Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Consacra ❯ Conditioned 2 - Confrontation ( Chapter 4 )

CONDITIONED

 

Chapter 2: Confrontation

 

He stared at the ceiling, the continuous drone of silence in his ears. There was only the soft slide of skin under the fabric of his bodysuit as his taut muscles relaxed against the mattress.

 

He realized he had not heard his own voice for a long time. Only the metallic whirring of machinery and the clicking of the keyboard on the ship's computer. He was surrounded by absence.

 

Perhaps he would rest before he arrived at his next destination. Even in the absence of danger, he had slept less than he could have in the last several weeks. It was in his conditioning to minimize sleep even when time was abundant.

 

In abundance, time was an agent of rust. Soldiers knew this truth intimately.

 

He closed his eyes and allowed his mind to drift. He might fall asleep, or his thoughts might keep him awake.

 

He had the blood and title of a prince, and the soul and mind of a soldier. There was no question that conditioning trumped heritage. He could assert his title before others, but his words would always ring empty inside him. What he was and what he should be were two different things. Only one was real.

 

For the first five years of his life, he had been a prince. He had been taught that a monarch must not let any small detail, any shadow of a threat, escape his notice. A prince had to be aware of all potentialities at all times, and made it a cardinal objective to master the unknown. For the three decades following his father's death, he had become a soldier. His royal grooming had been replaced by harsh military training: to focus on one task at a time, blocking out all distractions and periphery details in order to complete the assignment at hand. It had kept him alive through disastrous missions and failed purges, kept him focused through the sensory overload of brutal bloodshed and violence during his first real brushes with death in large-scale battles and outright massacres.

 

But between each battle stretched long periods of inactivity, of staring blankly into the black void of space en route to missions, gambling or whoring when such entertainment was available, training when he could find a suitable facility.

 

Soldiers were left to their own devices to figure out how to deal with boredom, which easily led to restlessness. Restlessness, in turn, was only a step away from discovering the truth.

 

The truth was meaninglessness. Movement and action, thought and interaction served as handy covers for the emptiness that lay at the core of all life. Many never faced the truth, whether it was out of cowardice, foolish idealism, or brainless ignorance. Most clung to a reason, or several reasons, to continue living, whether they realized it or not. Most had goals and aspirations to drive them perpetually forward, never experiencing a moment where the bottom fell out of their self-absorbed plans and left them standing on the nothingness of reality.

 

For soldiers, blood and victims' screams painted and adorned that empty space, concealing what lay beneath one's immediate line of vision. Violence and bloodshed sated their need for a reason to live. It was when the killing and screaming stopped that one was left to stare downward, beyond the fading streaks of crimson and echoes of death, at the abyss that waited to swallow them whole.

 

Faced with the stark truth, some took their own lives. Some lost their sanity and became mechanical shells of their former selves, living minute-by-minute in a shallow, tomorrow-less existence, while others became slaves to carnal lust, desperately seeking out all forms of pain and pleasure just to be free of conscious thought for a precious few moments.

 

Then there were some who constructed meaning for themselves. They established goals to drive themselves forward, never resting to look down. It was best to have a goal that was impossible. Then one would never stop moving, because the prize would always be ahead, out of reach.

 

He had been one such soldier. And his goal, naturally: ascend to the Legendary state, and kill Frieza.

 

For all its emptiness, life seemed not without humor—a very dark streak of it. The goal he had spent his life pursuing in all its impossibility had been burnt up like rice paper and scattered to the wind, as easily as the last breeze that had brushed his blistered skin on Namek. Burnt up by a third-class peasant who had not even been aware of the iniquity of his act.

 

Vegeta had met his end by Frieza's hand; in another stroke of dark humor, he had been wished back, only to find Kakarott had ascended before him and was in the process of beating Frieza to death. In the golden flame of Kakarott's power he saw the reflection of his utter failure. And, turning his gaze downward for the first time, he saw emptiness.

 

On Earth for the second time, he had had to laugh at himself, at the absurd fancy he had once had for the idea of immortality. What was the point, when an endless life merely meant an endless stretch of nothingness below one's feet? And what was the point, now that his strongest enemies were dead, leaving him to stand alone at a desolate summit? All the Earthlings had stared at him, wondering if he had gone mad, as he tossed fistfuls of grass into the air and raved about conquering the universe. As if he was still bent on meeting a challenge that had become a non-challenge.

