A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews! I'm not entirely happy with this chapter but I had done everything I had wanted to do with it so I don't know why I don't like it.

Oozaru; The Great Ape; the beast within every Saiyan; Saiyan's are taught to respect their inner beast and take pleasure in the rare time they are able to give in to its calling. Planet Plant has a full moon every ten years. With two suns in the sky the moon is only visible for an average of four hours per night before the rays of a sun block it out. Full moons were a rare and wonderful event.

At sixteen years of age tonight would be Peppra's second full moon and it was all she could do to contain her excitement. She wasn't the only one though; there had been a buzz around the palace since day break.

She couldn't stop talking with Nappa about the transformation even though he was a limited supply of information. Nappa was twenty years old and had been a very small infant during his first full moon and they had both been children during the last. There was an old wives tale that stated if an infant goes through the transformation and lives then it will grow up to be brutal and large. Peppra never thought that Nappa was brutish but he was large. Still, his size didn't aid him against Vegeta on the night of the first battle.

Peppra was woken by the rays of the first sun as it danced over her bare skin; the moon's face was just starting to dip below the horizon. Despite the pounding in her skull and the ache of her body she forced herself to sit up and take in her surroundings.

There were bodies all around her; most she could tell were Saiyans since they were as naked as she was. However, she couldn't tell from her limited vantage point which one's were dead or which one's were asleep. She hoped that the majority were sleeping off the effects of the transformation but it would be hard to tell unless she inspected every body; any blood shed would have seeped into red ground, cloaking major casualties.

She recognized the clothed bodies scattered around as Tuffles; they lay among the Saiyans, their blue blood making purple stains on the red ground.

Peppra and those around her were lying in a Tuffle township…or what was left of it. The city was completely leveled. She cautiously lifted into the air to inspect the extent of the damage and what she saw took her breath away. Miles and miles of rubble; it appeared that they not only took out their targeted city but all townships surrounding it. At least a twenty-five mile radius around the targeted city had been was destroyed. Not bad for four hours.

The night was a blur in Peppra's memory and it was bothering her that she couldn't piece together the events. She hadn't remembered that she would loose all reason when she transformed, but obviously everyone had.

She could recall coming to the city with Nappa; recalled Vegeta giving all Saiyans stations surrounding the city as they waited for the transformation. She recalled being stationed close to Vegeta and being aware that he was watching her very closely. She recalled being irritated that he was focused on her when he should have been concerned about his raid. Peppra was going to give him a piece of her mind but was stopped by his gentle command: "Look up, Peppra."

So she had and she remembered seeing the full moon in full detail. Its perfection nearly brought her to tears as her blood had sung from the sight of it and her body answered the great moon's call. Her skin had ripped and her bones elongated as her very being changed from the inside out. It didn't hurt though, there was none of the pain that one would expect; there was sensation but it was calming, like taking a step in the right direction. It felt serene and true and almost pleasurable.

Peppra remembered being irrationally angry that she could not experience such tranquility of body, mind, and spirit more often. The anger was the last thing she remembered.

Resolving to start the long process of looking for casualties she descended only to be met by Vegeta on the ground. Other Saiyans were awake now, going from body to body—waking some, proclaiming others dead, and killing any Tuffles who were still hanging on to their lives.

Peppra met Vegeta's steady stare with one of her own. He was naked like everyone else and covered in red dirt and red blood that matted together in long deep gashes on his chest and shoulders. The cuts weren't the burn marks from Tuffle laser guns that covered the dead and wounded, they were the result of tearing claws and angry teeth.

"What happened to you?" she asked with barely concealed concern.

Vegeta ignored her worry, "You need to come with me, Peppra."

She nodded, not being able to deny him these little requests, and they took to the sky.

Vegeta landed about ten miles from where Peppra had woken up and the destruction here was far worse. They were in what was left of the South Pole City, which had been a fairly large metropolis yesterday. Today the tall buildings lay in shambles; so that every step the rebel and the young Saiyan female took they were stepping over rubble and stone streets that ran with blue and red blood so that it mixed into an ugly purple.

"We did well for having only four hours," Peppra mused as she took in the tattered surroundings.

Vegeta grunted, "I expected more from three hundred Saiyans."

They walked in silence after that since Peppra was too busy taking in the death around her to initiate conversation, besides, Vegeta looked as though he had swallowed a poison Jepri berry; his face was grim and solemn.

Finally Vegeta stopped before a pile of shredded metal and crumbled stone. He looked at Peppra, his expression giving nothing away. She was about to ask why he had brought her here when she spotted a hand sticking out from below the rubble. A very familiar large hand.

With a very uncharacteristic yell of shock Peppra began moving the rubble off of Nappa's prone body.

"Don't just stand there," she snapped at Vegeta who was standing a ways away, watching her scurry to unearth Nappa with mild interest. "Help me get him out, Vegeta!"

With a stiff nod Vegeta began taking large quantities of rubble and scrap metal in his hands and relocating it.

With Vegeta's help they were able to get Nappa free fairly quick but Peppra didn't breathe a sigh of relief until she saw that her companion was still alive. Barely, but still.

"He'll live," Vegeta said curtly. "He needs his wounds cleaned and rest."

