Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Wish For The Past ❯ Rise and Fall of Emperor Pilaf - Part Two ( Chapter 62 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

MAP! Map, map, who has the map? And what do you need a map for? Why, to help you visualize the layout of the capsule house! I've had this map for a while, to help me visualize what I'm writing about and to keep locations straight, but until now I didn't know if I'd need to let readers see the map. I think, now, that I do, so here it is.

___[K]_
[B] [P] [G] <c> [ L ]
[b]================[____ _]
[g] [T] [V] [R] | |

Crudely done (it looks a lot better on paper) but sufficient for my needs. [B]= Bardock's room. [P]= Bathroom (p for potty, because b was already taken). [G]= Goten's room. <c>= closet and heating/cooling equipment. [K]= kitchen. [b]= Bulma's room. [g]= Goku's room. [T]= Trunks's room. [V]= Vegeta's room. [R]= Radditz's room. [L]= living room. Hope that makes things a bit clearer.

Thanks to Frozenflower, ChibiCasey, and Shinka (and anyone else I might have forgotten to mention) for their help as beta readers and sounding boards. I couldn't have done it without you!

Disclaimer: Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect royalties on DBZ ('cause I don't own it!)

The house was a disaster. There was no other way to put it. Complete and utter disaster. Couch cushions had been carelessly tossed on the floor, the couches themselves tipped forward so their wooden frames showed, like the bare ribs of a beast that had been gutted and left to rot in the sun. The broken remains of lamps, jars, and vases lay mixed in with the scattered books and magazines that had once sat proudly in place on the shelves and tables within the room. Strewn across the floor and furniture were the shirts, pants, gis, dresses - pretty much all the clothing obtained from the trip to the Orange Star City mall - that had once resided in a few small capsules that had been left on the coffee table. Not one single thing had been left untouched in the wake of whoever had entered the house in their absence, and this was only the first room.

"What... what happened?" Bulma stammered as she gaped through the open door at the wreckage of the living room. Not exactly the most intelligent question, since it was fairly obvious what had happened, but the young girl's mind was too shocked to come up with something better. Behind her, the two chibis stood with similar expressions of dazed disbelief on their faces, staring at the scene with wide eyes while trying to comprehend the situation.

"It looks like someone picked up the house and shook it," Goten commented naively, the black haired demi Saiyan already stepping forward to peer curiously at the mess. Setting his teddy bear on the floor, he bent over to retrieve a fallen shirt and brushed off a few small shards from a broken lamp it had been sitting next to. He looked at it for a moment, then sighed and dropped it back to the floor so he could retrieve the teddy bear. Hugging the bear to his chest, he looked up at Bulma and asked, "Would somebody really do that?"

"Goten, you dummy. Why would anyone want to pick a house up and shake it?" Trunks replied irritably. "It looks more like someone was searching for something and ransacked the house while looking for it!" Growling to himself, the older demi Saiyan angrily kicked a couch cushion across the room and scowled at everything in general. He was more than angry at the situation. He was furious! Someone had come in his capsule house, wrecked everything in immediate sight and maybe the rest of the house as well, had probably found whatever it was they were after, and there hadn't been a single thing that he could do about it! He was a Prince of the Saiyan race and he had become the victim of some common, ordinary burglar!

"Who would be out in the middle of a forest this far from the nearest city?" asked Bulma, a pensive frown on her face as she surveyed the damage. Deciding to try get a better idea of how extensive the damage was, the eleven year old girl began to pick her way across the room toward the hall where all the bedrooms were. The only other exits from the living room were the front door and the entrance to the kitchen, which probably wasn't very high on the priority list of a thief.

Looking a little forlorn, Goten followed after the blue haired girl. "What would anyone want from us? We don't have anything to steal besides the house, and they didn't take that."

"Unless they were after the dragonballs," Bulma stated soberly, finally reaching the other side of the room. "It could very well be that someone else has made a tracking device to find the dragonballs, which would lead them to this house despite being so far out of the way."

