Go-chan didn’t know when she began to scream. Someone was holding her in a strong, unbreakable embrace, lifting her off her feet and she kicked and flailed. Someone wrapped her shaking, half-naked, disoriented body in a warm, too-large shirt. She couldn’t clear her head, couldn’t see anything. She lashed out wildly, trying to escape the arms of whoever was holding her.

Gohan-nissan, she realized faintly.

She could hear the distant sound of her mother’s frantic, worried voice saying her name. Then she saw him, saw Gurasia, lying in a smoking crater where the center of the showroom had been a moment before. Bright purple blood was trickling from his nose. And Toussan was crouched over him, one hand around his throat.

"NO!!!" She wailed. She slashed at her brother with sharp, suddenly claw-like nails, trying desperately to free herself. "Don’t hurt him!! Please please don’t hurt him, Toussan!!!"

Toussan turned back to see her thrashing in Gohan’s arms. She had never seen her father’s face so drawn and horrible. She finally saw that they were all here. Her brothers, her mother, her cousins, Vegita-san and Bulma-san and all their children. Everyone.

Toussan stared at her another interminable moment, and then very slowly let Gurasia go. He stepped back and the Tsiru-jin rose to his feet. And Go-chan suddenly felt, suddenly sensed, the thrill of unexpected fear that swept through Gurasia. He should not have been able to land a blow like that! I am far, far stronger than he. And yet, he did it, nevertheless…

She felt him push the thought aside. And when the Lord of Tsiru-sei raised his head to return her father’s glare, his face was cold and emotionless.

"Tell me you didn’t do it, Gurasia," her father said softly.

Gurasia was silent, staring her father down, as though trying to read his thoughts. Then he tilted his head back, his bloody nose in the air, his red lips forming a hard, unrepentant line. "I cannot lie to you, Son Gokou."

"What has he done, Kakarott?" Vegita asked harshly.

The silence that followed was so loud it hurt Go-chan’s ears.

"He used my wish," Toussan said. "The old wish I made to give all those married or bonded to Saiyans a naturally equivalent lifespan. That’s how he managed to mature so quickly. He deliberately moonbound himself to a Saiyan. To Go-chan."

There were no gasps, no ‘Oh gods!’, no angry growls. Only stony, horrified silence.

Moonbound. Moonbound to the Lord of Tsiru-sei. The smallest part of her, some tiny untouched kernel of self that was not seeing reality through the distortion of the bond, that did not leap for joy at those words, at the mere sound of his name, was wailing in terror at the irretractable truth she heard in those words. Bonded, wed, mated, chained, to the Lord of the Tsiru-jin forever and ever and---

Everyone was still standing, quiet as mourners around a fresh grave, waiting to see what her father would do next. The next instant, Kassan flew across the room at Gurasia, screaming words and phrases Go-chan would never have believed her mother knew. Goten leapt forward and plucked her out of the air, restraining her gently as she sobbed against him. Toussan was there beside her, as well, and Go-chan could hear the indistinct sound of her father’s mental voice, speaking gently, soothing her mother through the threads of their bond. The only intelligible word Go-chan could make out was, "My baby…"

"Why her?" Trunks asked quietly. He was standing a few feet from where Go-chan still hung limply in Gohan’s arms, flanked on the other side by…by Trunks. He was…he was the other Trunks, she realized with faint surprise. His hair was long, like this timeline’s Trunks, but he wore it in a kind of high, loose Samurai ponytail. And he had no tail. "Why Go-chan?"

Gurasia has lowered his head, his face still cold and immobile. Slowly, he swept them all with a curled imperious, sneer, his features swathed again in that ugly mask of all-encompassing arrogance, before his gaze came to rest on her father again. "You told me to find a way, Son Gokou. Any way. You said the fate of the entire galaxy depended upon it. The dragonballs were all destroyed, inactive, or unavailable. The Healers of Inlu-sei said their medical processes might stunt my power. I took the only road open to me. Do not judge me when it was your counsel, your warning, that set my feet on this path."

"Judge?" Toussan said softly. His rage was leaking away. He could never hold onto anger for very long, no matter what the cause. It wasn’t in him. But Go-chan’s heart clenched, her eyes stinging, at the sorrow she saw in his face. The sorrow and the disappointment. "You’ve ruined my child’s life, Gurasia. Go-chan is tied to you for as long as she lives. How could you do it, Gurasia? To her of all people?"

A slow, rolling surge of hurt welled up inside her, hand in hand with such an aching sense of isolation and loneliness that Go-chan sobbed softly.

It took her moment a to realize the emotions were not hers. They were Gurasia’s. Why her? Because of all your race, Son Gokou---of all races and all peoples everywhere, you and the girl have been the only two who did not loathe and fear me in some way.

Somehow, inexplicably, it seemed her father had heard that thought as well, because his face softened infinitesimally.

There came a low cry from Bulma-san, and a burst of red heat, the exploding star of Vegita-san’s full power surging upward. "When did you do it, you unborn perversion of nature?!" His voice, as he strode slowly toward the Tsiru-jin like a wall of living power, was so thick with rage it was unrecognizable. "On Shikaji? You moonbound yourself to an infant!? Did you ‘consummate’ the bond at the same time, you filthy Tsiru-jin abomination?!"

Gurasia’s face froze for a fraction of a second with shock at that accusation as he watched the Saiyan Prince advance on him. Then he smiled, slowly, cruelly, each syllable dripping with spite. "I only tripped the mental and empathic facet of the bond. I fear I do not share my father’s taste for fruit that has not yet ripened. It leaves the submissive partner forever damaged." His smiled widened. "As well you know."

Vegita-san launched himself at Gurasia with a howl of rage. And it was over in an instant. One blow. Gurasia struck him once, hard in the chest, so quickly Go-chan never saw the blow. Vegita-san staggered back several steps, coughing blood, his face white. Then he collapsed backwards into Bulma-san’s arms. Bulma-san was crying out and cursing with fear, while her children gathered around their parents. Trunks---which Trunks she wasn’t sure---left in a white streak of speed to fetch a medic.

The others were closing in on Gurasia, like wolves ringing a grizzly bear.

"Raise you hands to me at her peril, sons of Vegita-sei," Gurasia told them coldly. "All of you know well the power of the moonbond. If you somehow manage to tear my flesh, she will bleed as well!" He raked them all with a red, hateful gaze. Then his eyes turned to her father once again.

The crushing sadness was gone. The hurt that, when push came to shove, even Son Gokou saw him as a monster, the monstrous son of a monstrous father---all that pain had been quickly, instinctively, transmuted to scorn, derision, contempt.

Gurasia extended one hand in her direction, his eyes still fixed on her father with bright, angry malice. "Come to me, little monkey."

Go-chan moaned softly at the power in his voice. She tried to fight it. She couldn’t. It swallowed her will and sense of self until there was nothing left but the mindless need to be near him, to please him, to give him everything---mind, heart, body and soul. She burst free of her brother’s arms and ran to him, sobbing. And into the unbreachable wall of Gohan. He had circled and cut her off faster than her vision could track the movement.

"Stay the hell away from my sister," Gohan growled.

Go-chan winced at the crackling sense of power, barely contained. It lay coiled inside her brother, ready to be released in an instant. This close to him, with him restraining her from flying mindlessly into Gurasia’s arms, it was so strong the mere proximity to so much raw power was painful. It was like holding a live wire.

"Such valiant, cliched words!" Gurasia’s words were mocking, but she could feel something in him like hesitation. Wariness. He wasn’t exactly afraid of Nissan, but…he had a healthy respect for Gohan’s strength. His red gaze returned to Toussan again, his face hardening. "Twenty years ago, you promised me a great gift in exchange for thwarted vengeance. Piccalo Daimo, Enma-sama and yourself swore to me. I have emerged from my last im-saktu as asturrr-aach. I am male. She---" He stabbed one black-nailed finger directly at Go-chan. "---is the only road that leads to the thing I desire most in all the galaxy. I will have it. And thus, I will have her. If you refuse me, you condemn her to madness and slow death now that her first heat is upon her. Ask Son Pan how long she would have lived had her marriage to Trunks been denied."

"Not long," Pan whispered from somewhere close by. Her voice hardened. "But Trunks would have died, too. He’s not holding all the cards, Jjiisan. He just wants us to think he is."

"We can’t even hurt him, much less kill him," Goten said thickly.

Somewhere behind this conversation, there was the sound of flight, of boots hitting the floor. Go-chan could hear the soothing voice of the nice Madrani doctor from the Medplex, Zoukin’s friend, and the soft whir of a

Med scanner. How badly was Gita’s father hurt?

"You worthless Tsiru-jin bastard," Radu-san was saying, his deep voice an angry rumble.

"Jisan," Skoy-san asked her father hesitantly. "Can’t we use the dragonballs to undo the moonbond?"

Gurasia shook his head. "Piccalo says it will not work." He narrowed his eyes and sneered down the bridge of his nose of Toussan. "You asked my father’s soul a question twenty years ago, Son Gokou. Today, I take great pleasure in hurling the same choice back in your face. Decide which you love more---your child or your hate for me."

No one moved, no one dared to breathe in the tense stillness that followed those words.

And then…

And then, her strong, sweet, good, perfect father lowered his head.

"After the war is over," he said. He silenced the words of protest from his friends and family with a raised hand. "If---if we can’t find a way around this…we’ll make arrangements then." The soft, muffled sound of her mother sobbing. Her father approached Gurasia slowly, stopped less than a meter from the young Lord of Tsiru-sei. He stood gazing up at the younger man’s haughty face, his own a portrait of quiet grief. "You’re wrong, though. I don’t hate you. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive you for this, Gurasia."

It didn’t show, but she felt Gurasia flinch internally at those words.

A low chime sounded. The sweet, treble notes were not loud, but everyone in the cold showroom jumped.

"The Council is beginning," Trunks said with quiet urgency. "Without us!"

Toussan turned back to the others, his face solemn and resolute. "Let’s take care of this now, everyone. And worry about tomorrow after we’ve made sure there’ll be a tomorrow." He turned his back on Gurasia and strode over to Go-chan, where Nissan still held her in a gentle, inescapable grip, where her mother held her hand, sobbing. She felt the rush of Gurasia’s ki as he left through the broken ceiling of the museum without another word.

Toussan lay one hand on the side of her face and kissed her forehead. Behind them, Vegita-san saying something in a choked whisper, batting away the gentle hands of the medic who was trying to sedate him.

"Kakarott…"

"We’ll figure something out, Go-chan," Toussan told her. "I promise! But until we do…we’re going to have to keep a close watch on you, okay?"

"Okay," she whispered.

"I can help with that," Bra-san had left her mother’s side. Bulma-san was losing patience with her husband’s stubbornness and had begun cursing fluently at Vegita-san. Bra moved toward Go-chan at though she was about to embrace her, but stopped short, laying one hand on each of her temples. "Relax, Go-chan." Everything went blurry for a moment, then her vision cleared and Bra was smiling at her.

Something was…different now.

She could still sense Gurasia, feel him moving through the Capital Library of Madran. He was telling Surita-san---she felt a warm rush of all the affection Gurasia held for the old man sweep through her---he was telling Surita-san that he should stay here and talk scholar-talk with the Madrani historians’ guild while the Council was in progress. But there was a…a filter in her mind, now, where his gateway to her thoughts and feelings had been.

"Filter is a good word to describe it," Bra said. Go-chan blinked at her in surprise. Had Bra always been able to read her thoughts? Everyone’s thoughts? "I put up a filter in your mind, Go-chan. It doesn’t dull the power of the bond, but it will prevent him from influencing you like he did today. He won’t be able to come into your mind and make you think or feel or do anything you don’t want to."

"Thanks," she said again. Her voice sounded like a little girl’s to her own ears, frightened and unsure.

"Kakarott!" Vegita-san said, his voice rising over Bulma-san’s angry threats of trank suppositories.

