Chapter Eighteen

Retribution

In the daze of semi-consciousness, life was lost. It was so familiar, so infuriatingly normal and yet it didn't feel the same. It didn't encourage animation or superiority, just the feeling of something so much darker. Loss. It was a pure, unadulterated torture, the like of which had never been experienced or defined by such a ruthless mind before.

Warrior blood pounded to its sickening reality, but did not conjoin with the usual incapacity that it would inspire. No… this time it was something even more uncontrolled, it wormed its way through drained limbs, sprung up from the depths of despair, it was calculated but guttural all at the same time, making powerful lungs scream, expelling air that could ill afford to be lost.

Perhaps… perhaps it was something more than hopelessness, something so completely untamed that its mere presence was overpowering. Maybe it was this instinct that made his frustration call out in such a feral release, so much so that self-loathing would be an inadequate description of the anger it contained. It was the lack of power, the singular memory of what that signified, and the despair that it brought.

The bond was gone. In a flash of incomprehensibility it was all over, Bulma's life extinguished, the power surrendered.

If, in this make-believe of his once feared planet, things could be reborn into any more significance than the wild breathing, the feral heartbeat that shook his internal organs to the very brink of collapse, then Vegeta could very realistically believe himself near to death, but if he defined it more accurately then it was more a case of, perhaps, not caring about restraint anymore.

Bulma's last words swam around his head. "It's only a game… you have to willingly want to end it." What did she mean by that? He couldn't think properly through the daze of incapacity. Something about it rang true, but he wasn't sure whether it was the urgency that was delivered behind the words or whether is was because a take of their meaning complimented the way he felt right now.

One thing was painfully clear though, the desire for revenge crushed at his chest, and trampled over his whole body with such a need for release, that it almost made him physically sick.

The small creatures moved curiously about him, a look of triumph plastered all over their disgusting features. They were happy. It made him want to rip their throats out, make every single muscle in his body reach for some sort of motion that would do justice to the rage he could feel at their mocking.

Didn't they realize what they had just done? They had committed a crime of inestimable proportions, against one of the kindest and most forgiving hearts he had ever encountered! He may not have ever wanted to see such accomplishments in anyone, may have repeatedly repelled, and recoiled from its patronizing balm, but even though he could not fully understand or feel anything close to it himself, didn't mean that he could not see its beauty. They had just murdered a Saiyan royal, and would pay for it with their traitorously pitiful lives. The whole lot of the disgusting creatures would feel the unrivalled wrath of the Saiyan species! Vegeta just wished that he could be the one to exact it, but right now that was impossible, even the energy it took to breath was hard to find.

In the fiery light of this cavern, against the flow of the Elders energy, (even though it was depleted itself,) he was useless. The Elder himself was now in view, the power that he had forcefully expelled from Bulma sitting ever so comfortably in his hands, not even a trace of the regret that his Emissary had briefly indulged in, etched onto his features.

Under the contemptuous state of Vegeta's stare, the Elder's mouth even seemed to turn at the corners in triumph, and as if to impress this image on the Saiyan with even more weight he knelt carefully at his incapacitated side, holding the power out for him to witness close up. The small yellow ball of light danced with undisturbed centricity as it hovered over the green limb.

Turning his head, Vegeta closed his eyes, not wanting his vision to confirm what the pit of his stomach already knew. The power was pushed millimetres under his nose, and he scrunched it up, as the smell of the pure energy still conveyed the subtle scent of Bulma's feminine body. Its power symbolized everything about his life, it was supposed to cement her forever to himself, just as it had to his mother. It was the tie that denoted a chosen rather than born royal, it was only everything he could give her, and what good had it done, nothing but lead her blindly to her own destruction.

He felt so angry, empty, but his anger wasn't just directed at the Ko-oni-jin but to himself as well. If only he had told her. He had wanted to everyday since the one that he introduced it to her system, but it was too much, how did one tell such a free light spirit that she was linked to such darkness. He was pure evil and she was everything that showed him up as the filth that he was, what his whole life had been. He had tainted her, thrown his own visage onto her with no thought to how it would affect her. It was yet another act of selfishness on his part. How was it possible for him to have made such an error?

