Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Time & Tide ❯ Unexpected Alliance ( Chapter 9 )

Chapter Nine

The ship landed on a planet several thousand miles on outskirts of Planet Vegeta's solar system, but it had taken the ship only a few minutes to get there at its fastest speed. A hatch opened on its side, and a ramp extended to the ground.
Zarbon strode out calmly. He had a firm grip on Sdhoirm's collar again, and he tossed the physically drained Saiyan into the dirt. Sdhoirm had been freed from his chains, but he was too weak to see straight. He looked up at Zarbon.
Frieza's general stood over him, with a malicious glint in his eyes. Sdhoirm's sword was in Zarbon's hand. Zarbon kicked him in the side. "Get up. It's no fun if you don't put up at least some sort of a fight."
Sdhoirm coughed. He tried to get to his feet, but suddenly he clutched his stomach and dropped to his knees. "Where am I?"
"Some inconsequential planet. Who knows," Zarbon shrugged. "But don't even think about trying to escape. You're far too weak for that. And you've no hope of being rescued, either. None of the Saiyans knows what we've done, and even if they had, no one could have gotten here so fast."
"Then why bother taking the fight out of me?"
"Well, I can't have you getting away before you're broken."
Sdhoirm looked away. "So it's to be torture."
Zarbon nodded.
"I can deal with torture."
Zarbon shook his head.
Sdhoirm turned back to him, as he struggled to his feet. "You don't believe me?"
Zarbon shrugged his shoulders as he moved into battle position. "You survived Master Frieza's death ball, you must be very brave...but nobody withstands my pain." He smirked. "Oh, and by the way...I can't tell you how happy I am that you'll soon be dead. After all, once you're out of the way, I can easily have Zafira for myself. She is beautiful, isn't she? She'll be a fine mate for me, don't you think?"
Sdhoirm's head shot up, and his eyes flashed. No one should ever talk about Zafira that way in front of him...But even in his half-dead condition, he knew he was too weak to fight Zarbon now. As he took in his surroundings, he noticed that they looked very familiar. Then something clicked.
Suddenly, to Zarbon's complete surprise, Sdhoirm turned and ran. Even in his state, he was surprisingly fast.
"Blasted fool," Zarbon snarled angrily, taking off after him. "He must know he has no chance...And I really wanted to try out this sword, too."
Sdhoirm ran blindly into a forest...He could hear Zarbon behind him, closing in quickly. He started to make sharp turns into the undergrowth, trying to find shelter and throw Zarbon off his trail.
The forest ended suddenly. Sdhoirm's strength was about to give out, when he looked up ahead, and saw huge rocky cliffs jutting into the sky. With any luck there would be a cave in which he could hide.
He reached the cliffs without any problems. Turning around for a glance back, Sdhoirm searched for Zarbon...and couldn't see him anywhere. The green general was gone.
He couldn't have given up... Sdhoirm panted desperately to himself. Could he?
Just then, Zarbon landed in front of him. Sdhoirm gasped and started to back away.
"Well, well, well..." Zarbon sneered. "Thought you could hide from me, did you? That was not a smart move, I'm afraid. Now you'll wish you had taken your chances against me."
He raised his arm and shot a ball of energy at the cliffs. There was a rumble, and suddenly the rocks started to rain down upon them. Zarbon smirked.
Sdhoirm looked up in horror. He tried to run, but Zarbon was waiting. He punched Sdhoirm so hard that the Saiyan flew back and slammed into the cliff wall. Just as Sdhoirm had managed to get up again and take a few steps forward, the cave-in had reached them and he disappeared under a rain of rocks and a cloud of dust.
Zarbon waited until the smoke cleared. He stared carefully at the boulders that had buried the Saiyan, but there was no movement at all. He smiled in satisfaction.
"Now to make it look good for Zafira," he said to himself, heading back to the forest.
Once he was there, he quickly caught and killed an ape-like creature. Slicing it open with the sword, Zarbon made sure that the animal's blood covered the blade.
"They'll never know the difference between this ape and that one," he snickered, reaching up to press the transmitter button on his scouter. "Lord Frieza...Mission accomplished, sire."
"Excellent, Zarbon," came the reply. "Hurry back. I can hardly wait to see these arrogant monkeys surrender to me."
"Yes, sire." Zarbon clicked off the scouter and, holding the hilt of the bloody sword and with a Saiyan buried under a landslide behind him, he made his way coolly back to his ship.

