It had been a warm summer day when it had happened, a day similar to this one. The sun was shining bright and high in the sky and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. The picnic tables were set up in perfect order across the Capsule Corporation lawn, which was so green and well watered that it put most lawns in the area to shame. The food was laid out before them banquet style, and friends and family milled around the yard, talking and laughing as they helped themselves to extra platefuls of ChiChi’s cooking. Bulma had been in the center of it all, laughing as Yamucha and Oolong argued about some memory from the past. She was wearing that red dress again, looking young and beautiful in the soft fabric that stretched across her curves as though it had been painted on. As she spun around with a plate and said something to Videl, her deep blue eyes twinkled with playfulness. She looked like the average beautiful woman, laughing happily and patting her friends on the back.

Juuhachi-gou hated her at that moment, was so envious of her that she could have spit. How nice would it be to be able to laugh like that, to let all of those emotions show proudly and unabashedly? She was so normal, the epitome of a real woman in the real world. Bulma was everything that Juuhachi-gou could never be --- everything that Juuhachi-gou wanted to be. She wanted to be normal. She wanted to laugh and smile and have a history with everyone. The human part of Juuhachi-gou’s soul just ached to be in that woman’s position right then, wearing that red dress and that brilliant smile, laughing with all of her friends. Instead, she was standing on the sidelines, clutching a small plate of watermelon and strawberries for Marron, who was still just a baby. Instead of the tight red dress, there were clean khaki pants and a long sleeve tee shirt. Instead of strappy red heels, there were flat brown sandals. And instead of Bulma’s wide, flirtatious smile, Juuhachi-gou’s face was expressionless and plain. Her ice blue eyes followed the woman as she walked through the party, laughing and talking with everyone that she met.

She had even talked to her earlier, had stopped and smiled at her with sparkling deep blue eyes and asked about Marron. Bulma had commented on the fact that Marron looked so much like her mother and how tiny and precious she was. Juuhachi-gou had been surprised that the woman had talked to her, had actually noticed her. She had given a polite response and even managed a small smile, but all the while she had been seething with jealously. She would have given anything to be that normal, to be that friendly.

Juuhachi-gou sighed and kept staring at Bulma as she stopped to talk to ChiChi. There was something else to be envious of: the friendship between those two women. They were the only two members of an exclusive club: the wives of the two strongest warriors in the universe. ChiChi clashed against Bulma’s outrageous appearance in a simple, elegant dress, her hair neatly pinned up in her usual bun, but the bond between the two of them was evident. The dark haired woman laughed at something that Bulma had said, and the two of them smiled at each other knowingly. It was enough to make Juuhachi-gou sick with envy. She wanted that friendship, she wanted to belong. But her heart knew that she would never truly fit in, no matter how kind and accepting they were to her. She was just too different, and she always would be.

“Why are you staring at my wife?” A voice had asked her, hard and harsh.

She turned to find him standing no more than two feet away from her. A plate heaped full of chicken and ribs was in one hand, a beer in the other, and he was wearing a casual button down shirt and a pair of shorts. A pair of sunglasses was perched on the top of his head, and a pair of black sneakers was on his feet, his socks neatly scrunched at the tops of them. It occurred to Juuhachi-gou that he might have been able to pass for the average male, had it not been for the absolutely furious glare that was in his eyes and the superior warrior’s stance that he had taken.

Feeling as though Vejiita wouldn’t understand what she had to say, she merely ignored him and turned away. She just wanted to be back at her husband’s side again where she felt comfortable, wanted to be able to give her daughter the plate that she had just made up for her. Dealing with Vejiita wasn’t something that she had prepared herself for today and she didn’t want to have to deal with his asinine accusations and his rough, arrogant voice. But as she turned away from him, she felt the sudden pressure of his strong fingers against her arm.

“Don’t mess with me, jinzouningen trash.” He spat out, seething. The plate of food shook slightly in his hands as he leaned forward, glaring angrily into her eyes. “I’m watching you. I know what you are. I know what sleeps inside of you. And if you so much as lay a hand on that woman or my brat, I will kill you.”

Curled up in a lonely corner of her mind, Juuhachi-gou watched through the eyes of her own body as Vejiita attacked. She had never known the Saiya-jin no Ouji to go back on his word. If he intended to kill her now, he very well could. She knew her limitations, and she was quite certain that Vejiita was much more powerful than her. If she had control of her body, she would have never even attempted to fight the angry Saiya-jin warrior. He was simply too powerful for her. She didn’t want to die now, thought of her husband and her daughter as Vejiita came towards her body with a sharp kick. They were everything to her, everything that made her life even somewhat normal. And the thought of never seeing them again made her feel dizzy and sick. But perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps it would be better if Vejiita just ended her life before she could hurt anyone else. She couldn’t stop this evil that was inside of her. But maybe Vejiita could.

