Episode 12 - Truth Revealed

If you do not clearly see the words "to be continued" near the bottom of the page, then it hasn't loaded completely or properly.

Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ, its characters, story line, or any likeness of the characters. My name is not Akira Toriyama. If I had enough money to be Akira Toriyama, I'd just buy the Internet. However, this story line has been created by me to be used by me and to be written by me. You know that drill. Also, I do not own Mountain Dew, though I really wish I did. I am not endorsing any brand names I use here in any way either, along with the topics of gangs, fighting, and the like. If you look carefully, you'll notice that I am strongly against those things and try to make that clear to you, the reader.

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A/N: Sorry it's taken so long. I've been getting involved in a few really involved projects. **Ahem, "Taking Flight", my GW fanfic, and "Tempest Winds", my webcomic. Go read them!** I also completely lost the notebook that I had drafted the next few chapters into. Now I'm sick of looking for it, so I'm planning on just redrafting the chapters and getting on with the story. Updates might be slow because I'll be getting a job this summer and shipping off to college, plus I have a lot of projects/stories to update. Still, after re-reading what I've written so far, I can't believe that I ever wrote such short chapters. (I recently whipped out a 70-page chapter of Taking Flight that I'm planning on chopping in half before posting.) I added plenty to this one when I re-drafted, and I think it's safe to say that, even though I tried to keep it around the original length, it's much better this way. Originally it was set up so that Corran spouted off a bunch of random facts and Trunks said, essentially, "oh." That said, enjoy!

P.S.: I need a new beta reader! I'm looking for someone with passable grammer and spelling skills (not just spell check), and preferably with the MSN and/or AIM instant messanger program. Contact me at my e-mail address to apply.

Broken bodies, broken dreams.
All is lost, or so it seems...

"'He say... Oogaly? What means that? Oogaly?' 'It means your face would frighten small children. Now be quiet.'" - Babadi and Buu, DragonBall Z

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Tussney was scrubbing the chrome walls a few hallways down from the cargo bay when several random aliens came rushing past. One with twelve tentacles for legs tripped on his bucket and swore in his native tongue as the cleaning solution bubbled and hissed on his membranous feet. "Hey, what's going on?" Tussney yelled after the mismatched group, which he knew to be made up of weaklings far below his power level.

A small, squat alien with a head and feet that seemed too large for the rest of him waddled past. He grunted and chuckled with something akin to laughter. As if delivering the punch line to a hilarious joke he chortled, "Newbie fainted," and waddled on.

"What!?" Tussney yelled, then took off running before the short alien could repeat himself. He slid around the corner and waved his arms to keep his balance, then jogged into the cargo bay and squeezed through the small crowd that had gathered to gawk and jeer at the fallen violet-haired teen.

"Tussney," came a voice from further into the crowd. Corran's scaly arm appeared that same moment and dragged the hulking Saiyan through the last few feet of the crowd and to where the man could clearly see what was going on.

Tussney whistled as his eyes befell Trunks's prone form. "Hey, Corran, is his skin supposed to be that white? Kahler never told me nothin' about his species."

The scaly Slycan shook his head. "I don't know; he never told me anything either." Still, Corran was pretty sure that the ghostly pallor creeping onto Trunks's face wasn't a good sign.

Tussney frowned as a pair of aliens that he recognized from the medical bay pushed their way through the crowd. He distinctly remembered talking to the boy about his recent changes in habit on a few occasions, but Kahler hadn't exactly been very cooperative, or even very responsive. He would eat his foot at the end of the ship day just to get it out of sight, it seemed, then stumble back to their room like a zombie and usually be asleep before Tussney even got back. In the mornings, Tussney found it increasingly harder to coax him out of bed. He had recently developed a nasty silent glare as well that fewer and fewer aliens were spared from as they crossed the cranky teen's path throughout the day. While Tussney was glad that it seemed to keep a lot of small aliens out of their way, Kahler hadn't exactly proved to be pleasant company of late.

…And then there was his creepy habit of sometimes glaring at those funky capsule thingies too, as if they held all the answers in the galaxy.

As Trunks's limp form was rolled off to the medical bay, Tussney whispered to Corran, "I have a plan."

