Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Sojourn ❯ Chaos ( Chapter 5 )

Sojourn, chapter 5
Chaos

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Father of mine
Tell me where have you been
You know I just closed my eyes
My whole world disappeared...

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Today was only going from bad to worse. The feeling of impending chaos was growing by an order of magnitude, like a swiftly expanding ball of snow tearing down a mountainside, with me squarely in its path, utterly powerless to stop it.

"Don't do it!" I jumped ahead to cut him off, arms flung wide, desperate fingertips stretching outward in supplication. Please. It's complete madness...

I might have been an insect, crawling in his way, for all the notice he gave. "Move out of the way, girl, or I'll blast you to Hell along with them." His expression did not flicker.

Gee, Dad, I love you, too. The air shimmered around his upraised palm, invisible power radiating from the fastidiously white glove like heat from an opened oven, and I was not fool enough to doubt him.

Forced to concede defeat, I stepped aside to give him a clear shot at the impenetrable steel doors of Gero's lab, but not before pausing to give him the finger.

I shouldn't have bothered; I'd have gotten more reaction from the cold grey steel. Repressed terror made me irritable, settling like an immovable ball of ice in my gut. Was he ever going to believe anything I said? Why did no one else seem to feel the smothering dread that threatened to cripple me whenever I stood still for too long?

Because you're the only one who fully comprehends what's about to happen here, girl. You're the only one who's seen it. Reminding myself of this offered little cheer. I finally stopped shivering as I drew in enough power to raise my body temperature, gathering the swirling warmth of my ki around me like a blanket. No need for stealth now, with the blazing beacon of my powered-up father in front of us. Tien and Krillin followed suit, exchanging wary looks. Piccolo did not move at all.

I took one last longing look at the clear, smokeless sky, azure blue against the jagged, snow-crested peaks on all sides of this lonely place. Drinking in a wind not yet tasting of ash, I waited for him to start the battle that would end everything. Cut directly into the rock, the portal loomed menacingly over us, tall and austere, as foreboding as the gates of the Hell he'd carelessly mentioned. A line from one of my mother's books pierced me suddenly:

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here...

My breath stopped as my father loosed the blast, the gleam of raw power shining through his eyes, leaking from his fingertips, rolling off of him in radiant waves. He was nearly maddened with it, a container filled to the brim -- no, overflowing -- with more power than he'd yet touched in his lifetime. Without the prospect of fighting Goku to use as an outlet, he had no way to release all of the energy he'd channeled into himself. He was not leaving here without a battle; I doubted that he even could.

Two pairs of eyes became visible at the threshold, glowing vermillion as their vision effortlessly pierced the darkness to view us while we stood blind and vulnerable. Fortifying my ki shield, I found myself still holding my breath and forced my lungs to inhale, knowing that I'd be useless if I passed out. The faces around me wore nearly identical expressions of barely mastered fear, all except for Vegeta, who instead looked merely impatient. Did his unbelievable pride allow no room at all for concern?

"Are you coming out, or not?" he called. "I'm waiting." As though he were the only one here, or at least the only one that mattered. I snorted softly, the others standing mutely behind me, except for an almost imperceptible sound of disgust from the Namek.

"So anxious to die, little man?" the sibilant, familiar voice snaked out of the gloom, a moment before its owner materialized. The same silky fall of black framed his face in the darkness, blending seamlessly with it and making the cobalt blue of his eyes glow unnaturally bright. Entranced, I didn't even glance at his sister, a paler shadow of him.

Vegeta bristled visibly at the insult to his stature, like a cat doused with water, and I almost rolled my eyes. Was he always so easy to bait? Juunanagou's responding laugh was cold and utterly inhuman. Juuhachi wore no expression at all.

Intrigued in spite of myself, I took a step forward and looked into the icy mechanical gaze for some hint of the torn and tormented cyborg I'd left behind in my time, but this Juunanagou only met my stare with bland indifference and a hint of the leer he'd worn when I first met his other self. He looked me up and down with deliberate slowness, and I growled in irritation, the morbid fascination suddenly vanishing. Was it my imagination, or was there a faint snarl of anger from one of the men on my left? From Vegeta? Definitely not.

