Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ A Shadow in the Twilight ❯ Chapter 27 ( Chapter 27 )

Chapter 27

The planet's name was listed on the interstellar cartographs as Terraflora, or "Land of Flowers". Not that its name, or anything else, would matter once Bardock's crew got through with it. The orders from Planet Trade were quite concise: Clear the planet of its inhabitants, one way or another.

Scanner droneships sent out several months earlier had detected substantial ore deposits of a rare, energy-absorbing mineral known as monaxium on Terraflora that could be mined out for at least a couple of decades to come. What did it matter that the mining process would eventually leave the planet dead and uninhabitable? The only colonizers Frieza was going to send to this backwater mudball were mining techs and worker bots. Aand those would only be in residence for as long as it would take to deplete and ship out the deeply buried natural reserves.

The few metropolitan centers that were of any note were the first to fall under the invaders' ki blasts. The rest of the planet's inhabitants were scattered in small agrarian holdings over the surface of the planet. Most of these weaklings fled the destruction as best they could in disorganized, frightened packs, but the mercenaries' scouters easily located them before the escapees could get too far. Dispatching them was proving to be downright anti-climactic.

It didn't take long for Bardock to become disgusted and bored with his crew's current assignment. These pathetic creatures were not even putting up even a micron's worth of resistance! There was no challenge!

Feh, he clucked disappointedly to himself, watching as his crew laughed uproariously and blew away the terrified creatures, one by one. It's like shooting fish in a bloody barrel! This stupid jaunt's been a sheer waste of Saiya-jin talent and manpower. But, leave it to Toma! At least, he and the others are managing to make it somewhat entertaining!

The insistent chirping of his scouter unit in his left ear pulled his attention away from the action at hand. The tinted readout was telling him that a significant energy level was detected approximately seventy-five yards to the south, just beyond a small rise in the formerly floral-blanketed plain. With all the smoke clouds billowing around him, he was unable to secure an immediate visual confirmation, so he strolled over to where he could obtain a better look-see. His scouter indicated that he was getting closer to the life reading, but the smoke was just was thick, if not thicker, as where he began his search. A small, whimsical breeze chose that moment to brush over a field of charred stems, unexpectedly clearing a space nearly twenty feet wide. The directional readout pinpointed an indistinct life form, which was solidifying as the clouds pulled away, revealing a small being, possibly a child, standing just beyond the smoky cloudbank.

Bardock smirked as he slowly raised his right hand, summoning up just a smidgen of his considerable ki power to create a killing beam.

This is really too damned easy! Besides, I can't let Toma and the others have all the fun, he thought as he waited for a clear view of his target.

The ball of destructive ki hovered in the air just in front of the Saiya-jin's outfacing palm, ready to launch, when a pair of dark blue eyes, the color of a velvet midnight sky, suddenly affixed onto his. A tiny girl child, possibly no older than four or five standard years, was humming a quiet song under her breath and regarding him with a solemn expression. From head to toe, she wore a dusty coating of the gray grime of destruction, which effectively obscured whatever color her skin and hair would normally have been.

Down the line of sight that his muscular arm provided, Bardock stared back at the child's disturbingly serene face.

Those eyes are way too large for that little face, he mused, startling himself with the unspoken observation.

The harsh sounds of explosions and agonized screams faded from the periphery of his consciousness as he continued to focus on her steady, fearless gaze. His arm stayed in its elevated position, but the ki ball slowly shrank in circumference and then dissolved totally.

For a few moments, the young Saiya-jin warrior and dust-covered child studied each other, remaining as still as hewn statues. Only their hair and clothing moved, caught up in a few of the random breezes. He noted that she held something between her tiny, cupped hands, holding it securely, but tenderly enough so that it would not be crushed. Still humming her little tune, she bent her dusty head down to regard her treasure, her eyes following the path of his curious gaze towards her hands.

Like a flower shyly opening to the first rays of the morning sun, her grimy hands parted to show him what she held, and he realized what she had been protecting so ardently. The edges of its outer pink-tinted petals were ripped, but the miniscule lotus blossom was, for the most part, relatively intact. From her distant position, she slowly held her hands up to the Saiya-jin warrior. In her simple gesture, she was offering him the carefully harbored bloom. His arm finally dropped back to his side as surprise pierced his heart. Her gentle, starry eyes found his once more, no rancor or hate abiding in them--just hope reflecting in those glistening midnight orbs.

A prickly sensation in the back of his mind formed words sung with a child's voice, her voice:

((I will remember you!))

For a brief, insane moment, Bardock felt the urge to sweep the child up and take her somewhere safe, but an orphan wind gust carrying some sandy dirt suddenly flew up into his eyes, causing him to tear and blink hard at the irritation, and broke his connection to the girl-child. Bardock instinctively brought both fists up to wipe the grit-laden wetness from the corners of his eyes. At the same time, Toma burst through the dusty cloudbank behind him, calling out his friend's name. When Bardock looked back to where the child had stood just a split-second ago, she was gone. His scouter could no longer detect any nearby life forms. It was as if the cloudbank itself had reclaimed her as one of its own. Or had she really existed at all? When grilled by Bardock, Toma confirmed that his own scouter had registered two notable life energies, but only for a few seconds. Of the two, the only substantial one that had remained in the immediate vicinity was Bardock's. At Bardock's insistence, all the Saiya-jin warriors searched around, carefully looking for any trace of the elusive cloud-child, but to no avail, save for a single lotus blossom petal that Bardock himself found; and he couldn't be sure it was from her flower. According to everyone's scouters, all sentient life forms on the planet had either been eradicated or captured, as outlined by their instructions from Planet Trade.

Toma thumped his bewildered friend on the back in congratulations of a job well done. "Chalk up another successful mission for the Saiya-jin clean-up crew," he laughingly told his commander.