Vehemence

Another day of boring spaceflight had come and gone. From where they had set off from, deep in Cooler's former empire, it would take them over a month and a half to reach planet Earth. The prince found it fortunate that he was equipped with all the means he would need to train along the trip. Having used the tiny attack pods as his main means of transportation all his life, he had never been able to do anything besides sit motionless and mediate during his journeys. That, and listen to Nappa's constant complaining, if neither of them activated their cryogenic hibernation systems. Traveling on the Bringer of Death, he was now able to focus entirely on his training in the gravity chamber.

For the first few weeks, he continued his pattern of spending half his time training and the other half in the regeneration chamber. Yet he soon noticed that this approach yielded diminishing returns. The regeneration chamber still healed him, but his power no longer grew at the same rate when he recovered from injuries. The zenkai had proven to be a useful advantage before, but his power was now high enough that he barely noticed each successive boost. He had been injured and healed so many hundreds of times; it seemed as though the effects were less and less each time.

Not only that, but training at continually increasing levels of gravity had begun to slow him down. He now had the strength to stand in sixty times the gravity of his home planet, but training seriously didn't seem to help that much more. In fact, the benefits of increased gravity had started to taper off around forty to forty-five times Planet Vegeta's gravity. He was most comfortable training at a mere fifteen times his home planet's gravity, as this allowed him full control.

Of course, going Super Saiyan made the weight seem like nothing. The first time he had transformed in the gravity chamber, the explosion of energy had shorted out the system, sending it to its maximum of one hundred times the gravity of Planet Vegeta. Even this had been no challenge at all in his Super Saiyan state; he had smiled momentarily as he reflected that this gravity was one thousand times that of the planet where Kakarrot had grown up.

Unfortunately, his transformation had damaged the system, and it was a full week before the engineers could repair it. During this time, he spent hours pacing the deck of the pool and gazing at the stars; the rest of the time he spent in his chambers, anxious to make it to Earth.

As reclusive as he was, one member of the crew continued to check on him. His second in command, Oniya, who had designed his ship, had been noticeably present anytime he was outside the training room. Vegeta was no fool; he could tell that she was attracted to him. Was it his position of power or something else about him that caused her to hang on his every word? He didn't know, and he convinced himself that he didn't care.

It wasn't until halfway through the week without the gravity chamber that the tension finally reached a climax. The prince had been reclining on the deck of the pool watching the stars stream by through the haze of slipstream flight when Oniya walked in behind him.

"Why did you request a pool if no one was ever going to use it?" she asked softly. Vegeta ignored her. "Do you mind, my lord?" He still said nothing, so she walked slowly to the side of the water and unzipped her flight suit, letting it slide down over her shoulders. Smiling shyly, she lowered her body smoothly into the water and began swimming to the opposite side.

Vegeta watched silently, his expression never changing. Most alien species in the former Frieza empire seemed grotesque to him, but Oniya was different. She was far more slender than a Saiyan woman, and her greyish-blue skin was…unique…but he felt his heartbeat quicken as she turned and swam back toward him.

Vegeta frowned from his throne, his vessel making its final approach towards the blue planet called Earth. It had been six months since he had defeated Frieza, subsequently planning a rematch with Kakarott. His ignominious retreat from this planet had been only a few months earlier, though it felt like a whole different lifetime. He had come so far. His exit had been shameful, but his triumphant return would more than make up for it.

The prince tapped his foot nervously, eager to sense the power levels below. "Kakarott, if you aren't here I swear I will kill someone today! I am in no mood to wait six more months for my vengeance." Vegeta had found it difficult to keep his life centered. His purpose, his one goal – to become a Super Saiyan – had driven him his entire life, but now it had been fulfilled. It was difficult to know where to pick back up now that the prince was free to do as he pleased. Of course, defeating Frieza's brother had been an easy choice as a next move. Now, he found that he could think of nothing else besides the fight on Earth. Something kept drawing his mind back, despite knowing that he might have to wait half a year longer before the other Saiyan arrived.

