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The Young Prince
Chapter 8
Finding the large prey needed for Saiyan appetites required going some distance from the camp since Radditz and Vegeta had decimated the local wildlife. The Saiyans demonstrated no interest in sustaining the existing populations. They just killed whatever they caught, and they ate whatever they killed. Zarbon wondered, not for the first time, how it was anything edible managed to survive on the same planet as the Saiyans. The sparse population probably helped; the Saiyans seemed to reproduce slowly, and despite living on an unusually large terrestrial planet, numbered only a few million.
He tracked down the boar on his third foray, killing it cleanly with a ki stroke through the neck. Flying back with the head cradled in the crook of his arm and the body dangling by two legs from his hand, Zarbon tried to plan his next training session. The Prince had never been calm, but the last few days he'd been especially excitable, even for him. Maybe bringing him out in the wilderness among prey had been a mistake.
Shifting the weight of his kill, Zarbon landed gracefully by the firepit and arranged the boar next to the other two animals from his earlier hunts. The Saiyans were in the river, just behind the space pod, splashing and bathing. At least they have some concept of personal hygiene. Sighing, then catching himself -- Vegeta was right, what an annoying habit he'd picked up -- Zarbon pushed his cloak behind his shoulders and, forming his ki into sharp angles around his fist, began to butcher the boar.
"How do you do that?"
Zarbon did not look up from his task, as his scouter had already identified the approaching ki as belonging to Radditz. Of the three Saiyans, Radditz's power level, while respectable, was by far the lowest. "Do what?"
"There's no blood." Radditz's tone was disapproving.
Holding up his fist, Zarbon let the ki aura glow for a minute, revealing a double-edged, cutting shape enclosing his hand. "I cauterize as I cut. Here." Extending a tendril of ki energy, Zarbon used it to flip the boar's head toward Radditz's voice. He went back to cutting, hearing the flat sound of flesh against flesh when Radditz caught it. Wait, I shouldn't have done that. We're probably married now...
Hazarding a glance over his shoulder, Zarbon saw the big Saiyan was ignoring him, instead turning the animal's head over in his hands and frowning at the neat burn just under the skull. Radditz was dressed in his customary leather and metal tunic, his flank guards slung over a shoulder, his muscular arms and legs bare of the usual leather bands he strapped around them, his knee-long hair, damp and curling, only falling to his thighs. "Feh," Radditz finally grunted, dropping the head. "Waste of good blood."
Zarbon finished quartering the boar, selected a section, and slowly infused it with ki to half-cook it. He thrust it into the smoldering fire under some flat rocks he'd arranged to form a make-shift oven and stood up. "I'm heading up river for a while. You boys distribute the rest of the meat however you like."
Radditz said, lazily, "We aren't good enough to swim with?"
"Far be it for me to demonstrate the basic inadequacies of the Saiyan physique," said Zarbon, his even voice as close to a snap as it ever got.
Radditz laughed out loud.
They're all cracked. Annoyed, Zarbon began to levitate away.
There was a tug on his foot, and his upward progress stopped. Wondering what he could have snagged, he glanced down and saw Radditz was closer than he thought.
It was an instant before he realized the Saiyan had loosely wrapped the tip of his tail around Zarbon's ankle.
"Let go or die," said Zarbon, quietly.
Radditz looked up at him, steadily, a half-smiling curve against his mouth. "I was part of the off-world troops for ten years," he said, a seeming non-sequitur. "My father's a squad commander, and I thought I might replace him, eventually."
"I'm sure the two of you went to a thousand worlds and destroyed them all, like good little Saiyans." Power began to crackle around Zarbon's arms and torso. "Which means lots of entities wait to greet you in hell."
"Your breed is rare, Zarbon." Radditz's voice was soft, without mockery. "But I've met your kind before." The grip on his ankle tightened fractionally before the tail slid away and Radditz released him. Zarbon shot up several feet, making sure he was out of reach of every conceivable appendage (prehensile or otherwise), but Radditz's tail was behind the Saiyan now, fluffed up, lashing.
"I'm not here to indulge your taste for the exotic."
Radditz grinned at that. Ferally.
From his vantage point Zarbon could see the young prince emerging from the river (moving, he noticed with satisfaction, very gingerly for a Saiyan), Nappa already out and heading toward his capsule. "You're about to have some high ki company."
Crossing his arms, Radditz did not answer.
