Amshah
By: Lisalu

The Chikyuu-jin ship had set down less than an hour ago on the bleak and arid surface of Amshah. The planet was a lifeless rock, too far off the main trade shipping routes and too inhospitable to attract any form of colonization. The world had been, and perhaps still was, home to atop secret division of the weapons research and development branch of Maiyosh House. The facility was so top secret, in fact, it was not listed in any database of Maiyosh Corporate. The system itself was not registered on any modern star charts.

The smaller, and seemingly younger, of the two Chikyuu-jin men who stood outside the gray, featureless shield doors of the underground research complex shifted nervously and glanced up at his companion worriedly.

"I don't like this, Nissan," he said softly. He turned, staring at the flat, slightly distorted reflection of his own face in the metallic plating of the blast doors. He appeared to be a young man of twenty. The planes of his fine-boned face were not those of a son of Nipon or greater Chin, nor of any ethnicity that still lived on their homeworld, though his features were similar in some ways to both. His features were those of a people long gone. Even after a year it was still jarring sometimes to catch a glimpse of his own reflection and see a man's face staring back at him. The face was that if a very young man, but the eyes...the eyes were ancient.

"Me too, little brother," the tall, bald man beside him said in his quiet way. "He's been in their too long." His eyes unfocused slightly as he searched for the sense of the third member of their party.

...okay...come on in. The reply chimed in both their minds. I've found something. It's not what we were searching for, but it's something that needed to be found.

They glanced at each other, and the bigger man hit the door control. They levitated, flying through the shield doors without a word of discussion. There had never really been a need for it between them, the younger man reflected. In the course of a lifetime, some friends came and went like seasons of the turning year. Some were forever, deepening slowly to ties closer than family. But in a very few cases, the connection went deeper, and that friend, that brother in all things but blood, became like a part of you. It was not the same as a love bond between spouses, but it was very similar. They were neither of them inclined to be lovers of men. In some ways, it might have been easier if they were. Because a connection such as they shared overrode all other ties of love an obligation.

They flew through the sterile, stagnant-aired corridors of the complex, averting their gazes from the bodies of the scientists who had been stationed here, who seemed to have been...been turned inside out. There was no way to describe it. The steady beacon of Uubu's ki, burning in both their minds like a small sun, led them on. As they flew, the encroaching sense of dread, the tangible fear of something far, far worse than death, grew to a nearly paralyzing terror.

Tien, he said silently. Whatever he sensed when he had the vision that led us to this awful place...Uubu will he be strong enough to handle it? Won't he? It's like...I've never felt anything so horrible!

Tien glanced sideways at him as they flew to a stop just on the edge of what must have been the lab's rec room or mess hall. "He stood toe to toe with Babi and nearly beat him," Tien said aloud. "He's only gotten stronger since then, and then there are his other powers. The magic Buu bequeathed him when they remerged. He changed you from boy to man in an instant with that magic when you asked him and didn't even break a sweat doing it. Whatever we find here, I think he'll be able to deal with it."

They stepped through the utilitarian doorway into the sparse, aluminum-decco mess hall, treading warily over old bones and eviscerated carcasses of Maiyosh-jin scientists as they slowly approached Uubu. The man had his back to them, blocking their view of whatever he was holding in stasis with his magic until they were standing shoulder to shoulder with the brown-skinned warrior.

Chao-tsu gave a soft gasp. "Nissan...isn't that---isn't he---"

"Jeiyce of Maiyosh," Tien said harshly.

Jeiyce of Maiyosh was seated in a mess hall chair, shielded within a silver sphere of Uubu's power, dining happily on a package ration meal as though it were some kind of sumptuous feast.

"What the hell, Uubu?" Tien muttered.

The younger man shook his head, his large cinnamon-brown eyes swimming with power. "I found him here. Or what is left of him. We have to get word to Gokou-sensei and Vegita-san. I think I know now why they have not been able to find Jeiyce in all this time."