~*~
"Unbelievable," Frieza uttered in shock as he watched the blips on his screen, which represented his troops, diminish slowly. "She must've had this all planned from the beginning..."
"Sire, report: Zarbon has returned," a soldier in front of the control panel said. Frieza's features suddenly lit up and he began to laugh.

~*~
"Your highness, your highness!" a servant's voice spoke into the speaker of the queen's scouter. "We've just received a transmission from Frieza."
"What does that bastard want?" she asked icily.
"He says that he wishes to discuss a truce."
Zafira paused, "You're serious?"
"Yes, ma'am and he also has some important information about Master Sdhoirm," the servant spoke. Zafira caught her breath. She hadn't heard from Sdhoirm in a while and she was beginning to worry.

~*~
Zafira came storming through the halls of Frieza's ship. She had instructed the others to continue fighting in her absence, much to their disagreement. Sdhoirm had better have been in one piece or heads would roll. She finally came across his personal brooding quarters where the automatic doors slid open and she stormed right in. He was sitting where he usually sat: in the center of the large window in his floating capsule chair with his back turned. Zarbon and Dedoria standing by his side. When the sliding doors closed behind her, Frieza turned around, a sympathetic look on his face. Zafira's brow rose. She had never seen the Tsiru-jin with this type of expression on his face.
"What do you want?" she asked rudely in spite of herself. Frieza tried to hide the smirk on his face, "I'm afraid to report that Sdhoirm is no longer with us."
"What are you babbling about?" Zafira asked, growing annoyed.
"He and Zarbon were engaged in battle on this very ship when Zarbon began to gain the upper hand. Out of hate for my general and the shame of dying by his hand, Sdhoirm committed "hara-kiri," Frieza said grimly. Zarbon pulled the sword out into her view from behind him, blood covering the blade. Sdhoirm's blood. Zafira gasped at that very moment, "honorable suicide". She clutched the top of her outfit, her breath growing rapid.
"...And I felt that with the circumstances that it would be best to call a truce. After all, we wouldn't want to lose any more people that are close to us, do we?" Frieza asked, no longer able to hide his smirk. Dedoria's and Zarbon's expressions matched his. Luckily for them, Zafira's thoughts were elsewhere. Sdhoirm...dead...was all that ran through her mind.
"I'll give you some time to think it over," Frieza said.

Somehow, Zafira managed to walk out of the room. She was trembling now and bumped her back into the wall and slid to the floor, a mess. She covered her face with her hands as silent cries escaped her lips and salty tears fell down her cheeks. Then she heard footsteps. At the moment, she didn't care. She had lost her lover, her mate. Now she was truly alone. Vegeta would become king and have Vaya, but what would become of her? Oh, and poor Vaya! She'd be so heartbroken over this!
"It's a shame about what happened to Sdhoirm. Quite the fighter," an all-too-familiar voice invaded her ears. Zafira slowly looked up to find Zarbon standing before her, that usual smirk donning his features. That's when she finally realized what type of room she was in. It was one of the ship's guest rooms. The two of them were in the living room. Zafira quickly wiped her tears and got up, trying to not to show her broken-up state.
"You must feel terrible," Zarbon said, his voice sounding sympathetic, yet mischievous. Zafira slowly backed up against the wall, folding her arms around herself as she looked to the side. Zarbon smirked and walked up to her till they were noses apart. He wrapped his big, muscular arms around her waist and gently pulled her to him. He slowly planted her head against his chest and held her. Zafira finally couldn't take it anymore and broke down into tears once more. She had no idea why he was consoling her, but she needed to be held at the moment. Zafira finally got a hold of herself and pulled away from him. She turned to her side, holding herself again. Zarbon only smirked at her stubbornness and turned her to him, forcing her to look him in the eyes. He smiled at her and gently wiped away her tears. Zafira held her breath when she felt his hand on her face. It hadn't registered to her that she was being pinned against the wall. All she noticed was that they were inches apart and that there was virtually nothing stopping him from kissing her.
"You'll have to learn to trust me. You know I'd never hurt you. This Sdhoirm must've been very close to you to make you feel this way..." he pulled her face closer, and Zafira realized that she wasn't trying to stop him, she couldn't get her limbs to cooperate.

