Jeiyce shivered at the blasted nothingness that hung around the dark, cloaked figure that hovered before his uncle's desk in the balcony office that looked out over the Celebration Hall of the Maiyosh Corporate Palace. He leaned out over the gilded balcony edge, peering down at the guests already beginning to fill the Ballroom below, scanning the crowds for a flash of blue. He couldn't look directly at the thing in the cloak too long without getting an almost incapacitating case of the creeps. Coming from a man who had spent a cumulative thirty-odd years in the service of one of the meanest mother-fuckers Tsiru-sei had ever spawned, followed by a toasty warm fifteen years in Hell, he thought that was saying an awful lot. Burka was smiling like a man at table with an old, well-loved friend. Jeiyce shook his head. His uncle had almost no ki sensitivity at all. He had no idea how disturbing the kind of negative energy the Arrak-jin gave off was to one who did.

"…right, Jeiyce?"

"Sorry, Uncle?"

"I said, the communications booster array is all prepped for tomorrow's festivities, yes?"

"All done."

"Good, good," Burka nodded. "So far we've had a seamless flow of events, my Lord Ambassador. With the little exception of the incident in your lodgings a couple of hours ago. Are you satisfied with what you found there?"

"Yes…well, I thought the Saiyans might be to your liking. We'll have a part of your entourage strategically placed tomorrow for the best possible dining experience. An appetizer, if you will." Maiyosh smiled at his own witticism.

Jeiyce shuddered at the sound of the horrible greed in that hollow voice. He'd lead a team to port those little black box houses the Labtech boys had built for the Bugs if his uncle demanded it. But he'd be damned if he would touch them himself.

"We'll even throw in the Tsiru-jin lad as a dessert confection," Burka was saying magnanimously. "You seemed to like the taste of him."

There was a rush of something obsidian and the clatter of thousands of tiny legs clicking across the tiled floor, flowing out of the cawled form, into the black, cube-shaped box behind it. The lid slammed shut with a clap that made the Ginyu start. The dark robe lay empty and abandoned on the floor like a discarded lizard's skin.

"Shit," Jeiyce muttered softly.

"Well, I think that went rather well, don't you?" Burka said brightly. "Don't look so anxious, lad. Go down to the party. Enjoy yourself! Have a drink and a pretty woman or two." His uncle chuckled. "Or are you still brooding about nearly being----How did the Saiyan put it? I only saw the surveillance tape once----'torn in half like a wishbone'? Buck up, boy!

This time tomorrow you'll have all you ever wanted. The power, the money, and the girlie."

Jeiyce mustered a grin and shook off the unease---it was easier to do now that the things were back in their box. His uncle was right. And a means to and end was a means to an end. "And you, Uncle?"

"I'll just have to be content with the power and the money," Burka smiled.

Jeiyce took his leave and strolled down to the Ballroom level. The party was just getting into swing. He tooled around the edges of the swirling crowds of dancers and merry-makers for nearly and hour, half-lost in thought, but still scanning the faces surreptitiously. The Saiyans were easy to spot. A wedge seemed to open up around them wherever they moved, as people scuttled away from them like rodents before a pride of big, deadly felines. They were fools to think they could turn the tide of public opinion in one or two days. His uncle's propaganda machine and lobbyists had been drumming up old fears and reopening half-healed wounds left by the Tsiru-jin and their Saiyan workdogs in every civilized system within the reach of Maiyosh's vast corporate empire for the better part of two years now. His eyes swept past where the "Saiyan no Ouji", that mouthy little prick Trunks, was dancing with his new bride. Pretty little thing, though for all they'd tried to doll her up in lace and frippery, the cut of the girl's body and the way she moved said "warrior". Not his type. He liked his women soft, pearl-skinned and breakable.

There she was.

He stood gazing at her rapt, his heart caught in his throat. He had not been wrong. She was somehow younger, more beautiful than she had been before. And that was saying a great deal. Trunks handed off his bride to her father and swept his mother up in a swirling reel across the floor. To think of a woman like that wasted on a grotty little bastard like Vegita. Jeiyce grinned. Not for much longer. It wasn't just the exotic Chikyuu coloring or the woman's body or face, he thought with a sweet surge of anticipation. He had discovered long ago, almost in the same year that the first sparks of adolescent desire had awakened inside his body, a barrier to true pleasure that was a constant for him----though he knew it was not the same for most men. When he took a woman, broke her against his body in searing, crushing stroke after stroke, there was always some point where she simply vanished…partitioned her mind to another place, or simply checked out on him altogether in the escape of madness. He had never been able to find any release, or even interest, without inflicting pain----and over the years, he had become a great master in the arts of pain, an avid connoisseur of every conceivable technique, every skill that could be used to hurt and hurt and hurt…But at some point, his lovers always deserted him----one way or another. All of them but her.

She had fought him. To her last breath, to the utter limit of her strength and beyond. He had never used a woman as hard as he had her. At Lord Frieza's command, he had pulled out all the stops. He had made her his masterpiece. Oh, he had let a few others take a turn at her initially, but after that…it had been him and her, locked together in a world of his pleasure and her pain that was theirs alone. Over and over, for hours, and each time he had her was sweeter than the last. And she had never left him, never stopped fighting him, trying with all her meager strength to hurt him as he was hurting her. At the last, she had been so close to death he could almost see her soul straining at the broken shell of her body, bones shattered, torn and bleeding in a hundred different ways, inside and out. He had kissed her cold mouth as he tried to memorize the feel of her skin against his, knowing he would never, as long as he lived, have another to equal her. And she had bitten his lip, and with the very last of her failing strength, spat in his face.

