Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Slayer Mine ❯ Difficult Memories ( Chapter 10 )

"Giselle? Honey? Please talk to us?" Chi Chi brushed the hair from the girl's forehead, gazing into her eyes, there were so much pain in those eyes…and sighed, turning to her friends; "We can't get her to talk to us if she's in shock…"

"This is ridiculous!" Vegeta snarled, shoving Kakkorat's wife aside, he stared down at the frozen girl on the sofa and grabbed her by her shoulders, shaking her; "Snap out of, girl! This is my mate we are talking about! If you don't tell me what I want to know right now, so help me…I'll MAKE YOU tell me!"

"I can't…I don't…" Giselle threw up her hands to defend herself, trying to loose the Saiyan Prince's grip but he was just too strong, she cried out as tears streamed down her face; "Please…you're hurting me! I…"

"Vegeta!" Chi Chi cried, "Stop it! Your not doing any good by hurting her!"

In a barely concealed rage, Vegeta snarled at her and turned back to Giselle; his voice low, suddenly pleading…the fear in his dark eyes flickered and held her own and she felt his desperation. He would kill to get his mate back…she felt certain of it. "Giselle…please…"

She winced as his nails dug into the skin of her shoulders. She nodded…shoving the pain and terror she felt every time she though of that…that PLACE…down deep where she could muffle it for a while with other things and began her story in a trembling voice.

She was the Slayer, yes, that was true.

She was extraordinarily strong, much more so than the average sixteen year old girl, but that did not mean she was as emotionally strong as her body was.

She began her tale on the eve of her eleventh birthday. That was the day she found out just what, exactly, her mother was and where she came from…

The play area was one of several circular rooms in the facity where the children of several successful breeders were brought to play amid others of their agemates. Secretly, with cameras positioned all around the room on the walls and ceilings, the children were observed, analysed, and metally picked apart as they played together, unaware of the ulterior motive for their playtime.

Giselle was one of the children. She wasn't very outgoing and so the powers that be had deemed to leave her alone and focus on the enhanced…of the children. She spend most of her time in the play area on the swings. She loved the feeling of soaring and forgetting everything but the feel of the air, even if was the stale, dry of recycled air, in her hair and the rise and fall of the feeling in her stomach she pushed the swing as high as it would go.

After playtime, all the children were herded together into the main dining area, to sit at long rectangular tables with hard benches beneath, eating fare that was healthy if not particualarly good. Giselle and her best friend, a girl called Amber who was a few years older than her, always sat together and rarely left each other's side.

For awhile, Giselle thought as she told her story, she'd been a normal preteen girl and Amber…she hadn't thought of her in…it seemed like ages. She felt her heart contract for missing her wide-eyed flaxen haired girlfriend and sighed, continueing on.

"Gather your plates and carry them to the kitchens." The voice over the intercom was neither male nor female. It could have been a robot for all Giselle knew, no one ever saw the people behind the speakers and only the mothers were ever around to guide their children where they needed to be and tucked them in at night and gave them the love and attention no one else would.

At least, Giselle, recalled, until the day came when the children were considered old enough to be put to work. Either as workers in the kitchens, gardens, or other random labor…if you were born so fortunate enough to be male. Or, Giselle shivered, as an breeder if you were female. Unwilling or not.

Giselle picked up her tray, the scatchy wool of her gray and white uniform itched and she wished, not for the first time, that she could have different clothes to wear. But, she like all the other girls there, were forced to wear the uncomfortable pleated skirts and sailor tops, looking, she knew, for all the world like one of those annoying little anime chicks she's seen on the cover of a manga that had somehow gotten inside the facility.

Amber's mother appeared in the doorway, looking as ragged and worn as most of the other mothers there. Her eyes, steel gray in color, like Amber's, reflected no hope within them. Only when she was looking at her daughter did there come some flicker of life to her dull, often vacent orbs. She called Amber over and Giselle paused in her walk to kitchen…listening.

"Amber, come along…" Giselle looked and could tell, even from across the room with other children running around, talking, laughing and joking like kids did, that something was wrong. Amber's mother was often depressed, like most of the women, but there was something more in her voice, in her tone as she talked to her daughter; "Amber…come along now…"

"Mommy?" Amber asked, taking hold of her mother's hand, "What's happening, Mommy? Where are we going?"

Giselle left her tray on the counter and followed, at a safe distance, keeping to the shadows and ducking beneath the cameras. She wanted to find out what was going on with her best friend and she knew she'd never know unless she threw caution to the wind.

Amber's mother was crying. Giselle could hear her sharp intakes of breath and her hiccuping sobs even as Amber continued to plead with her mother to tell her what was happening, why she was crying so badly…

"I'm so sorry, baby…" She sobbed, leaning down to embrace her child, stroking her hair and crying; "I'm so sorry…"

"Mommy!" Amber shouted, shoving her mother away, terror in her eyes, "Please, your scaring me!"

"What's the hold up?" Giselle gasped. A man's voice! Men weren't allowed in this part of the building! Even she knew that! What was this one doing here? "Come on, I haven't got all day and this one needs to be fertilized. Orders from the boss." He waved a piece of paper in the air in front of Amber and her mother's face, but there was an odd leering quality to his features that unnerved Giselle.

As she concluded her story, the screams of her friend as she was dragged into a vacent room and forced to do god knows what, stilled played over and over in her mind as if it had happened only yesterday. The fertilization process had been succeful, or so they said. But, it did not matter. They'd found Amber dead a week later in one of the bathrooms. She'd stabbed herself throught the chest with a kitchen knife she'd stolen during her turn as washer one night.

Amber's mother would not speak to anyone who questioned her about it. Giselle did not wonder why she'd never bothered to look for her daughter after she'd been missing for nearly twentyfour hours. She knew, after the woman had glanced breifly into her eyes, that she'd known exactly what Amber was going to do and felt in her heart of hearts that it was the only way her daughter would gain back the virtue stolen from her. Perhaps she believed that Amber had escaped to a better place, in death.

"Oh, how horrible!" Chi Chi cried, dabbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her dress, after Giselle had finished talking, she also told them the whereabouts of the facility as best she could remember them, "Those poor women and children…Vegeta, Goten…We have to help them! We have to save Bulma, yes, but we can't just leave it at that…!"

"I know Mom." Goten said, Vegeta was already at the door, letting it slam shut behind him. He'd waited long enough to get his mate back! "We're already on it…Piccolo, we'll need your help too…"

"Of course." Piccolo said, and turned to Giselle; "You did well, Slayer."

She wiped her eyes and nodded; "Thank you, Sensei." Then she added, almost too low for anyone but him to hear, "For Amber…make them pay…"

Goten looked down at Giselle before he left, touching her cheek tenderly, he smoothed away the steak made by her tears and bent down to kiss her softly, briefly on the mouth, not caring what the other's might think. His whispered into her ear; "After this is all over, Giselle…I have something I want to say to you."

She watched him leave with the others and Chi Chi looked at her aside, her lips curled upwards ever so slightly in a knowing smile. Giselle did not notice her as she stood up and made her way into her bedroom to lay down for awhile, feeling drained and wanting only to close her eyes for awhile and forget…everything.