Corran looked uneasy; Tussney's plans were almost never a healthy thing to get involved in. He was spared from having to answer when Riigo spotted Tussney at that moment and yelled, "Oy, monkey! Get your flea-bitten tail outta my cargo bay!"

"Meet me outside in a couple of minutes." Tussney told his friend as he slunk away and out of Riigo's sight.

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Several minutes later, Corran was engaged in sneaking stealthily down a cream walled hallway, his scales lightened to match the almost sickly yellow hue. He had in his claws a tiny green bean, a souvenir from his brief "discussion" with Tussney.

"Kahler told me about these miracle beans from his planet on his first day here, and I caught him debating with himself whether or not to take one a couple of days ago." Tussney had told the Slycan. "I'm willing to bet that the quack doctors that Lasiehr uses to treat the crew won't know jack shit about Kahler's race, much less be able to do anything for him. Shit, I don't even have more of a clue than this. Get to where they're keeping him, Cor', and see if you can figure him out. If not, use this doo-hickey."

//"He owes me for this."// Corran thought, though he wasn't sure if he meant Tussney or Kahler by that. He had to admit, this latest turn of events didn't do much to increase his confidence in the boy.

Corran pressed himself flat to the ceiling as two loud aliens (a tall, thin, wiry, bird-like blue one and a short, fat, lumpy red one) exited a room to the left and entered a room two doors down and to the right carrying several sheets of paper each. From the small amount of their conversation that Corran overheard, they were not only surprised that the newbie which Riigo had praised so highly would be prone to fainting spells, but they also didn't have any idea what was wrong with the boy, much less how to treat him. The red one seemed to dislike the situation mostly because it meant a lot of paperwork right now so they could send off their test results to some medical center to be analyzed.

Corran got an eyeful of Kahler in the room that the aliens had just left even as he got an earful of the aliens' whiny, surprisingly high-pitched chatter. He scampered into the room via the ceiling and whipped his tail in after him just as the door swung shut into its oval frame. The young Slycan immediately flipped onto the floor, landed with several soft clicks as his claws struck the tile, and let his color revert to its natural deep forest green.

The first thing he did was walk quickly over and take a look at the various electronic displays that were steadily spitting out paper records of their readings. Kahler's temperature was about a steady 98.6-… no, 98.2… well, it was fluctuating between 98 and 99. His pulse was steady and strong in any case, And the oxygen level in his blood was about as high as his own (but not nearly as high as Tussney's). His brain waves were pretty erratic and about as fast as most species were when conscious, but he was obviously unconscious. There were two IVs in his arms, one in each. One was apparently keeping him hydrated and the other was linked to a machine that monitored his blood. An electronic display on that machine had some funky symbols on it, most of which Corran didn't know how to read. It was probably in one of the doctors' native language. Corran picked apart some blocks and slashes that he recognized as Tennerran and discovered that the rapidly changing digits to the side of it and next to an inverted, rapidly falling graph of a parabola corresponded to the boy's blood sugar level. At the start of the graph it looked pretty stable and only slightly above the level that was pretty commonly normal among most races, but now it had dipped below that and was gaining speed in its decent.

"Ssyriniss!" the Slycan hissed a random curse that he had picked up from the pirates and turned quickly toward Kahler. Most of the other numbers on the monitors were falling as well, though much slower. //"What the hell!?"// Corran vaguely thought as he crossed the space between us in a single giant step, opened Kahler's mouth, shoved the Senzu bean inside, and forced the boy to chew. He swallowed reflexively, and for a few long moments nothing happened.

Then, color rushed back into Kahler's face and all the numbers on every chart spiked to impossible levels, but Corran wasn't watching them. He was watching with relief as Kahler's eyes fluttered open groggily and he yawned, exposing slightly pointed incisors. "Mornin', Tu-… You're not Tussney." Kahler looked quite confused.

"Well, thank you for that enlightening report from the Obvious Committee, Kahler." Corran rolled his eyes savagely, clearly annoyed now that he was pretty sure that the crisis was over.

"…And this isn't my room." Trunks observed as he quickly scanned his surroundings. He moved one hand to scratch an itch on his other arm. As his fingers brushed the offending OV needle, Corran could swear he heard the air crackle as Kahler stiffened. The hair on the back of the violet-haired boy's neck rose, he quickly removed all of the needles he could find (including one near his rear that Corran hadn't previously known about), and he shuddered.