"Gohan," Toussan said soberly. "Take Go-chan and your mother to the Council. And don’t let your sister out of your sight. I’ll be right behind you in a few moments." He turned, grim-faced, and went to Vegita-san’s side.

"Come on, sweetie," Kassan said, wiping her face, trying to smile at her. "It’ll be all right. If your father says we’ll think of something, then we’ll think of something."

Gohan set her on her feet, but he kept one hand locked firmly around her wrist. Everyone was leaving, hurrying to the Guildmasters’ Hall.

She turned back and let her brother lead her away. Gurasia…

He had given her no choice. He had commandeered the course of her life before it even began. And…and Kami, she still loved him so much her chest ached now at the mere thought of him!

I’m not your damn pet! She sent back very clearly.

He reached out, touched the filter in her mind and hissed with fury as he recognized it for what it was. He was making the short flight to the Guildmasters’ Hall without Surita, without one ally at his side, or one retainer at his back. Alone, he was thinking. As ever.

No, she thought, her heart constricting, in spite of her anger at what he had done to her, what he had forced on her, all he had done and said in the Museum to deliberately hurt her father. You’re not alone. I’m here.

His vicious anger towards her family, his prideful, malicious spite toward all of them, did not falter the tiniest fraction. But he smiled inside at her words, tentatively, like the sunshine dawning across a lifeless frozen tundra.

Not alone, his voice sighed.

Bulma wished for the hundredth time in the last twenty minutes that she had some form of super strength or ki control. "If you don’t lie down and let the doctor help you, Vegita, so help me---"

"No!" Vegita rasped. "I must talk to Kak---" He choked again, struggling for breath.

"You need help now, Vegita-san," the medic told him calmly, reasonably. "The blow you sustained had broken your breastbone and crushed half your ribcage into your lungs, and now they are filling up with blood."

On the periphery of her senses, Bulma had heard the council bell a moment ago. Son-kun had finished chewing out Gurasia. Gohan and Chi-Chi were busy bundling little Go-chan away from the sick, twisted, Tsiru-jin monster.

"Vegita," Son-kun knelt down beside them. "You need to let the doctor help you. If you die now, you won’t get a chance for a rematch with him."

"Do not patronize me, Kakarott," Vegita hissed painfully. "…cannot give your child to that---that---"

"I don’t intend to," Son-kun said firmly. But his eyes were full of a terrible kind of doubt. He had found a road around every obstacle or problem in his life until today, but Bulma saw now, with a chill of helpless fear, that he could not see any solution for this one. At least not yet.

Vegita shifted in her arms. "It would be better to see her dead than---"

"Don’t ever say that again, Vegita," Son-kun said very softly. It wasn’t a request; it was a quiet, cold warning.

Vegita stilled and eyed him, then shook his head angrily. "There are many things worse than death, Kakarott. Being the plaything of a Tsiru-jin is one of them. You do not understand! They---everything in their nature is twisted and perverse. Pain and pleasure are the same thing to them. They---they---"

Bulma sighed softly as Vegita tensed in surprise, then collapsed unconscious. She felt her eyes burning as she reached down and wiped the faint glitter of tears from her husband’s face. She glanced up at Goten, who had waited for Vegita to focus all his attention on Son-kun, then pressed the trank hypo against his neck. "Thank you," she said. Thank you for stopping him from telling the details I think he was about to force himself to tell. Seeing little Go-chan half-naked, half conscious, in the arms of that---that young monster had opened up wounds inside him that had never truly healed, even after a lifetime. Vegita was out cold, but still---she touched his face gently. He was still crying softly, even unconscious, in little gasping hitches of breath, like a terrified, wounded child trying to muffle the sounds of his sobs.

"He’s not just raving, Toussan," Goten said bleakly. "The Tsiru-jin have no clear neurological barriers between pleasure and pain. They---they basically enjoy any intense physical sensation."

"Moonbonding between Saiyans is very violent," Bra-chan murmured. "With no clear delineation between pleasure and pain in the heat of the moment. But it’s not unpleasant." She lay on gentle hand on her husband’s arm. "He’s not what I’d consider good brother-in-law material, but he’s not mad and he’s not a sadist, Goten-kun. He’s not his father."

Goten seemed to calm marginally from nothing more than his wife’s touch. "So, he won’t torture her," he growled. "At least not physically. I trust your sight, Bra-chan. But Tousan, the Tsiru-jin have a dominant/submissive social hierarchy. Politically, culturally, socially…and sexually. The dominant makes a slave, a pet, out of the weaker partner. The dominant is always determined by strength. And Gurasia is far, far stronger than Go-chan, Toussan."

Son-kun’s face had gone a shade whiter. "Goten-kun. I can’t hear this right now."

"You have to, Toussan," Goten said stonily. "As bad as you think Go-chan’s situation is, you still don’t understand. He’s also got all that Unlu-jin mental discipline on his side. He should have been just as helpless to the power of the bond and she is, as anyone would be. But he’s somehow managed to use his Inlu-jin training to stay in control of himself, even when he had her in his arms. Did you hear what he was telling her when we all burst in on them. ‘First you must learn to obey.’" Goten spat, quivering with barely suppressed rage. "He’ll use all his telepathic strength to just…just take her over. Swallow her whole personality inside his until she has no will of her own left. Until there’s nothing left of her at all!"

"I took care of that," Bra-chan said. "I set up a block in her mind so he can’t come in and take over whenever he feels insecure or afraid of his feelings for her. And you’re wrong about him being in control of himself. He’s terrified by how much power she has over him. "

"I was pretty sure that was what was behind that." Son-kun seemed to relax minutely. "Goten-kun," he lay a hand on his son’s shoulder, seeming to calm the crackle and spark of the younger man’s rage with his touch alone. "It’s a bad situation. But…not as bad as you think. We’ll work something out. Trust me."

"Kassan," Trunks knelt down beside her, gazing down at his father’s pale, still face. "I need to leave."

"Go, honey," she said. "They can’t begin the Council without you and we can’t afford to let them try."

He kissed her and left hurriedly.

"He’s going to be fine, Mistress," the Madrani doctor said gently. "He’ll need a few hours in a regen tank and I’ll need to drain the fluid from his lungs first."

Half an hour later, she stood in the post-op regen ward of Medplex, staring through the clear plating of the tank at Vegita’s sleeping face. Every so often, he twitched and lashed minutely, caught in the clutches of dark troubled dreams, even this deep in the tanks’ regenerative sleep. She closed her eyes, cursing the shade of Frieza’s damned soul to eternal torment for the millionth time.

"The Tsiru-jin put him down in one blow," Trunks murmured at her side.

"Yeah," she said softly. Gods, Vegita would be in a state when he woke. She blinked once, staring up at the older Trunks who had just laid a gentle hand on her arm. "Trunks-kun!" She began laughing a little too loudly, with shaky delight. "I’m so sorry! I didn’t even notice you were here. Or that you weren’t the---the other you." She stopped smiling, seeing something in his face as he stood gazing at her that made her heart ache. And she suddenly knew why he had avoided visiting Capsule Corp personally since---since his arrival on Maiyosh Prime. It had been too painful, too soon after his true mother’s death, to look at her and not break down. She put her arms around him and he stiffened minutely, slowly relaxing into her embrace, his arms tightening.

"Kassan," he whispered.

"I’m so sorry, honey," she said again just as softly. She drew back, marking the sleepless shadows under the quiet, wrenching grief in those clear blue eyes her future self had bequeathed him. He didn’t respond with words, but something in him seemed to brighten minutely, as though the mere sight of her had healed him in some way.

"…the encapsulation shouldn’t hurt the lattice network," Gita was saying in a soft conspiratorial whisper. He was seated in one of the waiting room chairs behind them, shoulder to shoulder with the younger boy beside him as they both peered intently at the screen pad he was holding. Bulma felt a faint spark of pain flare behind her eyes as she gazed as Gita’s companion. Her other son from a parallel timeline. She was going to need a timeline tracer to keep track of all her kids soon.

"But the quantum breach components might react badly," the red-skinned boy said urgently. "Look at the compression stress test. The numbers say encapsulating it might have a 37% chance of destabilizing the---"

"’Destabilizing’ and ‘quantum breach’ are not two phrases I like to hear in the same sentence, boys," she said, watching the guilty looks on both boys’ faces narrowly. Her gaze faltered as she stared into the Maiyosh-jin boy’s wide blue eyes. "Honey…I don’t even know your name yet."

The boy smiled tentatively when she met his eyes with a kind smile, when she didn’t flinch away from the mere sight of his face as she had in the hanger bay at Capsule Corp. "Johns Briefs. Johny."

Johns. Grandpa Briefs’ name. She smiled again and nodded, feeling Trunks’ and Bra’s curiosity like a tangible thing as they regarded the blue-eyed Maiyosh-jin boy. Goten was frowning slightly, but seemed no less interested. "Johny," she repeated. "This is Trunks---the older Trunks who came back in time to warn us about the androids. This is my daughter Bra and her husband Son Goten. Kids….this is my son, Johny Briefs. He just…arrived here yesterday morning from another timeline where everyone except myself and Gita died on Shikaji."

"Damn," Goten said quietly.

Bra peered down at the boy, her pretty face unreadable for a moment. Then she smiled. "He’s cute!"

Johny glanced over at Gita, unsure of how to take this.

"You got off lucky," Gita told him. "She used to pinch my cheeks and call my ‘sweet blossom’."

"Heh," the younger boy laughed nervously.

"It’s strange to think of you married to anyone other that Vegita-san," Goten remarked, frowning slightly.

"Actually," Gita said with a strange expression. "She might have married several other people. It she’d never met Poppa, I mean."

"Gita," Bulma said slowly, feeling that familiar twinge of unease she always felt when she found her youngest son tinkering with a new invention. "Why don’t you tell me about this new invention of yours. Am I wrong in thinking you and Johny were just trying to decide whether encapsulating it would create some kind of temporal breach?"

Both boys gave her equally apprehensive stares. "Um," said Gita eloquently. "We were actually thinking it would damage the quantum breach gate."

"You should show her," Johny stage-whispered. "All the other Okassans were really proud of you."

"A ‘temporal breach gate’?" She said with deceptive calm. She hoped little puffs of steam weren’t coming out of her ears yet. "You built a temporal breach gate?!" She was sure, absolutely, positively sure, that Gita had had less that five minutes of fiddling with the plans for Mirai Bulma’s timegate before she had taken them away from him. "Gita, you---" She stopped, appalled, as Johny’s last words finally sank in. "Johny, did you say, ‘All the other Kassans’?"

"I’ll show it to you!" Gita said desperately. "But please, please don’t take it away from me or disassemble it, Momma! I was waiting until today to show it to everyone. When we’d all be together. Momma, we’ve built so many amazing things working together. Engines and defensive shields that will help us against the bugs!"

"We?" She said. Kami, why did she feel like she was about to get another massive shock to her equilibrium, on a day full of massive shocks? "We who?"

Goten’s comm chirped before Gita could answer.

"Goten," Radu’s voice. "We need Bulma-san here in the Council Hall. The Ansousei-jin faction is on the point of disrupting everything. And they’ve produced one hell of a ringer as their prime Speaker."

"I guess he means I need to be there to remind everyone that Hiru calling the Saiyans a pack of murderers is the pot calling the kettle," she murmured.

Hiru will try and force me into defending my husband, knowing I’ve seen the tape he gave me. And she would stand there, facing down his personal victims, trying to put forth some defense against indefensible acts that could never never never be undone, no matter how much Vegita had changed...

It was turning out to be a hell of a day, and it wasn’t even half past noon yet. She could feel a tension headache building behind her eyes. She had a feeling it was going to be a record breaker.

She turned back to the regen tank. "Vegita…" She couldn’t leave him.

"He’ll be utterly insensible for at least another 2 hours," the Madrani surgeon, the kind-eyed, middle-aged man who had come to the museum told her, as he adjusted the valve settings on the tank minutely. "If you are needed in the Guildmasters’ Hall, go. He’s in no danger and watching him float there inside the tank will not be a help to him or your peace of mind." He checked his chronometer. "He should begin to rouse a bit in another hour and a half if you want to return by then."

