Dragonball Extreme

Raditz stared uneasily around himself. He knew they would be coming soon, but he never knew from where. He couldn\'t keep track of time any more; days passed like years and years passed like days. All he knew was that his refusal to revert to soul form was causing him immense suffering. He didn\'t care, though. Something inside him was telling him to hold onto his life form no matter the cost.
He heard the whip whistle through the air only a fraction of a second before it cracked across his back. He yelped and leaped forward, spinning about to face his opponent at the same time.

\"So, tired of running, whelp?\" the ogre snarled. \"How \'bout you make it easy on yourself and just follow the rules like everyone else?\"

Raditz just snarled. \"I\'ll never take orders from you,\" he spat. \"I\'m a saiya-jin warrior; we don\'t bow down to miserable wretches like yourself.\"

\"Big talk from someone who\'s about to be on his knees!\" the ogre said. He drew back the whip again, but this time brought it down across Raditz\'s arms. When it wrapped around his wrists, the whip fused into a set of shackles, binding his arms together. The ogre approached him. \"I know just the place for \'tough guys\' like you,\" he said with a chuckle. He grabbed a hold of the chain between Raditz\'s arms and pulled the struggling saiya-jin along behind him as he headed off toward the horizon.

*

Bardock froze in mid-stride. The familiar feeling of light-headedness suddenly overtook him, and his eyes glazed over. A plethora of images flashed before his eyes; he could barely make out images of his son, and King Vegeta\'s son, the prince. He saw others too; they\'d been in his visions for a long time now; he\'d finally figured out that Vegeta and Kakarott had both taken mates, and now had children. He thought he remembered seeing Kakarott with a grandchild in one of his visions, but he couldn\'t be sure now; was that dark-haired girl really his great-granddaughter? She looked so much like Kakarott\'s mate, maybe he was just forgetting something. No, now the girl has a tail, the trademark of all saiya-jin...she must be the granddaughter that Bardock swore was just a baby not months ago.

King Vegeta caught up with him. He took note of the glazed, frozen stance Bardock had taken. \"No, not now,\" he groaned. \"Bardock, snap out of it! They\'ll be on top of us in moments!\" He watched the lower-class saiya-jin for a moment. It never failed to amaze him how Bardock could freeze up with a vision in the heat of battle or in mid-flight. He\'d initially thought having a gift like Bardock\'s would be incredible; now he was beginning to see the drawbacks, and why Bardock sometimes complained of it as being a curse.

He yelped as he felt a sharp slash across his tail and backside. King Vegeta spun around to see a sneering ogre behind him.

\"Ha ha! Serves you right, you troublesome monkey! Too many of your kind are being too obnoxious for your own good.\"

King Vegeta sneered at the ogre. \"At least we don\'t LOOK obnoxious, freak.\"

The ogre balled his hands into fists. \"What did you say to me, you wretched creature? Have you any idea what we can do to you?\"

King Vegeta laughed. \"Chase us for an eternity? Torture us? Please, spare me the gory details. I heard it all when I got here; Freeza did more to hurt me and my people than you ever could.\"

\"Is that a fact?\" the ogre said. He snarled and withdrew a handful of sparkling dust from his belt. \"Maybe you\'ll feel differently when you wake up...if you ever do.\" He threw the dust over King Vegeta and Bardock.

\"What do you mean, wake up?\" King Vegeta asked suspiciously. He took a step forward then fell over limp. Bardock slumped to the ground next to him.

*

Tales awoke with a start. He glanced wildly around himself for a moment; he didn\'t recognize his surroundings at all. He started to get up, but a woman\'s voice halted him.

\"Don\'t get up yet; you\'re not fully healed, and I need to run a few more tests on you.\"

Tales glanced in the direction of the voice and saw a beautiful figure and long aqua hair. As the woman turned around, he saw that she was middle-aged, possibly a bit older than ChiChi, but had kept her appearance beautifully. A bead of sweat rolled down his face, and a rush of warmth ran through his body as her graceful figure moved about the room. He sat up and reached for her.

\"Don\'t you even dare,\" a sharp voice snapped. \"Trash like you should know better than to mess with the royal mate.\"

Tales spun around, terrified. His eyes locked on the speaker in shock. His mouth moved in silent confusion for a moment before he gasped for breath and stuttered. \"I-it can\'t be...P-prince...\"

\"About time you recognized me,\" Vegeta said. He raised his nose haughtily in the air. \"But I might like to ask just who the hell are you? Only four saiya-jin survived the destruction of Planet Vegeta, and I don\'t recall you among their number...though you do look strikingly like Kakarott.\"

Tales shuddered and wiped the sweat off of his face, forcing himself to gain better control. \"Tales,\" he said hesitantly. \"My name is Tales; and as far as I know, Kakarott is the only saiya-jin beside yourself to ever see me.\"

\"Impossible!\" Vegeta spat. \"What about your parents? Someone had to have given birth to you, and even saiya-jin parents at least see their offspring. And why wouldn\'t anyone have seen you? Weren\'t you on Planet Vegeta?\"

Tales hesitated and looked at the floor. \"I vaguely remember shadows, from when I was a baby. All of my life, however, was spent inside one spaceship or another. My parents were a recorded message in my ship that told me all about my heritage and my people. When I got bored with being by myself, I joined a group of space pirates who were renegades from Freeza\'s army, and I quickly became their leader. I never knew Freeza personally, but from what I gathered from the recordings, he was no friend to the saiya-jin. I attempted to spread my rule from a lowly group of space pirates once, but it only ended in miserable failure. Kakarott still hasn\'t forgiven me, and now he has reason to hate me even more.\"