"But why didn't Bardock or one of the others do anything to stop them?!" a frustrated Trunks growled, kicking another cushion aside as he stalked after his two friends. "No one in this time is strong enough to stop Bardock, Vegeta, Radditz, and maybe not even Goku! Especially not all four of them!"

A funny look crossed over Goten's face as Trunks's words sank in and he abruptly stopped walking. Curious as to what he was doing, Bulma and Trunks paused to look at him, wondering if something was wrong. Opening her mouth to voice this concern, Bulma was cut off when the eight year old's face suddenly drained of all color, his eyes widening in alarm. "I can't sense them!" he yelped, twisting his head around as though searching for something. "Bulma, Trunks, I can't sense any of them! Grandpa, Goku, Vegeta, Uncle Radditz! They're all gone!" Spurred into action by the urgency of his discovery, Goten didn't even wait for a reaction from the others before sprinting past them and disappearing into the first room he came to. Only a few moments passed before he zipped out of Radditz's room and into the next room on the same side of the hall - Vegeta's room - his whole demeanor quickly becoming more frantic with each empty room he searched through. "Trunks! Help me find them! They have to be here somewhere!!"

Apparently, Goten's panic was contagious, because worry and fear quickly began to gnaw at the minds of Trunks and Bulma. Chibi mother and future son exchanged looks of uncertainty, then nodded and split up, Trunks going down the hall to the rooms of the left side that Goten hadn't gotten to yet and Bulma turning around to make her way toward the kitchen. "I'll check the kitchen and around the house while you two check the bedrooms and the bathroom," she called after the boys, feeling the need to say something to make their search feel a little more organized, instead of the frantic and haphazard hunt it would otherwise be. That said, she quickly hurried across the ransacked living room and into the kitchen, pausing only to check under or behind objects that might possibly conceal someone's body.

In the mean time, Goten and Trunks were systematically searching through every room, Goten going through the rooms on the left side of the hall and Trunks on the right. They only stayed in each room long enough to determine that none of the four missing people was in it, then moved on to the next room. Each room was the same as the last, clothes dropped all over the place, mattresses pulled off the beds, lamps broken, chairs knocked over, and random paraphernalia scattered everywhere, testifying of the thoroughness of the thieves that had torn the place apart looking for the dragonballs - or whatever it was that might have been their objective.

So far, neither of the boys had needed any light to see by, since each room had a window, and neither of them had taken the time to bother turning on any of the lights. However, after searching Goten's room, Trunks made his way to the next room down the hall - the bathroom, and the only room in the house without a window - and suddenly found that there was insufficient light to see anything in the room clearly.. He located the switch to turn the lights on and flipped it, but to his surprise and confusion this had no effect. The lights remained off. Jiggling the switch a few times to see if maybe it was a loose wire, the nine year old demi eventually came to the conclusion that he'd have to search the bathroom without the aid of light. Unless...

"Trunks, you're a genius," he murmured to himself with a small smirk, holding up one hand to form a small but brilliant ki ball that illuminated the whole room more than well enough to see by, casting stark shadows that shifted when he moved around the room. Puddles of water near the toilet and in the middle of the floor indicated that the bathroom had been used at least once, and by someone who hadn't bothered to clean up the mess he'd made, while he, Goten, and Bulma had been out shopping. Glancing in the tub to see if maybe someone was in it, he found that while there was no one in it, it was still full of water from someone's bath. Upon closer examination, Trunks was alarmed to realize that the bath water was a pale red color and that there was a thin reddish ring around the edge of the tub. Young as he was, the nine year old Saiyan was a fighter. He could still remember the time he and Goten had gone off to fight Majin Buu as Gotenks, only to come back in defeat with a bruised and bloody body. After they had split back into their separate forms, their mothers had cleaned and bandaged their wounds, then lectured them about recklessness. He remembered that the water that had been used to rinse the blood from their cuts and scrapes had also turned a pale red, just like the water in the tub was now.

