Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Second Chances for Bardock's Sons ❯ Dinner of Doom? ( Chapter 17 )

 

Second Chances for Bardock's Son's

 

Dinner of the Doomed

 

By Trynia Merin

Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ so please don't' sue me. Tomic and the few other fan characters are my only claim in this. This isn't for money, it's for fan enjoyment.

 

At Mt. Pauzo, Goku's new home filled to the brim with his friends and newly discovered family. Chichi had rolled up her sleeves and dragged Tomic into the kitchen to help her prepare a feast the Z warriors would brag about for the next few years at least. Still wearing her borrowed outfit, Tomic allowed herself to escape the answers to many uncomfortable questions in Chichi's insanity. Pots and pans clanged, vibrating as they heated on the massive stove. Potato peelings and rice husks grew to huge mounds at the feet of the rapidly toiling Saiyan female. Light gleamed off the sharp knife she held, scraping it up to peel a thin continuous slice off the white tuber.

 

“Excellent work, girl,” Chichi whacked her on the shoulder. Tomic almost dropped the knife with a grunt of surprise. She glanced up at Goku's shapely wife wiping her hands off on the long white apron girded about her waist. A matching one was hitched around Tomic's hips as well. Across her chest Chichi's borrowed tunic easily accommodated her own ample bosom thankfully. Still the silk frogs that fastened the Chinese style collar tickled her throat. Long loose silk pants covered her scarred legs, tanned and marked from her various times of training.

 

“I guess I'm not getting out of food preparation on this planet either,” she glanced up at Chichi.

 

“I think that's more then enough. C'mon I'll show you my secret recipe for eight treasures. Your husband will LOVE you forever if you master THIS one!” Chichi laughed conspiratorially. Grabbing Tomic's wrist she yanked the Saiyan female to her feet. Still Tomic clutched the paring knife, letting the potato drop into the basket to her left. Chichi's strength was considerable for a human, far stronger then Tomic recalled from some past hazy corridor of thought.

 

A huge rice cooker belched a cloud of steam when Chichi yanked the lid off. She stirred the accumulated mounds with a flat paddle, then thrust huge chopsticks into Tomic's other hand. “Quick, check the dim sum… right there…”

 

Tomic dipped gargantuan chopsticks into the pot, snagging large endless noodles combined with vegetables. Totally absent were any deep fried grease entrees that most `Chinese' restaurants would serve. Instead every last bit of piping hot food appeared to be steamed or stir fried in light oil leaving no traces of a crispy grease laden coating. “I sucked at cooking,” Tomic mumbled.

 

“Nonsense, a scientist like you? You have GOT to be kidding me! All you have to do is follow a recipe like you'd follow a formula,” Chichi harrumphed. “Honestly how can you please your man if you can't cook?”

 

“That's what I was wondering. But in my society we eat fresh kill and…”

 

Waving a dismissive hand across, Chichi seemed to banish that past experience. She darted over to check on the tall bamboo steamer, yanking the top off. Another column of steam blasted both women in the face accompanied by the mouth-watering scent of sui mai. Tomic's stomach growled, and she suddenly felt a strange familiarity. Smells of rice, ginger, taro root and all manner of spices filled a palate painting a picture long held fuzzy in Tomic's thoughts. A steady dribble of memories welled up, faces floating before her eyes. She gripped the edge of the counter, watching Chichi darting like a sparrow from one pot to another.

 

Images flooded over the happy laughing ones. Tomic could smell the iron scent of blood. Frightened faces as a strange illness mottled the skins of the Delphinians on Quetzal 2. Within her stomach Tomic felt the swimming as she inhaled hot brassy sun blaring down. All around her feet cracked the vast grounds of an arid plain. Smoke rose up in the distance from a small gleaming metal monstrosity training its vast muzzle forwards. Hot blinding sun blasted with white-hot intensity, sweeping the arc of an already smoldering city.

 

“Help us, the Aridians are attacking again!” screamed the local inhabitants.