Zarbon heard a hiss, and realized it came from his own throat. Damn the monkey, he's getting to me; even Vegeta can't do that-- Pushing his reptilian side down, Zarbon spun off into the gathering dusk.
Radditz remained where he was until the Prince's peevish voice, demanding to know if that was all that was available for dinner, shook him out of his reverie.
Sitting in the close confines of his one-man space pod, Nappa looked at the reports scrolling across the communication screen and frowned. As Commander in Chief he was in charge of more than the various branches of domestic guards; he also directed the off-world forces. It was his duty as well to train the heir, once a viable one was produced to the King's specifications. He'd done his best over the last decade for Prince Vegeta, teaching him to block, to look for the unguarded throat, to force ki into streaming, disintegrating energy, to kill without thought or mercy. Nappa had been with the Prince the first time the boy went oozaru at just under two years of age, brought here to the sparsely populated interior of the Southern Continent so he would not wreck the capital in his infant rage. And Nappa had been there seven years later, when Vegeta had gazed on the moon for a second time and remembered himself after the transformation, containing his destruction to the condemned prisoners provided by the King for his son's education.
But the student had surpassed all of his teachers, and Vegeta had done the unthinkable, the nearly unforgivable -- turned to an alien for more advanced training than any Saiyan could provide. The results were admittedly impressive; an improved basic combat technique, that awesome rapid-fire ki attack, and a steadily-increasing ki that, if Nappa's scouter had registered the readings correctly before being broken, now outstripped that of Zarbon's mammalian form. All Vegeta needed to do was decisively crush this teacher as well, and the alien taint would be gone from Vejiitasei as if it had never existed.
The alien was going to get a nasty shock in just a few more days, thought Nappa in cruel satisfaction. Such was the natural order on Vejiitasei; the student killed the teacher, the son killed the father, the heir killed the King. Killing someone who had power over you proved your own power.
Of course, Nappa's thoughts continued, with as many sons as he had, they would have to fight each other to the death first to see who got the honor of killing him. Hell, his one daughter was the most ferocious one of the lot; the honor to fight him to the death would likely go to her.
Nappa's lips parted in a savage grin. It would be a worthy contest, when the time came.
He turned his attention back to the screen and the disturbing reports from Rigel Seven.
Leaning against the capsule, Vegeta gnawed on a bone while he absently listened to the sound of Nappa's voice. Radditz was foul company at the best of times, and the last two days he'd been positively monosyllabic. Although the condition was rare, Vegeta recognized the early stages of rut in his guard. Had they been in the capital, he would have sent Radditz away, telling him not to come back until he'd either mated or gotten over it; out here, it was easier to just walk away himself, leaving the warrior staring morosely into the fire. When I reach breeding age, I am not going to be such an idiot, thought Vegeta, cracking the bone open to suck at the marrow. Of course, the rutting urge had long since been weeded out of the royal line and, anyway, breeding was not an option for him. The succession was too important to leave to random genetics. It had been generations since the last King took a wife. And look what happened to him; to them. Definitely not worth it. No, he would be provided with a selection of sterilized concubines when he was of age, descented to reduce the possibility of genuine attraction, mentally programmed to self-destruction should the Prince fall in love with one of them anyway--
Wondering why he was suddenly feeling depressed, Vegeta scowled at the broken ends of the animal bone in his hands and tossed the pieces toward the river.
"They didn't renew the oath of fealty? Are they crazy?"
Vegeta put a hand on his mid-riff, feeling the roll of something under his skin that was still not quite right. That was probably why he continued to have a metallic taste in his mouth, although at least he was no longer heaving blood. While most of the injuries Zarbon had inflicted on him with that knee to the abdomen were closing, there was a slow, unnatural pulse behind one kidney that was most likely internal bleeding. Bastard really did get my spleen, he thought in detached amusement. Bet he did that on purpose--
"What's the word from the scouts?"
A static-obscured voice responded to Nappa's question, indicating that two scouts had been sent, but neither had reported back.
"Have they at least paid tribute?"
A negative.
"Feh. Rigel Seven's a nice planet -- we'll get a bundle for it. Another one."
Rigel Seven?
Vegeta focused in on Nappa's voice, listening as his former teacher gave orders for the deployment of troops -- adult troops -- to a planet that was only a system away.
Vegeta was being quiet. Vegeta was listening.
Which was enough unlike him to make Zarbon very, very nervous.