"Done now?" Corran asked with amusement.

"…Yeah." Trunks admitted slowly, clearly embarrassed. Corran nodded, and as he did, the events leading up to this moment rushed back to Trunks's conscious mind in one cold, hard, mental slap in the face. It bothered him deeply how he was unable to determine how many repetitive, boring days he had spent starving aboard this ship. Had it been weeks? Months? How long had he been slowly wasting away?

"Hey, Kahler, wake up there." Corran called him back to reality. He had apparently been trying to talk to Trunks, and was now waving a printout of the young demi-Saiyan's biological functions. The machines that supplied it had been conveniently switched off, and Corran was giving Kahler an awfully meaningful look. Trunks wished that his friend would leave just so the feeling of apprehension that had settled in the pit of his stomach about what the Slycan's next words would be, would go away. "As I was saying, this is not normal. You have some explaining to do, and you're not backing out of it."

Trunks caught himself wondering what the Slycan planned to do in order to stop him, but a wave of guilt overcame him as he remembered that if it hadn't been for Corran bringing him a Senzu… "Wait a minute, Corran, you gave me a Senzu?"

"So that's what you call those weird green things. Yeah, Tussney told me to-… and don't change the subject."

Trunks nodded and flexed his fingers; renewed strength flowed through them. He could feel the restorative power of the Senzu rushing through his blood, and for once in a very long time, hunger wasn't clawing at his insides. He sighed slightly as he realized that this had been as good of a time as any to use a Senzu. "Thanks though, Corran."

"Don't thank me yet." Corran's gaze was still narrow. "You are going to tell me what's going on, and you're going to start by explaining this." He slapped the paper onto Trunks's knees, revealing the huge spike in body temperature, oxygen level, brain waves, blood sugar level, and so on when he moved his clawed hand away. One spike in particular interested Corran the most. As he had been waking up, for just a moment Kahler's power level had been rising at an impossible rate before being quickly suppressed to 5, rising again, then being allowed to hover at more or less 175. Corran didn't care so much about the miracle bean so much as he was dead set in his conviction that no one's power level fluctuated that much, especially while waking up.

Trunks laughed nervously and stumbled over a possible answer. "Well, I, uh… um…"

Corran cut off Kahler's shameless stuttering and decided to put words into his mouth. He knew that he probably didn't have much time left here anyway, and he might never catch the boy in a situation like this again. "I've been watching you, Kahler. Your health was failing you, and it's because of the meals. I've seen the way you eat, and how you've become more careful of how you throw your strength around in the cargo bay. …And I'm not stupid like half of the rest of the trash on this shit ship. Lasiehr almost broke you; I've seen enough of that to know. You don't do yourself any favors by hanging close to Tussney either. Not that I have anything against the guy, but your habits and looks are too similar. Kid, I could have sworn the first time I saw you that you were Saiyan just by how you acted, how you carried yourself, but I know that your coloring is off for one, two I've never seen a Saiyan as short as you (//"Thank you, Dad."//), and three, you don't have a tail."

Trunks nodded perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. "Yeah, there you have it. You said it yourself, I am definitely in no way related to the Saiyans-…"

"But all of that doesn't mean a damn thing." Corran cut him off. Trunks just about planted his face in the floor. "There aren't many races that can interbreed with Saiyans successfully-the republic of Girtopia maintains a pretty strict pedigree of all the Saiyan blood that's left in the galaxy-but I know of a few."

//"Oh great."// Trunks mentally groaned.

"Most of them have strange skin colors or bony plates in places that you obviously don't, and one has these strange pointed ears and the emotional depth of a rock, but I'm willing to bet that barring those, you're a Farben."

"…A what?" Trunks couldn't help but ask.

Corran smirked and answered, "It's a race of these really smart beings that the Cold Empire nearly wiped out. They're ace with technological crap, and even though they're physically not the toughest things around, they can get out of some tough scrapes by using their minds to fortify their bodies. They have really vivid hair colors-purple, blue, and white are common probably from genetic engineering or something-and I saw a lot of them living on the last Saiyan space colony that we raided. Resourceful little guys, I'll give them that."