 

“Who… what…” Tomic blinked. She was there again, on that training mission. To show what she was made of. A small planet once blue with oceans was now becoming desert at a fast pace. Two factions warred, the Aridians who were surface dwellers, and the Delphinians, the sentient air breathing mammals that inhabited the small pools of saline water still surviving on the planet's surface. Dessert brush and tumbleweeds flourished with large spiny cacti.

 

For years the spots had speckled the Delphinians. Tomic within days of arriving had sat back to observe the two races. Knowing that their fate was sealed the instant she touched down. They had let her craft sit in the dunes and kept tabs on her from afar, too worried about the next heat ray burning.

 

“Please help us!” called another voice. “You're the most powerful, starfaller!”

 

“You don't want my help,” Tomic said as small children huddled behind her. She sat in the shelter of a huge ruined wall. Heat rays fizzled the charred flesh from around her. Growling, she levitated up into full view of the war machines. Large lenses focussed the rays of the twin suns with decimating strength. Like a child frying ants with a simple magnifier the Aridians used their solar power well.

 

“You there!” Tomic shouted as she hurtled forwards. “Prepare to be exterminated like the fools you are!”

 

“As if a weak mammal like you possessed the power to destroy us,” echoed the laughter through a loudspeaker.

 

“Atomic BLAST!” Tomic growled. She spanned wide her arms, gathering the surging crackling energies into a small sphere. Raising one finger, she aimed her opposite hand, clutching the energies with her left. Through her arm the ki channeled, surging in a purple cone that aimed its beam forwards. One machine after the other melted like hot wax in the sun. The cries and screams of the soldiers in each vehicle overpowered that of the dying in the Delphinium capitol city.

 

“You wiped them out,” said a frightened voice.

 

“This planet is dying,” Tomic said as she crouched down at the quivering creatures sidling up to her. Around her lay the bodies of the Delphian shock troops, flash fried. Her scouter beeped with only pitifully small traces. She examined the mottled skin on the shiny creatures blue bodies, noting the varying degrees of skin lesions.

 

“Please help us,” whispered another.

 

“Are you the only ones here?” Tomic asked, dropping to one knee.

 

“The big people are gone. They got sick, like us,” said another braver youth, fixing gold eyes into hers. They were all large as saucers.

 

“You fell from the sky in the desert. You blew up the bad guys before, I saw you,” said a third youth, brushing wet tendrils of scant hair from his speckled forehead.

 

“How long have the spots… been on you?” Tomic asked.

 

“We were born with them,” said the first youth, a girl, hugging Tomic's leg. “You're the only big person left. The others are all there…”

 

“Dead, won't wake up, you big baby,” snorted the gold eyed one. “Daddy said it was a weapon. A weapon in our water.”

 

“Show me,” Tomic said. Little hands grasped hers, shepherding her towards the large shimmering pool swirling under the light to the twin suns. Another Aridian attack had been wiped away. Yet row upon row of adults lay scattered in their gleaming mother of pearl armor. Some lay over walls while others were charred cinders, indicating the swaths of heat burning them. In a matter of minutes she reached the vast expanse of pool shimmering. Steps lead down, and across the expanse she saw a ruined statue arching up with its fins raised.

 

“Where we swim. We live on the shores, but we swim most of the day. But if we swim too much, the spots grow worse,” the gold eyed child snorted.

 

Tomic adjusted her scouter. Lights flickered with feeble results, indicating no intelligent life. Only the movements of native fish. Buildings ringed the opposite shore, barely discernible even to Saiyan eyes. Descending the marbled stairs slick with water, she crouched. One gauntlet hand dipped in the water, raising a small handful to her nose. An acrid smell ponged into her nostrils, and she tasted the water. Something odd drifted across her tongue before she spat it out.

 

“Poison. Some bio agent,” she mumbled, glimpsing her scouter's energy readings. Not to mention the bitter taste of the slimy waters that were hardly fit for bathing in. One could drink them, but not for long.

 

“Every pool is like this,” one of her other small companions said. Their robes hung around their bodies, gleaming opalescent in the twin suns overhead. Other traces flickered in the distance, barely moving. Then her scouter pinged with a shrill beeping.

