Bulma's round ship lifted off into the air to take not only her, but Goten and Trunks far away into space. Chi Chi watched, face blank, as it shrank into the sky like a balloon floating up into the atmosphere before disappearing from sight.

Meanwhile, Hass watched Chi Chi from her doorway.

Chi Chi was small of frame, but even before Hass had officially met her, she had always been large of presence. She was, and had always been, a fiesty, imposing force in and out of the martial arts ring, and an energetic force in the lives of her family members. But right now, she didn't appear to be any of those things. Instead, she looked small. Small and tired. The sight of her made him almost as upset as the plight of his abducted daughter.

"U-um," Hass began, stepping lightly across her ruined lawn with dewy eyes, "They're, they're going to be alright. You know that, don't you?"

Chi Chi jumped like she'd stepped on a firework, but settled down when she turned and saw that it was only Hass.

"Oh," she said. "Yes. Um, yes." she wiped at her eyes. "A-and, and they're gonna bring back your daughter!" She sniffled mightily, puffed out her chest, and put her hands on her hips. "Goten and Trunks'll bring Sevoya back just fine! You'll see!"

Despite his own fidgeting and sniffles, Hass almost laughed.

"You don't need to put on a brave face for me, Chi Chi," he said, lower lip quivering. "She, she, she doesn't h-have superpowers, but if anyone in the world was gonna, was gonna make sure they came back to me, it's, it's, my daughter. I know they'll all c-come back, I just," he pulled out his own handkerchief and blew into it like a trumpet, "I just hate the waiting! I hate the waiting so much!"

Chi Chi burst into tears, too, and accepted the second handkerchief Hass offered her from his pocket.

"Ye-he-he-hes!" Chi Chi wept. "That's it! Finally! Someone gets it!"

OOO

If she hadn't known better, Calliope might have thought the spaceship came from a fairyland. Inside, it was a faint purple and white, and sparkled like satin. A plant. The ship was the plant, and the interior was made of massive petals held together by layers and layers of silks like those inside an ear of corn. They coated the walls, and hung from the ceiling in curved columns. Glowing spores the size of Sevoya's fist gently stirred in the still, cool air as hundreds of the strange, four-legged invaders climbed on the ship's walls and to the apex of its loped, cavernous ceiling to deposit their captive. Globular pods of wet, green jelly nestled within the interior's soft threads like gemstones sewn onto a dress, and the strange creatures populated each with a person, or an animal, or whatever else they had nabbed. Sevoya and Calliope both tried to release their captors' holds on them before they ended up in a cell, too, but their struggling didn't even slow them down.

Instead, Gyoza and Fifteen Stars held a heated discussion in a foreign language - or, heated on Gyoza's end, anyway- as they ran towards the center of the cavernous ship. A massive, glowing crystal protruded from the floor like a column. The orbs in Fifteen Stars' body illuminated as if from a light from within, and as they did, so did the crystal. Gyoza adjusted Sevoya on his shoulder to put a free hand alongside its surface, and pressed into it as he would a series of buttons. Moments later, the ship began to rumble, and took off from the planet. Almost immediately after, he tossed both Sevoya and Calliope into two of the unoccupied gel cells near the perimeter of the room.

Calliope didn't realize that the captives were conscious, breathing, and able to move around inside their prisons until she found herself in one. And it was hell - the gel filled their ears and mouth, and every breath Calliope took felt like she was inhaling water.

But she knew better than to panic.

She stretched her arms out in front of her to see if she could break out of the gel. Its surface gave under her hands like rubber, but then pulled her back in when she tried to put her feet against the back of the chamber and push with her whole body. She was too weak.

Next, she tried to ignite the gel with her energy. It absorbed it before it had even left her hands. When the silks surrounding her chamber suddenly flashed and carried a glow from their ends all the way to the crystal like a current running down the wire, Calliope realized that she'd just given the ship more energy.

She had one more trick to try: her "voice". She held out her hands and focused on channeling her energy not to make light or heat, but vibrations. Instead of sucking the energy away like water from a straw, the gel chamber began to shudder.

Calliope poured more and more of her energy into it. The chamber shuddered more violently. She added more!

Then, to her surprise, the silk stands went slack and unravelled, the gel lurched forwards and out of the wall, and then splattered into broken chunks on the soft ground, releasing Calliope. She sat up and gasped for air as she dug herself out of the gelatinous pile, and then stumbled towards Sevoya's chamber. She put her hands on its surface to do the same thing, and had she had the ability to make noises, she would have screamed when it attempted to pull her in with Sevoya!

Instead, she screamed with her energy, and the ensuing expulsion of goo from the wall was much more dramatic than the first. The silks slackened, and the gel melted into a syrupy liquid almost immediately. Sevoya fell on top of Calliope with the gel with a series of violent, sputtering coughs. Once she realized what happened, Sevoya dragged herself off Calliope and tried her best to stifle her coughing. Calliope leapt to her feet and guided them both behind a nearby column of silks, so that Gyoza and Fifteen Stars were less likely to spot them from across the massive chamber.

She poked her head around the column. Gyoza and Fifteen Stars were still occupied with whatever they were doing with the crystal. Good.

"Thanks," Sevoya said, still coughing.

Then, she gestured around the column as if she were trying to point out Gyoza and Fifteen Stars.

"Did you see where they put Polymnia?"

No. Calliope shook her head.

"He's right by them," she said. "On the column closest to the crystal. I don't know what they did to him, but he's not dead. I can tell."

