Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Red Window ❯ Mirror ( Chapter 1 )

BAM.

 

Mid-kick, Vegeta was sent flying against the wall of the gravity room. He shouldn't have been affected by such an insubstantial strike, but he'd had no reason to expect it, either. Recovering and wiping a small bead of blood from his lip, the Saiyajin turned to face the culprit. He nearly jumped as they locked eyes; for a moment, he thought he had met a ghost of himself.

 

“Vegeta.” The word was no more than hissed, no less than spat. Muscles tensed, the offender prepared to strike again.

 

“What do you want of me?” the prince demanded. He measured his opponent carefully. Vegeta's keen nose identified the figure as female, a realization which may have taken a moment longer by mere visual inspection. Her tufts and spikes of hair were unruly; her eyes shone wild as she took her time observing him as well. Once again, the Saiyajin felt he was standing before a mirror—perhaps a mirror to the past. Her crazed expression induced nostalgia, nothing more; he had known these feelings, whatever they were, once, too. But peace had settled into his heart since Buu's defeat, and he'd been surprised to welcome it so readily.

 

Not-quite-sparks danced around the woman, and her hair stood on end in elevated rage as she noticed that the prince seemed too busy with introspection to notice her presence. The hairs stood taller yet as their eyes met again; he was much more real than she'd imagined. She suddenly understood the words of her father—no, not her father, never her father. The prince stood as a lion before her. Why was he here—this quaint little world—fixed so apparently permanently, peacefully? The calm behind his gaze infuriated her.

 

The prince crossed his arms, and his fingers rapped impatiently against his bicep. “Well?”

 

“I'll have none of this,” she muttered, the words perhaps meant to remain inside her mouth.

 

“Won't you,” Vegeta responded dryly, scoffing. What arrogance.

 

A quiet set in, and she almost turned to leave at his foreboding presence. But as he looked down his nose at her—not so difficult, for she was no taller than the man—her resolve was steeled. “You die today.”

 

Vegeta laughed as she charged. He blocked her strikes with little effort, but as she relentlessly attempted to strike him, Vegeta realized that the gravity was still turned up to a hundred times the Earth's—his cool-down. She was no challenge for him, but the degree to which she was not fazed by the extra gravity intrigued him. Smirking, Vegeta blocked two more of her attacks and dashed through the open space to his left to reach the controls. He paused, conflicted, and was soon distracted diverting the woman's ki blasts from the panel, deflecting them back to strike her as she struggled to dodge.

 

“What's the problem?” Vegeta taunted. “I thought you said I'd die today.” He was reminded of his son's infamous heckling and added, almost playfully, “Maybe you meant I'd die of boredom.”

 

She stopped in her tracks, and the blood pumping through her eyes became more visible. Her voice shot to a higher pitch as she screamed, “What was that?!” Charging forward once more, the woman made another attempt at striking the prince. “I see you're a bit concerned about that panel,” she huffed between blows. Launching herself forward, she laid all her weight against the prince's chest in a mighty elbowing motion. Vegeta was able to defend himself from the blow, but with this dodging motion his shoulder blades were slammed against the board. Cacophonous blips arose as buttons were smashed, ten or twenty of them, and then the lights flickered. After a moment, they sputtered off completely, and then back on—but this time, they were as red as the flashing digits—5-0-0—on the display.

 

The woman crumpled to the ground, face first, and red blood dribbled from her nose and mouth. And as she stirred, one more time, in a struggle to lift herself, her red cape rippled across her back to hang over her side before she collapsed. And beneath where the cape had been—and how had he missed it?—Vegeta watched the woman's tail go limp as her eyes closed. He turned her over to inspect her, reaching up to dial down the gravity as he did. Red shoulder pads—the armor obviously modeled after what had been standard issue in the days of Freeza—red shoulder wounds. Red teeth as blood dribbled from her lips down into the cracks. The medallion tucked between her armor and her skin—that was not red. But—damn, surely it can't be—the etched and painted anchor symbol on the back of the medallion—that, too, was red.