Returning to my island laboratory no longer requires me to use an aircraft. No longer working for Frieza, or fighting along my fellow Saiyajin, I’m allowed to take pleasure in flight for the first time. I can’t find anything to rejoice in. My flight there is direct and without a shred of amusement. The irony isn’t lost upon me.
Few of them had anything to say to me. The question of how I became a Saiyajin was dropped in lieu of my transformation to Super-Saiyajin, after which everyone just looked at me in shock. Except for Kakarot, who quietly and sheepishly asked if I’d ever want to practice with him later, and Trunks, who gleefully congratulated me with giggles and laughter.
Super-Saiyajin. I never dreamed of gaining this manner of power, couldn’t even conceive that such a thing was possible. Vejita aspired his entire life to attain it, struggled and tortured himself to force the metamorphoses. Gaining it for him was a triumphant achievement, a testament to his willpower.
But for me, it’s hollow. Empty. In that moment I felt the power to crush atoms and level planets and found I would trade it all to have the love of my husband back. I have belittled everything he struggled for in a handful of months, and I could see that in his face as the flicker of my gold aura washed across his features. And, I suspect, such a thing wouldn’t even have been possible had I not used the genetic material of a Super-Saiyajin to begin with.
Turning on the lights as I land and enter, the absence of the time machine is immediately noticed. I’ve wondered every now and then whether or not my machine was actually found by another Saiyajin and not incinerated. Be interesting to know where they would go if they actually figured out how to work it. Not really worth dwelling on. I can’t undo the past. Even with a time machine, I can’t go back to the person I was. I can’t undo my mistakes, but I can attempt to correct them.
I turn to the splicer and begin powering up the generators. I snipped off a lock of my hair before I stepped into this machine the first time in case something went wrong and I had to try and mend my body. I kept it here in a small box below the control panel. Opening it up, I take the strands out move them between my thumb and forefinger while marveling at the color.
Was I ever really the woman to whom this belonged? Was I ever that innocent? Did that other life, did Buruma really ever exist? Was she just a facet of an alternate timeline, a possibility of who I might have been if life had worked out differently? Have I always been Kansha, who dreamed a past for herself to make up for one she despised?
I smile. It's a nice fantasy. Too bad it's nothing but a lie.
I don’t foresee any problems reversing the physical aspects of what I’ve done. It would likely take a few months for everything to revert back to being a complete human being again, just as the transformation to Saiyajin necessitated. I can remove the Saiyajin genetics and replace them with my prior, human ones.
The question, of course, is do I really wish for that to happen? While it is possible for me to turn my back upon everything I have become, I don’t know if that will solve anything. The damage has been done, both in deeds performed at my hands and in the eyes of the people that know me. Nothing would be undone except the purely physical changes.
The generators are ready. I can’t find the desire to place the hairs into the chamber, however. I think, in the end, I like the person I am now. It’s hard me for me to admit that, to admit that despite the bloodshed and the violence I have endured I have been bettered by it. Transformations are tricky things. If you believe that all experiences that have led you to become the person you are, and understand that changing any tiny bit of it would prevent that person from coming into being, you can come to accept that it is useless to ponder how things could be different if those experiences had never occurred.
I became Kansha because I wanted to. Not because I feared rejection from my husband, though I’m certain that was one of the reasons I wanted to change. But it wasn’t the only reason, and I need to be honest with myself about it.
“What is this ridiculous looking device?” My husband’s voice comes from behind. I hadn’t been paying close enough attention to sense his chi or hear his footsteps.
I turn to him. I am pleased to see that his rage has quelled somewhat.
I smile lightly. “The means that I became a Saiyajin.”
“Really?” He looks it over with a skeptical glance. “I bet you’re exceedingly proud of your creativity aren’t you?”
That was said with no small amount of sarcasm, but I nod anyway.
“Yes, as a matter-of-fact I am.”
He smirks. “Science. Technology. That is no way to become a warrior.”
I keep my distance, shrugging. “Science gave me the potential to become a warrior. The rest I learned as any other warrior might.”
He doesn’t appear to have a ready answer to that. He looks the gene-splicer over again.
“There are plenty of warriors on earth that don’t resort to such drastic measures,” he finally says softy.
“And how many of them,” I ask, “do you honestly respect? Kuririn? Videl?”
His disdain shows.
“Be honest, Vejita,” I continue, “I could have become as good as either of them, and you’d have still refused to take me seriously. I had to become something more than that.”
“I never asked you to do this,” he shakes his head. “You need not have changed for me.”
I nod. I know this now, but not then. That’s as close to saying ‘I love you’ as he is capable of saying.
“I’m sorry I doubted you,” I mumble.
Another silence while the generators hum in the background.
“Foolish woman,” he says beneath his breath. “I could have killed you, you know.”
I nod. “I know. But I had to prove to you-
“You needed to prove nothing.” He slams his fist into a spare table, shattering it. He immediately looks regretful, and steps away from the debris.
“I don’t understand,” he begins quietly, “how you could go into the past and serve Frieza.”
I chuckle before I’m able to suppress it. He looks quickly up at me.
“Clearly,” I say carefully, “I didn’t intend to do that. My time machine was destroyed and I had no other choice but to work with the others. Do you really believe I would have done it if I felt another alternative were present?”
“And how did you return home, then?” He folds his arms over each other.
“I used the dragonballs on Namek,” I reply. Before he can retort, since I already know it what he’d say, I continue, “But I didn’t think about them initially. I thought I was trapped, because I had gone into the past with the machine and had planned on returning with it. I was alone. I was surrounded by people expecting me to act as a warrior. Somewhere in all of that my knowledge of the dragonballs got lost. I was despairing, Vejita, don’t you see? I didn’t think I’d ever get back to you.”