He remembered the night that he had forced his power on her. For months he had been having those visions, they were a haze of the memories that the Ko-oni-jin's induction onto his system had repressed. Even the earliest of Frieza's culpability had been wavered by its sickening embrace, it eradicated all disassociated thought, repelled everything that it possibly could, making his conscience easy, undisturbed by feeling or principle. It left him cold, the very ruthless man that the Saiyan body willingly indulged in. It had pushed him to such uncontrollable anger, such simplistic bloodlust that it curbed any other conscious thought, leaving him to levels of susceptibility and rational thought that most only controlled when awake, and turned them into the very reality of his dreams.

Only when he slept did he accept, brood and rue over the destruction that had been inflicted by his own hand, and at that time fully indulge in the horror, the loss of life, and of the demise of his own childhood, that showed him how guilty he really truly was. When he awoke, the power flared back into being, fuelling that selfishness, ignoring the night visions and cementing the mindset that he was not culpable into an everyday mentality, masking all lamentations and making him as cold and unconcerned as ever.

Sleep was not his friend… it was his conscience, and when Bulma had intruded on his real life nightmares, she had found him at his most vulnerable. He could literally feel the salvation that her power, (small and insignificant that it was,) held for him, and in a waking stupor he had reached out to it, wanting to lay claim to anything that could help his slowly failing ethics.

Not soon enough the power was removed from its victorious spell before his nose, the Ko-oni-jin flashing him a grin that he himself had indulged in all too often. "You see Saiyan! You see it, what fate you have carved by your own hands!"

Vegeta's eyes flashed open, and even though he wanted nothing more than to wipe the smug grin off the Elders face, he had to ask, "What are you going to do now?"

"What, no threat, no anger? Aren't you going to tell me that I am the vilest creature you have ever beheld, but then again I guess it would only be a lie, because I am already looking at that incarnation. Your kind will pay Saiyan, now we have you exactly where we want you. Once this power is reintroduced to your system ours will be free to work. It will blanket all memories, letting us dictate you as we will."

"Over my dead body!" growled Vegeta, trying to instigate some sort of movement to back up his words. He managed to raise his head from the floor, only to have it pushed back down again by a kick to the forehead.

The power that was held in the Ko-oni-jin's hand was pushed violently into Vegeta's chest, a golden aura, sparking all around his unresisting body. He could feel it trying to absorb back into his system, tearing its way through the skin, burning and melding at the same time.

Gritting his teeth, Vegeta tried to repel it, but it was just too strong for him to cope with. Then in a flash the power was expelled, but not into his body. Vegeta had to blink a couple of times to understand what had just happened, as it seared over his chest, spiralling out of control and hitting the opposite wall. The Elder's face, meantime, had contorted into a pained grimace, falling with little elegance onto his stomach, pushing the air out, and winding him.

Slowly the creature pushed its small limbs from Vegeta's abdomen, turning its smoothed head, peering over its shoulder to get a glimpse at whatever had struck him. His eyes widened a fraction, and double eyelids blinked in surprise, "Kandai?" it questioned.

A burning of power blew the once stagnant air in a haze of ki. Ancient robes fluttered to its dictation, flapping mindlessly over aged limbs, "Back off Elder!" came the duo-tone reply.

"This is none of your concern Guardian. You cannot stop us, you are not allowed to!"

Kandai's whole body seemed to denote a mind made up; there was even a controlled amount of anger clawing its way over usually calm, stoic features. "You are telling me that I cannot interfere, and you are right, but I am not here in the capacity of your guardian, I am here as a peacekeeper, and to persuade you to think better of your actions."

His stare turned to Vegeta,

"I am not here for you either Ouji. I can heal you in a second if I wanted to, but I will not, because I know you will only use your new power for destruction. Here!"

A ball of energy condensed slowly on the old mans out-stretched palm. It was the faintest hint of purple and contorted the perspective where it lay in a haze of power. The energy languidly followed its direction, forming a bubble of near translucent power over restricted Saiyan limbs. "That will give you enough power to stand, nothing more."

