Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Illumination ❯ Interlude: Breakdown ( Chapter 8 )
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Silver Armada 
When Trunks is almost killed by the group chasing Armada, the mercenary goes on the offensive.
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Drama / Adventure | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 12.07.2016 | Pages: 15 | Words: 8.9K | Visits: 153 | Status: Completed
When Trunks is almost killed by the group chasing Armada, the mercenary goes on the offensive.
Anime/Manga: Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Drama / Adventure | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 12.07.2016 | Pages: 15 | Words: 8.9K | Visits: 153 | Status: Completed
Disclaimer: Dragonball Z
belongs to Akira Toriyama and numerous other companies. This fanfic
is only for fun, no monies are being made.
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Two days after dropping off the senator and his attendant, Trunks and Armada were headed back to Ute. The trip directly to Ute from the edge of the Republic would take eight days; longer than the trip from Virda City, but shorter than the entire round trip of Ute-Virda City-Republic. Armada was sitting in the lounge behind the one table in the small space, typing away into a small laptop computer. Trunks wasn't surprised to see she hadn't moved in the few minutes it took him to go back to his room, pick something up, and walk back to the lounge; she had been sitting at that computer for close to six hours now. And with nothing to do, and no politicians and bodyguards keeping their attention occupied, he was bored. So he decided to change things up a bit.
Trunks walked into the lounge and threw down a small box on the table next to Armada's computer. It landed with a loud smack and slid slightly. Her eyes immediately pulled away from the screen to look at the box he'd thrown down. "What's this?" she asked, her eyes tracking up to his as he stood in front of the table.
"Playing cards," Trunks said with a triumphant smile.
Giving him a wary look, she reached over and picked up the box. She opened it, and a deck of cards slid out, with symbols on them that she had never seen before. She looked back up to him, her face full of guarded confusion, but he spoke before she had a chance to say anything.
"They're mine," Trunks began. "They're from my homeworld," he amended.
"And you think I'm going to play cards with you?" she said slowly, almost mechanically.
"Why not?" Trunks countered. "What else do we have to do to kill time?"
Armada immediately looked down and put the cards back into the box, folding the opening back in to seal it. "I don't know this deck, I don't know how to play," she started into her excuses, but Trunks didn't let her finish.
"I'll teach you," he said while moving to sit at the side of the table to her right. He took the deck of cards from her hands and pulled them out of the box once more. "It's easy, you'll catch on quick," he said as he started to shuffle the deck. He knew she would resist. Anything that might be the slightest bit of fun seemed to be a no-go for her. He knew he'd have to work this in tactically. But now that he had her attention, her first excuses to say 'no,' he was ready to go in for the kill. "Unless," he said as he stopped shuffling and looked up at her, "you're afraid to lose."
Her eyes snapped back up to his instantly. She shut the lid of her laptop and pushed it aside to her left, out of the way of the 'game area' Trunks was beginning to setup. "I'm not afraid of anything," she said flatly. "Deal me in."
Trunks smiled as he looked back down at the deck of cards in his hands and started dealing them out. "Okay. I'll go easy on you the first few rounds."
"I only need one round to learn the rules," Armada replied. Trunks could have laughed at her predictably competitive nature. "Now explain what it is that you're doing," she added, referencing his dealing of the cards.
It only took one round for Trunks to explain the rules of five-card stud, a variant of poker. Armada caught on quickly. They played a few hands while Trunks continued to explain the rules, and which hands were ranked higher than others. Armada finally told him to 'get serious,' at which point he laughed but agreed. They played in relative silence, but it was a nice break to the monotony for Trunks, so he didn't care if she wasn't much for conversation. It beat playing solitaire.
"Where are you from?" Armada suddenly asked as she dealt the next hand.
Trunks kept his gaze down on his cards as she finished dealing the hand, thinking about how to respond. Since the Bmyhadians had found his home, Earth, he had learned quite a bit about Earth's place in the galaxy. Apparently it was part of unmapped space, called the Frontier, at the edges of the GaReXa Republic. The Bmyhadian explorers and scientists who found them had been contracted out by the Republic to do their research in that region. Bmyhad was part of the Federation Alliance, a small nation composed of six star systems and a few independent satellites and space stations. The Alliance was bordered by the three major nations in the universe; the GaReXa Republic, LOKI, and the Roffeler Empire. Compared to these nations, the Alliance was new and tiny, almost at the center of mapped space. Which is why the Bmyhadians had to go through the Republic to explore uncharted space.
"You're not from Ute," Armada said as she examined her cards. "You're not a Bmyhadian; they aren't very adept at controlling energy, and you're too clueless about some basic things to be from Bmyhad. So where are you from?" she repeated herself and locked her gaze with his.
"A small planet in the Frontier," Trunks replied. He didn't want to give out the name of his planet, lest she try to look it up for less than savory reasons. While the threat she had laid upon Noran two days ago was funny, he hadn't forgotten about the way she described herself. A hurricane of death and cruelty. She wasn't someone he was jumping at the opportunity to trust with sensitive information. "The Bmyhadians found it while charting space under the Republic's jurisdiction," he added as he set down two cards to the side to draw two more. "What about you?" Trunks asked, knowing the opportunity wouldn't rise again anytime soon to try and pry some information out of his employer.
"I'm not 'from' anywhere," she replied flatly, setting down one card to draw one more. "Never lived in the place I was born," she added while examining her hand.
Trunks wasn't surprised at her non-answer. She didn't trust him any more than he trusted her... which he supposed was fair. "How long have you been in Ute?" Trunks asked, examining his hand and realizing he was likely going to win this round. "Would you consider it your home?"
After the first few rounds had been played without betting, Armada pulled out a stack of empty bank cards so they could at least have something to bet by proxy. Real money wasn't at stake, but at least having some kind of counter made it feel more real when they placed their bets. Armada took two bank cards and threw them in the pot. "Raise. I had been on Bmyhad for twenty-two months before I ran into you," she answered him. "I was about to leave, actually, when you helped Dax rob me."
Trunks tossed in two bank cards, then another four. "Raise. I forgot that you knew that guy. How do you know him?" Trunks asked earnestly.
Armada's face scrunched up a bit as she thought about what to do. She threw in the four cards Trunks had tossed in. "Call. Dax and I served in the military together," she added while setting down her hand on the table face-up. She had two kings and two sevens, for a hand of two-pair.
She's ex-military, Trunks thought as he set his hand down face-up on the table as well. He had a straight-flush, three through seven of diamonds. That explains a lot. "Damn," Armada cursed as she saw that she had lost the hand. She reluctantly pushed the pile of plastic cards over to Trunks. It was then Trunks's turn to deal, so he collected the playing cards and began to shuffle.
"By Utian time, it's getting late. You may want to get some rest," Armada looked up at Trunks as she spoke.
Trunks continued shuffling for a moment, when a thought hit him and he stopped. "What about you?" he asked, fixing his gaze on hers. "I don't think I've seen you sleep once, in what, two months?" Oddly he'd never given it a thought, but he had realized even during moments when he was awake and should have been sleeping, she was seemingly always up. If he didn't already know better, he'd wonder if she was a robot. Or android, he thought with a mental cringe.
"I learned to live on very little sleep," she replied automatically. "Hard to get restful sleep," she began as she moved to the side and stood up from her seat, "when all you do is have nightmares." She didn't spare another glance at Trunks and walked away.
Figuring that was the end to their game, he shoved the deck of cards into its box and shoved it in a jacket pocket. It was certainly interesting, what she said. Armada was the type to put on airs that everything was put together and under control. Why would she suddenly let down that veneer to him? Or rather... did she not realize she had let it down?
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Illumination
Interlude: Breakdown
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Days on the ship in space absolutely crawled, and Trunks was beginning to hate it. He just didn't like being away from fresh air, natural gravity, and other things he'd taken for granted seeing as how he wasn't raised in space. So as he walked through the open air market in Ute next to the river, he felt renewed. Nothing was better than fresh air and sunlight, and the freedom to enjoy both. He and Armada had arrived back in Ute during the night, and he had immediately gone up to the roof of the ship's hangar to get some air. Ute's climate was very pleasant right now, as summer started to come to a close. It was supposed to be the rainy season, but as the local weather reported, things had stayed oddly dry, but not enough to be of concern. Ute had seen showers, but not the raging thunderstorms that were expected this time of year.
After enjoying some early morning star-gazing, Trunks went back inside and slept for a few hours. Now, in the late morning, he decided to head downtown to walk around an enjoy a beautiful day. It wasn't that long ago that walking around in the open like this on his home, Earth, was impossible. And if that's why he felt so damn sentimental about it, he didn't care—he just wanted to enjoy the day.
After spending a few hours downtown, and carrying a large bag of fresh fruits and vegetables, Trunks returned to the hangar. As he approached from down the street, he noticed a truck pull up and park in front of the front entrance to the hangar. Trunks kept walking, and as soon as he reached the truck a young man in a uniform stepped out of the open side door of the truck carrying a package.
“Oh hey,” he called out to Trunks, “you live here?” he asked as he took a few steps closer to Trunks and the door to the hangar.
“Yeah,” Trunks replied promptly.
