DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN DBZ OR AND OF THE CHARACTERS THEREIN. I AM NOT RECEIVING ANY MONEY FOR THIS. THIS FICTION IS PURELY FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.

WARNING: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS VIOLENCE AND PROFANITY AND RAPE. IF THIS OFFENDS YOU, DON’T READ.

In the white peace of his bleached throne room, Frieza smiled it was all falling out even better than he had hoped. The only random factor in the entirety of the little drama he had just watched unfold was the Namek. And his ‘secrets’ had proved to be worse than useless.

"Is it time, Holy Lord?" A voice whispered shyly.

Frieza turned his eyes to the slight form of the young thing that sat at his feet gazing up at the Tsiru-jin monarch in rapt adoration. The white armor of the Tsiru-jin priesthood who had raised her from infancy emersed her slim, fragile-looking body, making her appear even smaller. "It is time, little thing," he said affectionately. "I’m pleased your tutors have taught you such piety and obedience to your god."

"My god," the girl sighed.

"All your life has moved toward this moment. Now, serve me in this one small errand and you will be ordained, a full priest of my order—the first ever of non-Tsiru-jin blood." Frieza smiled again and the girl nearly sobbed with love. An endearing little creature. Perhaps he would keep her as bodyguard and caretaker for his child.

"My life and my soul are yours, Holy Lord," she intoned. She bent and kissed his feet reverently.

"Bring me my bait," said Frieza.

The girl touched two fingers to her forehead and blinked out of sight.

From high above, the cries of the wounded and the grieving drifted down through the long shaft Trunk and Goten had driven through earth and metal.

"He did it on purpose," Goten said to no one in particular. He was sitting on the floor, his expression betrayed no emotion whatsoever, except for the tears running unchecked down his scarred face. "He powered down deliberately at the last second." Goten seemed not to see or feel the presence of his family encircling him, touching him comfortingly. "He wanted to die…"

Across the room, Bra was hunched anxiously over her mother. Bulma moaned faintly. "Trunks…Vegita…" Gohan’s stomach lurched sickly when he saw her clothing was smoking.

Zarbon turned her gently in Bra’s arms, examining her carefully. "She’s all right, love," he told the girl. "The edge of the blast just singed her before Vegita tossed her out of the way."

A few feet to his left, Vegita knelt motionless, Trunks body still cradled in his arms. After one initial heart-rending cry, he had bowed his head over his son’s and turned still as stone. Gohan felt a stab of shame that he had ever thought the man incapable of love.

"After Frieza first kidnapped us," Goten said, absently wiping the tears from his face, "He told us you’d wished yourselves and all of Chikyuu to safety and left us, because our lives didn’t weigh out against the lives of everyone on Chikyuu. Then he and his men began laughing. We both called him a liar and we fought them all—We fought so hard! Then Frieza stepped in and just beat us down with one blow." Goten’s voice had taken on a controlled, offhand quality, seemingly devoid of emotion. For some reason, this worried Gohan more than the tears. This was the face his brother had shown the hundreds of non-combatants on Haven’s surface moments before---the people Goten had killed with as much thought as Gohan would give to stepping on an insect. The look on his father’s face told Gohan he was thinking the same thing.

"We always told each other it was a lie," Goten went on, sounding more detached with each second. "That you were all dead. But the lie…haunted Trunks." He gently disengaged himself from his mother’s embrace, holding her at arm’s length. "It was always worse for Trunks, whatever went down. Frieza never forgot it was Trunks who killed him in the end. Even if it wasn’t the same Trunks. I think the belief that you had all died before you could come rescue us was all that was keeping him together." He laughed softly. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. "And he wasn’t that together anyway. I think he’s been trying to die for a while now. To goad Frieza into killing him. I wish he hadn’t lived long enough to see you all come out of hiding."

He touched his mother’s face with an unnerving smile. The smile turned quickly to a grimace as Gokou seized his arms, pinning them, and threw him to the floor. Then he sat on him.

"Chi-Chi, stand back!" His father said sharply. "Goten-chan, can you hear me?" He asked the younger man squirming under him.

"Y—ess," Goten managed.

