DISCLAIMER: I DON’T OWN DBZ OR ANY CHARACTER OF THE SAME. I’M NOT RECEIVING ANY MONEY FROM THE WRITING OF THIS PIECE OF FAN FICTION.

 

Atlas’ Burden
By:Lisalu

 

She stood by the balcony sill of the high arched window of the Ivory Library, the distance viewer in her hands pressed hard against her eyes as she gazed upwards. The wind whistled in through the open pane, burning her cheeks even through the barrier of her thermal body suit and her own minimal ki shield.

"They may not finish their bout for some time, Mistress," the papery, soft voice of the ancient creature behind her said in his kind, slightly distracted way. She tore her eyes from the two whirling, slashing figures in the night sky and turned back to her companion. She managed a wan little smile. He was happily pouring over a forty thousand-year-old anthropological treatise on sentient insect hive mind behavior as he sipped gingerly at an ice blended mug of Chikyuu-jinn café mocha. Surita-san, Master Librarian of Tsiru-sei’s Ivory Library, had developed something of a sweet tooth for all things chocolate over the last few years.

"I know," she sighed, shutting the window behind her, joining the old man at the wide marble table where he had spread hard copy, original documents of several hundred similar Tsiru-jin studies in his own personal mess of disorganized order. "I know it sounds foolish, but it terrifies me every time they spar. I’m not really afraid they’ll hurt each other, but…I keep worrying they’ll accidentally do to Tsiru-sei what they accidentally did to the tenth planet last spring."

"It is unfortunate that my Holy Lord and Master Son have no place where they may train at full strength without…um…breaking the planet beneath them apart with the force of their blows and ki bolts." Surita-san gazed upward briefly, his old eyes unfocused, and smiled with all a father’s fond pride. "My Lord is very pleased to have such a strong sparring partner in your husband, Mistress Videl. They are like burning suns in my mind, and, yet, they are using…a tiny pittance of their might in this match."

"Yeah…" She said softly, shivering. "Well…I need to find something to keep my mind off of it." She fingered a stack of parchments set aside from the sprawled clutter of arachnid essays. "Can I help you, Surita-san? Is this a section you’ve already reviewed, or are you saving it for Gohan to research?"

He glanced at the pile of innocent-looking documents, a sudden flicker or shadow washing away his almost perpetual visage of gentle, scholarly serenity. "Those are medical histories," he said in an odd, tense tone. "Zoukin-san of Zapria-sei, your mate’s kinsman, is working with a team of physicians on Madran for find a kind of vaccine for…" His red lips bowed delicately with mild distaste. "…for female heat in Saiyan women. Or more aptly, a vaccine against moon madness that would inhibit moonbonding. Master Gohan found a brief, cursory mention that such a thing once existed and sent the findings to Zoukin. Zoukin, having also seen a daughter suffer in the grip of moon madness and heat, is bending all his will to finding that lost vaccine. He seems to think it may be a neuro suppressant of some kind. Several days ago, Gohan-san asked me to pull the most comprehensive medfiles available on Saiyan physiology and the moon from the archives. He requested those medfiles specifically, having just read a historic lament, a lyric ballad called the Rape of Tsiru-sei." He was no longer meeting her eyes for some reason. "I warned him these files might prove an unpleasant read for him, but he wishes to peruse them nevertheless."

"What are they?" She asked.

He sighed and took the stack of files off the table, like an adult who’d just seen a little girl eyeing a row of books on pornography or murder. "What they are is a tale in and of itself," he murmured. "More than a thousand years ago, Mistress Videl, during the reign of my Lord Aiysa-sama the Winter King---Lord Gurasia’s great-grandsire---Tsiru-sei took several hundred thousand Saiyan captives after routing their homeworld in conquest. They were little more than grunting beasts, it seemed to us---dirty, smelly and stupid. My Holy Lord Aiysa-sama fought the chieftain of one of their more vicious tribes in a great tournament, offering the brute his freedom and the freedom of all his people if he could best the Winter King in single combat. The Saiyan lost, of course, but he---he marked our beloved Aiysa-sama with a deep gash across his face. My Lord Aiysa-sama was very prideful of his great beauty, and all of Tsiru-sei wept to see it marred, though he was no less perfect in out eyes. But he was enraged. He took the Saiyan and crucified him in the White Hall for the entire season of Sun Return---a months long festival that comes but once a century."

"And the Saiyan…" Videl paused, gazing into the old eyes that had seen this tale of legends first hand. "He went Super Saiyan, didn’t he?"

Surita nodded, the thin, wrinkled lines of his white face set in a mask of remembered pain. Of grief that was no less sharp after ten centuries. "He slew my beautiful Lord Aiysa-sama," Surita whispered. "He slew all my race in a day. When he broke the threshold of power into Super Saiyan all the other monkeys rose up, casting off their bonds as Tsiru-sei’s three moons rose that night as one. And that was when we learned what the word Oozaru meant…" He breathed in a little sigh that sounded like a suppressed ghost of a sob. "Everyone I ever knew died that day, Mistress. After the Super Saiyan took his people and departed for Vegita-sei, there were less than a thousand Tsiru-jin left alive, where before, we numbered in the tens of millions. My little Lord Frieza survived, a babe in the arms of his father Holy Cold-sama, and grew to manhood in the smashed ruins of what had once been the most beautiful world in creation, a glittering, exquisite work of art, an entire civilization carved of ice sculpture and crystal. We rebuilt the White City, just as we rebuilt it again when the Creator graced us with our Holy Gurasia, but it was never the same. And…we were never the same." He was silent, seeming to push back old memories. "Not all the monkeys left Tsiru-sei with their new king. Quite a few were left behind, by ill chance or by their own foolishness. These medfiles are a detailed description of what befell those unfortunates. Cold-sama commanded they be rounded up and subject to all manner of medical research. He was determined to find the secret of the Saiyan healing factor and the lunar were-change and incorporate it into Tsiru-jin physiology if possible."

