Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ With A Jagged Edge ❯ Piccolo's Gambit ( Chapter 10 )

"It's utter chaos! I can't believe what's happening!" The man's voice shook with fear as he stumbled backwards over a pile of rumble, crawled out and continued to scream into his cordless microphone. A cameraman was trying desperately to remain focused and in control as buildings exploded and windows shattered all around him. But he squealed like a girl and dropped the camera as an explosion came a little too close for comfort. "Hey! Come back! This is the scoop of the century!" The reported bellowed, half-crawling, half-running after him.

"Oh, kami!" A random woman screamed, holding a wailing toddler on her hip, her blonde hair in complete disarray, "Where's Hercule when we need him!?"

"Yeah!" Another voice yelled, huddled into corner with what seemed to be his immediate family, "Where's our savior?!"

Vegeta looked around, or rather, the being inside Vegeta used his eyes to look around, a scowl upon his otherwise handsome features. He heared the cry go up from those who had yet survived his blasts and his fists curled at his sides, power radiating from him in waves as hot as the anger of the entity inside of him. How dare they seek to save themselves?!

"Hercule!" Came the cry, of about two hundred or so survivors, over the sound of Piccolo, Gohan and Goku's explosions and laughter, the screams and toppling cement;

"Hercule! Hercule!"

"Aaargh!!" Vegeta's gutteral cry drowned out all the voices combined. As did the powerful attack launched from his palms towards the people, who tried to scatter. The ground blew away beneath them and cracked down the center. Those who had not been killed outright by the blast, fell into the newly formed crevice and were crushed amid rocks and debri when the earth was once more altered as Vegeta continued his assault with several more powerful blasts. "No one will save you, you pathetic creatures! All of you die now! DIE NOW!"

And within Vegeta's mind, in the dark corner he found himself to be locked within, watching yet unable to move to prevent what was taking place, the Saiyan Prince struggled against invisable bonds and used every curse word he knew, of Earthly origin and Saiyan as his dark eyes flashed dangerously.

A silvery thread of laughter issued upwards to where he sat, still trying to free himself, his hands at his sides curled into fists. He could see nothing holding him down, yet he could not move. It was unnerving to say the very least. The laughter became a giggle and he saw a flash of silvery-white out of the corner of his eye. Followed by a larger shadow, cloaking the smaller one.

"Oh, Monkeys are fun, aren't they, Mistress?" A little girl's voice squeaked, sounding much like Puar, Vegeta's ears twitched from the sound, "I wonder if this one will do any tricks?"

Vegeta blinked as she materilized in front of him and held a stick in her small, thin hands. Her long, white blonde hair fell over her shoulders and pooled at her feet like a rippling, transparent waterfall. Her eyes, he saw, looked like two muddy pools, deep and devoid of anything resmembling honest affection or love. Her eyes looked dead.

He snarled as she poked the stick's sharpened end into his ribs, giggling as he tried to jerk away from her, spittle erupting from between his clenched teeth. How he longed to rend her limb from limb...

"Careful now, dear one." The larger shadow came up behind the girl and covered her hand with her own, stilling the movement of the stick, "Not too much. Your little monkey will do his tricks for you...with the proper...motivation..."

"I...hate...you...!" The words seemed ripped from his throat, Vegeta snarled and gasped after each syllable, breathing hard. He was so angery he couldn't find words strong enough to fully express his disgust and hatred. "You will pay! I'll see you pay for this!"

Laughing, the little girl took ahold of her Mistress' hand and skipped with her into the darkness of Vegeta's mind, there to torment him further as they used his body to wreck havoc upon innocents...

~*~*~

Tayven!

Tayven stirred. She'd been shooting ki blast at cars alongside Gohan and was having a great time, more fun, really, then she ever remembered having before. She'd been pretending that she'd been playing a really realistic video game and tallying up her 'points' to compare with Gohan's to see which of them had caused the most damage when she'd been knocked backwards accidently by her own blast when it had bounced off a yet-still-standing building.(A/N: Don't ask....Don't you just love fan-fiction physics?)

She rubbed dust from her face and tried to focus. Everything was double. And hazy. Very hazy. It took her a few moments to realize the haze was smoke from several fires and coughed as soot entered her lungs. She tried to move, but her leg felt broken and she was aching all over.

She was hurting in places on her body she wasn't certain she even knew the names of! Rolling over so as now to become crushed by a falling peice of a building, Tayven swallowed back the scream as pain as sharp as a jagged end of a knife sliced through her calf. Tears in her eyes, she tried to drag herself away.

Tayven!

Pausing, her eyes widened as she realized, belatedly, that she was no longer being controlled. She looked at the others, saw thier expressions even from the distance she was from each of them, and shook her head in confusion. How could she have gotten free, when she had little to no experience ental combat, indeed any type of combat, when they had not....

Tayven...listen to me! There isn't time for questions!

Grabbing her head, she cried out. She wasn't used to having someone speaking to her from inside...

Closing her eyes she tried to get a better feel for whoever was addressing her, Tayven instictivally scooted away from all the chaos and felt herself falling backwards through the tunnels of her mind.

Picking her way through mental debri, kicking aside objects that may or may not have certain symbolic meaning to her, she followed the glimmering down one twisting mental tunnel after another coming to a stop, at last, before...

"Piccolo..." She gasped, as the tall namek warrior turned towards her, His form shimmered around the edges, "That's what Gohan called you, right?"

"Yes," He said, his voice sounded strained, and she felt him tremble, even standing a few feet away, as though he were struggling with something, "It...cost me much...to remain like so...She's trying to gain control again..."

Gritting his teeth, Piccolo plunged onward, trying to explain to her that, since she'd knocked herself on the head she'd momentarily dislodged the being's control over her and he had taken that oppertunity to shove past the one holding himself hostage to mentally link with Tayven and force the aspect who'd taken over her into the background.

But, as she felt darkness reaching, like skeletal hands towards her, threatening to pull her back and regain power, she knew that time was short.

"We have to get through to the others," He said, struggling over each word, she saw him shiver in what looked to her like pain, but gave no other sign than that as he held out his hand to her, "Come on! There's no time, Tayven! Stop hesitating and give me your hand!"

"I...don't know what to do!" She snarled, but clasped her much smaller hand inside his own, feeling her mental self being drawn towards him, as everything seemed to shift and alter, air whooshed past at great speeds, making it seem hard to breath, if she needed to breath, that was.

Her head felt like a thousand bees were buzzing inside her skull, setting her teeth on edge and she when she looked, she saw that she was above everything, flying, her hand still gripped almost painfully tight within Piccolo's. She saw her own body, slumped down inside a crevice, looking very dead.

She felt her heart catch in her throat and Piccolo said, gruffly, "Your not dead. Now, pay attention. If you don't do this right you might as well just join your half-dead self and everyone else who's been killed already down there in that concrete grave."

Great, Tayven thought bitterly, way to lay on the pressure, Green Bean...

"And don't call me Green Bean!" Piccolo's mental self snarled at her.

Tayven jumped. She really didn't care for this mental link business. Not at all.

"So, just do as I tell you and we can seperate soon, kid." Piccolo assured her, looking grimly to the side at her. Tayven sighed but grit her teeth, determined to face whatever was coming with little to no complaining...