Carefully the power absorbed itself into Vegeta's chest, its clear and fabricated form freeing him of the liquid energy of his captors, burning away their hold over his limbs. His breathing relaxed slightly and mind cleared, and slowly pushing himself up onto his elbows, his scowl looking even more dangerous than before, he spoke "I will have my revenge Kandai! No one fucks with Saiyan royalty and gets away with it! Help or not I will destroy their whole disgusting breed!" His voice was low and dangerous, but ultimately controlled.

Kandai simply closed his eyes, shaking his head in exasperation, before turning silently away, "Now to help your mate!"

Vegeta flinched at this statement, and hung his head low, "You are too late spirit." A torn white glove pointed to the direction he had last felt Bulma's energy, "She is already dead."

The guardian craned his head around to see where Vegeta was pointing. All too forcefully his mouth went dry and stomach turned as his eyes fell on what Vegeta had distinguished. His right knee fell with no thought of the pain it would inflict, as he tried desperately hard to resist the urge to throw up. The Saiyan was right. Bulma's body lay limp on the cold floor, twisted and very obviously contorted in death. Her face was calm when tempered with how mangled her body was, a ring of dark crimson circulating and matting with aquamarine strands of hair, her chest cavity ripped open from where the power had been removed.

Shakily Vegeta walked up to the guardian's side. His features were unmoving as he looked down on the once vibrant female and his chosen mate. The only indication that he felt anything in witnessing this was a contraction of his eyebrows. His voice, however, seemed to confirm the amount he was silently suffering, as it constricted. He laid a hand on the old mans shoulder to say in tones as dark and unforgiving as before, "You see how its stands now spirit. You are indeed here in official capacity. It is a Saiyan warrior's right to exact revenge over the death of his mate. I will fight the Ko-oni-jin to the death and you will officiate it as such… agreed?"

Kandai turned away, not wanting to see the small body of the female he had come to think of as a friend, distorted in death. He knew what he had to do. Vegeta was perfectly within his rights to demand such a contest. Reverently he bowed his head, "So it shall be." The words were rasped out as he secretly wished for the chance to take the Saiyan's place.

Nodding in appreciation Vegeta walked over to Bulma's body. He saw death on a regular basis and knew what had to be done even though it was now more daunting than ever. He crouched down by her side, only just controlling the muscle spasms that pulled at his cheeks and threatened to betray the emotion he would not let surface. In languid dejection his hand moved to close eyelids over the extinguished brilliance of cerulean eyes. Not caring who was watching he pressed her bloodied body against his chest, his eyes not looking at her, but staring hauntingly into nothingness, their obsidian orbs preoccupied with a mixture of barely controlled rage and… grief. This was the final time he would hold her, as he fought to find the courage to do what was required.

Ignoring the beginnings of moisture that threatened to overthrow his composure, he stood, Bulma's body falling back to the cold floor. He turned to face the Ko-oni-jin his teeth gritted, a vein thumping murder on his forehead, "You will be next!" he snarled, his right arm dropping back, the power building as high as his depleted energy reserves could muster, a beam of concentrated heat launching purposefully from his hand, cremating Bulma's lifeless body on impact.

Kandai walked up behind Vegeta, "When did you wish to begin?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

The wish to exact revenge burnt with an uncontrollable passion, the like of which not even Vegeta's ego-filled thirst for ultimate power could have created, as the vision of her battered body still made his stomach twist. His eyes glinted as his mind was made up, "Cure us both," he demanded, "and we will return to the stadium. I want the whole of Vegeta-sei to see this creature humbled!"

Kandai agreed and turned to the Elder, "Ko-oni-jin Elder, you have committed a crime against Saiyan royalty and a duel to the death will take place, you have an hour to prepare, then we will meet at the Mestalia stadium."

The Elder gritted his teeth in anger, "This is ridiculous! I will do no such thing! How many lives have been lost at the hand of the Saiyan's and we were not given such an opportunity for revenge!"