The conclusion was inescapable. Someone had cleaned a bloody wound in this bath tub - and judging by how much blood appeared to be in the water, it had been a pretty bad injury.

A chill ran down Trunks's spine at the realization of just what his discovery might mean. Someone had been injured, but who? And how badly? Was it one of the people that had remained at the capsule house while he, Goten, and Bulma had gone to the store? If so, how had that person been injured? Maybe a simple sparring injury? Or was the person or people who had broken into the house strong enough to actually do serious damage to a full blooded Saiyan? Maybe one of the burglars had been injured while subduing the house's inhabitants, and this was his blood Trunks was seeing. Whoever had been injured, how badly was he, or she, hurt? Was someone dead, or dying? Or was it a minor wound that had bled a lot?

"Okay, that's enough," he suddenly snapped at himself. "I can't tell what happened here, and it might not even be important, so I need to stop worrying uselessly about it and quit jumping to conclusions. The important thing is to find the others, or some hint as to what happened to them. There'll be time to think about it later." Taking a deep breath to help calm himself down, the nine year old boy began to scrutinize every detail of the bathroom, hoping for a hint as to what had happened. There wasn't much. Puddles on the floor, a damp towel lying crumpled off to one side, water droplets covering the seat of the toilet... maybe they were clues, or maybe they were just indications that the last person to use the bathroom had been pretty sloppy about cleaning up after himself. A green shirt that was too small for Bardock or Radditz hung on the towel rack, too clean to have been used, so Trunks guessed that Vegeta or Goku had put it there with the intention of wearing it soon. Probably Goku, then, since green wasn't really Vegeta's color of preference. "So either Goku was the one who got hurt and cleaned up in the bath tub, or it's just a coincidence that he left his shirt there. I can't assume either one, though, not unless there's more evidence elsewhere in the house."

When another glance around the bathroom failed to reveal anything new, Trunks allowed the ki in his hand to dissipate and quickly walked out of the room. He needed to keep searching for signs of the others, then find Goten and see if he had found anything in one of the other rooms. "Right then... on to Bardock's room."

Bulma shook her head at the mess the thieves had left behind in the kitchen. The cupboards had been emptied of their contents, most of which had gone straight on the floor, and bits of half eaten food lay everywhere. Obviously the culprits had decided to snack on the goodies they stumbled across, since Bulma knew it couldn't have been the fault of any of the people who had been left at home. Bardock, Goku, Vegeta, and Radditz were all Saiyans, and Saiyans simply did not waste food. A search of the kitchen wasn't entirely fruitless, since it did reveal that there was more than one burglar involved. At some point during the search, a bag of flour had been upended on the floor, leaving a broad pile of white powder that had been stepped in on multiple occasions by the vandals, leaving distinct sets of boot prints behind. One set was made from the large, clunky boots mostly likely worn by a male, and the other was smaller, slimmer, and somehow more "feminine." Whether there were more than two people involved in this crime, Bulma couldn't say, but she was certain that there had been two people in the kitchen at least.

"Nothing else to find here," she murmured to herself, kicking at a fallen cookie jar with vague amusement. Somehow it hadn't surprised her that the cookies were all gone and that only crumbs remained as mute testament of their messy demise. "Guess I ought to check around the outside of the house now."

Exiting the kitchen and traipsing back across the living room to the door that led outside, Bulma's thoughts drifted back to Goten's moment of panic. She felt pretty proud of herself for keeping a cool head and choosing to search by herself instead of following mindlessly after the two boys like a lost sheep, allowing her shock to rule her intellect. She was too old for that sort of behavior, and this way they'd cover more ground in less time, though it meant that she'd be leaving the two little Saiyans on their own to discover and interpret any clues they found. Without the benefit of her brilliant and observant mind, they might miss something important, but that was just something she had to risk. Speed was essential, and besides, Trunks seemed to be pretty bright, despite the fact that Vegeta was his father. He probably gets his intelligence from his mother, whoever she is.