 

“Traces of 50, and there are at least ten of them,” she mumbled. Gentle waves undulated in the surface of the `bathing' pool, growing choppy in tiny ripples. Through her dark boots she felt the vibrations of heavy machinery, guessing another wave of attackers were on their way.

 

“How long?” she glanced down at the three youths pulling and tugging on her boots. “Has this happened?”

 

“It's always been this way,” said the oldest of the children. “Can't remember when it wasn't.”

 

“I've seen enough,” Tomic said quietly. “There is no more water. Just these lakes in every city.”

 

Three pairs of eyes glanced up at her scouter covered one, wide and afraid. Lips quivered, whimpering as one of them sank down and huddled up to the male with scant hair. The lavender haired one turned her gaze up to Tomic, her eyes asking millions of questions she dared not ask.

 

“Do you miss your parents? Are they gone?” Tomic asked.

 

“Yes,” they murmured.

 

“Stand close with me. You'll see them soon,” Tomic said as she crouched. Slowly she enfolded them in her arms, then drew her power to her. A soft chikara buzzed through each of them, and they closed their eyes with tiny sighs. Little arms wrapped around her neck, and Tomic exhaled with a soft hiss.

 

“Disintegrate,” Tomic whispered. She flipped her fingers up, focussing on one gleaming atom. From one to another the molecular bonds disintegrated. Three lives shimmered like new stars, clinging close before they disintegrated into black dust. Wind whipped her hair as Tomic swallowed hard, and leveled her gaze on the entire city. All the bodies piled up from successive attacks. Another flick of her wrist and she let out a loud cry, letting the shimmering spread from her hands stretched out to their widest expanse.

 

“ATOMIC BLITZ!” she yelled. Scorching heat shot from her skin, tearing over the heaps of death. Black dust shimmered as the atoms decomposed to their base elements. Heaps of dust whipped in the lonely air, while the water lapped at her toes. A purple blaze dropped to nothingness, and the female Saiyan stood alone in a scorched circle.

 

“You'll see them now,” she whispered, letting the dust sift through her fingers. “And now, the others to deal with. Let this planet be free of these two factions forever.”

 

Black boots lifted off the steps. Gracefully Tomic launched into the air, scanning the source of her alert. There on the horizon were the sources of the Aridians. She blasted forwards in the hot brassy air, seeing the circles of distant lakes with ruined cities around them. Sunlight gleamed off the herds of metal machines kicking up dust on the planes. From their source she flew, to the greatest life readings simmering on her scouter.

 

Dunes ringed the sea of small upturned boxes. Fires blazed as the lizardlike inhabitants let out cries and laughs. Smoke filled her nostrils, and she smelled burning flesh. Metal tanks whizzed with heat rays blasting into the distance. Some of the larger vehicles trundled up through the massive metal gates, thundering into the heart of the metropolis.

 

Tomic descended, dropping with a whoosh of air into the midst of the Town Square. A grinding wheeze indicated the hatch on the side of one of the larger machines had opened. Rolling down the ramp were bodies. Gleaming blue with mottled black spots. Behind them were Aridians prodding with long poles and looks of glee? Bodies were poked and spat on, and rolled into heaps.

 

“What in Duenna's name is THAT ugly thing!” one of the nearest columns of Aridian shock troops asked. Their bodies were robed in long cloaks that girded over one shoulder. Large feathery crests crowned their heads, while gold eyes similar to the Delphians fixed onto the newcomer. She towered over them all, although their tails whisked back and forth while wrinkled scaly skin folded over bared teeth.

 

“It's HIDIEOUS! You, what are you!” one of them snarled, trudging up to poke Tomic with the pole.

 

“Your Armageddon,” Tomic said quietly. “Enjoy your last moments alive. Because that is what they truly are.”

 

“As if a hideous hairy thing like YOU could scare us. Drachma, kill this noisy thing that dares interrupt our gloryfest!” hooted another, with a tall red cock's comb.