 

The news that Kakarott had survived Namek's destruction came just in time, before he could decide to pursue that course of action just for the hell of it.

 

He constructed a new goal, foolish as it was. Kill Kakarott.

 

No, killing the man was not the point. He could have killed the overly trusting fool in a dozen clever ways that did not involve strength. The goal was to surpass him.

 

Impossible—perhaps not; the distance between them was not nearly as wide as the gap that had separated him from his former master. But it was impossible enough.

 

Then Cell had taken Kakarott's life—or the fool had taken his own life. Either way, Kakarott died, and Vegeta had not been the one to kill him—had not even gotten the chance to try. And in yet another merry stroke of black humor, the man had chosen to remain dead.

 

No more goals. Nothing but an impatient woman and a squalling infant to distract him from the smiling maw of the abyss. Despite all the ways she irritated him, he found that she had understood him better than most others.

 

But it seemed the mutual understanding they had implicitly established was now non-existent. It puzzled him that she had so vehemently opposed his leaving for space, as if this time were different than all his previous departures. Perhaps she believed he had “changed” in some fundamental way after Cell, when their son from the future had fallen with a ki blast through his heart, and Kakarott had died permanently. Perhaps she now expected him to act differently.

 

She was an irritating, and irritatingly fascinating woman.

 

It was strange that in the brief time he had been with Bulma, he had begun noticing small details again, taking interest in the maddening complexities of who she was and what she offered him in the form of her sharply intelligent mind, verbal battles tinted with innuendo and desire, and the language of her facial expressions and body movements. She revealed just enough through her words and sultry looks to make him wonder about the enticing possibilities of something more.

 

In the past, he would have taken such a woman without ceremony or question, at the first inner tug of desire. Then he would have moved on to the next task, the next step in an infinite sequence toward meeting his goal. But he found that his focus had begun to loosen, to fray at the edges, and he blamed it on the soft, trivial culture of the planet he had had the misfortune of settling on. And he blamed it on the woman. She had made him want something more than just her body, and think about more than just the next threshold of power he had to reach. And in that wanting, he had thought for the first time that perhaps there was something more than the emptiness of existence, something not constructed by one's will but intrinsically present, elusive but real…

 

Perhaps that was how she had “changed” him. He had started to believe he could live on Earth in peace, that a woman's company and a mundane life could perhaps be meaningful after all. But he was glad to be free of that fallacy.

 

In these few weeks, frustrating as they had been, he had realized once again why warfare had always been so exalted by his people. To have something to fight, conquer, surpass—to have an enemy—was what gave life meaning.

 

He had a new enemy and a new goal. Expectedly, it was near-impossible, even more so now than before. He had recalculated his measure of confidence after his first faulty interpretation of the priest's words.

 

His next guess was likely to be wrong, as he realized he understood almost nothing about the priest. No matter. He had time.

 

The priest's circumlocutory manner of speech and tendency toward philosophical banter had made a literal interpretation of “place of origin” seem highly improbable. Yet he had decided to test its improbability.

 

The origin of questions in his life—the origin of questions for any young child—was one's place of birth. He was returning to his homeworld. Or rather, the solar system where his homeworld had once been.

 

*****

 

He stared through the glass, the steady drone of the ship's engines in his ears. He could feel the chill of the space outside through the thin fabric of the navy bodysuit he wore.

 

All vestiges of sleep were gone from his eyes. His destination was near; he could see the glowing ball of Vegetasei's sun, no longer a mere speck of white.

 

The reigning questions of his youth rose again from the dust of his earliest memories. Questions to which he would never know the answers. What would it have been like to hold the reins of power over a warrior race with fire and ki infused in its blood? Would his people have respected and feared him as much as they did his father? What new levels of greatness would his race have reached under his rule?

 

Senseless questions. The past could never live again. Those roads of possibility had terminated long ago in dead ends. Or rather, a single dead end. Frieza.

 

His people, his homeworld, his freedom, his destiny—all terminated at the hands of one being. For each new level of power he managed to attain, at the end of the day cold reality was always there to blanket his sleep. He was a slave to another, mocked with the title of “prince,” as he could never become a king.