“Oh good,” the young man sighed in relief, “when I was driving up I was wondering where I was going to leave this.” He raised the package slightly at the end of his sentence. “Can I get you to sign for it?”
“Sure,” Trunks said and moved his bag of groceries to his left hand to free his right hand to sign with. The delivery man held out a tablet with a signature field already ready to go and handed Trunks a small stylus. He used it to sign, and signed 'Mace Son,' figuring he shouldn't use his own name and coming up with something on the spot. As soon as he signed, the delivery driver took his tablet and stylus back, and handed Trunks the package.
“Thanks bro!” the young driver called out as he stepped back into his truck and drove off. Trunks looked down at the package; it was nothing special. Maybe four inches thick, the box was about the size of a large book, and maybe half as heavy, wrapped in brown paper. Trunks tucked the package under his arm and punched in the security code to unlock the door to the hangar.
Moments later, inside the ship, he set the package down on the table in the lounge and proceeded into the galley carrying his bag of groceries. It appeared that Armada had left sometime after he did earlier, and since the package was likely for her he just left it where she would see it if he didn't get to tell her about it first. Trunks spent a few minutes putting his groceries away, then went to the lounge to catch up on local news. He sat at the same table as the package, paying it no mind as he caught up on some of the latest news and weather reports for the area while snacking on what he considered an apple, though it was a bit sweeter and softer.
After about thirty minutes, Trunks started to feel tired and yawned. Admittedly he didn't get good sleep while on their trip to the Republic and back, so he shut down the terminal in the lounge and headed back to his room to get some rest. No harm in taking a nap when absolutely nothing was going on. As he walked into his room, Trunks threw off his jacket and tossed it onto the lower bunk bed that was unused as she strode over to his bed. He kicked off his boots and flopped down into bed. It was already fairly warm in the ship, so he didn't bother pulling up the covers, but just laid down on his stomach and wrapped his arms around his pillow. Sleeping in normal gravity felt wonderful, and he was all too happy to rest.
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After some time, though he had no idea how long, Trunks started to wake up. He tossed and turned, suddenly feeling very hot. His mouth was dry and he was sweating profusely. Finally he opened his eyes and decided to get up, because his thirst was becoming unbearable. As soon as he sat up, he felt himself drift to the left, as if his whole body were off its axis. His head felt like it was full of water, and he reached up to place his right hand against his forehead. What... the hell...? he thought in confusion at his condition. He felt fine earlier, now he felt like he'd baked in an oven for several hours and someone had hit him in the head hard enough to destroy his balance. Trunks forced himself to his feet, and immediately swayed. He managed to take a few steps to grab the wall next to the door to prevent himself from falling over completely.
He opened the door to his room, determined to get to the galley and grab some water. His body ached for it at this point. He pulled himself upright using the door frame, and began walking down the hallway, using the right side of the hall for support. He felt himself spinning out of control in one direction, while it felt like the ship itself swayed in the other. He breathed heavily, and his hands—no, arms—no, his entire body shook violently as he tried to make the trip to the galley.
Suddenly his limbs started to feel heavy, like the heaviest metal on Earth and he stopped walking. He couldn't will himself to move forward; he couldn't call upon his energy to help him. Each time he tried, it immediately fizzled out, like he was trying to grab bubbles and hold them in his hand only for them to burst and disappear into nothing. Leaning completely against the wall of the ship, he gritted his teeth. Something was terribly, terribly wrong, and he had to figure out what. Because at the rate he felt his health declining, he was pretty sure it would only stop once he was dead.
“Hahh!” Trunks let out a yell as he pushed one more step forward, only to fall completely to the ground. After he collapsed, he lifted his head slightly to look down the hallway into the bridge. His vision blurred, and he could barely make out what he was looking at.
Was it really coming to an end like this? He was, arguably, the strongest being in the universe, and here he was being taken down by some mysterious illness? If he could, Trunks would have laughed at the irony. It all made sense. This was some cosmic balance coming into play. He saved Goku, the strongest warrior of his time, from a heart virus, only to succumb to something similar. Apparently somebody was meant to die like that. Maybe that was it; you couldn't escape fate, you could only push it off onto someone else.
As his eyes fell shut, Trunk's left hand clenched into a fist and he thought of his mother, Bulma. She was going to be so angry with him.
-+-
Armada opened the door to the ship and immediately in her view was a hand, attached to an arm that lay out of her view to her left. Her eyes shot wide and she stepped inside to find Trunks laying in the hallway. “Trunks!” she shouted out to him as she took one knee at his side. He was laying face down, so she turned him over onto his back and held his head up. He was breathing heavily, but they were shallow, quick breaths. His skin was almost burning to the touch, and he was drenched in sweat. He's sick,Armada thought as her eyebrows came together. She set his head down gently and flew to the infirmary.
On her way, something caught her eye in the lounge and she stopped. There was a small package wrapped in brown paper sitting on the table. Her eyes widened in shock, and she immediately realized what was going on. He wasn't sick; he'd been poisoned, and that meant there was nothing she could do to save him.
She flew to the galley and grabbed a large plastic bag. With the bag in hand, she returned to the package, and using the bag to shield her hands, she lifted and tossed it into the bag. She hurriedly tied it off, and flew back to where Trunks lay in the hallway. She lifted up his back first, so he was in a sitting position. Keeping her left hand on his back, she turned to face him and put her right arm around his chest to his back, underneath his left arm. She then stood, lifting him up with her, and his body weight fell into her. He wasn't too heavy for her to lift; she had the energy to expend. The problem was that he was about five inches taller than her, which made him awkward to carry.
Armada hefted him up a bit higher, so her arms were wrapped around his waist as his head hung over her left shoulder. She then reached down to pick up the bag with the package in it, and started flying backwards to make sure she got him out of the doorway all right. With that obstacle cleared, she closed the door to the ship and headed down to the main entrance of the hangar. There wasn't time to load him up into the car and drive... she'd just have to fly there. Which she hated to do, because it draw all kinds of attention to them. But if his condition was any indication, they didn't have time for discretion right now. Besides, she already didn't want to do what she was about to do, but it was the only way to save him at this point.
She took him to the hospital.
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When Trunks finally willed his eyes open, he whole body ached. If he had to guess, he would have said he'd been smashed under one of Ute's giant skyscrapers, or dropped into the deepest trenches of the ocean where the water pressure would liquefy his bones. As his vision finally decided to obey him and focus, he started to take in his surroundings. There were lights above him, but they were turned off. The room was still pretty well-lit, and the ceiling was white. So were the walls. That was when Trunks realized he wasn't taking breaths; something was taking breaths for him. He tried to lift his hands, which didn't happen—but he felt his hands twitching in response to the command.
“Take it easy,” Trunks heard and suddenly his vision was filled with that of a man with dark hair and glasses looking down at him from his right side. The voice sounded far away, and it echoed in his brain like it was being projected into his skull. “You're still way too close to death to try any of that,” the man spoke once more. If Trunks had to guess, this guy wasn't much older than himself. But who was he? And where was he?
Trunks felt a hand on his right hand, and it squeezed lightly. “You feel that?” the man asked. Trunks tried to nod, and while he was sure he was unable to do so, the man responded with “Good,” as if he had understood the Earthling's futile attempt to move. “But you need to lie still until we finish getting the contagion out of your system.”
Contagion? Trunks thought in confusion. What the hell had happened?
The man's attention was dragged away from Trunks's face for a moment. “Well, your blood pressure's rising, and we can't have that right now,” he finished and turned back to Trunks briefly before walking away. “Just relax, let your body heal,” Trunks heard the man speak even though he was out of his line of sight. Seconds later, Trunks's eyelids felt heavier than whatever thing had crushed him, and he couldn't stop them from rolling shut.
-+-
The next time Trunks opened his eyes, he didn't have to struggle. Not only could he open his eyes without any real effort, he was able to sit up, albeit leaned back on his elbows. A white sheet slid down his chest, which was bare, and Trunks looked around the room. From the instruments he saw, his bed, and the intravenous fluids line running into his chest, he was able to quickly deduce that he was in a hospital. It was no hospital on Earth, though, because it seemed a lot more high tech than what they had at home.
Ute. Bmyhad. He was in Bmyhad. Everything came back in a rush. He and Armada had just gotten back from their last job. He'd gone downtown, he signed for a package, he went to take a nap, and that's when all hell broke loose. But how did he end up here? He briefly remembered collapsing while trying to get to some water, but nothing after that besides waking up where he was now.
Before he had a chance to really think about it, the door to his room slid open, and a young man not much older than himself with short dark hair and glasses walked in. He wore a white lab coat, not unlike the ones Devan and Murtole wore. “Good, this time it wasn't a false alarm,” the man said as he strode in and walked over to Trunks. He looked a console sitting near Trunks's bed for a moment, before he turned to Trunks. “You want to sit up? Here let me adjust your bed,” he said and with a few button clicks Trunks felt the bed moving. After a moment it settled in a spot so that when he leaned back against it, and off of his elbows, he was still sitting upright.
