DISCLAIMER: I don’t own DBZ or any of its characters.

WARNING: Sex, harsh language, adult situations, blah-dee-blah Blah-blah.

"The kids," Bulma whispered. "Frieza’s taken them."

Chi-Chi sounded choked. "My little Goten as well."

Gokou patted her awkwardly. "We’ll get them back, Chi-Chi," He said. "They can’t have gotten far."

Bulma turned to Vegita. He stood beside her still and motionless as granite, his face blank and cold. Hold it together, girl, she told herself, because he’s very close to losing it completely.

"I have the Crane commercial passenger prototype decapsulated in in hanger three," she said steadily. "It’s bigger and faster than anything I’ve ever built."

All the mens’ heads snapped up in unison. "Piccalo-san!" Gohan said. only Gokou didn’t look surprised.

"I’ve got some news about our old pal Frieza’s recent visit." The Namek’s telepathic voice echoed deep inside her head, making Bulma flinch with surprise. From the look on Chi-Chi’s face she was hearing him also. "It’s bad," he said bluntly. "Some of this you’ll have already figured out. Somewhere, somehow, some galaxy class intellect thought it would be a plan to wish Frieza back to life."

"Did they use the Namekian dragon balls?" Gokou asked.

"I wish," Piccalo growled. "We think these dragon balls were made by a Namek named Daruma. He was a wanderer like me, but he would have been ancient by the time I was born. And when I say I, I mean Kami and myself, before we split. Which means he remembers craft secrets that were lost eons ago. So, forget all the rules for any set of dragon balls you’ve ever dealt with. He wrote his own rules for the Red Dragon Balls and we still don’t know what they are. He was also a real bastard. So was the dragon he conjured. Anything you wish for with these babys will turn to evil. Red Soraku decides how to fulfill the wish and he’ll find a way to twist it against you."

Gohan frowned. "You mean like if you wish to be rich, for instance, someone you love would die and you’d collect a fortune in insurance?"

Piccalo’s dry mental chuckle. "That sounds about right, kid."

"Sound like this Soraku has a nasty sense of humor," Gokou said.

"Dende’s sources think Frieza was wished back by the last remnants of his own people, the Tsiru-jin."

Vegita cursed visciously. "I knew I hadn’t gotten them all!" Everyone stared. "After Namek was destroyed, before Kakarott returned to Chikyuu, I paid a visit to Planet Frieza where the old lizard quartered most of his legions and a great many of his own folk. I did not leave so much as an insect alive, but I knew there were other Tsiru-jin out there. I should have hunted them down! They’re royal house is deity in their eyes. I should have known they would do something to try and resurrect him!" Bulma put a comforting hand on his arm, and he jerked away from her touch angrily. She swallowed hard, beating the tears down ruthlessly. In half an hour, her seemed to have regressed ten years.

"How did he get so strong?" She asked, tearing her eyes away from her husband.

"Daruma’s dragon balls come with five wishes," Piccalo replied. "We think his people used the first one to wish him back. Then he used the second one to wish for power—anything he wished for would be turn to evil, but I guess because he’s evil himelf, the dragon didn’t screw him. He wished for the power of a god, people. If we could quantify how strong he is now, it’d be something on the order of Super Saiyan 7 now, if there were such a thing. And the third wish to wish all his armies back."

"There’s no time limit on how long the people you wish back with these dragon balls can have been dead?" Gohan sounded startled.

"You got it, kid. This new Frieza’s not the same pasty little bastard we all knew and loved. He has the almost limitless power of a Kai now, but is subject to none of the celestial laws that bar the Kais from excessive interferance in the physical plain. And he still has one more wish under his belt." Piccalo paused. Bulma had the sense that he was receiving information from a third party. "Okay, listen up people. Dende’s tied up right now in a fifty-way conference call. We’ve got a rogue Kai and an evil dragon on our hands, and this is one of the few exception where the gods get to throw down and personally take action."

"The gods are going to war," Chi-Chi murmured.

"Not if we can help it," Piccalo said. "Dende and I are both of the opinion that there may not be very much left in the aftermath of such a battle." A pause. "I’ve got to go, soon. The hotheads are starting to gang up on Dende. "Gokou, Vegita—Daruma is the key. He’s the only one who knows how the Red Dragon Balls work and Frieza’s last wish and their power will be directly tied to his life. Dende won’t tell you this but I will. No Daruma, no dragon balls, no more wishes. It won’t solve all our problems, but it’ll pull a couple of his teeth. And it might keep the Kais out of this if Red Soraku’s out of the picture."