He shuddered with the memory, and forced down the red burn of desire and want it sent coursing through him. Tomorrow, he sighed, smiling dreamily.

"Can you give me any good reason," said a rough voice at his shoulder, "Why I should not kill you where you stand?"

It was a credit to the schooling of his youth in the poker face of the Masque of the Trade Houses that he turned an easy relaxed grin on the man who stood beside him. "Vegita," he said lightly. "Nice hair cut."

"Fuck you, Jeiyce," the Saiyan said, eyeing him balefully.

"How's this for a reason?" Jeiyce replied. "You kill me, you look like a big crazy monkey, your people get voted down tomorrow by a landslide, and all the Trade Houses move in on Madran, Chikyuu, and all their uppity little satellite systems trying to break free of Maiyosh monopoly." He frowned in an statement that he hoped looked like honest confusion. "I don't know why you'd have a notion to pop me anyway. I never did anything to you before Namek. Never even bullied you or roughed you up when you were a kid. And the last time we met, you killed me. If anybody's got a right to be pissed, it's me!"

"You were with Frieza after he raised you with the Red Dragon Balls," Vegita hissed. "You were part of the abduction of Trunks, Bra and Goten."

Jeiyce eyed him searchingly. "You don't know anything other than what the boyos told you, do you? I was never the boys' enemy either."

"No," the Saiyan said darkly. Jeiyce had begin to get that tingly back of the neck feeling, the sense that the man beside him was a hair's breath from doing something irrational and very final to him. "Though that would not have been the case with Bra had Zarbon not rescued her. I remember your hobbies."

"Didn't happen, Vegita," Jeiyce said. "You gonna kill me for something I didn't do? As for being with Frieza, it's not like I had a choice to high tail it and run like that blue poof Zarbon did. Anywhere I went, Frieza would have found me. You can't imagine how strong he was. He pulled down Maiyosh and the other Trade Houses. Killed my uncle, and torched Maiyosh Prime to the ground. Lucky me, I got to watch to prove my loyalty."

Vegita was silent. Jeiyce bore the brunt of that dark homicidal stare with a guileless, mildly irritated gaze that would have done any son a Maiyosh proud. "How did you survive?"

"When the Red Dragon bought it? Oh," Jeiyce grinned again. "Guldo.

You were actually on the point of wasting me a second time if that makes you feel any happier. In the last second, I grabbed hold of the little frog just as he did his temporal phase thing and held on for dear life. He had developed a new twist to his power. Before he could only step out of sync with time, so it seemed like time had stopped around him. He learned this new trick----moving just a hair out of step with the flow, so time still seemed to be moving around him, just really slow. When the bubble popped, and the timeline we'd all been inside dissipated, Toady and I were outside of real time. When we phased back in…everything was just…gone. Guldo and I split up. For all I know, he went back to Gekk-sei and is raising a fine family of tadpoles. And I came back home. Shortly after which, Mum had a nasty accident and I finally got my seat on the board of Maiyosh House. Good times! Am I one lucky son of a bitch, or what?"

"You are a consummate lying son of a bitch, at any rate---you and all your House," a new voice lisped softly.

If the look the Saiyan was giving him was murderous, there were no words for the gaze he turned on the young Lord of Tsiru-sei.

"Temper, Prince Vegita," the boy said with silky malice. "Or is it still 'prince' now that your son had taken up the title? You are not one I would have thought to ever abdicate a throne. But then, perhaps it was not so difficult for the sovereign of a dead world."

Vegita was trembling like a leaf with barely suppressed rage. The little lizard must have some sort of death wish to bait a loose cannon like Vegita, who was more than strong enough to incinerate the boy on the spot. Which would be fine with Jeiyce if it took the Saiyan's attention off himself. Vegita was so angry, Jeiyce saw with amusement, that he literally could not speak.

"A better question, son of Maiyosh, would be, 'Why are you not afraid?'" The boy said, narrowing his slitted eyes.

"Come again?" Jeiyce's smile slipped a bit.

"If things go as Tsiru-sei and Madran wish tomorrow, your House will lose a sizable portion of its merchant empire. It may very well lead to an avalanche of defecting worlds anxious to breathe air without paying Maiyosh for the privilege. I imagine Trunks' Saiyan Protectorate of the Free Trade Coalition worlds will grow by leaps and bounds as a result." The boy pursed his lips. "But if the Council votes our side down, if they declare us anathema and attempt invasion of Tsiru-sei or any of the Saiyan-harboring worlds, what do you think will become of Maiyosh?"

"If," Vegita said slowly, thought finally ruling emotion, "you send a fleet to Chikyuu, if you threaten my world, my family or my people in any way, I will kill you and all your house Jeiyce."

"Mass murder's fallen out of vogue these days, Vegita," Jeiyce said. "Or haven't you heard?"

"I am not a follower of fashion," the Saiyan said softly.

"So I ask you again, Jeiyce of Maiyosh," the Tsiru-jin purred. "Why are you not afraid? If you win tomorrow, you will lose everything. If Prince Vegita does not wipe out Maiyosh for its termidity, I certainly shall. I will most likely kill you soon regardless for having struck me this afternoon. Tell me, do you plan to use those things in the black crates as a weapon against us?"