“I'm Dr. Rema,” the man finally spoke to Trunks, “and you were in pretty bad shape.” He paused a moment before continuing, “What's your name kid?” Trunks was confused, but before he could say anything, the doctor spoke once more. “She didn't tell me your name, just threatened to kill me and destroy the hospital if you didn't wake up. I'm used to her threats, but this time it seems kinda personal,” he finished with a laugh.
Dr. Rema spoke forcefully and quickly. Trunks was still kind of in shock as to everything that was happening. But more importantly, “Who?” Trunks asked. His voice came out a lot smaller and weaker than he thought it should.
Dr. Rema eyed him warily for a moment. “Who brought you here?” he supplied. “Armada. You know her. At least I'm assuming you do because she doesn't normally threaten to kill me and mean it.” Trunks sat soaking in the information for a moment. “Yes I know who she is,” Rema preemptively answered a question he figured his patient was about to ask. “I've treated her before. But your name, kid, you got one?”
This doctor seemed kind of... unorthodox, to put it mildly. He was very blunt and abrupt, for a Bmyhadian. The few that Trunks knew weren't like this at all, so he thought it may have been a cultural thing. Leave it to a doctor to prove him wrong.
“Toran,” Trunks answered. It couldn't hurt to give out a fake name.
“Toran, nice to meet you,” the doctor replied, still standing at Trunks's bedside. “Like I said, I'm Dr. Alten Rema. I've been treating you since you were dropped off here at First Mercy of Malleas Hospital eight days ago. Do you remember what happened?”
Trunks shook his head briefly before letting out a breath and letting his head fall back against his pillow. “Not really. I had just come back from the market by the river. I was tired, so I took a nap, and when I woke up,” he trailed off.
“You left out the part where you signed for a package,” Dr. Rema cut in. Trunks opened his mouth to speak but the good doctor cut him off at his knees. “That package was poisoned with a biochemical agent,” Dr. Rema stated flatly. “The other guy, the one who delivered it to you? He got here too late. He's dead.”
“Kami...” Trunks said under his breath as his gaze fell.
“It was an attack,” Rema continued. “Although I don't think it was meant for you, and neither does she.”
“Armada, where is she?” Trunks looked up at Rema once again.
“Hell if I know,” he replied. “She dropped you off and stayed long enough for me to take your case and threaten me, then she bailed. That's generally the script when she drops someone off for me, although...” the doctor trailed off as he averted Trunks's gaze.
“What?” Trunks pressed. He wanted to know what the doctor seemed reluctant to say.
“Although usually she only wants them to survive so she can either interrogate them or turn them in for bounty,” he added. “You're the first one she's brought me that she wanted to live for... well... to live, I guess, hell if I know what she's thinking,” he added on. “Anyway, how do you feel?” Rema changed the subject to the true matter at hand.
“Tired, but... good,” Trunks answered honesty.
“Excellent,” Rema replied and turned back to the console. “I'll have you discharged this afternoon. But you can't use your power for another two days,” he added and looked to Trunks. “You're not fully healed yet.”
Trunks was shocked; he didn't know what to say. What did this doctor know about him, exactly?
Rema laughed, “Oh don't panic kid, treating people like you is what makes my life interesting. A nurse will be in shortly to get your prepared to leave.” Dr. Rema smiled at Trunks before he turned and walked out the door with a careless sense of speed.
Trunks let out a deep breath. He almost couldn't believe what had happened, especially since apparently eight days had passed and he remembered none of it. Being hospitalized in critical condition for more than a week, he knew that meant it was bad. Trunks lifted his right hand and flexed the muscles, clenching and relaxing his fist. He wondered if he didn't have the speedy healing of his Saiyan genes if he would have survived. Clearly a normal person wouldn't, if the delivery driver's death was any indication.
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Several hours later, Trunks was finally walking back into the ship. At the hospital, they only had the clothes he was wearing when he was brought in, a tank top, a pair of pants, and a pair of underwear. Thankfully they had disinfected his clothes instead of just incinerating them. They found a pair of shoes in the lost and found that would fit him, though he was fairly certain “lost and found” meant people who died and nobody claimed their belongings. He only needed the shoes to get back to the hangar, from there he'd toss them out.
While Trunks was still careful to not exercise his energy use just yet as Dr. Rema had instructed, he could sense that Armada wasn't in. As he walked down the hallway to his quarters, he noticed that the ship smelled weird. Almost like... chemicals. When he entered his room, it became abundantly clear as to why that was.
The chemical smell was much stronger in here, and the sheets had been stripped from all the beds, washed, folded, and left on each bed awaiting placement. On his bed, the one that wasn't part of the bunk beds set, his belongings were all sitting out on the bed. Trunks walked over and picked up his blue Capsule Corp jacket, and it unfolded in his hands as he lifted it. Clearly Armada had cleaned the entire ship, which explained the smell. He was slightly shocked though, that she hadn't simply burned his things and told him to buy new. That was what he expected, at least. Instead, everything was here, neatly folded, just waiting for him to return.
He felt a twinge of guilt. She could have let him die. And sadly, he half expected her to. Instead, she saved his life—she took him to the hospital. She cleaned the ship. She took careof his things, the key being care. He wouldn't have given her enough credit to do all of this before. Dismissing the thoughts, because he had things he needed to do, Trunks set his jacket down and kicked off his borrowed shoes. It was early evening, and he was starving; it was time to make something to eat. He headed to the galley, leaving his things to be sorted and put away later.
If Trunks had taken a closer look at his belongings, if he had gone into his bathroom and opened the cabinet he kept locked, he would have seen the ID and watch he had recently recovered were both gone.
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Grelb was thrown backward into a wooden table, which splintered underneath the force with which he was thrown, and he crumbled to the ground with it. The young man, with his brown hair cut almost short enough to be considered shaved, tried to raise his head slightly and face his assailant. Blood trickled down into his right eye from a gash in his forehead, opened when she'd bludgeoned him with a shock rod. He was drenched in water from his neck down to his torso, from where she had subsequently half-drowned him in a sink to wake him up after knocking him unconscious with the aforementioned shock rod. He wasn't sure what was next as she stalked toward him, but he was sure it wouldn't be good.
Armada reached down and grabbed Grelb by the blue collar of his jacket, lifting him up off the ground and into the air. His hands hung limply at his sides; he was in no condition to fight back. She'd already barged in and killed six men, Grelb was the only one she didn't immediately murder. Instead, she was trying to beat information out of him. And in her opinion, it was only a matter of time before he talked.
“How'd you get the address to send the package?” Armada asked calmly but with murderous rage simmering just beneath the surface. Grelb only stared at her, saying nothing. Armada let go of his jacket, and before Grelb's body had a moment to react to gravity and begin to fall, she had her hand around his throat. He immediately coughed; her grip reinforced her intentions.
“Do you want to be a rotting corpse like the rest of your friends?” she asked with that same, even but barely contained dark rage filled tone. Grelb stayed silent and choked for air. Armada clenched her teeth and her grip on his throat. “I don't have the patience to deal with you today! Tell me what I want to know or I'll rip your lungs out with my bare hands!” she screamed loud enough to shake the building, or at least Grelb thought the building shook.
Grelb brought his hands up slowly to her arm, trying to indicate that he couldn't speak with her vice grip around his neck. In response, she dropped him to the ground. He sat up halfway and coughed, until Armada leaned over him and backhanded him across the face with her armored right forearm. His mouth immediately began to fill with blood from her strike, and she lowered her face to his. “Speak,” she ordered.
“Tracking you for months,” Grelb managed to blurt out between coughs as he gingerly held his throat with his left hand. “Dax got the money, but Rieve wanted blood,” he added, finishing with gasps.
Armada realized, as she suspected, that the biochemical attack was only the start of an onslaught. “Who did they send?” she asked the local cell leader for Rieve in Ute. Grelb only coughed in response, to which Armada's gaze filled with fury. She stood upright and stomped on Grelb's abdomen with her right foot, which he responded to by crying out in agony.
Grelb wrapped his arms around his sides and rolled over slightly, desperately fighting to breathe. She had collapsed his lungs with that last hit, and he couldn't speak until he regained lung function.
“Finding it hard to breathe?” she taunted maliciously. “I can fix that for you,” she leaned down so Grelb could look into her eyes, “but you've got to work with me.”
Unable to bear the pain of suffocating any longer, Grelb nodded furiously. Armada turned and grabbed an empty syringe lying on the floor. She bent down over Grelb and stabbed him in the chest with it, slightly left of center. She pushed down on the syringe, forcing air into one of Grelb's collapsed lungs. He immediately gasped for breath, but the unbearable pain hadn't quite subsided, as his right lung was still useless at the moment. She then yanked the syringe out, and Grelb's body twitched.
Armada reached down with her free left hand and grabbed Grelb by the jaw. “I won't ask again. Who did they send?!” she shouted at him with a fury that made him pray that his reinforcements would arrive soon.
“I don't know his name,” Grelb managed to spit out between clenched teeth as the mercenary held him by his jaw. “He's an elite, part of Rieve's personal squad. He was supposed to arrive a couple hours ago,” Grelb croaked out before he started coughing again.
Armada dropped him. Despite being the Utian cell leader, he was still a low level lackey. If he knew anything, that would be the sum of it. Before Grelb could say anything else, she thrust the syringe into his chest, this time into his heart, and much farther than just the needle. Grelb gurgled up more blood for a moment before falling silent. Armada let out a breath, and turned to leave.
