Time Warriors Chapter 11

Pulsing power, sinuous and slippery, easily evaded his grasp. It hovered around him, taunted his psyche without mercy and triggered old memories as his body swept through the air.

"Ah, my young little monkey. You do have such interesting talents – it would be a shame to kill you simply because you could not control your temper, don't you agree? Now, then … again, my pet … try again …"

As he sliced through the dawn tinged sky, humiliation, anger and fear boiled in his veins. It was as fresh as the night the little tyrant murmured those mocking words to him, leaving him gasping with helpless rage. Freeza's flexible tail had slowly twisted around his body, bringing the prince ever closer to the tyrant's thin black lips as his colorless eyes shone with undisguised lust. The despot had prodded and squeezed and fondled the royal child, using a combination of brute force and emotional manipulation to coerce the boy into submitting to his ministrations and commands until Vejiita was convinced he was going to go completely insane.

Where did that come from? He immediately pushed the memory away; years of smooth practice at suppressing his subconscious helped him banish that recollection, as he had repressed most memories from his time with Freeza. While he had been unable to control the little tyrant's actions, he at least had been able to control his own mind and quell those images - and because of that, Vejiita had stayed sane. His mouth stretched across his teeth in a tight grimace of fury as his eyes scanned the terrain for signs of the one transmitting that teasing energy signal, his muscles tense and ready for battle.

Another memory flashed in front of his eyes -

The slight breeze felt wonderful against his neck. He was standing in his private training room, just behind the doors that opened to his tiny garden. Heat rose from the flagstones in a shimmer, and the breeze brought the scent of grass and wildflowers to him – Vejiitasei was always hot, but today in particular was turning out to be a nasty scorcher.

Keeping his tail snug and secure about his waist, he looked but didn't see the small plot in front of him – outrage and frank curiosity were goading him to action. Something happened that morning – something that intrigued and angered him so much that he still felt those emotions rolling around in his mind – something that pushed him so that he was now willing to involve his personal guard and play a deadly game with –

-with...

"With what, dammit?" he screamed in frustration as he flashed across the sky like a bullet. "With what? Show me NOW!"

But no matter how much he shouted at it, his memory refused to cooperate; a dense fog curled around the rest of his mind, shrouding the balance of the scene in mystery. The only things he could remember were his feelings – cold anticipation mingled with vicious excitement, and something else – a need to possess, to dominate and control something he didn't understand, to make it completely his own. He was the Prince of Vejiitasei, after all, and his will was law. He would have what he wanted precisely when he wanted it, and he wanted it now.

Vejiita was so abstracted with his own thoughts that he missed the small, tell-tale energy pulse and slammed full force into Gokuu, Gohan and Piccolo as they materialized in front of him.

The gate was unguarded – or, if it had been guarded, it had long ago been abandoned. By this time, most Cronch had deserted their posts to bound snarling at their comrades, as they tried to totally annihilate each other.

Howling, crested Cronch continued to dash across the desert encampment in their quest to destroy anyone in their path. Huge geysers of dirt and sand sprouted unexpectedly from all parts of the site as stray blaster shots found their marks, flinging bodies of the Cronch and their captives alike into the air. The noise from the battle was deafening, and the sharp smell of ozone and crisping flesh hung over the camp like a noxious cloud.

Theo and Dron scurried toward the gate, pushing and dragging any mobile Cronch captives with them. They found one of the prisoners huddling in the sand; a tall, thin male, obviously terrified, lying next to a rock, trying to pretend that he was part of the rock as he thrust his head into the soft ground.

"Come ON!" Theo hissed at him, exasperated, as she tore one of his arms out of hiding and started tugging on it. "We don't have time for this foolishness – we have to get out of here!"

The man's head popped out of the sand, brown eyes wide and fearful. "No, no – they'll kill us all! They said they'd kill me if I tried—" and he broke off, staring at Theo, his mouth gaping open.

"What?" she demanded, looking at his expression. Now totally confused, Theo followed his gaze – and found herself looking at her breasts, her ripped shirt completely exposing her torso.

Outrage bubbled and burst in her chest as her emotional control slipped away. "You pervert!" she screamed as she cuffed him on the side of his head hard enough to drive him face first into the sand again. Still angry, she glared at him – then took another look, noticing that his shirt was in one piece – a bit sandy, but serviceable –

"Take it off," she ordered, reaching for the man's waist.

His head popped up from the sand, sputtering. "What?"