A glowing white rain of energy crashed through the broken remains of the city, smashing into buildings and streets and windows. Fires started once more, lighting up and flashing against the smoky air, moving across the ground with the speed and strength of a tidal wave. The blasts shook the earth quickly and violently, and the echoes of sound shot off the remaining buildings and reverberated through the city. The rain of energy continued, slamming through the remains of Satan City, following a solitary figure as he dodged through the blasts and away from the female android. The world exploded around Vejiita as he ran flew through it all, casually ducking as a sheet of steel the size of a small car went careening above his head. He dipped down low and flew under the skeleton of a bridge, tunneling through it and popping out on the other side just in time to see the building in front of him shatter in a sudden explosion of glass and metal.

He pivoted, let a new wave of energy and adrenaline course through his body, then flew straight into the sky, spiraling up towards Juuhachi-gou. He was through with being target practice for her. With those blasts, she was only making the city more smoky and dangerous than it already was. Besides, he could dodge them so easily that it wasn’t even worth the effort on her part. He moved to the side as another blast shot past him, hurtling down through the air and smashing into the city below. He could feel the shake from the explosion and felt the burning heat as the fire ripped out of the building and began eating up the remains of the city. The resulting boom made his ears ring, but he ignored it and continued towards her, completely fearless.

She met him in the air with a strong fist, drawing her arm back and connecting with his jaw. Her turned his head to the side to weaken the hit, then snapped his own arm around to grab her hand. He grasped it hard enough to hear it crack, yanked her down and drove a sharp elbow in between her shoulder blades as she flew forward. He rose up, spun around, and brought his leg with him, landing a spinning kick straight into her spine. She arched forward and then hurtled out of the sky, heading for the burning pit of fire and concrete that lay below them. He waited a short moment before chasing after her and grasping her ankle. He let her dangle there for a couple seconds, her head so to the fire that he could smell the ends of those pale blond strands burning. Then he lifted his arm and swung her up, flinging her through the air.

She managed to stop herself before she flew out of control and turned to face him with anger in her ice blue eyes. Slowly, vainly, she reached up and brushed her hair back out of her face, ignoring the black marks that her fingers left on her cheeks. Nearly her entire body was covered in ash and soot, including her long, slender hands. He supposed that he probably looked every bit as dirty, but it was amusing to see her looking less than perfect for once. Her appearance was normally so flawless and clean that it was quite satisfying for him to see that stream of blood trickling down from her mouth and the cuts and scrapes all over her smooth arms.

He brought his head up and gave her a smug look. She was fighting him with all of her strength, but it simply wasn’t enough. He would win this fight, could win it with no effort at all, and he was eager to prove that. The female jinzouningen might have been able to defeat a sleeping city and thousands of innocent, weak citizens, but she would not defeat him. Not now, not ever. He had grown since their last fight, both physically and mentally. His capacity for power and strength was much greater now and much more mature. She honestly didn’t stand a chance against him, and they both knew it. He straightened up and lifted his chin, looking down at her with dark and smirking black eyes. “Do you give up yet, tin can girl? I am much too strong for you to battle.”

Juuhachi-gou shook her head calmly, staring at him with cold, ice blue eyes. “You are weak. You were always weak.”

At her words, Vejiita suddenly paused. His heart stopped beating momentarily and his eyes grew unfocused, unblinking. His limbs grew numb instantly, coldness shooting out from his head and spreading through his veins like a disease. Where had he heard that before? Why did that phrase seem so familiar to him? Why did those words make him want to scream, and why did they make his stomach hurt so badly that it felt as though someone had shoved a fist straight through it? His mind flew back in time.

“You were always weak. You and your entire family! My father should have been King long ago. This entire thing could have been avoided if only your stubborn egotistical family could have stepped down when they should have!”

A bitter, fanatical laugh. Cold in harsh in the wind. The words struck him straight in the heart, made his head feel light and dizzy. It was his fault. All his fault. Bulma was killed because of his history, because of what had happened so long ago on Vejiita-sei. Bulma had to die because his family had been too proud, because his family had refused to give up their rule. Because of him. Because he had chosen her as his mate. Guilt, shame, regret, sadness. It all hit him at once, so strong that nearly made him sick as he kneeled in the snow, clutching her bleeding form in his hands. Then the anger came, so sharp and violent that it felt a fire had actually been lit in his chest. It was fury like nothing he had ever felt before --- the kind of blind, destructive fury that could kill a thousand warriors just with feeling and adrenaline alone. It rose up within him and built and built until he could no longer take it. The fury ripped out of him, exploded out of him, and he reached a level of power that he had never been able to attain before in his lifetime.