Calliope cocked her head. Sevoya could sense energy?

"I can pick out ones I know well. Like Dende's, and like Gohan's," she said. "For better or worse, I'll never forget the way Gohan's energy feels, and Polymnia's impersonation is very convincing. He's still transformed."

Calliope closed her eyes and tried to find him - mostly out of curiosity. Sure enough, she found him, but not after a moment of pause. Polymnia's power wasn't deep enough to be a landmark sensation, and the presence of so many people trapped on the ship made finding him similar to reading fine print on an advertisement. But she did find something that reminded her eerily of Gohan at his meekest.

But that wasn't all she found. She turned her head to face the enclosing ship wall, and made a hiccuping sound when a gloved hand pierced through the silks. Trunks. She stumbled towards him and mustered the same energy she used to disrupt the gels to slacken the silks in the wall.

Trunks pushed through an instant later, followed by Goten. They were in some kind of space suits that fitted to their bodies, but obscured their faces in helmets. Still, she knew it was them. She threw her arms around both of them.

"Callio-!" started Goten, but she shoved a hand over where his mouth would be on the other side of his visor, and put a finger to her lips.

"Sorry," he whispered.

Bulma wandered through the forest of silks next, and no sooner had she passed through that they twitched and tightened once again. Calliope guided the three of them to Sevoya, and the secluded nook between the column and the wall.

"This place is crazy," Bulma muttered, mostly to herself. "I can't believe something at least as plant-based than the Nameks exist, and in ship form. This is insane. Did they just grow these?!"

She took off her helmet to get a better look. The boys did, too.

How did you get here? signed Calliope. Were you captured?

"No," said Goten. "We came on a little ship to rescue you."

"We're gonna destroy the guys who took you, and take over this one," added Trunks. From the look on his face, Calliope could tell he meant it.

She shook her head, and Sevoya saved her the trouble of trying to convey complex thoughts through Goten.

"Keep your temper in check," she scolded. "Don't be conspicuous. We're getting away with being out right now because there're so many other frightened people to obfuscate us. Don't blow our cover! Besides!" she spread her arms out. "Look at the walls and ceiling! If you really get into it the way you guys usually do here, you'll blow everything and everybody up!"

"Sweetheart, we came here to take control of the ship," added Bulma. "That comes first."

Trunks pointed through the column as if at Gyoza and Fifteen Stars. "And you think they're just gonna stand there and let us?! We have to get rid of them!"

"Well, then we'll get rid of them," said Bulma, like there was nothing more to say.

Calliope looked at her like she'd grown a second head.

"I mean like a distraction. You know! What if they can't breathe in space? And even if they can, it's easier to fight them without hurting other people if we do it outside. So we set a trap."

"What do you have in mind, mom?" asked Trunks. "Are we just gonna insult them and make them come running at us?"

Bulma shrugged. "I mean, yeah. It's worked every other time I've done this kind of thing, so I can't imagine it wouldn't work now."

OOO

"Hey!" shouted Sevoya, stepping into Gyoza and Fifteen Stars' direct line of sight, blaster drawn. "Hey, assholes!"

She fired a bolt. It whizzed over Gyoza's head as he dodged it, and sizzled against the silks on the ship's floor. A puff of glowing spores erupted into the wall. She fired again.

"Get back in your cage, [garble]," growled Gyoza, rushing forward with his arms outstretched. "You think you can [garble] do [garble, click] to me?! Do you?! Huh?!"

Sevoya let Goten pull her out of the way as Trunks fell from the ceiling, wrapped his legs around Gyoza's neck, and shoved his fingers into all of his eyes. Goza cried out, and flailed wildly from the pain as he tried to rip Trunks away from his person. Trunks held his own and steered Gyoza towards the ship's perimeter, where Bulma and Calliope waited with one of the ship's silks stretched out like a tripwire. He crossed it, and stumbled towards the perimeter wall just as Trunks leapt off him. Calliope put her hand upon it, and it fell open just in time for Gyoza to fall through, and then slip through a gap in the glossy green casing of the ship's exterior while the vacuum of space pulled at his body. Then, Calliope moved her hand away from the wall, and the interior silks repaired themselves.

"Well, that wasn't very nice," said Fifteen Stars, wrapping a rubbery appendage around Sevoya's wrist, and another around Goten's.

"I thought he was pretty gentle with you, considering he's Gyoza. Guess courtesy doesn't count for much."

Trunks punched Fifteen Stars directly in the orb that constituted his head. A crack appeared.

"Oh," said Fifteen Stars.

The grey sinew holding their body together turned to mush, and the orbs fell to the ground like massive marbles.

It shocked even Trunks, who threw the punch. But more startling was the orbs themselves as they rose independently of the body and stretched the sinew in all directions before regaining its humanoid shape.

"The boss is right, yet again. Yet another race that does nothing but solve its problems with violence," they said. "Ugh. I hate it."

The orb comprising Fifteen Stars' right hand flew in the air towards Trunks like the weight at the end of a whip. It struck him in the head, and he fell face-first into the floor. A cloud of spores puffed from the silks broken by the collision.

"Even now, you're so angry I can hardly stand it," said Fifteen Stars. "The root of all anger is fear, you know. You think I don't know? You think I can't feel your every emotion? I hate it."

Goten jumped at Fifteen Stars' central trunk, and ripped into it with his teeth and hands. It stretched like gum before finally coming away with a wet ripping noise, and Goten let it go to take another chunk. Fifteen Stars fell in a lopsided heap from the weight of their orbs and the lack of tissue, but didn't seem injured. In fact, Fifteen Stars leaned into the collapse, and then unravelled the remainder of their body until they were nothing but a long rope. Then, they wrapped themselves around Goten, and squeezed.

