“What does it feel like right before you fight?” ChiChi asked, and she raised her eyes to meet his as she handed him another dish to dry, gently placing it in his palms.

He tilted his head to the side as he thought, rubbing the smooth, white plate with the warm blue towel she had given him earlier. It was late in the evening, and he had offered to help her with the dishes. He must have been trying to make up for something, to heal some wound that he had caused earlier by offering her his help at one of her many, many tasks. He couldn’t remember what it was exactly that he did, but he remembered the crestfallen look on his wife’s face, and the way that her eyes had seemed to shine with tears. He hated that he made her sad sometimes, hated making her angry as well. As far as he knew, it was his job to keep her happy and safe, and sometimes it seemed like he was only doing half of his job. It felt good to be with her now though, completing such a simple task together on a warm summer night.

“Before I fight?” He wondered out loud. She nodded and handed him another dish, her hands softly touching his as she handed it to him. He smiled at her, his mind suddenly alive with the memory of every single fight he had ever had. “My fingers start to tingle, I guess, like my body is getting ready, and right before it’s about to start, I always get this really cold, really empty feeling inside. It only lasts for a moment, and it’s really indescribable….It’s almost like….like….” He moved the dish around, searching for the appropriate word.

“Fear?” ChiChi suggested calmly, as she scrubbed at one of the pots she had used to cook earlier.

He thought for a moment, slowly drying the dish in his strong hands. “Hai.” He affirmed, and searched for her beautiful eyes. “Fear.”

As Gokuu stood there in the snow, his fingers tingling and his body tight with anticipation, he felt that very same feeling again, and it rushed through him like a wave, slamming to a stop at his heart. It was never fear for himself, of course. His own life was never something that he feared to lose. It was the lives of others that he worried about, protecting the people that were dear to him was much more important than saving his own neck. He knew there were people in the group there that weren’t able to defend themselves, and he was frightened that in all the rush of fighting, something might possibly happen to them. Without any conscious decision, Gokuu slowly backed Kuririn behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place, wanting to keep him safe. He could feel the enemy all around him, and though he couldn’t see them at all, he was well aware that they were there on all sides, circling around them like lions. He could also feel, though he didn’t know how, that his enemies were Saiya-jins. It was there in his blood and in his heart, an instant recognition of his own kind, as they circled around them in the snow, still out of view. His eyes sought Vejiita’s quickly, and he found the same look of recognition of Vejiita’s regal face. He had been very adamant about the fact that their enemies were not Saiya-jin, but he had surely realized that he was wrong now.

“What’s going on?” Bulma asked, in a wavering voice. She reached to her side for the gun that she had holstered there, a pearly white Capsule Corporation G-6, with a barrel roughly the size of her own arm. “They’re surrounding us? Why can’t we see them?”

“Shut up, woman!” Vejiita snapped at her, but in a move that Gokuu found very unlike the Saiya-jin prince, Vejiita nonchalantly moved in front of her to shield her from harm.

As Gokuu’s eyes scanned the area, he became suddenly aware that the snow surrounding them was moving in a very unnatural way, almost separately, in chunks. His eyes narrowed, keeping an intense gaze on a single snowflake before him. As he suspected, it stayed the same height in the air, not falling at all. It was around this time that he noticed the snow had taken on shapes, figures almost. The Saiya-jin soldiers surrounding them were in perfect camouflage, designed to look exactly like the falling snow around them, and they were closing in fast.

“Look out!” He cried, and just about the same time he cried out, everyone else seemed to notice that the snow had taken on a life of it’s own as well. Unconsciously, the women were herded into the center of the circle, and the men stood on the outside, crouched down into fighting stances.

There was a moment of stillness and silence, and the soldiers surrounding them did not move. Then a solitary figure strolled out in front of all of them, smaller than the rest of the camouflaged Saiya-jins around it. Before Gokuu’s eyes, the camouflage seemed to fade up, starting with the heavy black boots that were on her small feet, two legs appeared, pale and long, adorned with armor at the shins and knees, then a black cloak and breastplate were reveled, and lastly her face. She stared out at them from under her hood for a moment, dead black eyes looking out from under heavy bangs and slanting eyebrows. At first, Gokuu was struck by how angry she looked, how purely evil she seemed. She made Vejiita look almost pleasant, with the way her mouth was set in a small frown. It occurred to him that with her size and stature, she couldn’t possibly be more than eighteen years of age, merely just a child. There was something very commanding about her presence however, as if she were used to giving orders and having them be carried out immediately. She glared at them harshly, not moving an inch, not speaking a word.