"Daruma dies only after he’s told us all the secrets of his dragon balls," Vegita nodded, his eyes burning.

Gokou shook his head. "I know what you’re saying Piccalo, but I won’t do it. Tracking down Daruma and killing him is still murder."

"Fine by me," Vegita snapped.

"You two can argue about it on the way," Chi-Chi said sharply. "The first priority is getting our children back safely!"

Something had been tickling the back of Bulma’s mind. Something That didn’t quite add up. "What happened to the forth wish?" She asked. everyone’s eyes turned to her. "The Tsiru-jin used the first one to wish Frieza back and Frieza used the second to wish for strength and the third to wish back all his soldiers. And Piccalo said he still has one more wish. So, what happened to the forth wish?"

There was a long silence. Piccalo finally spoke again. "That’s the final thing I have to tell you. He took your kids and left you all alive for revenge. Because he wanted to hurt Gokou and Vegita, and leave them alive for a while to go on hurting."

"Get on with it!" Vegita said harshly.

"He planned this out very carefully, I think. You know you’ll be walking into a trap."

"We still have to go,"Gokou replied. "I don’t believe in traps, anyway. There’s always a way to win. We just have to find it."

Piccolo was silent a moment longer. "Then I need to prepare you for what you’ll find. The blackout you all experienced was the forth wish. It was the result of a temporal shift. Frieza used his wish to take this entire solar system and everything in it outside of the temporal plane and set it down in another point in time. Frieza hasn’t had your kids for fifteen minutes or even fifteen hours. He’s had them for fifteen years."

The two Saiyan warriors stood side by side watching the small, blue-green planet they called home slowly recede from sight. From the galley just the Crane passenger ship’s elaborate bridge, the soft burr of conversation between Chi-Chi and Gohan drifted toward them.

"…couldn’t catch them in, to tell Videl what’s going on," Gohan murmurred.

"…know she’d understand…" Chi-Chi’s subdued voice.

"Chi-Chi’s cooking something special," Gokou said after a long silence. "She says it’s one of her ‘coping mechanisms’."

Vegita grunted. Behind them at the navigation console, Bulma’s presence on the edges of his consciousness was a bright spark of pain. She had won her fight to come with them, beating down his angry refusals with stony logic. Her technical genius might give them a needed edge at some vital moment. That and the fact that nowhere in the galaxy would she be safe from Frieza, now. The others had watched the argument escalate, waiting for the explosion that never came. In the end, he had simply turned his back on her coldly and said in an icy, disinterested voice, "Do whatever you want,Woman." He wrenched his thoughts away from the memory of the hurt in her face. He backed away from it. He could feel his mind methodically shutting down his emotions one by one, going cold. A part of him was relieved. There was no comfort in the numbness, but at least he could function. Maybe that was his ‘coping mechanism.’

"I’ve found her," Bulma said quietly. A year ago, Bulma had planted a microscopic tracking device in one of Bra’s first molars (Saiyan children never lost there milk teeth.) She had done this in a fit of frustration and worry after losing the highly mobile baby in the enormous Capsule compound for the third time in one day. "A bit of tweaking," Bulma had said, was all that was needed to trace the girl half-way across the galaxy. "I made a couple of course corrections over the last hour so I could cross-reference the readouts from the tracer," she said. She glanced up at Gokou blank face. "Bra’s right here," she pointed to the X on the nav computer’s star chart.

Vegita checked the coordinates. "Mardran," he murmurred.

"Do you know it?" Bulma did not look up from the read out.

"I’ve been there," he said shortly. "Low population, but very rich. The Madrani design, manufacture and broker weapons."

"They don’t sound very nice," Kakarott said.

"They did their work and kept to themselves," Vegita replied. "That’s all I know about them."

"I’ve laid in the course," Bulma said. "We should be there in 12 hours. I’m going to try to get some rest." She stood and left the bridge without a backward look.

"Supper should almost be ready. Are you hungry?" Kakarott’s voice sounded so normal and calm Vegita fought the urge to strike him.

"No."

The big idiot eyed him doubtfully as the concept were utterly alien to him. "Vegita, you’ll need to keep your strenth up for this fight. Frieza will have some pretty nasty tricks up his sleeve, if I know him."

"You don’t know a damn thing about Frieza, Kakarott!" Vegita rasped. "You never did!"