 

“Atomic flux,” she said. Tomic lifted her hand, facing the palm upwards. In the heart of it glittered a purple ball. She let it fly, then summoned another, and a third to orbit her body. In whizzing arcs they spun and glittered, startling and fascinating the troops turning on her. As one hit the long pole, it sizzled the end of the stick to dust.

 

“Wha…” the bemused holder mumbled. Tomic hissed again, narrowing her eyes as each sphere shot out. As the three balls of energy collided with various targets, searing purple flashes blinded every eye nearby. Black dust fluttered in tiny heaps where each ball hit.

 

Dumfounded eyes turned gleaming gold with anger. Tails shook, rattling their scaly ends like thousands of rattlesnakes. One after the other, the Aridians charged forward with their long poles headed towards the new enemy. Others scuttled into their large vehicles, firing them up with a clatter and roar that drowned out the hissing snarls. Tomic hurled purple blobs of energy left and right, leaping over the arching stabs of the long sharpened poles. Apparently most of the robed Aridians carried them, using them for skewering Delphinians or their pray from the large pools of water at the heart of many a Delphinium water temple.

 

A sharp scrape scratched a line of crimson blood across Tomic's cheek. Licking it off, she grabbed the end of the staff. Levering it up, she flicked it hard, sending the startled holder of the staff in a blurred arc over her head. He crashed into a dozen of his fellow soldiers. Shouts and cries filled the air. Small crystals gleamed with captured energy from the twin suns. Sizzling beams hissed and sponged against Tomic's black third class armor. So these beings could focus solar power on a small level. Her heart pounded with the quick bursts of adrenaline, sparking an excitement that flushed out everything else. It was fun to grab the ends of the prodding poles and flick their owners to and fro. IT wasn't her fault if they were stupid enough to hang on till she sent them flying.

 

Levitating up, she held two Aridians in either hand. Power flickered and surged through her fingers, charring them to dust with a flash of her ki. IT was clean and painless, instant vaporization with the heat of an atomic bomb. Far too many of them swarmed the streets, looking like ants raiding a picnic. A sharp burning slammed into her back, knocking her forwards so the shouts and cries turned to amber streaks. Next she felt a cracking behind her as a bui8lding broke her fall, and she saw the sky turn into ground, and the ground sky. Her head rang with a gong when it collided with something hard and metallic.

 

Hoots and shouts surrounded her. Sharp pricks stabbed at her skin, barely causing pinpricks. She peered up into the faces of the gold-eyed lizard Aridians spitting and licking their lips. Dust swirled over them, through a blinding hole ringed with more troops further up. Dry hands slid around her, pulling at her armor and hair as they leapt on her. Tomic snarled, kicking and punching. Wet smacking sounds like watermelons smashing filled her ears. Simultaneous with sticky goo was coating her fingers. Leaping to her feet she saw broken and twisted bodies laying around her in a semicircle. Other uninjured figures were backing away with fear in their wrinkled faces covered by hoods.

 

Her hands dripped with blood and gore. In horrid fascination Tomic swung at one pole wielding Aridian who came too close. Right through him her hand passed, hitting something hard that snapped like a twig of raw petrite. The body slid off her wrist with a dull thump. Green ichor spurted against her armor, and she smelled an acrid pong of acid. “Yuck, they're so… fragile,” Tomic shivered.

 

“Slay the beast! Slay it! Kill the hairy monster!” they cried. Tomic rocketed up through a ruined roof of a domed structure, till the city below faded to the size of a small dinner plate. Tiny mites swarmed too and fro around the boxlike shapes on tank treads aiming muzzles skywards to her. Stopping abruptly, Tomic spanned her hands wide. She hissed with incoming breath as twin spheres of purple plasma crackled on her palms. It was difficult to generate packets of Atomic flux at such heat when a simple beam would cause more destruction, she found herself rationalizing.

