Planet to Planet
Chapter Five
Totepo surprised even himself when he realized that his patience was thinning to a size less than a width of the lens of a scouter. It came to a bigger surprise to him that his determination to find information was wearing out also. He knew that if he couldn't believe it, neither would anybody else, even if he had told him himself. After all, he was viewed as the most patient man in the entire universe and also the most determined to reach his goals, therefore his endurance should have been able to hold out until he found something on the computers about Vegetasei, Meatsei, the Saiya-jin, and more!
Alas, computer work was not a Saiya-jin's favorite work. It would be understandable for anybody of the Saiya-jin species to want to give up. Rather, they would give up, but it would have been a much longer time ago. So maybe a Saiya-jin from the past, if he were watching Totepo and could feel his mental pain, would exclaim, "It's about time!"
That would only be true if Totepo gave up. He didn't, though. Not quite yet.
What kept him from doing so was the fact that he finally made some progress. After Panboukin dropped into the circular control room with the emerald scouter and left just as quickly, Totepo accidentally pushed a wrong button, thinking it was the button to scroll down again. The mistake came much to his advantage; the night sky of the computer screen turned into daylight, with a dash twinkling fast, as if to coax the Saiya-jin into pressing a button.
Totepo fell for the trap and soon found himself staring at a symbol he knew quite well. It was a galactic consonant, used on Vegetasei ever since the Saiya-jin affiliated with the Planet Trade. Much to his delight, the consonant was the beginning letter of the word Meatsei. Ever since then, Totepo had been trying his very best to locate the rest of the six letters. Unfortunately, the second and the fifth letter were the only ones that were the same.
That was why he felt like he needed to at least have a break.
After all, what was the rush? The four of them weren't planning to go anywhere so soon, for they lacked information to know what to do. Plus, Celipa was still in the rejuvenation tank, Toma with her, and as far as Totepo was concerned, Panboukin was searching for new armor and clothing for them. Totepo's task was the least important job of them all, excluding Toma since he had nothing to do except to keep an eye on Celipa. It was so that when she did get out of the healing tank she would not do anything stupid. At least, that was what Totepo thought Toma was doing. He could be just there giving her company, since she could not communicate with the others.
It wasn't that Totepo felt pity on Celipa so much that he chose to not listen into Toma and Panboukin's conversation, and it wasn't the need for concentration either. If anything, it was more out of respect. He knew that once Panboukin had left the control room, he had brewed a conversation with Toma; Panboukin was loquacious that way.
It was not Saiya-jin etiquette to intrude into an on-going conversation unless there was something good to report --or bad, depending. Knowing Panboukin and Toma, however, and being their companion, Totepo knew that they wouldn't mind too much if he did start listening in on their conversation. In fact, he could just put on his scouter and turn it on, and they wouldn't even know he was there!
He felt uncomfortable about giving in to leisure before he completed his task; it would be a sign of psychological surrender, the worst kind of surrender imaginable for a bleak setting such as this.
Currently, the symbols on the screen displayed all but the last three letters, which was to indicate the title of planet: sei.
This might take just a little bit longer.
These olive reptilians --ugly reptilians, at that-- would not survive their time at the headquarters. That was a promise that Panboukin would be sure to keep, even if he lost a limb in the process. Alien visitors were a problem that the Saiya-jin did not need right now, and Panboukin was going to take it upon himself to get rid of them. Well, perhaps he would get a little help from Toma. Nothing was going to stop the sub-leader from coming. However, Panboukin wanted to at least engage himself in an interesting battle. It's been a long time since he fought intelligent creatures.
Perhaps "intelligent" was going a little far for this Saiya-jin to call his victims, but only for his victims from the past. The lizard-looking creatures actually were intelligent, and regretfully Panboukin knew it. The one that had shot that gun at Panboukin, the darker alien, moved with ease whenever the Saiya-jin made his attacks, and continued to fire his arm-length firearm with great aim. The darker alien's companion, however, didn't seem to want to fight, for he continued to tell the darker alien that the fighting wasn't worth it; they might as well just leave Panboukin alone. That only made Panboukin feel like the Saiya-jin race had been insulted; no one insults the Saiya-jin and gets away with it.
After all, no alien race --not even the Cold family themselves-- was good enough to fight Saiya-jin.
With this in mind, Panboukin continued his attempts to batter the forest green alien. He knew it was futile, but he also knew that if he stayed close enough to the alien, the alien wouldn't fire. Those rifles hurt enough for a Saiya-jin to avoid them.
The alien soon saw that his opponent was not going to go down without a good fight
Panboukin realized that his armor was helping him out so that the shots from the gun would not penetrate his skin. The alien --what did the other companion call him, again?-- wore nothing to protect himself except for a dark leather suit, which probably wouldn't help at all. Judging by the fight, Panboukin also knew that the alien --it was time to give him a nickname-- could not use Ki. Therefore the Saiya-jin had the higher advantage.
Panboukin floated about ten meters away from the alien and halted for a moment. The alien held out his blaster to fire again, but Panboukin was a stepping-stone ahead of him. The Saiya-jin shoved a muscle-structured hand towards the alien and began to trigger his inner spirits for a little light-spinning adventure...
But the alien had quicker reflexes. Before the ball of light could fully form, the alien pulled the trigger, and a split second later Panboukin's left hand flew to the opposite side of his shoulder blade. This time, he felt blood escape and slide down his fingers. That only enraged him even more.