~*~
What was left of the Saiyan army had been led into the middle of the desert by Frieza's men. None of the Saiyans could believe that their beloved queen had really given the order to surrender, but not one of them dared to defy the order, just in case. They had complete faith in their female monarch, but being seated on a sandy desert floor surrounded by their enemies armed to the teeth did not help to strengthen their loyalty. And then there was the information that they had suffered the loss of Master Sdhoirm, which had thrown them into a deeper surge of panic.
In the very center of the circle sat Prince Vegeta and Vaya.
Vaya was dead to the world. Her eyes stared, blank, unseeing, gray from tears past. She no longer thought. She had passed from her mental agony at the death of her only parent, and she felt nothing...not sadness, not anger, not fear...it was the strangest feeling in the world. It was absolute zero. She was numb to everyone and everything.
But Vegeta was different. His mind was a blinding whirl of emotions, but not one single one of them was sadness. He was angry...angry that Frieza had forced them to surrender. Oh, he was well aware that the order could not have come from his mother in sound mind...She would never have done that. She had told them that they would free themselves from Frieza, or die trying, and his mother never broke her word.
And then there was the story of Sdhoirm's death...next to the unexpected surrender, the Saiyan circle was abuzz with the news that the Sword Master had been killed. It wasn't merely the idea that Sdhoirm had committed suicide that made Vegeta deem this tale ridiculous...it was the gut instinct inside of him. It told him that his soul-father was still alive.
But if he was alive, then where was he?

~*~
Almost an hour had passed since the surrender. Warfrost and Cassinian had disappeared...Vegeta did not for once suspect that his beloved pet had abandoned him, but he didn't know what had happened to them. The sun beat down on the tired Saiyans, and hunger, thirst and fatigue were beginning to set in, along with a despairing hopelessness that they would either become Frieza's slaves or be slaughtered.
The sun was beginning to set. The Saiyans' only comfort was the knowledge that the favored time of the night would soon be upon them, with the cool breeze and the beautiful stars. There was no full moon that night.
Suddenly Vegeta, who had the sharpest eyes and ears of all of them, jumped up with a shout and pointed in the direction of the setting sun.
Several of Frieza's guards rushed in with a snarl to restrain the rebellious prince...but then, as one by one every head turned towards the golden rays of sunset, they all stared in amazement as they saw what the young prince had seen first.
Merely shadows at first, but growing larger and bold against the sun were the shapes of hundreds of giant birds. Their wingspans were huge and the powerful wings glided them effortlessly through the sky. Each bird had golden-brown feathers and eyes like sparkling jewels, seen only by the Saiyans from their great distance. They were eagles, beautiful and powerful, greater in size than even Warfrost and Cassinian. They flew towards the Saiyans and their captors, approaching with steady beats of their wings.
It was a majestic sight, but not one to inspire fear...until it was too late.
Within an arrow's flight of the two armies, the eagles circled and dived with a many-throated screeching cry. The Saiyans and their enemies alike received only a glance at the eagles, enough to see the rider on each one's back. But that was all the time they had, for the eagles were upon them, driving at them with sharp talons ready to seize and tear.
The Saiyans leaped up, prepared to engage in battle. Frieza's men seemed too afraid to think. Vegeta frantically tried to get Vaya to rise and defend herself, but she saw no reason why death from the eagles wasn't a favorable option to slavery by Frieza.
Suddenly, a shout from an Eagle-rider made the armies look up. Riding at the head of the swooping cloud of birds was a figure cloaked all in black. His face appeared to be nothing but a black hole, for the inside of the cloak was covered in shadow. But the stranger called to his companions and made the Saiyans' hopes lift.
"Not the Saiyans!" the stranger cried. "Leave them alone! Only Frieza's men are the ones to kill!"
The Saiyans looked at one another...then they cheered and turned on their captors to battle once more with their new allies alongside them.

~*~

He was gone. She couldn't believe he was gone. She felt numb to the touch and she seemed deaf and blind to whatever was going on around her, even the fact that Zarbon, her enemy, was holding her in his arms. She would be alone, her beloved was gone. Zarbon finally pulled her face gently from his chest, tearstains on her face. He wiped them away gently.
"It's all right love, I'm here now..." he said warmly as he pulled her lips to his...