"Medical experiments." Videl felt her stomach turn over with queasy slowness. "You mean they used the Saiyan slaves as lab rats."

Surita-san stared back at her, blank-faced, blank-eyed. He was probably mentally incapable of consciously admitting to himself that "Holy Aiysa-sama" had been a vain, vindictive bastard or that Cold had been a sadistic monster. But something deep in the integral core of the old man’s soul, his individual, innate decency, could not reconcile his worshipful love of Gurasia’s grandfather and great-grandfather with this abject evil. That blank, I’m-not-worthy-to-question-my-god’s-purposes look was the librarian’s only way of dealing with the internal conflict.

"Yes," Surita answered. He shifted the pile of documents in his hands, unconsciously filing them in referential and chronological order, as the room filling with silence.

Videl took a deep breath that bordered on a sigh. She was about to turn back to the window and the thundering shower of light and energy in the sky when the old man choked, a sharp raw noise of horror that whipped through the high wispy tenor of his vocal chords. She moved back to the scholar’s side, unconsciously reaching out a steadying hand as Surita seemed to sway on his feet. She took his hand without thinking. The bottom had fallen out of her stomach. Poppa…he’s gone still as a statue, just like Poppa did at his last Boudakai.

Half a second after he had belted the final contender, Uritta Basta, out of the ring, Poppa had frozen like a man made of stone, a look of confusion, then sadness, flitting across his heavy features. Then he had toppled backward, champion of all Chikyuu to his last breath. When she had run, flown, to his side an instant later, he was already gone. But there was a small smile fixed on his lips. He had known it was a damn good way to die. Not many men die exactly the way they would wish.

She pulled her hand back sharply, feeling the frostbite burn of his skin even through her thick gloves. "Do you need a doctor, Surita-san?"

"A doctor…" the old man said faintly, bitterly. He seemed to be blinking away tiny diamond pearls of ice. She realized with a start that he was crying. His tears were freezing against his skin as he shed them. He was gazing down at the open medfile in his hands, and suddenly the shaking, black-nailed fingers clenched into fists. "I must show this to my Holy Lord, Videl-san. He will punish that monstrous fool---" He broke off, his head cocked in a listening post. "He is…the last im-saktu! It has come upon him early! He is---he is falling!"

A shrill keening was echoing through the clear ardantium window panes of the library, the sound of every Tsiru-jin on the planet sensing what Surita had just sensed. And freaking out, Videl thought tensely, listening to the witchy wailing that was filtering into the library from all over the White City.

Surita let out an explosive sigh. "Gohan-san has caught him. But---" His hand was still curled around the documents in his hand in a convulsive claw, and he trilled suddenly in terror. "My Lord Gurasia’s last im-saktu. And he will attend as physician while my Lord lies helpless in chrysalis. We…sweet mercy, we must stop him!"

 

 

 

Gohan swept down through the spiral towers of the gleaming city of ice and marble and white granite, carrying the young man in his arms like a sick child. They came at him, screaming up through the pale icy mist of cloud cover, trilling with rage and hysterical fear.

"Don’t---!" He tried to say, but the first one struck him head on and he reacted without thought, sending the Tsiru-jin spinning backwards with a back-handed blow. He ground his teeth. They were not going to listen. They were so terrified for their young god made flesh they probably couldn’t think coherently right now. And…and they were all old. All that was left of Gurasia’s dying race were less than two hundred frail, elderly beings, clinging to life by the single bright, strong thread that was their Lord. He wasn’t just their god or their king. He was their future, the one member of their race still young enough to bear children. He was their everything.

Gohan powered up like a fuel-dowsed torch and brushed them aside with nothing more than the force of his aura, cringing internally as he saw the one Tsiru-jin he had struck falling bonelessly toward the ground. As he strength grew, his fine control grew more and more tenuous. He let out a frozen, crystallized sigh of relief when he saw the man he had struck right himself in the air just before he hit the ground. Gohan had not hit a living soul other than Gurasia in fifteen years. Not since he and his family had journeyed to Shikaji and met with the Arrak-jin. Gurasia shifted and moaned weakly. The Tsiru-jin’s muscles were contracting like coiled springs, spasming as his body prepared for its last metamorphosis. The im-saktu that would take him to full adulthood.

Gohan flew down in a straight line of descent, out-pacing the pale figures that had tried to attack him in blind panic for their young Lord. He swept through the open window arches of the new White Hall, the ancestral palace of the Lords of Tsiru-sei. After Frieza’s death, Vegita-san had come to Tsiru-sei and killed every member of the tyrant’s race he could find, demolishing the White City and its ancient palace as well. Gurasia’s people had rebuilt City and Hall for their infant Lord with painstaking, exquisite craftsmanship, exactly as it had been, down to the tiniest snowflake ice figurine sculpture. A labor of love. It was high summer now, and the great mosaic windows were open to let in the ‘warm’ evening air.

He set down in the blind, white fog of the Hall. In the same instant, a ring of White Cloak Priests, Gurasia’s personal honor guard, blurred into the blanched mist around him, their sexless treble voices dinning in his ears, circling him like sharks.