 

He was returning to that place in his past where so many roads had been open to him. Paths to greatness, to glory, to the fulfillment of prophecy. When he had still had the chance to become a warrior king, controlling the destiny of an empire. Perhaps the chance to remain blissfully unaware of the meaninglessness of it all.

 

He passed the fringes of Vegetasei's solar system. The outermost planet hurtled by his window, sending the first wave of innate memory through his senses.

 

“Is this where my dominion ends?”

 

A harsh chuckle. “I am not dead yet, boy. The dominion is not yet yours.” A sobering pause. “This will not be the end. You have prophecies to fulfill, my son. The boundaries of your empire will only be limited by the level of power you attain.”

 

His fist clenched and unclenched at his side. The boundaries of his empire were the confines of his own body. Even after attaining the power of the Legendary, he realized that not much had changed. It had taken several beatings and the death of Mirai Trunks to shatter his prideful misconceptions of his own status. He was still a man. A man with the strength of a god, but a man nonetheless.

 

He pressed his hand against the cool glass of the window. There, between the crook of his thumb and forefinger, had been his training ground for space combat lessons. Near the ringed planet, he had deliberately blown apart his instructor's ship in a temper tantrum, and had subsequently faced his father's wrath.

 

“It is a shame on my honor that a son of mine would demonstrate such lack of self-control. A ruler does not slay his servants as it pleases him! You must sustain the loyalty of your followers, not breed enemies among them!”

 

He supposed that even after all these years, self-control still escaped him. The sound of his own voice speaking in a much more recent memory rose unbidden alongside his father's harsh words.

 

“I decided he was not a servant worth keeping. As his Prince I was within my rights to kill him.”

 

And the question that followed it—the same question that easily fell into place beside all of his actions:

 

“…why did you commit the murder?”

 

…why did you…

 

Why?

 

His nails dug into his palms. The question was irrelevant; the answer was meaningless. He did not care to know.

 

Did not care if the final answer he had given the priest was correct.

 

Another unbidden memory rose at once to counter that thought. The absurd apprehension he had felt as he waited…fearing he had answered wrongly before the invisible stranger who was not human.

 

His choice. It had always been his choice to kill, to destroy, to betray…?

 

And was it still?

 

His nails dug deeper into his palms, breaking the skin and drawing blood. Pain broke concentration, erased thought—his cardinal rule of discipline. In that second of relief he refocused his attention on something else.

 

He saw ahead the dark gash in space where Vegetasei had once been. He entered the first ring of dust and debris.

 

Is this where my dominion ends?

 

On Vegetasei, when warriors died, their ashes were scattered over the ocean nearest their place of death. There was no body left to view, no grave to visit. Warriors' spirits were not contained by shallow graves and empty ceremonies. Their bodies were eliminated, no longer of use or significance without a vital life force inside them.

 

The planet had been left to a different fate. Its corpse lay scattered in millions of pieces across the solar system, a visible testament to its ruler's failure and its people's demise.

 

But not all Vegetasei's people were dead. He remained. The only full-blooded Saiyan still alive. After he died, perhaps the debris of his planet would dissipate and vanish like ashes across an ocean, as was fitting for a warrior's death.

 

The piercing sound of the ship's alert shattered the chains of memory around his consciousness.

 

His eyes riveted on the screens and the radar. Five spacecraft were approaching him from all sides.

 

He immediately saw that they were not warships or monitors. They were junks, hardly suited for combat. Their gray shells bore obvious dent marks, their wings clipped in some places. Two of them appeared to have been cobbled together with miscellaneous parts of different ships.

 

There was an incoming signal from one of them. He switched on another screen to begin receiving the transmission, intrigued to discover who currently held power in this area.

 

A dark green reptilian face appeared on the screen, baring rows of serrated teeth.

 

“Greetings, stranger. Let us skip the formalities, shall we?” The coarseness of the reptile's voice struck a curious contrast with his polished manner of speech. “We will not ask your origin or purpose, only that you hand over your ship. Lord Szemnere has use for it.”

 

Vegeta had not switched on the transmission from his end; he decided not to reveal his face just yet. This could become interesting. “I fear I am not familiar with the customs of this domain or the name of your sovereign. Would you deign to enlighten me?”

