Love's Weakness, Part Two
Scouting mission; that was what it was. No... a fighting mission, really, since the Saiyans were always looking for someone new to combat. It was a test of strength, a test of resolve; it was in their blood, in their genes, and there was absolutely no way to stop it.
It was also an exercise that Ru Sa thought stupid and vain, but who was he to question? After all, for well over a century he'd pretended to be one of them. For once, Ru Sa opted to go on an off-world mission. Usually he chose to stay behind; his reason for going was sublimely simple: he really needed a vacation.
Living with Saiyans and tending to them were two entirely different things, and Ru Sa was growing very tired of doing the latter. He had accurately read the winds of change and stopped pretending to be a Tsufuru-jin about a hundred and fifty years ago, almost to the day when the Saiyans had arrived; there was no question in his mind which species would eventually be the victor for the small planet known as Plant, and he'd chosen to be on the winning side. However, part of his continued existance as a Kyuujinshu required that he be relatively unknown, or unnoticed; and THAT meant menial jobs.
Well, he had a menial job right now; the someday-captain presently had the duty of cleaning and running old regen tanks, and a disgusting duty it was indeed. He'd only had it (only BEEN this person, for that matter) for a month, but as of today, he could take no more. Foreswearing all injured Saiyans and the gack they left behind, he had joined one of the "exploration" parties and left the planet.
It was just his luck that the ship he chose broke.
The vessel had technical difficulties almost from the start and fell short of its goal by several systems' worth; instead, of Alpha Centauri, it hit Kaeru - planet of the Frog People. Well, they looked like frogs to Ru Sa, anyway; tall, green, thick-lipped and absolutely noseless, these freaks wore absurd turbans on their heads and fancied themselves to be fighters. With that attitude - and some minimal power to back it up - they provided the edgy Saiyans with all they'd been looking for, and so the accidental landing turned out to be much better than anyone had feared. That is, for the Saiyans; for Ru Sa, it was simply a Very Bad Idea.
The Saiyans were forced to stay two months rather than two weeks on Kaeru, which was considerably longer than Ru Sa had intended; naturally, such close quarters with so few other Saiyans meant that his face and bearing became familiar to some of them, and that meant he would have to fake his death and become someone else again at least ten years before he'd planned. Kami, what a pain.
As it turned out, however, he didn't have to. The thing that changed his mind happened right after they managed to blow apart a particularly annoying frog man who had been named Paikuhan - whose name they had known not because they asked, but because his froggy little friends had been shouting it at him the entire battle. Post-war euphoria had ensued around the campfire, and Ru Sa had stood with his companions, eating fresh frog-meat and boasting about their kills. That's when a young Saiyan woman came up and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Hey," she said.
"What?" Ru Sa asked, looking down at her.
"You are HOT," she confided, winked, and then walked away.
Ru Sa blinked. "Huh?"he replied eventually, but by then she was already out of hearing range.
Well. That was... odd. In fact, that was the first time in ages that anyone NOT of his own species had come on to him.
"Must have gotten something with the pheromones wrong," he muttered to himself, scratching his head and trying to figure it out, when another female - the only other one on the ship, but that was hardly unusual - walked up and slapped him in the face.
"THAT'S for being an ass," she announced, and flounced away.
Ru Sa was now totally at a loss. He stood there, absolutely befuddled, his forgotten and his expression lost. He'd seen that kind of behavior before, yes, but it was so out of context here that he could not immediately place the motivation.
"Whoah, good one," one of the other soldiers said, and they all started laughing. At him.
"You think so?" he snarled at them, resisting the urge to just break character and blow them all to hell.
"She wanted you, stupid," the offending Saiyan explained, still laughing and nudging his fellow apes. "What are you, gay?"
Ru Sa sputtered.
"Dunno what your problem is, man," the fellow continued, but I wouldn't lose an opportunity like that again." And still laughing, he headed off to get some more food.
At that moment, Ru Sa realized just where he'd seen that woman's behavior before.
It was jealousy. She was acting JEALOUS.
Of WHAT? He hadn't DONE anything - what, not arguing with the first female meant he'd somehow rejected the second?
No explanation was forthcoming then or later - women of all species had alwasy been a mystery to him - but it turned out to be the first of many incidents. When they finally returned to Vejiitasei, Ru Sa began to have trouble remaining as incognito as he wanted. Apparently, something about the particular form he had taken on this time was extremely attractive to the female gender, and random ones he'd never laid eyes on before began making excuses to come to the regen room and watch him work.
Or try to talk to him.
Or touch him.
Or spar with him - and that, as everyone knew, was REALLY serious.
By the time a month had gone by, Ru Sa suspected that several of the females (and a few of the males, but he chose not to think about that) were were purposely allowing themselves to be injured so he'd have to treat them. Hence, when the next planet raid went out, he went with it - with every intention of jumping ship the first moment he got the chance. No freaking way he was going back to Vejiitasei; he was anything but anonymous now, and because of that faking his death and coming back would be very hard. The only solution - clearly - was just to LEAVE.
Unfortunately, it didn't happen that way. It was on that particular mission that he met Kinusayo, and so entered one of the oddest - and thus, most memorable - periods in his life.