"Good," said Gokou amicably. "Frieza wished us and Chikyuu fifteen years into the future, then told you and Trunks that awful lie about us running away and leaving both of you, so that when we finally caught up with you, you’d think it was true and try to kill us. Did you get all that?"

"…yes."

"Good then." Gokou let him up. "And Goten," he locked eyes with his youngest son. It was a stare that Gohan fervently hoped he would never earn from their father as long as he lived. "If you hurt any more innocent people ever again, I’m going to beat you senseless."

"Y-yes, Toussan," Goten said faintly. He looked dazed. Then his father drew him into a crushing bear hug. Goten stiffened at first, then seemed to slowly melt into the older man’s broad chest.

Gohan swallowed hard. Words like pride and love seemed pathetically insufficient to express what he felt for his father. He forced himself to turn away and moved to where Bulma lay.

Gohan fingered the pouch of senzu his father had entrusted him with before they’d left. He had a feeling they would need the senzu desperately soon. He should not use even one for something little more serious than a bump on the head. "Are you sure she’s all right?" he asked Bra and Zarbon.

As if in response, Bulma opened her eyes.

"Trunks…" Somewhere, something had gone horribly wrong.

"Vegita-san needs you right now," was all Gohan could think of to say. Some sixth sense made him turn just in time to see Zarbon tense, then fall slowly forward onto his face with a sigh. Gohan stared in shock at the gaping hole through the blueskinned warrior’s midsection—and up at the shining figure who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. She wore snow white armor that seemed almost silver beneath the blaze of her Super Saiyan aura. Her young face—she looked like little more than a child—wore the serene expression of a monk in meditation. Her face…

The girl looked like Videl.

Gohan began shaking his head as though it would take away the truth he already knew. "Pan.?" No one moved.

That instant of surprise was all the girl needed. In one smooth movement, she struck the stunned Bra aside and grabbed Bulma by the throat.

Nothing else would have torn Vegita out of the deep shock he had been submerged in. Now he and Gohan’s father were instantly on either side of the girl.

"Don’t hurt her!" Gohan begged them, "Please don’t hurt her!"

"Another centimeter and I’ll pull off her head," the girl told them. Bulma gagged as Pan squeezed her neck for emphasis. She focused on Vegita, who stood snarling on her right.

"My Lord bids you come alone to Tsiru-sei and she will be set free," Pan told him. She placed two fingers to her forehead, and Gohan, driven by insight quicker than rational thought, clamped one hand firmly around his daughter’s ankle. In the same instant, he, Pan and Bulma were gone.

"Father!" Bra said brokenly. "No…."

Vegita looked away, then, burning with shame at his sudden surge of hateful jealousy toward the dead man, he took the sobbing girl in his arms and stroked her head. "Oh, Poppa," she said.

"Sleep, Bra-chan," he murmured. He struck her once, a short, sharp blow to the side of the head, and she sagged against him. He set the unconscious girl in Chi-Chi’s arms. "Find a way to keep her from following me," he said shortly.

"He will kill you both, Vegita," Kakarott told him.

He didn’t even pretend to misunderstand the other Saiyan. "He will kill us all regardless. If I do not go now, he will kill her slowly, Kakarott. He will do things to her you cannot even begin to imagine. Gohan as well, and his brat." He gripped the other man’s arms. "You said before there is always a way to win. Find it, Kakarott! If—" Pride almost choked the words off before he could utter them. "If anyone can find a way to win against Frieza, it is you! I will buy you all the time I can." With that, he was gone, launching himself upward through the tunnel in the ceiling. Moments later, they heard the low roar of the Crane vaulting into the sky.

Gokou took Goten’s hand in his. He kissed Chi-Chi weeping face.

"I have to think for a while," he said. He sat down cross-legged and closed his eyes.

Bulma woke cold.

She sat up sluggishly. Beside her, on the glittering sheet of ice that was the floor, Gohan lay on his back, bleeding from a blow to the head.

"Naughty boy," a voice remarked.

She turned her head this way and that. She couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her face before vision faded into uniform snow-blind whiteness. Slowly, her eyes began to adjust, and she saw the tiny figure, scarcely bigger than a child in his present form. Bulma blinked.

"You’re—"

"Female?" Frieza stroked his—her?—swollen belly lovingly with one white hand. "Not as you understand it. We change when we are carrying our young." He smiled. "My baby. My heir."

