Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Ransom Due ❯ Endless Summer ( Chapter 12 )

Ransom Due - Chapter 12 - Endless Summer ---

 

Raditzu carried the large ceramic water jugs down the steep trail to the spring, one on each shoulder. He could have used buku-jutsu and had the task done quicker, but today he felt like taking the scenic route. The menial task hadn't really bothered him before. He viewed it as uncomplicated tradition, a form of veneration to the owner of the house any warrior in training had permission to live in. The cistern had to be kept full anyway, but then it had served his own needs. Now that his father had returned, necessitating a houseful of warriors at any given time, the chore took on all the undignified overtones likely intended. The minor debasement served as a reminder to those serving required intersession between their infant mission and their first outing as adults that they had a place distinctly far below the standing of a warrior seasoned enough to have acquired his own living quarters. He normally got the job done as quickly as possible and early as possible, but he could see the subtle saffron glow of the second sun already breaking the horizon, marking the hour as much later than usual.

 

The heat of the first sun already beat down persistently, twice as unbearable because of his heavy armor. Insects, a virtual plague of them, incessantly buzzed past his ears, some taking the opportunity to alight on his bare arms and legs to bite at him. At his arrival on Vegetasei he'd been greeted by the taunting of several experienced warriors on their way off world. “Intersession during high summer in the capitol,” one of them chortled. “The boy craves a challenge!” It hadn't taken him long to figure out what they found so amusing. Intersession training had a reputation for being brutal, and summer on Vegetasei made it doubly so. Rumor had it that many, after having seen the information stored in the pods about their homeworld, intentionally waited to return from their infant missions so as to arrive on world during the cooler seasons. Of course, nobody would have admitted to doing so, but it was common knowledge that the winter sessions always had somewhat larger turnouts. He never had the chance of returning to the prospect of anything but a summer session. His father eliminated the possibility of that by simply keeping a seasonal residence.

 

Any one of these things normally would have put him in a terrible mood, but on this occasion he didn't even feel mildly annoyed. He took his time, wandering over the uneven ground almost aimlessly, stopping momentarily in the few places the scrubby undergrowth offered shade.

 

One more rise in the little track snaking through the pumice laden outskirts of the city and he arrived at the little spring. As he knelt to dip the jugs into the small trench carved by the trickling stream of water, he heard something moving in the brush behind him. He turned, hands arcing to collect ki in the off chance he'd startled one of the rare browsing game animals that showed up from time to time to get water from the spring.

 

A low powered blast of energy glanced off his upraised hands, stinging slightly and negating the power he had collected.

 

“'Afternoon, waterboy.”

 

“Celipa.” Her name rolled off his tongue in a feral hiss as he struggled to retain some semblance of composure. “Shouldn't you be back at my father's house gloating over your new job?”

 

The thin line of her mouth spread into a teasing smile. “I would, but that wouldn't be any fun. Awfully late with chores today, aren't we?” She plucked a sprig off the brush she'd emerged from and deposited it soundly between her lips.

 

He grunted and returned to the task at hand. Perhaps, if he ignored her, she would go away.

 

He would have, should have, attained a position on his father's squad if she hadn't cheated at the trials to fill the vacancy. Both his strength and fighting technique rivaled hers even though she had several years' experience on him. She'd only won the contest because she'd distracted him with the use of totally unnecessary flourish in her attacks, designed specifically to draw attention to her femininity. A dishonorable and underhanded tactic that most females wouldn't use simply out of pride, especially in a public forum. He'd prevailed until nearly the very end, but it only took one slip up to loose everything.

 

“Hmmm. Can't say I envy you for coming out the looser. And now putting so much energy into burying your outrage.” He heard the porous gravel crunch beneath her boots as she took a measured step closer behind him. “Keep focusing on your anger alone and you'll not advance. Not quickly, anyhow.”

 

“Won't I?” Stupid! She'd hardly said a few words and already he'd fallen into the trap of responding to her taunts. He attempted to strengthen his resolve by galvanizing his attention to carefully forcing the mouth of the first jug into the trench so that the water might flow into it easily, focusing on his own hands... His hands! It became evident as he looked at them that he could encircle the neck of the container with only one hand, when it should have taken two. The hands he looked at were those of his adult years, not the scrawny appendages of an adolescent at all. He only began to grasp the odd juxtaposition of being in this place as an adult when she spoke again, causing the thought to dissipate as mist on the wind.