It was an impatient Vejiita that finally broke the silence, his deep voice cutting through the cold winter air like a knife. “Are you going to just stand there, or are we going to fight?” He demanded suddenly, a large vein standing out on his forehead, his muscles bound and tense around his body.

The girl turned toward him with an indignant look, but still she did not move. “Drop the camouflage.” She commanded in a quiet voice. All around her, the soldier’s camouflage of falling snow slowly melted from the feet up, revealing nearly a hundred soldiers surrounding them, all with guns aimed straight at them. No soldiers stood behind her or close to her, and she stood alone and unprotected, her hands relaxed at her side. A thin, long black tail appeared from under her cloak and wrapped around her waist, and at this movement, all eyes went to Vejiita, seeing the proof of Saiya-jin existence right there. Without any kind of command or movement from the girl, all of the soldiers suddenly crouched down into a fighting position and clicked their weapons into place on their shoulders, fingers ready on the triggers.

“Are you so willing to fight now, human?” She asked Vejiita, and took one step closer to him, her cape blowing behind her in the wind. “Or do you surrender?”

“We will never surrender.” Gokuu answered for her, and her sharp eyes switched to his face, narrowing slightly as she took in his appearance. “We came here for a purpose, and I doubt any of us are willing to give up on that, just because you have a few silly guns pointed at us.”

She nodded silently, and held out a gloved hand, stretching it before her and then snapping it back into a fist. “Very well, then. Let’s see how well you fare against real Saiya-jins soldiers.”

She crouched down low, then sprang up in a light, experienced jump. She shouted something to the soldiers that Gokuu didn’t understand, but somehow he felt that it was a Saiya-jin call to battle, in a language that Gokuu had only heard in his dreams and flashbacks of vague memories. The soldiers snapped to attention at once, and flew at the group in the center of the circle, kicking up snow and ice and flinging it through the freezing air. Gokuu backed away to tighten the circle around the women, and prepared himself to fight, powering up in a flame of red. Several soldiers attacked him at once, one from both sides and two from the front. He kept both of his feet firm on the ground, and dodged their punches and blows easily, moving quicker than the eye could catch. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Vejiita, Kuririn, Gohan and Juunana-gou doing the same, and most of them succeeding at the task.

A lucky blow caught him in the shoulder and he spun around to kick high to the temple of his attacker, while blocking another hit with his left arm. One of his enemies went down hard into the snow, skidding face first through the white, and slumped there, unmoving. At this, several more soldiers fell upon Gokuu, as if sensing that he was a bigger threat than that he imagined at first. Twelve of them attacked Gokuu at once, and though he was experienced enough to be able to handle the fierceness of a quick fight, and felt himself drifting away from the circle, concentrating too hard on the movement around him. With a growing uneasiness, he noticed that this left the women in the center of the circle in a lot of danger. He turned back to look, hoping that the Saiya-jin soldiers had not attacked them yet, and was caught by a very strong blow to the temple which sent him tumbling through the air and into the snow, his limbs landing awkwardly underneath him. He spit a mouthful of blood out, and ignored the stinging cold on his face, snapping his head up to look. The Saiya-jin girl stood above him in the air, then floated softly down to the ground, her cloak flapping behind her as she descended, a sword glinting at her side.

There was a blinding light, and the girl turned her head to the left to see what was happening, only to be swallowed up by a blast of sparkling white energy. As Gokuu sprang to his feet and turned to the left, he saw Vejiita standing straight and proud, his arms still stretched out in his attack position. Gokuu nodded at Vejiita, who ignored him as usual, and turned to kick the nearest soldier viciously in the stomach, causing him to double over in pain. The girl that Vejiita had blasted landed deep into the snow and sprang up, shaking the flakes off of her quickly, her eyes afire, glaring at the Saiya-jin prince.

Gokuu lightly ran along the snow, and flew up into the air, tumbling to avoid a blast from one of the Saiya-jin soldier’s guns. A twisting blue ray of light shot past his ear, narrowly missing him as he flew, and he dropped down to the ground immediately falling upon his attack. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the women carefully, deciding if they needed to be helped or not. In the center of the circle, Juuhachi-gou and Videl were trying their best to surround and protect Bulma, who really had no fighting experience at all. An eager Saiya-jin soldier approached them quickly, his tail waving relaxed behind them, obviously not viewing them as a threat. He stood before Juuhachi-gou with a look of contempt on his face and reached his arm back in an arch to punch, aiming for the temple. The female jinzouningen stared at him with cool blue eyes until just the moment before he was about to connect with her head, then ducked, her short blond hair raising up behind her as she drove a hard fist through the center of his armor, cracking it and connected solidly with real flesh. The Saiya-jins eye’s bulged, and his mouth dropped open, looking up only in time to see the bottom of Videl’s boot slam into his face, shattering his nose. With a renewed strength and confidence, Bulma crouched down to the ground and set her gun, kneeling in the snow as she yanked back the catch and steadied it before her. Gokuu had been with her when she demonstrated the gun’s capabilities, and he knew that if any Saiya-jin came within three feet of her, he was going to be toast. The beam from the gun had blasted straight through a solid oak as if it had been a piece of tissue paper. Confident that the women would be able to take care of themselves, he flung himself into battle, only slightly dismayed at the number of opponents before him.

