation at the other boy, who was suddenly on the verge of tears. Johny stood, balling his hands into fists at his sides, as though to force himself from throwing his arms around Gita and bursting into another storm of tears.

"Don't say that, please," the younger boy said again, softly. "I felt you die. I'm a strong empath sensitive, even for a Maiyosh-jin. I felt it when you died."

Gita didn't answer, thinking of his one brief meeting with Mirai Trunks on Madran two months ago. Remembering the shame he'd felt for the safe, happy life he'd been blessed with, the love and family he'd known all his life. He felt something very like that each time he spoke to another version of himself in the mirror loom whose life had been immeasurably bleaker than his own.

"You saved me, you know," he said finally. The Maiyosh-jin boy's blue gaze turned upward, meeting his black Saiyan eyes, startled. "Have you really thought about that? You saved everybody I know, all my family and friends. You gave Momma fifteen years of happiness with Poppa instead of having lost him and everyone else on Shikaji." Gita had no memory of Shikaji, not really. Just a few vague images. The sense of flight, the sound of screaming everywhere and the sight of his mother's terrified face.

The other boy smiled tentatively, as though thinking of himself in any positive light was a wonderful new perspective.

"Can I ask you something," Gita said slowly. His better judgement, his innate sensitivity, told him not to ask. But he had to know. "You were born after Poppa died, and you're half Maiyosh-jin," Gita blurted out. "Who was your father? No one will talk about it, and I--I knew better than to ask Momma or Poppa after that scene in the hanger..." He trailed off in shock as the younger boy turned and bolted with a cry of despair, tearing off into the crowded city around them in a blur of motion that was not flight nor truly a run. Gita cursed his own stupidity and flew after him, zipping between shoppers, sightseers, and groups of VIP's already gathering for Trunks' Council at noon. He closed the distance between them with his greater speed, alighting in front of the red-skinned boy on the edge of one of Keraffta City's many wooded parks. Johny barrelled into him, struggling to get away as Gita gripped him around the shoulders. The boy fought and twisted in Gita's restraining hold, fighting his greater strength.

"Stop it!" Johny wailed. "Please, just let me go! I can live with Okassan hating me but not you! Not you!"

Gita spoke as gently as he could to someone he had pinned in a wrestler's hold. "Why would I hate you? I don't even remember---" He stopped, kicking himself mentally. That must hurt like hell. Gods...to save the people you loved, to see them well and whole again after having watched them die---then to come home and realise no one even remembered you. Because now, in this new timeline, Johny had never been born.

The boy had gone limp against him. Slowly, Gita eased him down, propping the shaking boy's body up against the bole of a huge golden-barked tree, here on the eaves of the forest park.

Gita knelt down before him, speaking steadily. "Tell me. I won't hate you."

Johny stared at him hopelessly. "You always loved me. You were the only one..."

"What about Momma?" Gita asked.

Johny heaved a soft little despairing sigh. "She did. She tried to. But..." He closed his eyes, turned his face away, and began to speak in a low even tone, almost devoid of emotion. "My father was Jeiyce of Maiyosh. Do you know that name?"

Gita frowned apprehensively. "Nissan told me a little about Shikaji. Jeiyce was Lord Burka of Maiyosh's nephew. He also was a henchman of Frieza's in his first life. He helped Burka ambush everyone on Shikaji and---and---" Gita stopped, a chilly sense of horror begin to creep up his spine.

"And when everyone was killed by the Arrak-jin," Johny finished tonelessly. "Jeiyce took Okassan back to Maiyosh Prime with him as his prisoner. Burka let him keep her as a reward for helping to kill the Saiyans. Jeiyce saved you as well. And he used you to blackmail Okassan into doing anything he told her to do. That's how I was conceived."

Gita stared wide-eyed and speechless at the other boy. A gaping hole seemed to have opened up in the pit of his stomach.

"A few months after I was born," Johny went on relentlessly, "Okassan used me to gain support for a palace coup and overthrew Burka and Jeiyce. She led the war against the Arrak-jin. But she never touched me, never even picked me up when I was a baby. She wasn't unkind to me, but she could barely stand to look at me. Jisan Yamcha told me she wasn't always that way. But she never really touched anyone after that. After Jeiyce. Not even you. When I was a baby, you started carrying me around with you everywhere just to have something to hold. You thought Okassan didn't love you anymore. You took care of me. When I was three, Okassan sent us to Chikyuu to train under old Kame Sennin. When we got a little older, she sent us to Maiyosh Prime to study under---under a Maiyosh-jin kinsman of mine. The---the only time she ever touched me was just before she sent me back in the LTS to try and change everything. She kissed me and hugged me goodbye. She said she was sorry she had never been able to show me she loved me. She wanted to. She---she just couldn't. But you did, Nissan. You always loved me."

The story was all the more heart-wrenching for having been told without tears. Gita sat down beside him, trying to think of what he should do or say. 'I love you' would be a lie. He didn't even know the other boy. Though...though something, maybe a faintest spar of memory from the time that was no more, or maybe some visceral Saiyan instinct that could sense blood kin, drew him to Johny. Made him want desperately to know him, befriend him, protect him. And come to love him in time.

"I don't hate you," he said again.

Johny opened his eyes, gazing up at him.

"I don't remember you, that's true," Gita went on slowly. "But that doesn't mean we can't start all over again. And...and there are a lot of people who hate me because of who my father is and because of things he did in the past. I know how unfair that is. So, let's begin again by being friends. Okay?"

The boy didn't leap up and seize him in another clinging embrace as Gita thought he would. He only nodded, a small wondering smile on his face.

The instant their feet touched Madrani soil, Bulma felt Vegita tense beside her like a cat poised the spring. He had always done this in crowds, but his guarded unease among large groups of strangers had increased dramatically since Shikaji. The number of people crowding the space port and Keraffta City was all the greater because of the Guildmasters' decision to allow a great Bazaar to form throughout the city during the week preceding Trunks' War Council. The Bazaar was comprised of artisans, merchants, and artists, of culinary representatives from every renowned restaurant in the Empire. There were jugglers and street performers of every description boothed along side tradesmen, sculptors, and pet stores specialising in exotic alien animals. And the spectacle, combined with the attending Council reps from non-allied worlds and the Empire's own Members of Parliament, had swelled the city's population to bursting. Radu had appropriated the Guildmasters' Hall, Madran's seat of planetary legislature, for Trunks' Council. It was dead center of downtown, and Bulma could almost hear Vegita mentally weighing the options of scooping her up and flying over the heads of the throng around them. Not that they had a problem working their way through the crowds. People caught sight of Vegita, dark and glowering, his tail snugly wrapped around his waist, and they fell back like sea waves parting before an ancient god's command.

