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.

WARNING: ALL YE UNDER 18 GO AWAY NOW! This fic contains extreme violence, adult themes and profanity. If this is not your thing, don’t read it.

PART III: MADRAN

The ship set down in the charred blasted remains of what had once been Madran’s capital city.

"My goodness!" Chi-Chi exclaimed, surveying the wreckage around them. Gohan hung anxiously close to his mother, scanning the burned-out buildings for danger. Vegita snorted. The boy’s strength would be an asset in this suicide rescue mission of theirs, but his fear for the fool woman’s safety might paralyze him at some critical moment.

Bulma adjusted the tracer and turned due east. Her strained, tired face looked hopeful. "She’s less than 10 kilometers from here, somewhere in these ruins."

"I wondered what happened here?" Gohan muttered. "Whatever is was it was recent."

"Who gives a damn!" Vegita demanded. "Let’s go get her!" He scooped Bulma up, tracer and all, and shot upward. The others followed suit, all flying low to the ground. The signal grew steadily stronger as they neared the center of the city. Bulma recalibrated one more time.

"There," she pointed the instrument directly at the husk of what had once been a temple or maybe a school. It was more intact than any of the other structures around it. Vegita sat her on her feet in the arched doorway. He ripped the melted slag of the door off its hinges and stepped inside first.

It had been a temple. Young and old, entire families, had crammed inside hoping for some divine protection from the attack they must have known was coming. It hadn’t saved them. A huge circular section of the roof was caved in and shafts of bright sunshine illuminated what lay around them all too well. Everyone who had not taken refuge below ground when the blast hit had been roasted alive. Bulma drew in a sharp breath. Then she set her jaw firmly and began picking her way through the still smoking remains.

Kakarott, looming behind him in the doorway, glanced back and caught his son’s eye. The younger Son said something in a hushed voice to his mother, blocking her view of what lay past the temple door.

The tracer’s signal had risen to a shrill shriek as it closed in on its target. Bulma knelt down and Vegita watched, frozen, as she pulled a white, crimson-tipped tooth out of the ashes. He caught her just before she sagged to the floor. She made no sound, only beat against his chest with one clenched fist as he held her against him. When she did finally make some sort of noise, it was an angry, full-throated howl of rage. Vegita closed his eyes, and the image came to him, unbidden, of Bra lying safe and snug in her bed, smiling up at him.

A shadow fell across his face.

"Sounds like someone strangling a cat," a rough voice snickered. Ringed around the edge of the hole in the ceiling, a dozen hulking silhouettes peered down at them.

Vegita uttered an incoherent roar and hurled himself up at them. He was beyond all thought, beyond all reason, beyond recognizing the too-familiar armor worn by all of Frieza’a soldiers. There was nothing but the mindless, burning need to kill. He didn’t bother with ki blasts, he simply began pounding and slashing with his bare hands. His hand seared through a living chest, seizing the fluttering heart within, smashing it to pulp. He whirled and gripped another enemy’s head, ripping it off and hurling it like a missile through the stomach of a third. Somewhere on the ground, Kakarott and his son were beating down another knot of warriors with short, controlled bursts, firing with just enough power to stun, not kill. Good, Vegita thought, All the more for me! He spun wildly in the air, rending and pummeling everything in sight. All sense of time ceased to exist, until he realized, through the red din of the killing rage, that he was alone. They were all dead. With a cheated snarl, he dove toward the clump of figures on the ground. Kakarott and his brat were hunched over one last survivor, and Bulma and Chi-Chi were approaching the scene of the fight hesitantly. Vegita landed hard and stared into the prisoner’s battered face.

"Zarbon," he rasped. He raised one finger, and a tiny witchlight of energy pooled on the tip. "I will thank Frieza before I kill him, for giving me the chance to kill you twice."

"Vegita-san, wait!" Gohan cried. "He may know how to find Goten and Trunks!"

"Oh, he will tell us where they are," Vegita agreed softly. He released the dot of ki, searing the flesh on Zarbon’s left foot below the ankle. He was rewarded with a hoarse scream.

"Vegita, listen to me!" Zarbon hissed through clenched teeth.

