Chapter 2
"Zaabon, sir, something's coming up on radar."
The purple-skinned alien had pointed out the small blip on the screen to his superior and then attempted to
figure out what, or who, it was. Zaabon, a man with dark green hair pulled back into a single braid and light
blue skin, had been overseeing the workers for most of the day and it was intensely boring work.
"Is it another asteroid, Kuyi?" he asked in a bored tone. Furiza had ordered the man to point out
every single thing he found on the radar screen to a superior officer. Unfortunately, that person turned out
to be Zaabon that day. He'd been there for five hours and every single blip so far had turned out only to be
space junk.
"It's a ship, sir. Class D and Saiya-jin in origin."
Zaabon perked up at those words. "Saiya-jin in origin, eh? I thought we had them all. Fire at the ship to
get their attention and then incapacitate them."
"Right away, sir!"
The bright flashes that were the powerful missiles impacted with the hull of the Saiya-jin ship three times
before someone contacted them.
"This is Prince Vegeta. I demand to speak with your lord at once." Zaabon could hear the irritation
in his voice and was slightly surprised. Usually people only cowered before them; it was an interesting change
from the usual.
Kuyi smiled, his white teeth stark against his dark colored flesh. "A person in your position can't order
his enemy around. Either you surrender or you die."
Zaabon turned and bumped directly into Furiza. "My lord," he bowed low. "The Saiya-jin we found
are attempting to negotiate with us."
His face brightened and a delighted laugh emerged from within. "Saiya-jin! I haven't had any with spirit
to torture in months!"
"You also don't like living, then." Kuyi said into the small microphone with a smirk. He never saw
the disapproving figure behind him until it was too late.
Furiza's small, but very powerful, hand curled itself around the purple alien's throat and began to squeeze.
Kuyi began to gurgle, struggling to draw breath past the hand that was slowly crushing his windpipe. Suddenly,
the smaller alien released him with a toss to the floor.
"Consider that a warning," he said pleasantly before seating himself at the console and pressing a
button with one black pointed nail. "I would like to extend my sincerest apologies for his rude behavior.
It will never happen again, I assure you."
Shaking his head in amazement, Zaabon exited the room. "I will always question his sanity."
'We've escaped captivity for seventeen damn years and look where we are now!' Vegeta grumbled to himself. 'I doubt he will kill me outright because I'm prince of the Saiya-jin. I've heard about what he does to captives and I'll commit suicide before I let him put his disgusting hands on me.'
"Are you okay, boy?" Bardock ask in a voice that was only slightly audible.
Vegeta nodded. "For now. Furiza's gonna do some painful things to us, though."
The hangar was huge and it seemed even more so because only the Saiya-jin ship was docked there. Workers of all shapes and sizes passed by the group, but no eyes focused on them.
Two large doors that sat against one wall opened with a slight hiss of escaping air from the locks. Zaabon stepped through, looking as calm as ever, and made his way over to the assembled Saiya-jin.
"I am Zaabon. Lord Furiza gave me strict instructions to escort you to your chamber."
"Don't you mean 'prison cell'?" Bardock began to walk forward, rage clearly displayed on his face. "We didn't do a damn thing to you people! Why the hell can't you just leave us alone?"
Zaabon knew the reason Furiza wanted to imprison and break all of the Saiya-jin. No one else besides his lord even had a clue.
Furiza, master of pain and of evil itself, was completely terrified of Super Saiya-jin.
It was a legend that had begun millennia ago on the once-existing planet of Vegeta. One Saiya-jin was born with the innate ability to transform into a golden being with superior speed and strength that had the capability to butcher billions with little effort and destroy entire solar systems with the barest of thoughts.
He had heard the whispers in King Vegeta's palace and knew most of the Saiya-jin figured that his son would be the next Golden Warrior. Furiza, at first, wanted to torture and then kill the prince as well as his people, but Dodoria convinced him otherwise.
"Wouldn't it be better to have the prince on our side if he was the Legendary Super Saiya-jin? Nothing could stop us then."
"Disgusting pink blob," Zaabon muttered to himself with loathing. He despised his fellow aide with all of his being and barely tolerated him when they were in the same room together.
Vegeta heard his words and one eyebrow rose. "I doubt Dodoria would appreciate your description. It isn't very flattering."
He chuckled slightly and then caught himself before they were too far down the dim hallway.
The room was fifteen feet by fifteen feet square and all the Saiya-jin barely fit into it. The plain gray walls and concrete floor had been covered by some sort of fabric but no matter what they did to the room it would always be a cell.