The training area, between Vegeta's powering up on the hillside and his temper-tantrum the day before, was pock-marked with scorch marks and a crater or two. Finding one unscathed tree, Vegeta sat down under it with his back against the trunk, crossed his ankles and closed his eyes. Leaning against the tree with his arms folded, feeling a bit strange, Zarbon struggled to remember half-forgotten words from his childhood training and put them in a context a Saiyan could comprehend. He spoke of self-knowledge, of pulling power from a center, of a clear understanding of one's own limits, and how to make sure they were real limits, not imaginary ones. He discussed ki techniques, of observing other fighters and learning from them, making their techniques one's own. He explained the ultimate goal of self-knowledge, as his own sensei explained it to him: "It doesn't matter what you fight for, or even if you fight for anything. Just fight from a pure heart."
At that, Vegeta stirred and asked a question. "And if your heart is pure evil--?"
"That's still pure, baka."
"Do not," said the Prince, dangerously, as he opened one eye to look up at Zarbon, "call me an idiot."
"Oh, is that what that means? You Saiyans use it so often, I assumed it was an endearment."
Snorting, Vegeta shut his eyes again. "I find myself questioning the ultimate purity of your heart."
"Purity doesn't mean good or evil, Vegeta. It just -- eh, I'm no good at this--"
Another snort from the Prince.
"I find my purity," said Zarbon, doggedly, "in the technique itself. In the clean execution of the stances, in the organization of attack and counter-attack. In my case, it doesn't matter what the fight is for, whether it's a tournament or an actual battle; the performance is all that matters to me."
"Heh. Back to that center stuff again."
"It's important, Vegeta. It's why I make a good mercenary, in fact; the moral questions of why my employers do what they do are meaningless to me. Good thing, since you Saiyans are considered one of the scourges of the universe."
Vegeta smiled slightly at that, but his face quickly returned to its customary scowl. "Do you find," he queried (too casually, if Zarbon had been paying attention to his tone), "that having a 'center' helps you in battle?"
"You saw how I dealt with you in the tournament, Vegeta. Even though you surprised me a couple of times, I was able to counter." "I mean a real battle, like in a war."
"Yes," said Zarbon quietly after a pause. "Having something that clears your mind in the face of certain death is remarkably effective in avoiding termination, although you can still be simply overpowered by a higher ki. You saw that happen to me, just a few months back. Let me ask you a question, Vegeta. Why did you kill all your opponents at the tournament?"
"I didn't kill you, baka. Or that four-eyed freak..."
"Gurudo has some sort of technique that lets him move very quickly. We can both do that, too, of course, by concentrating ki briefly, but the way he does it is different. Pity you didn't study him long enough to figure it out. Jiisu had a brilliant ki attack he called the Crusher Ball. Didn't give him the chance to show it to you, did you?"
"I didn't give him the chance to kill me, no."
"The power restrictions were under what it would take to kill you with a ki attack."
"I guess Rikuum forgot to read that paragraph in the rule-book, eh?"
A tight grimace acknowledged the barb. "Feh. He has no finesse," grumbled Zarbon.
"Yes, your all-powerful love for the technique doesn't seem to have rubbed off on him." After a pause, Vegeta casually offered, "The only time I saw an attack I wanted to duplicate, it was one of yours."
"And you saw it because I lasted more than sixty seconds, right? If fighting's what you want to do, Vegeta, you should at least let your opponent fight."
There was silence between them until the curiosity got to Zarbon and he asked, "What did I do that you wanted to try?"
The Prince smirked. "I wondered how long that would take! You -- shouted at my ki blast and diverted it."
"Ah, that's right; you were about to blow up the grandstand. You know, if you'd had a center to focus on and channeled your temper, you might have been able to defeat me. That was before I had discovered your many, many technical flaws." Vegeta growled low in his throat. Zarbon chuckled and relented. "It was more of a defensive block than an attack. I angled my ki to divert your blast from the bystanders. It's not unlike forming an energy ball, but since it's just an extension of your aura it doesn't leave your body and it does thin your shield out elsewhere. The shout helped me focus properly since I didn't have time to think, just to react. I can show you some ki manipulations, if you like."
"Really?"
"Really," Zarbon mocked. "I know you Saiyans prefer to just blow things away, but precise ki control is also a very valuable technique, Vegeta."
Vegeta leaped to his feet, suddenly eager, and happily spent the rest of the session learning to contort his ki aura into different shapes around his body.
Read The Young Prince: Chapter Nine
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