"Stop it, Vegita!" Kakarott stepped between him and the blue-skinned warrior. "He wasn’t with Frieza’s men. I think he was their prisoner."

"I know what he is," Vegita said balefully. "Get out of my way, Kakarott!"

Something hard slammed into him from behind, bowling him over. He righted himself, seeing Kakarott and Gohan picking themselves up off the ground as well. Beside him now, Bulma gasped, and he followed her gaze to the armored figure who now stood between them and Zarbon. He stared frozen in shock at the young woman whose face was very nearly a mirror of Bulma’s, surrounded in the glow of her own Super Saiyan aura.

"Don’t you touch my father, you son of a bitch!" Bra said.

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Vegita stared into the angry blue eyes of his youngest child, and the madness that infused him moments before seemed to drain out of him. The look he leveled at Zarbon was still murderous, but he seemed to have regained control. Bulma suppressed a shudder. No matter what the circumstances, It was terrifying to watch Vegita kill so ruthlessly.

She laid a gentle hand on his arm and stepped between him and Bra. "No one’s going to hurt Zarbon, Bra. I promise I won’t let them." She kept her voice even with effort. She eyed the energy cuffs that bound the blue-skinned man’s hands and feet together. "I can take those off of him." She reached slowly toward the tool belt around her waist. "I’ve also got a medical kit. Someone should see to his wounds."

Bra eyed her with open suspicion.

"You can trust her, love," Zarbon told the girl quietly.

Bulma moved past her daughter, who was still powered up, blocking the men’s access to her "father". She knelt beside the injured warrior, and after a quick examination, popped the cuffs with a negative pulse wrench. "You," she told him as she set about treating the burn on His foot, "Need to start explaining yourself right now."

The flawless, beautiful face that had made her blush like a school girl so many years ago, smiled ruefully up at her. "I suppose so.Where to begin? Bra-chan?" His voice softened noticeably. "Come sit down beside me and this pretty lady."

Bra backed up cautiously and knelt beside him, never taking her eyes off Vegita. "He hurt you, Father," she said.

Vegita cursed viscously at the girl’s use of the word "father".

"Vegita, stop it," Bulma said quietly. Her eyes never left Zarbon’s. "I think we may have a great deal to thank him for. You rescued her, didn’t you? Why?"

Zarbon stared at her in surprise. Then he sighed. "I’d already made up my mind to bolt before they ever took the kids. One lifetime in Frieza’s service was enough for me. When they brought the children on board Frieza’s cruiser, the boys nearly tore the ship apart. They almost got away three or four times during the first few hours. By the time we put in at the hub space port on Skilda, the ship was in pandemonium. Everything was on fire or being blown apart, Frieza was laughing his ass off watching the boys kill his own men, like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. My Madrani contact had just signaled me it was now or never if I was going to jump ship. And in the midst of this unbelievable shit storm, I looked down and saw Bra. No one was paying any attention to her in all the chaos. She looked up at me and raised her arms for me to pick her up, and I just…I just grabbed her and ran." He glanced at Bra. "I still don’t really know why. She’s been nothing but a pain in the ass from day one." Bra made a face at him. "Put it down to a gesture to childhood. I was a child in Frieza’s court, just like Vegita." He and Vegita exchanged an unreadable look and Vegita nodded grimly in silent thanks to the other man. "Anyway," Zarbon went on, "while Frieza began gobbling up system after system of free worlds, we managed to hook up with a kind of underground. The Madrani were part of the network. They had developed a mechanism that allows us to hide in from our enemies in plain sight. Bra and I set down a couple of hours ago and found this. We split up to look for the Mastertech, sort of the planet’s head scientist. I found him and his team, or what was left of them. Someone had spent a lot of time getting info out them."

"Do you think it was the SPE specs they were after?" Bra asked anxiously.

"I hope not, love. Whoever tortured the Mastertech to death got what they wanted and left. The ones who jumped us were just Frieza’s standard clean up crew. None of them were powerful enough to fry a huge city like this in seconds." He smiled without any humor. "You can all come back to Haven, our base world , with as. I think we might be able to help each other. But if Frieza has the plans to our camouflage engine, we may all simply die together." He scanned their faces. "Now that I’ve answered a couple of your questions, maybe you wouldn’t mind answering one for me. What the hell are the lot of you still doing alive? I thought Frieza had atomized you and Chikyuu’s entire system a few seconds after the Ginyu returned from their little kidnapping expedition."