Goten screamed.

"Goten!" Trunks cried. He lit up a ball of energy in his hands.

"No!" said Bulma.

"You'll hit your friend," said Fifteen Stars.

Trunks fumed, still holding his energy.

"It's almost like you're hard-wired to want destruction. I wonder why? It's not just your race. It's got nothing to do with race. It's this whole damn universe. The denizens of this planet in particular even managed to make a Namek crave destruction. Two, even. And you..."

Fifteen Stars wrapped their final segment around Goten's neck, and squeezed. The boy gagged as his best friend seethed with even more intensity than before. If looks could kill, Fifteen Stars would be no more.

"No," said Fifteen Stars. The glow of their orbs changed from blue to a dangerous orange-red, like they were mimicking Trunks in their own way. "I don't care why! It's making me want destruction! I hate it!"

They squeezed Goten's throat with more force.

"I hate it!"

Calliope threw herself at Fifteen Stars, and slapped both of her hands on their connective tissue. They glowed with the same soft light as when she put vibrations into the ship, and Fifteen Stars came undone again. Their orbs fell limply to the ground.

This time, they didn't spring back together as quickly as they had before, but Trunks didn't dare find out how much longer Fifteen Stars might stay down. He gathered the orbs up and ran them to the wall of the ship. Calliope was close behind, and in a matter of seconds, the two of them jettisoned Fifteen Stars out of the ship and into space.

OOO

"Alright, show me," said Clio, leering at Dende with one red, irritated eye. "I know you can grow it back. I wanna watch!"

The cockpit of Clio's tiny craft had barely enough room for the three seats housing two of them and Melpomene. Clio had turned around in his seat to ogle Dende, and at his back blinked constellations of lights from the controls. Real constellations twinkled through the glass helm, and faded in and out of the velvety black of space.

Dende himself had awoken stripped of the top of his robe and strapped to the seat. A dry, purple crust of blood encircled his truncated shoulder where his arm once connected. The inside of his mouth tasted like metal.

Clio prodded Dende with one outstretched claw. Dende flinched away from him.

"Come on!" Clio said. "Come on! I know you're awake! Let's see that new arm, huh? Gonna sprout one for me like the new year's harvest? Hm?"

Something large and looming passed above the ship, and seemed to swallow the stars into its silhouette with every meter it moved. Dende belatedly realized it was another ship- a much larger ship.

Clio would have never noticed it had Melpomene not dispassionately craned his head upwards and called attention to it.

"The ship has reached the pick-up point," he said.

"Awwww, can't we just wait five more minuuuuutes?!" whined Clio, pushing himself side to side on the back of his seat like an energetic little brother. "I wanna see him dooooo iiiiiit! I wanna see him grow his arm baaaack!"

"The ship will be at an unfavorable angle for entry in seventeen seconds," said Melpomene. "Sixteen. Fifteen. Fourt-"

Clio puffed out his cheeks like a child on the verge of a tantrum, and then threw his paws in the air when he finally exhaled. They hit the roof of the cockpit with a thud.

"Fine!" he said, spinning around to take the controls. "Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine! But you better not do it while I'm not looking! If you do, I'll have to rip it off again!"

Dende blinked away his drowsiness and looked out the cockpit window. He when he saw the curved face of the Earth to his left. It was like a massive whale hovering in the ocean waters nearby, and the ship was an insignificant little swimmer. He reached out to put his hand on the glass.

It was a glowing green and blue pearl on the deep black of space, enveloped by clouds so white they were like cotton. He'd never seen it from such a distance. He never knew it was so beautiful, or so blue.

He eyed Clio and Melpomene. If he was quick, he might be able to incapacitate Clio, but he would never be able to stop Melpomene, even if he killed him. The machine in his head would keep him going, and with even fewer inhibitions without a living conscience struggling to fight it.

Instead, Dende turned towards the Earth and signalled for help with as much strength as he could.

The craft lurched as Clio started the engine, and sent the craft on a path towards the huge, shadowy mass in front of it. He picked up a microphone, and hit a few buttons to open a radio line. Dende's antennae prickled with the signal as it competed against his own.

"Hello hello," Clio said. "This is the tiny lil' craft in front of you! We've got one little green man, one braindead guy, and one devilishly handsome hare onboard. Are we clear for entry? O-ver!"

A bit of static, and then an answer. It was a woman's voice.

"That's cute," she said. "You're clear. That little Namek's sending out a massive telepathic distress signal. I'd appreciate it if you'd get him to be quiet. It's very annoying."

Dende froze. Clio's head swivelled slowly on his neck to face Dende, and a thin Cheshire grin unrolled on his face.

"Oh, good," said the woman. "He's stopped."

Dende turned to the window, hand shaking, and clenched his teeth and fist. He was trapped.

"He's telepathic too, is he?" Clio gave a dark, excited chuckle. "Oh, that's fascinating. I can't wait to take you apart. Namek. A Namek! How new."

"As you please," said the woman. "He's such a minor Guardian that I doubt anyone would miss him. But do it on your own time, once I've collected the rest of what you've promised."

OOO

Sevoya started to sweat as she watched Bulma poke and prod the crystal at the center of the ship. She knew she'd just heard Dende's voice in her mind. She knew it like she knew that her hair was purple, but nobody else seemed to be reacting. Had they not noticed? How could they not notice?

