Chishan was unable to keep the defensive note out of his voice. "I've logged thousands of hours in simulators on planet."

The King's expression turned sardonic. "I'll pilot the shuttle in. You let Zarbon know I'm coming."

All it took was the brief communication that the King was en route to the capitol to jar Zarbon into complete wakefulness. The changeling didn't waste time bemoaning his lack of preparedness. Instead he grabbed earrings that (hopefully) matched his tiara as he raced out of his suite to meet Vegeta's craft, trying to thread the hoops through his pierced ears, tug on gloves and align his shoulder guards, all while in a flat-out run. He skidded to a halt on the tarmac just as the shuttle was setting down. Techs were still straightening out the hastily-thrown-down gold carpet when the shuttle door opened and the King levitated out without waiting for his guards.

Zarbon had not been considering anything other than a jumble of technical frets involving royal protocol and his own appearance, but suddenly he was struck by a vortex of unexpected emotions. He had not thought he was concerned about Vegeta's physical safety during the mission, but seeing the King before him brought such a combination of stark relief and unmistakable irritation that the liaison was momentarily frozen into place as he tried to decide if he most wanted to hug or slug his errant hatchling.

The King did not appear to be experiencing any similar emotional revelations. Vegeta hit the ground in mid-stride and gestured imperiously to his liaison as he strode past. Zarbon tried to fall in behind the King, but Vegeta reached back, snagged him by the edge of his armor, and pulled him forward. "I don't feel like shouting over my shoulder at you," said the King. "You don't get the full weight of my displeasure when you're staring at the back of my head."

Zarbon tried not to wince. "You've heard about Trunks' latest exploit, then."

"Kyokun has kept me well appraised. Indeed, he has been far more forthcoming with information than you have. I should not have to tease out details from reports when I have a liaison who is supposed to keep me appraised of all situations."

Zarbon puffed out a heavy sigh. "Usually when I try to brief you on the state of the Empire, you storm off insisting that attending to these trifling details is what the liaison is for. I suppose consistency is too much to ask of any Saiyan."

"I am in no mood to be amused, Zarbon."

"Who was joking?" Indeed, Zarbon felt he was being only slightly facetious. "What did Kyokun tell you?"

"Oh, let's see: Nappa swiped the brat, Bulma went tearing off in the wrong direction, my Heir trounced the Commander in Chief to the delight of dozens, if not hundreds, of witnesses, thereby reinforcing the inherent superiority of the House of Vejiitasei -- am I leaving anything out?"

Nicely done, acknowledged Zarbon, who not for the first time thought Kyokun might be best placed in the diplomatic corps. Unfortunately the liaison's sense of duty to the King outweighed any considerations of personal safety, either his own or Kyokun's. "Just one important detail, my King. Nappa took the Prince to the camps for live target practice. Trunks refused. The rest, I suppose, is correct enough."

"I was told this." Vegeta's tone was impatient. "Not only was Kyokun's report thorough to the point of tedium, but everything in it was confirmed by the account Lord Shiruko filed. No doubt he felt compelled to assure all and sundry that he was only following orders and therefore had no culpability in this incident. I think I may put him on throne duty for life anyway."

"Last time I checked, that was an honor."

"Yes, but a very boring one when the Heir is this young. Once he's old enough to challenge, then it becomes interesting. How's Nappa taking it?"

"Strutting around proud as anything claiming it was his superior training that jolted the Heir into Elite status so young."

Vegeta snorted.

"Bulma's still here," Zarbon offered diffidently.

"Of course she is," snapped Vegeta, as if he entertained no doubts whatsoever. Well aware of his cross calls to Radditz demanding updates on the Queen, Zarbon regarded him with open skepticism. "Oh, I thought it possible that she might take off, yes," the King acknowledged. "She seemed angry enough. One of the great weaknesses of humans, though, is how they cling to their children. The brat is still here, therefore so is she. I know she won't leave without the brat. Indeed, the fact that she's still on Vejiitasei after this tells me that it is unlikely that she will leave for anything."

"One should always be careful about taking one's partner for granted."

