Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Crossroads ❯ A change of location ( Chapter 8 )

DISCLAIMER: Nothing new since the last chapter. I still don't own DBZ.

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"Ooff!" Svenja groaned when the sudden weight of Zura on her torso expelled the air from her lungs.

"Hey!" she wheezed when he didn't move and boxed him in the side, one of the few places she could reach with her arms pinned as they were. The spell of immobility she had been caught in moments earlier had disappeared, but with Zura lying across her this renewed manoeuvrability was of no use at all. Blowing away strands of his hair on her face she scrunched her nose, fighting down the urge to sneeze.

"Hey!" she repeated in alarm when she still didn't get any reaction. She hadn't hit him hard, really, but it should have been enough to at least evoke a reply. Come to think of it, his body was really heavy and without any form of tension, she realized with a sinking feeling in her gut.

Frowning she twisted her head to the side, moving it backwards as fast as she could to get a clear view of his face. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt icy fingers crawling down her spine. The dread she had felt earlier that she had been unable to explain rationally had vanished, only to be replaced now by a different fear, with the reasons for it laying a short distance away from her face.

His head was lying on her shoulder and left upper arm heavily, cutting off the circulation in her limb. His skin was deathly pale and had a waxen sheen, and dark blotches were forming under his closed eyes. Blood was trickling out of his ear, forming bright red lines that ran across his face and disappeared where their skins met.

"Shit! Zura!" she yelled and started to struggle against his weight, her stomach a hard knot in her belly. "Gods, please don't be dead, please!" she muttered over and over without noticing.
Gathering all her strength she tried to heave him off her or at least roll them sideways, but to no avail. Releasing a sob of frustration, she ceased her struggles after a few attempts. How could anyone be so damn heavy? Granted, she'd had no leverage, but she had thought she was stronger than that. All she had managed was to shift him his weight a little to the side and free her right arm.
"Zuraaaa!" she pleaded through gritted teeth, trying to fight down the horrible suspicion that grew in her. She slapped her hand to the side of his neck, frantically searching his pulse point. His skin was cold and clammy, the attribute 'lifeless' flashing unbidden through her mind.
Forcing her hand to stop shaking she tried to calm enough to feel something else than her own heart beating painfully in her chest. Emitting a small sound of relief, she let her head fall back to the stony ground and briefly closed her eyes when she felt the faint beating against her fingers. Alive, she thought relieved and blinked away the sudden moisture in her eyes. Alive, but only barely. She didn't know much about his metabolism, but she figured that a pulse being very slow and almost imperceptible wasn't a good sign. Gently pushing his hair out of his face she searched for a sign of consciousness but found nothing. Her joy at him not being dead was replaced by worry, but before she could figure out how best to get out from under him and what to do next something unexpected happened that stunned her.

The faces of two men appeared above her, and two pairs of hands took hold of Zura and lifted him off her a bit. Svenja stared uncomprehending at the new arrivals and wondered for a fleeting moment whether she had now gone completely insane, but dismissed the notion at once.
Her attention had been solely focused on Zura, and only now did she realize that there had been noises that by all account shouldn't be here.

What the hell?

Wriggling sideways until she could raise herself, she sat up and opened her mouth to say something but found herself to be unable to utter a sound.

There was some kind of large window reminding her of a giant television that stood unsupported in the middle of the room where a few minutes ago had been nothing but thin air and a strange flicker of light, shortly before she had hidden her face in Zura's chest. The edges of it were wavering and blurred, but the main picture was pin sharp. It was a bright room with instruments and devices placed on tables where several white-coated people were talking agitatedly and hacking furiously on keyboards.

Svenja' eyes grew round when she saw four of them bearing stretchers walk through the window.

"Wha..?" she croaked disbelieving and pushed down the sudden urge to break out in either hysterical giggles or a screaming fit, whatever came first.

The two men had lowered Zura again to the floor and one called to the four people with stretchers, motioning for them to hurry over.

Svenja blinked, suddenly calm. Looking down at Zura lying next to her she reached out and took his limp hand. She had no idea what happened right then and why, and she feared she would go mad when she thought too much about it. But within her jumbled thoughts and confusion one thing stood crystal clear.