Once outside of the capsule house, Bulma began to examine her surroundings in earnest, even as she turned to her right and started walking slowly around the building. Pausing each time she passed a bedroom window, she carefully scrutinized the window sill and the ground beneath it for any signs of either the intruders or the missing Saiyans. Nothing so far, but she didn't let that get her discouraged. After all, sometimes no news was good news. The fact that she hadn't discovered any bodies certainly wasn't anything to cry over!

By the time she had nearly completed her circuit around the house, Bulma was ready to assume that she wouldn't find anything out here. She'd found a set of indentations that had probably been made by an air plane - and a pretty old one, considering how the landing gear had to have been constructed in order to make those kinds of marks - accompanied by some faint foot prints in the dirt, but aside from these discoveries her search had turned up fruitless thus far. She hadn't even been able to tell how many people had gotten out of the plane! If only they'd stepped in a clear patch of dirt or mud, rather than the mainly grassy turf that made up most of the clearing the house was situated in. Sighing, the eleven year old girl passed by the kitchen window and turned the corner...

...and planted her foot squarely on the face of an unconscious Radditz, heel slipping into his open mouth as the toe of her shoe gooshed his cheek.

"Uwah!!" Bulma squawked in alarm as she lost her balance on the uneven and unstable footing of Radditz's face, arms pinwheeling in a frantic attempt to keep herself from falling. Alas, her efforts were futile, and the blue haired girl toppled backward to land painfully on her butt. "Ooff! Ow!" Rubbing her sore behind, she glared at whatever it was she'd stepped on that had caused her to lose her balance and fall, only to shoot her eyebrows up in surprise when she discovered the culprit was none other than one of the four people she'd been searching for: Radditz.

Now, Radditz might have been unconscious due to having his nervous system overloaded by a pulse of electricity generated by Pilaf's Thing, but there are just some things that no one can sleep through. Having someone step on your face, prying your jaw open with the dirty heel of her shoe and crushing the flesh or your cheek with her toes... that's just not something you can sleep through, no matter what the circumstances.

"NNNGGHGGGHACK!!!!" Eyes snapping open in pain and surprise, the unfortunate teenager jerked his head away from the cause of his pain and bolted upright. With one hand tenderly holding his injured jaw and the other frantically trying to wipe the dirt and grass off his tongue that had been deposited by Bulma's shoe, he uttered a few choice and unrepeatable phrases that clearly expressed just how he felt about the situation. "Why the hell don't you watch where you're going!?" he shouted angrily, pinning Bulma with a glare so sharp she almost felt like she'd been skewered.

A torrent of emotions swirled through Bulma's mind, one after another in a quick progression, leaving her feeling somewhat lightheaded. First shock and surprise at finding Radditz alive and well and... well... under foot. Literally. Then embarrassment - after all, she had just stepped on him! Anger was soon to follow. How dare he yell at her for what was a complete accident! If he didn't want to be trampled, then he shouldn't sleep on the ground like that! Finally... joy. Pure and simple joy flooded through her and washed away the other emotions, joy and relief that Radditz was alive, which might indicate that the others were also alive, that there might not be any dead bodies after all.

"Sorry about that," she hastily apologized, standing up and brushing the dirt and leaves from her clothes. "It's just that I wasn't exactly expecting to find you lying on the ground like that." Arching one delicate blue eyebrow in puzzlement, she placed her hands on her hips and waited for the Saiyan to get up as well. "Mind telling me why you chose such a strange bed?"

The fifteen year old glowered darkly at the young girl. "I was not sleeping on the ground! I was knocked unconscious!" he growled angrily. Bulma got the impression that he wasn't so much angry at her as he was angry at the circumstances that led him to the undignified position of being under her foot.