I finally noticed what I should have seen immediately -- another one of them, inactivated, still contained in its pod. I panicked; How would we ever beat three of them? I was sure that all of our extra training would not make up for the increase in their number. I had to try and destroy it now, before they activated it. But...

"Where is Gero?" I asked.

Juuhachigou brightened, laughing caustically. "We had a difference of opinion." Her smile was beautiful and terrible. "Let's just say the place is under new management." She laughed uproariously again at her own joke. I noticed absurdly that her nails were bare. Gero hadn't let her paint them. Poor baby.

That last unknown variable accounted for, I powered up in an instant, touching the nexus of power in my core with a savage joy that not even these circumstances could temper. The others stared warily at me, and even Vegeta's glare registered a spark of dim surprise. In my head I heard: What the hell does she think she's doing? This is my--

I blocked him out. To them I said only, "Not for long," and then the mountain exploded.

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This is not what I needed. This little chit is as irritating as her mother but far more meddlesome, with not insignificant fighting power to back up her idiotic stance. My estimation of her abilities rose a grudging notch; Her blast was impressive, and I was somewhat surprised to see that it didn't even manage to scratch my prey. Indeed, it served merely as a distraction for them to take flight, and I was incensed that they dared to run away from me.

"Get back here!" I shouted, and took off in pursuit--

or would have, but for the body that planted itself in front of me. "No," she cried. "You can't!" Her eyes were wide, desperate, and I hated her weakness, the fear that I saw there. No child of mine would openly display such cowardice. She must have read something from my face, because the pleading blue of her gaze rapidly iced over into cold grey steel. Her lowered voice was as hard as flint. "Be reasonable! You saw my attack, it was my strongest blast, and it didn't even faze them! You can't take them on alone! Let's wait until Goku recovers--"

Did she not know to whom she spoke? "I am the Saiyajin no Ouji! I will not shy from battle, and I do not need the help of an unranked commoner! Stop interfering!" I shouted, and punctuated the statement with a fist to her solar plexus, a blow she should have been prepared for, another mark of her unfitness for real warfare. She doubled over, starving for air, and held me for another valuable second with the incredulous hurt shining through crystal blue eyes too much like another's. It felt for an instant as though I'd just hit her, and an unfamiliar emotion rose unpleasantly in my chest. She isn't Bulma! I shouted mentally, shaking off the feeling, leaving it and her behind as I blasted away in haste.

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After he left, I floated face-down for a long moment, mesmerized by the crimson droplets falling steadily in time with my heartbeat, out from my lips to meet the ground far below, furious with myself for caring that he'd hit me.

"Bra? You okay?"

I rotated in mid-air to meet the concerned gaze of Krillin. "I always knew Vegeta was an ass," he said simply, "but I never thought he'd hit his own kid. Especially his--"

He broke off, and I knew he'd almost said especially his daughter, but since he hadn't, I forgave him.

Tien was more terse. "We should go." Piccolo only looked at me, arms crossed.

Left with no other choice, I ran the back of my hand across my mouth and flew in the direction Vegeta had gone, the other three taking flight at my heels. I couldn't give up now. Whatever might happen to my lousy father, I still cared about the fate of this world.

The first thing I saw upon our arrival at the scene was Juuhachigou flinging a bloodied Vegeta ass-over-teakettle into a rocky cliff wall, leaving a sizeable crater, and for a crazed second I wasn't sure whether to be happy or upset about that. I fiercely quelled the absurd urge to cheer, but some part of me was actually glad that, of the three of them, they'd chosen the female to take my father on. And there were three now, my blast hadn't harmed the pod at all. They must have activated it in the time it had taken me to shake off Vegeta's blow. He was strange-looking, to me: huge, massively-muscled, with a bright ridge of hair sticking straight out of his skull and the same ice-colored eyes as the others.

As soon as he saw us, Juunanagou touched off and drifted in our direction. I floated to meet him, leaving the guys slightly behind on either flank. I was somewhat discomfited that the third android appeared to take no interest in the entire scene, staring instead out at the empty sky.

"Nice of you to join the party, sweetie," he said casually. "But Juuhachi appears to really be enjoying herself, and I don't think she'd appreciate the interruption." He leaned in closer, and I forced myself not to recoil from the stranger wearing a face that had become so familiar to me, a face I'd almost understood. "You and your friends stay out of it, and I'll let you watch...but if you join the fun, so will I, and you'll all lose."