She didn't want him to die.

Gripping her companion's cold hand firmly she raised her head and looked at the man kneeling on the other side of Zura's form determinedly. Wherever those people came from and how wasn't important, caution and answers could come later. Right now priorities were laying elsewhere.

"Help him!" she said to the man, uncaring that it sounded more like a command than a request.

The man blinked at her and nodded once. "That's what we mean to do." he said reassuringly and stood up to make way for the stretchers. "Can you walk?" he asked.

"Dunno." she answered. She was reluctant to release Zura's hand, but it would only slow things down. And besides she felt slightly unsteady and rather wanted to have both arms free for balance, especially since the one Zura was had been laying on started to tingle painfully.

"Wait!" one of the new arrivals stopped her when she attempted to get to her knees. "Better remove that first. Just in case the muscles are locked." he said, and pointed down when she looked at him in puzzlement. Tears sprang to Svenja's eyes when she realized what he meant. A brown appendage, patches of fur still missing due to the injuries of when Zura had crashed down here, was curled loosely around her middle.

"Shit", she whispered and wiped away the moisture running down her face. "No! Let me." she intercepted the men's attempts to help her. Placing her hands on his tail for the first time she gently unwrapped it around her and lowered it carefully to the ground. "Be careful. It was broken." she mumbled absent-mindedly and stared at it. She hadn't even noticed it but now that it was gone she felt the cold attacking her skin where it had rested.

He had protected her, had come running into the ruins and tried to get them both away and had not once relinquished his grip on her. She had got the impression that he was very private about his tail, that his carefulness with it was based on more than the injury. That his tail had been wrapped around her touched her deeply for reasons she couldn't find words for. He had protected her until the last moment.

The men had finished transferring Zura's body onto the stretcher and lifted it carefully. One of the men offered her a hand, and gripping it she pushed herself to her feet, finding her balance after a moment.

Walking between the stretcher and the man hovering close to her in case she fell, the small group walked towards the window-like apparition. On the other side people had stopped their hectic activity, watching their approach with expressions varying from disbelieving astonishment to guarded curiosity.

Svenja regarded them closely, welcoming the distraction keeping her away from thinking. She didn't want to think, didn't want to do anything but to take one step at a time, acknowledge each moment as it came, no questions asked and no answers given. Cowardly, yes, but she just didn't have the energy. Maybe later.

Apart from the men accompanying her and Zura towards to window there were six other white-coated persons in her line of vision, both male and female and of different ages. One of them, a woman with bluish hair walked over to the side where several computers and monitors dominated the room and looked up expectantly.

Svenja swallowed when they approached the window and involuntarily tensed up when she stepped through it. She didn't know what she had expected, a barrier of some sort or a tingling feeling. But there was nothing, only a gradual change of temperature when she entered the warmer room, and she felt irrationally disappointed. The woman at the computer nodded satisfied once they were through and punched a sequence of keys. There was a bright flash behind Svenja, and she whirled around in startlement. The ruins, the building she had spent the last week and more had vanished. All that was left was a rectangular metal structure, looking dull and unremarkable. She suddenly felt strangely bereft and incredibly lonely, walking though the room full of people and with the only familiar person being out cold. There was no time to think about it though, they were ushered through a door and into another room she clearly recognised was used for medical purposes.

The men moved Zura's body from the stretcher onto a kind of surgery table, the bright lights over it making his face appear almost white. Svenja hovered near the table, feeling worried and useless, but refusing when one of the men asked her to move away.

"No." She said stubbornly, shaking her head and starting to tremble. There was no way she would leave now, absolutely no way. She glared defiantly at the man, trying unsuccessfully to lock her shaking legs.
The man looked at her with a worried frown and exchanged a glance and a nod with someone behind her.

Svenja barely felt the hands that prevented her from falling and carried her over to a second surgery table nearby. Frustration at her body failing her, her helplessness and at the realization she couldn't do anything at all washed through her.

The woman who had sat at the computer was there suddenly and talked to her, but Svenja had trouble concentrating on the questions, her attention focused on the body laying a few meters away from her, and she shook her head. "What?" she asked more out of reflex rather than of actual interest.