"Yes, of course," Peppra agreed as she tried to maneuver her large comrade onto her arms so that she could take him away from the war zone. Luckily Vegeta saw the dilemma of her small frame trying to carry Nappa's girth and wordlessly he grasped Nappa's legs as Peppra cradled his torso and they flew back to the palace.

Vegeta set Nappa up in the first room the trio passed and turned to Peppra once Nappa was safely on a bed.

"I have to get back," he stated, his gruff voice still distant and solemn.

"Of course," she nodded, already making a mental list of what she would need to clean Nappa's wounds. Once Vegeta began making his way back to the window so he could fly away it occurred to her that Nappa was only alive because of Vegeta. The flame haired man didn't have to find her this morning and lead her to her comrade. Nappa meant nothing to him. Vegeta could have let him die. "Thank you, Vegeta." The words tumbled out of her mouth in an awed breathlessness.

Vegeta looked back, his onyx eyes cold. "Don't thank me for this, Peppra," he gestured lazily to Nappa, bleeding and broken on the bed. "It was my pleasure."

Twenty minutes later Peppra was standing beside a still unconscious Nappa with several bowls full of water at her feet that she had boiled with ki. It was a daunting task to get all of the blood, sweat, dirt, and debris off of Nappa's body; he was a mess. Still, she tried to work through the worst of it as fast as she could; wanting to clean the wounds out before they started closing over the grime which would undoubtedly cause infection.

It took about three hours and several trips for more water before Peppra got Nappa completely clean and he was still out cold. She had been so intent on her task that it wasn't until she stood back with a sigh of relief that she noticed the wounds covering Nappas body weren't burns from Tuffle lasers.

They were cuts and bruises, deep and red and angry and oozing clean. They were everywhere, his chest, his arms, his tail, his legs, and back. They were deep too, some going all the way to the bone. Some wounds went straight in with tearing around the edges and some had shredded his skin completely.

They were just like the wounds that Vegeta had bore on his body when he came and retrieved her that morning. Why hadn't it occurred to her that Vegeta shouldn't have known that Nappa was underneath that pile of rubble with only a single hand showing?

Suddenly Peppra was shaking as she looked down at her beaten companion. "That good for NOTING BASTARD!"

Saiyans started returning to the palace shortly after Peppra had finished nursing Nappa. She wanted to go and find Vegeta immediately and throttle him but she knew it would be a bad idea to leave Nappa alone and defenseless in a building filled with potential enemies. So she waited and fumed since she knew that after a while Vegeta would have to come to her.

When Vegeta finally did make his appearance hours later Peppra couldn't help striking out at him as soon as he opened the door. The waiting had made her feral and she was perversely satisfied when her jagged fingernails made brief contact with the side of his face before he recovered from his surprise and jumped out of her reach.

"What did you do to him?!" Peppra screeched, pleased that she could see blood in his beard form her attack. They stood on either side of the open door, Vegeta holding a large object loosely in one hand and glaring at her.

"I put him in his place."

How humiliating for Nappa.

Despite her thoughts Peppra was shaking with rage. It felt wrong that this man she had known for all of one day could come into her life and pick a fight with someone who had been with her for her whole life…it was wrong that this was customary.

"Explain yourself," Peppra demanded.

With a jerk of his free hand Vegeta closed the door, giving the two of them relative privacy. "We battled and I won." Vegeta stated. "It's not that difficult to understand, onna."

"You attacked him—"

"I did not!" Vegeta's rumbling voice was harsh and thin, his patience with the situation wearing. "Even so it would have been well within my right to do so," he continued. "You are mine."

Peppra grit her teeth as he reminded her of the connection she was doing her best to ignore. It was true that because of that unexpected connection she was attracted to Vegeta—his pride and arrogance and his everything-is-mine attitude called to her and it only made things worse that she now knew he had the strength to back it all up. Still, she didn't know much about him and if asked at that moment she would have said she hated him despite her physical attrition.

"I am my own." she hissed.

It didn't take a genius to see what happened. Saiyan females were few in number and sometimes fights broke out between men over a mate. However, it usually ended in one of the male's death.

"Why didn't you kill him?" Peppra ask; she needed to know Vegeta's reasoning.

Vegeta's pose finally relaxed and he let go of the object he was holding so that it landed on the stone floor with a hollow thud. "He's strong, onna, and an excellent fighter." Vegeta shrugged as if that explained it all. The object at his feet was red and white and familiar. "I can't afford to start killing warriors when I just launched a war. I would like him on my side…..Besides, would you have forgiven me if I had?"

Peppra looked up from the object that she had finally identified as a Tuffle breast plate. "This doesn't mean anything, Vegeta," she told him, maintaining eye contact so that her words might have a chance of sinking into his thick skull. "Just because you two idiots fought over me doesn't mean I care who won."

Vegeta's eyes narrowed dangerously. "You'd align yourself to him?"

"Perhaps I won't align myself to either of you!" She shouted in annoyance. "I'm saying I don't know yet what I want and I'm not going to be anyone's mate before I'm ready."

Vegeta blinked in surprise, his demeanor going back to casual. "I can understand that," he relented. He swiftly but gently kicked the Tuffle breast plate to Peppra's feet. It was small, just her size. "I'm trying to change the world economically; you are trying to be the change you'd have socially." He was quiet for a moment before he continued thoughtfully, "I can respect that, Peppra. Still, I would like to be a part of your decision; you will be fighting close to me from now on and I will be watching you."