 

The reptile's expression changed from a sneer to a smirk of amusement. “A true rarity. Are you a first-time visitor to this side of the galaxy, that you have never heard the name of our great lord?”

 

“It has been a while,” Vegeta answered simply.

 

The smirk disappeared, replaced by a solemn stare, as if the mere act of speaking of his lord was a most serious matter. So he was one of those—a mindless acolyte of some petty upstart. He almost rolled his eyes—one of Bulma's habits that had grown on him.

 

“Lord Szemnere is the Never-born, the Ever-living. He is the most beautiful of the gods.” His voice was reverent. “He left the immortal realm to enter the mortal coil, willingly forsaking his unfathomable beauty for a body of flesh and blood. But even his earthly form is perfection, and his power is unsurpassed. This is his chosen domain, and those fortunate enough to dwell here live to learn his truth.”

 

“I see. And why might your all-powerful lord need to steal my spacecraft? Could he not conjure one out of thin air? Gods seem to have those sorts of abilities.” Even in mocking the reptile's embellished speech, boredom was evident in his voice. “And for all this talk of beauty, why does your lord surround himself with beasts?”

 

The alien snarled, baring rows of razor sharp teeth. “You are a fool to mock Lord Szemnere and his servants! You will vacate your ship immediately and come with us. Resist, and you will face the consequences.”

 

This time Vegeta did roll his eyes. Had he ever employed such clichés when taunting his enemies?

 

The threat was not only overused—it was redundant. There were consequences for every action. What mattered was who had control of the consequences.

 

A pleasant feeling spread slowly through his senses. It was old and familiar, something he had not felt for a good span of time. To have power over life—to know that the edge of his will formed the precipice between the life and death of another…the power was intoxicating. It reduced those irritating questions of motive and choice to a mere itch. He smiled, invisible to the hopelessly ignorant reptile sneering at him on the screen. The consequences of this situation were his to control.

 

“Did you hear the order, unworthy scum? Vacate your ship immediately, and perhaps we will treat you with more mercy than you deserve.”

 

He expanded the shield of the ship so that he would be able to breathe when he stepped outside. The reptile's face relaxed as the door of Vegeta's ship slid open.

 

He donned his armor and stepped out into coldness, taking in the sight of the enemies surrounding him. No, they were not enemies—only toys at his disposal. A cruel smirk touched his features. He levitated upward until he could stand on the cool metal of the ship's hull.

 

Five sets of anti-spacecraft weaponry were trained on him. Slowly, he raised his hands above his head in a gesture of surrender.

 

And obliterated the two ships above him in one concentrated blast.

 

A quick shot to the right and left, and two other spacecraft burst asunder. The last one fired a laser directly at him.

 

Idiot. Any second-rate pilot would think to aim for the ship beneath my feet.

 

He deflected the shot effortlessly and blasted the ship into a shower of scrap metal.

 

The satisfying knowledge of his absolute dominance over his now-dead enemies soured into contempt. How many of these mindless cult followers had settled here, in the once proud empire of his race? His land of birth, his rightful domain, was now the dominion of some charlatan passing himself off as a god.

 

Perhaps he would pay the pretender a visit.

 

*****

 

He entered the floating city without much difficulty. It was sparsely guarded, lacked a defensive shield, and was overall a model of poor urban planning. Usually when there were no inhabitable planets in a solar system, colonists would construct such cities, primarily as trading ports and refueling stations. This one apparently lived off of piracy and forced tribute payments from passersby.

 

Once he was inside the city's invisible barrier, he opened the hatch and stood in its frame, artificial wind blowing through his hair. The houses here were crudely built rectangular settlements about two or three stories tall at the most. The streets were set in a circular grid, all converging at the center. He could see the masses of people milling about in the narrow streets below, oblivious to his presence above them.

 

He had an odd flashback of some planet whose name he had forgotten—he had floated over a city like this one, filthy and overcrowded, pondering the notion that he had control over every single life he saw wandering those streets below. He could exterminate all of them in a second. That was his mission, after all.

 

This time, there was no mission or urgent business. He did not have to kill them, but he let the possibility of their death linger for a second longer before moving on.