“Fire the guns!” Gokuu heard the young Saiya-jin girl command, though he couldn’t be sure where her voice was coming from. It was all a blur of hands, legs, and snow before him, and the cries of pain and battle around him were almost hypnotic.

Vejiita flew at his side, and looked as though he were about to say something when a sudden twisting blue beam of light caught him in the back. Vejiita’s entire body seemed to shake, then froze up as if he had been shot with ice. Gokuu watched in horror as his friend’s eyes rolled back into his head and he dropped like a stone to the ground below him. He hit hard, and snow flew up around him, mounding on each side and creating a Vejiita-sized crater in the deep snow. The Saiya-jin prince did not move.

“Vejiita!” Gokuu cried, and he raced down, narrowly avoided another curling blue beam, as it shot past his arm, nearly catching him. The air suddenly seemed to be full of rays, twisting on all sides of him like lazers, as the Saiya-jin soldiers below him aimed and shot. Gokuu dodged as best as he could, flying high and low in the air, flipping around to avoid the blasts from the guns. Below him, his friends fell on by one into the snow, struck by beams that they couldn’t possibly avoid, until all of them lie face first in the cold, unmoving and quiet. In a fit of fury, Gokuu realized that there was no way he was going to reach the ground and help them if he was being shot at in this manner. In a split second, he made his decision, and reached into his heart for a moment, triggering a transformation that had become so familiar to him that it was basically nothing.

What took only half of a second to the eyes of anyone watching the battle, took what seemed like a lifetime to Gokuu. A scene from every fight he had ever been a part of flashed through his mind like bits of lightening, moments of pain and grief and victory. Then straight from his soul came a raging fire that surged through his body, tearing up muscles and bones and boiling the blood in his veins. It raced through every part of him, from the very core of his body to the tips of his fingers and toes, radiating a golden light that seemed to sparkle in the white of the snow. He saw red for a moment, and he closed his eyes, opening them again to reveal a burning jade, pupil-less eye, beneath slanting golden eyebrows. He let out a cry of rage, and the power burst out of him, surrounding him in a bright gold glow, afire in radiance and light. The color flew from him, a golden flame rose from him, and shot across the snow in waves of sunshine yellow.

On the ground, the Saiya-jin soldiers froze, some dropping their guns and their jaws, staring at Gokuu in amazement. A few began to shake with the sheer power that they saw, and the fear that was running cold in their stomachs. The girl Saiya-jin, who was standing at command in front, looked up at him with eyes full of fear and wonder. She brought her tail in tight around her waist, shaking. “Masaka!” She gasped. “Super Saiya-jin!”

Gokuu wasted no time, barreling straight at her with a blast that knocked her twenty feet away in the air and sent her skidding across the smooth surface of the snow like a hockey puck. The girl gave one single cry, flipping several times before she landed in a heap, unmoving. The other Saiya-jins, too shocked and stunned to move, immediately dropped their guns and simply stared at Gokuu’s brilliant gold form, their eyes wide and full of fear. He wavered in the air for a moment, then flew to Vejiita’s side, crouching down beside him in the snow.

“Vejiita-san!” He cried, and tried to shake him awake, but he remained unmoving, though Gokuu could plainly see that he was still alive and full of life. Gokuu deliberated for a moment, not quite sure what to do. There was no way he could carry off every single one of his friends to safety, but there was also no way that he could fight an entire army alone and come out victorious. Thinking hard, he shed his Super Saiya-jin brilliance and reverted back to his normal form, his hair falling back down into his normal position and color. Still wary, the Saiya-jin soldiers around him backed up, not about to attack. He felt that if he took care of the young Saiya-jin girl, the rest of the army would back off, but he couldn’t be too sure. He didn’t want to leave any of his friends behind, but he knew that no matter how strong he was, he couldn’t possibly carry that many people in his arms. He looked up into the sky for an answer, and was surprised to see another female Saiya-jin figure rushing down towards him.

Chapter 57
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