 

“You won't. I know this from experience.” She said this in a clipped, smug tone, laced with the confidence of already having bested him once before.

 

He felt something brush lightly at his elbow and reflexively clutched at it, whirling to face her as he did. He grasped only empty air as she whisked the stem she'd picked earlier out of his reach. A snarl of sorts rumbled from his throat in his frustration and he lunged, intending to snatch it from her hand. Again she moved just fast enough to render his effort useless, sliding the end of the twig back to its seat at the corner of her mouth in a swift and elegant motion. She didn't laugh or say anything for a moment, but her tail swayed arrogantly behind her as she fixed him with a steady gaze.

 

He again set his mind to quell the rising fury and desire, even as he felt his throat constrict and chest tighten with the surge of it. “What is it that you want?” He matched her stare, noticing now that her hair hung just slightly past her shoulders. He thought that surely she would have cut it by this time, that she did cut it immediately after she'd been officially employed, but the thought slipped through his mind, barely registering. She'd surreptitiously closed the remaining distance between them. She stood close enough for him to feel her body radiating heat, and looked up at him, eyes narrowed and predatory. He felt a sheen of sweat bloom on his exposed skin.

 

She removed the twig from her mouth and tossed it aside. Her tongue flicked over her lips. .“I want you to show me how angry you are.”

 

Her utterance of this invitation swept all pretenses of rationality from his mind. He flew at her again, this time with more force and speed. Again her petite frame moved just out of his reach, only a fraction of a second faster than his advance. She laughed now, a soft, pleasant sound that belied her violent nature. “Oh, ho! You'll have to catch me first. You'll need to know how.”

 

With that, she loosed the force of her ki, displaying her aura in a flash of muted white light before shooting upward into the hazy air. And so began a frenzied chase, first in the sky, the capitol city and its outlying districts spread beneath them in a disorganized conglomeration like so many hastily discarded trinkets. Later they sped through the city itself, carelessly buffeting people in the teeming streets, rocketing pell-mell through alleyways and promenades alike.

 

Always she stayed just a hair's breadth ahead of him. Periodically she looked back over her shoulder and laughed, or flung mild insults to egg him on. He returned her criticism in kind, his frustration gradually turning to tense brevity.

 

He finally pushed himself over what he thought was his limit, only to realize that of course his strength had grown as had the rest of him. He had more than enough power to overtake her at any time. He collided with her and the two dropped out of the air, forward momentum sending them tumbling over a modest expanse of bare earth. They finally came to a stop against a crumbling wall.

 

The chase had ended in the bowl of an ancient amphitheatre, a decrepit edifice left behind by some long forgotten civilization. He halfheartedly noted the irony of the location, the very site where she had previously achieved her ill-gotten victory over him. It didn't matter. They tugged at each other's armor, somehow removing it despite the tangle of limbs and wild attempts to gain purchase by any means necessary.

 

Eventually she jockeyed herself to a position behind him, painfully wrenching his arm backward while winding a good portion of his hair around her forearm and pulling roughly to fully expose his neck. She ran her tongue from the ridge of his collarbone up to his ear, stopping to nip at it and laugh again, this time low and gruff, abandoning all pretense of humor.

 

“Yield!” She whispered the demand, making it all the more compelling.

 

“No.” Never. Not willingly.

 

He only needed to snap his head to the side, dislodging her grip on his arm and sending her flying up with the momentum over his shoulder to land gracelessly in front of him.

 

Her eyes widened in disbelief at his newfound power as he advanced on her, taking his turn at mockery and savoring every minute of it. She twisted to avoid him and simultaneously get to her feet, but he intercepted her before she could right herself. He planted his foot squarely in her gut, upsetting her center of gravity and driving her to the ground. His laughter rose to a nearly insane pitch as he observed fear clouding her features, if only for an instant.

 

“Submission suits you,” he said as he pinned her shoulders to the ground, gripping forcefully with hands that nearly engulfed her in their breadth.

 

“Not as well as it does you,” she spat back as she attempted to dislodge him with some well placed kicks. He efficiently circumvented her efforts, eliciting a strangled howl from her, followed by a stream of curses that he cut short by covering her mouth with his own. As his lips closed on hers he could taste the spicy-sour sap of the branch she'd held there earlier.