"I’ll stay and stand watch, Bulma-san," Goten told her. He gave the doctor a look. "She more concerned that someone will hurt him while he’s helpless like this."

"Oh my," the Madrani said.

"I’m glad you’re the one taking care of him, Doctor," Gita said.

The gold-skinned man smiled in mild confusion. "Have we met, young man?"

Bulma watched her son draw up short, then smile sheepishly. "Um…sort of."

Suspiciouser and suspiciouser, the misquote sang through her head, setting off every maternal alarm in her arsenal. What kind of ‘breach gate’ had her youngest son built? Her gaze fell on Johny, standing adoringly at his brother’s shoulder. Second youngest son, she amended silently. Somehow, in the space of two short hours, the two boys had met and become fast friends. She winced at the thought of what Vegita’s reaction to this would be.

"Well, I’m not up to Goten-san’s speed," the Madrani doctor was saying. "But I assure you, I won’t allow a patient under my care to be assaulted, Bulma-sama. Not while I’m still standing."

"Bulma," she corrected with a warm smile. "Just Bulma. No one who has just saved my husband’s life should address me formally, Doctor…"

She hadn’t even thought to ask his name.

He smiled, and the expression seemed to take years off his face. "Scopa. My name is Scopa."

"I’m glad to meet you, Scopa," she said.

Somehow, for some inexplicable reason, she had the feeling they were going to be great friends.

The Guildmasters’ Hall was designed like a theater in the round. The main floor was ringed by rising rows of stadium seats, where those in attendance could watch from anonymous safety. To speak, one must descend the stadium stairway and take the floor. That was really all Bulma knew of the place. Heretofore, it had only ever been used for domestic Madrani legislature among the different Guildhalls of Kerrafta. Pan-chan had told her it looked for all the world like a replica of Chikyuu’s royal parliament. She had pictured some similar in design to the Chamber of Shikaji---a place she had no desire to visit again as long as she lived.

The Guildmaster’s Hall was not some giant unwieldy structure, literally miles across. In fact, Radu had told her its maximum occupancy was a little less that ten thousand. Today, it was housing considerably more than that, though the entirety of the civilized galaxy was tuning in via hyperlight news feed.

They did an end run around the interstellar press, the on-lookers, protesters and petitioners circling Hall in a standing wave of sentient bodies, simply flying in over all their heads. Trunks carried her as they whipped through an open port she’d left in the security blast shield she’d given Radu weeks ago, moving too fast for most eyes to follow.

Bulma took a deep breath as Trunks set her on her feet. It was impossible for her to breathe flying as that kind of speed. Behind her, Johny was doing the same. Gita had taken his hand and tugged him along behind him as they flew.

"You can fly, can’t you?" Gita was whispering.

"Uh-huh. But not as fast as you."

They had set down on the main floor, just behind Trunks’ seat at the high, round table he had erected dead center of the Speakers’ Floor. The first order of business today was to address all independent representatives of unaffiliated worlds who had doubts about the threat of the coming invasion. Which meant that her son and Gurasia were sitting at table with virtually every political enemy they had. Everyone who had already thrown in their lot with the Saiyan Empire was sitting in the ringed tiered seats above them.

There was a soft rumble of murmuring voices, the sudden weight of hundreds of eyes focused on her. To the on-lookers above them as well as the people on the Speaker’s Floor around them, it must have seemed as though she and her children had just appeared out of thin air.

The younger Trunks’ attention was focused so intently on the man across the high table he did not even glance back in acknowledgement of her arrival. On the far side of the Floor she saw Son-kun and his family looking on tensely. All around the high table, she saw, and scattered throughout those who waited their turn to debate the Saiyan no Ouji’s request for their worlds’ support, she picked out the faces of Radu, Skoy, Zoukin and their families as well. All the Saiyans were not here today. Routab and his family were on Yadrat-sei. Cukum was on Doujib. And so on. Trunks said it would have been a bad idea to put all the galaxy’s living Saiyans in one convenient place for mass assassination again. So, today was family---hers and Son-kun’s.

"We are not here to settle any issues of reparation or guilt today," Trunks was telling Hiru coldly. She glanced down as her son’s hands, clenched so tightly around the arms of his chair his knuckles stood out bloodlessly. Though his face was cold and controlled, it was taking every ounce of will Trunks possessed to sit and talk civilly with the man who had murdered his mother. Which, of course, had been Hiru’s plan all along. He had probably been half hoping Trunks would leap across the table as him and snap his neck in full view of the entire fucking galaxy.

Trunks could not kill him. He couldn’t even call him to accounts for her death under proper legal channels, because the instant he did, Hiru and the Ansousei-jin delegation would begin to scream that the Saiyan no Ouji must arrest the murderer in his own family before he laid one finger on Hiru.

"So, you say," Hiru of Ansousei murmured. "All I see is that you and the Tsiru-jin have done a remarkably thorough job of divvying up the entire galaxy between your respective empires."

Bulma glanced around at the faces of the delegates and heads of state. Gurasia was sitting on the far side of the high table from Trunks, frowning slightly, saying nothing for the moment. She took and deep breath and stepped forward, laying one hand on Trunks’ shoulder.

"The threat is real," she said in a carrying voice. "Today, you are here speaking for the Ansousei-jin Transpo union and the freighters’ guild, Hiru-san. But no one here has forgotten that you stood in the Maiyosh Seat on Shikaji when Burka released the Arrak-jin on the Saiyans---and on the entire crowd in the Chamber. Many of the delegates here today were personally torn limb from limb by the Arrak-jin. You stood in the Seat and smiled when Maiyosh turned to bugs loose and didn’t lift a finger afterwards to save a single person!" Her voice was like chipped ice. "You were too interested in seeing my children butchered by the Arrak-jin. You were too eager to see me raped and torn to pieces by that psychotic serial killer Jeiyce of Maiyosh, or failing that, too hell bent on personally putting a blaster bolt through my heart. All the people who died that day were just speed bumps in that way of your revenge!"

Dead silence. Followed by angry murmurs of agreement. And the murmurs grew quickly to a low roar. She could feel the angry shifting behind her, the sound of both Trunks reacting to the statement about Jeiyce’s twisted obsession. Something no one other than Vegita, Son-kun and Bulma herself had known until today.

Hiru was gazing around at the crowd, his face stunned, his eyes full of sick betrayal. He understood why the crowd had turned against him, but he still had the nerve to feel that he was the good guy here. He had helped Burka serve many of these people up to the bugs like an after dinner mint, but he had still wanted them to care about how he had been so brutally victimized by Vegita. Now, they never would.

Flashes of images from the Ansousei-jin newsfeed chip spun through Bulma’s mind like dancing demons, imprinting themselves there like shadows of incinerated bomb victims burned against a wall. She felt sick.

They should care. They should all care about Hiru’s family, his world, his people. It didn’t matter that the man himself had become what he beheld in his quest for revenge. She had done nothing more than publicly testify to what many people had suspected for years, but never known for sure. And she felt as though she had played some dirty, under-handed trick by turning the tide of public opinion with nothing more than the truth. That she had robbed him of his…his…

His justice.

Hiru robbed himself of justice, Momma, Bra’s voice said softly in her mind. If he’d kept his hands free of innocent blood, we would have had no defense against him here today.

"Hiru-san," a high, treble voice, Bulma’s friend Teslia of Arlia, spoke up.

"Save this suit for another day. There is too much at stake. No one can say with any surety that there is no threat, my friend. Even if you do not believe they will arrive as the Saiyans say they will, we cannot play a game of chance with the lives of all peoples everywhere." Hiru began to respond angrily, but something in Teslia’s great multi-hued eyes silenced him. "I have lost as much to Saiyan hands as you, Hiru," the insectoid said gently.

"Yes," Hiru said hoarsely. Then he cut his eyes to Bulma, and his face twisted with spite. "You have lost as much as I. The same Saiyan beast destroyed both our worlds. That makes us brothers."

Teslia was looking at her in consternation, as she reached out one hand with slow, deliberate steadiness, and gripped the back of Trunks’ chair.

One last bullet in the Ansousei-jin’s armory of ugly, hateful truths. One more terrible thing she had not known, not even suspected, though she had always known that the insectoid’s world had been burned by Saiyan hands. And looking back on the odd, tense, unspoken understanding she had sensed but never understood between Teslia and Vegita whenever the two men had met in passing on Madran, she knew they had both kept this from her deliberately. Because nothing good would have come from telling her this. It would have served no purpose at all other than to cause her pain. She felt as though Hiru had just shot her through the heart again.

Teslia had turned back to Hiru, shaking his head sadly. Even now, he wasn’t angry at the Ansousei-jin. His huge jeweled eyes held only pity. "I do not say such things lightly," he went on, raising his voice to carry throughout the entire assembly. "There is an old Chikyuu-jin proverb I recall from a book a dear friend gave me several years past." His head tilted back toward Bulma and she knew that if he had been physically capable of such an act he would have winked. As it was, he only smiled sweetly at her. "It is the words of a Chikyuu sage speaking to contentious factions in the midst of some ancient council of war. The proverb runs thus: ‘We must all hang together…or we shall most assuredly hang separately.’"

A low nervous chuckle ran through the Hall.

"Old friend," Teslia said gently, laying one hand on Hiru’s shoulder. "You do not see this threat as real because salvation at the hands of a Saiyan is too horrible for you to contemplate. But the lives of your people are worth more than personal vengeance, or even true justice."

Hiru met the Arlian’s warm, blameless crystalline gaze for the space of an entire minute before dropping his own eyes. Then he spoke as though the words were torn from him. "The Transpo Guild will at least listen to your proof, Trunks-Ouji."

Trunks nodded soberly, recognizing Hiru’s curt statement for what it was. A temporary truce. He stood slowly, surveying the crowd around and above them, then spoke in an even voice that somehow reached every ear in the Hall. "I want no outbursts when the prisoner is brought out. Two months ago, he agreed to give us the location of a secret Maiyosh House R&D base on a remote world where he claims there are still living Arrak-jin. In return for this information, he asked to come to this Council to name his successor.

When he gives us the star coordinates, Son Gokou will use a Yardratsei-jin technique of teleportation to transport a probe servo-bot with a hyper light uplink to this Hall."

No one cried out or cursed when Radu’s two sons escorted the slim, unimposing Maiyosh-jin man to a seat at the high table, but the hostility, the weight of silent, flat hatred that swelled inside the Guildmasters’ Hall, was oppressive. Burka of Maiyosh, sat down awkwardly, his hands bound before him in strombite energy cuffs. He seemed totally relaxed, completely unconcerned by the thick pall of tangible hate in the Hall---all of which was directed at him.

"I’ve been told," Burka said mildly. "That I have supplanted Frieza as the galaxy’s most hated being in the interstellar press’ annual poll for the last fifteen consecutive years."

"No one is here for the pleasure of your company, Burka," Old Corsaris rumbled from his seat near Trunks’ right hand. "Give us the space co-ordinates of your bloody base or it’ll be the worse for you!"

"First I would like to speak with my ministers," Burka said amiably.

Horda and the other Maiyosh-jin lords had pressed to the fore of the crowd surrounding the high table on the Speaker’s Floor. "First he must name his successor!" Horda said angrily. "He has sat on the information that a clutch of bugs are alive and well somewhere in the depths of space for the last fifteen years. Another ten minutes will make no difference!"

"If he names his heir first," Pan-chan said sternly. "He’s achieved his goal in attending the Council. He had no further reason to honor his promise to tell us where Amshah is located."

"Only because you and your Lord husband have stubbornly refused to put him to the question!" Another of the Maiyosh-jin nobles spat contemptuously. "You’d have had the location of Amshah or anything else you wanted from him long ago if you weren’t so damned squeamish!"

