Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Forgotten ❯ Chapter 1

My name? Why… well, I suppose it doesn't matter anymore, does it? What matters is what I'm about to tell you. No one else knows this, I'm the only one who found the truth, and by then it was too late. Sorry, I'm rambling…

So, why am I telling you this? I suppose I'm half-crazed with loneliness. I have to tell someone, before I forget it all. Before the truth is lost again. I can no longer keep it to myself…

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I was a scientist on Planet Plant. Yes yes, a Tuffle. I know, the name sounds amusing, doesn't it? Girly even. But it didn't sound that way back then. Not to us anyway.

Most Tuffles, if not all of us, were scientists. It was just the way we were. We never did like conflict or power. We, as a species, were content with creating. It's what we were good at.

However, I was a bit different. My profession was analyzing the ruins of our ancestors. Most considered it a little odd, but then again, I was always a little odd myself, so I suppose the job fitted me. In any case, I enjoyed it.

I was helping out in the excavation of a very old building. From what our scans showed, it was a primitive laboratory. It was remarkably well-preserved for being so old, and everyone present was happy with the pace of the work so far. We were hours away from opening the door to it, and delving into the rich mysteries of times past that were surely hidden safely inside that buried compound.

"Careful, your tail might start wagging if you get any more excited," one of my partners in the project teased me. I glared at him. It was a joke I had had to endure since childhood, that I was actually half-Saiyan. Intelligent, but a bit too enthusiastic for my own good. I can assure you, both my parents (and their parents) were 100% Tuffle. But oh gods, if only we had known!

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The door was opened, and the smell almost overpowered everyone. Stale air. It was old! Of course, the carbon dating had already confirmed that, but the smell just proved it somewhere in our subconscious. The smell was probably the only thing that kept me from rushing in like a little child and analyzing anything I could get my dainty little hands on. Yeah, I had dainty hands. Shut up about it. It's normal for Tuffles.

We all waited impatiently as fresh air filtered into the ancient building. We felt rushed, and for good reason. One of the frequent sandstorms that raged across the planet would be here in a few weeks, and our project would have to be finished by then. Before I can continue, I should explain the climate of Planet Plant to you.

The planet is (was) a desert. There is enough water still left to support the meager bit of life that remains, but no more. We (the Tuffles) have to regulate the water constantly. The majority of the mechanical and biological experts were currently working on a way to artificially create water. There was geological evidence that this planet once had water all over it, but what happened to it all remained a mystery.

The Saiyans didn't make it any easier to live on that planet. They destroy whatever small settlements they can find, so we have to live in large cities, protected by armed guards.

The Saiyans were everything we weren't, and had everything we didn't have to survive there. Where we were physically weak, they are unbelievably strong, and where we could only survive for a couple days without food or water and had mild appetites, they could go for months at a time and then devour mind-boggling amounts of food. They were savage and wild and perfectly adapted to that environment. Any environment, really.

There had been a tense air around as of late because of the Saiyans. One reason I hadn't appreciated the comment about my parentage. But that's enough about me and the Saiyans. I have a story to tell.

The air inside the building was breathable now, and myself and the others rushed in. No time could be lost collecting information from the ancient computers.

The inside was disappointingly stark. But we weren't entirely unused to this. One of my partners hooked the appliances up to a small power generator and the machines started up with a whirring sound. They were perfectly preserved…

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It had been two weeks so far, and most of the information had been extracted from the machines, and all but myself had left for home. There was still something left in those ancient machines, and I'd be damned if I was going to leave that bit of information stuck in an ancient building to be covered in sand again.

I sat in front of a slightly glowing screen, fingers awkwardly plunking down codes on the panel that sat in between the screen and I. I was close. If I was a Saiyan, I could probably have smelled it. But we've been through that already.

With a soft ringing sound a new screen popped up. I felt my hands shaking in excitement. I had found it! For one brief instant, I wished I had a tail, just so I could wag it.

An image appeared on the new screen and I leaned forward to se better. It was a moving image, a movie, badly recorded. Static moved across the image, but it didn't obscure the face that appeared there. Sound crackled from the speakers.

The face on the screen looked tired and old, and oddly burdened. He (for the face was obviously male) had brown hair and eyes. The hair was disheveled and unclean, and the eyes looked a little wild, sad, maybe even desperate. The static couldn't hide that. His voice was cracked and uneven went through the speakers. I listened eagerly.

"I made this recording," the voice echoed in the empty room. "To… to make sure our past is never forgotten. To make sure generations to come know the truth!"

This intrigued me. The truth? I paid close attention.

"The year is 235."

That had been close to 600 years ago. Various pictures replaced the face as his voice echoed through the cold room. It was data, and my eyes rolled over it excitedly at first, then, as his voice droned on, a bit psychotically, and the pictures flashed by, my eyes couldn't stop looking at them, couldn't stop absorbing the information with a morbid curiosity. I distantly felt my heart racing.

"This planet… before year 0, a hundred years before, was green with life. There was water everywhere, over half the planet was ocean and rivers and seas. There were forests, grasslands, even an entire continent of ice! But… there was something that went wrong… our ancestors didn't know what they were doing! They destroyed the majority of the natural resources before they realized, and now we're left with this desert wasteland of a planet! That was so long ago… now, children are being born with tails! They are aggressive and dangerously strong. When they are old enough, they will undoubtedly be thrown out of society and have to fend for themselves. It's a shame, really… they are perfectly adapted to life on this planet. They will be the ones to inherit this planet. They are, for lack of a better term, the evolution of ourselves!"

"But that's enough about that. On year 0, there was a launch of a space shuttle, equipped with all that could be needed to set up a colony on another planet. All contact was shut off from that new planet, for unknown reasons…"

There was a loud bang against the closed door and I whirled around. The bangs got louder. No! I couldn't let bandits get to this place, not with this new revelation! This couldn't happen!

WHAM!

The door fell to the floor heavily. I froze in horror.

"Heh heh heh…" a voice chuckled darkly, stepping into the room. "What do we have here boys? A little Tuffle who's lost his way?"

More voices laughed harshly and the owners of the voices stepped in after him. I backed up against a wall. Tails waving excitedly behind them as they advanced toward me, the wild Saiyans were looking for blood. My blood. I don't doubt that they could smell my fear.

"Ah, come on," a harsh-sounding but feminine voice interrupted. "Can't I keep him? I haven't had a pet in ages! Just for a little while?"

"No," the apparent leader answered. "We haven't had a good kill in days. We can't keep supplying you with new pets all the time and just let our little prey escape…"

And, faster than I could see, they blew a hole in my stomach. I wasn't given a chance to fight back. I wouldn't have had a chance anyway. I lay on the ground, barely conscious as the Saiyans gleefully tore the place apart. The voice from the past that I had been listening to was beginning to fade.

"The planet that was colonized… it was to be called New Earth… we can assume then that our ancestors called this planet Earth originally…"

A Saiyan ripped the wires out, and the picture and voice were silenced. Lying quietly on the floor, I died.