The woman sighed and shook her head slightly. "Never mind." she answered and smiled a thanks at someone who handed her a cup with steaming liquid. "Here. Drink that." she said and pressed the cup firmly in Svenja's hand, watching her emptying the cup. The strangely-coloured stuff tasted peculiar but not unpleasant, and left a warm trail down her throat and in her stomach.

There must have been something in it to make her sleep, she thought detachedly as she felt numbness enveloping her body. She couldn't gather the energy to be angry or concerned about it, things were out of her hands now.

"Help him." she mumbled at the woman who looked down at her and caught the cup that rolled out of Svenja's hand. The last thing she saw before sleep enveloped her was a reassuring smile and a nod.

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Bulma closed the door to her room and leaned back against it, sighing wearily. She had spent the last hours collecting and saving data from the Portal, getting a thorough medical check-up from the doctor along with the other technicians present in the lab this morning and generally trying to make sense of what happened.

There had been no mistake about the coordinates, she had checked and rechecked the settings, they were the same as the first time. And it was also the same destroyed building that had appeared in the Portal.

Everything had been the same, except for the fact that this time there were no overlapping of different landscapes and no emergency shut-down of the device. And for the two people.

"Anything new?" Came the harsh voice of Vegeta from a corner and he stepped into the light. Bulma regarded him tiredly. Since this morning his mood had darkened considerably. They had all been stunned by the unexpected presence of two persons at the other side of the Portal, and the collapsing of them following that terrible scream that made goose bumps appear on Bulma's skin at the memory. Her team, trained to deal with emergencies and unexpected events without making a fuss and talking things over first - an essential quality when working at Capsule Corporation - had acted fast and efficiently when she gave her okay to get the two people who were obviously at the end of their strength, into the CC compound and under treatment. They were in the med section now under quarantine, but the doctor had said they carried no known virus, bacteria or any potentially dangerous and contagious diseases. The virus causing the girl's illness was a known one and already treated, and the man…

"Well?" Vegeta snapped harshly and Bulma's eyes narrowed. "Stop it, Vegeta! No, nothing new since half an hour ago when you were down there yourself. What the hell is it?" she demanded angrily. With all the things that had happened today, the last she needed was an argument with her pissed-off lover.

"That man is a Saiyan!" he yelled, his unusually agitated face only inches away from hers.

"You don't know for sure, the tests aren't finished and…"

"He is. I know." He said firmly. Bulma frowned. She trusted his opinion in that matter, Vegeta had a kind of sixth sense for his own species. But still. "But how can that be? You said yourself that in the whole time you worked for Frieza you didn't hear or see anything about other surviving Saiyans except Radditz, Nappa and Goku. So how.."

"I don't know!" he shouted and beat a fist against and inadvertently through the wall.

Bulma swallowed her complaint and looked at Vegeta quizzically. So that was it.

She hadn't thought about what would happen if Vegeta met a fellow Saiyan other than Goku since Vegeta himself had declared there was none, but it made sense that it affected him. But she had no idea why he was so angry.

"Look," she said exasperatedly, "the doc said he'd be out of the regen tank in a few hours, you just have to wait until then."

Cursing under his breath he turned around and stalked out onto the balcony, followed by Bulma. "And don't be late for dinner!" she yelled at his rapidly retreating form flying away from the house.

"Asshole." she muttered and closed the balcony door. Whatever it was that bugged him, he'd deal with it, as he usually did. She had learned from experience early on that it was no use trying to talk when something troubled him, he either told her about it or not. And she had too many other things on her mind to worry about his bout of male PMS or something.

Kicking off her shoes she set her alarm clock on 5 p.m and flopped down on her bed, determined to get a few hours rest.

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A/N: Well, that's it for this chapter. So, what do you think? Please let me know, okay?

And I have a request. I need a topic for my diploma paper and frankly have no idea. So, if you have any ideas or suggestions about a possible topic, please tell me.
It has to do with English language and/or culture and there should be some literature available about it.
I'm open to any kind of suggestion, so if you have something in mind, don't hesitate to tell me, okay?

Thanks :-)