"Let him speak the name of his successor, Saiyan no Ouji," Gurasia said pleasantly. He gave Burka a chilly not-smile. "If he refuses thereafter, I will dig into his memories and find the information we seek. Even if I have to turn his mind inside out to do so."

Unbelievably, Gurasia received some nasty laughter and scattered applause from this helpful suggestion.

"We do not use any form or torture on anyone," Trunks said coldly.

"That’s sad," Mirai Trunks said softly at her shoulder. Bulma glanced back at him curiously. "Burka of Maiyosh became a good man in my time. A hero. He and Horda-san gave their lives to get the survivors from Maiyosh Prime’s last stand through the portal."

"People used to make piñata replicas of his head in my time," Johny whispered.

Trunks grinned down at the boy, his hard solemn face lighting up too briefly.

"Name you successor," Trunks, the younger Trunks, said curtly.

"Well, now," Burka said slowly, his gaze wandering across the eager faces of his former corporate board. The ministers had all edged out of the crowd to stand before him, their faces half-hopeful, half wary of what he would say. "Horda," Burka said with a small smile. "You’re a good man, That alone dictates that you should not rule Maiyosh House in my stead. You’ll give away too much. Yennu, you’re not a good man, but unfortunately, you don’t have two spare brain cells to rub together. Tresha…you’re smart and unscrupulous. But you’re also a bloody arsehole without an ounce of charm to your name, and everyone who knows you wishes you were dead."

"Leave off insulting us and just say a name," Horda said tiredly.

"Could you not decide between yourselves who should rule?" Burka asked slyly. "Unable to reach a consensus, even after fifteen years, my lads?" He turned back to Trunks. "You see, my friends here are all kinsmen to the throne, but none of them is actually of royal blood. My nephew Jeiyce and myself were the last of Maiyosh House---unless, of course, Jeiyce begot any by-blows upon one of the few unfortunates who survived his attentions. Which I doubt." All his falsely smiling facade abruptly departed. "Without a royal to unite behind, they will continue to bicker among themselves for ascendancy, and thus, they will not be an effective asset to this war. I would ask that you appoint a successor to the late Yachma-san, a regent, and take a sample of my blood to clone a child of pure royal blood."

"That will not work either," Lord Horda snapped. "Our people burn you in effigy each year on the anniversary of Shikaji. You have destroyed us as a Trade House power and vilified us throughout the known galaxy. Maiyosh Prime and all its colonies would revolt if we gave them an infant Burka cloned from your blood as their Lord. I do not think they would even accept a your biological son produced from a sperm sample. The line of succession cannot go through you Burka."

"That bad, is it?" Burka didn’t seem surprised, only thoughtful. "Everyone hates a loser, I suppose. In that case…I’m open for suggestions, my friends. But the shipyards, factories, warriors and cumulative might of Maiyosh House must be unified under a single authority. If not, I assure you, these good men---my former ministers---will begin to civil war of succession that will vivisect Maiyosh House irreparably."

A tug on her sleeve, a gentle, almost hesitant touch. Bulma found herself staring down into eyes as blue and troubled as her own. She began shaking her head before the boy even uttered a word. "No! You don’t have to do this, honey."

"I do," he said steadily. "You know it’s the best solution. It’s only whether you want to do it. You---you’d have to help me." He bit his lip. "Ve-vegita-san won’t be happy, and it’s a much bigger responsibility than running Capsule Corp. And…it’ll be harder than it was in my time without Yamcha-jisan to help." He seemed to be blinking back tears. "No one told me…I didn’t know until just now that Jisan was dead. I had been looking forward to seeing him again…"

"Oh, Johny, I’m sorry." She wished he could let himself cry for Yamcha right now. She would have liked to cry with him. She smoothed back the unruly spikes of his white hair, brushing the fly-away bangs out of his eyes. It was a thoughtless gesture, something any mother would do to a child in her care. But he seemed to light up with such simple happiness at nothing more that her touch, she suddenly knew, just knew, that before---in that dead, hellish timeline of his birth---she had never been able to touch him so effortlessly. Perhaps she had never been capable of touching this sweet child with her eyes and Jeiyce of Maiyosh’s face at all.

He had changed it all. The magnitude of what he had done, of how much he had accomplished in re-writing the history of all their lives, was staggering. He deserved nothing but good things in his life. And the very least she could give him was his birthright.

She took his hand and stepped forward to the edge of the high table, pulling the boy gently with her. Burka, the Maiyosh-jin lords, the entire assembly of notables, fell silent, watching her. "My Lords of Maiyosh," she said formally. "Would you unite behind a child of royal blood who did not directly descend from Burka? Without question?"

Horda stared at the boy beside her for the count of five seconds, his eyes slowly widening as he scanned Johny’s face. When his gaze turned back to her, his face was full of horrified sympathy.

"My Lady," Horda said gently, with great respect. "The royal house of Maiyosh is the one thing that keeps our contentious ruling caste unified. Yamcha-sama did a grand job for an outsider, but…yes, we would all swear allegiance to such a child."

She squeezed Johny’s hand and turned back to him. "Johny," she said very softly. "Do you have a Maiyosh-jin name?" One your father gave you, she thought, stifling a shudder.

"Jehan," he whispered.

She only nodded and turned back to face them all, her back straight, her head high. "This is Jehan," she said loudly. "Son of Jeiyce of Maiyosh, and rightful heir to the Lordship of Maiyosh House."

"The hell he is!" Lord Tresha said hotly. "This lying Chikyuu-jin bitch cannot---"

"Be very careful how you refer to my mother," Trunks said from his seat at the high table, his voice deadly and soft.

Tresha eyed Trunks hatefully, almost added a belligerent retort, then closed his mouth.

"He is not Jeiyce’s son," Yennu said firmly.

"Yes, he is," Horda said bleakly.

One of the other Maiyosh-jin lords snorted angrily. "In any case, he is half-caste. Look at his eyes!"

"Come here, laddie," Burka said, frowning intently at the boy.

Bulma followed closely, her hand still in Johny’s, as the boy made his way around the high table, past the assembled might of powerful beings, without displaying an ounce of insecurity or fear. In fact, the instant she had announced his existence to the Hall, the moment she had spoken his Maiyosh-jin name, everything in the boy’s manner and bearing had changed. Before, he had nearly radiated hesitancy, timidness. His every word and gesture had been indicative of someone who had spent his entire young life apologizing for his very existence, trying to stay as invisible as possible. Now, he had raised his head high, straightened his back, and he returned the curious, hostile stares of the Maiyosh-jin lords with casual, confident grace.

His entire aura was one of effortless self-confidence. It’s a mask, she thought sadly. One, as an infant heir to a great empire, he must have learned to wear before he could walk.

Johny stopped before Burka’s chair, returning his grand-uncle’s piercing gaze without flinching. "You really are Jeiyce’s boy, aren’t you?" Burka said softly. And slowly, almost gingerly, the former Lord of Maiyosh smiled. An honest smile of real pleasure. "Look at the lad’s face, you fools!" He told the others.

"You are out of options, gentlemen," Bulma said sternly before anyone else could toss in his two cents’ worth. "The next Shareef-sama Trunks appoints will very likely be a Saiyan."

"We…" Tresha chewed nervously on his own tongue. "We would require a DNA test."

"Do it now," Burka said. "I’m sure you’ve brought a proprietary Maiyosh House scanner, Yennu. In hopes of getting a sample of skin or hair from me on the sly to clone your own puppet pretender."

Yennu didn’t bother to deny it. He withdrew a scanner from his frock coat and ran the device over Johny in one smooth sweep. There was a tense silence as the Lords of Maiyosh crowded around him, peering down at the results.

"The scanner contains the DNA specs of every son or daughter of the royal house born in the last century," Burka told her softly. "We don’t stand much on legitimacy, but we do demand that we are sure of the bloodline."

"The boy’s a perfect match," Horda said. He glared coldly at Burka. "Good enough. But there is still the matter who will be his regent til his majority."

"Oh," Burka said with a fond smile. "I imagine his mother is more than capable. Aren’t you, Bulma-san?"

You could have heard a feather strike the floor inside the great Hall. Bulma was glad, very glad, she could not see her own face as she spoke the next words. "Yes," she said shortly. "I suppose I am."

Oh Kami, what had she just done?! What had she just gotten herself into?! She didn’t have the courage to look back at Trunks or Pan-chan or any of the others and see their shocked bloodless faces. She didn’t want to see them all remembering how she had been Jeiyce’s captive, however briefly, on Shikaji, or see them judging the boy’s age and counting the years since that days. Or know that they were all remembering how she, Vegita and Gita had all but dropped off the face of the galaxy for a year afterwards. She had to explain Johny to everyone as soon as was humanly possible!

She jerked her mind back to the matter at hand. Work this problem, dammit, and deal with all the other stuff later!

"I, for my part," Lord Tresha was saying imperiously, " Will not swear service to a half-caste child who is both the son of the Chikyuu-jin consort of Vegita no Ouji and Jeiyce-ouji---who we all know to have been a certifiable madman!"

"Is Tresha-sama still sleeping with both Yennu-sama’s wife and daughter in this timeline?" Johny whispered, so softly only Bulma and Burka could hear.

Burka’s lips twitched. "Why, yes he is. Good boy! Tresha’s grandmother was also half-caste, you know. That why the matter is such a touchy subject for him." He met Bulma’s eyes over the boy’s head. "Let me smooth the way for my grand-nephew." He raised one cuffed hand awkwardly laying a stack of data chips in Johny’s hands. Then he pressed one last chip into her hand. "I meant to give these to whomever Trunks appointed as overseer today, even if it turned out to be a Saiyan."

"Why would you help us?" She asked coldly. She suddenly became aware of both Son-kun and Mirai Trunks standing close by, not trusting Burka this close to her, even shackled with a ki-damper and energy cuffs.

"Whatever my business scruples of lack thereof, Lady, I am a true Prince of Maiyosh. I wish to serve my people and see them prosper. The Maiyosh-jin will not survive this war as anything but cannon fodder if they aren’t unified under a ruler the Saiyans will both support and defend. And regardless of the lad having been born on the wrong side of the bed, you seem quite attached to him. If you are standing by him as regent when our crawly friends make their reappearance, the Saiyans will not let Maiyosh Prime fall." He grinned widely, and turned back to his erstwhile ministers, raising his voice. "Jehan, be a good lad and pass those chips out to your august head of state. They’re all marked by name." Burka was positively beaming as Johny obediently gave each Maiyosh-jin lord the chip with his name on it. "Each disc, my old friends, contains enough dirt to bury each of you---politically, socially and legally. Look them over , if you will. The master copy of all your tantalizing secrets and indiscretions I’ve placed in the hands of the lovely Bulma of Chikyuu. Now, in the grand tradition of Maiyosh House succession, you are all free to contemplate ridding yourselves of both her and my young nephew here through assassination---so long as you also contemplate in graphic detail what Vegita-ouji will do to you and most likely all of Maiyosh Prime should you harm his wife."

"Trunks-ouji," Horda said with as much dignity as he could muster while staring down at a digital print out of all his deepest darkest secrets. "As Vice-Chancellor of Maiyosh House, I must convene an emergency meeting of the corporate board. Here and now."

"Be quick about it!" Lady Avaris snapped from her seat at the high table. The thin, almost skeletal Lady of Avaris House, rapped the words out with cold mechanical precision as the Maiyosh-jin lords formed an angry whispering huddle.

"We don’t have time for this kind of squabbling," Son-kun said tensely. "I can feel it, Bulma. I don’t think we have much time left at all before it starts."

Someone else was taking the floor. Or trying to. Dahl of Shik, supported by Hiru and another Shiksei-jin retainer, was trying to stand. Bulma remembered Teslia mentioning that the man had contracted some form of degenerative muscle disease.

"We believe," Dahl said in a papery, raw voice, "there is great danger in the Saiyan Empire. As friend Hiru said, we have no proof of a great enemy. All we see is…two great empires built upon a threat unproven." On one side, Telsia seemed to be trying to speak to him, to soothe the ailing man back to quiet. The harsh argumentative whispers of the Maiyosh Board were growing steadily louder.

