Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Slumber Party! ❯ An Eye For An Eye ( Chapter 29 )

"How much longer?" Vegeta's biting tone pulled the man from his work, grease smeared upon his coveralls, wrench in hand.

"This is delicate work, Mr. Vegeta, sir," The man said, looking back at the craft he was trying to fix, "Looks like she's seen her share of battles..."

"If Bulma were here..." Vegeta stopped himself from finishing that thought. Bulma was the reason he needed to get this blasted thing working in the first place! "Just hurry up!"

The man shrugged and went back to work, though by the looks of things he wouldn't be finished anytime too soon.

Vegeta flew back to the house, propelled by this own anger and fear more than anything. He paced the grounds, fuming, fists clenching and unclenching, wanting so badly to go rescue his mate and deal his own brand of punishment to her kidnapper...as for that Tori girl...

He still couldn't believe she'd actually betrayed them like that! After Chi Chi and Piccolo had told him what had happened, how could he not see it other than a gross betrayal? What he would do to her if he ever got his hands on her...

For all he knew, she had been in on the plan to steal the dragonballs and his mate!

Piccolo looked up from the place he was sitting, floating, trying to still his mind so that...

"How can you just float there, Namek?!" Vegeta cried, turning on him, "That monster's taken our women and the dragonballs and all you can do is sit there?!"

"I don't see how ranting and raging about is going to help, Vegeta." Piccolo said softly.

He closed his eyes once more, ignoring Vegeta's snort of disbelief and the sudden wind as the saiyan prince lifted himself into the air once more, leaving Piccolo alone again. The namekian warrior focused his breathing and his thoughts. He knew he could do it if only he had time...

He felt his mind floating, spinning though a void that could only be called space, stars and planets all around...seeking...searching...

~*~*~

"...and after we have used the dragonballs to make our wish, then..." Cyclone was rambling on about how powerful they would be, but Tori was barely listening. She nodded and smiled at the right intervals but her mind was elsewhere. She turned her gaze on the viewscreen and focused on a patch of blackness in the dark sky.

Suddenly, she felt it.

A tingling at the base of her skull. So subtle, if she hadn't been being still she may have missed it. Missed him! She recognized the pattern to the tingling and it became thought within her own head...thought that was not her own.

** Piccolo! ** She whispered urgently inside both their minds, afraid that Cyclone would notice her glazed expression and catch on, ** This is very dangerous...**

** I need to know, Tori,** He began, and tears crept into her eyes at the sound of his beloved voice inside her head, how she longed to be with him, to feel his arms about her protectively, ** Have you really betrayed us for...him? **

The blast of her denial nearly knocked him physically backwards.

** Of course not! ** She cried out within him, part of her that was still responding to Cyclone's voice outside her body urged her to shut down the communion before it was too late, ** I must go...tell the others...there is a way! **

** Wait! Tori!** Piccolo cried out both mentally and aloud as Tori slammed her mental doors on him, wisking him back though the void into his own head and, as he blinked awake, back to where he was still floating beside the fish pond outside the house. Her last words echoed inside his head...

"There is a way..."

His eyes widened as, suddenly, he began to realize just what the girl had in mind.

The dragonballs...He thought, standing up and taking off towards where he would feel Vegeta's ki signature the strongest. She said to tell the others but he knew he had to let Vegeta know what was going on first, then they could tell everyone else.

"Vegeta!" Piccolo called out as he spotted him, floating high in the air, clouds surrounding him, it was difficult to breath so far up in the sky, "Vegeta!"

The proud prince turned slightly, sighed and raised his dark brows in a query-like gesture.

"She's going to use the dragonballs!" Piccolo said, and Vegeta grinned, shaking his head as if he'd all ready known as much.

"Of course she is, fool!" He snapped, "And unless I can get that hunk of junk down there working, there is no way to stop her. Even if she doesn't know the words to say, they won't have that much trouble getting Bulma to speak them for them...will they?"

"You don't understand..."

"I understand enough!" Vegeta cried, dark eyes narrowed dangerously, "I understand that I have two beings to dispose of instead of just one!"

Before Piccolo could do or say other, the saiyan prince flew off, rage crackling around him like a lightning storm.

~*~*~

Tori continued to watch the blackness, an odd feeling roiling within her stomach. There was something...not right...about the area of space she was staring at. She did not know exactly what...

"Tori?" Bulma, from the cage behind them, whimpered, her voice hoarse finally from crying out, "Tori, what do you see...out there...?"

Cyclone turned in his seat, a mixture of rapture and boredom playing across his features. "My dear," He began, "What are you...?"

"Something..." Tori blinked, realizing that the space directly ahead of them was devoid of any stars, just a large dark space. Suddenly, as if slapped across the face, she got it. "Cyclone! Look! Do you see it?"

He looked where she was pointing, her hand shaking, and eyes widened in disbelief. "I-it can't be...!"