"Did you guys, um," she glanced from Goten to Calliope as the two of them pulled Polymnia from his gel prison, "did you hear that? In your head? Like, um, like that green guy? Dende?"

"Hear Dende in my head?" asked Goten. "No. Dende's in North City right now, I think. Right?"

Calliope shrugged, and then shook her head no.

"Oh," said Sevoya, shrinking. "Never, uh, never mind. I'm sure I'm just tired."

But that wasn't it. She knew that wasn't it. She could feel Dende somewhere in the distance, slowly moving farther and farther away, like he was leading this spaceship to some other destination. She just knew it.

"Let's see," said Bulma. "I can't read these, but I have a feeling it's something like," she touched something, "this!"

The entire ship lurched as it came to a sudden stop. Sevoya and Calliope both bowled over as Bulma braced herself against the crystal and fiddled with something else on the control panel.

"Ah ha!" Bulma cried. "I've got it! I've got it! It works on a coordinates system and a manual system! That's great! Now to get it moving back to Earth!"

She'd no sooner said that when the crystal began to glow a dangerous orange-red, just like Fifteen Stars had the moment they chose to suffocate Goten.

"Hey," said the crystal, and Sevoya recognized it as Fifteen Stars' voice. "You think you can just take the ship? You think we can just let you have it?!"

The craft lurched again like something collided against it with incredible force.

"You thought you could kill us?" Fifteen Stars asked, just as the ship began to shake. Spores and silks fell from the ceiling like the top threatened to collapse.

"Thought you could escape your destiny with such a cheap tactic?! I'll show you what that feels like! I'll show you what it means to kill someone just because you don't like them! I'll show you!"

The ship began to tilt on its side. Goten and Trunks scrambled to hold Bulma and Sevoya steady, but Sevoya pushed Goten's hands away and threw herself at the crystal so that her hands made contact with its surface.

Whatever Fifteen Stars was, it was more than Trunks or Goten knew to handle. They had torn Tienshinhan to bloody shreds, survived bodily destruction, and displayed enough strength to incapacitate Goten. Worse, the entire ship was collateral damage. Even if Goten and Trunks did engage this creature and emerge victorious, there was no telling what might be left when the smoke cleared.

She'd seen enough. If they wanted to keep the most people safe, they needed to bargain.

"We'll give you Gohan!" she cried. "If you stop this, we'll trade you this ship for Gohan!"

"What?!" screeched Bulma.

"That's who you're after, right?!" continued Sevoya, heedless of Bulma's flabbergasted anger.

The crystal turned blue almost immediately.

"Oh," said Fifteen Stars. "Really? You'll negotiate? Oh, I'm so glad someone can be reasonable in these sorts of situations. That would be—"

The crystal paused, like Fifteen Stars had been interrupted. From the sound of Fifteen Stars' ensuing monologue, it was probably Gyoza furiously scolding his partner for being such a pushover. Honestly, Sevoya was amazed they'd considered it so easily.

"Yes, but Gyoza, we only ever had to bring Son Gohan back to the boss. There was never any expectation to—" they paused, again. "Yes, yes, I know that, but we can have them transport them in a—"

"We have a craft," said Sevoya, looking to Bulma. "I'll deliver him to you in our craft. You can even pick it and move it yourselves, assuming you're strong enough, and carry it to your boss.

"See, Gyoza? They have a craft! Isn't that great? What's a few humans when we can capture the prime objective like we were meant to from the beginning?"

"Sevoya!" exclaimed Bulma in a half-whisper. She kept her hands off the crystal. "If you do this, I don't know if we can get you back!"

"We'll go after you!" insisted Trunks. Calliope and Goten nodded.

Sevoya removed her hand from the crystal and whirled on them.

"No, you will not," she said. "You're our insurance that they're not going to turn around and attack this ship on its way back to Earth! If you aren't there to guard it, how can you guarantee they won't turn around and shoot it down the minute Bulma turns it around?! This is our best chance. You have to get the craft back to Earth before they figure out that they don't have Son Gohan- they only have Julian Naan!"

It was also Sevoya' best chance to get to Dende.

Sevoya slapped her hand on the crystal again.

"Do we have a deal, or are we going to have to fight this out?"

"No, no, I'm done with fighting. I just want to go home. It's a deal."

OOO

The ship was massive, layered, and rounded. It looked like some kind of bud cut from the stem of a massive bush and left to fall from the upper atmosphere to the ground. Whatever model it was, Vegeta did not recognize from his years in Frieza's employ. In fact, he'd never even heard of anything like it, let alone seen one.

He didn't have much time to think about it. A translucent green web of winding tendrils fell from its base as it came nearer and nearer to North City. They reminded him of enormous versions of the zucchini noodles Bulma liked so well.

Vegeta flew closer to the ship's body, and experimentally punched on its dark, glossy hull. It gave, and then sprang back into place like rubber. An even darker bruise bloomed where he'd hit it, much like a crushed flower stem, and it gave off the scent of fresh-cut grass. Nothing else happened.

He could see no windows on the craft, and no angry passengers ready to push him away for his interference. In fact, he wasn't sure he could sense anything sentient on the craft at all. He put his hands on its hull, and adjusted his headset when he heard Urania's voice crackle to life through it. It was clear enough, though he could do without the tinny buzz of static accompanying her every word.

"Vegeta, are you in position?" she asked. "We're going to fire at the roots that thing is putting down so it doesn't rip up the ground and everything on it. Your job is to grab the ship and move it away from the city. Over."

