Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ The Frog Prince ❯ The Curse ( Chapter 1 )

Author's Note: I was watching that mini-series Rose Red. The scary one based on a Steven King novel. Anyway, it got me thinking about a fairy tale I read once called Snow White, Rose Red by the Grimm brothers. Which in turn got me reading my Book of the complete Grimm fairy tales, but I didn't get past the first story of "The Frog Prince" because I got the idea to write this. ^_^ It's a Bulma and Vegetaified version of the original fairy tale.

Chapter One

"The curse"

…No one will ever show love for a worthless being like you. The curse will remain on your head…forever. Hahahahahaha…Ah ha ha ha ha ha.

Prince Vegeta gasped and shot up from his bed of cool grass. The chill night air filled his drowning lungs with the scent of honeysuckle, dew, and all the smells of the surrounding forest. The nightmare was plaguing him again. Only it was not truly a nightmare. It was a memory. A reminder of the day that sorcerer had cursed him to the fate he suffered now. Freeza's mocking raspy voice echoed in his mind, repeating the same words over and over.

The prince took a deep, staggering breath, relaxing back on the soft, thick grass. He stretched naked beneath the eyes of the silver moon. The lush swells and hollows of his muscled body were accentuated by the pale grow from the sky above. In the eastern horizon a pink stain cut across the sky, heralding the sun and the return to his cursed form.

By the fiery fingers of light

Thy true form fly from sight

Hidden by grotesque disguise

With slippery skin and bulging eyes

Live you in a watery bog

And spend thy day as a hideous frog

Thy fate is sealed, until that is

A love release you with true love's kiss

This curse, set upon him by the evil sorcerer Freeza, doomed him to spend his days in the body of a frog. Try as he might to break the spell it was useless, unless he found a true love to kiss him whilst in the form of a frog. That is how he knew his fate was truly sealed. The prince had not a romantic bone in his body. But that was a mere side note considering no woman with a sane mind would fall in love with a disgusting green amphibian? He could find someone by night in his true form of a man, but he was bound by the curse not to speak of his fate. It was all so maddening.

After this cruel trick had been set upon him, Freeza took over the prince's kingdom in the lands of Saiya. The sorcerer possessed a fearful wealth of power and the saiyan people were powerless to oppose him. Without their prince they were at Freeza's mercy. To make matters all the worse, Freeza ordered his closest guard, a blue skinned bounty hunter simply called Zarbon, to take the frog prince far away from his homelands. To where mattered not, all Freeza demanded was that the prince be left alive to suffer with his misery.

Where he was now he had no ken of where is homelands lay. He wandered for days covering little ground since his deformed body was not made for long travel. Eventually he happened upon a lush green forest and in that forest lay a beautiful pond glittering in the sunlight. He decided to rest in this place for a few days while he thought of what to do. He had limited options and even those few seemed bleak.

During the days he rested by the pond, his froggie nature sometimes was more prominent than his human side was. Much to his disgust he actually had to stop him self on numerous occasions from flicking out his long tongue and snatching fat juicy flies from the air. The mere fact that he used the word juicy to describe a fly was cause for some concern. It occurred to him that perhaps if he did not find a way to lift the curse soon, he would turn into a frog permanently. To keep his sanity he spent most of his nights doing the things he had enjoyed as a human. Most prudently he hunted. Although a prince, who had spent a good deal of his eighteen years living in a palace, his father had taught him many of the skills one needed to fend for themselves. The saiyans were a practical people who believed in strength and self-preservation. They had little time for the trappings of weakness, like feelings, most especially love.

Many days had passed and he had yet to set eyes on another soul. He was beginning to wonder how long it would take to find the nearest town, let alone Saiya. His blood boiled at the idea of a proud prince such as him self reduced to such a state of helplessness. The very next morning he decided. He would rest all day in his amphibian form, then come nightfall he would travel as far as his human legs could carry him. This way he could cover more ground as a man at night then he would all day as a frog.

Finally content having formed somewhat of a plan, Vegeta watched the sun rise and felt his body change. Hopping on his powerful legs he settled down on a rock next to the beautiful pond and fell to sleep for a long day's rest.

* * *

Next Time: Enter the princess. Princess Bulma is sad because she has no one to love. Her short fling with the stable boy, Yamcha, was a bust. Now her chambermaid ChiChi is getting married to the knight Goku. Bulma decides to go to the one place she loved as a child, but what happens when she losses her beloved gold dragon ball?