"I don't have time for this, fool!" she spit into his face as she yanked his shirt free from his pants. "Either you take this off, or I'll rip your arms out of their sockets and take it myself!"

Seconds later, Theo was clad in a long, sandy, dark blue workshirt that hung almost to her knees, while her supporter was climbing to his feet, shirtless, shivering in the dawn air.

"Theo!" Dron cried from the far side of the gate. "Get out of there!"

Adrenaline pumped through her veins as she watched another knot of Cronch roil toward the entrance to their prison. "Come on, you worthless moron!" she snapped, pushing him toward the gate as she sprinted ahead of him. "We are leaving!"

People streamed through the gate – the prisoners of the Cronch, freed from their bonds by Dron, stumbled out of the pen and into the encampment, dazed and bewildered. Some were leaning on others as they made their way though the gate, only to trip and fall on the Cronch bodies that littered the path.

The spacer grabbed and hurled the dead Cronch out of the way, throwing some of the captives into each other. "Let's go, let's go – move it, move it, move it!!" Dron yelled, pushing and shoving a large number of former prisoners toward the relative safety of the open desert. "You're better off taking your chances out there – anywhere's gotta be better than here."

"Hurry up, for Kami’s sake!" Theo snapped, grabbing and shoving people to the other side of the fence as she reached the entrance, elbowing her way through the crowd. "We don’t have all day!"

The knot of Cronch rolled right into the fence several meters away from the gate, bringing it down and literally crushing anything underneath it. Blood and ripped flesh were flying everywhere as the Cronch tore into each other, giving up their dead blasters for their long knives and teeth.

Theo squeezed into the panicked crowd that ran out of the gate, trying to push her way over to Dron. She only glimpsed his gray head in the throng once as she tried to shoulder her way toward him.

Without warning, a strong hand clamped down on her left wrist, dragging her off balance and pulling her back into the crowd, toward the pen.

"No!" Theo shouted, yanking in the opposite direction, believing the frightened, shirtless man was hanging onto her for dear life. "You stupid moron, let go of me! Don't go back in there, for Kami's sake – you'll get us BOTH killed!"

Unable to dislodge his hand, Theo whirled to face her antagonist. Her lips curled back from her teeth as she accessed the wellspring again, grabbing the small trickle of power and twisted it into coercive potential as she prepared to dive into her opponent's brain. Her expression was fierce and threatening as she snatched her left wrist to her body, pulling her adversary through the horde into a deadly embrace.

"Theo – it's me, it's me!"

Theo stopped in mid-dive, gasping, "Ally?"

All of a sudden, Allyssa materialized in front of her, her tall form protectively shoving other people away from Theo, her face dark and unreadable in the early morning light. She crushed Theo's wrist in a painful grip as the women stared at each other, shivering in the brisk morning air.

The expression in Allyssa's eyes was undisguised relief mixed with puzzlement as she looked down into Theo's small, oval face. "What happened to your eyes? Ah, well, tell me later – thank Kami you're in one piece," she husked, shaking her head, grabbing Theo's thin shoulders with her free arm. "Your mother would've flayed me alive if you weren't."

"Oh, I'm so glad you're here, Allyssa," Theo said, heartfelt, shaking her head at her friend. "Once the Cronch took me – that big guy did it, too – I had no idea where I was or …" Her voice trailed off as she watched several expressions chase across Allyssa's face, each more fearsome than the previous.

Allyssa's expression had abruptly transformed from relief to one of suppressed rage; her arm felt like iron as she pulled Theo close to her body, and her grip tightened around Theo's wrist until the Guardian thought her bones would shatter, making her gasp in pain.

"Don't you EVER go off with anyone like that again, Theo," Allyssa ground out, her nose centimeters away from Theo's, her gaze bright and penetrating, "not unless you want me to beat you senseless every single day of your miserable life after that."

Totally taken aback by Allyssa's rebuke, Theo could do nothing but stare helplessly at her friend's threatening expression and stammer, "I … I'm sorry, Ally … I didn't … didn't think that—"

"Obviously," Allyssa muttered, her grip hard and steady around Theo's shoulders and wrist as she stared at the smaller woman. "Thinking wasn't your first priority – drinking seems to have been first on your list." Theo's gaze wavered and fell as waves of color crossed her face; it was clear that any defiance previously there was now gone.

"I'm really sorry, Ally," Theo muttered, abashed. "I won't – won't do that again."