"Is…" Dahl was craning his head around as though each minute movement hurt him terribly. "Is the Lord of the Tsiru-jin here?" His voice was like cracked gravel.

"Yes," Hiru said gently.

"And…and all the Saiyans? We cannot see well…"

Hiru shook his head, laying a comforting hand on the other man’s arm. "No. Vegita is not here. And quite a few others are missing, I think. But no one will harm you, Dahl---"

"No!!!" Yennu finally shouted. "I will not agree! Vote me down to your heart’s content, you fools! I will not concede the throne to the half-breed bastard son of the man who murdered my sister!"

"Damn," Burka said mildly. "I knew that would be a sticking point for him."

"You knew what Jeiyce was," Bulma said with icy disgust. "His whole life. And you protected him anyway."

"I loved him, my dear," Burka said without a trace of his constant dissembling smile. "Strange as it seems. He was the son I never had, and believe it or not, he wasn’t all bad. He was the sort of lad who would have been completely normal if you removed him completely from the company of women."

"Other than being a hired killer, you mean," she said.

Burka smiled up at her fondly. "And you wouldn’t know a thing about defending a mad murderous killer, would you, Bulma-san?"

She kept her face cold and hard, but she wanted to break down and wail.

"No!" Yennu was saying harshly, shaking off Horda’s restraining arm. "I will see Maiyosh House torn asunder before I see it fall to the son of Jeiyce-ouji!"

"I believe that is my cue," Gurasia said, standing.

He was across the high table in less than a heartbeat. It happened too fast for Bulma to follow. One instant the young Lord of Tsiru-sei was rising to his feet, the next Son-kun was gone as well, standing between Gurasia and the other Lords of Maiyosh, shielding them. One of the Tsiru-jin’s fists was caught on Son-kun’s hand. The other…

Gurasia was holding Yennu of Maiyosh by the throat in his other fist. The man’s neck was broken.

All around her, delegates and by-standers were crying out and scrambling backwards. And the Saiyans were moving in, forming a ring around Gurasia and Son-kun. All except for Gohan, who was holding a shrieking Go-chan in his arms, and Gita, who had stepped in front of her to shield his mother from any backdrafts of power should a fight break out.

"I never knew young Trunks was a twin," Burka said conversationally, watching both Trunks advance slowly on Gurasia.

"Oh, shut up!" Bulma snapped.

"You must stop them, Bulma-san!" Teslia had made his away through the press of gawking parliamentarians. "They will listen to you!"

"There won’t be a fight," she said firmly. "Trunks and Son-kun won’t let it happen."

"I wish I had your faith, Lady," Hiru of Ansousei said waspishly. He was close behind Teslia, pushing Dahl of Shik’s anti-grav chair. She realized belatedly that they weren’t approaching her so much as passing by on their way toward the main exit. "Teslia, you can fly. Get Dahl out of here before the Saiyans blow the Hall up around us."

"You’re the man you shot Kassan back on Shikaji, aren’t you?" Gita said in soft horror, taking a threatening step forward.

Johnny was suddenly shoulder to shoulder with him. "If you come another foot closer to our mother, we’ll knock you through the wall!" The boy said fiercely.

"I don’t want to hurt your mother, boys," Hiru said through gritted teeth. "I’d like to get this sick man out of here, but you’re all three blocking my way!"

"Stop it, everyone!" Trunks shouted. And somehow, as if by magic, all the running and shouting, all the babble of frightened conversation, stopped. "Stand down, all of you," he told the others softly. "There won’t be a fight here."

Slowly, the Saiyans did just that.

The Lord of Tsiru-sei jerked his fist free of Son-kun’s grip. He opened his right hand and let Yennu’s body drop to the floor with cold indifference.

"I do not wish to fight," Gurasia said coolly. He turned a contemptuous, angry gaze on Trunks. "But you are wasting time with this pitiful mime of democracy, Trunks of Chikyuu. The Lords of Maiyosh must come to heel and agree to accept Jehan of Maiyosh House as their sovereign Lord with Bulma Briefs as his regent. There is no one better suited than her to lead a corporate power in wartime and make the best use of Maiyosh House’s technological assets." His red gaze fastened on the ministers. "You will all agree to this here and now, or you will die. The Saiyans cannot stop me from killing the next fool who raises an objection. And if any of you renig on your oaths…" He smiled coldly. "I will burn you home provinces to a black cinder on the face of Maiyosh Prime."

"No you won’t," Son-kun said flatly.

"We won’t allow you to do that, Gurasia," Gohan said. "You must know that."

"Do I?" Gurasia’s smile widened. He began to power up slowly. As he spoke, he began to pace in a wide circle, addressing the Saiyans and the audience at large. "If you fight me, we lose time we do not have. Fools! I am the Lord of Tsiru-sei. I am Gurasia. I will lead this war. Your ‘Council’ is over! There will be no more bickering. No more inane debate to decide the least little thing. We must have one voice, one law, one chain of command, if we are to stand any chance of winning." He raised on black-nailed finger and stabbed it toward Trunks. "I will take you oath of allegiance now, Saiyan no Ouji. If you refuse…" He advanced on Trunks, sneering down the bridge of his nose. "If you refuse, I will kill your fool of a father, for a start. I will raise my left hand and remove the seal I set on your mother’s memories of the many hours she spent in the arms of Jeiyce of Maiyosh. Then, I shall raise my right hand and dislodge your lovely wife’s memories of the Red Dragon as well. In that timeline, she was raised from infancy as a White Cloak acolyte on Tsiru-sei. When she recalls that unmade past, Son Pan will wash my feet with her long dark hair and weep with love as she does so. And last, I shall call my bride to me and devour her mind with the force of my own as we consummate our---"

Son-kun punched him in the face. Hard. "Stop it," her old friend said softly. "You don’t have to do this."

Gurasia staggered, took two steps backwards, and righted himself, wiping a trickle of blood from his mouth. He met Son-kun’s eyes, and it seemed the tiniest flicker of regret flitted across that coldly handsome white face. "Yes. I do." He shook his head implacably. "Understand. There is nothing I will not dare to do to you and yours to force you to follow me. Because nothing is as important as winning this war. Nothing. Trunks…Trunk-ouji is a good man. A good man will give every fool a voice because it is the fair thing to do. A good man will hesitate to make the hard decisions." He stepped back from Son-kun , seeming to withdraw from the strange understanding and compassion the older man was offering him. He turned back to Trunks, deliberately avoiding Son-kun’s gaze. "I am not good-hearted. I am Gurasia, son of Frieza. And you will all follow me or you will die."

"Smart boy," Burka murmured.

"He’s thinking…" Bra was speaking softly, almost under her breath.

"What?" Bulma asked.

"That voting on everything will mean our death when it’s time to act quickly." Her daughter’s eyes were slightly unfocused. "That the Saiyan no Ouji might be loved, but people move faster when they fear their leader. He doesn’t mind being hated if it means there’ll be people left alive to hate him when it’s all over." Bra’s pretty face was sad, and Bulma realized abruptly that her daughter wasn’t speaking to her at all. "He means what he says about what he’ll do if we refuse him, but he’s not a truly evil man. He’s putting on a show. Trying to scare the whole galaxy into fighting together under his command. Because he wants to same thing we want. To save this galaxy from the Arrak-jin. Does that help, Nissan?"

And across the Hall, Trunks nodded minutely.

"Swear to me, Saiyan no Ouji," Gurasia said. "Swallow your Saiyan pride and bow to the fact that there must be one leader in this conflict. And I am far, far stronger than you."

"No!" Radu shouted suddenly. "Don’t do it, Trunks! You can’t let those stinking lizards enslave us all again!"

Bra cocked her head sideways and Son-kun seemed to tense as well, as though listening to the call of someone far in the distance. "Uubu-kun?" Bra said in soft surprise.

"Decide, Trunks," Gurasia commanded coldly.

Whatever Trunks might have said, none of them would ever know. A sphere of bright pink light shot through with rainbow-hued firefly sparks of bibidi-jin magic appeared in the center of Madran’s high table and promptly collapsed it. Where the sphere touched the table’s edges, it splintered them like kindling. The light slowly dimmed, fading away to reveal four men. Uubu-kun, Tien, Chao-tsu and…

Trunks was suddenly nose to nose with Uubu, who was resolutely blocking him from wringing Jeiyce of Maiyosh’s neck.

"You have to hear what he has to say first!" Uubu shouted urgently. "Please! Gokou-sensei, we found him on Amshah! He has information about the bugs!"

Son-kun lay a hand on Trunks’ shoulder. Behind him, Mirai Trunks seemed to snarl softly, as though it took all his will power to stand still, to stare at Jeicye of Maiyosh and not kill him. Bulma felt strangely numb. Then she glanced down at Johny. She lay one gentle hand on the back of his neck, as she saw the boy was clutching his arms around his chest. He seemed to shrink into himself as he stared at his…his father. She kept her gaze fixed intently on Uubu. If she looked directly at Jeiyce herself…well, they might have to hold her back from killing him, too. Around them, the crowd had calmed and settled down, watching avidly. This new twist had them all spellbound for the moment.

"Go on, Uubu," Son-kun said. "We’re listening."

"We found Jeiyce on Amshah," Uubu said quickly, the words tumbling out of his mouth in his urgency to tell them. "He had gone there after Shikaji to kill the batch Burka had secreted away there."

"Out of the goodness of his heart?" Radu asked coldly.

Jeiyce’s voice chuckled brokenly. "Out of gut reaction to having just been eaten alive by the little buggers. Bit of an eye-opener that was."

"When he got there," Uubu went on, "they ate him. They crawled into his body and lived inside him for fifteen years. They drove him like pilots steering a ship from the inside."

"…puppets…" Johny said softly.

"Puppets?" Gita frowned.

"In my time," the boy whispered, "the enemy used them to move among living beings and spy out our weaknesses. They also used them as beacons when they---"

"You can all fight over who gets to kill me after I’ve said my peace!" Jeiyce’s cry broke in over Uubu’s even voice. He stumbled forward, out of Tien and Choa-tsu’s supporting grips, and lurched into Son-kun, gripping the bigger man’s forearms.

"I freed him," Uubu said quickly. "But he’s seen their mind, Sensei! You have to listen to him!"

Bulma turned her eyes away from Uubu’s tense face and stared directly at Jeiyce for the first time. He looked like Hell. Literally. And he was mad. Not psychotically, homicidally mad as he had been before. Jeiyce was in some deeper darker place, now, if that was possible. A place where every shadow seems to hold a million nightmares, where each horror compounds upon itself and terror begets terror. And she couldn’t summon up the smallest grain of sympathy for him.

"They are coming!" Jeiyce shouted.

"When?" Son-kun said intently. "Where?"

"Now…Now!!" Jeiyce screamed the word. "Their advance guard is less than an hour away! Uubu-sama, make them listen! These Saiyans are sitting on these arses like a live monkey buffet. They are coming to Madran!!!"

A hole opened up in the pit of Bulma’s stomach. Here. Now. The day had finally come. She knelt down and began tearing through the contents of her capsule satchel. She had brought the entire arsenal today. A sample of everything she had cooked up in preparation for this day. Gita and Johny were huddled beside her instantly, taking each capsule she handed them wordlessly.

"Momma!" Bra said sharply. "I have to go find Roma-chan!"

Bulma kissed her on the cheek. "Be safe, Bra-chan."

As she pulled out the shield cubes she had constructed from the blue prints Mirai Trunks had hyperlight faxed her months ago, sorting her new and improved inverse brute rays---her IBR cannons---from the defensive weaponry, she could hear Jeiyce still screaming.

