Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ With A Jagged Edge ❯ Nightmares...Waking Dreams ( Chapter 6 )

Days faded into weeks, Tayven focused on her training, finding her teacher tougher than nails and twice as hard to fathom, although his method of teaching often left her close to tears, she could not deny that she felt as if she were gaining something she'd never even known was missing. It was an odd experience. At night, she was too tired to dream and of that she was more than thankful.

The old house still stood where she'd first stumbled across it, lonesome and brooding, as it it merely waited for her return. She never had any intention of returning. Tayven would stay far from it had the choice been her's. But, like most things in her life, she was rarely given the choice when fate decides to interfere.

She gazed around, not certain where she was. Looking down at herself, she saw that she was dressed in the more modest tee-shirt and shorts Bulma had bought for her that she'd gone to bed in. Confusion and fear sped her heart as she felt the cool ground beneath bare feet and the breeze tossling her hair about her shoulders. What was going on? She wondered, glancing back towards where she could just make out the roofs of Capsule Corp's main buildings. Where...? She paused when she heard it. Laughter. Children's laughter.

A chill ran up and down her spine as the clouds moved aside the moon momentarily to reveal to her the faded white picket fence. Her hands reached out, unbidden, and touched the fence, still hearing that odd, broken, high-pitched laughter.

I wonder what's so funny, She thought with that part of her brain that remains stand-offish even when the rest of herself was terrified. Okay, Tay, snap out of it. This is just a dream. Wake up now.

She pinched herself to wake herself up but nothing happened. Save for the pain in her arm where she'd pulled roughly at her skin. "Ouch...jeez...I've never felt pain in a dream before..."

That's because your not dreaming, Tayven.

She spun around, a scream caught in her throat, falling into the fighting stance Vegeta'd taught her automatically, fists balled and her body tense. She glanced around, feeling for anything threatening. All she could hear was the pounding of her heart between her ears as her breath came out in sharp takes. Even the laughter had died off, as if waiting.

"Who's there?!" She cried, "Show yourself!"

No need to shout, Tayven. The voice was inside her head, she realized, blinking, and

yet...yet it seemed she could hear it aloud as well, it was more than unnerving, I'm right here. I've always been here, had you the mind to realize it. We have been waiting for you.

"W-why...?" She gulped, righting herself, her body no longer poised to attack, how can you attack something you can't see or feel? But no less tense than before, "Who are you?"

They appeared around her, suddenly, unsolicited, drawing her into the center of their circle. Tayven felt a surge of dread mixed with a feeling of history repeating itself. Just before the link could be completed, a vision rose before her, inbetween the children. She gasped at what she saw, cringing away in horror.

The woman before her smiled, yet her eyes remained hard, glittering green jewels, her auburn hair frizzy upon her head and her bulk towered over the girl, who'd suddenly forgotten that she was seventeen years old and not a little girl any more.

This is the image we have pulled from your mind, The voice continued, funny, Tayven thought, it did not sound either male or female. A curious mix of both. It is an image that inspires the most...emotion...from you. Why is that?

Tayven was beyond hearing. She flinched away from her mother's large hand, tears streaking down her cheek, backing away slowly. Her backside came near to one of the children's linked arms and something that felt like a jolt of electricity shot up her spine, sending her back to the center and sprawling her at the image of her mother's feet. The woman picked up her feet before Tayven could touch them, she saw that the image was even dressed in a flowering house-coat and slippers with a cigarette burn in one toe as she often dressed around the house when Tayven was little.

"Get up off your knees, you filthy little creature!" The woman screamed in Tayven's mother's horse voice, "You pathetic girl! Can't you do anything right? I told you to clean that disgusting room of yours, Tayven! I should be made a saint for putting up with you, you know? Your father thinks you hang the moon, doesn't he? He doesn't know the truth, does he, girl? He doesn't know how stupid and ugly you really are..."

"No!" Tayven cried, tears blinding her as she curled upon the ground, her body racked with sobs, "Mamma, please! Don't say that! Don't say that...I love you, Mamma, I love you..."

"You love me?! How pathetic." The woman yelled, screaming down at Tayven's trembling form, "Look at you! Too scared to stand up and face me! How did I get blessed with such a daughter? It's enough to make me puke! You hear me! Look at me when I talk to you!"

Tayven looked up, reluctantly, sniffling, feeling her heart cracking as it had so many years before. "Mamma...please...Why?" She cried, not understanding how her mother could be so cruel when she had always done her best to make her mother proud and love her, "I don't understand..."

"Of course you don't," Her mother said, glaring, "Because your too stupid to understand. I thought we went over this before."

"I'm not stupid, Mamma!" Tayven cried, covering her head with her face and sobbing, she did not see the children drawing nearer, reaching out, starting to tap into her hidden reserves of strengh, her essence, and begin to pull the power from her. She felt a tingling sensation at the pit of her stomach and realized, belatedly, what was happening.

But she could not break free of the nightmare which placed her in her six-year-old self's form facing her livid mother. For her, everthing faded out and became smaller until the world began and ended with herself curled upon the ground mentally trying to dodge her mother's posion-tipped verbal arrows. Arrows that perced to the heart more often than not.

~*~*~

"Mmm..." Bulma rolled over in bed. It was late, but the light from outside and the stillness around her, "Vegeta...what's wrong?" She realized he wasn't asleep, but laying beside her, his breath held, body rigid. He let out the breath he'd been holding and sprang out of bed so fast she hardly saw his body move from the soft mattress to the floor.

"What?"