"I take nothing for granted where she's concerned," responded Vegeta coldly. "I have no idea if she will ever relent to the point where we can cohabit again. I have thought about it a great deal on the trip back from Koorim, however. Since you were not around to spar with, there was little else to do. It seems that there is nothing more offensive to Bulma than the planet trade." Vegeta offered this as if it were a revelation to him. "I should not have been so taken off-guard, I suppose. We had words about this when I was on Earth, more than once. Back then she was very insistent that the Earth technology could not be used for clearing worlds. I suppose, to the extent that I considered it at all, that I thought she had reconciled herself to the necessity of it. Evidently she just ignored it. Foolishness," the King grunted to himself. "I cannot say how this will play out in the long term, no more than I have ever been able to tell what the silly human will do from one moment to the next. Still, I have no regrets. Whether or not she remains with me or sets up her own palace elsewhere, she is still the Queen, and the Heir is still the Heir. Nothing will change that."

The sense of relief that flooded Zarbon did not surprise him. He strongly felt that his honor was tied up in Bulma's well-being, and his emotional investment in Trunks was powerful, at least as strong as the emotional investment he had in Vegeta himself. Vegeta's flat statement meant that he would not be forced to chose between loyalties, at least, not for the foreseeable future. As they approached the Imperial wing of the palace and the suite of rooms that belonged to the royal family, though, Zarbon felt obligated to bring one more potential source of conflict to Vegeta's attention. "Trunks has been ..."

"Yes?" Vegeta prompted impatiently when Zarbon paused to search for the appropriate words.

"He has been saying that things will be different when he is King, perhaps even more like they are on Chikyuu."

"No doubt things will be different." Vegeta's tone was disinterested; like most Saiyans, he had little regard for any future beyond his own lifetime. "But like Chikyuu...? He has been to the camps now. He knows the truth of it, better than his mother does. You are concerned that he lacks the heart of a Saiyan?" Now Vegeta sounded amused. "No matter his looks, he is my son. He is far younger than I was the first time I put Nappa into the tanks. I want to give him a better fight than my father gave me." At the door of his suite, the King turned to Zarbon and spoke sternly. "Take this to heart, Zarbon. Next time I leave, I do not want to waste so much time trying to decipher cryptic messages from those in charge of my family and my planet."

"You're going on more missions, then." Zarbon's statement was flat with disapproval.

"Yes," replied Vegeta. "I thought, before, that this one mission would be enough, but it is not. It never will be enough for me. I must fight."

"I'm sure I could arrange contests or --"

Vegeta shook his head. "Staying here will kill me, Zarbon. The brat will do that soon enough. Is there anything else?"

"Not this instant. I'll have a complete briefing prepared for tomorrow morning."

Vegeta waved him away, a small, vicious smile playing about his mouth. "I'm sure that anything beyond what we've discussed here will take care of itself. If not -- isn't that what the liaison is for?" Laughing, he closed the door to the royal suite in Zarbon's petulant face.

Chishan regarded the hastily-disappearing back of his King with resignation. Vegeta should not be stalking around the Palace without his guards in tow. Indeed, the King should still be on the shuttle while those charged with his protection secured the area and high-ranking officials queued to officially welcome the monarch back to the capitol. The words of the wounded soldier back on Koorim played through his mind: "And what do you expect to do about that?" The Captain of the King's Guard gave a grim smile as he admitted to himself, Nothing. Nothing at all. Having seen the King in combat, Chishan knew now that anything powerful enough to take Vegeta down was beyond the abilities of the entire combined Guards. "Just ... go home," he said wearily to the contingent on the shuttle, who were standing flat-footed with indecision and waiting for direction. "I'll call a general meeting tomorrow to assign Palace duties, so leave your scouters on."

But what point was there to Palace duties? Chishan wondered what need the King had of protectors as he turned his own feet toward the spacious suite reserved for the Captain of the King's Guard. Again his mind tugged back to the battle he had witnessed on Koorim. No need, he was forced to acknowledge. The Foreseen One did not need any of them.