"He’s okay!" Gohan snapped irritably. He raised his ki shield a little higher, bumping them back as they tried to close in on him.

"Be still, little fools!" A chill voice lisped.

All the Tsiru-jin, every living member of the race, halted in place, regarding the small figure in ivory priest’s robes with blatant fear on their pale faces.

Gohan stepped forward, studying the White Cloak with a hard scowl of dislike etched across his face. "Hayull-san," he said. "Tell them I’m not going to hurt him."

"They will not believe me," the High Physician of Tsiru-sei snickered, with a thin-lipped smile. Gohan suddenly realized that Hayull was as frightened as any of the other pale forms that chittered and fidgeted inside the bank of white fog surrounding them. "I do not believe you, Son Gohan. Our Holy Lord, the Shining Light in the Creator’s Eye, is utterly helpless now that his last change has come upon him. You are Saiyan." His red lips pursed tensely. "How can we stand unafraid when you hold him at your mercy?"

It was all Gohan could do not to snort in angry exasperation. "I was bringing him to you, Doctor. If you don’t believe I would never harm an unconscious man, believe that I know we need him to survive the Arrak-jin."

He stepped forward again, holding Gurasia’s limp body in outstretched arms. "Take him, Hayull-san. Nurse him through this last im-saktu. For all our sakes."

Hayull nodded coldly and the thick, almost tangible fear emanating from the others dimmed marginally. The doctor edged forward cautiously. He had been coming to Tsiru-sei, on and off, for fifteen years, and this was the closest he had ever been to any of the Tsiru-jin other than Gurasia and Surita-san in all that time. He was Super Saiyan, and they all feared him like Hell itself. Hayull reached out to take his master from Gohan’s arms, murmuring under his breath in the hissing, sibilant language of the priesthood, High Tsiru-jin. The others took up the chant. Prayer, Gohan thought. It’s a hymn to Gurasia.

A harsh shriek peeled out of the fog, and its author streaked forward, barreling through the ring of indistinct white faces. Gohan watched in absolute shock as Surita-san---mild, kindly, scholarly Surita-san---flung himself at Hayull in a blur of hissing fury. He was shrieking in High Tsiru-jin. Gohan caught the words ‘betrayed’, ‘Frieza-sama’, and ‘abomination’ somewhere in the rant.

"Do not let Hayull have him, Son Gohan!" It was the one phrase Surita uttered that Gohan understood, but it was enough. Gohan raised his ki shield again, barring anyone from approaching him, watching the spitting, slashing fight between the sweet-natured librarian and the High Physician with growing concern. Whatever that bastard Hayull had done or was about to do, it must have been something monstrous to set Surita off like this. Surita belted the doctor back into the white mist around them and the other Tsiru-jin let out a wailing chorus of reaction. None of them had known how to react to this sudden spate of violence from Surita, but Gohan had the impression that they all trusted him as much as they trusted any other member of their kind, and were waiting now to see what he would say.

The Librarian turned back to Gohan, his breath coming out in short, weazing little gasps. "We cannot let Hayull near him until he has emerged from the chrysalis. It is a matter of life and death for us all, Gohan-san. And we should not use the trrl-kaa the doctor has prepared for our Holy Lord here in the White Hall." Surita raised one trembling finger and pointed at Hayull, who was emerging out of the fog, his face livid. "He will not come near our Lord!" The Librarian spat at the thunderstruck Tsiru-jin who still stood motionless, undecided. "Hayull has betrayed out beautiful Lord! And his father, and Frieza-sama's father before him! He has betrayed us all! I will carry our Lord to the trrl-kaa. Master Son, I charge you, as you know our Holy Lord to be the pillar of all our hopes in the coming war, do not let anyone else near him!"

Gohan stared into the stricken, desperate old eyes, and handed Gurasia over to him, encasing the Librarian in the protective shield of his power. Surita was the one member of Gurasia 's cold, spiteful race who loved his master, not as a symbol of worship and deity, but as the child he had helped to raise.

The ancient creature held his master close, gazing up at Gohan with a grateful nod. "Do not let anyone near him until he arises from the trrl-kaa."

Gohan nodded curtly and did as he was told. He blazed up like a lighthouse in a fog-shrouded night and pushed out, extending his energy in a wider protective bubble around the three of them, following the old man up and through the ring of wailing, cawing Tsiru-jin. Gohan saw with vague disgust and horror that many of them had clawed the skin of their own faces with their thick black nails in their panic. Hayull was right behind them, screaming something at Surita, whipping the others into a frenzy with his words.

Gohan flew, guided by Surita, through the press of them, bumping them gently back with his ki shield as they circled like agitated hornets. Their destination was not far, just over the ring of harsh, jutting mountains that rimmed the White City. It was a small temple, carved, as was every ornate thing on Tsiru-sei, of bone and ice, it's silver-white walls encircling a small pool that was strangely unfrozen.

Gohan was startled to see Videl shivering beside the silver liquid that was not water, a frost-covered med scanner in her hands. Gohan quickly enfolded her in his shield as they landed, in case the Tsiru-jin flew at her in their panic.

"It's okay," she told Surita. The Tsiru-jin were landing all around them, their pronged feet tapping gently on the icy ground. "The pool's pure liquid nitrogen, Surita-san." She stepped into the relative warmth of Gohan's arms, shivering. "It's not been tampered with."

"I thank you, Mistress." Surita stepped forward, kneeling beside the pool. Then he gently, lovingly, lowered his Lord's body into the thick, frigid liquid. The watching Tsiru-jin began to hum, their high voices rising in an eerie, dissonant harmony. Another hymn.