When he put it like that, I knew we had no choice but to sit out. For now. But what kind of game were they playing? Wasn't it all going to degenerate into a fatal melee anyway?

I shrugged, and crossed my legs to sit seemingly at ease in the air, putting on the appearance of settling in to watch. "Got any popcorn?" I asked under my breath, but he heard me and laughed.

"You're a funny girl," he said appreciatively, that glint in his eyes again. "And a looker. I might be persuaded keep you around." The tone of his voice implied that I should be greatly pleased.

I pretended not to hear the mountains of innuendo woven into that statement. I managed to watch the fight without expression, but inside my mind was racing. Was there a way out of this?

It came to me then, that I just might have other, more subtle weapons at my disposal. "Juunanagou," I began.

His head turned automatically, irritation flaring dangerously in his eyes at the distraction. "What?"

"You don't have to do this," I said, point-blank. "You and your sister might have been under Gero's command, but you were never his."

"What the hell are you talking about?" All pretense of pleasantry had dropped from his manner now.

I willed him to listen. "You're still human! He stole, mechanically augmented, and mentally re-programmed the two of you, but you were never his creations! You have a choice!"

He reeled back from me, gripping his head between his hands, and I realized in horror that in trying to get him to think outside his programming I was causing him severe pain. "Shut up!" he screamed at me, and Krillen and Tien moved closer, new fear behind their eyes. Piccolo turned his head from the fight below.

My hopes plummeted; Gero's influence was yet too strong in his mind, and there would be no swaying them from their course. Even so, looking at the eyes that were for an instant those of a caged, tortured animal, I pitied him.

Unable to direct his pain and outrage at any target but me, he advanced with an insane red glow limning the ice blue eyes, and I figured the free-for-all was about to start. I readied myself against his inevitable attack, wary of making the first move. So many things weren't what they were supposed to be this time around, I reminded myself. As hard as it was, I had to quit thinking about him as an enemy I'd faced many times before, and be prepared for anything. Piccolo suddenly shouted, "Vegeta cannot win! Her power supply is limitless!"

It was at that moment that Juuhachi viciously broke my father's arm, and I went immediately on the offensive; I knew from the look on her face that she was not going to stop until she'd killed him. She wasn't playing anymore. The audible crack of bone forced brutally beyond its limits echoed inside my head, but I was far more sickened by the quicksilver dart of satisfaction that flared in my breast at the nauseating sound. Finally, he would see that I had been right about them, about the very real danger they posed, even to the great Saiyajin no Ouji.

His body twisting in pain, the black fury of his gaze flickered from his opponent only briefly, too quickly for anyone but me to notice, but more than long enough for the uncontained blaze of raging anger to sear into my skin. I had been right, he finally realized, and he hated me all the more for it. It was all that I could do not to flinch from the unseen blow. I had only been trying to save his life. Part of me still wished never to have courted my father's animosity, but it had been too late for that the day I arrived three years ago, and at this point it was not him I strove to please. He could hate me as he would, but for my mother I would use any tactic at hand to keep him alive.

The best one I could come up with at the moment was a full-on charge. I'd figured from the beginning that it was going to turn out like this. I took pleasure in at least knowing that my unwelcome intervention would royally piss him off. A chorus of surprised swearing followed me down from my companions as they rushed after me, but did they really think there was any other option at that point? Idiots.

The bitch broke my sword with her bare arm, and the nagging feeling of wrongness finally solidified into a coherent thought. They were too strong. They weren't supposed to be this strong. In my time I was powerful enough to take on either one of them alone, and Vegeta was easily as strong as I. What the hell was going on? Was Fate so determined to kill us all off that it had compensated thus for my trouble to come back and warn them?

It was somewhat fitting that my own father took me out of that fight, his body thrown as a projectile into me with incredible force. I daresay he didn't mind.

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My first wistful thought upon swimming back out of the clinging, heavy oblivion was that the sky was too flawlessly blue for a day that would herald the doom of the earth. Right after that, I wondered if one ever grew accustomed to the bitter taste of senzu. Tears choked my throat as I remembered the last one I'd eaten, and who had given it to me.

I sat numbly in a dazed state of melancholic apathy as Vegeta left, and then Piccolo, after shouting something I barely heard. Gohan, I really wish you were here.