"Can’t you hear them?! They are almost here. When they tear through the mantle of this universe they will eat this world in one big gulp. They’ll take as many high-powered warriors alive as possible. Some to use as puppets, but they want to put a special hurting on you and yours, Son Gokou. They know all the bugs on Shikaji knew. They want to nab all the Saiyans and the Tsiru-jin lad first. Their memory stretches back into eternity, monkey man, but in all their long existence, you Saiyans are the only beings who’ve ever given them a run for their money. They want you all cacooned nice and snug in the belly of the Swarm along with all the other strongest fighters. Me too. Lucky me! They will keep us alive and feed off us after they eat everything in the universe and move on. Sort a like travel rations. Even death won’t be an escape. They’ll come to Hell after they implode the physical plane and gobble us up there just as easily." He stepped back from Son-kun, staggering slightly, and turned in a circle, his wild eyes sweeping the stunned silent crowd. "Run, you stupid bastards!!!" He howled. "Why are you just standing there?!" The crowd shifted, restless and afraid, but not quite on the point of bolting.

Bulma finished popping the IBR capsules and began tinkering with the fine tuning of one of the four shield cubes she’d brought with her today. Dammit! She had a dozen more at Capsule Corp. Why the Hell hadn’t she brought them today?!

"Why should we believe you?" Trunks was saying. But even as he spoke, she saw Pan and Skoy darting out the skylight, burning toward Keraffta’s Mount Observatory where she had erected a force field generator two years ago. Somewhere just to her right she could hear Radu’s deep voice speaking softly but urgently into a hyperlight comm, sending word through the interstellar communications uplink to a hundred worlds, telling them to fire up their own planetary shields. Telling them that this was not a drill.

Jeiyce seemed to focus on Trunks and stumble towards him. He would have fallen if Ubu-kun hadn’t reached out a curiously gently arm to catch the Maiyosh-jin.

"Because, you stupid monkey git," Jeiyce croaked. "I’m a sado-masochistic sociopath. Not a stark raving nihilistic looney! If they win, it’s the end of everything. No temporal plane. No time! No Heaven or Hell! There will be nothing left! Do you remember what it felt like when they were feeding on you back on Shikaji, boyo? In my wildest nightmares I couldn’t have imagined that kind of pain. And if they take us, we’ll all be trapped in that agony forever and ever and ever and ever and----"

"Shut him up!" Someone in the crowd shouted. "Someone make him stop!"

Overhead, through the sunny open window and the Hall’s skylight, Madran’s planetary forcefield flared to life, a soft shimmer in the blue sky.

"We have to evacuate this world, Trunks!" Son-kun was saying. "Now!"

"On the word of a madman?" Horda of Maiyosh said skeptically. "Surely---"

"If all hell breaks loose," Bulma told Gita and Johny evenly. "I want you boys to decapsulate the transpo ship capsules in your hands all around the city. Then get yourselves on one of those ships as quickly as possible!"

"Do you have any more?" Teslia asked anxiously. He returned her strained smile. "I cannot fly as fast of young Gita, but I am very fast when properly terrified."

"I remember," she laughed shakily.

"Teslia," Hiru had turned away from Jeiyce’s speech with a grunt of disgust, pushing past Bulma and the insectoid, gently maneuvering Dahl’s anti-grav chair toward the edge of the crowd. "The Maiyosh-jin of frothing at the mouth. You don’t truly believe---"

"They are here!!!" Jeiyce shrieked suddenly.

Bulma stood, the little bug shield cube she had been adjusting clasped in both hands like a bouquet of flowers, staring in consternation at Jeiyce.

"Where?!" Son-kun pressed.

"They’re in this room! They—they---" Jeiyce spun, wide-eyed, and stared directly at her. He stabbed on shaking finger at her. "There! There! There!!! Right there, lovey!" He launched himself at her and, incredibly, got less than two meters from where she stood, unable to move, before Gohan came streaking behind him. Her old friend’s son caught one of the Maiyosh-jin’s feet and slammed him down to the floor. They had all blurred in from every direction, landing around her like gentle missiles, forming a living barrier between Bulma and the erstwhile Prince of Maiyosh. Jeiyce had, by some odd stroke of fate, landed at his uncle’s feet.

"There!!!" Jeicye was still struggling desperately, pointing at her as though---

No.

Not at her, she realized with a thrill of horror. Past her.

"Can’t you see them!" Jeiyce cried. "He’s stuffed full of the little buggers!"

Bulma turned, her gaze following Jeiyce’s extended finger, to where Dahl of Shik sat in his med chair, seemingly oblivious to the furor around him. Hiru had stopped moving, turning back to watch the drama. Now, he stepped in front of Dahl protectively as all gazes fell on the infirm man. "You lying red bastard!" He spat. "Dahl of Shik is a good, honest man!

He--"

A keening chorus of shrieks, rising in volume as other voices took up the cry, came from the other side of the ruined high table.

"This is it!" Bulma hissed. Oh, Kami, Vegita, wake up! Wake up and be well and able to move and fight! Because, gods help us all, I think everything is about to go to hell in a handbasket in the next few minutes!

She sat the shield cube down carefully and clenched the largest of her IBR’s in both hands. The crowd parted in a blind rush of panic to reveal old Lady Avaris. Her skin seemed to be roiling, bubbling like a thin bed sheet draped over a colony of roaches.

"Oh, look," Jeiyce moaned from beneath Gohan’s boot heel. "There’s another batch."

People began flying, literally, in every direction, as Lady Avaris opened her mouth as though to speak. A black cascade of Arrak-jin erupted out of her mouth. And as they emerged, the old woman’s body began to slowly crumble to gray ash. Each spec of her dusty remains would very probably grow into a bug in moments. Bulma pushed forward with the IBR on her shoulder, through the mass of screaming people, but Uubu-kun beat her to the punch. He hurled a blast of twinkling power at them, enveloping the small swarm in a ball of pale pink witchlight, sealing them within the sphere.

"Sensei!" He cried.

Son-kun was there beside him, one hand on the younger man’s shoulder, the other touching his forehead. They winked out of sight, taking the imprisoned Arrak-jin with them.

"That’s an incredibly useful talent," said a voice that sounded like old Lord Corsaris’.

But the paralysis of everyone else in the Hall was broken. The Guildmasters’ Hall was in pandemonium. Most of the Members of Parliament had left in a scrambling panic, some through the doors, some through the roof. They slammed headlong into the interstellar press, who were pouring into the Hall like eager children into a circus tent, hovering cambots at their shoulders. Large chunks of the ceiling were coming down where a couple of people had just slammed through the roof instead of the skylight in their haste. A small burst of power shot upward, incinerating pieces of mortar and marble as they fell, leaving the clear blue sky of Madran showing through the pall of masonry dust.

"I just told Pan-chan and Skoy to shut the shield down," Trunks was saying. "The city is already panicking and people will drive their ships into this side of the shield trying to get offworld."

"It’s better than complacency," Radu said gruffly. "Get that damn cambot out of my face!" A Ceyinin-jin newsman suddenly found reason to be hurriedly elsewhere.

"What about him?" Go-chan said softly. In the momentary confusion, the girl had escaped her mother’s side and ended up standing beside Gurasia, as the small group of Saiyans and other stalwarts---the only people still left in the Hall who were not in the process of fleeing for their lives---edging around Dahl and Hiru. They were all in a haphazard half-circle around Bulma and her array of decapsulated weapons. A ki blast would spread the bugs over the entire Hall. Getting any closer to Dahl would be just as perilous. Bulma raised the IBR on her shoulder and trained it in on Dahl. Or rather on Hiru, who was standing in front of Dahl. Beside her, Mirai Trunks and Radu had both taken IBR’s as well. They only needed to contain the bugs until Son-kun and Uubu returned to take this batch…wherever the hell they’d taken them.

"Step out of the way, Hiru," she said firmly. "If he’s not…infected, my weapons won’t hurt him.

"I will not let you murdering---" Hiru began.

Radu’s son Gera leapt forward and jerked the man to safety just in time. Hiru uttered a high shriek as he turned back and saw that Dahl’s mouth and ears had begun to void Arrak-jin. "Oh, sweet gods!" Hiru cried. Dahl spat the Arrak-jin out in the black fountain, scattering the Hall with bugs.

Bulma’s finger tightened on the trigger. Then several things happened at once.

Son-kun and Ubu appeared without warning. By some stroke of black serendipity, they materialized directly between Bulma and Dahl. In the same instant, Bulma fired, striking Son-kun square in the back with a bolt of ki-crippling blue energy. And in the same instant, the Arrak-jin struck. A black spear of seething bugs leapt out of Dahl and impaled Uubu-kun through the shoulder. The brown-skinned warrior fell backwards, almost directly into the arms of Zoukin’s daughter Wassti. As he crashed into her, bowling her over, the ‘spear’ broke apart into thousands of tiny bits. And the bits began to move. Wassti began shrieking as the bugs swarmed over her.

It was like a domino effect. Radu, Torq and Zoukin leapt forward to help her---and they were all pulled down. All around her, the Saiyans were sinking down to their knees, batting futilely at the bugs Dahl had spat at them. Having the IBR’s in their hands didn’t help them if they didn’t have the strength to hold the weapon. Oh Kami! she almost sobbed. Did we really think we were ready for them? Just like that, two small batches have rendered the strongest warriors in the galaxy defenseless.

"Uubu-sama!" Jeiyce was crying out faintly.

"TOO DANGEROUS," Dahl said in a voice like fingers on a blackboard. "THE BIBIDI-JIN MUST BE ONE WITH US FIRST."

Someone, Torq, released a wild volley of power and struck the Shiksei-jin a glancing blow. One arm flew away and bugs poured out of it. All the Saiyan were down now.

Bulma didn’t turned back to see what the others were doing to help Uubu and Wassti. She raised the cannon and shot Dahl squarely in the chest. He flew backwards several meters, shedding momentarily inert bugs as he went.

"They’re all over the floor!" Skoy was shouting. He and Pan had arrived back from Mount Observatory at some point, though Bulma couldn’t have said when if her life depended on it. "Nissan! Niss---" His voice faded away with a tired sigh.

Dahl was back on his feet, his arms raised akimbo, Arrak-jin still streaming from his mouth and ears. "COME!" He said in a toneless hollow voice. "COME!"

"Okassan!" Johny screamed. "He’s beaconing! He calling the Swarm!"

Someone, one of the Maiyosh-jin Corporate Board from the sound of his voice, was firing blindly, bringing down the rest of the Hall’s already crumbling ceiling, turning the Hall into a blazing rubble around them.

"Momma…" Gita whimpered. He had sunk to his knees beside her and twin pools of writhing black specs were swarming over his hands. Johny, still somehow untouched by the bugs, was batting them off of him, stomping them as he did.

"They’re only going for the Saiyans!" Hiru said. For an instant, she wanted to kill him for nothing more than the smile she heard in his voice.

"Johny," she grated. "Step back from Gita!"

She bit her tongue to quash the knee-jerk reaction against what she was about to do. My baby…

She fired the IBR in a shotgun spray, enveloping her son in a blue halo that temporarily disrupted ki and rendered the Arrak-jin inert. Also, unfortunately, temporarily. Gita fell bonelessly into Johny’s arms, unconscious, barely breathing, but free of the bugs for the moment.

"Johny!" She checked the Maiyosh-jin boy’s clenched fist and saw that he still held the little cache of capsules she had given him. "Take the capsules and expand them where you can. Then get your brother on the first ship that launches!"

"Okassan," his eyes were wide and full of the memory of horror. "I won’t leave you again---"

"You have to save Gita," she said implacably. And on impulse, she gave the quivering boy a quick hug. "Go!"

She didn’t turn to see if they had left. She scooped up the shield cube she had laid at her feet and began crawling across the smoking melee, decapsulating IBR’s as she went. She found Son-kun still lying on his back, still stunned by the IBR but untouched by the Arrak-jin.

"Son-kun…Oh gods, I’m sorry!"

"S’okay…" His voice was a breathless whisper. "Not your fault. I’ll be up in a couple of minutes."

