Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ A Shadow in the Twilight ❯ Chapter 37 ( Chapter 37 )

Author's note: Not slacking, y'all, I swear! Just really, really busy! But fear not! More chapters are coming your way, my faithful (and very patient) readers, just as soon as NansJns beta's the darn things. In the immortal words of the one and only Bugs Bunny: Jeez, ain't I a stinker?

Chapter 37

Prince Vegeta was almost upon her, his right hand cocked back for the powerful roundhouse punch that would almost certainly knock her down or kill her. To him, this minor difference hardly mattered; all he knew was that he wanted his revenge and, by Kami, he was going to get it!

Lluvia stood her ground, her stance unchanged. Her arms were upraised with the sword held shoulder-high, not in attack position, but as if she was presenting a gift to her attacker. Simultaneously, the king and Zarbon sucked in their breaths, waiting for the crushing blow to slam into her unmoving form. It was a blow that did not come.

At the last second, Lluvia twisted the bottom edge of the blade slightly upward so that it caught a down-turned ray of afternoon sunlight from above and to the right of her on its flat surface, reflecting the now-concentrated beam directly into the charging prince's retinas. The stark glare lanced right into his dark eyes in a painful, blinding strobe. His eyelids reflexively shut themselves against the bright assault, causing his forward momentum to slow just a trace, still carrying him into her, or rather, through her lingering afterimage, and he half-stumbled to a stop.

Lluvia's spectral image wavered in the air for a second or two around her unseeing opponent before fading altogether. Prince Vegeta blinked several times, feverishly rubbing his eyes in an effort to get rid of the annoying red and yellow blotches that kept popping up in front of his nose. The spectators watched as Lluvia's form re-materialized near the doorway, the sword held in her right hand and her left hand held down close to her body, away from immediate view. Though not quickly enough for him, the strobe spots finally cleared and a very pissed-off Prince Vegeta turned with a snarl, ready to begin anew.

Above him, a bothersome hissing sound began to emerge from the audience: "…hsss…hsss…" Ever curious, he cocked his head a little to better make out what the voices were saying. "…his hair!" "…his hair!"

Slowly turning to face the prince, Lluvia extended her upraised left fist, which she deliberately relaxed to release the contents within. Everyone watched in horrified fascination as the handful of dark rust-brown strands trickled one-by-one out of her loosened hand and onto the floor. The sole inheritor to Vegeta-sei's throne frantically ran his gloved fingers upwards through his crowning glory to discover that the topmost ends of his proud, upswept coiffure had been neatly sliced off.

More than one person gasped aloud, sobered with the realization that, with her facile speed, she could have just as easily lopped off Prince Vegeta's head with that one stroke. And he would never have felt the lethal edge pass through…

Had Lluvia opted to kill him outright, Prince Vegeta's subjects, not to mention his father, would have fallen upon her like a pack of Saiya-jin wolves and happily torn her apart. Well aware of this from the get-go, she was also cognizant that there was no way that she could begin to confront an entire planet of warrior beings blindly loyal to their sole prince and expect to leave with any part of her lilac-skinned hide intact. Only an absolute fool would have welcomed that suicidal scenario, and Master Akira Masaki's star pupil was nobody's fool. Besides, she was no cold-blooded killer. The prince was a bona-fide bastard, but she had no desire to have his blood on her hands.

Lluvia hummed a little tune under her breath and the katana began to hum a reply, causing the silvery metal to grow white-hot. At the sight of the glowing weapon, the Saiya-jin prince took a few short, involuntary steps backward, as a small wave of fear chilled his heart.

"It's been fun, your highness, but I gotta run!" she called out to him. With a keening war-cry on her lips, she pivoted around and buried the blade into the wall to the left of the doorway, right up to the hilt.

Her muscles bunched and strained as Lluvia wrenched the Dragon's Kiss through the wall in a clock-wise, circular cut. She started the rough circle around the forty-five degree mark, continuing down and around. Hopefully, her labors would soon yield a large enough opening through which she could wriggle out and affect her escape. Once that was accomplished, her subsequent plan was get to the launch pad so that she could procure one of the space vehicles moored there and get off-planet before anyone could follow.

Hot metal sparks flew in bright arcs all around her, landing on her hair, body and onto the floor. They stung her exposed skin and burned scores of tiny holes into the thin material of her outfit. Ordinarily, the intense heat of the katana could easily slice through any given metal, like a hot knife through butter, but the materials used to make this construct were proving to be more resistant than she had anticipated. What was infinitely worse than the burning beestings of the flying sparks was the terrible discordant sound her efforts were generating.

The alloyed metal was not taking the violation of the Dragon's Kiss very well. From the moment that Lluvia plunged the blade into its surface, it began to emit an almost tortured scream, as if all nine levels of hell had opened up and assembled into one loud, nightmarish chorus.