Krillin grabbed my hand, trying to pull me up, but I'm heavier than I look, and he didn't make it. "Hey. C'mon, Bra." He and Tien looked profoundly uncomfortable when I lifted my head to look at him through tear-filled eyes. "We, ah, have to get to Goku."

I sniffed, trying not to think of Gohan anymore. "Yeah. I'm okay. Let's go."

As we raced toward Goku's house, the rushing wind roaring in our ears, my thoughts had plenty of time to echo in my head. What had I done wrong? Why were they so much stronger? What could we do now?

"Are they evil?" Krillin asked me suddenly, as we slowed and descended toward the small dwelling that was our destination. I nearly fell out of the sky at the unusual question. I looked over at him, his face unusually troubled and serious. He touched the back of his hand to his lips absently.

"Krillin, I--" I sighed, stopping to hover in the air, so that I wouldn't have to shout into the wind. "Are they inherently evil? No. They were human once, stolen and made into what they are now without their consent. Gero was an evil bastard. In my time..." I stopped.

"Yeah?" There was a weird expression on his face, a mix of horror...and hope?

"In my time," I continued, "Juunanangou and I have a kind of understanding. He knows what he is now, and what he used to be, and if he ever manages to come to terms with that and the horrible things he's done, I think there might be some kind of life for him, yet. But Juuhachi...she has become the android, utterly forgotten and forsaken the human heart she once had, and I don't think she is at all sane anymore. I don't doubt that I will have to kill her," I said softly, and was surprised to find that I could feel regret, after all that she had done.

"But right now," he spoke quickly, "They haven't done anything yet, have they?"

"No, not yet," I agreed. "I would like more than anything to find a way to stop them without killing them, and be able to tell Juunana about it when I get back. They don't deserve what has happened to them, any more than the rest of the world did."

I stopped dead just outside the door. "But Krillin," I said, "If I can't reach them, I will kill them before I ever let them do to this place what they did to my world. You have no idea what it was like. I can't forget that."

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After moving Goku, we got a call from my mom, asking us to meet her. She'd somehow found my time machine -- except it wasn't mine, because mine was still encapsulated in my pocket. The malignant feeling of wrongness inside me kept growing, well-fed by my imagination.

Gohan found the moss-covered ship first, and indeed, it was my machine, or at least what my machine would have looked like had it been sitting abandoned in the wilderness for a long period of time. Even the inscription was the same, and upon seeing I missed my mother suddenly, painfully, even though she was technically standing right next to me. I jumped in and accessed the controls. It had been here four years, to be exact. There was a weird shell on the seat, which I tossed to my mother. We found another odd, slimy cocoon-thing not too far away.

I was a warrior, the only champion of my planet, and I had faced androids and my own death many times over. But in some ways I was still a typical girl, and I got really creeped out by bugs. I couldn't believe Mom picked up that disgusting carapace so casually. Ugh.

"Mom, ew!"

"Bra, it's just a discarded shell," she said matter-of-factly. "I'm more concerned with what used to be in it", she continued, "and you should be, too, since it appears to have come in your time machine..."

Yeah. How in the hell did that happen?

It finally clicked. This is why things are different. Somehow. This machine, my time machine, has somehow been sitting here for four years now. Something else has traveled along on a different time line, altering everything. I racked my brain, but I couldn't figure out what.

How could I have anticipated Cell?

When Piccolo later explained to everyone about Cell's origin and how he came to be back in the past, cold fingers brushed my heart. At our moment of triumph, after so much sacrifice, he had killed me right in front of her. The painful chill filling my gut must have been what the old expression meant by "someone walking on my grave". He had murdered me to steal the machine. My poor mother, at last having her daughter back from the past and the androids laid low, only to have me struck down right before her eyes.

I felt nothing at all when Krillin and I broke back into the lab and killed the Cell-still-in-the-past, a helpless embryo-thing. I only knew cool, utter resolution that it must be done, and a faint ray of hope in the certainty that at least now, whatever else happened, I would not die by his hand.

Now, the only thing left was to train. I had to reach the next level, and for that, I would need an opponent. I had not sparred with another fighter in years, and my methods of self-teaching were limited. I went looking for my father.