"I hope Gita stays out of trouble," she said conversationally.

"Kakarott says he and the girl are not moonbound," he smirked. "He has probably collapsed with relief."

"I know I almost did," she said softly. "I used to be a little jealous of the kids and their bonds. Did I ever tell you that? But after Goten and Zoukin told everyone that it's almost impossible to outlive your partner, that when one half of the moonbond dies, the other just...lies down and dies---I don't want it. If something happened to me---"

"Moonbound or not," Vegita rumbled quietly beside her, "I would not live very long without you, woman."

She shivered lightly, a sudden image of his face as he held her dying body on Shikaji floating through her mind. Vegita's words had been gentle, barely audible. They were completely at odds with the cold, threatening visage he was currently using to scare hapless tourists who didn't get out of their way quickly enough as they made their way to the edge of the space port.

"Don’t say that," she said quietly, laying one hand protectively around the satchel of capsules she had slung over one shoulder. It was full of the prototypes of every defensive engine she had built over the course of the last fifteen years. Some were irreplaceable, but all of them were, in some unique way, extremely dangerous.

It had been a tense trip from Chikyuu. She and Vegita had struck a truce over the matter of Johny, but the problem was by no means solved. Vegita’s half of the ‘truce’ itself was nothing more than a curt oath not to kill the boy. And she knew on an instinctive gut level that if she forged any sort of relationship with her new son at all, that a mere grudging promise to refrain from---from murdering her flesh and blood would not be enough for her. Not by a long shot. But…that same gut instinct also told her that Vegita was very probably incapable of budging any further on the matter than he already had.

She had spent the trip quiet and thoughtful, reading over the specs of some of Mirai Bulma’s work Trunks had hyperlight faxed her, wondering what she would say to her other son from another timeline when she saw him in person. And thinking about Yamcha. Revisiting their adolescence, their youth. Reliving a hundred silly, childish, sweet adventures and memories in her mind over and over. Gods, how could she miss him so much when they only spoken twice in the year preceding his death? Her heart ached with the loss, as bad as when Poppa had died. The wound was still so raw.

"Bassan! Jjiisan!"

Bulma’s granddaughter would have hit her in a flying tackle hug that might very well have decked her if Vegita had not moved forward and caught the girl in mid-air. Bulma saw that Marron’s children, Haysel and Prallin, had set down behind Roma-chan.

Vegita was glaring sternly at their only grandchild. "Do not do that to your grandmother, Romayna! You will hurt her."

Roma-chan nodded happily, unfazed by the reprimand, and gave her grandfather the hug instead. "I’m sorry! I’m just so happy to see you both, Jjiisan!"

Bulma felt the pall of worry and melancholy began to recede as she watched Vegita try to maintain his hard expression, fighting valiantly to keep their one grandchild from turning him into a doting old softy. Then she turned her gaze to Romayna’s two companions. Yamcha’s kids. Though he hadn’t fathered them, he had always referred to "Marron and the kids" like a man talking about his family. Gazing at the children’s pale, solemn faces, Bulma wondered how Marron was doing. She should find her, talk to her, while they were all on Madran.

"I’m so sorry about Yamcha, kids," she said softly. "I loved him too."

Prallin shrugged and looked away, but Haysel smiled a little sadly at Bulma’s quiet, brief expression of sympathy.

"It is good to see you, Romayna," Vegita was saying gruffly.

"Is---is Gita with you, Bulma-san?" Haysel asked a bit too eagerly, her fair cheeks colouring rosily when her brother snickered.

"No, honey," Bulma said. "He’s with Gokou-san and his family right now. Where are your parents, kids?" She watched the three children’s faces narrowly their expressions shifted to masks of perfect innocence.

"At the Guildhall," Roma-chan said guilelessly.

"Momma is at the Guildmasters Hall, too," Prallin said. "Trunks-ouji and all the other Saiyans are there too because Lord Corsaris’ ship just landed. Mom said they’re bringing old Burka the Butcher of Shikaji to Council today cause he says he knows something really important about the Bugs. We were just on top of the Serenitists’ Chapel downtown and saw the Corsari-jin rolling Burka’s stasis cell into the Guildhall. The Saiyans were guarding the cage, keeping people from stoning him, but the crowd was still getting really nasty until Trunks-ouji went Super Saiyan and told them to hush." The boy grinned faintly. "They hushed."

Vegita grinned.

Roma-chan was dancing from foot to foot to tell the rest of the news. "But they only got him as far as the Financial Exchange on the first level of the Guildhall when the Maiyosh Corporate Board showed up," she said. "All of them! Trunks told them not to come to this Council cause it would cause trouble, but they’re here anyway. They really, really want to talk to Burka about something, and now the crowd is ready to go after them and after Burka and Poppa and Momma are there with Pan-san and Radu-san and his sons trying to keep everybody from blasting everybody else!"

"We would have stayed and watched the fight break out, but we saw Bassan Juuhachigou down there and she looked like she was looking for us because we---" Haysel broke off, looking mortified.

"Because you ditched Marron and Bra-chan to go tearing around the city by yourselves?" Bulma asked pleasantly.

"Oh, Bassan---" Roma-chan began unwisely.

Vegita was stock still, listening to the flickering rise and fall of distinct ki’s surrounding the row at the center of the city. "Stay with your grandmother!" He told Roma-chan curtly. "Do not leave her alone. I will be back." He sprang into the air, vaulting over the decorative walls of the space port, heading for the heart of Keraffta.

"Dammit, Vegita!" She shouted after him. Uselessly, as always. "He ought to know better by now than to try leaving me behind like that!" She turned to the children, eyes narrowed. "Roma-chan, fly me to the Guildhall. Nobody, not even your grandfather, tells me when to stay or go, godammit!"

"Yeah!" Said Roma-chan excitedly. "Me neither!"