Kandai closed his eyes and dipped his head, "You never asked… besides, contrary to what you may imagine, to my omnipresent mind, Prince Vegeta has not killed any of your kind."

Vegeta's lip curled, "An inexcusable lapse!"

All he got from Kandai was a, "you really aren't helping" look, before he finished by saying "Vegeta cannot be held accountable for his ancestors actions."

"This is ridiculous! Do not cross me in this Kandai. You know even your pious powers are insufficient to keep mine at bay!" spat the Elder.

"Then you are willing to go against me, against my authority and subject your people to whatever that may entail?"

"If that's what it…" he was stopped mid-sentence by a similarly aged and withered green limb landing determinedly on his shoulder. He turned only to see the face of his Emissary clouded in concern and regret, shaking slowly from side to side.

Grudgingly the Elder bowed his head in forced veneration, his teeth gritting in disgust, "Fine!" The words were insufficient to express his loathing of the scheme, but ultimately it didn't matter.

He had been so close, but he couldn't ignore the guardian's words without losing the support of his followers. Not being able to hide the mixture of resolve and anger that rebounded through his ribcage, the small leader almost tore the hand from his shoulder and slunk off into an adjacent cavern, to take blind fury out on its carved stonewalls.

As the explosions rebounded in the distance Kandai looked to Vegeta, "Are you wanting to leave now?" he asked.

Training his eyes up to the robed figure, Vegeta simply growled, "I wish to stay here a little longer, I would appreciate being left alone!"

The guardian simply bowed and retreated, leaving Vegeta to his own thoughts.

"You have to willingly want to end it."

"You are right, as usual Bulma." He whispered, slowly turning his head to look at where the Ko-oni-jin had retreated to, "I will have my revenge!" he snarled, "and retribution will be sweet."

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White sheets bunched up as fingers reflexively tightened around their soft brilliance. Lungs tried to suck in oxygen as though they had never had the chance to breathe before, the delicate body of a human female, raising and writhing as the game relinquished its hold over her body. Fingernails continued to claw at the fabric as vision was blurred, hearing impaired just as it had been before. Only this time there was one major difference... the pain!

She had never felt anything like it. Even when the Ko-oni-jin Elder had been draining the energy from her body it had been relatively bearable to that which coursed through her chest now. Before it had been the games electrically induced pain, but this wasn't the least bit artificial, it was true pain, the kind that you couldn't even scream through, that no amount of movement could alleviate, and which refused to dull or relent for a moment.

The haze of confusion passed sooner than Bulma thought it would, as the half colors that her eyes picked up, blurred into a reassuring blackness, the pain gone and nothing more substantial able to commit itself than the woollen, cotton fantasies of and unconscious dreamland.

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Dr Brief looked down with outright terror at the visage of his daughter. She had been detached from the game for over five minutes and there seemed to be no improvement to her condition.

Goku was standing at the head of the bed trying to restrain her body as much as possible, the worry shining through his stare as the doctor approached. "Is there really no other way?" he asked, his face changing to almost white as he saw the needle in the old mans hands.

"Would you rather her be conscious through the pain?"

"No of course not, but how are we supposed to help them if we don't know what's going on?"

"We will just have to find other ways… ok" He quickly slipped the needle into Bulma's arm, releasing the sedative that would numb her body and protect her from her own suffering. "You can let her go now." He affirmed, seeing his daughter's shoulders sump.

"So what did you have in mind… please tell me there will be no more needles."
"No more needles." He avowed, "How's your energy holding up there Goku?"

"Ok, it isn't taking too much toll on me at the moment, but every minute he spends in there, the more support he'll need. I would say at this rate I'll run out of energy in less than five hours."

An alarm sounds in the background and both turn to look at it, "Looks like his energy level has dropped again, you know what you have to do."

Goku's eyebrows pinched together as his head nodded in a silent understanding. With no further communication he turned to the gurney on which Vegeta rested. "Time for your medication Vegeta!"