"What do you mean, 'find him'?" Chao-tsu asked in a whisper. The knot of dread in his gut was growing steadily as he watched the Maiyosh-jin. Something was terribly, terribly wrong with the man. His movements as he cut and neatly diced the meat portions of his meal were jerky, abrupt, awkward, as though he were a poorly built mechanical copy of himself, unoiled at the hinges of each joint. And the expression on his face was...blissful. He seemed to be utterly happy, utterly satisfied, savoring each bite of food as though the taste was the most pleasing sensation he had even known.

"Each year," Uubu said tensely. "Gokou-sensei and Vegita-san take a ship and go hunting for a month. Hunting this man. They have done this once a year, every year, since Burka Maiyosh's treachery on Shikaji."

"I didn't know that," Chao-tsu murmured.

"Neither did I," Uubu said. "Not until about seven years ago when Vegita-san came to me and asked me---ordered me really---to stand guard over Bulma-san and Gita while he and Gokou-san were away. He has received threats, several a year since Shikaji, against Bulma and the boy's life from all over the galaxy."

"Bulma never mentioned that," Tien said with a frown.

"She doesn't know," Uubu said shortly.

Tien's mouth pulled down into a hard grimace. "From people like that Ansousei-jin bastard who murdered her just to get back at Vegita. I can understand wanting to kill Vegita, but threatening innocent people because they are his family---that's sickening."

"Hate and grief make people do terrible things," Uubu said softly.

Tien glanced up at him curiously. "I thought Trunks told me that Vegita-san killed Jeiyce of Maiyosh."

"He did," Chao-tsu nodded. "But Bra-chan's Blue Dragonballs raised everyone who died that day on Shikaji, including Jeiyce."

Uubu did not glance aside at either of them, his liquid eyes on the man encased in the cell of power streaming from his hands. Jeiyce had finished his meal and was working on desert now. Some kind of pudding. "They haven't found so much as a trace of him in 15 years of hunting. Gokou-sensei can sense ki imprints and home to them, even from the other side of the galaxy. He hasn't been able to sense anything of Jeiyce anywhere. Piccalo-san has told them Jeiyce is not in Hell and he certainly isn't in Heaven. It was as though he just ceased to be." The incandescent eldritch glow streaming from Uubu's hands grew brighter and the island warrior tensed like a springing cat as Jeiyce abruptly stood, lurching to his feet as though his body were a life-sized doll on a string.

"Food is a good thing," He said. His lips spread in a horrible, rictus imitation of a smile And again, the voice was wrong. It sounded as though someone, something, was blowing through Jeiyce's vocal chords, sounding the Maiyosh-jin like a poor musician playing an unfamiliar instrument. Jeiyce stood facing them. His head turned left, then right, surveying his visitors, rotating like a parrot's hear, seemingly independent of his body.

"We have waited long for a ship," Jeiyce said.

"What happened to the one you came in?" Uubu asked quietly.

Chao-tsu fought the urge to press his hands over his ears as that horrific not-voice spoke again. Jeiyce tapped his chest. "This one came and found us. It meant to kill us. Foolish. We cannot die. We entered him. For a short time, he still had some will over this body. He destroyed the ship to keep us from leaving. Time...we had forgotten how ponderous it is. How weighty. But we were entertained. This one is full of many memories of sensation." He smiled and Chao-tsu wanted to cringe from the sight of that smile.

"Where is Jeiyce?" Uubu said steadily, voicing the terrible suspicion that had just formed to Chao-tsu's mind.

"He is with is. In here." The Maiyosh-jin's face shifted without warning. The rigorous grin melted away into something so raw and mortal, so full of horror beyond imagining, Chao-tsu choked with sympathy. And as it did, the bugs, the Arrak-jin, came flooding out of the Maiyosh-jin's mouth, nose, ears.

"...leasepleasepleaseplease, kill me! Make it stop! I want to die! Oh gods, I want to go to Hell, I want to go back to Hell, I--!" Then the words cut off as though they were water turned off at a tap. The joyful, unnamably inhuman smile returned as the things scittered back inside their host.

"Tough luck," Tien muttered unsympathetically.