Vegeta rubbed his chin thoughtfully. \"So that\'s what Kakarott has against you,\" he said. \"Though it\'s still a bit odd even for him...Kakarott isn\'t a particularly unforgiving person.\"

Bulma was listening carefully from across the room. \"Space pirates? Hey, you\'re not the jerk who planted the Tree of Might are you?\"

Tales was about to spit out a rude comment, but remembered at the last moment that she was Vegeta\'s mate - and he certainly didn\'t need the Prince of the Saiya-jin angry with him, with as vulnerable as he was now. He looked away and bit his tongue. \"What does it matter now? The Tree is gone, isn\'t it? Isn\'t that what was so important to you earthlings, to destroy my only hope for power?\"

Bulma threw her hands into the air. \"Well no wonder Gokou wanted to rip you into pieces. You jerk! You almost destroyed the entire Earth! And I\'m not taking care of you any more either!\" She threw her lab coat onto the table. \"I\'m going shopping, Vegeta, you can stay here with this asshole if you want.\" She slammed the door behind her as she left.

Vegeta stared in confused wonder as she left. \"You seem to have a negative effect on everyone,\" he commented. He turned back to Tales. \"Does the computer from your ship still exist? I\'d like to know just why you were spared above any other babies on Vegeta, even the elite\'s.\"

*

King Vegeta tossed fitfully on the hard stone floor. His dreams were peppered with images of pain that seemed all too real to him; he was forced to feel the pain of his death time and time again, forced to watch helplessly as Freeza fired the fatal blast into the core of Planet Vegeta, destroying it and all of its inhabitants. Then more nightmares flooded into his head, worse than he ever imagined. He watched his son, his beloved little boy, growing up under that hateful creature, following Freeza\'s every order to save a father and a planet who were long since gone. He watched as his son faced one humiliation after another; forced to bow before lesser creatures, taking both verbal and physical abuse from everyone around him. Loyal, stupid Napa and the boy Raditz were powerless to help him; when they tried Vegeta only waved them away, saving their lives and his. He watched the three grow into mature young men who knew nothing more than serving Freeza, Napa growing ever more dense as he learned only servitude, Vegeta and Raditz suffering from the humiliation of not being able to do anything of their own free will - and when they did, they began to slowly disappear. First Raditz, then Napa was gone. Then Vegeta saw his worst nightmares come to life. He watched his proud young man being tortured to death by the vile Freeza, the pain literally forcing tears from Vegeta\'s eyes. He could almost feel the pain his son felt, the crushing grip ever tightening, cutting off the precious oxygen needed for survival, the punishing blows repeatedly cracking against his spine. Suddenly, all was black. King Vegeta sat up with a start.

Next to him, Bardock dozed just as fitfully, but King Vegeta was unable to tell if it was from nightmares or visions. He found that the two of them were in some kind of cage, and he wondered how long he\'d been out. Had he been sleeping though all those years of suffering he\'d just experienced, or had Hell simply twisted time and space to cause him suffering in a shorter period of time? He shook his head to clear it, but it didn\'t help much.

Bardock suddenly screamed and flew to his feet. He looked wildly around him, panic overtaking his sense of reason. King Vegeta leaped to his feet and reached out to steady Bardock.

\"My son, my son!\" Bardock cried out. He scanned the room wildly. \"Where is he? What have they done with him?\"

King Vegeta pulled back and slapped Bardock soundly across the face. \"Snap out of it! Your son isn\'t here, you were just having a nightmare.\"

Bardock\'s jaw trembled, and for a second King Vegeta was afraid he was going to cry. After a moment, Bardock steadied himself. \"It was so real...my son was hurting so badly...\"

\"I know,\" King Vegeta said quietly. \"I think it was meant to be that way. What ever that ogre did to us, it was meant to make us suffer helplessly. Too bad they don\'t know that saiya-jin heal when they sleep.\"

Bardock took deep, even breaths to calm himself. \"And now what will they do with us? Find even more terrible torture? I don\'t understand what\'s happening. I don\'t want to be just another faceless soul drifting though here, and I certainly don\'t want to get wrung through that damned spirit cleansing machine.\"

\"I know, I agree,\" King Vegeta said. \"But that means we have to keep our wits about us and plan our way out. Obviously neither fighting nor running has helped us.\"

Suddenly a loud ban on on the bars of their cage startled the two saiya-jin out of their conversation. \"I thought I heard noise back here. You two keep it down; if you\'re smart you\'ll shut up altogether - the Demon Lord Daio has decided to handle you two troublemakers personally.\" The ogre grinned evilly before walking away.

*

\"You have GOT to be joking!\" the ogre screamed. He was taller, and of larger build than the others, and he wore battle-worn armor. \"You want to put that pathetic creature to work in my demon army?\"

\"I\'m not saying as someone to rely on,\" the other explained. \"Use him for whatever. Have him dig trenches or something; maybe he can clean the training grounds over on Needle Mountain. He just needs some hard work to break him in and teach him a lesson, and I don\'t have the time or the patience. If he\'s going to be a pain in the ass, at least he can be working for us while he\'s at it.\"

\"Right, like that sniveling thing could even last a day under a regular workload. Did the Demon Lord authorize this? I don\'t need to get into trouble for beating up on one of the inmates like I did before.\"

It was all Raditz could do to hold back his humiliated tears. These monsters were talking about him as if he were an infant or worse. He was a saiya-jin warrior for Kami\'s sake! He stood in mute anger and frustration as the ogres continued to banter about his fate.

\"Don\'t worry about it,\" the ogre holding his chain said. \"The Demon Lord is busy right now, I\'ll push the right papers through no problem. You just keep him out of trouble.\" He handed the chain over to the larger ogre. \"He\'s your problem now.\"