""You’re from Chikyuu?" Bra sounded startled. "That was my home planet! Father’s right, Frieza blew it up 15 years ago…" She broke off, staring at Bulma.

"No," her mother shook her head. "Frieza used one of his wishes to diplace the entire solar system temporally. Your 15 years ago was yesterday to us."

"I know you, don’t I?" Bra said in a small voice.

"Oh baby," Bulma reached out and tried to embrace the girl, but Bra drew back in confusion.

Vegita turned away from the dull look of hurt on his wife’s face, to Zarbon. "Tell her," he said coldly.

Zarbon took Bra’s hand and pulled her gently back toward Bulma. "Look at her, Bra. You were right. You do know her." Bra gazed intently at her mother, and one hand crept up the older woman’s face hesitantly as she processed all the information she had received in the last few minutes.

"Ka-kassan…" the girl asked, trembling. "Mama…You’re my Mama!"

"Baby," Bulma took the sobbing girl in her arms. "Oh, Bra-chan, shhh."

"I remember," Bra told her. "I was afraid you’d be mad at me when you got back from your party, because I murdered Nanny-Bot!" Bulma burst out laughing through tears. "I remember that night…" Bra repeated. She trailed off again, her eyes finding Vegita. "Poppa."

Vegita knelt beside her, and regarded his daughter. His features shifted minutely, softening into a look he only ever directed at his wife and daughter. Her left cheek was swollen and bruised. He touched it lightly with one gloved finger.

"One of them got in a lucky swing," she told him. "I think I lost a couple of teeth."

Vegita chuckled. "At least one. It’s how we were tracking you." The girl looked confused, but he didn’t bother to explain. He frowned at the blast-scored, dented, much-used armor she wore. "I would not have taught you to fight unless you wished it."

"Nessecity wished it," Zarbon interjected. He stood shakily. "We need to have this family reunion elsewhere. "Is the ship still cloaked?" He asked Bra.

"They blew it to pieces," Bra said.

"We have a ship," Bulma said firmly. "We can take you to your resistance base."

Zarbon laughed, shaking his head. "I ‘d like to think we were a resistance, but mostly it’s about hiding as many people and worlds as quickly as we can."

In spite of herself, Bulma was very nearly salivating with scientific curiosity. "Hiding whole worlds! How—"

"Later," Vegita said. "Let’s get back to the ship and out of this system first."

Bulma laid in the coordinates Zarbon had give her, watching her daughter anxiously hover over the blue warrior’s wounds. Vegita stood a little removed from everyone else, but she sensed the conflicting emotions inside him roiling just beneath the surface. Thankfulness that the man had saved Bra from Frieza and the dull glower of hatred that he had taught her to call him "father". There was some other tension between the two men as well. She had the sense that it was in some way related to the years they had spent in Frieza’s service, the part of his past Vegita never spoke of. It occurred to her that, in some ways, Zarbon knew more about her husband than she did herself.

Finally, Chi-Chi voiced the question they had all been thinking.

"What about the boys? What do you know about my Goten and Trunks?"

Bra stiffened and Zarbon’s face went carefully blank. Bulma tried to steel herself for the worst. "When they were first brought on board," Zarbon said slowly, "Frieza told them that you had all used Chikyuu’s dragon balls to wish yourselves and Chikyuu to safety. That their parents had abandoned them because their lives weren’t worth the lives of everyone on Chikyuu." The silence from the earth Saiyans was deathly still and cold. "I thought it was a load of green Namek shit myself, something he told the boys to demoralized them, and that he’d actually blow you all to the far side of Hell. But a kid might believe it---like a kid might believe a "meteor storm" had destroyed his homeworld by ill chance." Vegita looked sick.

Gohan finally spoke. "What kind of mind would make up a story like that?"

"Frieza’s," Vegita hissed.