She leaned down and kissed his cheek. And as she raised up, Hiru of Ansousei’s ghost pale face seemed to emerge out of nowhere. She grabbed him by the collar and shoved an IBR cannon into his stunned hands. "They can’t see you and me because we have such low power levels," she said. "For the moment, they can’t see Son-kun either. If they start to come for him, shoot them! You may be getting off watching them eat my family right now, but when they finish with the Saiyans they’ll morph into the giant flesh eaters and tear us to pieces. Do you want that? Do you want to see everyone on Madran die today?!"

"N-no," Hiru said shakily.

"Then protect Son-kun!" She said harshly. "I’m going to try to find Gohan and Gurasia. Between the three of them, they can use the shield cubes I’ve built to hold the bugs off long enough to evacuate this world."

Hiru swallowed hard. Even here, even in this extremity, he had to struggle with his hate. "I’ll help you," he said finally. "The Madrani don’t deserve to die." He clenched the IBR in his hands tightly.

"I’ve got him, Tien!" Chao-tsu’s voice, somewhere very close by. "Get them off of him!"

"Tien!" She cried, batting ineffectually at the smoke. "Where are you?"

"Here!" His disembodied voice echoed. She was probably right on top of them. She stumbled over something and saw it was Gurasia’s tale. He was kneeling, barely conscious himself, helping Chi-Chi swipe tarantula-sized Arrak-jin off of Go-chan. In his weakened state, someone had taken the opportunity to badly bloody him nose for him. Again. Good for Chi-Chi! Bulma thought fiercely. She didn’t speak or even stop moving. She pushed an IBR rifle into Chi-Chi’s hands and then fired the IBR at the girl and Gurasia. Chi-Chi gave a low cry of relief as the bugs fell off her daughter like black, deadly acorns, clattering on the marble floor.

Someone grabbed her elbow, yanking her forward into a solid bank of smoke. She opened her mouth to scream, but no cry came forth. It was Jeiyce.

"No time for romance right now, lovey," Jeiyce of Maiyosh said, pulling her down to where Uubu lay weazing and gasping for breath. His shoulder was a bleeding mess. The young man’s entire body was spasming. "He’s your friend, right?" Jeicye said desperately. "They’re all inside him. In a few minutes, he’ll be like our old friend Dahl. Like I was. Then they’ll turn him on us and everybody will die. If we’re lucky, we’ll die."

"Bulma-chan!" Tien said. "Try and drive them out of him with your gun!"

She nodded wordlessly, too numb with everything else that was happening to be shocked that Jeiyce of Maiyosh was begging her to save Uubu-kun’s life. She fired, and the things scattered out of the wound in Uubu’s shoulder like giant maggots.

"I still feel them inside him!" Jeiyce said, shaking his head. "Hit him again!"

"If we take his ki down too low, he might die," Chao-tsu said. "He---"

His words broke off in a scream as an Arrak-jin the size of a terrier sprang onto his back, pincers slashing. Tien tore it off his friend, bringing his hand down on its misshapen head. And as he did, fifty more came scuttling toward them out of the smoke. Jeicye raised both hands and fired.

And the Arrak-jin…dissolved.

They did not burst into black ashy fragments which would reanimate in moments into a hundred thousands miniature replicas of themselves. They melted. They looked for all the worlds like slugs in a bathtub full of salt, dissolving into a black muddy silt.

They did not stir again.

"What the hell did you do, Jeiyce?" Tien gasped.

"Damned if I know," the Maiyosh-jin remarked, staring down at his palms as though they might be holding some hidden weapon.

Bulma, though outwardly motionless, sat with her mind racing, staring at the Ginyu who was frowning down at his hands in perplexity. The shouting and screams and heat from the fire around them seemed suddenly distant and unimportant. They could not live inside a living humanoid being and keep their host alive without tearing his tissues and bones apart. Not unless they altered that host in some profound way to accommodate them.

"Jeiyce!" She said sharply.

His head snapped up, meeting her eyes for the first time. And in spite of Gurasia’s mental seal, something inside her cringed in sickened terror. A white hot burst of pain seemed to ignite directly behind her eyes. She forced the feeling down viciously.

"I want you to force a gentle stream of ki into Uubu’s body. Right into the wound. As though he were dying and you were giving him energy to keep his heart beating."

Jeiyce obeyed silently, without question, laying both hands over the wound in Uubu’s shoulder. The brown-skinned warrior bucked violently and choked on a dry, gurgling cry as Jeiyce filled him with a direct infusion of his ki. Then he sank down, limp as a rag. He was still breathing shallowly.

"They’re gone," Jeiyce muttered softly. "I don’t feel them inside him anymore."

"I have an idea." She lay down the shield cube she had been holding to her breast like a fragile child and broke open the little engine, fusing components and twisting others, rewiring micros-circuits. It was too simple, far too simple to be a sane idea. Which meant it might just work. "Okay," she said steadily. She turned a grim eye back to Jeiyce who was regarding her quizzically. She worst thing about him, she concluded coldly, was the utter lack of anything threatening in that friendly, easy-going grin of his. He was half-smiling at her as though she were an old friend. "I’ve just turned this shield into a spherical wave projector. But it’s still powered by living ki. It will project your life energy in every direction."

"You’re thinking the crawlies changed me somehow, lovey?" He said. He lay both hands on the cube. "Gave me a gift or two they didn’t intend?" His eyes wandered away from her face, crawling over her body. A balloon of soft blue light was slowly expanding from the cube as he spilled power into it, widening infinitesimally to envelop her and the three men surrounding Uubu.

"If this works," the Maiyosh-jin smiled at her, his face bathed in a sheen of sweat. "Do I get a kiss?"

"How about another electroshock to the balls instead?" She said tightly.

"Tell you a secret," he said pleasantly. "I actually sort of enjoyed that."

"Knock it off, Jeiyce!" Tien snapped. "You can make smarmy passes at Bulma-chan on your own time. Concentrate! I think it’s working!"

"Look!" Chao-tsu said in soft wonder.

The blue sphere of light was still growing. A clutch of Arrak-jin skittered toward them, into the leading edge of the light. And they simply melted away to sludge.

"Getting a little tapped here, lads," Jeiyce gasped. He was bathed in his own sweat now, straining for breath.

"We’ve got your back!" Tien lay a hand on Jeiyce’s shoulder, projecting his power into the Maiyosh-jin, strengthening him. Chao-tsu did the same, and the blue field of light expanded sharply, enveloping the entire Hall. And everywhere the blue light fell the bugs dissolved into a mucky black mud.

"Hey look…" Jeiyce laughed weakly. "The non-Super Saiyans save the day for a change…"

Tien laughed outright and Chao-tsu grinned in his shy, slightly neurotic way. She could almost see the young man wondering if laughing were being disrespectful to Son-kun in some way. How in the names of all the gods, she wondered faintly, had her two old friends become so chummy with a monster like Jeiyce? The entire Hall was bathed in the glow of the three warriors’ combined power. All around them, the sounds of weak coughing, of someone sobbing brokenly.

"Wassti-chan! Wake up!" Torq’s pleading voice.

"Kassan!" Trunks had somehow made his way to her side. Bulma turned and saw that he’d had help. Marron was half-scooting, half-dragging him, pulling him to a sitting position beside his mother. Bulma brushed the tangled hair out of his eyes and saw that it was Mirai Trunks. And saw in a half-instant flashing of motherly insight Marron’s hand resting innocently on his back, supporting him, and her son quickly, almost thoughtlessly, caress the younger woman’s hand where she touched him. And in spite of the nightmare bearing down on them like the trump of doom, she felt a warm rush of happiness. Good for them.

The light faltered suddenly and Bulma saw Jeiyce slump forward, followed by Tien and Chao-tsu.

"Trunks," Bulma said sharply. "You have to give Jeiyce your energy!"

He stared at her as though she’d just told him his real father was actually Frieza.

"I’ll explain later!" She said. "Just do it!"

Wordlessly, Trunks crawled forward and lay a hand on Jeiyce’s back. And as he did, the blue light of the cube leapt outward like a kindling match, expanding outward to the city around them. She lost track of time as, one by one, the Saiyans and other survivors of the attack on the Hall began to recover, making their way painfully to the center of the halo of light that had saved them all.

And then the cube sputtered and died suddenly as Jeiyce gasped once, struggling for breath, and sagged forward, half-conscious.

No one said anything.

"We have to get him to the medics," Bulma said finally, staring down at the Maiyosh-jin’s prone body without expression. "The Arrak-jin changed something in his basic physical makeup when they possessed him. And in doing so, they changed his ki to something that is lethal to them."

Son-kun stared at her, nodding solemnly. Then he took her hand and raised her to her feet. Her knees felt wobbly and her head was throbbing. This was apparently the stress headache to end all stress headaches.

"…beacon…" Jeiyce croaked in a dry whisper.

"You need to rest," Chao-tsu said. He could barely sit himself. "You deserve it."

"Beacon?" Son-kun whispered. Then he went pale as a ghost. He knelt beside the former Ginyu. "What kind of beacon, Jeicye?"

Jeicye shuddered and raised one shaky hand. "Heads up," he said in a hollow voice, pointing skyward.

Johny’s words, his specific use of the word ‘beacon’ half an hour earlier, came back to her like a repressed memory of horror. Outside, the incongruous sound of spring birds singing merrily mixed with shouting and the deafening bass roars of transpo ships launching into the bright blue sky.

There came a sound that silenced every voice, halted every pair of feet. The entire hemisphere of Madran froze, heads turned upward. The noise was indescribable. If she lived beyond this day, Bulma knew she would never find words to express it, save to say it was a profound, deep tearing sound that turned your blood to ice on some nameless primal level of terror.

A black maw of nothing opened up in the sky, dimming the sun, silencing the birds, turned the blue sky to purplish twilight. And the Arrak-jin came, pouring through the tear, blotting out the heavens, falling downward upon the world like a billion ravenous carrion birds.

"No!" Son-kun screamed. He didn’t waste time on words. There was no time. He grabbed Jeiyce and slammed the Maiyosh-jin’s hands down on the shield cube, laying both his own hands on the Ginyu’s shoulders.

"This is really going to hur---" Jeiyce’s words ended in a full-throated shriek as Son-kun blasted the full force of his ki through the Maiyosh-jin’s body. Through Jeiyce’s ki and into the cube. The world, the entire world, was suddenly washed in a brilliant blue that met the Arrak-jin less than a thousand meters from the ground.

There was a brief, nasty shower. A small sea of liquefied, black Arrak-jin sludge rained down like some ancient god’s plague of displeasure. It was like standing beneath a spraying oil pump.

"Yuck," Go-chan said weakly.

Son-kun sank down to his knees and would have fallen if Chi-Chi and Gohan hadn’t caught him. A sudden, oddly unnerving gust of cold wind whipped down through the open roof of the Hall.

"Oh goddess, no…" Skoy was pointing a mini-comp at the sky. At the moon-sized mouth of nothing still hanging in the sky above them. And instant later, Bulma saw it, saw what he was trying to calculate, fingers stabbing furiously at the key pad on his control panel. The sun…

Madran’s sun had shifted more than ten degrees to the east in the sky. Toward the Arrak-jin hole.

"How long have we got?" She asked quietly.

"Less than fifteen minutes," Skoy said, his face full of stark horror. "Madran’s sun is falling into the rift. We’re being pulled in as well."

"Okay," Trunks said, his face drawn and tense. "We need to keep this world alive ling enough to evacuate it."

"Jisan," Radu asked in a deliberately steady voice. "Can you lay your hands on the ground and use shunkan idou to transport the entire planet?"

"No," Son-kun shook his head. "I can’t move that much mass at once. If I try and fail, I might destroy the world and everyone on it."

Bulma had her own min-comp out, pulling up orbital distance and solar specs for Madran. "We need to move the world to another sun. The dragonballs---"

"We can’t use them," Son-kun shook his head. "Dende and all the Nameks have the three set of living dragonballs on New Namek---even Bra-chan’s. They’re going to use them for something…special. Pan-chan," he turned to is granddaughter. "We’ll need your help to get everyone away. You’re the only other person who’s mastered shunkan idou."

