Flash Forward 2: The Undead Past

53 Years After the Birth of the Super-Saiyan

His early years were spent in the Palace, playing tag with the Captain's children among the twisted plants that stretched toward the dim brown skies in the royal garden, playing more serious games with the Captain himself. He rarely saw his father, the King. Nor did he know, at least not consciously, that the King had taken complete charge for the first year of the little boy's life, feeding him and changing him and teaching him his first words, coaxing him to crawl, coaxing him to walk.

But when one of the galactic borders threatened to collapse the King raced there, intending to either coerce the rebellious natives into compliance by the sheer force of his presence, or to use his awesome power to destroy them. The care of the Heir fell to the Captain and the Captain's wife. When the King returned from his mission several months later he did not resume his relationship with his son. Instead he did what Saiyan Kings had always done, watched the boy from a distance, impassively, as the Prince grew and played and trained with the Captain's offspring. For his part, the Heir retained a certain affection for the King independent of his father's aloof treatment of him, perhaps gleaned from an indistinct infant memory of warmth and kindness.

When he was three, the Captain's wife caught him in their personal quarters where none of the children were allowed. She scolded him sharply. He looked at her with those bright blue eyes and pointed to the big mirror against the wall opposite the bed. "Why am I different?" he asked.

The Captain's wife paused, her own dark eyes widened in shock. "Who says you are?" she countered, finally.

"Some of the guards," he said. "They thought I could not hear. They said my hair was funny. And it is. It doesn't look like anyone else's hair."

She snorted. Then she did a very strange thing. She pulled a chair up to the mirror and told the Prince to sit in it. The Prince clambered up. His legs stuck out straight, the feet dangling loosely over the edge. He tapped the toes of his white boots together, staring at the reflection. His eyes were funny, too, he thought. The color was off. Or maybe the color was on where he was concerned. No one had colors like he had; everyone else was made of browns and blacks, like the skies overhead.

The Captain's wife leaned over the chair. For a moment she ran fingers through his hair, twining strands of it around a digit. He looked at her face in the mirror; she looked sad. She reached to the side, picked something off the table, and used it to brush his fine, fine hair. "Tsk, it's getting long," she said."We'll have to tie it back or cut it off. It'll just get in the way. Has anyone told you," she continued in the same casual voice, "about the Queen?"

"No," said the Prince. "What is a Queen?"

"A Queen is like a King, only female. The Queen was your mother."

"I thought you were the mother," replied the Prince. "That is what the other kids call you."

"Eh, that's because the brats are mine, my Prince. They call my husband 'father,' don't they? But you know he is not your father."

"The King is my father," the boy informed her.

"And the Queen was his wife, your mother. She did not look like other people, my Prince. She had soft hair like yours, and blue eyes like yours. She was very special. And you are very special, too, my Prince. You are not like anyone else. You do not need to be."

The boy considered this, hanging his head down as she continued to brush his hair. It felt nice. He closed his eyes. "Where is she?" he asked.

That was apparently a hard question to answer, for she was silent for a long time. "She ... went away, my Prince."

"When is she coming back?"

"People don't come back from the dead, my Prince," she said, and there was a raw note in her voice the Prince had never heard in anyone's voice before. After a pause she tapped him on the shoulder with the brush, then put the brush aside. Her fingers moved through his hair again. She started to divide it into different sections and then, as if under the compulsion of some long-forgotten habit, to weave the sections together.

"Would she come back if I asked? I would like to see someone else who looked like me," he told her.

"I'm sure she would if she could, my Prince, but she can't." She sighed. "Enough of this maudlin stuff. I will talk to the King when he returns from his mission, my Prince. If he doesn't kill me for the impertinence, perhaps he can tell you about your mother."

He turned his head to the side, looking at what she had unconsciously done to his hair. Giggling, he whipped his head back the other way, the braid with its untied end flailing. "That's neat! That's like a rope!"

The Captain's wife looked shocked. She quickly tugged and pulled at his hair, trying to straighten it out, while he wriggled and complained that he liked it the way it was.