"What's going to happen to us?" Vegeta asked. By unspoken agreement he was now the leader of their small group. Bardock thought that it was about time for him to take responsibility for his people. They needed someone that was of royal blood to show that they all had a chance to survive as long as Vegeta remained strong.
Zaabon shrugged and lied through his teeth. "I have no clue."
He left them alone, bolting the door behind him. Vegeta began to pace a small area of the floor that the other Saiya-jin didn't occupy and tried to come up with a plan.
"We're now prisoners on Furiza's ship. What can we do about this?"
"There's nothing we *can* do," Nanka sighed. "We're not the strongest on this ship, I doubt we can escape."
Vegeta stopped and glared at him. "He won't kill us off without a fight! I promise you that."
Bardock was completely disgusted with the older man. "Listen to yourself, Nanka. You belong to one of the most proud races in the universe. Don't disgrace the rest of us by acting like a coward."
Vegeta forced himself to take a seat on the hard floor and searched his mind for a solution to their problem. He couldn't allow himself to think about what would happen if they *couldn't* escape, too many lives were counting on him. He didn't take notice of how easily the role of leader came to him or how much the other Saiya-jin trusted in his decision. The door opened again and Zaabon motioned for the prince to follow him after catching his attention.
"If you don't want Furiza to kill you, agree to anything he tells you to do without question," Zaabon advised. He shook his head at the disdain on Vegeta's face. He had a feeling that his words had gone through one ear and immediately out the other but it hadn't hurt to try.
The halls, Vegeta noted, were laid out in a pattern. The wider ones always led to important rooms and the narrower ones led to the tiny cabins for the crew. On the journey to what probably was Furiza's audience chamber, every single being they passed stiffly saluted their superior officer with almost fear in their eyes.
'Zaabon isn't *that* intimidating,' Vegeta thought to himself. 'They shouldn't be so damn afraid of him.'
"It's not me, personally, it's what I represent."
At first, he thought that he had imagined those words. Maybe they were created by his mind. Then it hit him -- he had no imagination whatsoever.
An unfamiliar feeling of panic welled up inside of him as he struggled to erect whatever barrier he could to keep Zaabon out of his mind. The taller man stopped a few paces ahead of the prince and glanced back.
"I'm sorry," he said sincerely and then he continued onward.
"That's all you have to say?!" Vegeta shouted at him. "You invade my mind and all you have to say is 'I'm sorry'?"
Zaabon stopped again. "I'm *very* sorry." He smiled to himself, knowing that Vegeta couldn't see his face. For some odd reason it felt good to piss the prince off.
Vegeta glared daggers at his back and stomped past him, his mood gone from bad to worse. "You should be begging me for forgiveness."
"Furiza is my master." His voice and facial expression conveyed exactly how he felt about that.
"You could escape this place."
Zaabon snorted. "And where would I go? I have no home to return to, Furiza has seen to that. I am in the same position you are; we're both enslaved to his cause."
Furiza sat in his hover vehicle, idly swirling deep red wine around in a crystal glass. He loved to watch the liquid more than he liked to drink it, marveling at how much the color reminded him of freshly-spilt blood. The Master of Pain and Suffering wasn't physically imposing, but his voice, mannerisms, and power more than made up for that. He was small in his first form with pink skin, black horns, and a long tail. Hard white bone covered his head, forearms, and the tip of his tail and helped to shield him from deadly blows.
How would he learn the truth about the Super Saiya-jin from the prince? He had a strong suspicion that the royal family had been guarding the secret for millennia. Torture was a method that probably wouldn't work. The elder Vegeta, when exposed to it, had only become even more silent on the subject.
'How do I get the brat to talk? I need to know the truth!'
A sharp knock interrupted his musings and with barely a glance at Dodoria, the fat pink alien went to answer the door.
"What do *you* want?" he asked with a sneer on his face. Zaabon represented everything he was not and he despised him for it. Furiza favored the other man, giving him special privileges, gifts, and praise. He wished harm upon Zaabon in the very worst way.
"Lord Furiza sent me to retrieve Prince Vegeta, Dodoria, and it's not really any of your business."
Any other words they would have exchanged were silenced by Furiza's low voice.
"Send him in to me."
Vegeta tensed up at that voice and forgot about being fascinated by the expensive decoration of the room he had entered. It made the rest of the ship look inadequate in comparison. Zaabon paled slightly as he thought of the ways Furiza interrogated his prisoners. He had been a servant for several years and the screams hadn't yet ceased to torment him in his slumber.
He glanced at Dodoria briefly, the gleeful look on his face making his stomach turn, and indicated that he wanted to Vegeta to come over to the opposite side of the room. "Tell him whatever he wants to know."
