DISCLAIMER: I don't own Dragon Ball Z or any of its associated characters or intellectual properties. All hail Toriyama, creator of the same.

WARNING: If you are under 18, go away!

This fic contains violence, strong sexual themes and situations, strong language, and touches on the deep, emotional scars of molestation. If any of this creeps you out, don't read this story.

RED DRAGON

PART 1: Monster

Cold, white hands gripped him, holding him immobile and helpless. Hot, rank breath on the back of his neck, the stink of charnel houses. Sibilant, whispering laughter mocking him, mocking his weakness-he who had always been so strong. Grief and blood rage choked him, erupting in a guttural howl, as he struggled at first to break free, and finally to deny what was happening to him.

Pain was nothing to his kind. From the cradle he had been taught to welcome it as sharp affirmation that he was alive. He had cut his teeth on violence and death.

But this...

There had never been anything like this, never in the world!

Denial was stripped away from him, rage was beaten down. In the end, there way only grief and stomach clenching shame and betrayal that this, this, was what his father had given him over to. Out of fear.

Out of weakness.

Dignity laid waste, pride gone, all sense of safety destroyed forever. The adoration and near-worship of his father shattered and already unconsciously souring into cold contempt.

"The wages of weakness, little prince," the voice chuckled in his ear.

A sob caught in his throat-the first tears he had ever shed-the last he would shed for nearly 20 years. Black, talon-like nails sank into the bare flesh on his shoulders, piercing and tearing. "Don't cry, Vegita-chan," Lord Frieza purred. "I have a special place in my heart for children."

He jerked awake, bolting upright with a gasp, sweating and shaking.

Movement caught his eye and he summoned ki, raising his open hand- and stopped.

Wide eyes under a mop of blue bangs regarded him curiously. He relaxed slowly, lowered his hand. The child crawled onto the bed and into his lap.

"Bra?" His voice sounded hoarse even to his own ears. He'd come a hair's breath from killing her by accident. The absolute trust in the girl's sleepy smile as she looped her arms around his neck made something deep inside him constrict involuntarily.

"Poppa, you're squishing me," Bra said, squirming. He loosened his hold on her. He glanced at the bedside clock. 1:00am. "Bra, what are you doing up?"

"I heard you having a bad dream and it woke me up," she replied.

He frowned. At 3, his daughter's ki was disappointingly lower than her brother's had been at the same age, but her telepathic powers, unusually latent in both humans and Saiyans, seemed to be off the scale. The thought of Bra being subjected to the nightly horror show his dreams had become of late was not a pleasant one.

"Did you see my dream?" He asked carefully.

She shook her head. "No, I just felt you being hurt and afraid." One tiny hand patted his shoulder. "Poor Poppa."

He snorted. "It'll be poor Bra if your mother comes back from her party and finds you out of bed." He was feeling more normal with every passing second. "Did you break the nanny-bot thing again?"

"Not bad," Bra said evasively.

He carried her back down the hall to her bedroom, noting with a satisfied smirk the dozens of pieces of what had once been Bulma's nanny-bot project strewn about the room. The smiling nannyhead and core processor was imbedded into one wall at the center of a smoking, black burn mark that still sang with the memory of his daughter's ki.

It occurred to him suddenly that perhaps Bra was like Kakarott's first born, Gohan. The little bastard had shown only negligible ki at first. But when thrown into the mix of battle, when frightened or angered in any way, his power level had risen without precedent, seemingly with limit. Did that same potential sleep dormant inside his youngest child?

He sat her down on her bed. "Get into bed, Brat," he said quietly.

"I'm not a brat," she said, crawling under the covers, one arm curled around a stuffed dinosaur. "I'm a princess."

"That you are," he agreed, his face stony and expressionless. She smiled up at him, seeing effortlessly past the stoic warrior's mask. He pulled the quilt up around her more securely. He wasn't sure why; the room was perfectly warm.

Let your power sleep, he said silently. I would not awaken it with fear and death and danger for all the wealth in creation. I will commend to Hell's mercy anyone who tries.

"I had a bad dream last week," she murmured drowsily. She was almost asleep. "I dreamed about a monster."

"So did I," he whispered.

In his room, he washed his face and leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the bathroom mirror. He would not sleep again tonight. He was averaging less an hour a night, now. He needed 4--3 at the very least.

Why now? he wondered. After 6, maybe 7 years of relatively peaceful sleep, why had these old, rotting corpses from his first life come back to haunt him? He closed his eyes tiredly, remembering....

