Chapter: 2
Planet Xarrack, Northern Hemisphere.
How long had it been?
Long enough for the moon projectors to lose power.
Acala stared at the starry sky above, lying in a crater with broken ribs and a chunk of flesh missing from her waist. She knew it wasn't a worm that had injured her—the wound was cauterized, preventing her from bleeding out. After all she had survived, exsanguination would have been an embarrassing way to go.
She groaned, feeling a headache coming on, not to mention the searing pain from her sides. Her vision was a blurry mess; she last remembered seeing a Saiyan girl curled up in her pod. Even an elite couldn't control their Oozaru form unless trained to do so, and at a little over eight years old, at her age, they taught the children how to fly or how to throw an energy blast.
She forced herself to sit up and the world tilted for a moment before settling back into focus. She had been lying there for far too long. A cough wracked her body, and her mouth filled with a metallic tang. Blood. Just great.
Her armor was gone too, the elastic plates torn to shreds, but the bodysuit still clung tightly to her form, matted with blood, sweat, and fur.
Acala stumbled as she crawled out of the pit, badly wounded, completely out of energy, and critically fatigued. The strain of the transformation and the ensuing combat was too much for a child her age, even if she was an 'Elite' Class Saiyan.
A pair of crimson eyes scanned the carnage covering the wasteland, noting the gigantic carcasses of the worm monsters and the dotted figures of dead Saiyan children. It didn't evoke any pity in her heart, merely resignation and relief that she was not one of them.
'The weak die out, and the strong survive and live on stronger than before.'
She made her way to where she thought her pod had landed, though there was no telling the difference after all the destruction. She spotted it, a faint, discarded metal toy, lying buried under the sand. It was hers, all right—the hatch had been ripped right off its hinges. Nearby, she saw a figure crawling through the scraps of meat and bones that covered the ground.
Acala squinted, trying to make out the figure through the haze that clouded her eyes. The figure was another Saiyan child, covered in grime and blood but unmistakably alive... and unmistakably dying. She staggered towards the figure, step by step, her feet carrying her battered body through the agony.
As she drew closer, she recognized the girl from the pod. What was her name again? Ah, Spina. The younger girl was barely moving, her back carved open. If she didn't receive immediate treatment, she would die.
Oh, well... too bad.
Acala herself wasn't in much better shape; her body was about to give out too. She would be the one lying next to Spina if she didn't race through the gore to her ship for treatment. Would the girl take pity on her? Unlikely. The Saiyans were a warrior race, and pity was not something that came naturally to them.
She shuffled past the dying girl, hearing her whimper as she crawled inch by inch forward. Acala contemplated blasting her head in—the child could be a potential threat if she managed to reach the pod while Acala was still resting. But another look at the flayed skin on Spina's back and the missing flesh on her limbs dismissed the idea.
Spinny, or whatever the hell her name was, was a goner for good. Forget about making it to the pod; if she managed to crawl half a meter more, Acala would have to reconsider her take on the child's willpower.
But just as Acala was about to walk out of the dying girl's reach, something tugged at her leg. She looked down to see Spina's tail gripping her ankle, the girl's eyes wide with desperation, tears forming in them.
"Please..."
The girl croaked, her voice barely above a whisper,
"Help me... I don't wanna die..."
She was a stubborn one, Acala would have to give her that... and nothing more.
'Fool!'
If it were someone other than her, they would have kicked the child away already. The strong survived, and the weak perished—that was the Saiyan way. She was taught to be cold, apathetic, and altogether merciless. There was no sense of kinship, camaraderie, or love between them.
"Let... go of me!"
Acala growled, stomping down hard on the tail. The girl cried out in pure agony before collapsing completely.
She reached the pod and dragged herself inside, the emergency lights were still flickering rapidly. The control panel still displayed the same message: [Critical Systems Compromised]. But she wasn't after the flight or artificial environment generator modules; instead, she fumbled for the auto-repair sequence.
The pod hummed to life, the secondary hatch hissed shut, and the interior was flooded with a vaporized healing agent. Submerging in the liquid would have been faster, but these were attack pods, designed to be more resource-efficient than spaceships.
As the healing agent took effect, Acala's mind drifted off to the events that led to her current situation. Memories of her life after being reborn as a Saiyan child, of a brutal struggle for survival, and of being hailed as a prodigy for being born with a power level of over 700.
Her parents were dead, executed by King Vegeta for daring to rebel against the great "Lord" Frieza. As if that wasn't enough, the bastard called for a genocide of their house. The price for standing against a tyrant was paid in full—every man and woman who chose to rise up was killed. There were no elderly, not for a race of warriors. The children were confined in pods and sent to desolate death worlds like Xarrack. Three in total: Xarrack, Ulgash, and Xhodon.
Even if all these Saiyan children were related to her in one way or another, there was no pity in her heart. Survival was paramount. Mercy was weakness.
A soft beep brought her back to the present. The pod's sensors had detected an unfamiliar life form approaching. Acala opened her eyes, looking through the small viewport, and saw the small girl, Spina, inching closer, leaving a trail of blood in the sand. Her face was covered in soot, sand, pain, and... something else.
Was it determination? Hunger for survival? Or anger?
Acala couldn't tell, nor would she bother to try and decipher that look. Her fingers hovered over the control panel. She could seal the pod—most of them had secondary sealing functions in case of an accident—and in doing so, leave Spina to her fate. Yet, something made her hesitate.
She waited and waited and waited... After what felt like an eternity of staring as the girl dragged her injured body inch by inch closer to the door, Acala at long last deciphered that look. It was sadness. Sadness, perhaps, at being abandoned by someone of her own race. A single tear made its way down Spina's face and splashed into the sand, obscuring Acala's assessment of the look once more.
No matter what the look meant, it still bothered her! It bothered her to no end! In her heart of hearts, she knew if she didn't do anything to help the girl, that look would haunt her for the rest of her life.
"Damn it all!"
She muttered to herself, wondering why she was so bothered by a sorrowful look on a weakling's face. With a frustrated heave of breath, she activated the external access. The secondary hatch opened with a hiss, and Acala stumbled outside, grabbing Spina's tail and dragging her inside.
The younger girl looked up at her in wonder, tears streaming down her dirty little face. A gasp of pain escaped her lips as the airborne healing agent engulfed her body.
"Don't think this means anything,"
Acala growled, looking down at the little girl.
"You're on your own after this."
Spina nodded weakly, probably barely able to comprehend whatever it was that Acala said. But she looked grateful enough, and that was something. The pod's supply of healing agents would run out faster now, but Acala wasn't worried. She had seen quite a lot of bodies outside. They wouldn't be needing their pods anymore, she would accept them most gratefully.
There was barely enough space for one child to sit inside the pod. Two would be able to adjust; any more than that, and the place would be cramped with too many bodies. Thankfully, Spina was small for her age and didn't seem brave enough to come out of the corner she was huddled in.
Acala took a moment to observe her breathing. It grew steady by the moment. Perhaps the girl would've survived outside after all. Maybe it was a mistake, taking her in. Perhaps she ought to simply kick her out now... well, it didn't matter now. The little girl had already partaken in her supplies, and Acala could make good use of a spare pair of hands.