"I know everything you know." Vegita’s head snapped around. Kakarott met his eyes guilelessly. "From when we fused, remember? You had all my thoughts and I had all of yours. You told me afterwards that you thought you might have nightmares about Chi-Chi for the rest of your life, and I said I didn’t blame you because Chi-Chi can be really scary sometimes when she gets angry—"

"I was talking about your wedding night, you brainless, lowclass imbecile!" Kakarott frowned slightly, but regaurded him without anger. "If you know everything…" He turned away from the other Saiyan, his whole body trembling with conflicting rushes of emotion.

"I remember when you first came to Chikyuu," Kararott went on. "You seemed to really enjoy being evil, but when my mind touched yours a couple of time while we were fighting, it was like…" He paused, searching for words that were beyond his vocabulary. "….Like you’d swallowed a bunch of razors and they were cutting you to pieces on the inside. I know it’ll be bad, Vegita, but maybe not as bad as you think. They’re not alone, like you were. They have each other and the memory of our love. You can survive almost anything if you have love."

"Kakarott, Bra was three years old," he began. He choked the words off and the anger rose up, burning down the pain as it always seemed to. He rounded on the bigger Saiyan, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. "How can you stand there so calmly, Kakarott?! Blithering about love and togetherness when your child has been in the hands of a monster for fifteen years! When you know—" He stopped, shaking the fool until his teeth rattled. "Where is your anger, Kakarott? Where is your hate?!"

Kakorott laid a hand on his own heart.. His brows drew down and together. "In here," he tapped his chest gently. His voice, that irritating adolescent-sounding alto, had dropped a full octave. "I’m saving it all for Frieza," Kakarott told him in a deathly quiet voice. Vegita stared into the bigger man’s eyes, chilled. For an instant, something burning and terrible had flickered there. "I’ve never felt hate before, Vegita." Kakarott told him. "It hurts."

"Gokou-sa!" Chi-Chi’s voice came faintly from the galley. Kakarott seemed to shake himself, though he didn’t move. He gazed at Vegita politely until the Saiyan prince realized he was still gripping the other man’s arms tightly. He let go and stepped back.

"Cooking for me makes Chi-Chi feel better when she’s upset," Kakarott said in his normal voice. "That must be what "coping mechanism" means." He looked inordinately pleased that he had puzzled this out. "Are you sure you’re not hungry, Vegita?"

Vegita shook his head mutely. It never failed to stun him, how the man could change like that. Kakarott was already moving away, being pulled irresistibly by his stomach. "Chi-Chi always gives me a hug after she’s yelled at me," he said almost absently as he walked away. "After that, everything’s all right again. It’s nice to have someone to love, isn’t it, Vegita?"

Vegita opened the door to their cabin and undressed quietly in the dark. He moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Bulma lay turned away from him, tears drying on her face. She wasn’t asleep. He reached down and turned her gently, pulling her up into his arms. One finger traced the faint streaks her tears had made, brushing them away.

"I need you, Vegita," she whispered. "Please don’t shut me out."

He pushed her hair back from her face and kissed her softly. He hadn’t known what a kiss was until she’d taught him. She returned the embrace, hesitantly at first, then with growing intensity. His hands found their way under the white cotton top she wore, touching soft skin. She shrugged out of her underwear and he pulled the tank over her head. Wrapping both arms and legs around him, she pulled him down onto her with surprising strength. "I need you, Vegita," she said again.

He had meant to take a long time, to make love to her slowly and gently, the way she liked it. But the feverish, almost desperate look on her face changed his mind. He threaded each of his hands through hers and thrust fully into her in one smooth motion. She gasped and bowed her back, shuddering as he filled her up completely, banishing thought and pain for both of them, if only for now. He moved inside her, hard and fast, giving her what she demanded, exhausting release and the deep, irrefutable reassurance of his presence throughout every inch of her. Something seemed to break fatally inside him at the end. The old comfortable wall he’d been resurrecting around himself, that he’d never demolished completely, shattered into a million sharp fragments. Feeling came rushing back over him in a crushing wave and all that he had shut down and shut out rose up and struck him with the force of a hammer, leaving him naked and defenseless in her arms.

Bulma lay quietly spent beneath him, her heart already slowing. One hand gently disengaged his and caressed the back of his neck. His head was resting in the soft hollow between her neck and shoulder. He made no move to draw away, simply lay silent and still above and within her. He didn’t seem to be breathing until she felt a faint tremor run through his body, and he took a short sharp hitch of breath. She swallowed the sob that rose in her throat when she felt the wetness on her shoulder where his face lay buried. She said nothing. There were no words of comfort that would not shame him, and none that were sufficient. So, she held him silently in the darkness. They held each other against the grief the next twenty-four hours might bring. Sleep never came, but whatever horrors or battles lay before them, neither of them would face it alone.

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