 

She responded all too positively, darting her tongue to meet his, despite her continuing attempts to cause him bodily harm with her legs.

 

He managed to hold one of the delinquent extremities at bay, grinding into her thigh with his knee, but the unexpected griping of her tail on his thigh distracted him from confining the other.

 

Still they devoured each other, not even pausing for breath when she finally gained leverage and rolled, suddenly pressing him beneath her. She neatly clutched his waist into a vise grip with her legs, crimping his tail, which had remained protectively wrapped there. He gasped with the sudden pain, breaking their heated kiss abruptly.

 

“You are so easily suckered,” she sneered reproachfully, punctuating the statement by increasing the pressure on his tail.

 

Pain coursed through him as he stared without focus at the sky spread over her shoulders, the riotous crimson light of the suns burning in defiance to his agony. It was a wonder he noticed something terribly amiss about the sky through the throbbing in both his tail and now achingly restless groin.

 

“Gah! Going to die…” he choked.

 

“Awww. It couldn't be as bad as all that,” she crooned.

 

“No! All… going. To. Die!” His arm shot out and he clamped his hand on her wrist in an impulsive panic. “We have to… get off … planet… before it blows.”

 

She jerked her arm, inexplicably unable to wrest it from his hold although the majority of his strength was leached away by the havoc she wreaked on his tail. “What are you talking about?” He watched the anomalous body looming ever larger in the sky as she looked down at him scornfully, oblivious to certain doom. As he observed, it became readily apparent that the approaching object was no asteroid, comet or other celestial phenomenon. He knew this thing from somewhere, recognized the increasing harsh light flooding the sky, but could not immediately place it. Two words slid to the front of his consciousness unbidden: Death Ball.

 

“Furiza…” The name dropped carelessly from his lips as the gradual revelation dawned. “He'll… destroy us all…”

 

“Baw-ha-haw!” She unclenched her thighs, releasing him from both the pain and his entrapment. ”Fine. If you're willing to come up with such ridiculous lies to get me to feel sorry for you, you're hardly worth it.” He squinted his eyes against the nearly blinding light. She had become a shadowed outline against its glare, but he could still see her facetious smirk. How could she ignore…? They had to get away from here!

 

His mind wanted to deny the event. Still, he defiantly got to his feet and dragged the protesting Celipa in the direction of civilization and means of departing Vegetasei's condemned surface. He knew the impossibility of escape, but he flew anyway, fueled by adrenaline and the conviction of knowledge. He refused to die in such a dishonorable fashion, and refused to let her, a Saiya-jin warrior, reach the next world like that either. He railed against inevitability even as the first shock wave swept through them, as everything crumbled to searing dust with its furious punch.

 

She held fast, returning his grip against the all too real horror engulfing them on every side, her nails digging bloody furrows on the inside of his wrist as her body whipped up like a rag doll in the hot wind of the explosion's back draft. Her face had become a mask of terror. “Don't let go… don't let go… don't let go… don't…”

 

Powerless, he watched her disintegrate along with the world in a rain of super heated ash and rock. The process commenced at an excruciatingly slow pace, nearly unreal in its clarity. He uselessly voiced his anguish in an uncontrolled wail that the onslaught of rushing heat snatched away in its rising tide.

 

With time, the firestorm dimmed, allowing darkness and silence to descend. Yet he remained, alone and tiny against the vast backdrop of an endless void. Nothingness and freezing cold penetrated his senses, leaving only an empty numbness.

 

Raditzu startled awake, gasping, swallowing icy air. The cold interior of the pod seemed to press down on him. Blackness flooded the tiny craft save for the dim glow of a solitary indicator light. He vaguely made out the outline of his frozen breath as he struggled to get his bearings. It took a moment to take in the complete absence of starlight through the small porthole, to make the connection that the indicator light demanded his attention.

 

After a brief survey of the control panel, he surmised the stasis field and had failed. He hadn't the means of repairing such a malfunction. Luckily, everything else appeared to be working properly. The technical readout, visible through his scouter, said the pod was still rocketing through space, but the rift had enveloped it in an overpowering pall. There was no way of knowing if the gauge was accurate just by looking out the porthole. For all he knew he was stalled. Remembered tales of people loosing their minds in the void of a rift taunted him, his psyche still tinged with the remnants of his dream.