"Stop jabbering," he snapped. Just to spite her, he ignored the use of radio code. "I'm ready."

"Roger!"

Urania and her fleet zoomed beneath the ship, and fired, though Vegeta couldn't see their blasts make contact from the angle he viewed them from the side of the invading craft. Their bullets might not have been anything special against anything in one of Frieza's galactic fleets, but a glance towards his shoes gave him a bird's eye view of what looked like shredded vegetation falling earthward along with a cloud of debris. He supposed that might be impressive to some.

He braced himself against the craft, and pushed. It lurched against his body, and then followed his course when his strength won out. He pushed it away from the city, past the surrounding farms, and into the foothills of the northern mountains. It was simple, really. Almost asinine.

The air chilled, and the deep, dark forests beneath his feet thickened into a solid carpet of swaying trees before suddenly parting to make room for a massive lake.

"This should be far enough," said Urania. "If you need to set it down, you can-"

"I don't need to set it down," Vegeta snapped. "Clear out of the area. I can blow it up right here."

"Wha-?"

"Clear the area!" he repeated.

Vegeta released the hull, and darted through the air away from the ship like a fish slipping through water. Urania's fleet dispersed beneath him like a frightened school as he gathered energy into his hands and focused on the center of the craft. It glowed, warm and familiar, in his palms. He could barely remember the last time he'd focused so hard on the simple act of destruction for the sake of it. When he was younger, it used to give him a quick, cheap thrill to wreak havoc on targeted crafts. Now, it felt preposterous, and worse, wasteful.

With a guttural cry, Vegeta shot out a massive beam from his hands towards the ship, and then another, and another, and another, until the entire craft illuminated in the reflected yellow-white light of his assault and collapsed in on itself at the site of a deep gash at its center. A shower of blue-green spores filtered out from its innards and swirled in the sky like daytime fireworks.

He hit it with another. He hit it for no other reason than because he was angry, but any catharsis it might have given him felt empty and insincere. Where had he been these past days? What had he been doing? Had he won against Gohan? Had he staved him off to go lick his wounds? Would he be back?

He didn't know. That was the worst part.

"Vegeta," interrupted Urania in his ear. "That's enough. Do you copy? Over."

"What?" said Vegeta. "Are you afraid I'm going to hit you?"

"No," she said. "But if you keep blasting it as it falls, you're going to hit the mountains, and cause even more damage than the collision it is about to make. If you can set it down gently, it will reduce collateral. Over."

"There's nowhere I can put it that's less disruptive than where it is now. It's set to hit this lake, not the trees. Or can you not see it?"

"No," said Urania. "We made our retreat as you asked. But I suppose that's fine. Over."

Vegeta grinned despite himself. "So you ran away scared of me? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."

"We'll return to base now. Over."

The rest of Urania's crew chimed in. "Roger!"

Vegeta chuckled, darkly, as he turned away from the falling green wreckage in the sky to watch the little squad of aircrafts turn and retreat towards the distant silhouette of North City.

"That's it? Is that all you have to say? That you're running away?"

Vegeta heard a new series of clicks and static, but no Urania. He smiled like he was satisfied, but privately, he was disappointed, of all things. The Circle's apparent weakness made it even more humiliating that they'd been such a thorn in his side at the Tenkaichi Budokai.

Vegeta languished peerlessly on Earth for the past 7 years. He was dying for some kind of challenge- any kind of challenge- and these people who'd caused so much trouble for him and his family couldn't even begin to give it to him.

Except, if all he sought was freedom from his unending boredom, he would have taken it in whatever form it took, even that of mortal danger. He never would have been so quick to wish death upon the Saiyan from the northern mountains. He never would have been so quick to try and secure the safety of the planet, and of his son, who lived here.

He was soft. Vegeta had gone soft.

But where was that strange Saiyan now? It was as if he and Gohan had suddenly gone missing from the world, which was impossible. A power that huge and undisciplined would never stop until it crushed everything in its path, or succumbed to a horrible, spectacular, unignorable death.

And yet, nothing. He didn't sense a single trace of him.

"Hmph. Idiots," he muttered, to nobody in particular.

To his surprise, Urania re-opened the line and answered him. Or perhaps she'd never closed it.

"I don't have time to constantly question your motives, Vegeta," she said. "I live in a world where, physically, almost everyone is stronger than I am, but I can't live my life in fear, and I can't live my life in a way that fosters the idea that the physically weak must cower in the shadows of the physically strong. I'll die faster that way, and for nothing."

Vegeta snorted.

"How reckless," he said.

"I wasn't finished," Urania retorted. "There's a reason I have the courtesy to use radio code for communications, and I suggest you do the same. Are you afraid of us? Over."

"What?" said Vegeta. "Am I afraid of you? What sort of idiotic question is that?"

Urania didn't answer. It made Vegeta want to grind his back teeth down to stumps. Preposterous. He'd show her who was afraid.

"Say that again," demanded Vegeta. "Answer me."

She didn't. Vegeta grew hot under the collar, humiliated.

"Answer me!" he commanded.

When Urania still didn't say anything, he snarled into the receiver.

"...Over!"

Urania did. Vegeta couldn't see her face, but he imagined she was smiling the way Frieza and his men smiled when they managed to get under his skin. He resisted the urge to shoot down her plane.

"Are you afraid we're going to reject you?" Urania asked. "You could destroy us. You could. But it would leave you alone and with nowhere to go. Is that what this is about?"

Vegeta's cheek spasmed.