"What makes you think I know anything?" Vegeta asked. He refused to allow Zaabon's behavior and facial expression frighten him.
"He wouldn't want a private audience if you didn't."
Vegeta stared at the door that Furiza was behind. If what he said was true, then the Changeling would do anything to find out what he wanted. The implications of "anything" made him uneasy. He had known Saiya-jin that would do anything. A few of his father's aides had been scum of the worst kind. The agonized screams and wails of the assaulted were loud and clear for anyone who passed their personal quarters and his father, fully aware of everything that went on inside his palace, didn't do anything about it. The expressions on the faces of the children were what stayed with him all of those years. They were molested and never understood why.
"What will he do to me?" he asked quietly.
Zaabon looked down at the floor, debating on whether or not to answer the question. In all honesty he really had no idea what Furiza did behind closed doors but knew that it was bad. *Very* bad.
The prince held his head high and calmly went to confront Furiza. No matter what happened he would always have his identity. No one, not even Furiza, would ever be able to take that away.
Though he would never admit it aloud, Bardock was worried. Vegeta had been gone for quite a while and no one had seen hide nor hair of him since Zaabon led him away. He turned to Nanka, a man who had a strange amount of knowledge about Furiza, in desperation.
"What would he do to a prisoner?"
"Everything," was the reply.
That single word covered a broad range and made him all the more worried. He could be skinning him alive for all that he knew! What did Furiza want with the prince in the first place? The boy didn't know all that much about life other than that on the ship. He had been only six when they had been forced to flee.
The door that had remained closed for what felt like years finally opened and in walked Vegeta. The others were torn between staring at the troubled expression on his face and looking away in discomfort. The latter option was chosen and only Bardock's eyes remained on him.
A small area in the corner was cleared of bodies and the older Saiya-jin quietly asked, "What did he want?"
The shock was wearing off and Vegeta struggled to hold onto it. The numbness was comforting and it stopped him from feeling the pain that was sure to follow. His legs wouldn't hold him anymore as the intense waves of pain assaulted his senses. The vacant, unseeing look in his dark eyes chilled Bardock to the bone and he grabbed the young man by his upper arms and shook him.
"Snap out of it! What did he want with you, Vegeta?"
The voice was distant in the dark place his mind had retreated into when Furiza tried to get him to talk. He hadn't been prepared for the pain, though he imagined that nothing could have prepared him for the searing fire that had ripped an involuntary scream from his throat. All of the beatings his father had given him and all of the injuries he had sustained while sparring with Bardock combined held nothing to the pain he had felt earlier that day. And through it all, despite nearly going insane, he hadn't said anything that Furiza wanted to hear.
"Tomorrow is another day," Furiza had whispered in his ear as he lay broken and bleeding on the floor, "and we will see how much you can take."
"VEGETA!" The raw panic in Bardock's voice brought him slowly from the darkness and into the light.
Slowly the life flowed back into his eyes and he began to blink rapidly. "What was the question again?"
"He hurt you." A simple statement.
"A lot of people have hurt me." He sighed, hating the fact that there wasn't anything he could do about it. "Furiza wants to know the truth about Super Saiya-jin."
Bardock was surprised. "Is that all? Just tell him!"
"I don't know anything that he doesn't already know, but no one can tell the bastard any different!"
He leaned in closer and lowered his voice. "Does he know that you're supposed to be the next Super Saiya-jin?"
"He will *never* find out, Bardock. I will die before I tell him." The hatred in his voice for the Changeling was vehement. Vegeta shifted positions so that he was lying on his side and even that small movement sent jolts of pain throughout his lower body. Bardock noticed when he tensed up slightly and the solution to the puzzle was beginning to form inside of his mind. He didn't know how to ask but he needed to be sure.
"Did he... you know?" he asked very quietly in Vegeta's ear. He knew that no other Saiya-jin would overhear him despite their very good sense of hearing.
Vegeta rolled his eyes and sighed. "You can say the word, Bardock. We're both grown-ups here."
"Did he rape you?" The last two words were said almost without sound, but the prince still understood.
"No Bardock," he answered and before the other man could look relieved he continued. "I'm just in an ungodly amount of pain for no reason."
He frowned. "You're being sarcastic."
"Just go away and let me sleep. I have to rebuild my defenses for tomorrow's round of pain."
Bardock fell silent and looked over at the Saiya-jin who were still averting their gazes. "The prince needs to rest so shut up or I'll shut you up. Permanently."
A deep silence settled in the room and slowly Vegeta slipped into sleep. He hoped that tomorrow the pain would be nearly non-existent.
And he prayed that there would be no dreams.