Bulma didn’t exactly agree, but they could have that conversation later. The girl took off with jolting force and Bulma held onto her waist for dear life. Kami, the kid was as big as she was and still growing like a weed. She and Go-chan will have to find some tall men when they marry. And on that thought, Bulma tensed, thinking of Go-chan. One more thing to worry about today. How long would it be, Bulma wondered with a chill, until Roma-chan would have to suffer the trauma of her first heat? Son-kun’s report of Go-chan’s progress was a good sign. The girl seemed to be going into remission, if that was the right word for her condition. Chi-Chi had sounded almost sick with relief over the hyperlight comlink. Maybe Zoukin and his Madrani friends would develop some kind of heat inhibiting vaccine before Roma-chan was old enough---

Roma-chan hit the ground like a girl-sized cannonball, nearly jarring the porcelain fillings out of Bulma’s mouth. They had swept in through the arched columns of the Guildhall’s mezzanine. Even here, on the second level, it was wall-to-wall people. "Come on!" Roma-chan cried, and pulled her through the press of the crowd, plowing her way forward until they wedged up against the mezzanine balcony railing, looking down on the scene taking place in the main Exchange floor.

Trunks was standing dead center of the Exchange, flanked on either side by Vegita and Radu, arms folded. A grim, implacable barrier between the half-dozen Maiyosh House senior board members and their retainers and the glowing cube of energy surrounding Burka of Maioyosh. Encircling the stasis cell of the "Butcher of Shikaji", a frightening, lethal deterrent to any rescue attempts the Corporate Board might have in mind, stood a ring of Saiyans. Bulma recognised Radu’s sons, Gera and Torq, Skoy’s two sons, and Zoukin’s daughter Wassti in the circle around Burka’s cell. And hanging on the edge of the growing throng of people, keeping the increasingly agitated crowd from destabilising into a mob, she could see Pan, Goten and Bra.

"Toussan and Trunks-jisan called Jjiisan to come stand beside them," Roma-chan whispered. "People are so scared of Jjiisan after since they saw him tear down the Chamber on Shikaji and burn up the Bugs, no one will try anything crazy with him here."

Bulma nodded silently. And those who would know that Trunks and Radu would never kill them out of hand for "trying something crazy" would not have the same sense of security while staring into the cold, merciless visage Vegita was projecting at the little band of Maiyosh-jin nobles. Bulma fumbled through her capsule pouch until she found a sound amp, a long distance listening device. By the time she aimed the little spy toy at the conversation taking place between Trunks and the Maiyosh-jin Vice Chancellor on the Exchange, she had missed the first half of the argument.

"You had our word we would settle the matter in Council," Radu was saying in exasperation, a faint growl in his deep voice. He never wore armour, but he looked strangely out of place in the immaculately tailored businessman’s frockcoat and silk trousers. Radu’s tall frame always seemed to strain at the seems of normal clothing in the same way his father’s unruly Saiyan hair fought to escape the braid he habitually wore. "You were not invited to this Council, gentlemen, and there is no way in hell you will be granted so much as a passing word with Burka."

"Vice-Chancellor Horda," Trunks said without anger. "You have waited fifteen years for an audience with Burka. Why is it so urgent now?"

"Trunks-ouji," Horda of Maiyosh said tensely, scanning the faces if the rumbling crowd around them. "We know Burka blackmailed you into bringing him to Council with the promise of revealing the location of the R&D base on Amshah. We know that in return, he asked to be allowed to name his successor. We cannot have this information second hand. Maiyosh House will only follow a Lord who is named heir in the presence of the entire Corporate Board. We are in disarray, Trunks-sama. Squabbling among ourselves for ascendancy. Without Yamcha-sama we are already on the brink of civil war." The man stopped, his haggard, homely appearance at odds with the delicate elfin features of his people. "We must have a voice in this Council. And to be an effective asset against the Arrak-jin we must be unified. We represent shipyards, factories, supplies and thousands upon thousands of warriors you cannot afford to blithely cast away on the eve of war, Ouji-sama."

"If you sat in attendance in the Council," Trunks asked slowly. "What would you want specifically?"

"We are all cousins to the Royal House," Horda said. "All of us will do as proper candidates. He must name one of us his successor in the presence of the others for the inheritance to be legal. Failing that, if he is obstinate, we would petition that you name a strong regent to succeed Yamcha-sama. A new Shareef-sama."

"He’s not playing games, Trunks," Marron said quietly in Trunks ear. "Horda-san’s the only straight-shooter in the whole rotten bunch."

"And he’s telling the truth about Maiyosh House’s predicament," Lord Corsaris said grimly. Bulma had been so absorbed in the drama between the Corporate Board and Trunks she had not seen the old man standing a little to her son’s right.

Trunks was silent, staring hard at the Maiyosh-jin, considering. "This is not the main order of business today. I’m going to allow your petition, but if there’s a scene of any kind, you’re all going out the door. Head first."

A low angry noise rolled out of the crowd around them. Too many of the Members of Parliament and independent representatives who would sit in Council today had also been delegates on Shikaji. Many of them had very clear memories of having been eaten alive by the Arrak-jin before Bra-chan’s Blue Dragonballs had resurrected them. But Trunks gestured and Torq led the way to remove Burka from the public eye. Pan-chan took Horda-san’s arm and began to guide him and his fellow ministers to a less public place. The press of people thinned out with remarkable speed. The show was over for now.

Bulma turned away from the balcony, her mouth open to tell Roma-chan and the twins that their day of running wild around the capital was over. And, of course, the children were gone. Well, they were strong kids. Roma-chan was very close to going Super Saiyan, Bra-chan said. No one in the city could hurt them and they couldn’t get into that much trouble in a few hours. Maybe. Bulma had a sudden flash of memory as she moved with the crowd around her, weaving her way through the different offices and concerns of the Guildhall business centers, looking for a stairway down to the Exchange. The memory was an oldie but a goodie---the first time she had taken Trunks and both Son boys to a shopping mall. The property manager had only stopped clutching his heart when she offered to rebuild the entire structure.

She finally found a freight elevator off the main corridor and dodged into it. People were clogging up the main stairway like lemming piled up on the edge of a cliff. Just as the lift door closed a man pushed his way out of the crowd and into car beside her.

She froze, some mindless polite phrase poised on her numb lips, gazing into the ivory-skinned face of the man who had crept up on her like an assassin.

"You’re looking well, Bulma-san," Hiru of Ansou-sei said quietly.