Uubu glared sharply at him. "What would it take, Tien-san, to make a man beg for the mercy of Hell? Nothing living, good or evil, deserves...that." His mouth twisted in disgust as he turned back to the thing inside Jeiyce of Maiyosh. "You're feeding off his soul, aren't you."

"His self is a sweet, long-savored morsel," the Arrak-jin leered happily. "But his memories of pleasure and pain, of taste and touch and sweet music, of bright colors and sugared ale---Aaah! Those are beyond bliss for us. And with him as our vehicle, we may know all these things ourselves as this body feels them." It held up the nearly empty canister of pudding and ran its tongue along the inside like some bestial child licking a spoon clean of cake icing. "Our great feast is coming soon. The swarm is near. We wish to parley with the warriors who would oppose us. They will meet soon. There is much life here in this new place. Perhaps an accommodation may be reached. Take us to the meeting place."

"No," Tien stared at Uubu with dawning horror. "No! You can't take these things to Madran! We have to find a way to destroy them!"

"We cannot die," the abomination sang.

"Can you transmute him, Uubu-kun?" Chao-tsu asked desperately. "Into chocolate or stone or...just anything other than what he is?"

"I've laid these wards around him---them---it," Uubu said. "It's a shield that won't let anything not made of physical matter pass through. It will last until the end of time. But, no, Chao-tsu. I would never try to bring this thing to a populated world." His mouth tightening in sympathy. "Kami, I wish I could put this poor bastard out of his misery. Or maybe I could…"

Jeiyce! Uubu's mental voice rang out like a trumpet in Chao-tsu's mind. Jeiyce, can you hear me?! Nothing not of the physical universe can pass through the barrier around you. The Arrak-jin cannot pass through, but you---"

With a howl, Jeiyce flung his body at the barrier, shrieking in agony as he forced his flesh through the wall of light. And as he did, he left the black things behind. They tore out the back side of his body, falling to the floor in gore-splattered bundles, unable to follow their host through the web of Uubu's power. They must have been ripping the Maiyosh-jin to pieces on the inside as he pressed forward, his mouth open in a silent scream, tearing to things out as he forced his body through. It took less than five seconds, maybe less than three, but it was the longest, most horrifying three seconds Chao-tsu could recall. Jeiyce fell to the floor outside the cell of magelight, bleeding in great gouts from...everywhere. The back of his skull was pockmarked with holes, bright red against the ivory of his hair.

Uubu knelt beside him, covering the Maiyosh-jin with a pale glow of healing light, refusing bone, rebuilding organs, replenishing blood. He reached down as he finished and gently eased to Maiyosh-jin up into a sitting position. "How do you feel, Jeiyce?"

The sound started deep in his throat, a soft, low moan. And then Jeiyce of Maiyosh began to sob like a child, falling into Uubu's arms. It was a harsh, gut-wrenching noise that spoke of the deepest, unimaginable pain and torment. It was the sound of all childhood's darkest nightmares made flesh. Tien turned away frowning, embarrassed. After a moment, Chao-tsu did the same. Those sort of tears, the kind a man spilled only once or twice in lifetime if he was lucky, were private, not a thing anyone---let alone an enemy---should witness. It was strange to feel so much sympathy for a man who had willingly served Frieza, for a man who had tried to feed Son-kun and all his family to the Arrak-jin. Chao-tsu shuddered. He should have been able to nod grimly and tell himself the bastard had gotten a very poetic sort of justice here on Amshah.

But I can't either, Tien's voice said in his mind. And maybe it's not so much me mellowing into an old softy as it is the fact that Jeiyce is a living thing.

And nothing alive should have to endure the kind to torment Jeiyce had endured for the last fifteen years.

Nothing and no one.

Chao-tsu turned back as the Maiyosh-jin's wails began to taper down. Uubu was kneeling beside the man, gripping his hand firmly. Chao-tsu felt his stomach clench in sympathy at the look on the man's face. He had never seen anyone so utterly devastated. He knelt beside Uubu.

"It's over now," the brown-skinned warrior was saying. "It's over."

"I..." Jeiyce croaked hoarsely. "...don't know who you are, but...gods, I will serve you til my dying day...I swear service...I pledge faith..." He lost his words inside another faint sob.