Nodding in satisfaction, Allyssa released her shoulders but kept a light grip on her wrist. "Come on, then, we're getting out of here," she said, turning and dragging Theo behind her as she took off through the crowd. She spotted Dron in front of them; as she cut across the throng toward him, Allyssa called over her shoulder, "And Theo – why didn't you tell me those horrid things could fly?"

"Fly? What – what are you talking about?" croaked Theo, completely disconcerted as her bare feet skimmed across the terrain.

"Look up there," Allyssa said, pointing with her free hand at a corner of the sky.

Theo gasped and stumbled behind Allyssa, staring off to her right. "Those Cronch are different, Ally," she called back, turning her attention between watching her footing and watching the sky. "They weren't down here before." And they look like they're getting closer to us, she thought, alarmed. Are they reinforcements?

Bodies littered the desert camp; bodies upon bodies upon bodies, Cronch and human alike, all sprawled together in a tangled, jumbled heap. Seen from the air, it appeared as though a full scale war was raging at the encampment; several scouts had circled the carnage and immediately flew back to their transport ship to report what they saw. The party returning to the scene included the scouts, many high ranking security guards and the commanders of the ship, plus a large amount of heavy firepower, all brought to repel the enemy.

Sterbol was at the forefront of the battle group; as the overall commander of the transport ship, he felt his first responsibility was to his crew and second to his backers. After all, he reasoned, he'd have no way of procuring any of his "product" without his crew and neither would his investors, so it was in his own best interest to ensure the safety and well being of the individuals that served on his ship.

His first glance at the battle site left him with an ominous, unsettled feeling. There was something just not right about the carnage he saw, something that he couldn't quite place – until he realized that there were no aliens among the dead. The unmoving bodies on the desert floor were Cronch and human only; in fact, it appeared that the dead humans were the same type they had been collecting for their client over the past several spans – the weak, scrawny, friendless kind, the kind that no one missed.

"Who was the enemy?" he shouted at the scouts, skimmed through the sky. Those Cronch turned their faces toward him with perplexed, baffled expressions as they shook their heads and replied, "We don't know, commander. We didn't see anyone except our people firing."

A dark, heavy foreboding settled around his chest at that moment – he knew, without understanding the source of his knowledge, that nothing was going to be right ever again. Banking into the wind, he signaled for the rest of his party to follow him as he descended to the butchery below.

Allyssa, Dron and Theo were standing together, watching the large cloud of Cronch draw closer to their position.

"That's it – we're leaving," Allyssa declared, grabbing Theo's wrist again and turning to run through the camp. "I'm not waiting around to see what those guys want. Besides, we have to find the TARDIS remote and Dron's guns." Both she and Dron nodded at each other as they moved out; self defense was their first and only priority.

"Wait, Ally, wait – let me see if I can turn any of them away, or even at each other," Theo said breathlessly, trotting behind her and holding onto Allyssa's wrist with her other hand.

"What?" Allyssa said, glaring behind her at Theo.

"That's what she did to get the Cronch to fight with each other," Dron volunteered, his gaze sliding over to Theo and back again to Allyssa.

"Can't you do that while we're on the move?" Allyssa snapped, not relinquishing Theo's wrist nor slowing her pace.

"No, I can't – I can't concentrate like that right now!" Theo declared, tugging back on her wrist, digging her heels into the sand, her dark hair fanning about her head.

"Fine – all right, all right – hey Dron, wait a minute!" Allyssa called, reluctantly stopping next to a few large rocks and overgrown cactus plants.

The spacer turned around and looked at them quizzically, then glanced at the sky.

Allyssa threw up her hands and gestured to Theo, who planted her feet wide apart and stared at the approaching horde, her hands shading her eyes.

She dug deep inside herself to snag the wellspring power – now a bit more than a trickle, but not much more – and wrapped it into coercive potential. Theo decided to launch herself at the closest individual in the pack; she gathered her psychic strength around her and leaped into the aether, bounding into the mind of the leader.

Quickly spreading her tentacle-like tendrils throughout the creature's brain, Theo tweaked the emotional centers as she had done to hundreds of creatures before – and received a nasty surprise. This creature had a defense against attacks such as hers; a smooth, impermeable wall instantly sprang up between her and the rest of the beast's mind, effectively blocking her access to his other emotional centers and cutting her off from the power she had already placed in his brain.

Damn. Well, so much for a surprise attack, she thought shaking her head. I had better try–

- when a psychic blast came roaring back at her, traveling along the pathway she had created between the creature and herself. She barely had enough time to close the pathway, throw up her own screen and deflect the energy surge, bouncing it back toward the group of Cronch. It was obvious that not all of the Cronch in that battle group were familiar with psychic fighting, as three of them fell out of formation and plummeted to the ground, apparently affected by the blast. The rest, however, kept coming.