"Things?" Vegita snapped. "What the hell are you talking about, boy?"

"Ask your wife. She was there. Was she not, Captain?" Jeiyce felt a very real fear begin to crawl up the back of his spine as he watched the boy's face.

He could almost see the wheels in the kid's head turning as he considered telling the Saiyan how Jeiyce had ever-so-subtly pawed his woman, weighing the political snafu of a fight against the sheer entertainment value of watching Vegita pull the Maiyosh-jin's arms and legs off. Jeiyce nearly sagged with relief when the boy spoke again. "Whatever it was, it sucked my energy level up as though it had stuck a drinking straw in the top of my head. Do you care to enlighten us, Ginyu?"

Jeiyce set his jaw in a pose of indignant annoyance. "I'm sure paranoia is a family trait, but you're doing your dad proud on this one, laddie. If the Arrak-jin attacked you, you must have threatened them in some way." He glanced at Vegita. "Your nosy wife and that Madrani--Saiyan mastertech Skoy picked up an unknown signal, which was actually the Arrak's atmospheric enviro-pods, on your own security equipment and went snooping. They broke the seals on the Arrak-jin's rooms, scared the hell out of the Arrak ambassador, and then had the nerve to bitch at me for nearly arresting them. End of story." He gave them both an unfriendly, long-suffering glare. "Now if you'll both excuse me, I have a security force to run." He strode away, an irritable, angry set to his posture, waiting to breathe until he was well out of sight. Gods, he deserved some sort of award for that performance! As he zigged away into the crowd, his sensitive hearing caught the sibilant whisper of the Tsiru-jin boy's voice.

"He did not answer my question, did he?"

He stopped on the threshold of the exitway, watching the woman Bulma, nearly hypnotized by her nearness. There was a burst of laughter and noise as the Saiyans loudly and, in some cases crudely, bid the bride and bridegroom goodnight as they left to go and procreate or whatever. Bulma stood smiling, a little sadly, as her son departed. He watched her join in a smattering of this conversation and that for a while, before wending her way through the crowd to bestow a dazzling smile on her mate. Vegita's statement was cold and immobile as always, but his eyes warmed and came to life under the light of that smile. She spoke to him briefly, before flouncing away, wheeling off in the direction of the women's salon.

His legs began to carry him after her of their own accord. He could not help himself. Threats of being ripped in half from nave to chaps were insufficient apparently. A sudden thought struck him. She had not told Vegita about the incident this afternoon because she knew he would lose it if he knew, and the Council be damned. It was very likely she would not say anything to Vegita, or the big Saiyan Son Gokou for that matter, if he were to…approach her now. There was too much at stake. And after tomorrow, it wouldn't matter. For a moment, just for a second or two, when he had held her in the freighthouse today, she seemed to remember what they had shared together on Tsiru-sei. How much more could he make her remember?

He followed her.

Pan looked more beautiful tonight than she ever had, Bulma decided. The rosy hue of the almost constant blush she had worn all evening seemed to make her glow. And Trunks…Bulma smiled. Trunks looked happy---and just as important, at peace with himself. Somewhere in the turn of the last three years, he had managed to integrate the two halves of himself, and the result was a stronger, in grimmer man. There had always been a large part of him that had remained a boy, something in him that had never quite grown up. It was gone now, and in many ways, this new Trunks reminded her of the other Trunks, that solemn, slightly haunted young man from the future. If want to get to know the man my son has become.

Amid the kisses and catcalls that followed her son and his new wife as they took their leave of the party, both blushing furiously, Bulma saw Goten hooting something in the snarling Saiyan tongue as he tossed a baseball sized metallic orb at Trunks. Trunks caught it with a scowl worthy of his father and he and Pan made a hasty retreat with as much dignity as they could muster in the wake of the laughter that followed. Chi-Chi and Videl were crying on each other's shoulders, seeming to have no memory of having nearly come to blows earlier in the day.

"Wait'll they see how we booby-trapped the room," Goten told his father with a proud grin. The habitual, almost unconscious frown Goten wore most of the time these days was absent, making him look like the sweet boy she had known his entire life, less like the brooding stranger he had become.

Why, she wondered, had he changed so much more than Trunks in the wake of Gurasia's touch? She had watched Goten make an effort tonight to give his mother special attention. Chi-Chi loved both her sons equally, but Goten had been her solace, the child born of a dead father who had eased Chi-Chi's grief in the days and months following Cell's defeat. The boy had always been closer to her than his brother, had never moved out of her house during Son-Kun's ten year absence, simply because he couldn't bare to think of her living alone.

Skoy was making the rounds of goodnights. She had the feeling big crowds made the shy man anxious. She sent a word of thanks for him to take back to his wife Enga. The quiet, golden-skinned Madrani woman had offered to watch Gita and Go-chan tonight. She was embroiled in some project involving a new kind of hyper drive navigation system, and said she would use the relative quiet of baby-sitting to get some work done. The poor woman had obviously not spent a great deal of time in the company of the Son's little daughter.

Son-Kun was watching Goten dancing with Chi-Chi, a distracted, slightly somber look dancing across his features.

"He seems more himself tonight," she said quietly.

He looked startled that his face had so clearly shown the run of his thoughts. "He's trying really hard for Chi-Chi. But…" His brow furrowed.