Before she had turned fully, she was met with a shock rod in her face. The force was far greater than a normal shock rod, and Armada stumbled backwards, both temporarily stunned and blinded by the force. She immediately felt hands scrambling for her, so she lashed out and attempted to jump back and away from where she perceived the threat to be. Unfortunately, just as her vision returned, someone managed to clamp down one half of a set of AEM cuffs on her left arm. However, with her armor on, the cuffs couldn't seal properly and their hooks couldn't penetrate her armor. The one cuff still managed to shut down her use of her energy, but it wouldn't stop her from fighting back.
Just because she could fight back didn't mean she'd get away without any injuries.
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Later that night, well after Trunks had eaten and gone to bed, he awoke to a noise in the hangar. Immediately he sensed Armada's energy, and jumped up to meet her. He ran down the hall to the entrance to the ship and opened the door. He saw lights down below, and when they shut off he realized that she'd pulled the car into the hangar. He flew down to where she had parked, and his eyes widened at the grisly sight that greeted him.
She had collapsed over the steering column, and when she sensed he was standing next to the vehicle, she brought her eyes up to look at him, gasping for breath. She reached across her body with her right hand to open the door to the car, and Trunks almost felt sick when he saw the amount of blood running from a large cut in her left side. She had her left hand on it, trying to apply pressure, but blood ran down freely like an open faucet.
“What happened?!” Trunks near screamed in shock as he reached out to help her get out of the vehicle.
She immediately smacked his hands away with her right hand, leaving smears of her own blood on him. “Don't touch me,” she ground out through clenched teeth and harried breaths, glaring at him with an intensity Trunks had not seen from her before.
Trunks was now possibly just as enraged as she was. She was bleeding out, practically dying, and she was acting like a petulant child? He wasn't going to ignore her. He reached in and grabbed her by her left upper arm and dragged her out of the vehicle, quick enough that she could hardly react. That didn't stop her, though, and no sooner had he dragged her to her feet, she swung at him with a right hook.
Trunks easily caught her right fist with his left hand, and growled. He was cut off before he had a chance to speak, however, when she shouted at him, “I don't need your help!”
Trunks's eyes widened in shock. This... was she really doing this again? The pressure of everything, of not understanding her, of not getting what was going on, of nearly dying, laying in the hallway of the ship saying his own mental goodbyes to his mother and friends back home—it caused him to snap at her in a way he hadn't snapped in many years. “What the fuck's the matter with you?!” he screamed right back at her. His words echoed through the hangar, and they both froze.
After she stood still for the briefest moment, Armada started to struggle against his grasp and opened her mouth to speak. Realizing that words and reason were lost on her, Trunks did the only thing he could think of. He released her right hand and before she had time to react, he threw a swift uppercut into her abdomen.
Armada's eyes widened as the wind rushed out of her lungs, shocked that he'd actually hit her. She sputtered and fell forward, collapsing into Trunks's arms. “I'm sorry,” he said, knowing she didn't have the energy to fight back. “I'm sorry,” he repeated again as he pulled her close to him and flew back up into the ship with her in tow.
Once they were in the infirmary, Trunks set her down on the steel table in the center of the room. She still gasped for breath, and when Trunks made eye contact with her, she glared at him. He ignored her and turned to the cabinets housing the miniature hospital's worth of medications and bandages, only to find to his shock that the cabinets were empty. When he went to make his dinner earlier, he noticed that the galley had been completely emptied. He thought nothing of it, and just went out and bought more groceries, figuring that she had gotten rid of everything in an effort to decontaminate the ship. He never considered she would do the same with their medical supplies.
“Where is everything?” Trunks turned to Armada and asked in a panic, though he was certain he already knew the answer.
“Had to decontaminate the ship,” Armada replied through clenched teeth and strained breaths. She struggled to sit up, and reached for the latch on her chestplate. Trunks stepped over to her and helped her remove her chestplate. With that aside, Armada then pulled the black fabric of her underarmor down her torso to reveal the wound in its full glory. It wasn't as bad as the amount of blood loss led Trunks to believe, but it was bad—she would need stitches at the last, and they had nothing.
“You wanna help asshole,” Armada said as she put pressure on her wound with both hands now, “then listen carefully. In the cargo bay, there's a small black box with a handle, it says 'electrical' in red lettering. Grab that.” Trunks started to leave until she called out, “Wait, one more thing. The lockbox in the hall,” she continued, and Trunks knew what she was talking about. That was their 'safe,' it was where they kept their earnings. “The code is two-three-five-zero-seven-seven-one-three-eight, grab the bottle that's inside.”
With his orders given, Trunks flew down the hall into the cargo bay. He knew Dr. Rema said to not use his energy for two more days, but using this little bit for quick bursts of speed, or throwing a punch, was nothing, and hopefully it wouldn't effect anything. He saw the box in the cargo bay on the back wall, sitting on a work bench. Snatching it, he flew back upstairs and stopped at the lockbox in the hallway across from the infirmary. He quickly punched in the code, and inside was an unmarked glass bottle, among other things. He grabbed the bottle and flew back to the infirmary.
Inside the infirmary, Armada was now sitting upright, and she had removed her arm guards and the top half of her underarmor, leaving her in her black bandeau from the waist-up. She quickly took the bottle and black case from Trunks. First, she opened the bottle and started gulping down its contents, blood smearing on the glass from her right hand as she held it. With half the bottle gone in a flash, she then removed her left hand from her wound and poured some of the liquid down into her sliced open flesh. She winced at the pain, and from the smell Trunks understood just what was in the bottle—alcohol.
She set the bottle down, then proceeded to open the black box. Inside was a wiring kit, with several gauges and types of metal wire. Armada grabbed the thinnest gauge of wire inside the box, and started pulling several meters loose before she bent the wire and ripped it apart from the spool. With no needle to guide her, she just used the sharp tip of the wire and began stitching her wound shut. Noticing right away that she was struggling to hold the wound together and stitch it shut, Trunks reached in to help. He forced the edges of her cut together, and held them there so she could sew the wound closed.
In a few minutes they were done, and Armada laid back against the steel table. She was still breathing heavily, but after a moment she finally spoke. “Cargo bay,” she said while looking at the ceiling, “there's a crate marked ACI-5426.” She didn't have to say anymore, Trunks flew back down to the cargo bay.
When he found the crate she indicated and opened it, he found the same packets of artificial blood they had kept in the infirmary. So while they didn't have everything they needed, apparently she stockpiled artificial blood. Trunks quickly returned with just one box of the fluid from the crate, as the crate contained four boxes. He set it down on the counter inside the infirmary and pulled out a packet, and prepared it for her.
He turned around to face her and took her left arm to insert the needle. This time she didn't fight him, and once it was in, he hung the bag of fluids on the rack attached to the operating table she laid on. She wanted to move, she wanted to yell at him, she wanted to go hide in her room, but all of that took strength and energy and motivation she didn't have at the moment.
After a few minutes, her breathing slowed to a more normal pace, and she finally spoke. “That was a cheap shot,” she said, looking into his eyes from the corner of hers. It was infuriating to suffer two cheap shots from men recently; something like this rarely happened for her, and now she had two in such a short period of time.
“I know,” Trunks replied, his face sullen. He could almost feel the anger emanating from her.
She stared at him a moment longer before turning her face away from him completely. They sat in silence for twenty? thirty? forty minutes? Trunks wasn't sure how long, but it was long enough for the artificial blood bag to empty into Armada's system. She was feeling significantly better already, so she stood up and walked over to one of the chairs in the infirmary, carrying her bottle of alcohol with her.
Trunks brought over another bag of artificial blood and connected the line that was already inserted into her arm. Armada sat back in the seat and took a long drink of whatever alcohol was in that bottle. Trunks leaned against the counter over by the operating table, keeping his distance from Armada. “You don't have to babysit me,” she finally spoke up.
“No, I don't have to,” Trunks agreed, “but I'm here.”
“You're an idiot,” she said between still slightly strained breaths. “You should let me die, then you wouldn't owe me anything.”
“I'd still owe you my life,” Trunks replied quickly. He stared at her with a look of guarded anger.
Armada's gaze turned away from him. “That bastard doctor never listens to what I tell him,” she cursed and took another drink from her bottle.
“Like that matters,” Trunks responded. “Who else would have gotten in here to find me?” Logically, she was the only other person who had access to both the hangar and the ship.
Armada rolled her head around to glare at Trunks. Her face was red, and at first he was concerned until she spoke again. “I can't afford for my merchandise to be damaged,” she said with a little difficulty. Trunks would have been insulted, except that he realized she was drunk—which made sense, as the bottle was almost empty. He was surprised, until he thought about it and surmised that she was drinking as a painkiller, seeing as how she had dumped their entire stock in the infirmary. She took another drink, finishing off the bottle, and set it on the floor while turning away from Trunks so he couldn't see her face.
“Whatever your reasons, I'm still here. Thank you,” he said sadly. What was her game? What was the point of all of this? She saved his life, and he was grateful, yet she wanted him to leave her to die at the first opportunity. None of it made sense. Unless she was insane, which Trunks would be lying to say he hadn't seriously considered several times now.