Who – who did that? she wondered, peering into the sky.

A voice echoed in the void; Theo felt the vibrations of its harmonics and cracked her screen just enough to hear the blaring call.

You – telepath. I know you. The voice sneered and became ugly. Your little tricks won't work on us, telepath – we're smarter than those idiots that guarded you. Don't move, girlie – we'll be right there.

"Theo? Theo, what's wrong?" Allyssa asked urgently, shaking Theo's arm. The Guardian's face had become deathly pale, and her eyes were changing color rapidly – from sea green to royal blue to dark purple, the colors swirling so much that it appeared to be in constant flux.

… don't move, telepath …

They're going to kill us, Theo thought, incoherent, I can't let them – I've got to stop them … And she tried to force her mind to shift reality and leap to that alternate plane with the shining silver discs, the plane of the Kaious, where pulling the strings from the discs meant certain death to her enemies –

– but she was blocked, stymied by her own ghee-contaminated power. It refused to respond to her, allowing only a small trickle of stained energy to leak into her mental fingertips.

The flying Cronch were almost directly above them now, the horde large enough to throw a huge shadow over the desert, blocking the rising sun from their view. Sterbol's expression was frightening, visible in the gloom; his crest was fanned, stiffly thrust into the air; his eyes were merciless, dark and glittering; and his face was tightly drawn in an expression that mixed avarice with vengeance and lust.

"So – I see you're all here," he said sardonically, nodding to the three companions. He descended easily and motioned his soldiers to do the same – abruptly there was an entire company of Cronch in front of Theo, a forest of large, snarling, crested creatures. She involuntarily flinched.

Sterbol saw that, and laughed. "Oh, no, no, my little telepath," he chucked as he advanced on them, waving his men forward. "Don't worry – we're going to take care of you and your friends very, very well. Even though you've destroyed two month's worth of work and killed nearly seventy percent of my crew –" and his face momentarily flushed, revealing his simmering fury at that outrage, "—I think you'll fetch more than four times the amount of what those half-wits were willing to pay me for that entire shipment. Telepaths are rare, but fighting telepaths? ah, they are rarer still. A good bargain, ne? But first," he continued, his eyes narrowed in unconcealed hunger as his voice grew husky with need, "I'm going to have some fun." And he advanced on her, closing the gap between them.

Theo stared at the Cronch, a horrified expression on her face. A explosion of fear and rage rocked through her to the core of her being when she realized what he wanted, what he was going to do. Holding her hands in front of her body, her arms still and straight, Theo stood her ground and screamed in a rough voice that carried to the edge of the encampment, "NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!"

Finally, the force and intensity of her emotions pushed past the ghee-created power block and ripped open conduits in her mind that had long lain dormant. Sudden wellspring power coursed through her brain, a wildfire stoked by the tinder of pathways long unused. It erupted from her hands and fingertips in a dizzying display of creative power, a multicolored fireball ramming into the group of Cronch and flinging them with breakneck speed across their own compound and into the desert, landing with a sickening *crunch* against the side of some small cliffs about a kilometer away. The force of the blast flattened all vegetation in a hundred meter radius and knocked everyone else in the vicinity to the ground as it violently smashed into the heart of the Cronch battle group.

And her chi – her personal power signature – suddenly spiked to levels never before felt on that planet, flaring like a sun gone nova in the middle of a tranquil, serene star system, becoming something so unbelievably massive it was impossible to ignore.

"Kakarotto! What in blazes are you doing here?"

Vejiita had recovered, just barely, from his head-on collision with the other Z senshi. Piccolo, Gokuu and Gohan had materialized right in front of the prince and had been knocked over like so many bowling pins when Vejiita slammed into them full force, his impetus propelling him through their little group, flinging them aside.

"Ohayo, Vejiita – we were looking for you!" Gokuu rejoined, cheerful as ever, ignoring the other Saiyan's black scowl as he flew back to hover next to the prince.

"'We'? Looking for me?" the smaller man snarled, glaring at Gokuu then twisting to see Gohan and Piccolo streak back toward them in the sky. His expression grew even darker and his eyebrows drew together as he turned back to Gokuu. "Why? Why are you following me, baka?"

"Because you're making a mistake, Vejiita," rumbled Piccolo as he slid to a stop and hovered next to Gokuu in midair. "There's no need to destroy the being with this chi; there's no sign that the creature is harmful at all."