"Have you noticed the way he uses Saiyago like it's second nature to him? How he says 'our people' when he talks about the Saiyans---past and present. It's as though he doesn't even remember that he's half human. Where did he learn that Saiyan wedding song, Bulma? It's ancient, he said. Vegita didn't even know it. Trunks said that the Tsiru-jin scholar, Surita, who taught them Saiyago and something about Saiyan history and culture never taught them that song. Do you know what that silvery ball he gave Trunks was? It was as artificial moonlight bauble. I asked him how he knew how to build it and he shrugged and said he just knew."

"How could he have known?"

"I think…I'm worried that when Gurasia gave him back his memories of Tsiru-sei, he disturbed an entirely different set of memories. From a past life." Bulma felt a faint chill. "He's…" He broke off, staring at her worried face. "He's fine for the moment. This isn't the time or the night to worry about what ifs or think about unpleasant stuff. Are you okay, Bulma?"

"Just wonderful." She smiled warmly. "Now where is my stick in the mud husband?" She wandered around the edge of the crowd until she spotted him. She stopped, staring, hoping her mouth wasn't hanging open too far.

Vegita was standing at the mouth of a secluded alcove, with his back to the wall as he always did in crowds, half in shadow. He was standing perfectly calm, though glowering hatefully, engaged in a tense, serious conversation with the Tsiru-jin boy Gurasia. The boy cut his eyes to her slyly and slunk off into the crowd as she approached.

"Why," he said quietly, "did you not tell me about your little 'expidition' this afternoon?"

"It wasn't the right time," she said evenly. "We were where we shouldn't have been and we got caught. Gurasia got roughed up by the people in the boxes for spooking them, then by Maiyosh security for shooting off his nasty little mouth. I just wish I had a snap shot to show you of the security captain slugging the little bastard."

Vegita nearly grinned at the thought. "The boy thinks the Arrak-jin could be some kind of a threat to all of us. Nothing should have been able to drain the brat that quickly, to the point where he could barely stand." His eyes narrowed. "Did they hurt you?"

"Just threatened real good."

"Steer clear of Jeiyce," he said without any elaboration.

"No problem," she said a little too quickly. "He kind of gave me the creeps." He frowned, but she went on speaking before he could say anything else. "Skoy thinks he'll be able to pin-point the reading those enviro-pods of theirs give off now, so we'll know if the Arrak-jin are anywhere near us from now on." She changed the subject, smiling slow and mischievous. "Dance with me, Vegita."

"Not," he said flatly, "if both our lives depended on it."

She moved a little closer, until less than a foot separated their bodies, though she did not touch him. "Dance with me," she whispered.

He regarded her through half-lidded eyes, thought there was a sparkle deep in their black depths. "Come back to our rooms with me, woman, and I will dance a very old dance with you."

She could feel the radiating heat of his body from where she stood. She sniffed hautily. "Maybe later," she said, turning to leave. "If you're lucky."

She peeled off the main floor onto the verdant green and brown hallway that encircled the ballroom like a by-pass. Gods, what luxury! At a party this size, with literally tens of thousands of guests in attendance, an entire wing of this floor of the Corporate Palace had been reserved solely for primping.

Each separate delegation of any note had been given its own salon to freshen up in. The only drawback was finding it---it took her nearly ten minutes to reach the set of rooms the "salon homing device" the butler Laki had given her and all the other women in the party. It had seemed silly at the time, but now she realized it was the only way she would have ever found it. She closed the door behind her and stood arranging her hair before the brightly lit mirror that covered one entire wall of the room. She had let her hair grow long in the last three years, no longer feeling the need to keep it short and respectable looking. Or matronly. She smiled. The thought of life in the glowing prime of youth, life that went on and on for a century with no hint of age in sight, was sometimes overwhelming. But it was definitely a thought she could get used to. One thing was different though---a change in attitude of mind that came with six full decades of life. She wished desperately for peace. No more world threatening or galaxy threatening crises or adventures. Just life, with the love and presence of those she loved permeating every sweet moment. Somehow, she thought a little sadly, she knew she would never see such a day or a time. Not as the wife of a Saiyan warrior. And not, she thought wryly, as the woman Bulma Briefs. She would have to change everything about herself, her very nature, to stay steered away from trouble for good.

A gust of air stirred the hem of her long blue gown, a clap of a door opening and shutting. He had moved into the room, she thought with dim horror, so fast it was as though he had simply materialized behind her, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders. She could not move. She could not scream. It was just as it had been this afternoon, when his touch had frozen her in place and paralyzed her.

"You smell like a flower, Lovey," Jeiyce said, burying his nose in her hair. He sounded like a man greeting his fondest lover after a long separation. "I've never been able to get you out of my mind. I've dreamed about you for years. And you don't even remember me, do you?"

Her breath was choked in her throat, coming out in strangled little gasps, her heart battering inside her chest like a terrified bird in a cage. She would not have thought it possible to feel this much sickened horror and not faint dead away. Then he pulled her back against his body. One of his hands reached around and plunged into the low neck of her gown, cupping her breast and squeezing gently---and she sagged, the world turning gray around her. He took the soft lobe of one of her ears in his mouth and bit down, hard enough to draw a whimpering cry from her, and the world came screaming back into focus. "You don't remember me, but you're starting to, aren't you?" He was hiking up the skirts of her gown with his free hand. "Aren't you?" He whispered in her ear. And as she felt his hand began to smooth along the curve of her inner thigh, she suddenly found the power to scream.