Strong hands lifted him from the floor where he lay naked in a pool of blood, vomit and filth. There were voices around him, faint and indistinct. Dodoria's booming laugh cut through the dim buzz, chuckling about his "initiation." In his half-conscious state, he didn't remember when he was bathed, bandaged, and clothed. He did remember growling and lunging at the hand that slapped him back to full wakefulness. A big hand caught his small fist effortlessly.

"Easy, little soldier," Zarbon said.

Memory came flooding back and his snarl tapered down into a wounded animal's moan.

"How old are you?" The blue-skinned warrior asked. The man slapped his face again, pulling him back as reality began to slide away again.

"Nine standard years," he whispered.

"It is Lord Frieza's common practice to break all the young ones who come unwillingly into his service," Zarbon told him conversationally.

The man's lack of pity or mockery was an unlooked-for mercy. "Your body will heal, but your heart and mind will never forget who is the Master and who is the slave."

"I am no one's slave!" He rapped out.

Zarbon sighed. "Listen to me, little prince of Vegita-sei. I am not your friend. If my master lifts one finger, I will gut you without a moments hesitation. But I will give you some advice. Nothing amuses my master so much as defiance. And the harder you defy him, the worse he will use you-until he has broken your spirit or broken your mind. If you continue to howl and rage at him, you will always be his favorite catamite." The blue warrior's lips twitched in a mirthless smile. "I was younger than you when he bought me from the slavers who destroyed my homeworld. Listen to the voice of experience, boy. Keep silent, obey, and grow strong. That is how you will survive."

"Grow strong," he repeated softly.

"Zarbon?" He met the man's eyes for the first time. "I am hostage, according to treaty. Held in trust against my father's fealty to Lord Frieza...If I..." He swallowed, tasting bile. "If I obey and grow strong, my father and my people will be safe as well, yes?"

Zarbon's face was unreadable. He nodded solomly. "That's the deal, boy." It was 4 years before they told about the "meteor storm" that had destroyed his father and his world.

Grow strong, his mind whispered as his body shuddered with the shame and sick, helpless rage of the child he had been. Grow strong...

Those two words had shaped the man the child would become, had driven him beyond reason, beyond sanity, beyond any excepted definition of the word obsession. They had driven him to his own death not once, but twice.

"Why now?" He said aloud.

You have never had so much to lose as you do now, a voice whispered in the deepest recesses of his mind.

Grow strong...

Heh.

The only living being in the universe more powerful than himself was a blithering idiot who would no more harm those he held dear than...than he could carry on an intelligent conversation.

He shook himself irritably and stilled the involuntary trembling. He was the mightiest warrior in this or any other world...

Well...the mightiest with a full set of wits, anyway. And that was only for the moment, dammit! There had to be another level beyond SSJ3, and when he achieved it first, he would give Kakarott the beating of his miserable life!

He was strong enough to protect all that he had built; this good life he had built in spite of himself. He raised his head and gazed into the mirror--- and cried out, his voice cracking like an adolescent's.

Frieza gazed back at him out of the mirror, his blood-hued lips curled into a saccharine smile. The voice, so full of sweet, insinuating malice... He knew that voice so well! This was no dream! No hallucination!

A wave of black energy rushed over his senses, so violent it bowled him over physically.

"Soon, Vegita-chan," the old monster chuckled softly in his head. "Soon..."

With a hoarse cry, he smashed the mirror and launched himself out the window.

The annual Capsule Corp profit share Gala was showing no sign of winding down. Research and Development had taken the lion's share of the bonus's this year and the entire department was rip- roaring drunk. Petr Smoliensk, the head of Moscow R&D, was leading a bunny hop line of nearly fifty people across the middle of the dance floor. Bonnie of CapCorp West's L.A. offices was nearly in tears, watching her one woman crusade to "streamline Capsule Corp's maverick, unconversional image to more exemplify a world corporate power."

Bulma Briefs snickered. "No company built on the shoulders of scientists and inventors should ever try to be chic and trendy," she said aloud. Her father, venerable creator and owner of Cap Corp, was near the head of the bunny line.

"Are you sure I look all right?" Chi-chi self-consciously pulled down on the hem of the dress Bulma had lent her for the occasion. "I feel indecent."

Bulma smiled sunnily. "Modern fashion, Chi-chi." She was not completely plastered herself, but she was definitely tipsy. It had been a hectic, exhausting month. In two days, the planet's first line of non-military would be available of the open market, courtesy of Capsule Corp. Every government on Earth had fought them tooth and nail every inch of the way. "You're wearing a bra and your ass is covered," she hiccuped. "You're decent."