He padded into his bedroom, finding his wife a shapeless lump in the middle of the bed. Sitting on the edge, he poked cautiously at her with one finger; getting into bed with a Saiyan warrior could be a painful experience if she jarred awake in combat mode. But Konny only slitted open her eyes, squinted at him without much interest, then reluctantly moved over. "Back, are you?"

"Just."

"I don't suppose you brought anything to train with?"

"It was a purge. Complete eradication."

Konny mumbled a sleepy curse. "Too bad. Inadequate stuff they have in the camps these days."

Chishan regarded her quizzically as he began to remove his armor. "What are you blathering about?"

"The camps," reiterated Konny in irritation. "The training fodder. Completely inadequate." She buried her head under one flung arm, trying to get back to sleep.

"What were you doing at one of the camps? Needed a refresher, did you? You must have been incredibly rusty if your Captain let you go when the Guards were so short of hands."

Konny heaved a big sigh, and moved her elbow enough to glare at her smirking husband. "He wasn't happy about it when I got back," she admitted, "but your father has rank on him so I managed to avoid any more demerits." She paused, considering some of the barbed conversations that had taken place within the Palace compound over the last couple of days. "Well, most of us think the Commander out ranks the Captains, but Captain Radditz doesn't think so, and he hasn't been shy about saying it. Good thing he has that Zarbon creature to back him up, or I think some of your guards would have gone after him for the insult to your father. If you don't want them to, you'd better tell them so."

Chishan stared at her, open-mouthed. "You mean -- it's true? It really happened?"

"What?"

"The Heir battled my father?"

Sighing again, Konny sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. She regarded her husband balefully. "'Battled' is such a strong word," she said, awake enough now to engage in more active sarcasm. "The Heir and the Commander are in different classes. Prince Vegeta just waved one of those pale hands of his and your father went nose-first into the dirt. You would have loved it."

Rumors of the fight between the Commander and the Heir had only begun to circulate on the ship in the last few hours before it entered the system. Knowing the power of his father, Chishan had been disinclined to believe anything resembling a confrontation between the Heir and the Commander had really occurred, let alone that the Heir had won the contest. Konny's account astounded him. "You were there? Lucky dog! What was it like?"

Konny shuddered. The trip to the Western camps was not among her favorite memories, and recalling how easily the Heir humiliated Nappa perplexed and disturbed her. "Not like anything I could imagine from someone that young. He's not...he's not normal. Not even close."

"They used to say that about the King." Remembering his own recent thoughts about the elder Vegeta, Chishan chuckled a bit. "They still say that about the King, and they're right. I saw him battle on Koorim. Why should he be normal? He is the Foreseen One, after all. Like father, like son, eh?"

"I wouldn't know. Are you coming to bed, or are you just going to chatter at me until my shift starts?"

Chishan shook his head. A germ of an idea was beginning to take shape in his mind. "I have to draw up duty rosters and the like."

"Just keep me out of the Royal wing, that's all I ask."

He grinned. "Don't worry. You'll be back under your Captain's command in no time. The common rooms await." He lingered for a moment as Konny pointedly plumped a pillow and turned on her side, away from him. "Is the rest of it true, too? Nappa stole the Prince away from the capitol?"

"Now 'stole' is the wrong word, and you know it," snapped Konny. "He's the Commander. He can do what he likes with the Heir." She put the pillow over her head. "And I argued with him about it! Kami, I'm lucky to be alive..."

"He stole the Heir..." Chishan was grinning widely as he left his grumbling mate to her rest. There was little point to the amount of warriors reserved for the King ... but the Heir, it appeared, could perhaps find some use for those who understood the new rules and who would not blindly follow the old ways. Obviously it wouldn't do to leave the King unprotected, but his recent off-world trip demonstrated how useless the Elites were when it came to real, planet-clearing combat. If some would have to travel with the King anyway -- and, having seen the King's savage joy in battle, Chishan had no doubt that the Guard would be needed as much off-world as on -- then it would make sense to have them trained in realistic battle techniques, so that they might participate in planet clearing rather than just sit on the ship and let the common soldiers have all the fun. Chishan smirked as he began to put together plans that would dramatically reassign the duties of most of the King's Guards.