"What the hell is going on?" Gohan whispered into Videl's ice-flecked dark hair.

She raised her head from where she had buried it against his chest. "We have to stand watch until Gurasia emerges from the ice cocoon," she said. "I don't know why. Surita told me his life depends on it."

"Okay," he said. He would have asked Surita, but the old Librarian had knelt beside the pool, eyes closed, his wispy voice joining the others in their trilling hymn.

They waited. Three days and nights bled by in freezing, numb stillness. All the while Surita and the last, aged remnants of Gurasia's race prayed without cease. All the while, Gohan burned, a barrier against whatever danger Surita saw in Hayull and the others, a candle of warmth in the biting cold, keeping Videl alive with the heat of his energy. He did not sleep or rest in all that long, frigid vigil, though Videl nodded off after nearly two full days of the watch.

He smiled sadly as she lay in his arms through the coldest predawn hours of the third night. She was so strong, stronger than eve his mother in fighting power. She was very probably the most powerful Chikyuu woman alive. But because of who he was, because of what he was, she would always feel weak by comparison. It was a measure of her love for him, he thought, as he watched Tsiru-sei's pale distant sun begin to rise over mountains of iron and white granite that loomed to the west, that she had no resentment for him at all over this. She had been so fiercely competitive when they were kids.

The pool of silvery nitrogen erupted like a geyser. Gohan barely had time to through up a second shield around himself and Videl before the deadly cold liquid splashed over them. She woke with a start at the noise.

"What--?"

Gurasia was hovering over the pool, and his huge dark eyes were now murderous blood red, is white face twisted up in monumental, world-shattering rage.

"Namek!!!" Gurasia roared the word, his tail lashing like a bullwhip, his hands curled into black taloned clawed. Then his eyes rolled back to the whites in his head.

Gohan saw him begin to fall, saw the tension in Gurasia's body go slack as though some taut rope had been cut. Gohan leapt up to catch him without thinking and---

There was a jarring sense of forcible severing, of vertigo.

Then there was blackness.

A sense of falling without motion.

They slammed to ground in a bottomless well of night and silence as profound as the stillness before creation's first day.

"W---Where---?" Gohan gasped.

But Gurasia was on his feet and gone. Gohan flew after him, tearing through the pitch black of...of wherever the hell they were. The burning spark of Gurasia's lifeforce was his only lantern. And at some point during this blind, mad chase, Gohan realized belatedly why it was so easy to follow the Tsiru-jin. There were no other lifeforces within the range of his mind's senses. None. Not so much as a flea or an agate.

"Where the hell are we?!" He cried to Gurasia.

The horrified suspicion that had bloomed in his mind gave was to simple horror when he drew up short as Gurasia finally stopped ahead of him. Gohan halted at the Lord of Tsiru-sei's side, craning his head back as he gazed upward at the dull black, iron-wrought gates---though these gates were surely not made of anything so malleable and prosaic as iron, Gohan thought with a shudder. The Gates...Gohan swallowed hard. The Gates of Hell towered upward forever, beyond the reach of his sight. And Gurasia was standing before them, pounding against the bars with clenched fists.

"Namek!!!" Gurasia howled again, his voice reverberating in the still air. "Come out and face me, old Devil! Liar! You filthy, cheating, treacherous Devil!!!" And he slammed his fist against the Gates, releasing a titanic burst of power that blew a gaping chunk of the bars into nothingness. The hole was large enough to drop the entire White Hall through and more than big enough to allow Gurasia to pass.

Gohan followed again, barreling through the host of shades, dead warriors all, who swept in to bar their way.

"Piccalo!!!" Gurasia was screaming. "Piccalo, where are you?!"

They fought back to back, more out of instinct and blind panic at where they were on Gohan's part than anything else. And the dead just kept coming. And coming. It was a fight they could not win, Gohan suddenly realized. They were the two strongest living beings in creation, but they were living beings. But they could not kill the dead. The endless ranks of the damned would keep coming at them forever. Literally. And sooner or later, he and Gurasia would begin to tire.

Gurasia seemed to have realized that as well and raised his power a peg or two higher, pushing upward to his limits. Gohan smiled to himself and did the same. And they fought with every ounce of energy they both possessed, kicking out all the stops, and gods, it was glorious to release to full measure of his power without the constant fear that one of them would crack the mantle of the planet beneath them with a misdirected blast. How long it went on, how long they battled the army of the dead, he couldn't say. Time did not seem to flow through its normal channels here. But, at some point, he began to slow, his breath became labored---though he knew it wasn't real air their spectral bodies were inhaling. And one of them managed to work his way in close, coming at him from behind. Gohan sensed the man just in time, spun, his fist raised---and froze as he saw the last thing he had expected to see in this nightmare realm. A familiar face.

"R--Radu?"

The man's fist slammed into his jaw and he went spinning to the flat, stony floor of Hell. Gohan blinked up in amazement, staring up at the broad smirk of the man who stood above him. It was not Radu of Madran.

"What's wrong, boy? No hug for your long lost uncle?"

Gohan watched dazedly as Raditz bent down and pulled him to his feet by the collar.

"He wants to see Piccalo," Gohan said stupidly, staring around them at the blazing storm of fire and screams. This looked more like his notion of Hell. Except for the fact that he and Gurasia had created most of the fire and the screaming. Gurasia was burning like a torch, though his strength was waning as he continued to fight. Now that Gohan had ceased to fight them, the ghost warriors were ignoring him and concentrating all their efforts on slowly wearing down the Lord of Tsiru-sei.