Trunks grinned to himself. //"How convenient."//

"There was a recent report in the Galactic Update about how their scientists have been doing tests on some stupid creatures from this backwater planet that sounds like a burp noise, and they found their DNA to be compatible with Saiyans too. The E-arthans or whatever they're called are built a lot tougher than the Farbens, though."

//"Crap."//

"Hey, are you just going to sit there and glare at me or what?"

"…Sorry." He apologized. Trunks hadn't realized that he had been glaring.

After a short silence, Corran prompted him, "…And?"

"…And I think I'll leave you to your own conclusions." Trunks shifted and swung his legs over the side of the bed in preparation to get up.

"And I think you're going to do some explaining." Corran stood adamantly in his way.

Trunks briefly contemplated shoving Corran aside, but decided wisely against it and stayed sitting on the firm bed as the dark-scaled Slycan towered over him. Trunks's face took on a dark look and he lowered his gaze. "And I don't really want to talk about it. I'm not my favorite subject." He said lowly.

"Kahler, come on," Corran implored him, bending down to his eye level and giving him back his personal space. "I would like to think that I'm enough of a trusted friend of yours that you could at least tell me what you are."

"You know who I am." Trunks insisted. "That should be enough."

"No," Corran asserted, "as long as you need to rely on someone else for your health if nothing else, who you are isn't enough. …And I'm not even all that sure of who you are these days either. You've changed, Kahler, and I don't think I trust who you're becoming."

Trunks opened his mouth slowly, then closed it again. He was speechless; Corran was right. He had changed under the stress of his environment, and not for the better. "…I'm sorry, Corran." He said at length, and he truly meant it.

Corran nodded, accepting his apology. "…I guess I'm sorry too, yanno, for not doing anything sooner and all. …So are you going to tell me?"

"…Yes." Trunks replied. His heart seemed to lift into his throat along with that word and he felt like adding "everything", but held back. He couldn't and wouldn't tell Corran everything, not yet. "As you have probably guessed, I am half Saiyan."

Corran's face split into a toothy smile and a triumphant look. "I knew it!"

"But as to my other half, in order to keep my home world safe, I will not be able to tell you. I can assure you, however, that I have never heard of, and am most certainly not a Farben." Trunks told him seriously.

"Shit, man, what kind of backwater planet do you come from anyway?" Corran swore.

Trunks just laughed nervously. A door opened out in the hall, mercifully scattering any thoughts that Corran might have used to put 2 and 2 together, and a pair of footsteps started to approach. "Hide!" Trunks hissed at Corran and the Slycan dragged the paper records under the bed with him just as the door unlatched and K-fwoomed into the wall.

"Hmm? You're awake." The tall blue alien noted as he ducked into the room. His long muzzle was tipped in a short, eagle-like beak and his long fingers and appendages looked awkwardly proportioned to the rest of his 12-foot frame. The small red alien peeked in below him.

"Yeah, I woke up when you closed the door earlier, figured you'd be back…" Trunks lied as he pieced bits of what he was pretty sure to have happened before he woke up together. He was surprised how easily lying was coming to him now, and a little disquieted at the same time. "I'm feeling fine now, thanks, just overexerted myself a bit. I knew I shouldn't have tried to reset block B-63 after how funny breakfast smelled. …Oh, I hope you don't mind that I turned off your equipment. It was bothering me."

The doctors blinked simultaneously. "Well, er, yer gonna be comin' wit us fer a few tests anywho." The red alien said after a bit.

Trunks stiffened. "Really, I'm feeling much better now…"

"But we still must send a report to Lasiehr detailing your inherited race. He has expressed his wish to know in quite a… clear manner." The blue alien looked nervous as he spoke.

Trunks was nervous too. Corran poked him with his tail from an angle that the doctors couldn't see after he felt the silence had almost stretched too long. "A Farben." Trunks lied, remembering his earlier conversation.

"What?" The doctors asked in unison, obviously not having expected such a plain answer.

"I'm a Farben, see the hair? My mind fortifies my body." Well, at least that was pretty much true, and the lie might stretch to explain how he could lift the 5 ton crates. "Really, Riigo will be angry if I stay away too long, and I'm feeling just fine."