Zarbon, King Vegeta, and the others on the observation deck were not spared the awful cacophony. The horrific sound made everyone immediately cover their ears and caused all of the Saiya-jins' tails to stick straight up and out, bottle-brushing them to nearly twice their sleek, unruffled sizes. Even Zarbon felt like even the tiniest piece of downy fuzz on his body was standing at aching attention. The bloody racket was even making his skin hurt! Long, green strands on his braided head were waving wildly in the air, charged with demonic static electricity. Fortunately for the audience, their aural agony was relatively short-lived, thanks to a quick-thinking Puerro, who happened to be nearest the master volume control for the outside audio feed and cut the switch off after a few agonizing minutes.

The two warriors in the training dome were not so blessed as the outside observers, as the reverberations of metal against metal continued to echo cruelly off the inner walls and assailed both their ears. Prince Vegeta immediately fell to his knees, his gloved palms pressed hard against the sides of his head over his stricken ears. His own red-brown appendage stuck straight up behind him in a quivering, bristling exclamation mark. Grunting with the effort, Lluvia also felt the shrieking vibrations feed directly through her trembling muscles and bones from the katana, as well as through her unprotected ears.

Glancing periodically over her right shoulder to assess the Saiya-jin prince's status, she hoped that the steady noise level would be enough to keep him incapacitated and, so far, it was doing the trick. She let go, for less than a heartbeat, shifting her grip on the handle in order to better drag it along its circular incision.

With Lluvia's back now fully turned toward him, the wily prince briefly glanced up, while staying down on his knees and noting the minor change in her stance. As he continued to flinch from the hellish din, he bided his time, waiting and watching for the next time when Lluvia would have to release both her hands from the katana's handle. He didn't have to wait long.

The blade's leading edge only had a few more inches left before both ends of the circle would come together.

Just a little further, she prayed, feeling a sense of jubilant relief grow inside of her. Then, I'm gonna be so out of here! She opened both hands to re-adjust her grip for what she thought was the last time.

Quick as a wink, Prince Vegeta rose up and leapt, covering the few feet between them, seizing her from behind and wrapping his forearms under and around her upper arms in an unyielding, standing full-nelson. The classic move violently jerked her arms up and out from her shoulder sockets.

Angrily cursing for assuming he'd been rendered helpless and hissing with the pain, she squirmed and thrashed, but to no visible effect. Prince Vegeta held firm, steadily moving in measured steps, taking both of them back and away from the still-glowing katana.

Dammit! Lluvia cried in her mind with frustration. I was so friggin' close!

Despite the residual ringing in his ears, the prince smirked in triumph, feeling the wriggle and twist of her body against him like the trapped prey she was.

A very original move, dancer, he thought, believing that victory was already his. But such trickery will never defeat one who has the blood of the finest Saiya-jin warriors flowing through his royal veins!

Assured of his win, Prince Vegeta leaned in towards the back of her neck and inhaled her fragrance.

Hmm, I can detect the scent of that third-class soldier on her, he thought in passing. She really does smell good; like a spicy, ripe fruit, ready to be devoured. My father will be quite pleased with you, female, once I have you fully broken in! Heh! Perhaps, I'll just take a little taste for myself before I hand you over to him…

Lluvia's stomach was flip-flopping in the middle of a panicked dance, when she suddenly felt the soft touch of a wet tongue lightly flicking into the fragrant crease behind her right ear. At the unwelcome sensation, her entire body went rigid with shock and immediately arrested in its struggle, as all coherent thought took flight from her mind. In an instinctive, protective reflex, her violet ki aura crackled in an upward spiral around her form, infusing her convulsing body from the bottom of her boots to the top of her head, as a feral rage overcame her. Her hands rapidly double-clenched then fisted into two white-knuckled balls.

Out in space…

Looking out through his viewport, Bardock fidgeted impatiently as he watched his crimson home-planet loom larger as his spacepod neared it. The practical side of him knew that it would only be a matter of a few more minutes before the pod would finally hit Vegeta-sei's outer atmosphere. Then he would be passing through the heat of re-entry, and finally, into an absorption circle on the landing pad; but the time seemed to crawl along at a snail's pace.

Even though she'd blocked him out of their bond, he could feel an intermittent zephyr touch come through their connection, which was faint enough to be reassuring, but unsettling at the same time.

Without warning, an alarming jolt of psychic energy hit him squarely in the middle of his chest. The forceful sensation shoved him back into the padding of his seat and nearly knocked the wind out of him. It took a number of panting intakes to regain his normal breathing pattern.

((LLUVIA! WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU?)) he cried out to her, but it was as useless as shouting directly into the vacuum of space itself.

I will not allow that terrible vision to become reality, he vowed, pressing his clenched fists onto his thighs as the nightmare-image of Lluvia's dead body flashed into his mind again. I can do it! If only this stupid pod would move just a little faster!