She shattered apart inside, howling like a mad thing.

It all came shrieking back to her in one instant, and she felt her mind and a large piece of her sanity stagger under the hammer blow of the memory. The abduction of the children, the journey to Madran…and Tsiru-sei. Oh, gods! Oh Kami help me! There were no words for the things he had done to her, for how he had used her, in every way that it was possible for a man to hurt a woman. Oh Kamikamikami!!! Noo!

And suddenly she could move again.

"That's it, Lovey," he was saying softly. "Let it all come back." He had knelt down slowly, pulling her unresisting, half-dazed body with him, and because of the near paralysis she had exhibited, his hold on her was light. She turned on him, rage and an almost inhuman hatred tearing through her gut---and punched him with every ounce of effort and strength she possessed, straight in the balls. On impact, the friable, blue glass ring she wore on that hand cracked and released a jolt of roughly twenty thousand volts into his crotch. He screamed high and piercing, like a child with a spider down her dress, and fell on his side, moaning and clutching himself in agony. She stood up, ashen and shaking, as though she had been the one electrocuted.

"When this is all over," she said in a dead, flat voice, "I'm going to kill you."

She didn't remember how she got back to the Saiyan wing, or getting undressed and crawling into bed, fighting down wave after wave of nausea, unable to scream, unable to even cry. She didn't remember anything at all, any passage of time, until the light swish of the bedroom door and the almost inaudible catlike tread of her husband's feet. He sat down on the bed beside her.

"What is wrong?"

"Sick," she whispered. "I think…I ate something at the party…didn't agree with my human stomach."

He put one hand on her forehead, pushing back the sweat-damp blue strands. "There are medics on the Palace staff who could see to you."

She had been dry-eyed until now, unable to release any of the poison collecting inside her, but the gentle undertone in his voice made her eyes burn with unshed tears.

"…'m fine. Just weak."

He undressed and lay down beside her, one arm curling about her in a brief embrace, kissing her hair lightly. "If you are not better in the morning, you will go to the infirmary." He rolled to the other side of the bed, knowing how she hated to be touched when she was feeling sick or feverish,

not knowing that she could barely stand to be touched at all now, without fighting down the urge to start screaming.

"I'll be fine," she whispered again. She wondered as she lay awake, listening to the steady sound of his breathing, if she would ever be fine again.

Pan held Trunks' hand tightly, her knees shaking and her stomach trembling, as they left the ball. Cinderella leaving with her prince at last,

she thought. He was silent, smiling that half-grin of his that always made her insides turn to jelly, as they made their way through the circuitous, winding hallways that led back to their rooms. It was the first time they had been alone together since her arrival, their first real chance to talk, and he said nothing, though she could feel the wordless warmth of his thoughts slowly threading through her mind in the same way his fingers were threaded through hers.

Their bedroom suite was huge, carved as every room in the palace was carved, out of the living tree around them. She released his hand silently and moved to sit on the end of the huge bed, removing her shoes. She jumped up with a shriek as a mad cackling noise exploded from the mattress.

Trunks lifted the top layer of the bed and squashed some kind of jiggling mechanism flat in one hand. He turned back to her, eyes narrowed.

"Giggle box," he said. "Your uncle's going to pay for that."

She burst out laughing and he joined her, almost shyly taking a step toward her. She sobered, staring up into the face she'd dreamed about for three years, longer really. She could not remember a time when she had not loved him.

"Pan-chan," he said softly, and kissed her. She melted against him, feeling him trembling with wanting her, her hands running through his long hair, down to his shoulders, beginning to peel away the layers of clothing he wore. His hands were slowly undoing the tiny pearl buttons of her dress, working with agonizing slow precision that was growing gradually more feverish. Dress, stockings, and camisole, shirt, coat and pants, all stripped away, leaving nothing between them, nothing but his skin against hers. He had trained hard in the last years. The cut and lines of his formerly lean-muscled swimmer's body had grown bulkier and sharply defined with added strength. He was just looking at her, eyes taking in the changes in her body and face as well. Beautiful, his mind sang inside hers. He held up the silvery ball Goten had given him before they'd left the party.

"Goten made this for us," he said softly. "Tell me if you want to use it or not. It's a diffused artificial bauble of moonlight. It will bring back some of what we had that night in the forest."

"Won't we break things----like this room and maybe the entire palace, if we use it?" She ran one hand down the hollow between his pectorals, feeling him quiver under her touch.

"No. It's diluted at this setting. Less potent than real moonlight. Goten said something about us being moonbound, and that this would seal the bond between us. Don’t ask me how he knew that…but it feels true."

She nodded, and he tossed the bauble into the air, igniting it with a spec of his ki. The lights in the room sputtered and went out, leaving only the silvery glow on the moonlight shimmering three or four meters over their heads. He knelt down, grinning mischievously, and kissed her toes, trailing his mouth up to her ankle. I've been promising myself for three years that when I had you back in my arms again, I'd kiss you from head to toe. She laughed softly, then gasped as he swept her legs out from under her, catching her lightly as she fell. He lowered her to the floor and continued kissing her calves. She gazed upward and the power of the silvery light above began filling her eyes, burning through to her brain, as he worked his way up, circling her kneecaps with his tongue, extracting a small squeal from her.