Unexpectedly, a rumbling deep voice came from behind them. "Leave it," said the Captain from the doorway. "It looks good. And it will be practical as well, if the King decides he does not want the boy's hair cut."

His mate seemed disturbed, almost upset. "But it's like what... I — I mean, we don't have anything to tie it with. It'll just come undone."

"Baka." The Captain reached one of his big hands up, and tugged for a moment at his own hair. Suddenly it came spilling loose in a shower of thick spikes, almost completely encasing the muscular body. He held the red twine out to his mate. "Here."

Sighing, she took it from him, then re-did the Prince's hair, twining the red strand through the braid before tying it off at the base. She stood back, shaking her head, her eyes troubled. "He always wore a braid," she said. "You know that it will just upset the King."

"You should have thought of that first, Sash."

_________________________________________________________

For the next few days he visited the Captain's mate early in the day, demanding his hair be done in the new style. She complied with troubled eyes. The Captain startled him during one of their training matches by seizing the braid, using it to slam the boy's face to the ground. "Braids are like tails, my Prince," he said, mocking, as the boy clambered back to his feet with a scowl on his bloodied mien. "People will grab them if they can. Be prepared for it."

The morning of the King's return, the Captain's mate did his braid in a perfunctory fashion, her face set in lines the Heir had never noticed before. The Captain was late to their practice. The boy passed the time in the garden, playing with the Captain's three children as he always did, tumbling in mid-air making up rules to games as they went along.

Then unexpectedly the three headed for the ground, their faces blank and frightening. The Heir hovered for a moment. He couldn't sense the Captain nearby. Wondering why they didn't want to play any more, he followed them down. He tapped the eldest on the arm. "You're it," he said.

The older boy scowled. The youngest one, who was almost the same age as the Prince, said, uncertainly, "Something's wrong."

"Mother's hurt," said the eldest. He turned a black look toward the Prince. "Your father did this," he said, coldly.

The Heir blinked. "My father did what?"

The boy turned on his heel and strode away. Flicking uncertain glances at each other and at the Heir, his two younger brothers followed.

Piqued, the Heir took a quick flight around the garden, weaving in and out of the stunted growth as he practiced his turns, crossly telling himself that he didn't need anyone to play with. He was quickly bored by himself, though, and curious about what the other boys were doing. My father did what? He used his ability to trace kis to figure out where they were and followed, meaning to ask them.

He had been in the military compound many times, since it was one of the places the Captain trained with him. He had not, however, been in this area before. He swooped through corridors and between guards who ignored him, curiosity giving way to urgency. It was not just the Captain's sons up ahead; it was the Captain himself, and the King. Somehow, it all just didn't feel right. He twisted around another corner and brought himself to a halt. The two youngest boys were just ahead, staring with wide eyes through an open door. The Heir couldn't tell what was inside that had their attention.

There was the whine of ki striking, and a sudden sharp scream unlike anything the Heir had ever heard. He raced in behind the other boys, to see the King casually stepping over a smoldering form. The Captain made a move toward the smoking husk, but an imperious gesture from the King froze him in place. "My King," he said, something raw in his voice, "please..."

"Do I care whether some third-class warrior years beyond her fighting prime lives or dies?" wondered the King. "Or what happens to some tainted whelp who gets in my way? Your occasional outbursts of insolence are more of a concern. I tolerate stunning levels of familiarity from you because of the past. That hardly makes you irreplaceable."

"I am finished here," said the Captain, evenly. He did not glance again at the fallen form of his son. Blank-eyed, he fell in behind the King.

"He hurt Mom," said the youngest boy, amazed. "He hurt both of them." He started forward, but was grabbed by his older brother, who was staring beyond the Captain and the King at what the med-techs were doing, his face blanching. "He hurt Mom!" the youngest protested, trying to struggle in the stronger boy's grasp.

"You forget yourself, Kakarott," snapped the Captain.