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Basking in the alpenglow, he stood defiantly against the painted sky on the lonely outcropping of rock and flared furiously into Super: an impressive if slightly melodramatic display of power. He was a man of extremes, my father; it was all or nothing with him. Prideful to a fault, he also seemed relentlessly driven by a fierce determination that could almost be termed passionate. For the first time I began to see what it was that my mother might have seen in him -- What would it have been like for her, being the sole target of so much unbridled energy, once he had decided that she was what he wanted? I still couldn't figure out his blatant coldness to her now, but perhaps in a fit of mercurial pique he decided that he had not wanted her after all. Or perhaps it was the want of her that scared him.

He seemed to have no such indecision about me, though; I never saw him even glance at my baby self, and he ignored me now just as pointedly. If not for the blazing enmity cast in my direction that I felt radiating from him in waves, I would have thought him completely unaware of my existence. Apparently he was still determined never to forgive me for showing him up so long ago, or for having been born a girl in the first place. That galled me to no end; what was it about men like him, thinking that only sons were worthy to fight alongside them? Had I not decimated Frieza and Cold? He hated me both for being only a 'weak' daughter, but also for refuting his misogyny before his eyes and damaging his pride in the process! He was totally blind to the irrationality of the it. Only to Goku did he show respect, and that very begrudgingly. He respected Juuhachigou now, having been forced into it. A shattered humurus will do that, I suppose.

I staunchly ignored the part of me that was only, after all, a desperate young girl presented with a miraculous chance to know her dead father. He had no interest in that, and vying for his affection would only lead to heartache that I had no time for, not with the androids harrowing our every move. But I would force him to pay me the respect that I deserved, both as a woman and a mature fighter in my own right. That same respect that I saw gleaming back at me from the eyes of Goku and Piccolo and the others, and perhaps mixed in with a little awe, in Gohan's case. His regard warmed my heart, and I vowed that I would not fail him as I had the man he would be. I would let no harm come to him in this world, if it cost me my life.

I sensed him then, that life force that was as familiar to me as my own, yet just a little different, a little less refined and tempered by the influence of time. Younger. Innocent, I thought, as I turned to meet him and his father.

He had not yet witnessed the death of everyone he held dear, as my Gohan had.

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She stood there, slim and tall like a young tree, solid as a mountain and every bit as prideful as her father, though she would not have thought so. She nodded solemn acknowledgement at me as a warrior among equals, and I hid a smile as I did the same. She was definitely Vegeta's daughter.

A faint line between her eyebrows marred the face so like Bulma's as she said, "If you've come to reason with him, I wouldn't bother..."

Gohan responded for me. "I think he will be interested in what Dad has to tell him," he said soberly.

"I highly doubt that," the object of discussion said, turning only enough to gift us with the view of one arrogantly raised eyebrow.

I nearly sighed; a rational conversation with Vegeta was like trying to handle a rabid porcupine. Prickly. "Well then, I guess you don't want to hear about how you can accomplish a year of training in only a day..."

He finally turned to face us, though his arms were still crossed defiantly. I wondered that neither he nor Bra seemed to realize that their pose mirrored that of the other. "All right, Kakarott. Out with it!" he growled.

He listened with misleading disinterest to my description of the time chamber, frowning only when I informed him that he'd have to alternate days with the rest of us. When I told him that he'd have to share the time with another, most likely Bra, he looked at her as though she were something stuck to the underside of his boot, and my heart went out to the girl. I did not miss the way her chin lifted another notch defiantly.

I gathered that she would pull no punches, and I knew Vegeta better than he would have liked; he needed someone to raise the bar for him if he were going to reach the next level. She would do it, however unworthy an opponent he thought her. I rather hoped that she would change his mind.

It would be good for the two of them to be shut up alone in there together, if they didn't end up killing each other first.

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End Chapter 5

I'm sure that some of you thought I'd decided not to write for Sojourn anymore, and I'm sorry for that. Let me say first of all that this story has an ending already written, and I've always intended to make it there. Don't worry.

My life has just been in major upheaval for pretty much all of 2003. Fall Quarter is almost over, just a few more days. I'm hoping to write a lot in December, since I have no classes until January.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter anyway, in spite of the horrendously long wait! :)

Song lyrics by Everclear.

("Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," is the inscription at the entrance to Hell in Dante's "Divine Comedy", for those of you who may not have recognized it.)