She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry of spit. "What the hell are you doing here?" She managed to say.

The pale man’s huge circular-shaped black eyes, the mark of a nocturnal race, narrowed with cold humour. "There are no more magic wishes to bring you back if ill chance befalls you, are there?"

Bulma pressed back against the cold metal of the lift wall, her heart hammering as he took a step forward. She had nothing on her, no weapon at all, to defend herself. At least, nothing that wouldn’t take out the entire Guildhall and half of Keraffta right along with Hiru if she used it.

But the glint of flat murder seemed to die in the Ansousei-jin’s eyes as he gazed at her silently, his face bleak and emotionless. "I’m not here to kill you, Lady. Dying---no, killing myself on Shikaji, clarified many things for me. There’s nothing like dying to distil what you really want down to its essence, is there? I don’t want to kill you. In truth, I don’t even want to see your Saiyan family and friends dead. Especially not your eldest son. Trunks-ouji has brought something to this sector of space most races can’t remember ever having had---freedom and justice." He studied her blankly, his face still unreadable, though…there was something more in his face than there had been on Shikaji. His eyes weren’t dead now, only full of cold purpose. "For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I shot you. You are not evil or a murderer. I don’t want wholesale revenge anymore, Bulma of Chikyuu. I want justice." He took her numb hand and pressed something into her palm. A data chip. "I want justice for what is contained in this vid file. I want a trial. Not a rigged travesty like Burka’s vote on Shikaji. I wish to see Vegita no Ouji stand in the dock for a fair legal trial, ruled over by an honest, impartial judge. I will present my petition to your son today---"

"And Vegita will kill you," she said firmly. "The instant he sees you. There’s no force in the galaxy that will be able to stop him."

"Then he will kill me," Hiru said calmly. "That’s fine with me. There are many others who will use my death to spearhead the petition to try Vegita for mass murder on a planetary scale. Your son cannot turn a blind eye to our pleas for justice forever. Nor can you. View the disc, Lady. Then tell me I have no right to ask for the rule of law in this matter."

"You’re going to divide the Council at a time when we all need to act as one!" Bulma began. "You---"

"I do not believe the threat is real," Hiru said flatly. "I think Son Gokou destroyed the Arrak-jin when he burned up the dragonballs of Chikyuu. I think the threat of the insects has been an effective political tool to unify a fractious galaxy into a parliamentary democracy." He shook his head. "It is past time to give your husband’s victims their day in court. If the Saiyan Empire wishes to move forward, it must make redress for the past."

The lift lurched to a halt with a clumsy clunk. Hiru slipped out the opening door and was gone.

She wondered through the hallways of the Exchange’s office wing, through the Financial office sectors, faces blurring by as she made her way to the suite of rooms Radu always reserved for her and her family whenever they visited. She threw her capsule bag on the bed, decapsulizing luggage and toiletries, wandering through their rooms in a random circle of abstract worry as she unpacked. All the while, she held the data chip clenched in her hand.

She wound up in the bathroom, touching up her makeup, trying to ignore the minute tremor in her always-steady hands and she did so. She stared into the mirror, her brow furrowed, thinking. That night, eighteen years ago, the night we conceived Gita…why did we not bond like Goten and Bra, like Pan and Trunks…like Son-kun and Chi-Chi?

Of course, the biggest, most glaring reason had been that Gurasia’s temporary memory wipe had turned Vegita back into the psychotic killer he’d been when he first set foot on Chikyuu. But, even so, there had been a moment when her mind and Vegita’s had begun the blur together, to merge like lovers’ bodies entwining, thoughts and memories meshing together.

And then, she had drawn back in horror. In revulsion. In sickened grief and nausea at the things she had seen in his mind. The memories of things he had suffered. And things he had done. She had pushed the link, the bond, away. Shoved it back in his face with a scream of terror.

Granted, the mind she had been linking with was not the Vegita she knew, but the rabid, vicious killing machine he had been when he first arrived on Chikyuu. But, even so…

Even so, it had haunted her. Not the memory of the things she had seen in his mind and soul, the shades of the man he had been in his youth, but the simple fact that she had looked into the darkest niches of his soul, the most horrific secrets of his past…and flinched away.

A moment later, she found herself standing before the holo-vid player in the bed chamber. To watch it would be playing directly into Hiru’s hands. Nothing good would come of it. Nothing. She knew that on an intellectual level. But she couldn’t flinch away again. And more importantly, if Hiru meant to shove Vegita’s past down their throats yet again in Council today she had to know what case he would present. What hard proof he meant to use to pressure Trunks.

She loved Vegita. Always. Forever. Whatever heart-rending testimonials Hiru had gathered, she could look at it. She was not a blind naïve fool as Hiru of Ansousei seemed to think, ignorant of Vegita’s old sins, or willingly forgetful.

That Vegita was dead. He bore no resemblance to the man she loved.

She shoved the chip into the holo-vid and hit play.

It was not a victims’ testimonial database. It was a holographic newsfeed. A chronological series of them. She had once joked to Krillan and Yamcha, years before the Cell games, that the journalists of Chikyuu would be happy as children at a birthday party to cover the end of the world, simply because it was the story of the century. It seemed that reporters were the same throughout the galaxy. The news coverage was complete. Horribly, pitifully, heart-breakingly complete. It was the entire tale, shown on holo-vid news cams, of the last days of Ansousei.

She didn’t cry.

She could do nothing but stare, transfixed the way a moth stares into the flame that is slowly consuming it. Finally, when the house to house killing began, she fumbled for the off button. The sight of blasted bodies, of mothers left weeping over limbless shrieking children, of burning schools, houses, hospitals, was all over-laid with the uneven laughter of a boy whose voice cracked with each change of tone. Cracked because his voice was changing. How old had Vegita been here? Thirteen? Fourteen?

Her shaking hand hit the forward button by mistake, and she found herself staring at face of a much younger, very different Hiru of Tsiru-sei.

"I know you’re killing one from each household," Hiru was saying urgently. The angle shifted as the news cam servo-bot moved, settling into a new perch by the burning house. The boy Vegita was sneering down his nose at Hiru, Nappa looming like a living mountain at his shoulder.

"I am ready to die," Hiru said.

"…Hiru." A sob, soft and hopeless, from the woman who knelt in the one corner of the home that still had a bearing wall. She was far gone into the last trimester of her pregnancy. And Vegita’s head snapped around, catching sight of her, his young face twisting with cruel humour.