 

He left his ship in the air with its shields activated. At the center where all the roads met, one building rose high above the others, a gaudy and colorful palace of sorts. He flew toward it.

 

Landing on the paved walkway, he looked up at the towering, ornately embellished gates of the palace. They were terribly out of place against the backdrop of the dank and overpopulated city.

 

“Halt, trespasser!”

 

He glanced at the armored guards surrounding him. They were all of various reptilian races. It seemed Lord Szemnere was most likely cold-blooded as well, then. But he found it difficult to think of any reptilian race that could be considered remotely beautiful. A Fereshean, perhaps?

 

“What is your business here, stranger?” one of them snarled.

 

He noted the weaponry they carried. Standard issue military weapons—probably purchased through the black market, or a lucky raid on some government outpost.

 

“I am here to see Lord Szemnere,” he said calmly.

 

“Only those who are personally invited by our lord may step past these gates,” the guard replied, eyeing him suspiciously. “What is your name?”

 

“My name—” He hesitated. It suddenly struck him that they had not shot him on sight or cowered at his feet begging for mercy. Did they not recognize his face? Had they never seen the broadcasts of his notoriety across Frieza's empire?

 

“It does not matter what this man's name is,” another one of the guards stated coldly. “Obviously he has not an inkling of respect for Lord Szemnere. Either that or he is too stupid to realize his very presence contaminates the ground on which our lord has walked.”

 

His hand twitched, a second before it touched the bars of the left gate.

 

“Stop! You are not to enter!”

 

His hand swiveled to the side, palm aimed directly at the guard who had spoken.

 

The crack of gunfire sounded. His outstretched hand became a blur as the guards rallied around their comrade and fired on him in unison.

 

It materialized as a fist when they stopped firing. He swung his arm in a wide arc, opening his palm and flinging its contents outward, not bothering to look as each guard fell with a scream, their own bullets piercing their bodies.

 

Too easy.

 

He walked inside the gates. He did not bother wasting his time on fancy bullet-catching games with the new wave of soldiers who rushed at him.

 

“Where is your lord?” he asked as he sent a blast through the stomach of one of the guards. He spun and kicked another body through a row of ornate columns. “Where is he? Tell him to come out.”

 

They kept coming at him, paying no heed to his orders. He gritted his teeth in annoyance. They fought recklessly, without care for pain or death. Was their belief in their god so strong that it drove them to throw away their lives?

 

In less than a minute, he had incapacitated all of them. Letting the glow of ki fade from his fists, he looked up at the palace, a delicate construction reminiscent of the once famed courtesan houses of Mirage. Were its walls made of porcelain, he wondered. Its exterior seemed to glimmer under the artificial lights.

 

He grabbed a soldier who had fallen beside him. “Tell your ruler to come out and face me,” he snapped into the reptile's face. It irritated him to see no sign of fear, only hatred. “If he does not, I will tear his walls down around him!”

 

The soldier had the audacity to spit in his face. He narrowed his eyes in disgust and wrenched apart the guard's jaws, twisting until he heard a loud crack. The body dropped to the ground and lay still.

 

A soft voice punctuated the silence. “The curses of a hundred demons are bound to you for spilling the blood of my followers.”

 

He turned his gaze to the tall, slim figure standing before him. The man's pale blue skin was swathed in immaculate white robes, the tips of delicate fingers just visible in the folds of his sleeves. Waves of emerald green hair flowed around decorative shoulder plates and framed a fine-boned, distinctly feminine face. Vegeta had only known one of his kind before, and he was long dead.

 

A smirk curved his lips. “I imagine the souls of your dead followers might be cursing you for being late.”

 

Cool amber eyes watched him without expression. “What have you come here for, stranger?”

 

Vegeta narrowed his eyes at the utter lack of recognition on the man's face. “You do not know who I am.”

 

“You do not seem to know who I am, either,” he responded nonchalantly. “I have faced types like you before. Doubters. Enemies of the true way. In the end they learn who they are dealing with, and that even the mercy of a god has limits.”

 

“As does the lifespan of a liar,” Vegeta returned, advancing slowly. He noted a slight twitch in the man's expression. “I am Prince Vegeta of the Saiyans. A race that is long dead, like yours. Caimian.”

 

The amber eyes widened, then settled into mild amusement. “Ah. I suppose my people have not been completely forgotten by this wretched universe.”