"What's going on down there?" Vegeta stood, letting his cape ripple down around his body. "There is something strange about the majority of the energy I'm detecting on the surface. Something is clouding the ki signatures."

The Bringer of Death tore through the atmosphere, its black exterior glowing orange from the heat of re-entry. Vegeta had been discussing with his crew where they would touch down. "C47, scan the surface of the entire planet and direct the landing autopilot to the highest concentration of power levels."

"Statement: Of course, master. Query: Will you allow me the privilege of observing when you kill the population? Your knowledge of brutality and merciless slaughter has taught me much, and I am most eager to continue!"

"We shall see, droid. My intention is to fight Kakarott, but if he has not yet returned then we may have to find other means of entertaining ourselves. Have you located any power levels yet?"

"Resignation: Master, I am afraid that I am unable to detect the clown known as Kakarott. However, I have detected a small gathering of power levels on a remote island, where we will touch down shortly."

Vegeta nodded and walked briskly back to his chambers. Oniya was dressing herself just inside. "Woman, you know we're about to land." Vegeta's firm jaw betrayed a hint of a smile. "I'd hate to think you weren't taking your position as pilot seriously anymore."

The scientist's ebony eyes twinkled as she pulled her jacket around her chest, fastening the buttons quickly. She let her eyes wander, admiring the prince with a distinct feeling of pride. When he returned her gaze, she quickly turned away, hoping he hadn't noticed her stare. His face was the last thing she ever saw.

'BLAAAAMMM!' A concentrated ball of energy ripped through the side of the ship, directly into Vegeta's quarters. The explosive shockwave crushed the life out of Oniya's fragile body instantly; she was already dead when Vegeta caught her.

The explosion tore a gaping hole in the ship's exterior. The shields had deactivated only moments before; the ship itself had landed directly in the center of the island, crushing a small house beneath it. Oniya's body still in his arms, Vegeta uttered a roar of rage. "WHO THE HELL JUST BLEW UP MY SHIP?"

Laying Oniya's body down amidst the rubble, the prince dashed through the gaping hole in the side of his ship, searching for any sign of the attacker. "WHAT? YOU?" Vegeta couldn't believe his eyes. It was the earthling who had been killed by a Saibaman the last time he was on Earth. The weakling's arm was still extended from firing the blast. But something was wrong; his eyes were sagging and he was drooling from the mouth.

"HOW DARE YOU FIRE ON MY SHIP, YOU WEAKLING?" Yamcha made no response, other than snarling and dashing blindly at the prince. Vegeta was livid – stunned at the fool's stupidity, but still furious. Oniya had meant more to him than he cared to admit, and his rage at her murderer knew no bounds.

Yamcha's punch landed directly on Vegeta's cheek, but the impact shattered his knuckles and wrist. He screamed in crazed pain and spun around with a kick, but this too proved completely ineffectual. The bestial growl from the scar-faced bandit revealed that he was not cognitively controlling himself; it seemed that something had possessed or infected him. But the Saiyan prince didn't care.

As Yamcha charged again, Vegeta viciously backhanded him across the face, crushing his nose and sending most of his teeth and half his shattered jaw down his throat. The earthling staggered forward, only to meet a concentrated energy blast at point-blank range from the Saiyan's fingertip. It blew a six-inch hole in his chest, causing him to vomit up teeth and shards of bone before collapsing onto the sand, lifeless. The wish that had so recently brought him back to Earth had been negated by the bringer of death.

Down below, several others had crawled out from the wreckage of the house. Vegeta saw the Earth woman who had gone to Namek, a bald old man, and a dark haired woman he didn't recognize. Each of them appeared to be infected with the same condition, their eyes a pale pink and fangs growing in the corners of their mouth.

"Some kind of disease has spread across this planet since last I left. Oniya! Begin an atmospheric scan–" Vegeta paused, remembering with an unwelcome pang of grief that his second in command was dead. He turned to his droid, who had emerged from the ship and stood obediently beside him. "C47, I need to know if the air here is safe to breathe or if I too might become affected by this plague."