Realizing she wasn't going to say anything more, Trunks left the infirmary. She was in somewhat stable condition. As he walked back to his quarters, he realized he still had her blood all over his hands and clothes. So there would at least be a shower before he went back to bed.
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Thanks for reading, please leave a review! :>
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Two days after dropping off the senator and his attendant, Trunks and Armada were headed back to Ute. The trip directly to Ute from the edge of the Republic would take eight days; longer than the trip from Virda City, but shorter than the entire round trip of Ute-Virda City-Republic. Armada was sitting in the lounge behind the one table in the small space, typing away into a small laptop computer. Trunks wasn't surprised to see she hadn't moved in the few minutes it took him to go back to his room, pick something up, and walk back to the lounge; she had been sitting at that computer for close to six hours now. And with nothing to do, and no politicians and bodyguards keeping their attention occupied, he was bored. So he decided to change things up a bit.
Trunks walked into the lounge and threw down a small box on the table next to Armada's computer. It landed with a loud smack and slid slightly. Her eyes immediately pulled away from the screen to look at the box he'd thrown down. "What's this?" she asked, her eyes tracking up to his as he stood in front of the table.
"Playing cards," Trunks said with a triumphant smile.
Giving him a wary look, she reached over and picked up the box. She opened it, and a deck of cards slid out, with symbols on them that she had never seen before. She looked back up to him, her face full of guarded confusion, but he spoke before she had a chance to say anything.
"They're mine," Trunks began. "They're from my homeworld," he amended.
"And you think I'm going to play cards with you?" she said slowly, almost mechanically.
"Why not?" Trunks countered. "What else do we have to do to kill time?"
Armada immediately looked down and put the cards back into the box, folding the opening back in to seal it. "I don't know this deck, I don't know how to play," she started into her excuses, but Trunks didn't let her finish.
"I'll teach you," he said while moving to sit at the side of the table to her right. He took the deck of cards from her hands and pulled them out of the box once more. "It's easy, you'll catch on quick," he said as he started to shuffle the deck. He knew she would resist. Anything that might be the slightest bit of fun seemed to be a no-go for her. He knew he'd have to work this in tactically. But now that he had her attention, her first excuses to say 'no,' he was ready to go in for the kill. "Unless," he said as he stopped shuffling and looked up at her, "you're afraid to lose."
Her eyes snapped back up to his instantly. She shut the lid of her laptop and pushed it aside to her left, out of the way of the 'game area' Trunks was beginning to setup. "I'm not afraid of anything," she said flatly. "Deal me in."
Trunks smiled as he looked back down at the deck of cards in his hands and started dealing them out. "Okay. I'll go easy on you the first few rounds."
"I only need one round to learn the rules," Armada replied. Trunks could have laughed at her predictably competitive nature. "Now explain what it is that you're doing," she added, referencing his dealing of the cards.
It only took one round for Trunks to explain the rules of five-card stud, a variant of poker. Armada caught on quickly. They played a few hands while Trunks continued to explain the rules, and which hands were ranked higher than others. Armada finally told him to 'get serious,' at which point he laughed but agreed. They played in relative silence, but it was a nice break to the monotony for Trunks, so he didn't care if she wasn't much for conversation. It beat playing solitaire.
"Where are you from?" Armada suddenly asked as she dealt the next hand.
Trunks kept his gaze down on his cards as she finished dealing the hand, thinking about how to respond. Since the Bmyhadians had found his home, Earth, he had learned quite a bit about Earth's place in the galaxy. Apparently it was part of unmapped space, called the Frontier, at the edges of the GaReXa Republic. The Bmyhadian explorers and scientists who found them had been contracted out by the Republic to do their research in that region. Bmyhad was part of the Federation Alliance, a small nation composed of six star systems and a few independent satellites and space stations. The Alliance was bordered by the three major nations in the universe; the GaReXa Republic, LOKI, and the Roffeler Empire. Compared to these nations, the Alliance was new and tiny, almost at the center of mapped space. Which is why the Bmyhadians had to go through the Republic to explore uncharted space.
"You're not from Ute," Armada said as she examined her cards. "You're not a Bmyhadian; they aren't very adept at controlling energy, and you're too clueless about some basic things to be from Bmyhad. So where are you from?" she repeated herself and locked her gaze with his.
"A small planet in the Frontier," Trunks replied. He didn't want to give out the name of his planet, lest she try to look it up for less than savory reasons. While the threat she had laid upon Noran two days ago was funny, he hadn't forgotten about the way she described herself. A hurricane of death and cruelty. She wasn't someone he was jumping at the opportunity to trust with sensitive information. "The Bmyhadians found it while charting space under the Republic's jurisdiction," he added as he set down two cards to the side to draw two more. "What about you?" Trunks asked, knowing the opportunity wouldn't rise again anytime soon to try and pry some information out of his employer.
"I'm not 'from' anywhere," she replied flatly, setting down one card to draw one more. "Never lived in the place I was born," she added while examining her hand.
Trunks wasn't surprised at her non-answer. She didn't trust him any more than he trusted her... which he supposed was fair. "How long have you been in Ute?" Trunks asked, examining his hand and realizing he was likely going to win this round. "Would you consider it your home?"
After the first few rounds had been played without betting, Armada pulled out a stack of empty bank cards so they could at least have something to bet by proxy. Real money wasn't at stake, but at least having some kind of counter made it feel more real when they placed their bets. Armada took two bank cards and threw them in the pot. "Raise. I had been on Bmyhad for twenty-two months before I ran into you," she answered him. "I was about to leave, actually, when you helped Dax rob me."
Trunks tossed in two bank cards, then another four. "Raise. I forgot that you knew that guy. How do you know him?" Trunks asked earnestly.
Armada's face scrunched up a bit as she thought about what to do. She threw in the four cards Trunks had tossed in. "Call. Dax and I served in the military together," she added while setting down her hand on the table face-up. She had two kings and two sevens, for a hand of two-pair.
She's ex-military, Trunks thought as he set his hand down face-up on the table as well. He had a straight-flush, three through seven of diamonds. That explains a lot. "Damn," Armada cursed as she saw that she had lost the hand. She reluctantly pushed the pile of plastic cards over to Trunks. It was then Trunks's turn to deal, so he collected the playing cards and began to shuffle.
"By Utian time, it's getting late. You may want to get some rest," Armada looked up at Trunks as she spoke.
Trunks continued shuffling for a moment, when a thought hit him and he stopped. "What about you?" he asked, fixing his gaze on hers. "I don't think I've seen you sleep once, in what, two months?" Oddly he'd never given it a thought, but he had realized even during moments when he was awake and should have been sleeping, she was seemingly always up. If he didn't already know better, he'd wonder if she was a robot. Or android, he thought with a mental cringe.
"I learned to live on very little sleep," she replied automatically. "Hard to get restful sleep," she began as she moved to the side and stood up from her seat, "when all you do is have nightmares." She didn't spare another glance at Trunks and walked away.
Figuring that was the end to their game, he shoved the deck of cards into its box and shoved it in a jacket pocket. It was certainly interesting, what she said. Armada was the type to put on airs that everything was put together and under control. Why would she suddenly let down that veneer to him? Or rather... did she not realize she had let it down?
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Illumination
Interlude: Breakdown
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Days on the ship in space absolutely crawled, and Trunks was beginning to hate it. He just didn't like being away from fresh air, natural gravity, and other things he'd taken for granted seeing as how he wasn't raised in space. So as he walked through the open air market in Ute next to the river, he felt renewed. Nothing was better than fresh air and sunlight, and the freedom to enjoy both. He and Armada had arrived back in Ute during the night, and he had immediately gone up to the roof of the ship's hangar to get some air. Ute's climate was very pleasant right now, as summer started to come to a close. It was supposed to be the rainy season, but as the local weather reported, things had stayed oddly dry, but not enough to be of concern. Ute had seen showers, but not the raging thunderstorms that were expected this time of year.
After enjoying some early morning star-gazing, Trunks went back inside and slept for a few hours. Now, in the late morning, he decided to head downtown to walk around an enjoy a beautiful day. It wasn't that long ago that walking around in the open like this on his home, Earth, was impossible. And if that's why he felt so damn sentimental about it, he didn't care—he just wanted to enjoy the day.
After spending a few hours downtown, and carrying a large bag of fresh fruits and vegetables, Trunks returned to the hangar. As he approached from down the street, he noticed a truck pull up and park in front of the front entrance to the hangar. Trunks kept walking, and as soon as he reached the truck a young man in a uniform stepped out of the open side door of the truck carrying a package.
“Oh hey,” he called out to Trunks, “you live here?” he asked as he took a few steps closer to Trunks and the door to the hangar.
“Yeah,” Trunks replied promptly.
“Oh good,” the young man sighed in relief, “when I was driving up I was wondering where I was going to leave this.” He raised the package slightly at the end of his sentence. “Can I get you to sign for it?”