"Bearing women and new-borns are useless in a slave race," Vegita said coldly. He raised on hand and fired. Hiru’s wife didn’t even have time to scream. There…there had been nothing left of his family to bury but cinders.

And again, that broken laughter, thin-edged with fury and viciousness.

"Two for the price of one, Nappa!" The boy cackled as they turned and left Hiru standing in silent, dry-eyed shock.

Bulma found the off button and hammered her fist down on it as though the force of her blow could unmake the past. She sank down on the floor, one hand clamped over her mouth, not hearing the sound of the door or the hurried footsteps behind her until she felt arms around her, lifting her.

She blinked through the haze of her own horror, staring into the face she loved more than her own life. She made some low wordless noise of sorrow, pressing her face to his chest. He was shaking against her with tension, his entire body knotted up in fear.

"You have remembered something," His voice was choked.

She went still, frowning with momentary confusion. Oh Kami, he was talking about---about the other monumental, life-altering shock she’d had today. She sighed, a little gasping sob. She felt exhausted, heartsick, weary to the bone of too many nasty shocks and losses too close together.

Yamcha’s death, still grinding inside her like an open wound, the Maiyosh-jin boy’s appearance yesterday, the horrific truth of his origins. The terrible realisation on her part that she might very well be completely unable to give him anything a mother should give her child. The coming war which would surely be apocalyptic in scale, looming just over the horizon. And now this.

"No," she said in an amazingly steady voice. "It’s not that. It’s---" She couldn’t tell him, couldn’t get the words past her mouth. "I met Hiru of Ansousei in the Guildhall. He’s alive. He’ll be at the Council today---NO!!!" Her scream, a full-throated shriek, did not seem to register with him. His face had gone white with fury and the room around them seemed to suddenly crackle with smouldering power and wrath. She held onto him with all her might as he tried to pull away, his hands convulsing painfully around her arms. "You can’t kill him! You can’t! Vegita---you’re hurting me!" That froze him in his tracks as he stood poised to bolt out the window after Hiru. He loosened his hold on her, his face a mask of horror he stared at her bruising forearms. She didn’t let go of him, as though she had some mystical power to hold him in place with her touch alone.

"Bulma---I am sorry.I---"

"He wants you to come after him," she said harshly. "To kill him in front of the whole Council, probably. He has friends that will lose use his death to gain support in Parliament to have you arrested and tried for mass murder. The Council will divide between planetary MP’s who believe the Arrak-jin threat and know your strength will help us survive and all those who still think Shikaji was a one-time skirmish. You can’t kill him, Vegita! You can’t!"

He slowly, slowly, sat down on the floor, his breath laboured, her arms still around him. He sat with his back against the bed, his body shaking like a leaf as he fought an uphill battle against his rage at the man who had killed

her on Shikaji. "Did you harm you?" He asked hoarsely, several minutes later.

"No," she whispered. "Just told me what he planned. And he said he was sorry for shooting me. He’s not interested in killing the rest of us anymore. Just you."

"He was that close to you and I did not know it," Vegita grated. "I have been so careful ever since---" He broke off abruptly.

She shifted around to look at his face. A stone wall had more visible expression, but she could feel the violent rage and anguish churning inside him, barely held in check. "I’m not stupid, Vegita," she said. "I did notice that you have never really let me very far out of your sight since Shikaji."

"There is a great deal you did not notice," he murmured. "I made sure of it. You remember, after Shikaji, we spent a year in that broken castle on Farrista."

"Our own private castle on our own private world," she nodded. It had been like the honeymoon they’d never had.

"When we arrived back at Capsule Corp," he went on grimly. "The death threats had filled up the hard drive of the hyper light comm. Threats against me. Threats against you and Gita. Half a dozen times in the last fifteen years, assassins have tried to kill you, Bulma. On one or two occasions, they came inches from succeeding. I saw to them myself and you were never the wiser---"

The crack of her hand striking his face sounded like a fire-cracker exploding. She lowered her hand, cupping it in the other, staring down in amazement as though her palm had struck him of its own accord. It was throbbing as though she’d punched a brick wall.

"I’m sorry," she said tremulously.

Gods, there were too many emotions tearing through her insides to say with any surety why she had slapped him. For killing Hiru’s family? For hiding the attempts on her life from her? For his murderous hatred and loathing for the son she’d never born? That brave, heart-broken child who was utterly innocent of the circumstances surrounding his birth. Oh Kami, she had to talk to the boy, reassure him she didn’t despise him like---like Vegita did…

"You should have told me," was all she said.

"They will keep coming for you," he told her. He had dropped his arms to his sides, fists clenched against the desperate wish to hold her, to make things all right between them. "There was no resurrection for you. Bra’s dragonballs were inactive, and the Tsiru-jin brat frightened the Nameks into hiding their set in a pocket dimension for eleven years. I did not wish to see you live in constant fear for your life. For Gita’s life, before he grew strong enough to defend himself. It is a terrible thing to rise each day and wonder, ‘Is this the day I die?’" His jaw set stubbornly, his black eyes hard and unapologetic. "I did not wish to see you live that way."

The silence grew between them until it was deafening.

"Something else is wrong," he said. There was no question in that statement.

She gazed back at him, clenching her back into a pose of rigid attention to keep her shoulders from shaking. "Hiru gave me a data chip of newsfeed footage from Ansousei’s last days," she said numbly. "I watched it. I saw you…I saw---" She couldn’t look at him, tried to turn away, but he caught her. And the horror, the disgust, the sorrowing grief at what she had seen, burst the dam of her fragile control. She began to sob, pounding against his chest with her fists. "How could you do it?! Oh Kami, how?! You k-killed pregnant women and screaming children. Not with ki attacks, w-with you own hands! And---and you were laughing! You were laughing the whole time! You---" She ended the sentence with a wordless wail that trailed off into hoarse sobbing.

"You knew what I had been from the first, Bulma," he said.

He wasn’t holding her. His arms were at his sides. He hadn’t responded at all to the pitiful blows she had landed on his chest. He wasn’t defending himself at all. Not even with words. All the anger drained away, leaving her feeling hollow inside. As hollow as the deaths of her parents had left her, the first losses of her life that were irrevocable. As hollow and mournful as when Son-kun and Krillan had come together to tell her of Yamcha’s death.