"Statement: Running air sample analysis, master."

Vegeta quickly teleported forward, knocking out the remaining earthlings with three gentle blows. Although he ordinarily wouldn't have preserved their lives, he didn't really want to kill them until he figured out what was going on.

"Result: Master, the molecular composition of the atmosphere here is completely normal.

"Interjection: However, my sample contains traces of a curious and unknown element. It is appears to have been the cause of the earthlings' insanity.

"Hypothesis: It seems that whatever caused this was only dangerous in its first wave, but the concentration present now is too sparse to have any effect."

"That will be all, C47. See to the ship." Vegeta looked into the far-off horizon, feeling something he had previously missed. "I am sensing several power levels high in the atmosphere. We must have failed to detect them before because we limited our scan to the planet's surface."

"When I return I want my ship to be in working order," Vegeta barked, not waiting to hear an answer from his crew. He blasted across the horizon at blinding speeds, gaining altitude as he honed in on the energy above. "This must have something to do with that strange planetary body we passed on our way here. Whoever is responsible will pay."

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Greetings once again, everyone! Some of you may have doubted whether or not I planned to include the events of the Garlic Jr. Saga in BoD, but I guess you know the answer to that question now. I must clarify though, that I am not a fan of the actual Garlic Saga in DBZ; we all know it sucks and would like to wish it never happened. My goal in including it here is, as always, to give Vegeta a chance to be awesome. Hopefully, through chapters 19 and 20, you all will find this to be an acceptable variation of the story in which you actually enjoyed reading what happens.

It kind of pained me that Oniya had to die in this chapter. She was a character who we all had started to like pretty well, I think, and she didn't deserve to die. However, Vegeta's rage at her death was intended to reveal some things about how he has changed as a character. He isn't soft by any means, but maybe there is a hint that he could learn to care for someone eventually. We shall see.

Also, as for the Yamcha death, I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did. There are a lot of fics out there in which Vegeta and Yamcha are caught in a squabble over Bulma, but this story is not one of them. The "scar-faced bandit" coming down with a sudden case of death, at the hands of the Prince of Saiyanns, no less, was a pleasant picture for me to imagine.

As always, let me try to shed some light on some of the questions you guys have asked in your reviews.

Q. Is Vegeta not aware of King Cold's existence at this time? Instead of going to Earth to fight Goku shouldn't he be getting ready to go after the last of the Frost Demons?

A. I think Cold played a very loose role in the running of the planet trade organization. To the best of my knowledge, Vegeta would have never met him before nor heard of him. So to answer your question, he didn't go after him mainly because Cold's existence was a carefully guarded secret. However, that does not mean that Cold will not be fighting a Super Saiyan sometime soon.

Q. I really like this battle, the way Vegeta finished off Cooler was awfully familiar in the way another young super saiyan finished off Frieza haha.

A. Thanks! Yeah I know it was maybe a little bit cliche, but Cooler totally got sliced up like his brother was by Trunks. That has to be one of the coolest attacks in all of DBZ, in my opinion, so having Vegeta do something similar to Cooler was both reflective of his creative brutality and also appropriate since Trunks is his son after all. Where do you think Trunks inherited his skill for awesome deaths?

Q. Cold didn't mean to avenge Cooler immediately... why delay?

A. King Cold didn't watch any of the battle after Cooler blew up the moon. He assumed that Vegeta was killed in space, so he didn't even know Cooler died until later on. You will find out he he reacts to the news in the next chapter, I believe.

Thanks for your continued support, everyone! Each review is greatly appreciated. Spread the word so that our community of readers can keep growing! On a side note, I just got hired for a new full time job about two weeks ago and the adjusting has been difficult, but I'm hoping that, with David's help, we can continue bringing bi-weekly updates to you on BoD. I'd especially like to thank the talented writer 'American Vigor' for his extensively thorough reviews. If anyone here has some extra time to read another great DBZ fanfiction, check out his fascinating story, which features the difficult journey of a redeemed version of Cell, entitled Honor Trip. Have a great Tuesday!