Apparently the King agreed. "I always hated that name," he remarked as he brought one sparking hand up. The older boy flinched but held his ground, thrusting his younger brother behind himself, fists clenched so tight tendons stood out white on the back of his hands. The Heir burst between them, glaring at his father. "Stop it," he said. "Why are you doing this?"

His father's head snapped back. The King reached down to trace the braid, lifting the end of it off  his shoulder, letting it thud back. "Ho," said the King softly after a grim moment. "Had I seen this first, there would not have been enough of her left to go in the tank."

He gave the braid another hard tug, as if trying to remove it, but the Heir jerked away. "Leave it alone," he snapped.

"I did not realize your hair had grown so long," the King said, his expression far away even though his eyes were right on him. Glaring at him in distrust, the Heir stepped further back when the King moved to touch his hair again. The King's expression darkened. "Don't pull away from me, brat," he growled, reaching for the Heir again.

Without any conscious thought behind the action the Heir shot one hand forward to defend himself from a perceived threat. The ki ball stuck in mid-air a few inches from the King's body. Mild amusement lightened the cast of the King's face. He raised a hand with two fingers held upward. The ki ball floated toward his face until it was centimeters from the royal nose. The King snapped his fingers. The ki ball sparked and vanished.

Faint interest filtered out the anger in his gaze as he looked down at the Heir. "You've trained the brat well," he remarked casually over one shoulder. He crouched to the Prince's level, looking him straight in the eye, something calculating in his gaze. One hand lifted to gently touch the boy's cheek. "You started out slower," he said, "but you have a Saiyan's heart."

The caress turned into a blow so rapidly the Heir had no chance to react. The impact with the wall behind him made his vision turn shades of gray. He blinked his eyes until light oozed into them again. The King stood over him, mouth twisted bitterly, arms tucked against his sides. "You aren't strong enough to challenge me yet, brat," he said. "Don't do anything so foolish again until you are sure of victory." He turned, striding away without a backwards glance. The Captain followed him, but as the doors slid closed he did look back. There was gratitude in his gaze, although the Heir didn't recognize it as such. He just knew that what he saw in the Captain's eyes was more pleasing than what he saw in his father's.

The Heir carefully pulled himself out of the wall. His first step was shaky; his second less so, his third solid. He went to the sprawled form of the Captain's eldest, kneeling admist the flung strands of hair, trying to shake him. "Rik," he said, "get up. Get up."

But Rik did not move. "He's going to die," said a voice at his ear. The Captain's other sons crept up. The middle boy was fatalistic, his voice cold and hurt. The youngest, Kakarott, was just wide-eyed, trying like the Heir himself to work out what was happening.

"He's not going away," said the Prince in determination. He looked across the room at the indistinct form in the tank. "That thing is keeping your mother here, isn't it?"

"As long as the King decides it's okay for her to be in one," said the second son, grimly. "Tanks aren't for the likes of us, my Prince."

The Heir found himself blinking again. He was used to the title, but the other boy's tone disturbed him. "Don't call me that, Chishan."

"It's what you are," said Chishan, still with that coolness in his voice.

The Heir considered for a long moment. He didn't like the distance that suddenly gaped between him and the other boys. At the same time, although he didn't understand it, he began to grasp that somehow there was power in the distance, in what everyone kept calling him. Standing, he turned toward the cluster of techs, who were watching the boys as if they were very entertaining.

"Put him in a tank," the Prince ordered. The techs looked at him, indifferently, even contemptuously. The Prince held one hand up, generated a ki sphere the size of his head in a blink, then casually held his arm to the side. The wall opposite the tanks imploded. "Now," he suggested.

The techs were suddenly eager to comply.

The Prince watched them suspiciously, making sure his orders were followed and that the Captain's eldest was safely ensconced in a tank next to his mother. Finally satisfied, he turned away, his heavy brows folded together, his thoughts composed of dark emotions that he did not yet have words for.

From that moment forth, his father no longer commanded any part of the young Prince's affection.