“Sure,” Trunks said and moved his bag of groceries to his left hand to free his right hand to sign with. The delivery man held out a tablet with a signature field already ready to go and handed Trunks a small stylus. He used it to sign, and signed 'Mace Son,' figuring he shouldn't use his own name and coming up with something on the spot. As soon as he signed, the delivery driver took his tablet and stylus back, and handed Trunks the package.
“Thanks bro!” the young driver called out as he stepped back into his truck and drove off. Trunks looked down at the package; it was nothing special. Maybe four inches thick, the box was about the size of a large book, and maybe half as heavy, wrapped in brown paper. Trunks tucked the package under his arm and punched in the security code to unlock the door to the hangar.
Moments later, inside the ship, he set the package down on the table in the lounge and proceeded into the galley carrying his bag of groceries. It appeared that Armada had left sometime after he did earlier, and since the package was likely for her he just left it where she would see it if he didn't get to tell her about it first. Trunks spent a few minutes putting his groceries away, then went to the lounge to catch up on local news. He sat at the same table as the package, paying it no mind as he caught up on some of the latest news and weather reports for the area while snacking on what he considered an apple, though it was a bit sweeter and softer.
After about thirty minutes, Trunks started to feel tired and yawned. Admittedly he didn't get good sleep while on their trip to the Republic and back, so he shut down the terminal in the lounge and headed back to his room to get some rest. No harm in taking a nap when absolutely nothing was going on. As he walked into his room, Trunks threw off his jacket and tossed it onto the lower bunk bed that was unused as she strode over to his bed. He kicked off his boots and flopped down into bed. It was already fairly warm in the ship, so he didn't bother pulling up the covers, but just laid down on his stomach and wrapped his arms around his pillow. Sleeping in normal gravity felt wonderful, and he was all too happy to rest.
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After some time, though he had no idea how long, Trunks started to wake up. He tossed and turned, suddenly feeling very hot. His mouth was dry and he was sweating profusely. Finally he opened his eyes and decided to get up, because his thirst was becoming unbearable. As soon as he sat up, he felt himself drift to the left, as if his whole body were off its axis. His head felt like it was full of water, and he reached up to place his right hand against his forehead. What... the hell...? he thought in confusion at his condition. He felt fine earlier, now he felt like he'd baked in an oven for several hours and someone had hit him in the head hard enough to destroy his balance. Trunks forced himself to his feet, and immediately swayed. He managed to take a few steps to grab the wall next to the door to prevent himself from falling over completely.
He opened the door to his room, determined to get to the galley and grab some water. His body ached for it at this point. He pulled himself upright using the door frame, and began walking down the hallway, using the right side of the hall for support. He felt himself spinning out of control in one direction, while it felt like the ship itself swayed in the other. He breathed heavily, and his hands—no, arms—no, his entire body shook violently as he tried to make the trip to the galley.
Suddenly his limbs started to feel heavy, like the heaviest metal on Earth and he stopped walking. He couldn't will himself to move forward; he couldn't call upon his energy to help him. Each time he tried, it immediately fizzled out, like he was trying to grab bubbles and hold them in his hand only for them to burst and disappear into nothing. Leaning completely against the wall of the ship, he gritted his teeth. Something was terribly, terribly wrong, and he had to figure out what. Because at the rate he felt his health declining, he was pretty sure it would only stop once he was dead.
“Hahh!” Trunks let out a yell as he pushed one more step forward, only to fall completely to the ground. After he collapsed, he lifted his head slightly to look down the hallway into the bridge. His vision blurred, and he could barely make out what he was looking at.
Was it really coming to an end like this? He was, arguably, the strongest being in the universe, and here he was being taken down by some mysterious illness? If he could, Trunks would have laughed at the irony. It all made sense. This was some cosmic balance coming into play. He saved Goku, the strongest warrior of his time, from a heart virus, only to succumb to something similar. Apparently somebody was meant to die like that. Maybe that was it; you couldn't escape fate, you could only push it off onto someone else.
As his eyes fell shut, Trunk's left hand clenched into a fist and he thought of his mother, Bulma. She was going to be so angry with him.
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Armada opened the door to the ship and immediately in her view was a hand, attached to an arm that lay out of her view to her left. Her eyes shot wide and she stepped inside to find Trunks laying in the hallway. “Trunks!” she shouted out to him as she took one knee at his side. He was laying face down, so she turned him over onto his back and held his head up. He was breathing heavily, but they were shallow, quick breaths. His skin was almost burning to the touch, and he was drenched in sweat. He's sick,Armada thought as her eyebrows came together. She set his head down gently and flew to the infirmary.
On her way, something caught her eye in the lounge and she stopped. There was a small package wrapped in brown paper sitting on the table. Her eyes widened in shock, and she immediately realized what was going on. He wasn't sick; he'd been poisoned, and that meant there was nothing she could do to save him.
She flew to the galley and grabbed a large plastic bag. With the bag in hand, she returned to the package, and using the bag to shield her hands, she lifted and tossed it into the bag. She hurriedly tied it off, and flew back to where Trunks lay in the hallway. She lifted up his back first, so he was in a sitting position. Keeping her left hand on his back, she turned to face him and put her right arm around his chest to his back, underneath his left arm. She then stood, lifting him up with her, and his body weight fell into her. He wasn't too heavy for her to lift; she had the energy to expend. The problem was that he was about five inches taller than her, which made him awkward to carry.
Armada hefted him up a bit higher, so her arms were wrapped around his waist as his head hung over her left shoulder. She then reached down to pick up the bag with the package in it, and started flying backwards to make sure she got him out of the doorway all right. With that obstacle cleared, she closed the door to the ship and headed down to the main entrance of the hangar. There wasn't time to load him up into the car and drive... she'd just have to fly there. Which she hated to do, because it draw all kinds of attention to them. But if his condition was any indication, they didn't have time for discretion right now. Besides, she already didn't want to do what she was about to do, but it was the only way to save him at this point.
She took him to the hospital.
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When Trunks finally willed his eyes open, he whole body ached. If he had to guess, he would have said he'd been smashed under one of Ute's giant skyscrapers, or dropped into the deepest trenches of the ocean where the water pressure would liquefy his bones. As his vision finally decided to obey him and focus, he started to take in his surroundings. There were lights above him, but they were turned off. The room was still pretty well-lit, and the ceiling was white. So were the walls. That was when Trunks realized he wasn't taking breaths; something was taking breaths for him. He tried to lift his hands, which didn't happen—but he felt his hands twitching in response to the command.
“Take it easy,” Trunks heard and suddenly his vision was filled with that of a man with dark hair and glasses looking down at him from his right side. The voice sounded far away, and it echoed in his brain like it was being projected into his skull. “You're still way too close to death to try any of that,” the man spoke once more. If Trunks had to guess, this guy wasn't much older than himself. But who was he? And where was he?
Trunks felt a hand on his right hand, and it squeezed lightly. “You feel that?” the man asked. Trunks tried to nod, and while he was sure he was unable to do so, the man responded with “Good,” as if he had understood the Earthling's futile attempt to move. “But you need to lie still until we finish getting the contagion out of your system.”
Contagion? Trunks thought in confusion. What the hell had happened?
The man's attention was dragged away from Trunks's face for a moment. “Well, your blood pressure's rising, and we can't have that right now,” he finished and turned back to Trunks briefly before walking away. “Just relax, let your body heal,” Trunks heard the man speak even though he was out of his line of sight. Seconds later, Trunks's eyelids felt heavier than whatever thing had crushed him, and he couldn't stop them from rolling shut.
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The next time Trunks opened his eyes, he didn't have to struggle. Not only could he open his eyes without any real effort, he was able to sit up, albeit leaned back on his elbows. A white sheet slid down his chest, which was bare, and Trunks looked around the room. From the instruments he saw, his bed, and the intravenous fluids line running into his chest, he was able to quickly deduce that he was in a hospital. It was no hospital on Earth, though, because it seemed a lot more high tech than what they had at home.
Ute. Bmyhad. He was in Bmyhad. Everything came back in a rush. He and Armada had just gotten back from their last job. He'd gone downtown, he signed for a package, he went to take a nap, and that's when all hell broke loose. But how did he end up here? He briefly remembered collapsing while trying to get to some water, but nothing after that besides waking up where he was now.
Before he had a chance to really think about it, the door to his room slid open, and a young man not much older than himself with short dark hair and glasses walked in. He wore a white lab coat, not unlike the ones Devan and Murtole wore. “Good, this time it wasn't a false alarm,” the man said as he strode in and walked over to Trunks. He looked a console sitting near Trunks's bed for a moment, before he turned to Trunks. “You want to sit up? Here let me adjust your bed,” he said and with a few button clicks Trunks felt the bed moving. After a moment it settled in a spot so that when he leaned back against it, and off of his elbows, he was still sitting upright.
“I'm Dr. Rema,” the man finally spoke to Trunks, “and you were in pretty bad shape.” He paused a moment before continuing, “What's your name kid?” Trunks was confused, but before he could say anything, the doctor spoke once more. “She didn't tell me your name, just threatened to kill me and destroy the hospital if you didn't wake up. I'm used to her threats, but this time it seems kinda personal,” he finished with a laugh.
Dr. Rema spoke forcefully and quickly. Trunks was still kind of in shock as to everything that was happening. But more importantly, “Who?” Trunks asked. His voice came out a lot smaller and weaker than he thought it should.