"Go back to sleep." He said to her, pulling on his clothes. In a hurry, Bulma saw. She did not obey him, instead she got up as well and reached for her robe hanging on the bedroom door. She had barely got her arms into the sleeves when he rushed by and sped down the stairs faster than she could keep up. She called out to him, but he either didn't hear or choose to ignore her. Probably the latter, she thought, sitting down on the edge of the bed, a feeling of trepidation entering her chest.

~*~*~

Damn that girl! He thought as he took off into the air, feeling the rise of her ki as a buzzing in his head, the nearer she was the louder the buzzing, Didn't she have enough sense not to go wandering around after everyone's asleep? Maybe she was sleepwalkng...

He came to a stop near the roof of the old victorian house, his eyes narrowing dangerously at what he saw. Tayven was there all right, of that he'd had little doubt. He could see her from his height, looking like a small curled little girl huddled into herself on the ground, shivering. For a moment, he thought she was alone, but he blinked as several sources of light began to form and glow around her, one large light-source standing over her, seeming to mock and torment her.

Tayven's shuddering voice rose upwards where his keen saiyan ears caught it easily. She whispered; "Stop it...please...no...it's not true...It's not true..."

Without thinking, Vegeta dove downwards and formed a ki ball between his palms, letting

the power form and grow, adding his anger to the mix. Screaming a gutteral cry, he let it fly towards the largest of the things threatening the girl, expecting to see her thrown back as the blast exploded on contact with her. Instead, the creature, whom he could see now was shaped vaugly like a female, a rather large lumpish female, laughed as his blast was dissolved into her middle as if it did no more than tickle her.

"What?!" He cried, "How dare you!?"

Tayven was vaugly aware that something was going on, but she could feel the pressure placed on her by the image of her mother, who had somehow gotten stronger, she didn't know how, and could not look up. She heard tittering all around her and Vegeta's voice as if from far off, yelling words at those surrouding her that would have made her ears red had she not heard them a million times all ready growing up and on the streets.

Vegeta, dark brows drawn over eyes that flashed like a thunderstorm, felt the ki build up inside himself as he launched a series of blasts too fast for the human eye to follow at the woman standing over Tayven. He was brought up short as, once again, she seemed to pull his blasts into herself as if they were nothing. Frustrated, he flew downwards and swung his fist in the direction of her face.

Tayven choose that moment to look up. She saw Vegeta's face, wild with fury, his fist flying out towards her mother's face...no...she shook her head...that wasn't her mother...going right through as if she wasn't even there. The woman laughing at him. Vegeta growing more and more angry. He hated being laughed at.

Tayven didn't know what to do, but she didn't want to just run away. There must be something she could do to help...but the woman was looking at her again, pointing. Tayven ducked her head and looked at her feet, ashamed for no reason she could name. Her mother's looks and pointing finger could always make her feel that way.

"W-what are you?!" She heard Vegeta cry as he panted from his efforts at inflicting harm, any harm. "No...it can't be...y-your dead..."

Tayven snapped her head up just in time to see Vegeta backing away, still airbound, from the woman who looked like her mother to her. She'd never seen Vegeta look so...frightened? Was he scared? No, it didn't seem possible...and yet...he was looking at the creature before him as if it were something from his worst nightmare. "Your dead! Your dead!" He kept screaming, his face red and his body trembling, "This isn't real!"

Tayven couldn't understand what he was yelling about as she was sure he'd never seen her mother before in his life and the last time she knew, her mother was alive and well. What was he going on about then?

"Vegeta! Tayven!" Tayven looked and saw Bulma rushing over, she was wearing a pink bathrobe and slippers, her blue hair tossled. She screamed; "Break away from it! Listen to me! You have to fight back! It's just an illusion, Vegeta! It's not real! Tayven, come away from there!"

"I...I can't!" Tayven sniffled, calling, "Mamma will punish me if I'm bad..."

"I have to kill him!" Vegeta cried, powering up, "I have to make sure he stays dead!"

"Tayven, she's not your mother!" Bulma cried, trying desperatly to get through to them. She tried to push her way into the circle, but was thrown backwards by a force stronger than she could bear; "Vegeta! Stop! Listen to me! You have to get away from there!"

Tayven felt as if someone had placed spiderwebs inside her head and over her eyes. She struggled to clear them away and pulled herself up from the ground. She looked down at herself, saw that her body wasn't a little girl's and became confused. What was going on? Where was Mamma's vase? The one she'd broken...

No...wait...She stopped, realization striking her like a blow across the face. That happened years ago! She wasn't six years old anymore, dammit! Anger flashed across her features as she thought of how easily she'd been played. She looked up and saw Vegeta had almost finished powering up, a blue-ish aura cracked around him and stirred anything in it's path into a kind of windstorm, blowing her hair back from her face and rippling her clothing.

He was standing closer to the ground now, she noticed, as the wind continued to wail around him. She cried out as a peice of wood from the house smacked her across the shoulder. Without thinking, she ran behind him and grabbed his arm, trying to pull him away and out of the circle. She thought maybe with his help they could break free. A sudden growl as he glanced at her from over his shoulder and a savage backhand across her face sent her flying.

She'd broken out of the circle, the children were stunned for a moment and had lost concentration, just not in the way she'd planned. Landing on top of Bulma, she quickly scambled up, the side of her face stung horribly and she wouldn't be at all surprised if he'd fractured her cheekbone. She tasted blood on her lip from where it dripped out of the cut along her face.

"Vegeta!" Bulma cried. "Please...You have to stop!"

Tayven, wiping the back of her hand across her face, looked to see the children seemed to be growing stronger and Vegeta looked to be about to explode. He did not realize that the more power he showed, the stronger they become. Tayven was about to tell him that before he struck her. He was lost to the illusions, she knew, she also knew that if they didn't find a way to stop this that something very, very bad was going to happen.