"I thought for a while there the two of you were going to tear Hell down around our ears," Raditz chuckled. "Don't fear, boy. He's coming. He was just letting you both burn off some steam first."

"And seeing how strong we've become," Gohan muttered. He felt like a fool for not having realized that was what Piccalo was doing from the first.

"Gurasia."

All sound and motion, all the sizzling bursts of power and shrieks of the damned Gurasia was beating to a pulp stopped, silenced with that one soft word. Piccalo was there, materializing out of the nothing around them. All the dead bowed, like men before their king.

Piccalo Daimo, Gohan thought faintly.

"The Demon King," he whispered aloud.

"We just call him 'Boss,'" Raditz said blandly.

"The rest of you, beat it," Piccalo said curtly. The shades of the evil dead were gone, fading away as though they had never been. "What is wrong with you, Gurasia," Piccalo growled finally, bearing down on the gasping, foundering young man before him "You come down here, rough up my warriors, bang a hole through the Gates of my realm." The hard, angry stare swung around and fastened on Gohan, and Piccalo's frown deepened. "And what the hell is Gohan doing here?!"

Gohan moved forward, Raditz following silently. For some reason, his uncle had not departed with the others. "I touched him as he discorporated, Piccalo-san. I think he pulled me here by accident."

"Good," snapped Piccalo. "I'd have kicked his insubstantial ass if he'd brought you here on purpose."

"You tricked me, Devil," Gurasia hissed, red eyes gleaming in the darkness.

Gohan moved toward them, closing the distance that he suddenly knew, suddenly understood without benefit of explanation, was not space but perception of space. He willed himself there, and moved without motion. Weird.

"How did I do that, Gurasia?" Piccalo rumbled.

"I have just emerged from my last im-saktu, Namek." Gurasia’s thick, black-taloned nails were digging into his incorporeal palms with effort to control his rage. "Look and me, Piccalo Daimo! Look!"

Gohan stared at Gurasia’s solid-seeming form, a white lantern of burning rage in this black pit. The young Lord of Tsiru-sei was taller now, for one thing. Maybe four inches shy of seven feet. That…that was wrong for a Tsiru-jin. In his unascended state, he should stand somewhere between five and five and a half feet in height. But he had ascended, hadn’t he? Gurasia had powered up, completely, just as Gohan had, as they fought the armies of Hell. The Tsiru-jin had been so enraged he had left nothing in reserve for later. And yet he hadn’t shifted forms at all. That was not right either.

The lines of Gurasia’s body were proportional with a sleek-boned muscularity that appeared strong and deadly but didn’t give the impression of brawn. The eyes ad lips were blood red now, another sign of full maturity in his race. And the face, set beneath a full rack of curved adult horns, twisted in anger and inexplicable grief, which Gohan had not noticed until this moment, was…

There was something different here as well. Something off in everything Gohan was seeing. The planes of Gurasia’s face had shifted from the fine-boned, androgynous beauty of late adolescence to something harder, not longer pretty of dainty in any way. His facial bones were more cleanly defined, more masculine---

"I am male!" Gurasia shrieked. "I---I am---" All the insane fury seemed to wash away and his voice cracked almost imperceptibly on the last note. His voice was deeper now, like a young man’s, no longer the sweet sexless lilt Gohan knew to be normal for all Tsiru-jin He went on in the soft, raw whisper. "Our natural, most constant state in neuter. We may shift to a semblance of male or female when we couple for pleasure, and into true female when we are carrying young. But---but I cannot shift from this form. I cannot shift at all! That is deformity among my kind, Namek. I am male…"

"Yeah," Piccalo grunted in acknowledgment of the fact. "So?"

Gurasia’s head whipped up, his fine sharp predator’s teeth bared like an anthropomorphic shark. "I cannot bear young, old fool!" He spat softly. "You promised me that my father’s soul would be returned to me when I reached adulthood. That cannot happen if I am barren! I—I am---" He stopped, slamming his tail down on the gray stone beneath their feet, and advanced with slow, deliberate menace on the Guardian of Hell. "You betrayed me with your oath."

Gohan would have moved forward to step between them, but Raditz hand closed on his shoulder, and his father’s dead brother shook his head silently.

"I swore to you in good faith, Gurasia," Piccalo said clearly. "But as for your sudden manifestation of a gender---you did that to yourself, kid." He frowned without sympathy, his mouth tightening in a hard line of disapproval. "You altered the course of your own natural development toward maturity when you did what you did to reach manhood so quickly."

Gurasia seemed startled and more than a little unnerved by these words. For a brief second, the Tsiru-jin cut his eyes back to Gohan, a sly, almost furtive glance. Gohan had learned long ago that this was the closest most Tsiru-jin could come to any visible expression of guilt.

Piccalo Daimo smiled, a quick flash of fanged teeth. "Did you think no one would find out what you’ve done, Gurasia?"

The younger man set his jaw, glaring back and the big Namek without remorse. "I did what I had to do."

"And now you’re going to have to live with it," Piccalo said grimly. "Unfortunately, so are a lot of other people. One in particular. And very soon, everyone involved will know your little secret." A harsh chuckle. "I wouldn’t be in your webby shoes for anything in creation when that shit finally hits the fan."

Gurasia seemed to shudder lightly at the thought of weathering the comeuppance for whatever devil’s bargain he had struck to reach adulthood. He was not quite thirty-four standard years old. By the lights of normal Tsiru-jin development, he had aged nearly four hundred years in a little more than three decades. Not for the first time, Gohan itched to know just how the Lord of Tsiru-sei had achieved this feat.