"I understand that there's nobody here to rival you in the way you're used to anymore. Trying to "play our game", if you will, without having any experience with it before, is probably very intimidating. Over."

"Do you have any idea who I am?!" he shouted.

When Urania didn't immediately answer, Vegeta enveloped himself in a halo of explosive, golden energy, and then let it fade away when he realized he had nothing in front of him to take his anger out upon. He was like a housecat puffing out his fur to look intimidating, and he knew it.

He turned around to watch the craft hit the surface of the lake. It sent waves of crystalline water upon the shore with a booming splash accompanied by a massive, frothing wave. The trees at the lake's perimeter bent and snapped as the water and the collapsing craft's casing fell upon it before washing out to wreak havoc on the obscured forest floor.

"No," said Urania. "And I'm sure that you've realized by now that nobody else does, either. You're a minority in terms of your lineage, and a minority in terms of your culture."

She paused. Vegeta decided he hated her.

"I'm sorry for your loss," she said. "I can't possibly imagine how that must feel."

"Spare me your pity!" he snarled.

"I wasn't finished, and it's not pity," said Urania. "It's fact. I can't imagine it. Not at all. And it doesn't change the fact that you have to move on. There's nothing to salvage. Over."

"You mouthy-! Move on from what?"

He shared an intimate moment with nothing but the open line, which did nothing but stoke his mounting anger. Vegeta snorted outraged clouds into the chilly northern air.

"From what?"

Infuriating. These people of earth were infuriating, every single one of them. It was like they barely even valued his work, or recognized his strength. They'd rather go on, blissfully unaware of how narrow a limb they climbed upon when they addressed him with such smug attitudes.

He should smite them for their insolence. He should tear them limb from limb! They were always looking down on him! They were weaker than he was, and he was always letting them look down on him just as Frieza did! Like everyone did! It didn't matter who Vegeta was! It hadn't mattered for years- not since the day his planet was blown to smithereens!

The only person who ever saw him as an equal was Kakkarot!

Vegeta transformed, for no other reason than because he could. He let the energy wash over him like the water through the trees- let it zip through the air and push everything in its path just to make it bow to him, make it fear him, make it notice him.

Then, Urania sighed. It was a strange, muffled sound when filtered through his headset.

"Vegeta," she said, "I can't pretend to know what's eating at you, but please, stop this."

Suddenly, the Urania in his mind's eye didn't remind him of a smiling Frieza at all. Instead, she reminded him sharply of a frustrated Bulma sitting in front of him, wine glass in hand as she shucked her shoes and cradled her head after a long day.

"Here on Earth, we don't understand enough about your life or your situation to give you the kind of respect that, I'm sure, is probably due to someone in your position. We're just not going to give it to you, because we have no idea what form that takes. Instead, this is what you're stuck with. You see? You can either join us, or kill us now and then join us later when your own sad death comes for you, too."

Vegeta sneered, but he curbed his power until his hair turned black and his presence didn't glimmer over the lake- and then he noticed something he hadn't before.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," he muttered.

Speak of the devil, and he appears.

"Repeat that? Over."

"What, you can't sense the Inner Flame you people say you circle around? To the south. To the west. Don't you sense it? There's more ships, and we're not the only ones fighting them off."

OOO

Broly spent so long within the monotonous tile sea of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber that he had forgotten how vast and strange the world on the outside was. His friends insisted it was under attack and posed this as serious, but Broly didn't understand what this might mean until he actually saw the craft perched on the side of the volcano overlooking the place Terpsichore called South City.

The ship was… big, and strange, and completely different from the plants Broly had ogled from his vantage point in the sky as he flew across the continent, but the worst part came from the city itself, and where its denizens and the strange green invaders flooding from the ship met in the streets: widespread fear. The presences of the people below were nothing like the bombastic, assertive Thalia or the quietly unignorable Gohan, but there were so many of them that Broly couldn't ignore them. Even Piccolo and Terpsichore's tense discussions did nothing to hold his attention against the chaos of South City. He looked down into the city with a baffled, curious stare that quickly gave way to rising horror.

The people screamed as they ran from the green creatures scuttling through the streets. Some fired tiny pellets out of guns, or rammed them with their cars. When the green creatures came close, their entire bodies opened up and swallowed the people whole.

A little boy who'd fallen on his back trying to keep his dog from rushing an oncoming swarm reached his hand out to the sky and cried out before one of the creatures broke from its herd and enveloped him.

Broly acted. He heard Terpsichore shouting for him to come back, but he didn't pay it any mind. These were the people they were meant to be defending, right?! They came to stop these invaders, didn't they?!

He came down from the sky to tear the first of the creatures in two, and released the boy onto the asphalt along with a mass of slime and a fit of coughing before moving onto the next, and the next, and the next. He tore them apart as quickly as he could, or burst them apart from the inside when they surrounded him and tried to swallow him instead. He fired a beam at another oncoming swarm, and balked when it made contact with not only them, but the buildings behind them. The resulting explosion sent a shower of shattered glass and cement raining over the street, and a whole new wave of screaming people spilled onto the street as the building partially collapsed and burst aflame. Thick smoke billowed from the wreckage and enshrouded the street, and soon Broly had to cover his eyes and mouth.

Was that really all it took to break these cities?! How was he supposed to know that?!

The screams around him grew louder and greater in number, and the swarms of green creatures stampeded through the smoke to break themselves against Broly as he tore them apart in a bewildered panic. Blood pounded in his ears as more grime and goo covered his body, and the smell of smoke and burning meat clogged his nose.