"I knew," she agreed brokenly. She leaned her head against his breast, listening to the strong, steady rhythm. "I thought I knew." She looked up, meeting his eyes, and nearly began weeping again at the bleak, hopeless despair she saw in his face. She kissed his mouth. "I haven’t stopped loving you."

She felt him shudder with relief against her. "I love you!" She said again, fiercely. "I’ll never stop loving you."

They sat together in silence, her arms around him, each thinking their own thoughts. She slowly shifted around to straddle his waist, his head against her heart. The boy, Jeiyce’s son, and---and now this…they would work it out. There was always an answer to any problem, any obstacle, if you loved each other.

After a long while, he shifted and drew back. His eyes said he had come to a decision. "It is not enough that I am not as I was," he said. "Honor must be satisfied. Cho-gugol is a debt that does not sleep or lessen with the passage of years."

"No!" She said sharply. "You won’t give yourself to Hiru and his---"

"I will not," he agreed solemnly. "But cho-gugol must be paid. I will find a way."

"Not for me," she began.

"Yes," he said. "For you. But only in part." He touched her face. "I wish to have you think of me as you thought of me an hour ago." He stopped her words of protest with a soft kiss. "I have never been a hero---"

"Bullshit," she said flatly.

"---But…" He frowned in frustration, struggling as always, when it came to speaking his heart. "I---I have been your hero."

"You still are!" She angrily wiped away the tears that were trailing down her cheeks.

"Do not lie and say you see me in the same way you did before you watched the death of Ansousei," he growled with soft implacability.

And to that, she had no answer.

"I will find a way to repay my debts," he said. His eyes grew flat and cold. "But not to Hiru. He was repaid in full for Ansousei when he struck his dirty bargain with Burka and took your life! If he speaks in Council today---" Rage, brewing beneath the surface, all the blood-red killing rage he was repressing, poured out of him like physical heat. "I do not know if I will be able to stop myself from killing him."

"You can do anything you set your mind to," she said softly. "I never told you this, but that’s one of the first things I loved about you."

He tried to give her a rueful smirk, but his face suddenly froze, his eyes unfocusing, seeing, hearing, something she could not.

"What?" She asked. "What’s happening?"

"I am not sure," he rumbled, standing, lifting her to her feet as he did. "Kakarott---he is in a rage. There is no danger, no fight, but his ki is…I must go!" He began to disengage himself from her.

"We must go," she said firmly.

His face was tense with the expectation of trouble, but he gave a quick nod. "Yes," he agreed.

Go-chan lay awake, listening. Her parents and both doctors had only left her alone in the little sterile, hospital-depression-gray, recovery room after she had obediently swallowed a heavy sedative an hour ago. She climbed out of bed carefully, as silently as she could manage. Outside, in the main patients’ ward, her father’s voice was talking softly to someone she couldn’t quite place. The voice sounded so familiar, but…different.

"Everything seems to have settled down now," the other man said quietly. "The crowd dispersed pretty quickly after they removed Burka from

public view. I didn’t mean to disturb you, Gokou-san, while your daughter is ill---"

"You could never disturb us, Trunks-kun," her mother said adamantly.

Trunks?

No…Mirai Trunks.

Cool! Go-chan thought, as she quietly pulled her clothes on, listening furtively for any hint of someone approaching the door. There was no hint of her father’s ki skimming the edges of her consciousness every few minutes as he had done during the trip from Chikyuu, checking to make sure she was safe and sound in her cabin. He had apparently relaxed the moment she was safely asleep. Their voices were moving away, probably toward the cafeteria if she knew her father.

She had been safely asleep until about a half hour ago. Something had drawn her gently, but irresistibly up out of a sweet, warm dream of strong arms and a warm kissable mouth, towing her toward consciousness like a fish on a line.

Wake up, Son Gokouko, the dream voice had said.

She shivered, chilled and hot all over at the same time, as she remembered than voice. Heat dreams, maybe, if there were such a thing.

But something was pulling at her now, a gentle, but unbreakable tugging sensation. Saying get up, get out. Saying…

She slipped out the door and then through the waiting room window. And she was free.

She wandered through the crowds of the bazaar, bristling irritably at the apprehensive and downright hostile stares she drew here and there. Stupid people. She made a weaving sweep of the stalls, veering this way and that in places when something interesting caught her eye. But always drawn back to one particular direction, as thought she were homing to…something.

Her body seemed fine. Little waves of dizziness came and went, but they were nothing to what they had been. She would have to explore, see what there was to see, and be back soon, she knew. Within the hour, her parents would come to check up on her if the Madrani doctor didn’t first. If she were caught, she would have to face Kassan’s wrath, and worse than that, Toussan’s ‘I’m sort of disappointed, Go-chan’ look, which could always move her to repentant tears when her mother’s tirades had no affect. But she had to get out, ‘pulling tugging’ sensation or no ‘pulling tugging’ sensation, real or imagined. She needed to get out and away, escape the cloying microscope of everyone’s focused worry and apprehension. She glowered, growling softly in her chest. Everyone, everyone she knew, knew about her ‘condition’. Knew she had been in heat, like---like some kind of breeding animal. She didn’t want to see anyone in her family for a while. She---

"Hey!"

She whirled and nearly bared her teeth, nearly snarled aloud. Gita and Maiyosh-jin boy were advancing on her. "What do you want?" She growled nastily.

Gita’s face, so happy to see her up and around and out of the medics’ clutches, fell. The red-skinned boy beside him actually took a step back.

"Uh…I’m sorry," she said uncomfortably.

"It’s okay." His smile, that sweet effortless smile that had always diffused her temper, took the edge off the slow burning sensation that had begun to build inside her.

She took a deep breath and let it out. "Don’t tell anyone you saw me away from the Medplex."

He frowned worriedly. "But…what if you’re still…you know?"

"I’m not!" She snapped. The Maiyosh-jin boy jumped visibly. "The doctors proved that when Toussan brought you to the exam room. I just…I need to be by myself for a little while," she went on, fighting for calm. "Without anyone looking at me. Just don’t tell, okay?"

"Okay," he said, still sounding unsure. "I guess you’re fine if we’re not, um, reacting to each other. Just don’t say we saw you if you get caught. Poppa’ll be mad and Momma will make me wish I was never born."