"Knocked unconscious?" she asked, surprised. "Did you see who got you? Are you hurt?"

"That's just it." Radditz folded his arms with a look of confusion and frustration etched onto his features. "I didn't see any attacker, didn't hear any movement, didn't feel any blow. I was coming home to check up on lunch, and suddenly the air seemed to charge with electricity. My skin was prickling, every hair on my body was standing on end... and then everything went black. Next thing I know, I've got your foot in my mouth." That last bit earned Bulma another glare, which she ignored in favor of analyzing the information she'd just gotten.

"Charged with electricity?" she mused to herself, brow furrowed in concentration. Her mind was racing with the possibilities and explanations that would produce such a result, sorting, examining, and discarding theories with a speed that many computers would envy. "Come on, I need to check something out." Without another word, the young genius hurried to the entrance of the capsule house, leaving Radditz to follow or not as he chose. Curious as to just what the hell was going on, Radditz chose, of course, to follow her.

Once inside the house, Bulma swiftly maneuvered her way to the panel on the wall that controlled the lights and flicked a switch. Nothing happened. Seemingly not surprised by this, she grabbed an overturned chair and placed it below the panel, climbed on it to more easily reach the controls, and started prying the cover plate off. That done, she began to examine the circuitry in the walls, poking her finger around inside the mess of wires and circuit boards. Eventually, she put it all back together with an expression of grim satisfaction. "I thought as much. The circuitry's fried."

"Care to tell me what that means?" Radditz asked coolly, leaning against a wall. He was burning with questions as to what had happened to the house, why everything was torn apart, where the others were, and so forth, but he was aware of no need to hurry, and so was willing to take things one question at a time.

"The wiring in this house is pretty sturdy stuff. I should know; my father designed it. It'd take an extremely strong burst of electricity to short it out like this, not to mention probably every other electrical appliance in the house. And if a charge of energy that strong were to hit a living being... well, my guess is that was how you were knocked out. Your nervous system was overloaded, your brain shut down, and," she clapped her hands once to punctuate her words, "you were unconscious. That's my theory, anyway."

"Makes sense," he grudgingly grunted, still somewhat sore about being trod upon. Eyeing the chaos in the room with distaste, he hazarded a guess. "So the person or people who launched this attack knocked all of us who were here unconscious, then proceeded to trash the place?" At Bulma's nod, he continued. "Do we know what they were after?"

"Well, we're not certain yet, but-"

"Yes, we are," Trunks interrupted his chibi mother, stepping into the room from the hallway, followed by a very distraught Goten. Making a visible effort to maintain a calm and steady voice, an effort that nearly succeeded in masking the faint quaver in his voice, the purple haired boy continued. "Bardock, Goku, and Vegeta aren't anywhere in the house, and all of the dragonballs are missing." He reached into his pockets with both hands and pulled out two objects, holding them out for everyone to see. "And they didn't take the Dragon Radar with them."

In his trembling hands, Trunks held the two silver rimmed, green screened radars, one from this timeline, and one from the future. It didn't take a genius to figure out what this meant, though. Bardock, Goku, and Vegeta were missing, but if they had just gone to look for another dragonball and had happened to take the other three with them, then they would have taken the radar. Likewise, if the balls had been stolen and the three Saiyans had decided to track down the thieves, they would have needed the Dragon Radar to do so. All that was left, then, was that when they thieves had attacked, they had taken the dragonballs, and everyone they had found inside the house.

"Goten and I have both tried to sense their ki." The facade of calm control was slipping, the nine year old's voice cracking with worry. "We can't sense them anywhere. They might be unconscious, or injured badly... or..." He trailed off, unable to bring himself to say the words. He might as well have said them out loud, though, for everyone in the room could hear the unspoken words whisper in their minds like a dread portent of the future:

Or they might be dead.

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