An incredulous expression crossed the Prince's face as he considered the Namekian with fresh scorn, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "A mistake? Explain yourself, Namek."

"You know what I'm saying," Piccolo argued, turning a baleful eye on Vejiita. "This is the same power we felt when we were traveling in space, only not nearly as strong – the same power that ran from you. That chi was not evil at all, and this chi isn't evil, either – and you know it."

"I never said it was evil, idiot," Vejiita responded, smirking at the alien. "I really don't care if it's evil or not. Now get out of my way."

"No, wait – wait, Vejiita," Gokuu said, catching hold of the smaller man's upper arm as he tried to push past Piccolo.

"What are you doing, Kakarotto?" he snapped, yanking his arm back and glowering at the larger Saiyan.

"Listen, please – I kinda agree with Piccolo on this," Gokuu said, nodding his head at his green friend, barring Vejiita's way. The other Saiyan scowled, but did not try to push by him, waiting for him to continue. "It's funny – the back of my head itches –" and Gokuu rubbed the base of his large neck, the muscles flexing as he scratched, "—but I don't feel the – well, the evil that I felt with Buu, or Cell, or even Freeza. And this chi is really, really different. It almost feels like it … uh …" Gokuu trailed off, at a loss for a word that would adequately describe his reaction to the alien energy signal, and frowned. "It sorta shakes inside my head."

"You mean … it vibrates, 'tousan?" Gohan asked, sliding next to the group in the air. "Because that's what it feels like to me – as if something is buzzing around the back of my head, trying to get in."

Vejiita turned his head and regarded Gohan with a hooded stare. "…trying to get in?" he repeated softly, nodding to himself, then turned back to Gokuu and Piccolo. "So … this chi that isn't evil is trying to get into your heads? And you had to follow me and tell me this, because …"

"Because we didn't want you to make a mistake and attack the person with this chi, and then find out you shouldn't have," Gokuu said simply. "That's just not right. And Piccolo thinks you're going to put everyone in danger if you do that, and that's not right, either."

A vein stood out on Vejiita's forehead, pulsing quietly with the force of his suppressed emotions. "Listen to me, Kakarotto," he said, clipping every word with controlled fury. "I don't care whether the creature with this chi is good or evil. Whatever it is, it attacked us – and I will do what I think is right to protect those I've sworn to and to protect what's mine. Nothing is going to challenge me and not pay the price – nothing. You, of all people, should know that." Why I bother explaining anything to this baka, I'll never know, the prince thought to himself in irritation. "Now get out of my way – the chi is moving, and I'll not lose it a second time."

"But Vejiita—" Gokuu started, then suddenly froze, a shocked, incredulous expression on his face.

Raw power, the size and magnitude seldom felt outside their own small circle, rose from the plain below and hit each of the chi-sensitive senshi with the force of a tsunami, blasting through their bodies and minds. It was almost as if they were paper in a gale force wind; all they could do was ride the crest of the power surge and wait for it to subside.

A loud, piercing noise accompanied the power blast, ringing through each of the senshi's heads, bringing a feeling of fear and desperation with it. As they hovered in the air, staring at each other in complete shock, Vejiita's expression appeared to turn inward, as if he was listening to something brought to him by the blast – which, in fact, he was.

"NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!" rang and reverberated in the corridors of his mind, the familiar timbre of the voice pulling at other doors, opening other brief memories –

--the tyrant's cold hands, reaching for him in the dark – his father's face scowling down at him – "Sire," an aghast Raditz gasping, "Are you sure you want to do this?" – hatred and fear flashing from multicolored eyes under curly red hair – dangerous power swirling in the air – a golden circlet, twirling around his fingers –

As quickly as the power surge had overwhelmed them, it was gone – but it left an indelible trail for any chi sensing being to trace, sparkling across the desert floor to the source of the energy, a scant kilometer away.

Vejiita recovered first, pulling himself out of his reverie to the present, his eyebrows tightly drawn together. That's enough of that, he thought, a slow, savage smirk moving across his face. He watched the other senshi rally themselves, snorted in disgust and said, "Stay here if you want to, Kakarotto – but I'm going in now." Vejiita spun and whirled away from the other warriors, darting across the sky, following the energy trail.

Gokuu had seen that smirk on the prince's face many times in the past, usually right before Vejiita attacked him with a technique that left him sore and aching for days. And if he does that to me … "Come on!" he called to Gohan and Piccolo, and chased Vejiita across the sky to the Cronch encampment.