 

“They believe you to be a god,” Vegeta said, indicating the scattered bodies of dead and wounded soldiers around them. “A god who forsook his place beyond the cosmos to live among the filth of mortals.”

 

“And you believe me to be a liar,” Szemnere replied, his voice neutral and soft. “Truth or lies, does it matter when truth is a thing that can be created? For the people of this city, my power has met their desperate need for belief at a perfect junction—the truth that I am a god.”

 

“I don't know whether to laud you for your powers of deception or to pity the utter stupidity of the masses. Perhaps both. Regardless…your race is long extinct. How is it that you are alive?” The pointed question added to the invisible tension already building in the air. Vegeta did not miss the rising ki level of the Caimian standing before him. Their fight would commence soon, but he hoped he did not have to hold a conversation in the midst of combat. It always took the raw edge off a battle.

 

“I have already told you. I am a god.” His airy laugh was accompanied by a light chime of jewelry. The delicate chain adorning his forehead sparkled once before he blurred out of sight.

 

Vegeta caught his fist a split-second slower than he would have liked, and stopped Szemnere's forward momentum with a sudden outward pulse of ki. He took to the air, putting distance between himself and the white-robed Caimian. In the periphery of his vision he could see thousands already gathered at the gates, initially drawn by Vegeta's rather noisy entrance into the sacred palace grounds. Now they were here to see the match between their god and an unwelcome stranger, and their numbers were growing quickly. Some were kneeling in prayer, others held their arms outstretched in fawning adulation as they watched their ruler's every movement.

 

They circled each other in the artificial sky, the city's outer barrier humming softly above their heads. His opponent's face was serene, hardly readable if Vegeta had never met one of his kind before.

 

“It is a pity that your lie—or your truth, if you prefer—will be exposed before all your mindless followers. But I would like to reveal something else to them first,” Vegeta said lightly. “The classic Caimian's dilemma: beauty or power?”

 

The air shook with the momentous force of their fists clashing, the initial step in a familiar dance of risk and mortality. First it was a battle of artful prowess, as each lightning blow was countered and returned, fists and feet blurring through the air, each movement whistling sharply as a hunter's call to his hounds. Lightning was followed by thunder; each delayed boom of their clashing forms shook the barrier of the city, shattered windows and cracked the porcelain walls of the palace. Through the concentrated maelstrom of this first stage, Vegeta could hear the keening cries of the populace down below.

 

They both drew back, not to catch their breath, but to continue the game of words. He eyed the superficial wound he had inflicted on the man's face. A large bruise was quickly discoloring one pale cheek, and a trickle of blood ran carelessly down from the corner of his mouth.

 

“You have surpassed the limits of your kind. But how long can you last before you must make the tradeoff?” Vegeta asked with an easy smile.

 

With a delicate flick of his hand, the self-made lord brushed a stray lock of emerald hair from his eyes.

 

“This is not the end of my power, Prince Vegeta,” he replied, turning his face slightly to the side. The bruise was fading quickly, the injured skin resuming its pale blue tone in seconds. Vegeta raised an eyebrow. Caimians were not naturally fast healers. Not even Saiyans could heal at such a rate.

 

“You are a hybrid,” Vegeta stated. “You have the blood of a Namek or some other healer race in you.”

 

Szemnere let out a sigh of condescension. “Must I keep telling you, my dear Prince?”

 

The use of that cursed title struck a nerve, tightening the emptiness of Vegeta's smile. The effeminate visage of the Caimian before him blurred easily into the face of another one of that race he had known too well.

 

A man who had known the location of every bone in his small, five year-old body, and had broken each one in succession, starting with his fingers. My dear Prince, when will you learn to obey?

 

“I am divine, a god of healing. It is the truth—” Szemnere choked, his words cut off by the fingers closing around his windpipe. His amber eyes widened in utter surprise at the Saiyan's impossibly quick movement. Shock turned to fear at the sudden enormous spike in Vegeta's ki.

 

Vegeta was done playing games. His grip tightened as he flared into Super Saiyan, his aura surrounding both of them in fiery gold.

 

“Divine healing is useless against me,” he said. His voice was like frozen venom. “Now transform.”