He walks over to the gene-splicer, apparently accepting my explanation.
“And how does this thing work?”
I take a deep breath as he turns back to me. “It changes the genetic sequence of the occupant’s DNA. All it needs is sample of the changes you desire.”
His eyes narrow. “And where did you get this sample? Kakarot? Gohan?”
“No,” I mumble. That would have angered him far more than the truth will.
I hope.
“From you,” I say quietly. He looks on the verge of snarling.
“I wanted to be closer to you,” I keep talking, “and I knew that if I was going to become a Saiyajin, I was going to have the blood of princes coursing through me.”
His lips, thankfully, almost predictably, quiver, and then calm.
“So, that is where your power comes from,” he now smirks. “You have stolen my power.”
I shake my head. “If it was power I was after, I would have used Kakarot. Getting a sample from him would have been simple.”
Brutal truth, but truth nonetheless. He knows this and doesn’t contradict me.
“But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to know that the two of us were joined by something that could never be taken away.”
“Nonetheless,” he scowls, “you took my power to become what you are. You’re nothing but a cheap carbon-copy. A shade of something not as strong as the original.”
I bite my lip. Brutal truth in his favor now.
“So it would seem,” I admit quietly. “I thought you would want a warrior for a mate. So I decided that I would become that for you.”
He puts his hands on the gene-splicer. “You’re powering this up for something? Thinking of becoming human again?”
“I’d still be a warrior now,” I shrug, “even if I wasn’t Saiyajin. That part of me cannot be taken away. I’d be a human warrior, but since you seem unhappy-
“And just how are you planning on becoming human again?” He shoots me a slightly threatening glance. While it does not intimidate me, it does catch me off-guard, and I pause.
“This,” I hold up the strands of my hair as I speak. “My old genetic sequencing. It’s just a matter of recombining the proper…” I fall silent, lowering my arm.
Shaking my head, I add, “Never mind. It’s not important. I’m not certain that I want-
I don’t get the words out before light shoots out of his hands and incinerates the strands of hair in my hand. Opening my fingers, I see there isn’t anything left. Just a little black dirt that the heat would have chemically damaged beyond use.
“Don’t even think you’re getting out of this that easily,” he snarls.
For a moment, I stand there in disbelief. After all his posturing, he’s trapping me in this form?
“You want to be closer to me,” he snarls again as he walks towards me, “and then you think you can just walk away from this?”
His chi is powering up. I don’t know how much power I’ll have as a Super-Saiyajin, but I think he’s right and it wouldn’t be equal to his. Regardless, the wounds I’ve suffered already are enough to give him a distinct advantage. Besides, there’s no guarantee I can even summon that kind of power on demand yet.
“You think I’m going to forgive you for this?”
He’s almost to me. I almost adopt a defensive stance, and think better of it. It would only be showing weakness and fright.
“Well,” he states, his breath hot against my cheeks, “you have no idea how wrong you are!”
His chi flares and explodes, and he goes gold on me. I close my eyes as the force of the impact hits me. My chest aches with the pressure of his arms as they squeeze, pressing the air out of my lungs and I gasp.
I feel the some of the rock wall shattering against my back as I’m carried through it. Then into the open air. I’m dimly aware that my arms are still trapped and that I’m still being…
Carried out into the open air by him.
“I’m going to test your limits in ways you’ve never even pondered them being explored,” he says darkly into my ear as the ground gets farther and farther beneath us. “And then we’ll see if you have what it takes to be the mate of a Saiyajin Prince. If’ you’re strong enough to endure everything I’m about to put you through, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll understand what it means to be a true Saiyajin woman.”
I now have arms that can crush planets.
None of the other warriors have what I have attained. Kakarot could crush Chi-Chi. Eighteen could do the same to Kuririn. But not me. I have put myself on a plane of existence akin to that of my lover and once that was understood, and proven, my life became much more interesting.
True to his word, what Vejita put me through was nothing short of brutal. But I took it. I took every moment of it, and never backed down. Even when my body wanted to fail me, I would not give in and I would not submit. I am even proud to say that I made him find limits he didn’t know he possessed as well.
In the end, though, I understood.
In the end, we have something between us that no one on this planet has any hope of ever comprehending. Passion on a scale that cannot be measured by poetry or rhyme, desire that cannot be tamed by word , and lust that cannot be captured in prose.
That’s what happens when gods make love.
It’s a pity that there isn’t a structure on this world strong enough to contain us. Perhaps I’ll think of designing one someday. If I find the time.
Right now, however, I find myself readying to entertain guests. A strange ritual that once I was quite accustomed to, and that now I find rather boorish and mundane. There is some comfort, small as it is, that I’m doing something Buruma would have done, even if Kansha wishes there were servants to do it for her.
Chores. Errands. These are not tasks fit for a warrior.
Nothing fit for a Saiyajin Queen.
I sense their chi long before they are within earshot. I bet they think they have something similar to what Vejita and I possess, Gohan and Videl. But they are young, and have time to understand the folly of that way of thinking.
“Hey, Videl,” I hear from behind the door as they approach. Gohan’s voice. “Are you doing something different with your hair?”
“What do you mean?” Videl responds innocently.
“It just looks,” Gohan mumbles in the awkward voice he inherited from his father, “different.”
I imagine her smiling. I can picture the exact curve of her lips as she replies in the secretive manner a woman does, “Oh, do you like it?”
She winks at me once as I open up to the door and let them inside.
Perhaps, one day, sooner than either of them can imagine, they might understand.