Bulma shook her head to clear it and took in a little more of her surroundings. At the foot of Frieza’s throne sat the girl who had abducted her with shunkan idou.

To either side of her she caught dim flashes of others, white-armored Tsiru-jin and hulking human-looking warriors in the mercenary Ginyu armor of Frieza’a legions.

"You took our children," Bulma said. "How could you do something like that, however much you hate their fathers, when you know what it is to carry a child inside of you?"

Frieza cocked his head mockingly. "Goodness me, I don’t know. It must be because I’m evil. Don’t you think?" He began laughing softly. From all sides Bulma heard the echoing chuckles of his soldiers and the lighter, airy laughter of the Tsiru-jin guards. Pan smiled and leaned her head lovingly against the monster’s leg. The rotting, decrepit stench of evil steeped upon evil struck her. It was more than the aura of an evil corporeal being. It was more than the aftertaste of damnation Frieza must have brought with him out of Hell. Then she saw it. Around Frieza’s neck, strung like golfball-sized rubies on a silver chain, hung the seven dragon balls of Red Soraku. They were still active.

Frieza touched the necklace lightly. "Daruma put too much of himself into his work, I fear," he snickered. "The dragon balls were unaffected by his death."

Bulma had never been so afraid in her life.

"Your monkey prince is on his way to trade his life for yours," Frieza told her. "He should arrive in perhaps six hours in that speedy little ship of yours. Oh I do so hate waiting! Let’s see…How shall we pass the time until our beloved Vegita-chan comes to your rescue? I know. When Son Gokou’s half-breed brat wakes up, we’ll see just how strong he’s become. He was very promising as a tot. I seem to remember his power being tied to his anger." He stroked Pan’s dark hair lightly. "We’ll have to think of something special to enrage him when he wakes."

"Vegita and Son-kun are going to kill you," Bulma said coldly. "They’ll put you down like the rabid animal you are and send your soul screaming back to Hell where it belongs!"

Frieza stopped laughing. A black wave of anger rolled off the throne like a gust of dark wind. Bulma stared the beast in the eye and readied herself. She was about to die.

"Stupid bitch," Frieza hissed. "I will kill these two whelps to amuse myself while we wait for the bigger game to arrive. And when I have taken everything from him that a man can lose, I will kill Vegita in as slow and creative a manner as I can devise. And then—always saving the best for last—I will kill Son Gokou!" He licked his rose-colored lips. "I will tear out his heart while he still lives and feed it to my firstborn!" His bow-shaped lips curled maliciously. "And you, Chikyuu woman, for your insolence, will come to envy them their deaths. Jeiyce!"

"My Lord?" The red-skinned Ginyu stepped out of the blinding white.

"Today is a day for settling all accounts, yours as well as mine. Entertain Vegita’s Chikyuu whore as best you can while we wait for Son Gohan to finish his nap."

One red hand grabbed her by the hair, and others, looming up out of the pale fog, surrounded her. Jeiyce chuckled, running his eyes over her appreciatively. "And it’s not even my birthday." He pulled her to him.

And in the echoing, ivory stillness if the Tsiru-jin throne room, Bulma learned what it meant to envy the dead.

Chi-Chi sat with Bra in her arms, watching her husband. He sat motionless, barely breathing. Chi-Chi waited and worried. Sometimes it seemed her entire married life had been comprised of nothing but waiting and worry. She banished the irrational surge of anger that thought always seemed to generate. She glanced at Goten. He had edged over to where Trunks body lay, and bent over the other young man’s still form, speaking softly to him. He heart constricted at the expression of wrenching sorrow on her son’s face.

"Goten-chan, we can wish him back," she said gently.

"It won’t heal his mind or heart, Kassan," Goten sighed. "Or mine either, for that matter. Kassan, if you knew all the things I’ve done, so many terrible things—"

"Hush, Goten," she said in a voice he still knew not to contradict. "I love you. Toussan loves you. And Gohan…We all love you no matter what." She kissed his face, an almost perfect copy of his father’s in manhood. "It will be all right, Goten-chan. Somehow it will."

As if in answer to her words, Gokou’s eyes popped open. He turned and smiled at them both grimly. "I have an idea."

* * * * *