The look of veiled disapproval on the other woman's face brought her up short. She and Chi-chi had never been very close-they were as different as two women could be in most ways. They were bound together by mutual love for Son-kun and the close friendship of their sons, but Bulma never lost sight of the other woman's disapproval of her and her family. She changed the subject.

"So, are you going into private practice, or are you still deciding?"

"I'm not sure," Chi-chi said frowning. "Clinical psychology seemed very appealing when Gokou-saa was...gone. I finished the degree because it was something I had started. But...I think the happier you are, the less interesting other people's problems become. And I don't take Gokou-saa's presence for granted. I'm jealous of every moment we spend apart, because some part of me believes that our days together are numbered."

Bulma stared at her. She hadn't expected the other woman to pour out her own heart in answer to such a casual question. Chi-chi's gaze had turned across the room to where her husband and her oldest son were wreaking devastation upon the food bar, engrossed in conversation with one another between mouthfuls. Gohan's wife Videl had taken their new baby to visit her mother in Europe for a few weeks. Gohan, unable to leave university during mid-semester, had moved in with his parents until Videl's return. "They could almost be brothers," Bulma murmured. Son-kun had not aged since the day he had shown up at Kame House with a 5 year old Gohan in tow.

"How long do Saiyans live, I wonder," Chi-chi said, echoing her thoughts.

"I made the mistake of asking Vegita that once," Bulma said wryly. "He said, 'Until we're killed.'"

They locked gazes, sharing unvoiced, unspoken thoughts. And burst out laughing.

A streak of lavender caught Bulma's peripheral mother's vision, and her hand snaked out and grabbed an ear. "Trunks, where are you going with that jar?"

Her son looked at her, all innocence. "Nowhere."

"We're gonna wait til people start to pass out, and stick big gobs of peanut butter in their ears!" Goten said brightly. At 12, he was already a head taller than his mother, but he yelped sharply when Chi-chi's hand clamped firmly down on his own ear.

As Chi-chi dragged Goten away, reprimanding loudly, Trunks smiled sheepishly and handed over the peanut butter jar. "Sorry, Kassan."

Bulma sighed. "Kassan's very tired and plans to sleep for a week after this party's over, Trunks. Kassan's also ever-so-slightly drunk." The boy snickered. "I'll think up some appropriately hideous and boring chore for your punishment after that."

"'Kay."

"I need one man in this family I can have at company functions who won't inflict physical damage on my guests. Okay?"

Trunks laughed outright. He seemed to have grown another inch while she wasn't looking. Sweet Kami, was he really almost 13 years old?

"Okay, Kassan." He looked sorrowfully at Goten. Chi-chi still hadn't released his ear. "I got him in trouble again."

"Yes, you did," she kissed him on the cheek. "He'll live. Be good. I've got to check on some things upstairs. And possibly throw up."

The room tilted pleasantly as she rode the elevator up suite in the office tower. Checking her laptop vidphone on her cluttered desk, she found no new messages. Good. No last minute hitches. She sank down into her chair and toyed with the bits of her last unofficial invention lying beside the vidphone like disgaurded jewelry. She twirled the two shiny metallic rings around her wrists like tine hoola-hoops, before encapsulating them and shoving them into her dress pocket. What should she call it? Transport? Telemat? Matterporter? Hmm. Better to think of a name when she was completely sober.

She really should go over to the family wings of the compound and check on Bra. She was starting to think that market testing the Nanny-Bot proto- type on her daughter was a huge mistake. She had not spent enough time with her youngest child-with any of her family, for that matter-in the last few weeks, and Bra was voicing her displeasure in a very Saiyan fashion. Bulma wondered with a faint chill if the toddler would have torn the arms off of a human baby-sitter the way she'd done the Nonny-bot.

She smiled in spite of herself.

She had known her children would have some measure of inherent violent behavior-known it from the word go. She pulled the scarflette- one of a collection she'd taken to wearing habitually over the years-from her neck. Her fingers lightly touched a fading mark on her throat. The first time she had noticed such a mark on her throat, her mother had told her something in her airy, slightly unfocused way, which Bulma had never forgotten. If you lie down with wild things, Dear, expect to get bitten. She spun her chair around to look down from the office tower's sparkling view of the city below, lost in memory. Vegita had definitely been a wild thing the first time he had come to her. Rough was not an adequate word to describe their first encounter.

After weeks of her taunting, teasing sexual overtures, he had silently followed her back to her quarter of the compound. He had taken her without ceremony, without preamble, without a word. He turned her away from him with a low growl, bent her forward over the foot of her own bed, and brutally thrust into her. He pounded her nearly senseless for over an hour; she came four times, the last time screaming. She had pursued him looking for something hardcore and rough and, by Kami, he had given it to her in spades.