"Ticklish spot," he chuckled softly. "Have to remember that." She wanted to say something, to tell him so many things, before she lost the capacity for speech altogether. But now his mouth was trailing up the inside of her thigh and he…Oh Kami! Her head snapped back, body arching off the floor, as he tasted her, delving inward to her aching center. It was as though an explosion tore through her body when she came. And before the tremors had even begun to subside, he was teasing her upward to a second climax.

"Trunks-kun!" She sobbed. He smiled, kissing her navel, moving up her body, leaving her hanging in a sweet agony of almost. His mouth on her breasts, tongue lightly flicking her nipples, hands roaming over the soft, olive planes of every inch of her. She lifted her legs, encircling him, feeling his hardness brush against her, feeling him nearly shuddering apart with need for her. She kissed his chest, his neck, plunging her hands into the pale lavender sweeping down into his sweat drenched face, feeling something primitive and mad coming to a head inside her. She bit down, tearing into the skin of his shoulder, drinking in the red river of his life. He gasped and cried out, tapering down into a low, urgent growl, and drove his fangs into her neck as well, sending jolt after jolt of screaming pleasure pulsing into her. His mind, the warp and weft of every sensation, every private thought, love, hate, and desire melted into hers like the gossamer strands of two silken spider webs meshed together, inseparably.

"I love you…I love you…" He breathed.

He kissed her slow and deep, and began to move into her, nudging slowly inward, his mouth against hers, gentle and burning with heat. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him sharply forward with a cry, through the last barrier that separated them, fully inside her, consumed by the need to be filled up by him. He lay still above her, waiting for the tension to ease out of her body, waiting for the pain to subside, kissing her eyelids, her mouth, her face. Slowly, slowly she relaxed, and he began to move, thrusting gentle and slow, his breath coming in jagged little gasps. She locked her mouth against his and began to move with him, building speed and intensity by slow, torturous increments. When she came this time, she shrieked his name, and with a snarl, she flipped him, still keeping him deep inside.

"Look up," she whispered, moving above him. He lay on his back, chest heaving in great shuddering breaths, and his eyes bled from blue to red.

Their thoughts, their very souls were so entertwined now that their heartbeats had synched, their breath laboring together. He uttered a choked cry as all control snapped and rose up into the air with her, feet treading less than a foot above the floor. He drove his teeth into her a second time and began thrusting hard and fast, crushing her against him with his full strength, and she moved against him with equal fury, equal strength. Take me, Truns-kun! Make me yours! He sobbed as he came, driving forward one last time, pulling her up to the pinnacle with him.

"Pan-chan! Pan-chan…"

She was unaware of the tears streaming down her face until he began kissing them away, lowering them slowly to the soft carpeted floor once, more, still inside her. They lay wrapped around each other, panting in exhausted gulps of air, slowly winding down into drowsy silence. The light from Goten's bauble flickered and went out, enfolding them in darkness.

He kissed her softly, tasting her mouth. There was no need to speak, words were a poor step-cousin to the link that bound them together. And now it was complete.

She smiled against his cheek, one hand caressing his tail, feeling him begin to grow hard inside her again. "Don't think I'm done with you yet, Ouji-sama."

He chuckled softly, and they began again.

"Something is wrong with Momma," Bra murmured quietly.

Goten nodded absently, gazing upward several kilometers at the vaulted ceiling of the Chamber, where the Council would begin in less than on hour.

He had taken the measure if giant domed hall, or tried to, many times in the last few days, trying to become accustomed to the size and scale, but it still made some back corner of his mind quail with stage fright like the country boy he was. The Chamber was the one structure in the city that had been built rather than grown. Several thousand years ago, it had been a hall of intergalactic parliament once before, built by an erstwhile, ancient government on Shikaji because of the system's central location among the community of space faring worlds. It made the biggest coliseum, amphitheater, or stadium h had ever seen seem small, backwater, and inconsequential by comparison. It seated in excess of two hundred thousand at full capacity. And today it was filling up.

Where the hell was Trunks? Five more minutes and, wedding night or not, he was going to go roll both of them out of the sack. "I don't think she's feeling well," he muttered. He had spent the last four hours running scanner sweeps of the entire Saiyan Seat, looking for any hint of sabotage. He ran a device monitor over the translator equipment for the third time, his eyes taking in their location of their party in relation to observing and being seen.

The Chamber was essentially a monolithic coliseum, a tiered circle of Box Seats, one for each delegation, each with its own set of offices and lounges behind the balcony Seat that looked out on the Chamber and down onto the arena below. He had learned from the Maiyosh butler Laki that the arena had been used of old to settle scores among warring worlds. The antagonists would send small armies to battle each other before the assembly to solve this disagreement or that. They certainly hadn't been given the cheap seats.

You could be observed by everyone from this vantage point, with everyone on your eye. Good. Or maybe bad, he frowned. The Chairman of the Chamber, the Chancellor of Shikaji, who would be officiating as opening speaker and moderator in today's dealings, had assigned each delegation this Seat or that. Shikaji was a Maiyosh populated and Maiyosh controlled world. Why would Burka give them such a good seat?

"Did you check the translator software for gremlins?" He asked her.