The two doctors looked at each other for a moment. Neither of them wanted to disappoint Lasiehr, but an angry Riigo usually meant a lot of unnecessary injuries and that uneconomic turn usually disappointed Lasiehr anyway. The newbie looked a lot like a Farben anyway and his vitals had been pretty close to those statistics.

The red alien nodded. He didn't want to have to bother with all the paperwork that it would take to test him, especially when the newbie had already offered the information so freely. "Fine, git yerself outta here 'n back ta Riigo then." He and the tall blue alien ducked back out of the room as Kahler walked past, then went back to their offices, apparently pleased that they would have much less paperwork to do.

Before leaving to follow Kahler, Corran sent the records that he stole down the incinerator chute. As he was climbing his way out of the room on the ceiling, he spotted Spug creeping his way along the floor in the hall, twitching and looking nervously around. Corran had the strongest urge to hiss at him and punt him with his tail, but resisted in favor of not drawing attention to himself, and therefore not provoking Lasiehr's wrath.

//"What the hell was he doing down here?"// Corran thought more as an outlet for his desire to curse at something than as an objective question to be answered. Still as Corran caught up to Kahler when he turned the next corner, he couldn't help but wonder and think twice about his question.

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To be continued...

**Dragon ball ending theme begins to play**

Trunks: Uh oh, I've got a bad feeling about this.

Tussney: So do I, but I think it's just breakfast… Urg…

Trunks: **Rolls his eyes** Anyway, one of the following things won't appear in the next episode: me in luminous bikini shorts-… Hey, who wrote this!?

**A clip of Trunks wearing shiny bikini shorts outside his pants and complaining about it**

Corran: Just read the script, Monkey-boy.

Tussney: Hey, I didn't do anything!

Trunks: **Slaps his forehead** …A drunken cat boy-…

Corran: Now I don't even want to see that. Those Felions are disgusting when they're drunk, all fur and alcohol… Give me nice clean scales any day.

Trunks: **Rolls his eyes** …Lasiehr in a dress-…

**A clip of Lasiehr in a dress, humming "I Feel Pretty"**

Tussney: **Wolf whistles**

Trunks: …Tussney wearing underwear on his head, Corran eating a bug, or a coconut bra. Tune in next time, same time, same place! DBZ: HYHB: Episode 13, Escape into Captivity! It's sure to be shockingly hilarious!

Tussney: …What's this about me wearing underwear on my head? I don't wear underwear on my head!

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STORY BY:
Silent Willow

TYPING BY:
Silent Willow

HTML CODING BY:
Silent Willow

BETA READING BY:
SSJ_Zorella (Retired?)
(I need a new beta reader!)

HOSTING BY:
Freeservers.com (fallen into disrepair)
MediaMiner.org
Fanfiction.net
And maybe in the future Deviantart.com

ACTORS:
Trunks Briefs: Trunks Briefs
Tussney: 17-year-old Radditz
Lasiehr: Morten
Riigo: Fat Bastard and a lot of makeup
Tobaga: ROSELYNE MARROT **YAY!!!**
Corran: Rya
Various Aliens: Random people off the street

SPECIAL THANKS TO:
The letter F (For not appearing on my report card!)
Zamba (W00t! We're RPing again! :D )
Ember (For being the first person to review this story!)
Rya (Former reluctant muse and fellow writer)
Pixi Stix (I had 8 of them today. The last time I had that many in one sitting, I nearly burned the house down.)
Vanilla Coke (Mmmm…)
Coffee (It's my friend…)
Phoenix_Rising (For being my drawing sensei and for helping me with the coloring of the Tempest Winds pages!)
Chino-kun (Still because of his spiffy Squall cosplay! Whee!)
SSJ_Zorella (Even though he's not really beta-ing anymore. I need a new beta!)
Momoko-chan (Because you're still Plot Slave Extraordinaire! You rock! :D )
PEFGH (Even though I haven't heard from you in a while)
Embyr-75 (For keeping on my butt to get this chapter out. Arigato! Without you, it wouldn't be here. ^_^;; )
MediaMiner.org (Even though you suck because you don't allow much art posting anymore, I still am in awe of your awesome Fanfic search capabilities and NC-17 friendliness. …Not that I read NC-17 fanfiction, but I do appreciate the freedom that you allow writers of NC-17 fiction. **Nod nods**)

And finally, readers like you!