Chishan had informed more than Zarbon about the King's imminent arrival. His tone over the com had been self effacing, as if he weren't entirely sure he should be talking to her, but Bulma thanked him sincerely for the warning before ending the call. She looked around the darkened room, gnawing on her lower lip as she tried to decide what she should do. In the end, though, she opted to remain where she was. As she had told Zarbon, her decision had been made when she came to Vejiitasei. She had known then, intellectually, what the Saiyan Empire was based on; if it took a while for the emotional and ethical considerations to catch up to her, she had only herself to blame for that. So she pulled the covers up to her shoulders and waited for her husband to arrive.

He could move quietly when he wanted. Bulma watched him, eyes shielded by her lowered lashes. He pulled off the gloves, still without looking toward the bed, then stood for a moment with arms crossed, armored back to her. When he spoke, his unemotional voice was directed away from her. "Is there a particular reason you are here, or did you simply not realize that I was returning tonight?"

How does he do that? Vegeta's peculiar ability to know she was only feigning sleep when he was on the other side of a very large room was something to puzzle out later. He could probably smell it or something, she thought crossly, with those animal-sharp senses of his. Sighing, Bulma pushed back the covers and scooted until she reached the side of the bed, swinging her bare feet down, hesitantly approaching her husband. She touched the thick armor covering his shoulders. His head turned; she caught the glint as he glanced at her, then his eyes faced front again. Carefully she put her arms under his, flattening her hands against the hard material covering his chest. There was no yield in him, no acknowledgment of her physical presence. "Vegeta," she said, "I'm sorry."

He took in a breath at that. He didn't like it when she apologized, it was something Saiyans just didn't do; and, in truth, she didn't like doing it. Yet there was still nothing indicating a dent in that Saiyan pride. "I'm not trying to change you, Vegeta. It's just--a part of you I have a very, very hard time dealing with."

He did speak at that, the words cool and unemotional. "Woman, you knew what I was when you married me."

"I did. I forgot for a while, that's all. I needed to be reminded." She moved her hands along the armor in small circles, wishing he had taken it off before calling her bluff. He would have a harder time being so unemotional if it were flesh she caressed... "Vegeta, I love you. But I can't always approve of things that you do. It's my problem, not yours. I won't take it out on you again."

He exhaled softly through his nose. "Feh. You humans and your fine distinctions." He caught her wrists, pulling her grasping fingers away from him as he turned to face her. "I will always honor you, woman. No matter what moronic thing you are doing."

And that, decided Bulma wryly, is the height of romantic declaration for a Saiyan. But I knew that, too, going in... "I know," she said, touching the curves of his face, tracing the warm skin with her fingertips. "I know." She pressed her mouth again his, briefly, a chaste peck. He growled at that, hooking two fingers through the arm of her nightdress, tugging her against him, kissing her deeply. She could feel the confusion in him; as he didn't understand why she was angry in the first place, he didn't understand where her anger had gone. It wasn't gone, she acknowledged to herself, just--altered, merged into a terrible sadness that the Saiyan purges were something she couldn't simply stop. It won't always be that way...

She stopped thinking about things she couldn't alter, about the same time Vegeta put aside his confusion.

The first night after Trunks' camp adventure, Mom surprised him by going into Papa's room rather than her own when it was time to go to bed. Trunks wondered if she were so tired that she just forgot she didn't sleep in there anymore, but when she did the same thing the next night he didn't know what to think and finally decided just to keep quiet. Then Papa finally came home. He came into Trunks' room first, but Trunks pretended to be asleep and after touching his son's hair and saying, dryly, "We'll talk in the morning, brat, so you'd better rest up now," Papa left and also went into his room, the same room Mom was in. Trunks lay rigid in bed, straining his ears and waiting for one or the other to storm out, but so far neither of them had. It had been a while, long enough for the Heir to feel a touch hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, it would start being their room again.