Bra sighed. "Several times. And the vid display and the terminals and the cam-bots. It's all working perfectly. We'll be seen and heard." He nodded. In the rooms behind the Seat, he could hear a round of good-natured laughter and young male voices engaged in ribbing their prince for having overslept all of ten minutes. A spike of Pan's mortified ki as someone asked Trunks a rather pointed question, and another loud burst of laughter as the questioner's voice was cut off in a painful squawk. There had to be something he hadn't checked yet. Something he's forgotten.

Soft hands fell on his shoulders, kneading the knotted muscle with a strength that was just short of painful. "There's nothing left to do," she murmured in his ear. He snorted irritably, and tried to rise, but she held him down in the Delegate's chair, calming tendrils of the gentle balm of her soul threading through the roiling turmoil of his worries and fears. "Everything's ready," she said, and his heart flip-flopped in his chest as it always did at the sight of her smile. "Just relax."

"Trying to order me around again, little girl?" He said with a half grin.

"Laying down the law, Goten-kun." She hugged his shoulders. "Whatever happens, we'll make it work out right."

This time he did grin. "You sound just like Toussan."

From the shelf of the out hung balcony of the Seat, a whip-thin, pale figure in snow white robes rose up, slowly levitating to eye level, head bent respectfully. Beside him, Bra stood silent and watchful, gazing at his shocked face.

"Surita-san," Goten said.

The ancient Tsiru-jin scholar cocked his head curiously. "Have we met, young sir?"

"No," Goten shook his head, but he felt an odd surge of warmth at the sight of his old tutor, the frail, almost ethereal guardian of the wealth of learning and knowledge of a hundred thousand years of his world's civilization, and archivist of thousands of other worlds as well. The old man had been his one solace the one tiny shred of kindness he'd found in all his years on Tsiru-sei. "Not really," he said.

The elderly Tsiru-jin nodded politely. He held something before him in both hands, a thin, white metallic band. Goten fought down a cold wave of sick rage as he realized what it was----a ki dampening collar, used by the Tsiru-jin to control the more powerful of their prisoners and slaves. He had worn one like it more times than he could----

"What do you want?" He asked harshly.

Surita held the collar out to Bra, who took it eagerly before he could stop her. "A gift, young mistress, for your Lady mother," the old man said. "From my gracious and Holy Lord. He feels there will be trouble of some kind today and in his infinite benevolence, wishes your folk to have some means to defend themselves. He said he knows he may trust her to make whatever modifications are appropriate."

"Convey our most humble thanks to your Holy Lord," Goten said slowly in the language of Tsiru-sei. The scholar paused, another sharp gleam of curiosity lighting his old eyes, then he bowed formally and was gone.

Bra was already examining the contraption. He looked away. He didn't think he could look at it for very long, let alone touch it. "I'll take this back to Momma," she said distractedly, with more than a little regret at having to relinquish the device to her mother. She brushed his lips lightly before she left, holding the collar away from him as she did. He sat in the Delegate's Seat, watching the other heads of state begin to pour in to their own Boxes around, above, and below them, and clenched his fists. His people deserved a chance to live again, to become strong in numbers, to have all the good things in life that other people had. There were people here today, thousands and thousands of them, who wanted to see them stamped out for all time, as though they had never been. Just like Frieza. He would not let that happen.

No matter what. Not again.

He shuddered, shaking off that thought and the reeling swirl of

vague images that went with it. It had started happening more and more as the Council drew nearer. Nerves. And strain. And history repeating itself, or threatening to, he thought grimly. The images, indistinct and half-formed, were scary as hell sometimes, but they never threatened to overwhelm him, never made him forget he was Son Goten, son of Son Gokou. Son of Bardock…

Bra knew. And he had the feeling his father suspected. And Kassan…He growled irritably. He had to stop worrying her, had to let her know he was all right, still her son who loved her. He just didn't know how.

He knew she sensed the change in him, so much deeper than in Trunks.

When this was all finished, he and Bra should go and spend some time at home and----something skittered, an almost inaudible clicking beneath his chair. He looked down, frowning. Huh. Funny on a world full of living tree houses how he hadn't seen a single insect until now. He stood and gripped the balcony railing suddenly as a wave of vertigo washed over him.

He shook it off, stood up straight and checked the audio drivers in the mikes one last time. He needed rest. He hadn't slept more than two hours in the last four or five days. There had been too much to do. He would sleep when this was over. He hoped fervently that would be soon.

Bulma barely noticed Chi-Chi and Videl usher a red-faced Pan into one of the side antechambers in the series of lounges that connected to the hindquarters of the balcony Seat. A huge circle had formed around

Trunks---the Madrani brothers, the Arbatzu reps, and the representatives of over a dozen other worlds who had pitched their tents under the Saiyan flag and stood to lose everything should they fail here today. Vegita stood back, his face stony and unreadable to anyone who did not know him as well as her, but his eyes were burning with a fierce pride as he watched his firstborn son. She turned her eyes down to the white, dainty collar, almost like a piece of unadorned jewelry. She had stripped the outer metallic layer of one side, baring the tiny components. It was beautiful workmanship, both in its utilitarian construction and its artistry. A hand brushed her thigh, and she barely stifled a scream.

Gita was holding up a micro-wrench helpfully. "Momma?" He looked ready to cry.

"Oh baby, I'm sorry!" She whispered, pulling the sniffling boy up into her arms. "You just scared Momma a little bit."