"Are they alive?" Gokou asked softly. Chi-Chi glanced at him and then away quickly. There was enough anger in that calm question to crack worlds in half, to snuff out suns like a flame blown out at a candle’s wick

"They are Frieza’s destroyers," Zarbon said finally. "His two-headed angel of death. We’ve met them only once, when our last base world was discovered 3 years ago. They led the attack—no one was spared. We survived because, at the last second, Trunks recognized Bra. He sort of froze for a moment."

"I’d like to think nissan let us go," Bra said. "But it may have just been surprise that made him hesitate—just long enough for me to knock him cold."

"We only know what little we’ve seen and what we’ve heard from other survivors of conquered worlds," Zarbon continued. "Goten fights like a machine, he’s completely controlled and merciless in battle and cold and rational off the field. Trunks…The day our base on Arbatsu fell, he was gentle and kind to one set of captives, then tore them limb from limb a few moments later for no discernible reason. He was erratic and unpredictable and horribly, horribly powerful. And his own men feared him. Goten was the only one who seemed to be able to get through to him or bridle him in any way. Trunks is…"

"Nissan is mad." Bra said flatly. "Whether is was Frieza’s doing or thinking he’d been left to his fate by all of you, Trunks is completely crazy."

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The young man approached the glimmering white throne and knelt in calm obeisance. The spikes of his short-cropped, jet black hair were smoking slightly from the warning blast that had just sung past his left ear. The Tsiru-jin courtiers and guards circled like piranha, hissing with outrage that the warrior had come unannounced and unsummoned into their master’s presence. A pale hand motioned minutely, staying his execution, and they went still.

For all the reaction the dark warrior showed, he might have been praying alone in some tranquil temple grove. A metallic eye-patch covered the blasted socket where his left eye had been and the red lens of his scouter covered the right, making it difficult to discern his expression. His deceptively light, youthful voice was calm and measured.

"I live to serve you, Lord."

The White Hall within the royal palace of Tsiru-sei was a pristine sculpture of exquisite beauty, wrought in ivory, ice, and the intricately carved bones of ancient enemies. Every whisper of a sound carried and echoed in the hollow emptiness around him. A soft snicker reached his ears, a bare wisp of sound. He raised his head slowly, his breath hanging ghostlike in the frozen air. His gaze was respectfully lowered, not meeting the eyes of the creature who sat on the ice throne.

"A world to burn? A rack to turn?" The one-eyed warrior sing-songed. One corner of his mouth curled up impishly. "I’ve a song or two I’ll wager you’ve not heard, Lord. An off-color love ballad involving a Tsiru-jin and a fire demon?"

A breath of a chuckle drifted toward him. "What would you call such a ditty, boy? ‘Roasted Love’? ‘Frozen Passions’?"

The kneeling man casually removed his scouter and raised his head a little further. The boyish beauty of his features was strangely accented by the angry scar and eye-patch. "’The Melted Heart’, Lord."

The sighing voice of his master seemed intrigued. "Do you hope to melt my heart, child? I know you have come to beg for your friend’s life."

"He will be needed if the Kais move against us, Lord." He thought he saw a flicker of fear on the alabaster face before him. Steeling himself for what might be his last action this side of hell, he reached out and ran one finger coaxingly down the three-pronged foot. Behind him, the Tsiru-jin courtiers hummed in jealous fury at such audacity.

"Give me Trunks to safe guard, Lord Frieza. He only becomes…unmanageable when we are separated. I will pledge my life on his good behavior." He smiled into the monster’s face, his own face automatically taking on its most appealing expression. "What can I do to sway your heart, Lord?"

One bone white hand stroked his thick black hair as though her were a much-loved, favorite dog. "Sing that foolish song for me, Goten-chan."

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Time had begun to have some meaning again. He hung suspended on the western spire of the Tsiru-sei palace, icicles and frost on his long hair and numb wind-burned face. The sun was going down. The nights on Tsiru-sei dropped to 80 below in the summers. He would not survive the night, and was somehow able to summon up a bit of pleasure at the thought. An end to pain. Even the nothingness of separation of body and spirit that Hell offered seemed inviting He closed his eyes, ready to surrender consciousness as he hadn’t since he was a small child. A harsh sob and a spike of familiar ki jerked him back to awareness. A "snick", and the ki-dampening slave collar Frieza used on the most powerful of his prisoners was pulled off.