"Deal," she said. The Maiyosh-jin boy was regarding her curiously, edging closer. "Who’s your friend?"

"This is Johny," Gita said. "He’s my little brother from an alternate timeline where Poppa died on Shikaji when we were babies."

"Hi," said the boy uncertainly. His eyes were Chikyuu-jin blue, the exact same shade as Bulma-san’s.

"Hi," she replied mechanically. She thought she had done a pretty good job of processing that information. "So, that makes two people from different timelines on Madran. I just saw Mirai Trunks at the Medplex. Well---heard him talking to Toussan, anyway."

"Mirai Trunks is here?" Johny asked wide-eyed. "Can I meet him?"

"We’ll all get to see him pretty soon," Go-chan said. "Gita and I have only ever heard stories about him, too. Toussan said he would be coming from Maiyosh Prime with Marron-san and the twins."

"Prallin and Haysel are here?" Johny asked, his face lighting up.

"You know them?" Gita asked curiously.

"They were on Chikyuu when—when everybody died on Shikaji," Johny said.

Go-chan frowned. This was getting too weird to deal with right now.

"You know," Gita was saying. He shot a sly grin at the Maiyosh-jin boy and turned back to her, his black eyes full of bright mischief. "If you can keep a huge secret, come with us to Skoy-san’s workshop and I’ll show you more ‘alternate people’ than you can imagine."

"I’ve got the quantum interstitial algorithms down," Johny said eagerly. "But I can’t wait to see your code revision in process."

"It’s really built on a theoretical platform of the gateway cube Mirai Bulma built to send Trunks and all the survivors from their time here," Gita said.

"The principal is the same," Johny nodded, "But to see if the new code will reconfigure the Loom into a physical portal someone would have to try stepping through and---"

"I’ll pass," Go-chan said. If she had doubted the red-skinned boy was Bulma-san’s son, she didn’t now. The last thing she wanted to do right now was sit in some boring workshop and listen to both boys babble happily in the incomprehensible language of techno-jargon.

She should have found the Maiyosh-jin boy’s appearance more interesting, she thought, as she continued through the Bazaar, leaving them to their nerdy entertainments. It spoke volumes about her mood that she did not. She began to slowly shy away from the multihued crowds and the stalls full of fascinating merchandise from a hundred different worlds. That pulling sensation was back now and it was stronger. Much stronger. It was drawing her through the city as thought she were a compass needle being forced toward unerring north. And at some point, as she entered the main square of the city’s capital and mounted the steps of what she vaguely recognised as the Madrani Interstellar Museum of the Arts, she realised she could not stop herself. She could no more halt the forward progression of her feet than a puppet on a string could master its own limbs. Still, she didn’t really begin to feel true panic until she reached the Museum’s main foyer and the world went fuzzy, tilting lazily to one side.

Her fever was rising again. No---it had been rising steadily since she left the Med Complex and now it was worse than it had been since last night. She was not well. She was not ‘over it’ yet. Kami, how could she have been so stupid and reckless?! But…she hadn’t been reckless, had she? As she levitated gently, following the trail through a maze of pristine corridors, past the public exhibits and away from the small crowds of school children and teachers that always populated such places, she tried purposefully, desperately, to stop moving. And she couldn’t. She hadn’t journeyed here out of some foolish curiosity, hadn’t left the safety of the Medplex on a hunch or a whim. Something had drawn her here like a fish on a line and now…now she faltered, lost her equilibrium and fell to her knees, dizzy, disoriented. Terrified. She had never felt real fear. Not like this. Not creeping up her spine like ice water as her perception blurred, as her balance centers began to rebel.

It was like a mental hand clamped over her mouth, staying the silent cry to her father before she even uttered it.

She gave a soft little sob of fear as she stood, as her feet obeyed. She was standing on the threshold of an isolated exhibit hall, though she had no idea how she had gotten here. She dug her nails into her palms, drawing blood, trying to stop moving forward, trying to regain something like clarity, and somehow managed to halt. She was in the center of the exhibit salon now, fists clenched, her feet finally, mercifully obedient.

The voice…she knew that voice. Knew it as intimately, as thoroughly as she knew the voices of her own family. She was shaking all over, shivering and burning alive at the same time. Her fever had spiked up again, sky-rocketing in the last few seconds. She gazed around her, trying to focus. Try to see where she was a little better.

It wasn’t just her fever chilling her bones. It was cold in here. The entire hall was full of glittering ice sculptures, every one of them lovely and utterly unique. It was…it was a white, shimmering fairyland of----

She saw him.

He was pale and shining, like every other cold, beautiful thing in this room. But he dimmed them all, every jewel-like exquisite sculpture around him. He made them all dull by comparison. Dingy. In the delirious, fever-blind haze around her, he was the only thing that was clear, the one thing in the world that stayed in focus. She closed the distance between them without thinking, all her fear gone in an instant of heart-stopping recognition. She stared up into his eyes in wonder. They were the deep rich crimson of fresh blood filtered through a luminous full moon.

"I know you…" Her heart was slamming against her breastbone. "I’ve always known you."

It was him. The beautiful pale boy who had…who had…

"You left me," she whispered almost angrily, as a half-waking memory of wrenching grief and abandonment shivered through her.

"I swore I would see you again." That strong, male baritone, almost too silky and beautiful to be a man’s voice, sent a sizzling current of dizzy heat tearing through every nerve ending in her body.

She stepped closer still, almost touching what she knew could not truly be real. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be. He was and had always been an image in her mind, an ivory-skinned dream warrior who---

She gasped, high and terrified, her breath sticking in her throat, as she finally saw him, as she finally took in the whole visage of the man before her. She recoiled half a step. Then two. Then three. She had only ever seen his face in her dreams, she thought numbly. Which explained why she had never realised that he was…he was Tsiru-jin. He was---

"Gurasia," she breathed. "You’re Gurasia of Tsiru-sei!"

She began to stumble back clumsily. Then something snapped inside her, all her courage flown like morning mist, and she turned and ran. Hands like living ice caught her easily, turning her back to face him, and she shrieked like a terrified child as something touched her face, burning her cheek like cold fire.

He dropped his hand. And all the cold arrogance that ruined his perfect ivory features, that seemed to sit on his face like a mask worn so long it had become a second skin, fell away. He looked horrified. Horrified and heart-broken.

"I am sorry," he said softly.