"I do, as ever, what I must, Piccalo," Gurasia said in a low voice.

"So, you do," Piccalo agreed. "So, stop bitching about physiological technicalities and suck it up. You’re male, not sterile. I swore to you your father’s soul would be born to you as your firstborn child. Does it really matter whether you father him or carry him yourself, so long as you get him back?"

"I---" Gurasia swallowed, frowning oddly. He seemed to be in the midst of some kind of information overload. Too many revelations, too quickly. "I meant to reverse what I have done to myself and---and others after we defeat the Arrak-jin. I meant to use the dragonballs Dende has spent these last fifteen years crafting."

"You don’t have any guarantee that there will be any dragonballs left when---if---we all make it through this," Piccalo murmured. "You’ve made your bed, Gurasia. Now, you’re going to have to lie in it. At least you’ll have company."

"Mammal and reptimorph cannot breed," Gurasia said, shaking his head. "Any fool knows that. How could a Tsiru-jin breed successfully with a---" Again that guilty, hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar glance in Gohan’s direction.

"If we make if through the other side of this," Piccalo said, ‘You’ll get what you want. I’ve never lied to you, Gurasia, and I’m not lying now."

The Tsiru-jin regarded him steadily, his red, evil-looking eyes full of unaffected, honest need. It gave him the brief impression of vulnerability.

"Agreed," Gurasia said.

Frieza, Gohan thought numbly. Piccalo-san bargained for Gurasia’s cooperation in this war by promising to let Frieza be reborn as---as---

"Listen to me, both of you," Piccalo said in a bass rumble that silenced the angry, argumentative words poised on Gohan’s lips. He moved forward, gravitating instinctively toward the note of command in his sensei’s voice as though he were six years old again, ready to fight and die on the Namek’s word. "It’s going to begin very soon. Sometime in the next year." The words hung in the air that was not air like the bass toll of a death knell.

"What should we do?" Gohan breathed.

"Train," Piccalo said. "This was is the reason both of you were born. It is the reason fate, the dragonballs, and the hand of Jouten himself have all cut you and yours a break at the crossroads of every catastrophe. Have you told anyone how strong you’ve become, Gohan?"

Gohan shook his head mutely.

"Don’t," Piccalo growled. "Jouten says there will be flesh and blood instruments of the Enemy moving among you soon. Let’s keep the secret that you and Gurasia are tied for first place as strongest beings in the universe under wraps and not tip our hand until we have to."

Gurasia managed a disappointed sneer. "And I had so hoped to see the look on the Saiyan no Ouji’s face when he learns you have surpassed him by two levels of magnitude. Again."

"You said our whole lives have moved toward this?" Gohan said slowly, ignoring Gurasia. "Then…all the catastrophes that have fallen on Chikyuu throughout my life, all the times we---the Saiyans of Chikyuu---had to surpass everything we thought possible to survive. Were the gods sort of lobbing peril after peril at us the spike our power a little higher with each new threat, playing on our healing factor and the fact that we seem to have no upward limit to our strength?

Gurasia chuckled, low and soft, full of amused malice. "Are you just now puzzling that out, Son Gohan? Foolish monkey. And I thought you a scholar. It is a mathematical impossibility that any one world could have such a steady stream of bad luck on the space of one lifetime."

In many ways, Gohan thought sourly, he preferred and enraged Gurasia to an amused Gurasia. "It’s not funny. They used us to---"

"To save the universe," Piccalo said bluntly. "They honed you and the others like weapons in a smithy for the last fifty years, and now it’s time to test your metal. Deal with it. The alternative isn’t an option."

"No," Gohan said softly. "No, it’s not. I’ll do what I have to do. Sensei."

Piccalo’s eyes softened minutely and he sighed, a look of inutterable sadness flitting across the glowering planes of his face. "I’m sorry, Gohan. I wish this weight didn’t have to rest on your shoulders…again."

Gohan somehow mustered a small grin. "Maybe when it’s all over, the gods will grant me a wish, too. It’s not one the dragonballs can help with."

"What do you wish for, Son Gohan?" Gurasia murmured.

"Peace," Gohan said simply. "I want to live on Chikyuu with Videl and my family. I want to have more children and watch them grow up. I want to see Pan-chan and Trunks’ have kids and …and…" He raised his eyes to meet Gurasia’s, knowing that if he opened his heart to the Tsiru-jin in this way the younger man would inevitably use it against him in some spiteful, mocking fashion later. "I don’t want to ever have to hurt or kill another living thing as long as I live."

A rumble above them, like the distant thunder of a warm summer storm, reverberated inside Gohan’s chest, rippling through his mind and soul like a sense memory of childhood peace and happiness.

"Granted," Piccalo intoned.

No one spoke. Even Piccalo seemed shaken.

"Damn," Raditz said softly from where he stood shadowed in the void of black around them.

"Raditz." Piccalo said finally.

"Boss-sama?"

"Take Gurasia up to the soul portal. Make sure he gets back to his body in one piece. Gurasia, you stay a moment. There’s something you’re going to have to know when you get back."

"Piccalo-san---" Gohan began.

"Leave this place now, Gohan!" Piccalo snapped harshly. "Don’t ever come back again. I can’t stand the thought of you here." The last words spoken very softly.

Gohan nodded obediently. But there was a painful wrenching sensation, a dull horror, so thick he felt he was drowning in it. He turned to follow his uncle into the nothingness, casting one last look back at the tall form of Piccalo. He was speaking to Gurasia, low and urgent. The Lord of Tsiru-sei was nodding grimly. I can’t bare the thought of you here either, Sensei.