Just then, the whole ship trembled violently as a barrage of stray energy blasts erupted against the side. Zarbon looked up from Zafira, his eyes full of rage. Zafira looked slightly confused, but still too dazed to figure it out.
"What the hell is going on out there?" Zarbon snarled. I thought Frieza told them to surrender...
Without giving the queen an explanation, he took hold of her hand and roughly started to pull her through the hallways. Zafira had only a dim realization of where she was going and why. As they passed through the front doors of Frieza's ship, Zarbon stared in horror at the war going on below. They landed on the edge of the battlefield and stared.
Zafira couldn't speak. Who were these new warriors, who seemed intent on freeing her people from their bondage? She remembered no such allies. She had never even seen these people before. And how could they fly such immense and powerful birds?
Just then there was a loud screech from the sky above them. Zarbon and Zafira looked up in time to see one of the eagles swooping down upon them at full speed. The strange man in black was riding it, and he reined it to a stop in front of the two.
Zarbon didn't even have time to react before the stranger kicked him hard in the chest, sending him flying backwards about thirty feet. Without hesitation the stranger pulled Zafira into his arms. The great eagle gave a cry and soared into the sky again.
Zafira clung to the stranger's neck as she gazed at the ground below. They were flying high in the sky, circling the battlefield, and she could see from all sides how her people faired. They were doing well, with the aid of the Eagle-riders.
Zafira turned her attention to the man in black, whose strong arms kept a careful hold on her. She tried to see under his hood, but the shadows were too dark to penetrate. She narrowed her eyes curiously...there was something very familiar about him...
"Who are you?" she asked slowly.
The stranger's attention had been focused on the battle...but he turned to her in surprise when she asked him the question. He made no response.
"Please..." Zafira tried again. "Tell me who you are."
Again, it was a moment before there was an answer. Then he replied, in a deep, smooth, and mysterious voice, "Someone who loves you more than anything in the universe."
Zafira's eyes widened as the stranger reached up and pulled the hood back from his face.
It was Sdhoirm.
Zafira nearly fainted.
"Sdhoirm!!" Without a moment's hesitation, she hugged him close, burying her face into his neck. When she finally loosened her grip, she looked into his eyes, her own growing moist.
"You don't know lost I felt when they told me you had died."

Sdhoirm frowned. "They told you I died?"
Zafira nodded. "Well, they actually told me that you had killed yourself, rather than lose when you fought Zarbon."
This information seemed to surprise Sdhoirm greatly. "Killed myself? Why would I do something as ridiculous as that?"
"I don't know!" Zafira cried, burying her face into his neck again. "That's why I didn't believe them at first, but then Zarbon showed me your sword, and it had your blood all over it."
"My blood?" Sdhoirm actually chuckled. "That sword never once came near me in enemy hands, let alone pierced my skin. Who has it now?"
"I think Zarbon still does," Zafira replied, raising her face to his. "You're not going to get it back, are you?"
"Of course."
"You can't! What if they kill you...um...again, and before we even have the chance to tell Vegeta and Vaya that you really are alive?" Zafira cried.
Sdhoirm shrugged. "Oh, Vegeta knows."
"What?"
"He knows. He knew it the whole time. He's very smart, and he listens to his instincts...He knew I wasn't dead, and he knows that the black rider is me. I just have to meet up with him after he explains the plan to the others."
Zafira was getting more confused by the second. "The plan? What plan?"
Sdhoirm sweatdropped. "Perhaps I should explain to you exactly what happened after you left me alone on the ship..."