Ru Sa fought along side the Saiyans on the intended target planet and that night bedded down in camp with a feeling of a job well-done.
The actual details of that first encounter were a bit strange; he recalled the scent of blood - Saiyan blood had a very unique odor to it, which made it hell to clean out of regen tanks - and the sound of a scuffle. Some rather creative curses, and then the progenitor of said curses was thrown by accident into the range of the firelight.
Ru Sa blinked at her, sandwich halfway to his mouth; three things immediately became obvious.
One, she was young. VERY young, he thought at first, curious enough to increase his scrutiny. Then he saw the swell of young breasts through her jumpsuit and the curve of barely post-pubescent hips, and lost interest again.
Two, she was bleeding - fresh blood, from fresh wounds This was unexpected; Saiyans, as a rule, were legendary for their skill to work together in a seamless unit, and so did not normally beat their own soldiers to pulp on the battle field. This meant that the little lady over there had to have broken some rules.
Three (and in seeming contradiction to observation Two), she was happy. This possibly rebellious young woman looked perfectly pleased to have been attacked, which of course merely served to infuriate her beaters even more.
Hm. Perhaps she'd suffered a head injury.
"I told you," she suddenly spit, blood flying from between her teeth; her voice was startlingly clear, and she had a slight accent. "I TOLD you that energy ball was too big for reversal. You'll see."
Energy ball? he thought, and then came the explosion.
The ship - which had NOT broken down on the way here, for once - very suddenly became so much scrap metal. There was a moment of wild shouting and scrambling as people threw up ki shields and ran to avoid the larger pieces of shrapnel, but it was clear the damage had been done; their ship was gone.
The ones who had already been beating the girl turned on her again with renewed fury.
Ru Sa was not among them; he could only stare at the husked ruin of the ship with a feeling bordering on nausea. Oh, gods... stuck AGAIN for who knew HOW long until help came for them, or until they were able to steal a ship or build one... and how likely was THAT to happen, and now he'd have to deal with more Saiyan-pawing, and more Saiyan-de-stressing, and more pure Saiyan-stupidity....
And who was this woman, anyway? WHAT energy ball was too big? Oh, she had better not have been the one responsible for this or Ru Sa might just have to join in on the beating-fest. Holding his head and resisting the urge to groan, Ru Sa eyed the wreckage of the ship mournfully and gave himself up for lost.
Later, when the answers to these questions came, Ru Sa found they held his attention - because they surprised him. Displaying a fighting instinct that only Elites normally had, this weird girl had accurately predicted that the oozaru-forming energy ball which the saiyans had sent up hours earlier and then supposedly dispersed had in fact not dispersed; that, in actuality, it had simply super-ionized the air and reformed itself on the nearest batch of metal... which happened to be their ship.
The soldiers on guard had not listened to her, had beaten her down when she had persisted, and now were extremely mad because she had seen the problem and not FIXED it.
Well. That was even more interesting.
Ru Sa noted all of this, along with the fact that the girl - for all her intellect - was smooshed fairly quickly. You know, it just figured; a superior mind would happen to go with an inferior body. Ru Sa shook his head, wondering at the obliqueness of this race and HOW the hell they'd managed to last so long.
"Captain. Captain!"
Ru Sa was startled out of his... reverie? That couldn't be the right word... to find Cumber standing over him, shaking him rather violently.
"Guh... wha..." Ru Sa said, instincts taking a moment to kick in. Then he grabbed Cumber and sat up, slamming the slimmer man over his knee and almost breaking his back.
"The HELL are you doing?!" Ru Sa demanded, holding Cumber down with relative ease. Cumber had never been much of a warrior.
Cumber coughed. "I...uh... you were... unconscious, or... um..."
Waves of concern and guilt came from Cumber's mind, and Ru Sa was mollified, at least for the moment. Letting him up and rubbing his neck as though he'd been the one attacked, he glared his best glare and waited for an explanation.
"Um... we're on course," Cumber said shyly, trying to stand straight and failing miserably. The boy was going to need a chiropractor.
"Un," said Ru Sa. Well, really; what kind of response was necessary for that?
"We'll be landing at the Capsule Corporation in twenty minutes," Cumber continued, and Ru Sa stared.
"WHAT?" he bellowed, and bolted out of his bed to go get dressed... and tripped over his dress armor, which some idiot had piled at his feet.
"Cumber..." Ru Sa said warningly, beginning to feel like this would be one of those days.
One of those...
...wait a minute...
"I didn't do it!" Cumber said, backing up with both hands in front of his chest. "Ididn'tdoitIhavetogetdressedgottogonowseeyoulaterCaptainbye!"
And then he was gone. He didn't do it... then who... Ru Sa looked at the armor and noted that someone had fingered a large, smudgy heart onto the chest plate.
The only person he'd ever known who dared pull crap like that was Kinusayo.
Bad Day? No, it was far worse; Ru Sa now felt that he was going to be sick.
Hands shaking mildly as he dressed, he geared up his mind for his next big mission, trying to forget about Kinusayo, trying not to wonder where she was and when she would be back, and trying to be READY for the coming adventure. This was important; this was how to stop the Black. Trying not to remember Kinusayo...
He'd never wished so hard that he could forget.
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