He followed Raditz’ spirit through the endless sea of night. They walked in the dead, flat silence of this netherland of the evil dead until he spoke without really meaning to. He had no real wish to reminisce on the brief, unpleasant acquaintance he and Raditz had shared in the living world, but the oppressive nothing began to close in on him after a while, battering his senses with lack of input.

"Hell’s not what I thought it would be," he said too loudly, walking a little faster so that he was striding beside his uncle instead of behind him. Gohan kept thinking something was creeping up behind them in the dark.

"It never is," Raditz muttered. He regarded Gohan with a strangely calm, almost serene expression. "What do you see, boy?"

"Nothing," Gohan frowned. A thought, a subtly terrible one, occurred to him. "So you see something else?"

Raditz nodded shortly. "Everyone brings their own Hell here with them. You see nothing because you are a good man."

"So…so you see what’s most horrible or most frightening to you personally?"

"No," Raditz stopped and turned to face him. "This is a learning place. A school for evil souls. There’s no torment here. No whips or fires. Only a mirror. In Hell, you see yourself and the life you led in the light of absolute Truth. Understand?"

Gohan nodded, feeling cold inside. "You’re not the same, Raditz."

"No," his uncle said curtly. "There are many of us, warriors in life, who could have chosen to be reborn long ago. We were offered a great honor. To fight beside the living when the Enemy arrives."

"How many?" Gohan whispered.

Raditz grinned like a great, long-maned wolf. "We are legion."

"That’s not a literary reference to inspire trust," Gohan said.

"If the war if lost, none of us will eve be reborn," Raditz said softly.

"But if you die fighting in the mortal plane," Gohan said with dawning horror. "Your souls will be snuffed out. That’s monstrous! You can’t---"

"No one will fight who has not chosen to risk his existence, Gohan chta Kakarott. Even Hell will not be safe when the Arrak-jin come." Raditz’ eyes gleamed with glad anticipation. "Half a century ago, after Frieza slew him on Namek-sei, Vegita-ouji came to Hell for half a day. Tell him the damned wish to follow the banner of a Prince who was a warrior of Hell, if only briefly. Tell him every Saiyan soldier who drew breath in the last century awaits his command. When the time comes, when the need is greatest, tell him to call his people. We will come and follow our Prince into battle. Piccalo Daimo will cast open the Gates of Hell and we will rise to his call."

"I’ll tell him," Gohan said hoarsely. He was shaking all over. He had to leave this place. "I want to go home now."

Raditz only nodded. "Look up, boy."

Gohan tilted his head back and saw a swirling spiral of multicolored light, spinning high above them. It looked like a sparkling smear of every color a prism had to offer.

"That is the way home," Raditz said.

"Wha---how do I---?"

"Jump." He must have hesitated a second too long, because his uncle seized him by the collar and tossed him upward, into the mass of light and color.

He crashed back into his body, feeling icicles encrusted in his stiff frozen hair. The sensation of physical form was like an unexpected blow to the stomach for a few seconds. He slowly became aware of Videl’s arms around him, of her soft sobs, the warmth of her lips against his.

"Gohan-kun…Gohan-kun, you were---your heart stopped. You weren’t breathing at all!"

He sat, breathing in and out slowly, and held her against him, listening to the high screeching of Surita and Hayull, both of whom were standing over Gurasia’s unconscious body like mother bears disputing ownership of a cub.

The noise ended abruptly when Gurasia sat up. There was a sighing moan, the sound of two hundred Tsiru-jin nearly fainting with relief. They all feel to their knees, faces lowered to the icy ground, humming in worshipful joy.

"My dearest Lord," Hayull began.

"My Lord, I must tell you someth---"

"Peace, Surita," Gurasia said quietly. He stood slowly, his red eyes glinting with banked rage as they came to rest on Hayull. "I know already what it is you wish to tell me." Gurasia swept them all with an imperious glare, knowing they seeing the changes in his body, knowing they recognized them for what they were.

"Asturrr-aach," Hayull whispered in horror. "My---my---"

"Yes," Gurasia said bleakly. "I am asturrr-aach. I am male. And I am also Gurasia, Lord of Tsiru-sei.

"You---you could never be less than beautiful and perfect to us, my Lord!" Hayull cried. All the others took up the affirmation.

If he’d matured into a pink, tap-dancing Oozaru, Gohan thought, they would have cheered and told him he was the most wonderful creature in creation. No wonder Gurasia was such an arrogant, insufferable piece of work.

Gurasia nodded, his ruby gaze still riveted on Hayull. "I know your secret sin, doctor. The Devil himself whispered it in my ear. After the Super Saiyan slew my father’s grandsire, Aiysa-sama, Cold-sama gave you leave to…to improve upon all of the youngest children of Tsiru-sei. To meddle with their brain chemistry and physical development while they lay cocooned in their first im-saktu. Your treatment worked. It made them stronger, smarter. It increased their fighting power by a factor of ten. But it also made them mad. My father included."

"I never knew why…" Surita whispered, his thin voice raw with grief. "Why he was so---so different when he emerged from his first im-saktu. My poor little Lord!"

Frieza, Gohan thought numbly. Surita was talking about Frieza. Mourning for the child he had helped to raise in the melted ruins of Tsiru-sei after the first Vegita’s ascent to Super Saiyan. The child who must have crawled out of his cold, nitrogen cocoon strong, fast, brilliant, and utterly insane, his brain chemistry forever imbalanced by Hayull’s experiments.