Dr. Rema eyed him warily for a moment. “Who brought you here?” he supplied. “Armada. You know her. At least I'm assuming you do because she doesn't normally threaten to kill me and mean it.” Trunks sat soaking in the information for a moment. “Yes I know who she is,” Rema preemptively answered a question he figured his patient was about to ask. “I've treated her before. But your name, kid, you got one?”
This doctor seemed kind of... unorthodox, to put it mildly. He was very blunt and abrupt, for a Bmyhadian. The few that Trunks knew weren't like this at all, so he thought it may have been a cultural thing. Leave it to a doctor to prove him wrong.
“Toran,” Trunks answered. It couldn't hurt to give out a fake name.
“Toran, nice to meet you,” the doctor replied, still standing at Trunks's bedside. “Like I said, I'm Dr. Alten Rema. I've been treating you since you were dropped off here at First Mercy of Malleas Hospital eight days ago. Do you remember what happened?”
Trunks shook his head briefly before letting out a breath and letting his head fall back against his pillow. “Not really. I had just come back from the market by the river. I was tired, so I took a nap, and when I woke up,” he trailed off.
“You left out the part where you signed for a package,” Dr. Rema cut in. Trunks opened his mouth to speak but the good doctor cut him off at his knees. “That package was poisoned with a biochemical agent,” Dr. Rema stated flatly. “The other guy, the one who delivered it to you? He got here too late. He's dead.”
“Kami...” Trunks said under his breath as his gaze fell.
“It was an attack,” Rema continued. “Although I don't think it was meant for you, and neither does she.”
“Armada, where is she?” Trunks looked up at Rema once again.
“Hell if I know,” he replied. “She dropped you off and stayed long enough for me to take your case and threaten me, then she bailed. That's generally the script when she drops someone off for me, although...” the doctor trailed off as he averted Trunks's gaze.
“What?” Trunks pressed. He wanted to know what the doctor seemed reluctant to say.
“Although usually she only wants them to survive so she can either interrogate them or turn them in for bounty,” he added. “You're the first one she's brought me that she wanted to live for... well... to live, I guess, hell if I know what she's thinking,” he added on. “Anyway, how do you feel?” Rema changed the subject to the true matter at hand.
“Tired, but... good,” Trunks answered honesty.
“Excellent,” Rema replied and turned back to the console. “I'll have you discharged this afternoon. But you can't use your power for another two days,” he added and looked to Trunks. “You're not fully healed yet.”
Trunks was shocked; he didn't know what to say. What did this doctor know about him, exactly?
Rema laughed, “Oh don't panic kid, treating people like you is what makes my life interesting. A nurse will be in shortly to get your prepared to leave.” Dr. Rema smiled at Trunks before he turned and walked out the door with a careless sense of speed.
Trunks let out a deep breath. He almost couldn't believe what had happened, especially since apparently eight days had passed and he remembered none of it. Being hospitalized in critical condition for more than a week, he knew that meant it was bad. Trunks lifted his right hand and flexed the muscles, clenching and relaxing his fist. He wondered if he didn't have the speedy healing of his Saiyan genes if he would have survived. Clearly a normal person wouldn't, if the delivery driver's death was any indication.
-+-
Several hours later, Trunks was finally walking back into the ship. At the hospital, they only had the clothes he was wearing when he was brought in, a tank top, a pair of pants, and a pair of underwear. Thankfully they had disinfected his clothes instead of just incinerating them. They found a pair of shoes in the lost and found that would fit him, though he was fairly certain “lost and found” meant people who died and nobody claimed their belongings. He only needed the shoes to get back to the hangar, from there he'd toss them out.
While Trunks was still careful to not exercise his energy use just yet as Dr. Rema had instructed, he could sense that Armada wasn't in. As he walked down the hallway to his quarters, he noticed that the ship smelled weird. Almost like... chemicals. When he entered his room, it became abundantly clear as to why that was.
The chemical smell was much stronger in here, and the sheets had been stripped from all the beds, washed, folded, and left on each bed awaiting placement. On his bed, the one that wasn't part of the bunk beds set, his belongings were all sitting out on the bed. Trunks walked over and picked up his blue Capsule Corp jacket, and it unfolded in his hands as he lifted it. Clearly Armada had cleaned the entire ship, which explained the smell. He was slightly shocked though, that she hadn't simply burned his things and told him to buy new. That was what he expected, at least. Instead, everything was here, neatly folded, just waiting for him to return.
He felt a twinge of guilt. She could have let him die. And sadly, he half expected her to. Instead, she saved his life—she took him to the hospital. She cleaned the ship. She took careof his things, the key being care. He wouldn't have given her enough credit to do all of this before. Dismissing the thoughts, because he had things he needed to do, Trunks set his jacket down and kicked off his borrowed shoes. It was early evening, and he was starving; it was time to make something to eat. He headed to the galley, leaving his things to be sorted and put away later.
If Trunks had taken a closer look at his belongings, if he had gone into his bathroom and opened the cabinet he kept locked, he would have seen the ID and watch he had recently recovered were both gone.
-+-
Grelb was thrown backward into a wooden table, which splintered underneath the force with which he was thrown, and he crumbled to the ground with it. The young man, with his brown hair cut almost short enough to be considered shaved, tried to raise his head slightly and face his assailant. Blood trickled down into his right eye from a gash in his forehead, opened when she'd bludgeoned him with a shock rod. He was drenched in water from his neck down to his torso, from where she had subsequently half-drowned him in a sink to wake him up after knocking him unconscious with the aforementioned shock rod. He wasn't sure what was next as she stalked toward him, but he was sure it wouldn't be good.
Armada reached down and grabbed Grelb by the blue collar of his jacket, lifting him up off the ground and into the air. His hands hung limply at his sides; he was in no condition to fight back. She'd already barged in and killed six men, Grelb was the only one she didn't immediately murder. Instead, she was trying to beat information out of him. And in her opinion, it was only a matter of time before he talked.
“How'd you get the address to send the package?” Armada asked calmly but with murderous rage simmering just beneath the surface. Grelb only stared at her, saying nothing. Armada let go of his jacket, and before Grelb's body had a moment to react to gravity and begin to fall, she had her hand around his throat. He immediately coughed; her grip reinforced her intentions.
“Do you want to be a rotting corpse like the rest of your friends?” she asked with that same, even but barely contained dark rage filled tone. Grelb stayed silent and choked for air. Armada clenched her teeth and her grip on his throat. “I don't have the patience to deal with you today! Tell me what I want to know or I'll rip your lungs out with my bare hands!” she screamed loud enough to shake the building, or at least Grelb thought the building shook.
Grelb brought his hands up slowly to her arm, trying to indicate that he couldn't speak with her vice grip around his neck. In response, she dropped him to the ground. He sat up halfway and coughed, until Armada leaned over him and backhanded him across the face with her armored right forearm. His mouth immediately began to fill with blood from her strike, and she lowered her face to his. “Speak,” she ordered.
“Tracking you for months,” Grelb managed to blurt out between coughs as he gingerly held his throat with his left hand. “Dax got the money, but Rieve wanted blood,” he added, finishing with gasps.
Armada realized, as she suspected, that the biochemical attack was only the start of an onslaught. “Who did they send?” she asked the local cell leader for Rieve in Ute. Grelb only coughed in response, to which Armada's gaze filled with fury. She stood upright and stomped on Grelb's abdomen with her right foot, which he responded to by crying out in agony.
Grelb wrapped his arms around his sides and rolled over slightly, desperately fighting to breathe. She had collapsed his lungs with that last hit, and he couldn't speak until he regained lung function.
“Finding it hard to breathe?” she taunted maliciously. “I can fix that for you,” she leaned down so Grelb could look into her eyes, “but you've got to work with me.”
Unable to bear the pain of suffocating any longer, Grelb nodded furiously. Armada turned and grabbed an empty syringe lying on the floor. She bent down over Grelb and stabbed him in the chest with it, slightly left of center. She pushed down on the syringe, forcing air into one of Grelb's collapsed lungs. He immediately gasped for breath, but the unbearable pain hadn't quite subsided, as his right lung was still useless at the moment. She then yanked the syringe out, and Grelb's body twitched.
Armada reached down with her free left hand and grabbed Grelb by the jaw. “I won't ask again. Who did they send?!” she shouted at him with a fury that made him pray that his reinforcements would arrive soon.
“I don't know his name,” Grelb managed to spit out between clenched teeth as the mercenary held him by his jaw. “He's an elite, part of Rieve's personal squad. He was supposed to arrive a couple hours ago,” Grelb croaked out before he started coughing again.
Armada dropped him. Despite being the Utian cell leader, he was still a low level lackey. If he knew anything, that would be the sum of it. Before Grelb could say anything else, she thrust the syringe into his chest, this time into his heart, and much farther than just the needle. Grelb gurgled up more blood for a moment before falling silent. Armada let out a breath, and turned to leave.
