LEAPING MOUNTAINS
written by Statehopper
CHAPTER ONE
(Flash backs written in Italics)
The whites of his eyes almost seemed to glow, florescent like a light bulb.
I was the moth.
He wasn't human, he didn't move like a human; I caught at the air and looked straight through his head. An unsettling substance expanded, throbbed and rushed down into my feet. Warm like blood, but lacking in what made me real, what made me physically possible.
I was lost inside, unequivocally gone.
TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER:
It was dark, that kind of pitch-black only found in a child's wardrobe. Down in the garden, the redefined and redesigned Saiya-jin space pod glowed at me, on me, the deceiver, the liar, the ghost who took things deeper. I heard him yell, and then the thud that eeked into nothingness. I waited with my fingers on the handle, I'd been shouted at before. After a few seconds I decided, and I made my way on toward the grating. Heat raced over me, red light and the interruption of failing electrical circuits.
"I heard you yell."
Catching my words, Vegeta forced himself up onto one knee."Argh-I was fine you idiot! Why'd you open that blasted door!"
"I figured it best to be sure."
"Well I wouldn't need your sort of help! Now leave me alone!" He struggled "Stupid interferrence. Why are you out here at all?"
NAMEK: BATTLE FREEZER.
Standing within the small white room known as the 'armoury', I listened to Gohan's footsteps fade further along the corridor. He had left to watch the Dragon balls as previously instructed. Krillian on the other hand, had departed some five minutes earlier to retrieve the password. I could feel Vegeta's pupils bite at me the moment they both left.
"I'm ganna go keep him company" I spoke into negative space, yet it did seem silly to give an animation the benefit of an explanation. Running my eyes across the floor I attempted to bypass his character with as little effort as possible. Quickly entering the corridor, I proceeded for only a few steps before I was viciously snatched by the forearm. Ripping myself free I shrunk against the wall, the muscle and bone throbbed from the shock of him. I hadn't until that point consider the fact that Vegeta, or anyone else for that matter, could hurt me. Now that I knew they could, I was even less at ease.
"Your lying woman. You've got power." he snarled "That was enough force to rip your damn arm off!" Retreating further along the wall, I stammered out a pathetic response.
"I-I don't."
"I want to know who you really are? How you found us, and what you're doing here!" On listening to him speak I realised something - if it breathed, argued and felt pain it was real wasn't it? I was real. Pausing in deliberation I did something rather foolish. I don't know why I lied. Presently standing out here in the gravity chamber I wished I hadn't. I guess back home I was never very interesting, I lived on an ordinary little street in an ordinary little house, with an ordinary job and ordinary friends.
"Fine." I straightend my back "I'll tell you. My father was a Saiya-jin..."
"Hmph. You're lying."
"My planet, Planet Hollywood, Frezia blew it up" Vegeta's manner changed slightly, yet he still held that same disbelieving stare "I'm the only one left. I'm not going to try and prove it to you, I can't. But I know that you were a Prince, and that my father worked for yours.. though that's pretty inconsequential now."
He said nothing as he left only to mutter to himself some way down the passage. "A poor bluff."
SIXTEEN HOURS FOLLOWING:
You could feel his size, his mass, the rumble in his chest - it near slapped you in the face. Catching the rise of Vegeta's shoulders, I got the distinct impression that he was always if not a little aware to just how short he was. Placing a hand to my chest I released a breath in good humour.
"I'm sorry-"
"-who are you?" Piccolo demanded, with almost as much attitude as Vegeta.
"Me... I'm Ardin."
"Gohan informed me that you were Saiya-jin, is this true?"
"Well I-"
"Don't you dare." Vegeta interrupted "She's a coward and nothing more!"
"I never said I could fight. What could I of-"
"-quite! I've never heard of any Planet Hollywood, and I'd know."
"I've done nothing wrong here."
He grabbed me by the scruff of my shirt. "If you were Saiya-jin you would know how to fight! Are you playing me for a fool!"
"Playing? What are you talking about-lemmego...!" By this time a small group had gathered, murmuring and discussing matters in a foreign tongue. Turning my attention back toward Vegeta, his mouth cocked at the right hand corner
"Hey! Let her go you jerk!" Bulma ordered through the crowd. It took barely a second, but before I could blink Vegeta had plowed his way threw six large maple trees. Gaping from the initial shock, I stared down at my arm; burning with fever and fright. In the distance I could only watch as Vegeta exploded with rage, wood, earth and rock catapulting through the air.
I screamed for help just before a crack cried out between my shoulder blades. Heat and sickness storming across my head. Smashing into the ground, a rocket proceeded to go off in my back. Crying out, I gathered at the earth; scraped at the ground in a simple attempt to ignore the pain. Clambering to one knee, I winced with embarrassment and ache, just as Vegeta's legs phased into my lower view.
"Get up!"
"I can't fight you idiot!"
"Lies! How did you acquire your strength?!" Struggling back to full height, I stared him straight in the eye - through the pain and loss of breath, I grit my teeth for every word.
"I owe you... no explanation..." I heaved "... I don't owe anyone... anything."
Emotions are fickle things, twisting and turning away like snakes in our hearts - you never really know which way they will turn. I had been sitting there for roughly ten minutes, tracing my eyes up toward his shoulders, neck and lips, before looking away. He had talked, I didn't hear Vegeta talk very often. He shouted and slighted, but he never talked. That was the first time in which I truly wanted to be there, to see if he really was so cold. His hands were free from gloves and hanging down from his thighs, dead still... asleep. I didn't ask and I didn't wake him, I just clasped my hand over his knee, squeezed it like you might do a melon - unmovable, infallible.
EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO;
The ship was gigantic, the ground shaking violently as it passed over us by a mere thirty meters. Crouching with Bulma, her body shrunk against my shoulder as the dust clouds mounted. The sound was deafening, the rumbling whir of the engine all you could hear.
"Now there's no room for mistakes, we must all keep our power levels suppressed or else Frezia will pick us up on his scouters.
"Can we not go and get a better view?"
"No!" he grabbed my forearm "You stay put you brat, you don't go until I tell you to go, understood!"
Oddly enough the desert was extremely claustrophobic. The air was heavy, hot, and invading on the lungs. The rocky outcrops seemed to go on forever, it was beautifully barren, but how I longed for home. I missed the tangibility of it all, I wanted a bullet in my chest, I wanted to wake up - everyday
"When you defeated Frezia..." Gohan spoke "and that big guy, you were a super Saiya-jin weren't you?"
"Yes, yes I was."
"Liar! That's impossible-"
"-he killed Frezia, Vegeta, he's dead. Why are you interrogating?
"How dare you interrupt me!"
"Interrupt you! You're always interrupting. We're all quiet happy to talk at a decent level."
"Guys, please, I don't think it's worth fighting over." Yamcha mellowed.
"Christ! He always gets away with it! Always! You're all scared of him! It's so stupid. He won't do anything, you know he won't... he's too worried about bloody Goku."
"For once you're right" Vegeta directed at Yamcha "she's not worth it... bah, hopeless woman." Grabbing the first thing I saw, Vegeta flinched to the sensation of a soda can bashing him in the back of his big stupid head. Swinging back at me, I felt regret almost instantly, and yet I remained sick of it, sick of him, her, them, everything.
"You may've been training brat, but you'll never match me."
"Psyco."
"Hah! I'll take it easy on you. Though I guarantee it won't be easy enough." Spinning an inch above the earth he connected a boot directly against the rise of my hip. Screaming I skidded across the rubble, deep into the cloud. It took me a good thirty seconds to scramble back to my feet. I was embarassed and sore, he wasn't even trying. All in all, I might have been strong but I didn't have the skill or speed needed to put any of that strength to good use.
Sitting on the ground at Trunks's feet. I openly studied his profile. I didn't care if he saw me, or anyone else, and in some strange way I guess I wanted them to. I wanted to upset something, to engage in a little complexity... to be, in some respects, human again. So many things still confused me, how to behave, how to respond - how I would be interpreted. Pulling at my boot lace I balled my fist atop of it. "I hate this place." Trunks glanced at me "I hate how I feel, or how I don't feel... nothings soild in my head, not even words." He went to speak, but stopped. Turning back ahead, he just returned to the silence and so did I.
It wasn't long before I was standing in-between Bulma and Gohan. Almost tumbling out of the machine Goku was shocked to find a welcoming committee. He looked as good as ever, from as much as I had seen on Namek.
"Hey guys? How on earth did you know I was coming?"
"This guy told us, I think he's a fan of yours" Bulma gestured at Trunks.
"He knows all about you daddy!" Gohan burst as Goku curved his brows in perplexity.
"But that's impossible, we've never even meet" he argued.
"Well that's what he said but he must have been tracking your ship in space."
"I dunno? Frezia tried to do that, but I could sense his power level as he passed me... but my gosh guys what on earth happened here? Who defeated Frezia? Was it you Piccolo or how about you Vegeta or-" He looked at me.
"Hey you're the girl from Namek?" he unfolded his arms.
"Yeah, that's right" I smiled.
"Oh I forgot you two knew one and other" Bulma intervened.
"Well we don't, I only saw, Ah?"
"Ardin"
"Right Ardin, we only meet for a brief minute before battle..."
"Well did you know she's a Saiya-jin" Bulma stated.
"What?" Goku widened his eyes "Another Saiya-jin?"
"Kakarott! she's not one at all, she's lying" Vegeta hissed from his few meters away.
"But look if you should be talking to anyone it's this guy, he defeated Frezia not them... he's a Super Saiya-jin, like you" Bulma declared, to which Goku almost burst.
"Another Super Saiya-jin!" Goku gasped, enraging Vegeta's temper further.
"Don't be a fool Kakarott, they both can't be Saiya-jins! It's impossible!" Glancing over Trunks and I he merely shrugged.
"Well if they say their Saiya-jins, then that's good enough for me
"-s-sorry-I'm-sorry!" I rushed, his hand tightening, tightening, tightening, with an expression that remained sinister, fiendish and completely unwilling to change in the face of contact.
"You're warm." he said frankly, in a way that made my stomach roll over. I watched as he pressed my knuckles against his cheek, lacking in the claminess of actual flesh.
"I'm sorry."
He turned, slowly... pausing before breathing out into the crook of my neck, "You're the most powerful woman on the planet... just think what you could do with the most powerful man in the universe. They're pathetic dogs." I didn't acknowledge his comments, I didn't want to. They were wrong, and the very evil in him that I was forever attempting to ignore.
Tugging at the shoulder of my night gown, his breathing began to deepen. The man's body turned well into mine as skin was groped and stroked. "Vegeta slow down..." I flattened my hands to his chest. With a simple sweep he invaded beneath my gown and bit my lip. Kicking out a boot my legs were parted, from where his attention shifted. Struggling beneath the weight of him, I cried out.
TO BE CONTINUED...
(DISCLAIMER; I own nothing but original characters, dbz is not my creation, though I really really wish it was)