"I don't need your service," Uubu said softly. "I'm Uubu." He nodded in his companions' generaldirection. "This is Tien and Chao-tsu. We're from Chikyuu. We came looking for Burka's records of the first experiments on the Arrak-jin."

"They are coming," Jeiyce whispered. "I...I saw inside their mind when they were in---inside me. They mean to feed. They mean to eat everything, but---but some people---the warriors with the highest ki like ourselves...oh gods..." He curled into a ball like a toddler trying to block an attack by hiding from it. "They want to---to get inside us all. All ki sensitive peoples. They want to drive us like ships and eat our souls til there's nothing left. We have to stop them! We...we..."

"We know they're coming," Uubu told him. "The whole galaxy's been preparing for it since Shikaji."

Something occurred to Chao-tsu and he leaned forward urgently, gripping the Maiyosh-jin's arm. "You said you saw their mind. Do you know how close they are?"

"Close," Jeiyce rasped. There were tears leaking down his cheeks. He made no move to wipe them away. He probably wasn't aware he was crying. "But I know where the first rift will appear. I know where their foreguard will emerge into this universe.

"Where?" Tien breathed.

"Madran," Jeiyce said. "There are other puppets, people possessed by the bugs like I was. They're probably from this cache of bugs my uncle had stashed here on Amshah. When I got here, I found all the techs dead, all the base's transpo ships gone, and one of the bug canisters missing. Their puppet spies have told them there's a big war council on Madran today. They mean to take out our leaders and gobble up all the Saiyans in one fell swoop, laddies!"

"Kami," whispered Chao-tsu, "There's no time to warn them! The Council begin in six hours! Even a hyperlight transmission couldn't reach them in time! And the flight back to Madran takes three days..."

"I can get us there faster," Uubu said grimly. He glanced down at Jeiyce who had slowly uncurled from his defensive, fetal position. "I can move the ship out of phase with time. It's another of Buu's talents. We can get there in maybe eight hours. It's the best we can do. I've been trying to call Gokou-sensei since I found Jeiyce here, but I can't reach him mentally. Let's go quickly!"

They half-carried Jeiyce into their ship. The four of them crowded into the little bridge, watching in fascination as Uubu launched them off the low gravity of Amshah, laying his hands over the hyperlight controls, filling the console and the ship itself with his own unique brand of energy. The stars blurred to the while streaks of hyperlight, then...then they vanished.

"That was unnerving," Jeiyce whispered.

"We're kind of in a super hyperlight," Uubu said matter-of-factly. "We're traveling out of sync with normal time, so we can't call ahead and warn anyone. But we'll get there in time. We have to." He glanced back at Jeiyce, who stood unsteadily, supported on either side by Chao-tsu and Tien. "Jeiyce, when we get to Madran, you have to tell everyone what you know about the swarm and the puppets. After we convince them the bugs are on their way. We have to make everyone believe you and evacuate the planet. I can do a deep telepathic scan while you're speaking, as a kind of truth detector."

Jeiyce's voice was low, somber, almost inaudible. "You saved my soul, Uubu-san. I'll do anything you ask of me." He frowned suddenly. "But you'll have to keep Vegita off of me until I've had my say."

"What did you do to enrage Vegita?" Chao-tsu asked.

"You mean other than try and feed him and his family to the bugs?" Jeiyce asked with a broken chuckle. His eyes grew haunted, dark memory of the fifteen years of Hell that was worse than Hell filling them up.

"Other than that," Chao-tsu prodded, trying to nudge the Maiyosh-jin away from the inverted madness he saw growing in the other man's eyes.

Jeiyce's head snapped up, his gaze coming back to life, a tentative, grateful grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. "Well, I did try to steal his woman."

Tien chuckled suddenly. "I'm surprised Bulma-chan didn't do you in herself."

"Actually," Jeiyce said softly, his face lighting up with a fond smile. "She did."

The ship sped on through the warp in time and space, a desperate messenger on the leading edge of the storm.

* * * * *