Knowing there would be lots of extra schoolwork if he were caught prowling the Royal suite after his bedtime (and, with Papa back, extra ki drills, too), Trunks skulked next to walks and around corners until he got to his mother's communication station. He tried to contact the Earth ship, but it was as if the signal went nowhere. They were supposed to get to Earth soon; maybe they were there already? Trunks tapped in a few commands and contemplated the other options available to him thoughtfully. Then, carefully, he picked out a code that had only been recently added.

At first he wasn't sure he had gotten through, but although the screen didn't come on he did hear voices speaking Common with accents similar to his Mom's and Gohan's. "Chi-chi, what are you doing out here? Should you be up?"

"Well, it's beeping and it's never done that before. Is it going to blow up? I knew we shouldn't have agreed to let Dr. Briefs put one of his contraptions in here!" There was a very sharp metallic 'clang' that made Trunks jump.

"Should you be hitting something that might blow up?" asked the first voice, sounding more interested than alarmed.

"Let me see," said a more distant voice, one that made Trunks' heart pump faster. There was a faint pit-pat of approaching footsteps, then the voice sounded very close. "It's just turned itself on, that's all."

"Oh, I knew having this thing in here was a bad idea--!"

"Mom, it's just like a phone, okay? Someone's calling."

"Oh, just what we need; a really big phone that takes up most of the living room."

"But Dr. Briefs fixed it so we can get satellite channels, too," added the first voice, eagerly. "They have this really neat all martial arts network--!"

"Don't even think about it! Our son has months of homework to catch up on before he can waste time watching television!"

"Mom," grumbled the closest voice, but then a note of excitement crept in. "I know who it is! Can I hold him for a minute, Mom, pleasepleaseplease? I want to show him off!"

There was a lot of mumbling, instructions that Trunks' didn't understand at all, then the first voice suddenly mentioned that he had started lunch but that he forgot to check on it and the second, sounding beyond horrified, faded away in a rush amidst screeches that threatened dire harm should anything happen to the kitchen. Trunks' cocked his head, listening carefully, but the remaining noises were very strange ones that he couldn't identify. "Hello?" he finally ventured.

"Hang on a sec," came from the loudspeakers. "Okay -- this must be it." The monitor wavered on. Gohan, his hair standing out at odd angles, grinned at him happily. "Trunks! Hi!" He hitched something up in his arms; a sack or a bundle of clothes or something. Trunks couldn't quite figure it out.

Gohan's cheeks were really red. "Your mom pinched you when you got back, huh?" Trunks observed, maliciously. "And she mussed your hair, too."

"It's a Mom thing," grumbled the older boy. What he was holding was squirming a lot. Gohan locked it against the side of his body and turned sideways, trying to maximize the amount of screen available to the bundle. "Look at this! Cool, huh?"

"What is it?"

"It's my new baby brother, Goten. Mom had him three days ago. Today's the first day they both got to come home. Mom says that since it's the first day she's seen me since I've been back, it's like a second birthday for me, too."

Trying to work that out made Trunks' eyes cross. Maybe it was one of those things that you couldn't understand until you were six or so. He settled for critically examining the thing Gohan was clutching. "It's drooling," he pointed out.

"Babies do that. They do lots of other things that hopefully he won't demonstrate right now. I may look a bit like Mom, but he's all Dad, don't you think?"

Trunks studied the tiny, wrinkled face with its wreath of thick spikes. "It looks like Squad Commander Bardock."

"Close enough," agreed Gohan, laughing. "I tried to get Mom to let me call Mr. Bardock and show him, but she's gone into ultra-defensive mode. She says no-way, no-how do any of Dad's 'people' get any where near Goten until he graduates from college."

"I'm one of your dad's people," said Trunks, although he wasn't quite sure and the words were flavored with doubt.

Gohan freed up one hand to wave it dismissively, then clutched compulsively at the bundle when it slipped slightly and looked nervously over his shoulder. "Naw, you don't count. She means warriors, like Mr. Bardock and Uncle Radditz."

"Well, I didn't kill people the other day, but I think I'm a warrior," Trunks told him. "I'm going to be in charge one of these days, so I'd better be one or there's going to be trouble."