 

“Atomic FORCE! HYAAAYYY!” she snarled, snapping her wrists down. Twin purple beams surged like rays of death, instantly crashing into the city far below. Anything under them shattered with the force of their impact. Fires erupted from the heat of the blast, exploding one tank vehicle after another in a deadly relay. Dust shot upwards and cracks snaked across the landscape for a half-mile before the energy dissipated. Peering down through her boots, Tomic saw little but bellowing smoke.

 

Suddenly she felt very weary. Tomic shot out over the desert, heading towards the place she had first seen the Delphinians. Dropping to the marbled pavement, she landed. Dust swirled around her, rife with the smell of charred flesh. Bones lay scattered, and she realized she had missed the outer fringes of the city when she had first burned the bodies of the Delphians killed by the Aridian attacks. With one shaking finger she punched her scouter, setting it for its widest scan. All that answered were faint pings.

 

“Is that all,” she wondered, sitting in the whistling winds. Dust rose from the city that she had decimated, reaching her across a half mile of desert. Still the smoke belched up from the ruin of the Aridian capital city. An emptiness filled Tomic as she sat there, starving from the use of ki.

 

She strode through the ruined city, purged of life from her Atomic Flux. It only targeted carbon-based molecules, leaving inorganic things intact. Now the Ghost City had no more children to cry for the loss of their parents, along with no more enemy to worry about conquering it.

 

For a time she wandered aimlessly, wondering if there was anything worth saving. Distant life forms surged; indicating there was some non-intelligent life alive. Air was clean despite the smell of death and war, while the water surged and lapped in each pool she had seen from the air. Tomic trudged through the streets towards the ruined bit of wall where she had last seen the three children. Out and beyond the gates of the Delphinium city was the stretch of desert and the small grove where she had concealed her only way of getting off this world.

 

Her knees gave out, and she pitched forwards. Tomic suddenly felt a strange numbness lift, and the images of the children's trust filled her with a sudden flare of defiance. How dare they trust her, to save them? She was here to take their world and clear it for a more deserving life form, the Mantissans. All that needed to be done now was to activate the homing beacon and climb into her pod. Yet she knew that she had foolishly not eaten and the work that she feared would take forever was only done in a matter of hours.

 

Tomic fought the tears, gritting her teeth and curling up. It was kill or be killed. She was fool to think they would let her go without purging one planet at least to prove her loyalty. The one last test of her skills was live game, and she was firmly sent here not two days ago with orders from Nappa to make them proud. A planet where war had all but reduced the world to shambles, and she could dispose of them any way she wished. There were only ten million on this world, and most were sick and diseased Delphinians struggling to fight off the attacks of the robust millions of Aridians.

 

Sleep flashed over Tomic. She felt consciousness leave her till she finally felt and heard voices around her. Blinking she saw someone looming over her, and felt someone reaching down to help her up. “Precious one, are you all right?”

 

“She's forgotten to eat, the stupid girl!” snorted the voice of Cabernet. “Wake up girl! Eat something!”

 

“Let me help her, damn it,” Raditz gritted. Tomic blinked up at him through the tears flowing through her eyes, seeing the concern in his dark gaze focussed on her. On one knee he bent, his hands sliding under her knees and back to lift her up.

 

“What the hell,” she muttered.

 

“Not bad work, kid, but you were a bit too clean. You didn't have to waste energy cleaning up the bodies, you know. The Mantissans said it wasn't necessary,” Nappa chuffed. She smelled fire and heard embers crackling. A delicious smell of cooked meat drifted past her nostrils, and Tomic buried her head in Raditz' chest.

 

“Are you all right, are you hurt?” Raditz whispered, gently shaking her. “You didn't eat enough did you?”

 

“Everything turned my stomach,” Tomic gasped. Suddenly she started to heave, and Raditz turned her head to the side.

 

“Huh, don't blame the pup, she's right,” Cabernet said as Nappa's harsh laugh cut through. “There's not a damn thing on here fit to eat. About the only thing here worth saving is the air and water.”

 

“There's at least two million Aurites worth of Rhinidium deposits here! And argentium!” Raditz snorted, picking Tomic up in his arms with ease. “We WILL get our three million for the job. She did what she was told to.”