Thought and feeling came flooding into her mind. Fool! Imbecilic fool! I cannot even touch her flesh to flesh without searing her warm skin with frostbite. There is no hope, Father. Not for you. Not for me. Not for her.

Those words, as clear and distinct as though he had uttered them aloud, carried so much despairing anguish and aching loneliness she felt tears stinging her eyes. He should never hurt, never be sad, never have anything bad happen to him!

She raised her ki, flaring upward to the limit of her power, not knowing why or what she hoped to achieve, only that she could not bear to see him in pain for any reason. She watched as he raised his hand again, tentatively, his ruby eyes full of apprehension, raw and unaffected.

His touch, his hand, was no longer burning cold through the blazing heat of her ki. The palm of his hand cupping her face, his fingertips brushing hesitantly across her lips, was cool and soothing, even as it seemed to stoke the fire that had begun inside her. Burning away thought and sanity. Burning away every sensation and desire expect his touch and her growing need to hold him, taste his mouth and his blood, feel his cool hands and mouth on her body and…

"Is this desire?" He asked hoarsely. His face was flushed with his own blood, a light violet hue against his white skin. His hand caressing her face was trembling. His eyes were full of startled wonder that was quickly giving way to a white-hot burn that matched her own.

"I think so," she whispered, her breath caught in her throat.

"It is inutterably sweet," he murmured. He paused almost uncertainly, one hand still cupping her cheek, trailing down to the hollow of her throat. It came to her suddenly that he was at a loss, as unbalanced by this---this whatever-it-was as her. He simply stared at her, as though unsure of what to do next.

She tried to speak, to frame a coherent question. "What’s happening? Why are we…we…"

His hand traced its way down her throat, halting just above the swell of her breasts. "No questions now," he said a little breathlessly. "Later…"

She reached up and touched his lips, as red as though he’d rouged them, but incongruously masculine, so very male. He was right. It didn’t matter how or why, not right now. He was hers and had always been. He opened his mouth, tasting the tiny pearl drops of blood where her nails had cut into her palms and hissed aloud with reaction. The arm he had slowly bent around the small of her back tightened harshly and she was suddenly pressed against the length of his body, her ragged breath falling into sync with his.

There was a tiny, sharp pain as his teeth tore open one of the cuts in her palm, widening it, sending her blood streaming into his mouth. Her head snapped back in a long soundless gasp, her ki rising like a tidal wave, beyond anything she’d ever achieved. She leapt upward with a feral snarl, burying her teeth in his shoulder at the base of his neck. His life poured into her mouth, cold and strong and sweet, like sugared ice water after a long desert trek. She could vaguely hear him moaning softly, feel him shaking against her. She could feel his hardness pressed against her belly through the thick white rubbery armour he was wearing. Her hands grasped at the ivory battlesuit angrily. It covered every inch of his body except his face and hands and fit him like a second skin. How the hell did it come off?!

She cried out in fury as he tore her from his shoulder, turning her roughly to face away from him, pinioning her against his body, his tail coiled around her waist in a vise-like grip. One twist or her wrist, and her blouse and bra came off in a single motion. She curled one arm up and back, gripping him behind the neck, pulling his head down to the base of her throat. His hands were moving over her newly exposed skin, touching everything he could find. She could feel his curiosity and fascination of the differences in her body and his, the gentle curves and valleys, the skin as soft as powered snow under his fingertips. He tasted the skin on her shoulder with his tongue, a short hesitant flick. One hand found her breast, gently squeezing, and she felt a thrill of satisfaction and need ripple through him as she moaned softly, pressing back against him, lost to any coherent words.

He was shuddering all over, his other hand pressed against her belly, steadying her against him, and she could feel a terrible fear rising in him like---then he froze. He didn’t move for a full minute, though he was still shaking, shivering like a man with a fever. All the sense of him, his mind, his thoughts and feelings, suddenly began to dissipate into nothingness. I will lose myself in her, be lost completely, never to recover my own mind or heart again. I must have control! Of myself. Of her. I must stay in control or the bond will—will drown me inside her!

Then, he was gone. She whimpered softly, unsure of what had just happened. She only knew she couldn’t feel him anymore. Him, his soul, his heart, all the most important parts of him were gone. He had just---just locked them away. He had shut her out, leaving her with nothing but his body.

An instant later, she found that the body was far from shut away, far from indifferent. And she was too far gone to even consider turning back. She made a soft wordless noise as he grazed her shoulder, just a small, tiny nick of the skin. He nipped her shoulder, drawing another little dot of blood. Then he did it again. And again. And again until she shrieked in a mad fury of frustration and blind need.

A soft, throaty, hissing chuckle in her ear. "What it is you need so desperately, little monkey?"

"You!" She sobbed. "Stop…teasing!"

"Ask nicely," he purred against her throat. "Say…" Another chuckle. "Say, ‘Please, Holy Lord.’ Say, ‘I beg you, Gurasia-sama.’"

Nothing else, she reflected much later, would have brought her plummeting back to cold lucidity. What---what the hell was happening!? What was she doing!? And on the heels of that thought, the subdued spark

of her volatile, ever-present temper flared to life.

"Beg?" She shifted in the immovable iron grip of his arms and tail, trying desperately to think straight. "…no begging!" she growled.

He tensed behind her in surprise. Then she felt it, even through the shield he had set between them in his mind. A quick sharp twist of arrogant anger. He poured over her, drowning her in a sea of his will, his thoughts, his desire for her. She saw, felt, his desire to hold her, have her, explore every new, delicious, sweet sensation the union of their two bodies could afford. To see her smiling, kneeling before him sweet and accommodating, so full of eager, obedient adoration, so---

"Fuck…you…" She growled the words out through gritted teeth.

"All in good time." The hand caressing her tummy smoothed lower still, almost but not quite brushing the apex of her thighs, and the desire rose up inside her again, unquenchable, uncontrollable, and all thought and sense receded. She craned her head around and his tongue, cool and twinned like a snake’s, flicked across her parted lips. That soft, wicked, wicked laughter again. "But first you must learn to obey---"

It all happened very quickly.

Go-chan had a half-instant impression of her father’s face, so full of towering, thunderous wrath she barely recognised him. Then Gurasia was torn away from her and the room exploded in a shower of molten marble and ice.

* * * * *

(Next Chapter: Quite a few things finally hit the fan.)