Before she had turned fully, she was met with a shock rod in her face. The force was far greater than a normal shock rod, and Armada stumbled backwards, both temporarily stunned and blinded by the force. She immediately felt hands scrambling for her, so she lashed out and attempted to jump back and away from where she perceived the threat to be. Unfortunately, just as her vision returned, someone managed to clamp down one half of a set of AEM cuffs on her left arm. However, with her armor on, the cuffs couldn't seal properly and their hooks couldn't penetrate her armor. The one cuff still managed to shut down her use of her energy, but it wouldn't stop her from fighting back.
Just because she could fight back didn't mean she'd get away without any injuries.
-+-
Later that night, well after Trunks had eaten and gone to bed, he awoke to a noise in the hangar. Immediately he sensed Armada's energy, and jumped up to meet her. He ran down the hall to the entrance to the ship and opened the door. He saw lights down below, and when they shut off he realized that she'd pulled the car into the hangar. He flew down to where she had parked, and his eyes widened at the grisly sight that greeted him.
She had collapsed over the steering column, and when she sensed he was standing next to the vehicle, she brought her eyes up to look at him, gasping for breath. She reached across her body with her right hand to open the door to the car, and Trunks almost felt sick when he saw the amount of blood running from a large cut in her left side. She had her left hand on it, trying to apply pressure, but blood ran down freely like an open faucet.
“What happened?!” Trunks near screamed in shock as he reached out to help her get out of the vehicle.
She immediately smacked his hands away with her right hand, leaving smears of her own blood on him. “Don't touch me,” she ground out through clenched teeth and harried breaths, glaring at him with an intensity Trunks had not seen from her before.
Trunks was now possibly just as enraged as she was. She was bleeding out, practically dying, and she was acting like a petulant child? He wasn't going to ignore her. He reached in and grabbed her by her left upper arm and dragged her out of the vehicle, quick enough that she could hardly react. That didn't stop her, though, and no sooner had he dragged her to her feet, she swung at him with a right hook.
Trunks easily caught her right fist with his left hand, and growled. He was cut off before he had a chance to speak, however, when she shouted at him, “I don't need your help!”
Trunks's eyes widened in shock. This... was she really doing this again? The pressure of everything, of not understanding her, of not getting what was going on, of nearly dying, laying in the hallway of the ship saying his own mental goodbyes to his mother and friends back home—it caused him to snap at her in a way he hadn't snapped in many years. “What the fuck's the matter with you?!” he screamed right back at her. His words echoed through the hangar, and they both froze.
After she stood still for the briefest moment, Armada started to struggle against his grasp and opened her mouth to speak. Realizing that words and reason were lost on her, Trunks did the only thing he could think of. He released her right hand and before she had time to react, he threw a swift uppercut into her abdomen.
Armada's eyes widened as the wind rushed out of her lungs, shocked that he'd actually hit her. She sputtered and fell forward, collapsing into Trunks's arms. “I'm sorry,” he said, knowing she didn't have the energy to fight back. “I'm sorry,” he repeated again as he pulled her close to him and flew back up into the ship with her in tow.
Once they were in the infirmary, Trunks set her down on the steel table in the center of the room. She still gasped for breath, and when Trunks made eye contact with her, she glared at him. He ignored her and turned to the cabinets housing the miniature hospital's worth of medications and bandages, only to find to his shock that the cabinets were empty. When he went to make his dinner earlier, he noticed that the galley had been completely emptied. He thought nothing of it, and just went out and bought more groceries, figuring that she had gotten rid of everything in an effort to decontaminate the ship. He never considered she would do the same with their medical supplies.
“Where is everything?” Trunks turned to Armada and asked in a panic, though he was certain he already knew the answer.
“Had to decontaminate the ship,” Armada replied through clenched teeth and strained breaths. She struggled to sit up, and reached for the latch on her chestplate. Trunks stepped over to her and helped her remove her chestplate. With that aside, Armada then pulled the black fabric of her underarmor down her torso to reveal the wound in its full glory. It wasn't as bad as the amount of blood loss led Trunks to believe, but it was bad—she would need stitches at the last, and they had nothing.
“You wanna help asshole,” Armada said as she put pressure on her wound with both hands now, “then listen carefully. In the cargo bay, there's a small black box with a handle, it says 'electrical' in red lettering. Grab that.” Trunks started to leave until she called out, “Wait, one more thing. The lockbox in the hall,” she continued, and Trunks knew what she was talking about. That was their 'safe,' it was where they kept their earnings. “The code is two-three-five-zero-seven-seven-one-three-eight, grab the bottle that's inside.”
With his orders given, Trunks flew down the hall into the cargo bay. He knew Dr. Rema said to not use his energy for two more days, but using this little bit for quick bursts of speed, or throwing a punch, was nothing, and hopefully it wouldn't effect anything. He saw the box in the cargo bay on the back wall, sitting on a work bench. Snatching it, he flew back upstairs and stopped at the lockbox in the hallway across from the infirmary. He quickly punched in the code, and inside was an unmarked glass bottle, among other things. He grabbed the bottle and flew back to the infirmary.
Inside the infirmary, Armada was now sitting upright, and she had removed her arm guards and the top half of her underarmor, leaving her in her black bandeau from the waist-up. She quickly took the bottle and black case from Trunks. First, she opened the bottle and started gulping down its contents, blood smearing on the glass from her right hand as she held it. With half the bottle gone in a flash, she then removed her left hand from her wound and poured some of the liquid down into her sliced open flesh. She winced at the pain, and from the smell Trunks understood just what was in the bottle—alcohol.
She set the bottle down, then proceeded to open the black box. Inside was a wiring kit, with several gauges and types of metal wire. Armada grabbed the thinnest gauge of wire inside the box, and started pulling several meters loose before she bent the wire and ripped it apart from the spool. With no needle to guide her, she just used the sharp tip of the wire and began stitching her wound shut. Noticing right away that she was struggling to hold the wound together and stitch it shut, Trunks reached in to help. He forced the edges of her cut together, and held them there so she could sew the wound closed.
In a few minutes they were done, and Armada laid back against the steel table. She was still breathing heavily, but after a moment she finally spoke. “Cargo bay,” she said while looking at the ceiling, “there's a crate marked ACI-5426.” She didn't have to say anymore, Trunks flew back down to the cargo bay.
When he found the crate she indicated and opened it, he found the same packets of artificial blood they had kept in the infirmary. So while they didn't have everything they needed, apparently she stockpiled artificial blood. Trunks quickly returned with just one box of the fluid from the crate, as the crate contained four boxes. He set it down on the counter inside the infirmary and pulled out a packet, and prepared it for her.
He turned around to face her and took her left arm to insert the needle. This time she didn't fight him, and once it was in, he hung the bag of fluids on the rack attached to the operating table she laid on. She wanted to move, she wanted to yell at him, she wanted to go hide in her room, but all of that took strength and energy and motivation she didn't have at the moment.
After a few minutes, her breathing slowed to a more normal pace, and she finally spoke. “That was a cheap shot,” she said, looking into his eyes from the corner of hers. It was infuriating to suffer two cheap shots from men recently; something like this rarely happened for her, and now she had two in such a short period of time.
“I know,” Trunks replied, his face sullen. He could almost feel the anger emanating from her.
She stared at him a moment longer before turning her face away from him completely. They sat in silence for twenty? thirty? forty minutes? Trunks wasn't sure how long, but it was long enough for the artificial blood bag to empty into Armada's system. She was feeling significantly better already, so she stood up and walked over to one of the chairs in the infirmary, carrying her bottle of alcohol with her.
Trunks brought over another bag of artificial blood and connected the line that was already inserted into her arm. Armada sat back in the seat and took a long drink of whatever alcohol was in that bottle. Trunks leaned against the counter over by the operating table, keeping his distance from Armada. “You don't have to babysit me,” she finally spoke up.
“No, I don't have to,” Trunks agreed, “but I'm here.”
“You're an idiot,” she said between still slightly strained breaths. “You should let me die, then you wouldn't owe me anything.”
“I'd still owe you my life,” Trunks replied quickly. He stared at her with a look of guarded anger.
Armada's gaze turned away from him. “That bastard doctor never listens to what I tell him,” she cursed and took another drink from her bottle.
“Like that matters,” Trunks responded. “Who else would have gotten in here to find me?” Logically, she was the only other person who had access to both the hangar and the ship.
Armada rolled her head around to glare at Trunks. Her face was red, and at first he was concerned until she spoke again. “I can't afford for my merchandise to be damaged,” she said with a little difficulty. Trunks would have been insulted, except that he realized she was drunk—which made sense, as the bottle was almost empty. He was surprised, until he thought about it and surmised that she was drinking as a painkiller, seeing as how she had dumped their entire stock in the infirmary. She took another drink, finishing off the bottle, and set it on the floor while turning away from Trunks so he couldn't see her face.
“Whatever your reasons, I'm still here. Thank you,” he said sadly. What was her game? What was the point of all of this? She saved his life, and he was grateful, yet she wanted him to leave her to die at the first opportunity. None of it made sense. Unless she was insane, which Trunks would be lying to say he hadn't seriously considered several times now.
Realizing she wasn't going to say anything more, Trunks left the infirmary. She was in somewhat stable condition. As he walked back to his quarters, he realized he still had her blood all over his hands and clothes. So there would at least be a shower before he went back to bed.
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