 

“She's too worried about being neat. How the hell am I supposed to count how many she killed with no bodies?” Nappa snorted.

 

“I'm sorry, it was the only way,” she muttered, finally climbing to her feet.

 

“Don't worry, you did very well,” Raditz reassured her, striding over to sit on a ring of rocks close to a blazing fire. Roast carcasses dripped with juices, fried on spits improvised from the poles of the Aridian soldiers.

 

“What DID you find to eat?” asked Cabernet, glaring at Nappa. He was stuffing his face with something that he spit out to the side.

 

“Well the Aridian lizards are a bit tough, but they're the only thing worth eating. At least you kept a few alive girl in those large tin boxes. I gotta give you credit for providing the victory feast,” Nappa chuckled, settling down to sit on the far side of the blazing campfire. He seized one of the long spits, tearing off one of the carcasses. Next to him, Cabernet crouched, grabbing a huge haunch of the meat from another pole to nibble on.

 

“I've had better,” she mumbled. “But it's better then starving.”

 

“Next time, EAT something even if you have to eat it raw!” Nappa said through mouthfuls. Tomic managed to sit up, balanced across Raditz' strong thighs. She rested her head on his shoulder, feeling his arm gently rubbing her back while his hand reached down to stroke her cheek.

 

“I think she could start with the marrow, it's still pretty good,” said Cabernet, tossing a large shinbone of some beast towards Raditz. He cracked it with a quick bite in his jaws, and slurped the contents down. Leaning over Tomic he pressed his lips over hers, gently urging her to eat what he'd chewed up. Still heaving she took the mouthful and swallowed the marrow softened with his saliva. Power returned to her body and she was well enough to straighten up and sit on his thigh.

 

“Catch,” said Cabernet, throwing her a drumstick. Reaching up a gloved hand she grabbed it out of the air. She didn't bother to question what it was before tearing into it with eager bites. Soon it was followed by another piece of meat that Raditz grabbed off a large spit close to his knee. Still he kept her sitting on his knee, holding her down from getting up with his tail loosely twining around her waist.

 

“Easy now, we're here. You need to rest and regain your strength. You should be proud,” he cooed.

 

“I did what you wanted,” she muttered.

 

“I'm proud of you, precious one. You've exceeded my expectations, and proved your worth. There should be no question now that you were an asset, not a liability,” Raditz reassured her. His cheek pressed to hers, and she found herself craving the comfort of a warm body. Slowly she unhitched her tail from her waist, to snake her tail around his opposite muscled thigh.

 

“Ten million,” said Cabernet suddenly, swallowing her latest mouthful.

 

“What?” Nappa asked.

 

“Ten million. That's what the estimates were. And I don't see any other life traces,” said Cabernet, glancing at Tomic. “Nice work. But you could have gone a bit faster.”

 

“I saw you playing with the natives. There's no harm in amusing them,” Raditz said quietly. “Besides, how else would you know where the natural resources were?”

 

“Pile the bodies in fives, girl. That way I don't have to waste time listening to my woman bitch when she's trying to count,” Nappa laughed. Burning copper bands spread across the eastern sky by now, and Tomic saw a pale disc slowly rising in the east.

 

“She could have used the moon,” Cabernet said. “Did you forget?”

 

“Wrong phase,” Tomic mumbled.

 

“You can show her now, Raditz,” said Nappa as he stood up and stretched. “She needs to learn how to master it. And that's one thing that tightwad commander Turles never let us do.”

 

“I've transformed only twice before,” Tomic shuddered. “I can't remember…”

 

“Basic training. I told you we should have put her through it but you HAD to wait!” Raditz glared at Nappa.

 

“Well just do what your old man does, and make one, smartass,” said Cabernet angrily.

 

“Fine, whatever!” Raditz glared at her. “How much time do we have?”

 

“Two more revolutions. Let's let the whelps play and train. We can't have the girl looking like an ass in front of the Prince,” said Cabernet.

 

“Let's go. Have fun,” Nappa said. “And remember leave SOMETHING will you?”