Afterwards, bruised, aching and bleeding, she turned and gently pushed him down on the bed while he was still shuddering in he wake of his own release.

Her heart was still hammering in her chest with kinky excitement and the very real danger of this vicious, half-mad animal she had taken to her bed. This half-mad animal she meant to tame.

"Lie back and let me do the work this time," she whispered. "Let me show you another way."

"Don't tell me what to do, bitch," he rasped. Then she took him in her mouth and his snarl turned to a gasp. She teased and stroked him with gentle tongue and teeth and fingers, drawing out the sweet torture, reveling in the way he arched his back and bit back a cry when he came in her mouth. He was ready again almost instantly, and she straddled him, pulling him up into a sitting position. She eased him into her sore body with maddening slowness. His eyes, almost invisible pools of black in the dark room, bored into her, and she, and for the first time, she thought she saw something unguarded in their depths. She moved slowly on him, touching every part of his body, always gently, always following the touch of her hand with her lips. She built him up, increasing her speed with agonizing slowness, and when they both crested together, he cried out like a man who'd just received a mortal wound, crushing her to him. She was wrapped around him just as tightly, shaken by a dawning realization that what she had played at this evening was no longer a game-should never have been a game with him.

He still held her in a vise-like embrace, as though he thought she might be snatched from his arms at any moment. Years later, many years later, he would tell her in a horribly toneless voice about the first girl, the only other girl he had been with. She had been a year older than him, the daughter of one of the camp followers, mercenary whores who grew rich off of Frieza's legions. Adolescent experementation had led to sex almost accidentally. Dodoria, the bloated orange sadist, Frieza's second lieutenant, had indeed snatched the girl from the 14-year- Old Vegita's arms and torn her into two pieces before his eyes.

But now his fingers traveled over the crimson, crescent-shaped wounds on her shoulders where his finger nails had gouged into her during their first time. The dull look of shock that flickered briefly behind his eyes told her He hadn't even been aware he had been doing it. Her hand traced the almost identical set of scars of his shoulders. There was more than one set, marring the otherwise perfect, inhumanly smooth skin. She would have many years to ponder the meaning of those faded marks. They were old, but they were very, very deep. She touched her lips to his softly, then kissed him face. He frowned at her in confusion.

"It doesn't have to hurt," she said softly. "It can be just pleasure."

"Woman, you..." His voice was unsteady. He stoked her cheek with one finger. "Woman, you talk too much," he said finally. Then he pulled her down and lay her beside him as though she were made of glass. Wrapping his arms around her, gently this time, he had fallen asleep with the quick ease of a long time soldier who slept when he could. She lay for a long time gazing at his face, shaken to the bone by the unexpected emotion welling up inside of her. What the hell, she wondered, Had she just gotten herself into?

A long, rocky road to happiness, she thought, gazing at the city lights without really seeing them. A year of being his lover, wordlessly working compromises between his violent ferocity and her gentle skill, before he would speak more than a few words to her as they lay together in the darkness afterwards. Years before he would show her anything other than scorn and contempt in the light of day, unable to fathom that the men he had killed when he first came to Chikyuu-Picalo and Tien in particular-would not kill her and Trunks if they knew he gave a damn about them. Unable to admit even to himself, that he did give a damn about them. Years more, until the Buu holocaust had stripped away all he had unwillingly come to cherish, leaving the man he had been shattered in a thousand subtle ways in its wake.

She would like to think she had rebuilt him this time. But she knew that the man she now shared her life with was his own creation- perhaps for he first time in his life. Not of his father's making, nor Frieza's, not even hers.

Vegita was not normal. He was not nice or sociable or friendly or remotely easy to get along with. But she knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that he loved her and their children more than his own life, though he never said the words. He was---

She bit back a shrill shriek.

--He was right behind her.

"Vegita, you son of a bitch! You scared-"

"Do you trust me?" He said harshly.

"Yes," she said without hesitation. She took in his appearance. He was dressed only in the black cotton gi pants he wore for sleep, his face pale and drawn. His eyes were black pinpoints; they looked desperate. No, she amended. They looked terrified. "What-"

He cut her off. "Trunks and Goten are watching Bra. They're waiting in the Crane prototype in your mother's garden. Let's go!" He pulled her Toward the window.

"Where are we going?" She half-shouted in exasperation.

"We're leaving."

"Leaving the house?"