In the chamber, there had only been four people, and the crushing hot-cold of the tile sea. He'd never experienced this before, and the visceral destruction and noise was too much, too close, too much, too close!

Another ear-shattering blast rocked the street, and Broly looked up to find Piccolo cutting neat, golden arcs in the air as he sent energy wave after wave towards the alien craft. It shuddered and wilted beneath each blast, but held fast to the mountaintop as more and more tiny green creatures marched from within its leafy folds like aphids from Gohan's book of insects.

Broly saw red. He roared, and rose from the street with a palpable fury before joining Piccolo's assault with single-minded ferocity.

If he couldn't take the creatures out all at once, the ship was the next best thing! Right? Right?! His fingers punctured holes into the side of the ship's rubbery exterior as he plunged his palm into it, lit it up with power, and then flew in a spiral around the perimeter to rip a massive gash in its hull before it filled with explosive light. Black ash and white-green spores scattered in the air as the ship began to deflate into a limp, amorphous blob, and the rubbery hull fell away in sheaths like massive, shredded petals. Broly turned in midair to go back for a second charge, but a sudden grip on his tail made him think better of it.

Piccolo released him the moment he let his transformation go. He hadn't even realized he'd done such a thing.

"That's enough," said Piccolo, pointing to the wreckage.

Broly's eyes widened at what he saw. The ruined ship and its fallen pieces lurched dangerously off the side of the volcano and over the city. Two taller buildings- both made of almost nothing but windows- held back its weight almost as if by magic, but when Broly looked closer, he saw Terpsichore's barrier glinting between the two of them like a wall holding back the wreckage.

Broly felt the weight of his actions crash down on him with full force- he'd blown up part of the city, and then put its entire northern perimeter in immediate danger.

Worse, Terpsichore could not possibly hold the weight for long.

Broly's first urge was to hold up the falling shrapnel in lieu of Terpsichore's barrier, but then he realized the destruction was not in one solid piece. He could hold one of them, but the rest would come rolling down the mountainside and into the buildings.

"Move them one at a time, and put them in the water on the other side," said Piccolo. "Start with the ship's body. Don't take more than you can carry. Now!"

OOO

West City's ruined ship was nothing but a husk by the time Thalia and Gohan were done with it. Gohan held it steady while Thalia pierced into its center and emerged with a crystal almost as big as she was. It glowed with a faint blue light that dissipated when she broke it in two across her knee.

Surprisingly, the ship immediately opened up in Gohan's arms like a giant flower - truly, a giant flower - and then its petals dissolved into nothing more than white lights and free-flowing strings of silk until Gohan was left with nothing but a massive sac of empty, rubbery leaves.

Now, it was spread over the Brief family's massive lawn, where Doctor Briefs excitedly examined both it and its broken crystal in nothing but his underwear and a robe. He barely mustered a wave and courtesy goodbye when Gohan and Thalia emerged from his front door wearing two of his daughter's space suits.

They were black, skintight, and featured a single raised disk at the top of their backs illuminated by a thin ring of white light.

"She was holding out on you when she made you that Saiyaman uniform," said Thalia. "These are way more tasteful."

"Everyone's entitled to an opinion, even if that opinion happens to be wrong," said Gohan. Their black helmets had excellent speakers, so his voice barely held a crackle. "But do you think Broly and Terpsichore are going to be alright?"

"Yeah," said Thalia. "Broly's energy has calmed down already. I'm sure whatever happened, they took care of it. He probably got a little carried away dealing with the ship."

She had her doubts. But now wasn't the time to feed into any of Gohan's.

Thalia lifted herself from the ground.

"You ready?" she said. "Only place to go from here is up."

OOO

Gyoza and Fifteen Stars left with their bounty, and Bulma steered the ship back into the atmosphere with virtually no trouble. But the atmosphere in the ship upon Trunks and Goten's return was possibly more nerve-wracking than their open conflict with the two aliens not an hour ago. It made Calliope want to crawl in the empty wall chamber Polymnia vacated, and seal herself inside to get away from them. Nobody said a word. It made her skin crawl.

Trunks slammed his fist into a wad of silks like he somehow knew what she was thinking, and was sick of hearing it. A spray of spores and sap shot out in answer.

"Trunks," said Bulma, glancing up from the crystal in front of her, "honey, we're all upset that not everyone's here, but I need you to not destroy this ship before we get home."

Trunks turned around and pushed his back against the curved wall.

"We should be going after them," he said. "We shouldn't have let them go!"

"No. Sevoya was right. There was no way we could fix things if the ship sustained damage. You know that."

"Well, they're gone, now!" said Trunks. "So why don't we go after them now?!"

"I'm not losing the two of you on a space mission just to make you feel better."

"But-!"

"My answer is no! That's final, young man!"

Trunks looked between the floor and his mother with a determined glint, as if to say, you can say whatever you want, but you can't stop me, but he didn't say anything back. Meanwhile, Goten twiddled his fingers together, and looked between the floor and his best friend.

"You 'member what Gohan said before we left? That it's not all our fault?" he asked. "I think this is what he meant."

Trunks glowered at him, and then turned to face the wall again.

"Besides!" said Goten. "My brother will save her. He's on his way right now. You know that, right? You can tell, can't you?"

Trunks struck his tongue against the back of his teeth - flint on metal.

"Yeah, and what if he screws it all up again like he did on Fire Mountain?" he asked. "What do we do then?"

"Trunks," scolded Bulma.