And…Gohan felt his stomach begin to clench and upend in horrified realization. How much of what Frieza had been and done, how much of the monster he had become, was culturally ingrained Tsiru-jin pride, malice and cruelty? And how much was Hayull’s fault? The sickened hatred on the faces of Surita and the other Tsiru-jin told Gohan that Gurasia’s people had opted to lay all the blame squarely on Hayull’s shoulders.

"My father might have lived long," Gurasia said softly, moving slowly toward Hayull one inexorable step at a time. "He might have fulfilled the manifest destiny of our race and ruled the galaxy. But he is dead now, slain by Son Gokou and Trunks-ouji. Our youngest, fertile brethren are all dead, slain by the Saiyan no Ouji. When the last of we who are gathered here dies, the Tsiru-jin will be no more. A sane Frieza would not have kept Vegita-ouji alive after the destruction of Vegita-sei as a curiosity and a playtoy, knowing what the little Prince might one day become. A sane Frieza would have killed Son Gokou quickly on Namek-sei, instead of toying with him until he drove the man over the threshold of Super Saiyan."

Hayull had cringed down to his knees, his hands outstretched in supplication. "I---I did not know, Sweet Lord! I swear I meant to make Lord Frieza and all the other little ones stronger. I meant to make him strong enough to protect our people from---from anything! So that there might never again be another Rape of Tsiru-sei!" The old creature sobbed softly, not with any real regret for atrocities perpetrated on sleeping children---Gohan had a sickened suspicion that Hayull had been very pleased with changes in Freiza. But the little doctor was still Tsiru-jin enough to turn into a blubbering mess at the mere thought of having displeased his Lord.

"I believe you," Gurasia said. He was standing over the doctor’s huddled form, his face solemn and thoughtful. "Stand up, Hayull." The Tsiru-jin watched in trembling silence as the doctor stood and faced his god. "You served my father faithfully all his life. You were councilor and first consort to my grandsire, and the only lover he ever took, to my knowledge. You meant to save us. I know you did. And because of all these things, Hayull...I grace you with the gift of death by my own hand."

The doctor raised his head and met his Lord’s gaze, the old, wicked eyes shining with joy and thankfulness. "My beautiful Lord," he sighed.

Gurasia thrust his hand into the doctor’s chest and tore out the heart inside. The Tsiru-jin peeled out shrieks of joy and praise as the old creature’s body fell slowly backward. They caught him as he fell, holding his body up, like a hero born off the cold ground by his fellows after a battle.

"Add his bones to the White Hall," Gurasia whispered the command. "Sculpt and hew them into something beautiful."

The Lord of Tsiru-sei stood motionless as his worshipers left him alone with Gohan and Videl. Gohan noticed with surprise that Surita had not moved from where he knelt, a meter from Gurasia’s feet.

"Holy Lord, I have failed you," Surita sobbed softly. "I saw that you matured too quickly and did not question it. I should be have stopped him before he—he---"

"He did not tamper with me, Surita," Gurasia told him expressionlessly. "I did this to myself. To be strong enough for the coming struggle." He turned and gazed down at the old man fondly, and spoke the words so quietly Gohan could barely hear them. "You are my most faithful, most favored servant, Surita." The old Librarian fell forward with a grateful, relieved gasp and kissed his Lord’s feet. It was the closest thing to an embrace custom allowed this old man who loved his Lord like a son, Gohan thought sadly.

Gurasia gazed down meditatively at the bright purple blood staining the perfect white of the snow at his feet. He still held Hayull’s heart in his hand.

"He never killed anyone before," Videl said softly.

Now he has, Gohan thought.

"It is time to unify our forces against the Enemy," Gurasia turned his head to face Gohan abruptly.

Gohan studied him hard, all the brief sympathy he’d felt for this lonely young man melting away into a more familiar sense of watchful distrust. "You’ve already unified half the galaxy with the implicit threat of who and what you are, Gurasia."

"Yes," Gurasia smiled coldly. "But Trunks-ouji has unified the other half under his rule. Though I fear I am to blame for much of his success. Given a choice between a Madran-based Saiyan Empire and serving the new Lord of Tsiru-sei, they flocked to swear fealty to him like little bird cringing under their mother’s wing. But the time is almost upon us, Son Gohan, and I no longer have the luxury of nodding at Saiyan aspirations to the throne. It is both my birthright and my burden to lead this war, and I will not suffer pretenders!"

Gohan stood. The cold air between them stood seemed poised with crackling power and tension. "If we start fighting among ourselves now, we’ll lose for sure."

"Trunks has called a great war council on Madran in six months time." Gurasia said. "I am confident I can pursuade Trunks-ouji to swear fealty to me for the duration of the conflict. A bloodless coup."

"How will you do that?" Gohan asked.

But Gurasia only smiled cryptically, his red eyes full of sly, slightly cruel Tsiru-jin humor.

"If we come out the other side of this," Gohan said bluntly. "Don’t think you’ll be allowed to maintain your ‘empire’ after the war."

The ruby lips spread a little wider, a full smile this time. "And do you mean to thwart my evil, meglomanaical designs, Gohan of Chikyuu?"

"Yeah. I do." I have to, he thought despairingly. Because I’m the only one strong enough to stop him.

But Gurasia only nodded amiably, a glint of eager anticipation in his eyes. "Ahh. Something to look forward to. But until then, let us all play nice together."

Gohan nodded, a curt snap of his head. His face was hard, his manner a warrior’s implacable stance. But he felt a big piece of his heart fissure with sadness as he spoke the words that sealed their agreement to settle the matter after the war.

"Until then," he said.

* * * * *


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