"I hope you don't kill people most days," commented Gohan, a bit puzzled.

Trunks explained, "Nappa took me someplace where I was supposed to train by killing people."

"The camps?" At Trunks' nod, the other boy shuddered. "Bad things happen there."

"No kidding," grumbled Trunks. "I never did get to go hunting. Anyway, it's not very good training. At least the robots Mom makes fight back. I told the Commander it was boring and I wouldn't do it. Commander Nappa got real pushy with me, though, so I had to beat him up instead."

"Good for you! I'm very proud of you."

"So is Mom. Don't be too happy about it." The little boy dropped his eyes for a minute, then raised them again. Gohan was startled at the cool, grim expression. "They're dead now, all of them. That's the part that Mom doesn't get. Just because she doesn't see it or think about it or do it herself, doesn't mean it's not happening. I can change some stuff, but I can't change my Papa's people. Not all at once, anyway. And even with the stuff I think I can change, Vejiitasei will never be like Earth."

Gohan put his head to one side, his heavy brows drawn down, his gaze serious. "You look...different. Not like your Mom's messed with your hair or something, just ... different."

"I know stuff I didn't know before. About myself, I mean."

The other boy grinned a bit wryly as he understood what Trunks was trying to say. "Yeah, I know what you mean. It's kinda scary when it happens to you, isn't it?"

"No. I was scared before it happened. Then suddenly I knew what to do and I wasn't scared anymore. This time, I didn't have to kill anybody, but," the Heir said frankly, "I think I may have to, sometimes. The other day--it just didn't make any sense to do it."

After a long pause, "I'm sorry to hear that," Gohan said.

"I knew you would be. But I thought you should know, anyway." Trunks looked at the bundle again. "That thing doesn't seem like it would be a lot of fun."

"You weren't when you were this size."

"I was that size when you first saw me?" Trunks was appalled.

"Yep. And you cried. You cried a lot. You cried a lot more than Goten does."

"Did not!" gasped Trunks in horror.

"Did, too. Don't worry about it. You're lots more fun now, aren't you?"

"Than a bundle of drool? I hope so." Trunks' scrutiny of the bundle turned calculating. "How long before it gets 'fun'?"

"Oh, I don't know. Three years, maybe? That's how long before you got fun. Dad thinks babies are lots of fun all the time, though."

"Hmmm. Maybe I can get one of those here? Mom has me playing with that Zenza brat."

"You have to play with a girl?" Gohan struggled with smothering his laughter, not very successfully. Trunks glared at him, wondering why he wanted to call this jerk in the first place. "Sorry, sorry; I guess it's not like you have a lot of choice over there. If you want a baby brother, you have to talk to your folks about it. I gotta warn you, though; they might bring home a baby sister instead."

Trunks made a face. "I'll tell them not to."

"Grown-ups don't follow directions real well," Gohan reminded him. "I'm pretty lucky I got what I asked for."

Trunks considered the very real possibility that he might have to put up with two girls, not just one. "Maybe I'll wait a while and see how yours turns out," he finally decided. "I'm not supposed to be up now; it just seemed like a good time to call. I better go before I get caught."

"Okay," said Gohan. "You'll have to call back lots of times if you want to keep track of Goten, though. Babies grow up fast."

Trunks nodded, saying goodbye to Gohan and, after a bit of a hesitation, also saying goodbye to the bundle. Goten drooled at him blissfully.

The smile faded from Gohan's lips as he stared at the blank screen in front of him. The conversation with Trunks left the older boy struggling with an illogical sense of failure. He stared down into his brother's oblivious face, considering his emotions. "He's not like me," he finally said to Goten. "He is a hybrid, as much Saiyan as human. He'll never see auras," he added wistfully before shaking himself out of his melancholy. "What am I worried about? There's lots of time yet, and he's going to be calling all the time." Taking a corner of the blanket, he wiped his brother's mouth. "And I've got you to practice on now, don't I? Eh, I don't need to worry. It will all work out."

End of Part II

The Undead Past: Epilog

Birth of the Super-Saiyan, Part III: "Lunacy"

11/2002