The mild mannered warrior carefully laid two hands on Vegeta's rib cage, the palms glowing a fresh white with energy. As soon as the power met with flesh and blood its very fabric was altered. It fed through the skin, the Saiyan no Ouji's body instinctively reaching out for its temporary cure. "That's it… not too much." Goku cooed, letting the energy dissipate, "Too much power right now is bad for you."

At the other side of the laboratory Dr Briefs was sitting at his computer terminal, the screen alight with coloured writing as it worked meticulously through the data inputted from Bulma's adjusted scouter. With vision wavering and fatigue setting in, his glasses were removed for the luxury and relief of a lab-coat run along the forehead.

There was something about this power running through both their bodies that he just couldn't get his head around, and now it was as inexplicable as ever as the portion that had been present in Bulma was now completely eradicated. Surely it wasn't possible for that much power to be extracted without them noticing? He truly believed that there was something going on in the game that was affecting both of them, albeit in different ways, and that the power they had shared seemed to be a contributing factor.

He could now, however, manage to track Vegeta's movements within the game, as he recognised the Saiyan's character traits though a train of concentric digits. They were flashed through the text in conjunction with the scenery he was involved in, making it fairly easy for him to keep in the location of activity. The good Doctor had managed to decipher most of the code, but there were still a few that remained a mystery to him, more especially one of the codes that seemed to have been in a pretty close conjunction with Vegeta's for as long as he had been watching his movements.

If pressed he would have sworn that it was another game player and that the power this player possessed was countering acting against the Saiyan's, but that was sheer lunacy. It had a very erratic pattern with similar characteristics, which related to that displayed by both Vegeta and Bulma, when they had been in together, but it certainly wasn't another participant.

Virtual Reality research, design and development was not something he was completely up to speed with, his expertise and fortune having sprung from a more industrial quarter, but he could not be considered a true scientist if he didn't keep up with the latest developmental technologies. It was entirely plausible that one of the beings simulated in this game was developing some cognisance of its true situation.

This theory had been brought up several times by leading games experts as they fought to come up with the next new blockbuster game. Computer programming had become so complex that most game code was encrypted with an ability to learn and adapt the longer it was running. With technology as advanced as the Saiyan's possessed, then this theory could be about to turn out proven fact.

As fascinating as all this was though, it didn't really help. He had tried to alter this regenerative code before and failed miserably, about all he could do was change the scenery, but that wasn't much help… or was it!

"Aiyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Goku nearly leapt a mile in the air as the shriek rebounded and echoed around the small room. Neatly turning the reaction mid-air he landed in a perfect stance ready to attack whatever could scare the old man so much. His face fell from its seriousness in an instant, and (despite the situation) his chest pounded to the beat of roaring laughter as he watched the Doctor's aged limbs doing cartwheels and mini celebration dances on the sanitized tiles, yelping at the top of the lungs! "I've got it! I've got it! I know how I can get Vegeta to realize what's going on. I can't believe I didn't think of it before! It's so easy!" He stopped, his breathing laboured, but the smile not dulling from his face.

"Goku my boy, go get the wife to cook you a big meal. I have to work on something and I need no distractions! Come on… food time!"

Not given the chance, and not having the inclination or willpower to refuse, Goku quickly ushered himself from the room. All at once Dr Briefs was left to the luminescence of his computer screen, skimming through streams of data, trying to find the code he would need for his final alterations.

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A/N - *growls at her puter* Yep my keyboard is slowly dying on me and I haven't got the money at the minute to replace it, meaning this chapter was a nightmare to write. I swear the damn thing is possessed! It seems to take delight in missing letters and spaces when I type and sticking the shift key down, so I end up writing half a paragraph in capitals without even realising it! Its evil, EVIL I TELL YOU!

^-^;; Well that's my rant over with lol… I hope you enjoyed this chapter nonetheless.

I just wanted to clear one point up before I go. I have received a couple of complaints saying that I don't update very often, which I whole-heartedly confess to. That is why I have a mailing list, so I can make sure you all know when I next add a chapter. If you want to be added then email me at ember_chan@hotmail.com but please specify that it is to join my mailing list, as I more than often ignore emails that are blank.