 

He threw the man to the ground hundreds of feet below. The impact shattered the gates and sent pieces of heavy masonry flying into the crowd of spectators. A loud chorus of screams broke into heaving coughs as a giant cloud of dust billowed into the air. Vegeta lowered himself slowly to the ground, waiting for Szemnere to get up.

 

“Transform.” He repeated into the dust that clouded his vision. “Let me show them the truth.”

 

With a pulse of his ki, he cleared the air around him of dust. He saw the Caimian half-kneeling in the wide circular indentation created by the impact of his fall. His emerald hair was disheveled, streaked with dirt, the once immaculate white robes stained with blood and grime.

 

Slowly he stood, his face rising to meet his opponent's.

 

A deathly hush fell over the crowd. There was no collective gasp of horror, no screams of fear. Only silence as the great secret of their ruler was laid bare before them. The hulking inversion of beauty turned and glared at those who worshipped him as lord and god.

 

“This is the wrath of your god.” His voice had dropped a full octave into the gravelly rumble of a reptilian monstrosity. The bloodshot amber eyes flashed, the wide pockmarked snout opened to reveal a row of shark-like teeth. “This is the form I take before my enemies. Those who do not worship beauty will cower before wrath!”

 

His bellowing shout rang in the empty air. Vegeta did not bother to scan the crowd's reaction to Szemnere's continued assertion of divinity in his ascended state. He would break their faith before their eyes.

 

The second and final stage of the fight began. Their auras blazed blinding white and gold as they charged each other head-on, the resulting backwash of ki throwing the nearest rows of spectators to the ground. Vegeta kicked his power up a notch to keep pace with the increase in Szemnere's level. The Caimian's strength was impressive, and it was a mystery as to how he had managed to surpass the known limits of his race by tenfold. Vegeta would find out in due time. Even in reptilian form, Szemnere was still far below the capacity of a Super Saiyan.

 

“Not fast enough,” he snarled as Szemnere put his whole weight behind a punch and missed, giving Vegeta an opening for attack. He slammed a knee into the Caimian's side, throwing him off balance. Lunging with his right hand, he grabbed a fistful of the man's emerald locks and jumped high into the air. Before the hair ripped at the scalp, he swung his arm downward to throw the reptile to the ground with incredible speed.

 

“Not strong enough!” He countered Szemnere's upward blast with his own, quickly overpowering it and enveloping his opponent's body in gold fire. He swooped down and sent another blast directly into the man's face, following through with a flurry of devastating blows to the vital organs. It was over soon after that. He shattered ribs, jaws, punctured lungs and kidneys, and finally aimed his hand at the heart.

 

“Not true enough.” His voice was laced with scorn as he stood over the broken, bleeding body of Szemnere in first form. The Caimian no longer had the strength to stay in his ascended state. “Your farce is over.”

 

He turned his eyes to the crowd. They shrank back in terror. His chilling smile widened. “Beauty is only skin-deep, after all.”

 

Some were weeping, hunched over the ground and refusing to look at their fallen lord. Perhaps in genuine sorrow for his defeat, or in pity for their own foolishness. Others stared blankly at the broken, dying man lying at the feet of a golden warrior; Vegeta could see death in their eyes as well. The death of their belief, the basis upon which they had built their lives.

 

“Here is your god,” he declared. No one spoke or moved. The air was rife with their fear; Vegeta breathed it in, relishing it. They had been made acutely aware of his power over their lives, and were free to fear him now that the charlatan's veil covering their eyes had been torn in two.

 

His hand began to glow. “I will send him back to his realm.”

 

“No…” Szemnere's voice was a soft croak. Vegeta looked down at him in amusement. The man could hardly speak, let alone move. One hand fumbled uselessly at the folds of his torn robe.

 

“…will give…power…my secret…do not kill…”

 

Vegeta dug his foot into the Caimian's chest and twisted. He was rewarded with a hoarse scream of pain. “I have already seen your pathetic power and revealed your secret, weak fool—”

 

He stopped abruptly at the sight of what Szemnere held out in his palm.

 

“Spare…life…take…and leave…in peace…”

 

There were four round stones, their faint glow tinted red with the Caimian's blood.

 

“Where did you…” The question was cut off by another, more urgent thought. “Where are the other three?”