 

He sat stunned in the blankness, trying to shake off the lingering uneasiness. The dark pressed on, unending. Don't let go… don't let go… don't let go… The whispered litany thrummed in his mind.

 

He recognized it. The slave had repeated the words ceaselessly as she lay dying, staring through him with unfocused, glazed eyes. Shock, the medtech said.

 

How strange that it would blend in his stasis dreams, which tended toward lucidity, not the muddled, nightmarish fugue he'd just experienced. The scenario, as it began, had been an oft revisited pleasure, during his hours both conscious and unconscious. Born of adolescent longing, he'd invented the majority of it.

 

Celipa had taken his spot on the squad, had become a fixture at the house over that distant summer. And, yes, he'd become somewhat obsessed with her. The attraction had only increased with his resentment over the situation. It was obvious and she did tease him occasionally, but mostly she'd ignored him. Work held the majority of her attention, and she'd treated him as beneath her notice. The squad had gone back out on mission before the season had ended. Shortly thereafter, he'd relocated to the opposite hemisphere, finished training, and moved on to his first official mission. He'd never seen Celipa or his father again after that first summer on Vegetasei, and he never set foot on the planet again once he'd left it.

 

There were many trysts with various parties before he left. Many more afterwards, once he gained rank in the Planet Trade. But, that first fascination, forever unfulfilled, was the one that he returned to, over and over. And he did wonder once or twice if she had died without honor like that. She must have. He'd checked the roster. All contracted squads were on world for a general census at the time of the disaster. He didn't dwell on it. Warriors did not wax poetic over the dead. Occupational hazards abounded making death incidental, including the shamefully wasteful variety.

 

Rumors circulated concerning Freiza's involvement with the accident, but the official reports all pointed to a celestial event. He had his suspicions, but he'd be a fool to voice any of them.

 

The searing blaze of the Death Ball rose up in his mind's eye, only to be replaced suddenly by a real memory wherein he lay freezing and paralyzed in the oppressive dark of a cavern, near death. The brief glow of a cigarette's ember flared, lighting the slave's face for an instant as she drew on it. The light sparked over green eyes and died as she inhaled sharply before flicking the butt of the over the side of a chasm, followed immediately by the body of one of the low level soldiers she worked with. She brandished a blast weapon and dared the rest of her squad to defy her.

 

He never had reason to look twice at low levels. He viewed them as fodder, little more than animals. But this one belonged to him, the only thing he'd ever owned legally and completely. It became a personal curiosity at the very least. He let the duality of the transformations intrigue him, took pleasure in playing psychological games facilitated by the associated memory loss. Tested her at every opportunity that presented itself to spark self loathing and self doubt. He even began to enjoy her outbursts, secure in the knowledge that she would be simpering for his approval in due time; knowledge he possessed that she didn't.

 

He remembered how he saw her in that instant, beautiful and untamed, his fever addled mind cleaving in awe to the play of the light on her disturbingly fair hair.

 

Thus began another obsession, a deceptive compulsion that he failed to see for its true nature until he'd found himself mired in its ill fated results.

 

He had every reason to think that Kakarott intended sabotage. Perhaps his brother believed that he could somehow circumvent the inevitable, that he could continue to rule in whatever little fiefdom he'd established. He would see the error in that line of thinking soon enough.

 

He nudged the environmental controls, trying to get the climate buffer to reboot. No sense spending the rest of the trip freezing if he had to spend it awake. Before he was able to make much progress, the indicator light on the stasis system blinked off and the cycle reengaged, plunging him back into unconsciousness.

 

He found himself stalking the forests of his childhood, formal training, of any kind, far in the future and inconsequential. He reveled in minor acts of destruction, reigning as sometime infant king of his personal stomping grounds.

 

***

 

AN: Many, many thanks again to my readers and reviewers… especially for your patience.

I know this chapter is an interlude that does not do much in the way of plot progression, but it will make sense later on in the story if all goes as planned.

The next chapter is already half finished, but unfortunately as much as I want to expedite posting it, I do have a billion things that also need to be wrapped up in the next few weeks so I can't promise anything except that eventually it'll get done.