"Oh, Trunks-kun," Goten’s hands were gently tugging at the steel spikes they had pounded through his wrists at dawn.

"Leave it, Goten," he tried to say. He couldn’t move his mouth. Goten seemed to hear the thought anyway, because he was growling in angry refusal.

"No way," Goten said. "You’re not allowed to die on me, Trunks. Do you hear me, you crazy son of a bitch? You’re not allowed!"

Goten wrapped one hand around each of the spikes they’d used to crucify him to the tower spire and tore them out in one movement. Trunks had time to draw in one sharp gulp of air before the pain rose up and turned the world black.

He awoke to burning pain and an odd, soothing warmth. Goten’s face blurred slowly into view.

"I’ve packed you down in med patches. The frosty bitch wouldn’t let me use the regen tank. He said he wants the scars to help you ‘reflect on your sins’. Just don’t try to move yet."

"My sins…" Trunks chest caught in a hitch. Goten had been told what had happened. Frieza had ordered a seventy- percent casualty rate on the world Trunks had taken two days ago. The indigenous population were reported to be intelligent and highly malleable, and Frieza had meant the remaining thirty- percent to be used as technical support slaves. Trunks had not left so much as a microbe alive on the planet’s surface.

"I started thinking about how their lives as slaves would be worse than a good clean death," Trunks told him. "Then I guess I just stopped thinking all together. I started killing and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop!"

"So you lost your shit in the heat of battle," Goten said uncomfortably. "It happens."

"They are better off aren’t they, Goten?" Trunks voice had begun to take on a vague, disconnected, almost childlike tone that was becoming more and more frequent of late. It was somehow more frightening to Goten than any of his friend’s insane bouts of rage

"Oh, Kami, Goten," Trunks sobs had tapered down into jagged breaths. "Do you think our parents can see us in Heaven?"

Goten looked away. "I hope not."

"They’d be so ashamed…I dreamed last night that they were all alive, Goten. That Frieza told the truth when he told us they were in hiding. I dreamed they finally decided to come rescue us." Trunks laughed unevenly. "What do you think they’d make of us now?"

"They wouldn’t make anything of us, because they’re all dead!" Goten said harshly. "Don’t talk nonsense,Trunks."

"You went to him and asked him for my life, didn’t you?" Trunks murmured.

Goten shrugged, inwardly relieved at the change of subject. The grey fog behind Trunks eyes seemed to recede for the moment. "Ask, beg, cajole—a bit of groveling here, a bit of judicious flirting there. He was in a good mood."

Trunks closed his eyes. He could imagine what the price of his life had been. "Oh, Goten-kun…"

Goten shrugged again as though it were nothing. "He was…Well, he was a she."

"What?"

"His time is almost on him." Goten said. "He’s completely into his female cycle—and I mean to the point where someone ought to tell him to put on a bra!" Trunks uttered a weak cackle. "Can you imagine waking up one morning to find you’re slowly turning into a girl? Creepy, ne?"

"The Tsiru-jin change gender to female when they are bearing their young," Trunks murmured. "It’s natural for them. I would rather have died than see you go to him, Nissan."

"And I would rather have died than see you dead," Goten said flatly. "Anyway, it was no big deal. He was feeling all hormonal and motherly. All I did was sing for him and make him laugh." He didn’t meet the other man’s eyes, knowing his friend saw through the lie. "The Tsiru-jin Empire should have a bouncing baby heir—or eel , or whatever—any day now. It’s my fault you got into deep shit anyway. I shouldn’t have left you to do that job by yourself."

"Where did you go?" Trunks voice was slightly slurred. The trank in the med patches was finally kicking in.

"I followed that rumor we heard to Madran and had a talk with the Mastertech," Goten replied. "I’ve found Daruma, Trunks!"

"Where?!" Trunks tried to rise weakly and Goten pushed him gently back down.

"Sleep, Trunks-kun," Goten said fiercely. "Rest and grow well. All of this long nightmare is almost over." He pushed the long lavender hair out of the other man’s closed eyes. The one living thing in the universe he still loved. "I swear to you, Onissan," he told Trunks sleeping form,"Frieza will not live to see his firstborn draw breath!"

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