~*~
Sdhoirm quickly summarized his capture and how Frieza had squeezed his tail so hard that he had nearly passed out. Then he told Zafira about how Zarbon had taken him to that strange planet, and when Sdhoirm had tried to make a break for it, Zarbon had triggered a landslide that buried him under a pile of boulders.
"But if you were caught under a landslide, how did you survive?" Zafira asked.
Sdhoirm then explained to her two things.
When he had landed on the planet, he had noticed that it looked very familiar. Then he had realized that he had been there before, when traveling through galaxies, before even Turles was born. The planet's inhabitants considered him a friend and he had tried to run in hopes that if he found them, they would help him.
Unfortunately, he was in no condition to outrun Zarbon. When he had seen that there was no way of getting past Frieza's general during the landslide, he had frantically searched the ground for a hollow. Upon seeing a small impression in the soil, he dove into it and prayed. By the greatest stroke of good luck, the first few rocks fell around him and braced against each other, forming a barrier around him. He had no room to move at all, but he was alive.
When he heard Zarbon leave, Sdhoirm tried to push his way free of his stone prison, but he was still too weak to even shake the rocks. That's when he noticed that he could no longer feel his tail. Straining to turn his head as far around as he could, he saw that his tail had been crushed by the boulders and torn off completely. Although upset by this loss, Sdhoirm realized that not having a tail to get squeezed might be useful in the future. He relaxed his tired muscles and waited for whatever would happen next.
As his air started to wear thin, suddenly Sdhoirm heard the sound of voices and rocks being pulled away. The voices belonged to the very people Sdhoirm had hoped to find. They were a race of hunter-warriors, medicine men, and sorcerers, and they were trained from birth to be in tune with the natural balance of the planet. They were strong and very wise. They were the Tagnik-zur, the Eagle people.
After they had pulled Sdhoirm from the debris and heard his story, the Tagnik-zur took him back to their nearest village. They recognized him, and took great care in restoring him to his normal self. They used natural remedies and psychic treatments to heal him.
All during his recovery, Sdhoirm thought hard about how to get back at Frieza and finally stop him. The leader of the Tagnik-zur, whose name was Karlock, visited him regularly, and Sdhoirm finally asked him for help. Karlock agreed to offer the services of himself and his army in alliance with the Saiyans against Frieza.
"You see?" Sdhoirm smirked. "It pays to have interplanetary connections!"
Sdhoirm was given a fresh outfit, since his old clothes were badly torn up, and Karlock ordered him to be given one of the Eagles to ride.
"Meet Baloth," Sdhoirm said, motioning to the eagle they were riding.
Zafira smiled and stroked the bird's feathered head. Baloth gave a piercing cry, which Sdhoirm explained to be a greeting. Then he continued with the story.
The army of the Tagnik-zur was always prepared to fight. In no time at all they were ready to depart. Gathering together, they combined their energy and created a portal that they used to hop from one planet to another. They passed through the portal and ended up on Planet Vegeta just a few miles away from the desert. From there they had flown down to aid the Saiyans in the fight against Frieza's troops.
Sdhoirm finished his tale. "Are you following everything so far?" he asked in a teasing voice.
Zafira gave him a light punch in the ribs. "But I still don't get what your big plan is."
"It's actually very simple...and yet it's going to be very difficult. You see, with the help of the Tagnik-zur, Frieza's men won't outnumber us anymore and we'll easily be able to overpower them," Sdhoirm explained. But then he frowned. "But here's where it gets complicated...We're going to all fly against Frieza himself. Now, we'll still have the Tagnik-zur on our side, and I doubt even Frieza can beat all of us, but one mistake and we'll be finished. But once we've weakened Frieza enough for the Tagnik-zur to get their hands on him, they'll create another portal to the middle of the galaxy, where there is a giant black hole. The portal will transport them right to the event horizon, where the Eagles will toss Frieza into the black hole."
Zafira stared wide-eyed at Sdhoirm. He blinked at her. "What?"
Zafira shook her head and took a deep breath. "Okay, first of all, where is the event horizon?"
Sdhoirm thought about how to explain this. "Well, you know that a black hole is a collapsed star with gravity so incredibly powerful that even light can't escape its grasp. The event horizon is the line that we dare not cross, the point at which the black hole's gravity has you and you can't escape. And that is where we plan to teleport to--orbiting the black hole at the center of the galaxy, riding just outside the event horizon."
"That's incredibly risky," Zafira mused.
Sdhoirm nodded. "But if you think about it, it's dangerous for Frieza, too. His ability to survive in space will be nothing. Anything that gets sucked into a black hole vanishes forever, squished down to an unimaginably tiny size by the incredibly destructive force of its great gravity."
Zafira didn't reply. She was thinking about what could happen if the slightest thing went wrong. Sdhoirm must have seen the look on her face, because he squeezed her waist reassuringly.
"There is nothing about the situation that can be changed by worrying," he said smoothly. "Now...let's find Vegeta and Karlock so that we can get this plan underway."