"What? I'm just asking a question. You can't say you're not thinking it, too!"

Goten ducked his head, but Calliope could tell he wore the oddest smile. Rather than being offended or angry, he was pensive.

"Well, we forgive him, and try to fix it," he said. "I mean, that's what he does when I mess up. Or when you mess up. It's the best anybody can do. We have to work together, or else we'll all get crushed."

Trunks snorted and snarled, but turned back to the wall without a word.

OOO

Heavy. The world was heavy, and Terpsichore was buckling. Sweat dripped down his forehead and back as he stared at the pavement under his feet and pushed all of his power up, up, up to hold back the incoming ruin of South City. He wondered if he was a fool to try and delay it, when he knew it would probably be his last act.

Idly, he made a note of the people running around and by him, towards safer, more open streets.

What would Calliope say? His most cherished student. Her parents gave her to him when every attempt they made to let her starve or get lost on her own failed. She was mute, but for a child of her age not to speak, they thought she was slow. They thought she was shameful. They left her on a mountainside to wander into oblivion. They left her at the bottom of a well. When she made her way back, they thought she was uncanny, strange, freakish, bad fortune. But she wasn't. She was Calliope. She was his daughter. He ignored whatever her parents had named her, and instead named her after the first instrument they came across after he took her away from that place because it fascinated her.

His vision started to swim, and his knees buckled. He was sure the weight was getting lighter, and yet he was tired. He was so tired.

What was Calliope going to do, if he was gone? He'd asked Thalia to take care of her. He made Erato promise that he would always have a place for her if she needed one. But would Calliope accept that? She was always so headstrong. She never let them stay anywhere that didn't suit the two of them for long.

Meanwhile, he was falling to his knees under the wreckage of a threat he hadn't even stopped, and was unwittingly a part of summoning. Clio may have made the call and hatched the plot, but Terpsichore had been watching Broly and keeping his ship safe for the taking.

Terpsichore was so weak.

And what was Broly going to do? What was he going to do without mentors, and help, and someone to walk him through what the death of someone close to you meant? His world was a mass of color and sound, and new terrors. Everything was new. He'd wanted so much to help that he hadn't even known what that might look like. Terpsichore didn't have it in him to stop him.

He was so weak.

The weight above him forced him to his knees, and then on his hands, too. He could feel his barrier warping like a sheet of plastic under a gathering puddle of water.

He was weak, but he wasn't going to give up. With a roar, he poured more of his power into the barrier, and pushed harder, and harder, and harder until he had nothing more to give, and screamed Calliope's name until he couldn't hold back the sky from falling anymore.

Then, he was pulled from the ground by a sudden force from the side. When he opened his eyes, he found a red-eyed shadow looming over him like the demon in his dreams. Exactly like the demon in his dreams, in fact. It was King Piccolo, almost exactly as he was when Terpsichore was a child locked beneath the rubble of Central City.

Terpsichore hadn't the strength to run or fight, or even scream for help. The only thing left for him to do was close his eyes and accept his fate. What he'd done with his life was enough. It had to be enough.

Then, the demon spoke.

"Stop crying," Piccolo said. "You're going to live, so the least you could do is look happy about it."

OOO

The mother ship was, for lack of a better way to put it, a massive strawberry pot. It was a deep, shimmering blue that reflected the stars of the surrounding galaxy like a mirror, and had the sun not been beating down upon it from Sevoya's back to reveal its color, she may never have realized it wasn't part of the black, galactic ocean spread out before her. Deep, curved balconies sheltered the multiple entrances staggered evenly across the ship's otherwise rounded surface, and as Sevoya's ship came closer, she realized that the bulbous ships like the one Bulma piloted back to earth grew from each of these indentations. However, instead of being clamped tightly shut in a neat, sealed bud, the ones facing the sun spread into open-faced flowers with thick manes of purple-white petals and silvery-green silks. They looked like a cross between a chrysanthemum and a sea anemone. At the very top of the ship's rounded body, a bouquet of petals, silks, glossy purple leaves, and gnarled branches spread from the top like the canopy of an enormous tree.

But more importantly, she could sense Dende growing nearer and nearer the closer Gyoza brought them to the ship.

Polymnia stirred in the seat next to her. He hadn't dropped his transformation, even in his sleep. His face and hair was still that of Gohan, though his demeanor didn't disguise anything.

"...What happened?" he groaned, and then winced the instant he tried to sit up.

"God," he said. "God damn it,"

"Shh," said Sevoya. "You're still Gohan. You need to stay Gohan, or we're both gonna die even faster. You get it?"

Polymnia slid his two black eyes her way, and furrowed his brow.

"What?"

Just then, Fifteen Stars' head-orb appeared in front of the cockpit windshield. Polymnia stiffened as his demeanor changed to resume his role.

Fifteen Stars' voice buzzed in from the ship's radio.

"We're landing!" he said. "Gyoza will put you down once we get in, so go ahead and activate the landing gear and keep your hands off the steering controls, alright?"

Sevoya nodded. She hadn't so much as touched the controls beyond powering up the engine to keep its interior atmosphere intact. Gyoza had picked up the ship before it even took off, and carried it the entire way.

The light in Fifteen Stars' orb shifted towards Polymnia.

"Oh! Your eyes are open. That means you are awake, right?"

Polymnia nodded.

"Ok," said Fifteen Stars, producing an appendage before splitting the grey sinew near the end into flexible strips that suspiciously resembled an OK sign. "The boss is very excited to meet you, Son Gohan!"