And when it was over, the anger did not go away. Even after she was dead, he continued to kill her, over and over again until there was nothing left of her but a mangled, bloody body. And even then he raised the sword, slashing over and over again. He kept slashing, kept cutting, kept killing. He couldn’t force himself to stop, not even when the tears finally came. Then, because his body was so overloaded with emotion and adrenaline, it finally shut down. His arms grew so weak that he could no longer hold the metal and it clamored to the snow, blood splaying across the pristine white.

He leaned his head back and howled in anger, holding his hands out in front of him and shaking droplets of blood to the snow. “I promised! Chikushoo! I fucking promised!”

Vejiita snapped his head up, his eyes full of that same, burning fury. Suddenly, he wasn’t in the ravaged Satan City, surrounded by flames and smoke and death anymore. Instead of cracked, battered pavement beneath his boots, it was soft, white snow. And instead of the burning hot wall of flames that leapt hungrily in the background, it was a blizzard. Snow whipped through the air, so painfully cold and harsh that his cheeks had begun to crack. There was blood on his hands --- there was blood everywhere. He looked up to face his enemy, but instead of seeing the ice blue eyes of the female jinzouningen, he was met with hard black eyes. Her eyes were darker than any other Saiya-jin he had ever known, like two burning black pits; they were eyes so cold and dark and evil that they might have been the very doorway to hell. When her hand rose to brush her hair back, it wasn’t pale blond strands that fell behind her ear --- it was dark and course and unruly. The hand wasn’t long and slender; it was short and calloused, gripped around the hilt of an ancient sword. Juuhachi-gou was no longer Juuhachi-gou. She was Pi.

He screamed --- the words were spoken too harshly and too quickly for even himself to understand. And then he lunged forward, his jade eyes furious and his teeth bared in a shrieking snarl.

The light in the room was dim, but it was still enough to make out the features of the young girl that sat propped up in bed. ChiChi had helped her to the shower earlier, and she had spent nearly an hour in there, but came out looking refreshed and somewhat more awake than she had been before. Her shoulder length blonde hair had been brushed back and placed into the usual pigtails, and ChiChi had given her some more of her old clothes that were small enough to fit her. She had nearly drowned in the sweatpants and sweatshirt, but it would have to do until Marron’s clothes came back out of the wash. Her leg, the one that she claimed to have hurt while she was running, had been wrapped and iced. It was now stretched out before her and propped up on a pillow. Her father was at her side, sitting in the chair that had been moved next to the bed. ChiChi stood at the doorway and looked down at them with dark, empathetic eyes.

“They aren’t going to hurt her?” Marron asked. Her timid little face looked up at ChiChi for assurance, her eyes wide. Again, ChiChi felt her heart flush with love and adoration for this small girl --- this little girl who was so brave and so understanding. It would have killed any other child, would have sent them straight into shock and tears. But Marron had taken the news of her mother with maturity. She had looked ChiChi straight in the eye and nodded her head, her eyes full of determination and courage. There was no doubt in ChiChi’s mind that the girl was crumbling inside and probably more terrified and sick than she had ever been in her life, but she faced the problem head on. She didn’t whimper, she didn’t retreat back into her shell and suffer. She just accepted it and dealt with it.

“No. They’ll be careful.” She assured the young girl. She moved to place a gentle arm around her shoulder, giving her an encouraging smile. “They know that this isn’t her fault. They just want to make sure that she doesn’t hurt anyone else.”

Marron nodded again, looking down at the bedspread. Idly, her hands began to play with the hem of the comforter, moving her fingers along the edge of it. There were no tears in her large eyes and her mouth did not pull into the deep frown that often came with crying. Instead, her voice was strong, but disconnected. She looked back up at her father suddenly in question, and moved a hand to brush a pale strand of hair away from her round face. “How many people did she kill?”

Kuririn took a moment before answering her, looking towards ChiChi for help. ChiChi gave him a look that plainly told him it was his decision. She didn’t know what the girl needed to hear, but she was certain that Kuririn was. He was her father after all, and comforting his daughter was one of the things that Kuririn did best. He gave her a sad smile and patted her head, smoothing the pale blond hair back away from her face. “We don’t know, Marron-chan. I think the important thing is that we’re going to make her better. They’re going to get both your mother and Juunana-gou and fix it so that they’re back to normal again and they aren’t going to hurt anyone.”

She nodded once more, didn’t meet his eyes. “And what about all of the people that she already hurt?”