"That might be dangerous for her, Gokou-san," Trunks said apprehensively.

Son-kun regarded Pan-chan curiously. Then, he smiled. He positively beamed. "Pan-chan. You’re pregnant!"

She blushed prettily, and Bulma thought she heard Videl’s voice utter a soft cry of joy.

"It won’t hurt the baby, Trunks-kun," Pan said firmly, squeezing Trunks’ hand.

Another grandchild, Bulma thought. And the warm glow of that knowledge was like a candle of all her hopes for the future they must save.

"If we can’t use the dragonballs," she said crisply, "we still have to get Madran away from the rift long enough to evacuate."

"Gohan," Skoy asked hesitantly. "Can you push Madran---the whole planet---away from the rift?"

"I think so," Gohan said quietly.

"Brilliant," Gurasia said with a derisive sniff. "The populace will not live long without a sun."

"No, they won’t." Bulma stared up at the Tsiru-jin and her stomach rolled with queasy disgust. Gurasia was standing beside little Go-chan and the tip of the girl’s tail was coiled around his ankle. She was dimly aware of Trunks and Pan saying their goodbyes, of Son-kun marshalling the others to help him find every spark of sentient life on Madran. "When Gohan pushes us away from the breach, he’ll have to hold the planet’s mantle together afterwards. A move like that will probably cause the world to break apart slowly if he’s not there to stabilize it. So, he won’t be able to give us a sun."

"Ah," he said. "I will finally be able to draw a breath on this forsaken world without the aid of a ki shield."

"We need you to burn of sun," Bulma said through gritted teeth. "To keep the world alive until we get everyone to safety."

"The indigenous population has no measurable ki," he said with cold indifference. "The best and brightest technical and scientific minds are here in the Guildhouses of the capital. The yokels and mediocraties are not worth the time or effort---"

Go-chan swatted him in the face with her tail. "There worth it because they’re people, you mean, cold-hearted bastard!"

He winced visibly, though not from the physical blow, Bulma suspected.

The force of the girl’s anger, of her disgust for his callous disregard for the live of ‘unimportant’ people, must hurt like hell through the mental bond they shared, as he felt all she was feeling toward him. As he saw himself through her eyes.

"Bra-san has once again proven she is more than a dabbler in the psychic arts," he said gingerly, teeth clenched. "She has laid a very strong shield in your mind."

"Only against you—you pushing your will at me." Go-chan was staring up into those evil Tsiru-jin eyes, her young face unreadable. "Don’t make me hate you," the girl said softly. "I couldn’t live hating you."

"I---" Gurasia seemed shaken to the core of his rotten heart by her words. Finally, he tore his gaze away from Go-chan’s and gave Bulma a stare of red-eyed murder. "I will burn a sun for Madran." He stepped back from them both and sprang into the sky in a whirlwind gust of power.

Son-kun locked a gentle hand around his daughter’s wrist as though he feared she might fly after the Tsiru-jin. Nearby, Videl was speaking in a soft voice, kissing Gohan goodbye. "Go-chan," Son-kun said. "We need your help getting people evacuated."

"…kill me now?" Jeicye weazed from the floor.

In the confusion and wake of much bigger problems, he had been all but forgotten by the others.

"I wish," she said tiredly.

"Just lie down, Jeiyce-ouji." The Madrani doctor, Scopa, had arrived sometime during the last few minutes with a team of medics. "Uubu-san is in stabile condition. You need to lie quietly while a try to stabilized your heartbeat." Scopa frowned down at his med scanner and shook it lightly. "That’s not possible!" He stared up at Jeiyce in mild horror. "The med scanner says you have no heart!"

Jeiyce cackled, a weak broken noise. "So, Mum was right all along." He focused blearily on Scopa’s face. "Oy, Doc. Don’t I know you?"

"Madran was a slave world of Tsiru-sei back in the day," the doctor murmured, staring down at the reading from his scanner in fascination. "I patched you and your friend Berta up once or twice."

"Doctor," Bulma began.

"Vegita-san is awake, Bulma," he told her. "He punched a hole through the face plating of his tank. He was yelling something about Jeiyce here."

"Ha ha," Jeiyce said.

"He was still unsteady on his feet," Scopa went on, gently pushing Jeiyce on his back as the Maiyosh-jin tried to sit. "Son Goten is watching him. I imagine he’ll be here any minute. Amazing recuperative powers, these Saiyans."

"…going to kill now, lovey?"

"No!" She said harshly. "And stop calling me that or I’ll have someone put a gag on you!" Every time he used that name her stomach twisted into nauseous knots. Kami, her head felt as though someone had driven a nail into her temples right behind her eyes.

"Well, when’s Vegita getting here then?" Jeiyce said petulantly. "He’ll bloody well kill me for sure!"

She studied him, perplexed. Moments ago, during the thick of danger, the Maiyosh-jin had seemed completely coherent, as lucid and dangerous as ever. Now that there was no longer any immediate threat or fight, his sanity seemed to have collapsed again.

"We need to keep Jeiyce alive at all costs," she said, laying her fingers along side her forehead. "Can you sedate him? Keep him unconscious so he won’t hurt himself or anyone else?"

"Of course," Scopa withdrew a hypo from his medkit and Jeiyce fell mercifully still and silent. "He’ll need a strong guard when he wakes, Bulma," he said with a worried drown. "I can tell he’s had some sort of breakdown and the med scanner shows…bizarre readings on all his physical stats. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. But ill or well, he’s a bad, dangerous man. He---"

"I know what he is!" She said too sharply. She took a deep breath and fought for calm. "I’m sorry, Doctor," she began. "I---"

He only lay a packet of meds in her hand, smiling gently.

"What’s this?" She asked, frowning.

"Chikyuu-jin aspirin," he told her. "For your headache."

He burned through the short distance between the Medical Complex and the Guildmasters’ Hall like a streak of enraged lightning, paying no heed to the screaming masses rushing for the giant transpo ships someone had expanded in every open are throughout the city. Whatever disaster was afoot, he did not care. Not right now. Vegita slammed through the gaping hole in the Hall’s ceiling, driving shards of marble into the air as his feet struck the floor. He scanned the smoking rubble around him for the familiar ki signature that had drawn him out of the tank’s healing sleep, dry-mouth with terror for his woman.

There he was!

Vegita strode forward, blowing the obscuring smoke from his path with a wave of one hand. Jeiyce was lying on the sludge smeared floor, unconscious, dead to the world. That would not do at all.

"Wake up, Jeiyce!" He snarled through bared teeth. He kicked the Ginyu viciously and the Maiyosh-jin’s body flew several meters through the air. "I want to hear you scream while I am killing you!"

"Vegita-san!" A Madrani clad in the sea blue of the Healer’s Guild stepped between Vegita and his prey. "This man is sedated and cannot---"

"Move, Doctor," Vegita said softly, raising his open hand. "I do not wish to harm a weakling medic, but---"

"Vegita!" Bulma screamed into his ear. "I said to stop it! Look at me!! Listen to me!! She stepped between him and the Madrani. Between him and Jeiyce. Had she been calling out to him the entire time, screaming to make herself heard? The killing rage had drowned the sound of everything but the pounding of his own blood in his ears. Bulma lay her soft, fragile hands on either side of his face. "I’m okay, Vegita," she said gently. "He didn’t hurt me. But you can’t kill him. Not yet." He snarled aloud like a tiger balked from its prey. She didn’t flinch. Brave woman. "Listen to me," she repeated steadily. "Jeiyce has been the Arrak-jin’s prisoner since Shikaji. They changed something about him, about his personal energy, and now his

ki can kill them. The doctors need to examine him and find out how. It may mean the difference between winning and losing now that the Arrak-jin are attacking.

He closed his eyes, trying to think coherently, trying to master his towering rage, lowering his energy as she stepped closer still, into his arms. His deviously clever woman knew that this close to him the heat of his ki would be dangerous to her if he did not power down. If he did not calm himself.

"The Arrak-jin have arrived?" He asked finally, when he was able to speak.

"Yes," she said softly, patiently. "Look at the sky."

He had taken little note of anything other than assuring her safety and killing Jeiyce. He turned his eyes upward and…gods. The was a rift in the blue sky above them that seemed to radiate blackness, a mortal wound in creation!

"They tore the fissure as the first wave came through," she said. "Son-kun destroyed them by funneling his ki through Jeiyce. The black goo all over me and everyone and everything else is what’s left of them. Doctor Scopa sedated Jeiyce so he won’t get away or hurt anyone." She rubbed her forehead irritably. The strained, veiled fear on her face would not let him relax, or selfishly mourn that battle had been joined without him.

"But it is not over." He was not asking a question.

"We’re being sucked toward the rift," she said. "Gohan is---"

He had less than an instant to glean some sense of what was coming, to feel the surge of Gohan’s power. It was like nothing he had ever dreamed possible, a deafening thunder inside the chambers of his mind where his own power and senses lay housed.

Oh Kami! Gohan’s mental scream, echoing in his head and the younger man’s power spiraled higher still. They’re coming through the rift NOW! Oh Kami, all the people! All the---

Vegita threw Bulma to the floor beneath him, hurling a ki shield around them and the rest of the wounded in the Hall as the floor bucked and lurched beneath them. As the bones of the world groaned aloud. As the sun whipped around in the sky and the heavens went pitch black. As Gohan’s power leapt higher still, a blazing, almost blinding flame inside Vegita’s head. The walls of the Guildmasters’ Hall shattered and fell upward, and there was a monstrous, crashing roar as thousands upon thousands of structures flew into the air with the wrenching force of whatever Gohan had just done, of millions of voices shrieking as they too were hurled aloft.

And moments later, the equally devastating rumble of all that had been tossed half a mile into the sky finding its way back to earth.

The flames of Bra and Romayna’s ki, of Goten and Gita’s and the weaker, less familiar spark of Jeiyce’s bastard, were whirling around the city, catching the flightless Madrani as they plummeted downward in the chill darkness.

And far in the distance, Vegita felt them come. There were no words to describe how many they were or how vast. The first volley of Arrak-jin had only been the foreguard. Gohan had not been a panic-ridden fool to shove Madran so quickly or carelessly through the sea of night that lay around them. The Arrak-jin were here, and had Madran lain in the path of the rift for an instant longer, the entire world would have been devoured in a heartbeat by what had just erupted through the fissure.

What is the exact phrasing in the ancient Chikyuu-jin myth? Gurasia’s voice, coolly unconcerned. Ah, I remember. ‘Let there be light!’

A sun flared to life at a noon-high arc in the sky, accompanied by a screaming roar of power that matched Gohan’s godlike strength, and then surpassed it, leaving Vegita stunned, nauseous with horror and rage. The Tsiru-jin brat! Damn you, Kakarott! You should have killed him when you had the chance!

An instant later, the Tsiru-jin’s power sputtered and collapsed, utterly spent. The boy had held nothing back as he gave life to the new sun above them. He had not even spared the strength to keep his own heart beating. The dim, receding flicker of his failing life force was spinning lazily toward the gravity of the newborn sun.

Noooo!!! He’s falling!!! A terrified mortal shriek, Kakarott’s girl child. And then, the sense of the brat’s ki exploding upward like and incendiary rocket. Up and past the threshold of Super Saiyan. Toussan! Toussan! I’m here, but I can’t get back! Can’t breathe…

An instant later they appeared within the bubble of Vegita’s ki shield, Kakarott, his daughter, and Gurasia. There were icicles in their sweat-soaked hair and frost on their clothing. The blue tiny of suffocation

Was dimming the girl’s high color.

"…needs oxygen," Kakarott managed to say. He was gently trying to disengage his sobbing child from Frieza’s son. He shook his head. "What a time for her to finally master shunkan idou."

The sight of the girl wrapped around the unconscious Tsiru-jin in a protective embrace, her young face so full of love for the loathsome creature, sent a low, harsh growl rumbling up inside Vegita’s chest.

"Vegita," Bulma’s voice gasped from beneath him. "You’re really heavy!"