She fell backwards into the chair, unable to keep the force of what she was feeling in check any longer. Hands to her temples, her eyes squeezed shut tight against the sudden onslaught, Tori cried out in pain and terror. Though it was not her pain nor her terror with which she voiced the agony.

A million voices, emotions, feelings, spirits, all crying out, screaming, grabbing, clawing, reaching for something, for anyone, for her. The closer they were to the black space within space, the clearer she could feel it...the clearer she could feel them. She had never experienced anything like it. Never!

Blood began to seep from her nostrils as her fingernails began to claw at her scalp. She screamed because to keep still was to do nothing and to do nothing was to writhe in unspeakable hurt.

"Tori!" She barely hurt Bulma's voice screaming from the cage. However the woman thought of her, she still cared for her and the kind-hearted blue haired female liked to see no one suffering...especially not those she'd once called friend. "What have you done to her, you monster!"

"I haven't done anything to her!" Tori heard Cyclone scream, his cries blending with those inside her head. She tried to speak above the noise...

"T-that space..." She tried, swallowing back vomit that had rose inside her throat to choke her, "It...was..."

Cyclone was busy checking his equipment, and gasped as he realized what Tori was seeing and feeling. He had no idea she was so sensitive...!

"It was a planet," He finished for her, they were closer now, close enough to see the drifting pieces of rock that had once made up that world. "It was one that...was destroyed..."

"So many...so many deaths..." Tori whispered, her eyes open, yet still unseeing, blinking back inner tears, "Can't you feel it...can't you feel them?" She turned to Cyclone, her gaze penetrating...making him flinch away from her, "They want vengeance, you know."

"I had nothing to do with it!" He cried, stumbling over his controls, trying to turn them around and away from the specter of the ruined planet, a shiver coursed down his spine, "It was their own folly...!"

Tori thought of the creeps who'd killed her family and a familiar rage filled her insides, coating her heart with a coldness thicker and darker than the blackest tar.

Vengeance. Such a lovely word.

"You had everything to do with it, Cyclone." She whispered, feeling her fire magic crackling all over her body, tiny licks of flame like demon tongues lashing out all over her skin, the flesh boiling and bubbling as it burned, though it did not hurt her, only served to fuel her anger all the more, "They came to you for help...you had to means to help them..."

"I could do nothing...I...Terra...!"

"They say that your sister wanted to help, but you overpowered her, when she was unaware, and escaped to a safe distance and watched them all die!" She glared dagger at him and even Bulma, in the cage, whimpered and pulled herself back against the corner, "An eye for an eye, Cyclone...it's only fair..."

She reached out, her fingers like claws, seeming to belong to some other being, her nails growing longer and more sinister...curled and burning with her own heat, a searing heat that no normal person could hope to withstand. Seeming caught by her eyes, those beautiful blue eyes turned the shade of dried blood, nailing him to his chair as forcefully as if he had been lashed there with ropes, he could not move.

~*~*~

Pausing in mid-air, Piccolo gasped, as still somewhat connected to her, he felt all that she had being feeling and saw, from an outside point of view, the millions of souls now working through her to gain their ends. He saw her reach out, flame like blood dripping from her hands, towards Cyclone....

~*~*~

"Tori...no...what are you...?!" He cried out, a moment too late as her claw-like nails, hard as steel and hot with the fire all around her, slashed at his face, cutting into both of his exposed eyes before he could cover them protectively. He cried out in pain as he turned away, hands over his damaged eyes, dark blood flowing from between his fingers.

Tori blinked at her hand, gore-covered and shaking, as if it did not belong to her. Cyclone had turned to ship around and they had been speeding farther and farther out of reach of the dead ghost-world. Slowly, she felt her mind become her own once more. Her telekinetically grown fingernails blackened in the heat and fell from her hand, like ash, as the blood continued to dry.

"My eyes!" Cyclone cried out, still writhing on the floor where he'd fallen, groping in his own darkness, "What have you done to me...?! My eyes! My eyes...!"

"I..." Tori tried, unsure, shaking her head, she hadn't meant to hurt anyone...only get her and Bulma to safety... She'd even given up the longing to harm those who'd killed her family because it would serve no real purpose other than her own sense of justice to hurt anyone else. "It wasn't me..."

"Stay away from me!" Cyclone cried out, lashing out blindly, "Stay away! I can't see...can't use my powers...I can't see...Stay away from me!"

Tori could not speak. She didn't know what to say. She could only stare at the man who'd once been so powerful and proud, who'd once stood before her and laughed at her mockingly as he invited her to join him in his bid for power. Now, thrust into a darkness of her making, Tori watched as he moaned on the floor, hands tight over his now sightless eyes.

"It wasn't me!" She cried out, knowing that he was beyond being able to hear or understand her. Tears flowed down her face, dripping from her chin, "It wasn't me!"