Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ New Dawn ❯ Chapter 6 ( Chapter 6 )

Chapter 6

Two days later, Kethry was sitting on the far side of the pond when Vegeta called for her, something he rarely did. Jumping to her feet, she jogged to where he was standing in the far end of the meadow. Here was a large stretch of grass and flowers. Vegeta's eyes where trained on the sky.

"You rang?" Her comment was met with a blistering look.

"Supplies will be arriving shortly." As he returned his gaze to the sky, Kethry mock-saluted his back. In her mind, his sense of humor was greatly lacking, but for the most part he ignored her sarcasm.

"You may want to step back some, girl."

Kethry suppressed to urge to snap back with `Yes, Master!' The one time she had let that slip past her lips, she had quickly wished she had not. Vegeta's hand had flown back as if to strike her and, in growling tone, he had informed her that if she wished to be treated like a real slave he could readily oblige her. It was needless to state that she had quickly learned which of his buttons not to push and which of his lines not to cross.

There was a roar of sound and she realized a small aircraft was approaching. Rotating its wing jets into a vertical position, the plane hovered for a moment before lowering, settling itself on the whipping grass. Both the rear hatch and cockpit hissed and opened. From out of the pilot's seat climbed a man with lavender hair. Kethry recognized his face from the photos on Vegeta's walls. In person, it was easy to see that he was closely related to the prince. His son, maybe? She wondered. Vegeta disturbed her thoughts by tapping her on the shoulder and pointing towards the rear hatch and the stack of boxes within. Taking the unspoken hint, she moved to unload the plane.

"Hey, Dad!" The newcomer patted Vegeta on the shoulder and seemed ready to say something else but he spotted Kethry lugging a heavy box. "Who is THAT?!" He sounded angry.

Vegeta chuckled, clearly delighted with his son's shock. "My servant."

The other man sputtered, the face he made twisted his handsome features into a scowl. "What?!"

This was met with an outright laugh from his father. "Come walk with me. I will tell you what I feel you should know."

For a good deal of the afternoon, Kethry struggled with unloading the boxes as the two men talked. She listened as she worked, learning from their conversation that the man's name was Trunks and he clearly did not approve of her being here.

"Dad, you don't need help! Look at her! She can barely manage those boxes! If you are lonely or something, you can always move back in with me. It is not like I don't have enough room in that damned place. Heck, Goku is living alone now, too! You could even go stay with him." The reply that followed was spoken too lowly for Kethry to hear but she could feel the anger snapping off Vegeta. "Fine, Dad. But don't let her stay here."

"You want me to turn her out into the woods to starve to death? And here I thought everyone wanted me to try and be a nicer person." It was easy to see that this comment was Vegeta's version of a joke. More than likely Kethry would have found his remark funny had she understood the story behind it. But what made her uneasy were the words reaching her ears. It sounded as if her fate was to be decided upon by two men that hardly knew her. Unfortunately, she knew that she was stuck. Before walking off, she had given away everything she owned to the local homeless shelter, along with a note informing her landlady that she was leaving and would never be back. With no money or resources, she had little choice. Vegeta seemed willing to feed her and give her a place to stay in return for little more than her cooking skills. This setup between them worked just fine for her. The men's voices continued and she quickly took a disliking towards the track on which they where heading.

"What about Mom?"

What sounded to Kethry like pain filled Vegeta's tone when he replied to his son. "Your Mother has been dead for nearly seven years now, Trunks."

"You don't mean…! You're not going to… You haven't, have you?!" The younger man sounded worried, almost frantic.

There was a throaty chuckle. "Interesting idea, my son."

A shocked Kethry dropped the last box on her foot but hardly noticed as she stood mouth hanging open, staring at the two. Trunks was also gaping at his father, who was wearing a smirk, eyes glittering in amusement.

"DAD!" Vegeta put a hand on his son's shoulder and started to push him towards the plane.

"It looks like your plane is empty. I know you have more deliveries to make, too. I will see you next month." The whole time he spoke he steered Trunks toward the plane then gave him a push into the cockpit. A still-stunned Trunks closed both doors and took off but not before giving Kethry a dark look that could have melted steel. Her eyes snapped over to Vegeta who was advancing on her, his eyes alight with a strange flame. "My son raises some good points; you are much recovered from your ordeal. Why do you stay?"

Kethry gulped slightly but held her ground as he circled her like a shark. "I don't have anywhere else to go." Her voice was soft.

He paused in front of her and, tilting his head to one side, gave her a smirk. "Interesting, and you have no friends or family, correct?"

This was leading somewhere and Kethry wasn't sure she liked where it was going. "No, I told you that already."

"So, it's either life here or death wandering in the woods?"

That weird little flame in his eyes was growing. He couldn't mean to harm me, Kethry thought. If that were the case, he would have done something to her weeks ago. She tried to convince herself of this; but if this conversation wasn't where all of this was heading, then where? "Basically."

"Have you found your stay here to your liking?" It was odd, she hadn't pegged him as someone that would care about the feelings of someone else, and she figured that he must have a motive hidden behind the question.

"I can't complain. Where exactly are you going with this?"

The fire had built into a full-fledged bonfire, making the normally cold depths of his eyes dance with bright lights. "I am giving you something on which to think. How would you like to start your life anew, truly start over."

"How?" she frowned. "What are you talking about?" He took a half step back and leveled a frank gaze on her.

"For weeks now, I have pondered the question of why you ended up here." He waved to include the whole meadow. "A woman with no family ties to speak of ends up on the doorstep of one of only two members of a nearly dead race." This was turning into a speech. Kethry could tell he had given much thought on what he was about to say. He started to pace slowly. "Of course, had you turned up on Kakarott's doorstep, things would have been quite different. Meetings would have been called; a home found for you, more than likely the clown would have gotten money and a job for you. You would have found yourself included in his family as a friend. But, you see, I think very differently. I have come to learn that every person that is thrown into my path is done so for a reason." He paused once more and looked at her. "It would seem to me that trying life over again in a different form would be more preferable than death."

"What are you driving at?"

"I offer you a chance to become stronger, to rise above these pathetic Earthlings. I have the means to change you into a Saiyan, like myself. What say you?"

Kethry reeled, taking several steps back. "DNA enhancement?" she whispered. The bonfire in his eyes became a wild fire that would burn any that came too close.

"Oh, so much more than just that! You wouldn't be some enhanced human, but truly Saiyan, as if you had been born that way. I am a warrior and not a scientist so the exact nature of the process is not something I can explain. But my mate was a scientist and inventor." A smile that that Kethry would have called soft on anyone else spread over this face. It changed his appearance from animalistic to bordering upon angelic. "A few years before her death, she made the breakthrough and gave it to me as a gift. `Just in case,' she told me, `some fool woman wants to spend two hundred years dealing with you.' Something she swore she would not do." He chuckled and smirked, his coolness returning. "It seems I am something of an asshole." Kethry suppressed the urge to agree with the deceased woman. Vegeta's head came up suddenly, and a low growl crawled out from within his chest. "Something for you to think on. We must get these supplies put away for we will soon have a visitor." With that, he stacked ten of the heavy boxes atop each other and picked them all up with little effort. Her mind raced with a thousand unspoken questions as Kethry stared at his back for a long moment, then she fought a box into her own arms and followed in his wake.