"You feel bad?" The boy asked tremulously. Oh gods, he was such a sweet baby! Trunks and Bra had been up and out of her arms as soon as they could walk, never allowing themselves to be held or cuddled for very long, a trait born of the nature of a race whose infants survived or perished on their own. She stood with him, leaving the crowded main lounge, holding the whimpering baby before her like a shield, just abandoning the pieces of the collar on the chaise where she had strewn them. She moved past where Gohan stood frowning at the Seat's main video feed monitor, at the image of the Tsiru-jin Seat where Piccalo stood glowering at Gurasia's right hand. Past the open sitting room where Pan was unwrapping a pile of brightly colored gifts for her smiling mother and grandmother. She finally found a series of stalls, set off a tiny hallway, in the back of the press of rooms reserved for the Saiyan delegation. Each stall was equipped with a hyper-wave communicator. Sort of a telephone room, she thought vaguely.

She closed one of the stall doors behind her, pressing her back against the wall, sliding slowly down, rocking the baby in her arms. Hold it together…

And then what? She would be no more able to hide this than Trunks and Goten could have hidden the changes in their personalities after Gurasia's touch. She clenched her teeth, breath hissing out between them, still rocking back and forth. She had to pull herself together! If the boys could live with their memories of fifteen years of torture and madness on Tsiru-sei, she could survive the memory of a few hours. She would hide this, bury it deep inside herself for now. She sensed that somewhere in herself she had the strength to do so. And when this crisis with the Trade Houses was over, she thought, bleak and icy as the plains of Tsiru-sei itself, she would find Jeiyce of Maiyosh and she would kill him.

And then maybe she would be able to forget him.

And Vegita could never know. Not now. Not ever. Though she had no idea how she would hide this from him. But, oh gods, he was happy…and more than that, at peace, maybe for the first time in his life. It would all be blown to hell if he knew. And he would…

She shivered, the memory of the things she had seen in his mind, the terrifying capacity for violence, on that night of moonstruck madness three years ago, leaping to her mind.

He would not just kill Jeiyce. He would kill every member of Maiyosh House in his rage, anyone who claimed even distant kinship to the man. He would burn this world and any other owned and operated by Maiyosh House to a cinder, until he had wiped out the Ginyu's entire race. All those innocent lives! Then…oh Kami, then Son-Kun would try to stop him and the two of them would fight----

The stall door opened without warning and she gasped, catching most of the scream in her throat before it escaped. "Bulma," Son-kun said softly.

He knelt down, staring into her face for a long moment. Then he swallowed hard, and she realized he was struggling hard, very hard, not to cry. "Oneesan," was all he said. Sister. He had not called her that since he outgrew her. And suddenly she was able to cry. She fell forward into his arms, muffling the tearing, shattered wails against his broad chest, hanging on to him as though she would drown if she let go. He held her silently, shaking with the emotion he was bottling, turning inward, knowing he was utterly helpless to make better. She clung to him, and he rocked her against him, lost to all sense of time, until she simply had no more strength to cry. A strange lassitude was creeping over her, pulling at her arms and legs, making them heavy.

Son-Kun finally spoke, his voice thick and shaking. "Did--did he---?"

"No," she said. "He just grabbed me. But when he touched me….it all came back. He meant for it to. He would have done more, but I electrocuted him." Her laugh sounded like brittle, broken glass. "He should be walking funny for a few days."

"This is my fault," Son-Kun whispered. "I knew what he was. I knew what had happened. I never should have let you out of my sight---"

"Be quiet," she said, pulling away from him slowly, looking down belatedly to see if they had squashed Gita between them. The boy was looking up at her with wide, solemn black eyes. "You can't be everywhere at once. And you had no way of knowing that he was…obsessed with me. I don't have to tell you all the reasons why you need to keep this to yourself right now, do I?"

"No," his eyes were burning pits of black anger. "I will kill him, Bulma."

"No," she said coldly. "I will. If I don't, I'll never get past this. Can you understand that?" He nodded reluctantly, and he helped her stand.

"How bad is it?" He asked softly.

"Bad," she felt her lower lip begin to tremble, and she forced it steady. It was easier than it had been. She felt immeasurably calmer, as though the world was beginning to recede by slow degrees. She knew on some level that this was not good , but at least she could walk and talk with some measure of normalcy. "It's as though it happened yesterday, Son-Kun. But now I have to wash my face, and you have to stand in the Saiyan Seat with Vegita and Trunks and the others and look strong, threatening, and nice at the same time." She smiled wanly. "I'll be okay for the moment. Gurasia, of all people, sent me a new piece of technology to keep my mind occupied."

By the time she made her way back to the main lounge, sitting Gita down beside her and beginning to pick through her tools once more, a series of chimes had begun to ring. As so often happened when inspiration struck, the pieces of the technical puzzle she was looking at simply rearranged themselves in her head to form an idea. She smile suddenly, or her lips curled upward at any rate. She had a feeling it wasn't a pleasant statement.

She fingered the components of the damper for a moment more. Then she popped two capsules, a mini hand-sized version of her brute ray and a standard issue energy rifle. Gita watched her, making no attempt to touch either of the dangerous devices, one thumb shoved firmly in his mouth. She set to work in earnest, ignoring the steadily creeping numbness. It could, with a few very minor adjustments, have both a positive and and a negative pulse ray. It would be a very unusual, very deadly weapon. She didn't notice Trunks disappear through the curtained arch that led into the balcony Seat, followed by all the other Chikyuu-jin and Madrani Saiyans.

The Council had begun.

* * * * *