"Leaving this godless planet, woman!" He saw the look on her face and took a deep breath. Taking her face between his hands, he kissed her mouth softly. "Listen to me. A moment ago, I felt a surge of something. It was not ki. It was like the rush of power when Shen Long is summoned. Only greater. A power level so high I could not take the measure of it. And it was familiar. Come!" Before she could protest, he scooped her up and bulleted out the window, landing in the rose garden beside the Crane 1000, the first prototype of Cap Corp's new starship line. He sat her on her feet, and checked the launch sequence timer on the forward landing strut. He cursed impatiently. "She still needs 5 more minutes to power up for launch. Get on board!"

"Vegita!" Gokou, with Gohan at his side, was striding across the grass toward them, all traces of the half-bright man-child she had known since her youth thrown off like well worn suit. Bulma felt a wave of dread rush over her. This was the man Son-kun might have been, the man Gokou would only force himself to become when things were at their most perilous. The sight of her old friend in full possession of his wits scared her more than the real fear in her husband's face.

"I know!" Vegita said. "I felt it too."

"You're running away?" Gokou said in honest amazement. The lack of recrimination in his voice seemed to infuriate Vegita more. "Vegita, Chikyuu needs-"

"Fuck Chikyuu," Vegita said succinctly. "Fuck everyone on it, and fuck you too, Kakarott." Gokou blinked. "I'm taking my family off this mudball. If you are capable of remembering that far back, you'll recall that they didn't exactly survive Chikyuu's last catastrophe intact!" He stopped, reigning himself in with great effort. "I'm taking Bulma and Bra some place safe. I know a dozen out of the way planets to hide them on. Trunks and I will be back to fight. We've got three minutes before the ship's ready. Grab that screeching harpy you're mated to, Kakarott, and we'll take her with us as well."

"You're right, Vegita." Gokou smiled grimly and nodded. "He has no honor. He might come after our families to get at us. Don't worry, though. We won't defeat him until you get back!"

"Defeat who?!" Bulma almost screamed.

"Frieza," Vegita said after a brief silence. "Somehow he's found a way out of Hell."

"But...he should be nothing to you now. Any one of you could take him out almost instantly." Bulma looked at the bleak faces of the three Saiyans. "...couldn't you?

Gohan spoke up. "The old Frieza, yes. But something's changed. His energy...it's beyond imagining. It's..."

"Infinite," Vegita finished.

The world spun crazily and went black.

"Wake up, Bulma! Wake up, we need you!" Someone was slapping her face hard enough to sting. Bulma opened her eyes to see Chi-Chi hovering over her anxiously. Somewhere close by, there was a low, rolling boom, followed closely by another. The ground beneath her shook violently with each detonation.

"What happened?" She asked shakily.

"It's Vegita," Chi-Chi said hurriedly.

Nearby, above the smoking crater where her mother's cherry orchard had been, three small suns were revolving crazily in the air, illuminating the night around them.

"Power down!" Gokou's voice came from the center of the inferno. "Dammit, Vegita! Power down! We'll shake the planet apart if we keep this up much longer.!"

In the eye of the firey maelstrom, Gokou and Gohan seemed to be barely restraining Vegita, who whirled and thrashed madly. All three were powered up beyond first level Super Saiyan and the world was indeed shuddering under the strain each time Vegita lashed out and the other two Saiyans countered.

"You don't realized what's happened!" Vegita screamed hoarsely. "You don't-" There was another deafening boom. Bulma heard a musical tinkling as every window in the compound, perhaps in the city, shattered.

"Vegita-san!" Gohan's voice. "Bulma-san's less than 30 meters away! You're putting her in danger! Power down!" The young man's calm measured voice, so much older than his years, seemed to penetrate Vegita's unthinking rage where Gokou's had only inflamed it. The deadly golden light around the three men faded as they slowly levitated to the ground. Vegita stood motionless between the two Sons, who watched him warily. He looked like he was holding the madness that had gripped him a moment before by a thin frayed thread. Then his eyes found hers. He held her gaze for one brief second, then look away and sagged to his knees as though he'd been dealt some debilitating blow. Bulma fought down rising panic.

What, oh sweet Kami, What had just happened?

She stared at Chi-Chi's tear-streaked face, and Gokou, Gohan, and Vegita, all grim and terrible as untimely death. Then she saw it. The Crane 1000 showpiece Vegita had been prepping for launch Was gone. Gone...

"The kids," she whispered. "Frieza's taken them."

NOTES: Hee. Cruel spot for a cliffhanger, isn't it? Questions?

Comments? Mail me at lisalu@peoplepc.com