"Bastard," Panboukin hissed and continued to spat many vulgar insults in one intake of air. It was all he could do to keep him from crying out and make the alien boastful by his weakness. Though it could come to the Saiya-jin's advantage he did not take it, for the last thing he wanted from anybody was the perception that the Saiya-jin race was weak. At least, not from this alien, anyway.
"Had enough?" the alien taunted menacingly, his black, hostile weapon still pointed at Panboukin. He was ready to kill, the overweight Saiya-jin assumed. His smug scowl proved it. The slanted forehead of the alien crumpled with his eyebrows, yet his mouth continued to suspend in mid-air in a sinister smile. His eyes twinkled with delight. It was then when his companion spoke again:
"Quit it. You know Shõgun doesn't like us torturing or killing rodents. We might as well leave him be."
"You be quiet," the alien hissed at his companion. "This is a personal matter."
Panboukin watched them with narrow eyes and saw the exchange of words between the two aliens. He saw his opportunity to attack; the alien he was fighting with was not paying any attention to him anymore. Yet there was something pulling him back: Toma's warning to not do anything stupid.
Suddenly, the alien glared back at Panboukin, and the overweight "rodent" knew that it was time to fight again. To keep up to the Saiya-jin standards, he was well prepared for it. He was not going to die in the process of ridding the headquarters with these ugly reptiles. It would be cheating him out of his second chance of living.
And one of the many things Panboukin hated most was a rip-off. Especially if he was it.
It certainly was about time that Totepo completed the planet's name!
Luckily for the acceleration of the gruesome process, he learned when he first started where the "Enter" button was. Unfortunately, the computer was slow while it searched for the information pertaining to Meatsei. It gave him time to think; however, the bad thing was that there was not a single thing he needed time to ponder, decide, or criticize about yet. The only thing that Totepo could do was to worry that the information about Meatsei was unimportant, and that the Planet Trade never had time to inhabit the planet.
Half a minute later, a paragraph appeared on the electric blue screen. It wasn't very lengthy, but there was more than just "a planet taken over, but never accepted by the buyer" or something else relative. Rather, the screen read:
"One of the ten assassination missions during the year 737. The victims were several low-level Saiya-jin warriors. However, four of the five assassins sent to the planet were killed by a lone Saiya-jin, as reported by Dodoria sometime later. That single Saiya-jin is thought to be the one who stood in the line of fire during the Vegetasei's demolition."
Totepo came close to pulling himself further away from the console. Each sentence affected each and every part of his body, all of the sentences worse than their former. All of those words were just horrendous! However, his need to clear his mind in order to think clearly about each of those words kept pounding in his head. He must, so that when he informed the other three he wouldn't have to have a struggle to clear things up for them.
First of all, an assassination missions? The Meatsei mission was meant to be an assassination mission? Totepo heard of those types of operations before; assassination missions were only for unsatisfactory crews who didn't deserve to be killed on their home planet. As far as Totepo was concerned, his team did better than most of the other low-level Saiya-jin crews, unless Freeza considered a mission completed ahead of schedule unsatisfactory. Sure, according to Toma, the beginnings of the crew of Bardock rode on a rough terrain, but that couldn't have been the reason!
The "ten assassination missions" in one year didn't bother Totepo too much; he remembered a year in which there were over twenty of those missions to a half a race of rebels. He did not want to think things any more complicated than they might turn out to be, so he did not venture into the possibility that perhaps more than half of those assassination missions were meant for the Saiya-jin alone.
Totepo was only half-surprised to see that the secretary made an effort to put who the victims were in this mission log; normally, the listings of assassination missions were only put down to mention the date of that task, unless there was a special reason. Typically, that special reason was that someone turned against the Planet Trade.
That was not what happened with this group of Saiya-jin!
Reflecting back to the events on Meatsei after the group's resurrection, Totepo soon realized that the lone fighter was none other than Bardock. The company of their commander, whom they had left behind to get the job over with, could have helped change the outcome of the crew. Totepo wondered what would have happened if they had waited for Bardock instead of leaving him behind. Would Toma, Panboukin, Celipa and him have survived?
After reading the last sentence, "That single Saiya-jin is thought to be the one who stood in the line of fire during the Vegetasei's demolition," Totepo soon pondered that if the subordinates had survived, perhaps they could have helped Bardock prevent Vegetasei's demolition.
Totepo brought his train of thought to a steaming halt.
Vegetasei's demolition? So, the Saiya-jins' home was truly gone? The Saiya-jin race as well? There had to be survivors. Freeza would have at least let some Saiya-jin live, wouldn't he?
Totepo stopped his thought process again, and asked himself why he was accusing Freeza for destroying his planet. There was no valid proof; the data entry did not mention it at all. That was excluding the fact that they could have been implying; "line of fire" usually meant that someone was deliberately attacking something or someone in one way or another. Surely it wasn't Freeza; it couldn't have been Freeza!
"Before Bardock arrived to this planet, Dodoria told me that Freeza thought the Saiya-jin as an eyesore. That he 'didn't like us'. I don't know, but I have a feeling that Freeza did something terrible to our people."
That was what Toma told Panboukin, Celipa, and Totepo before they departed off Meatsei. With Toma's information and the computer's data entries, Totepo knew then that it really was Freeza.
He still had an extremely hard time accepting all the facts dealing with Freeza's betrayal. Although he had told himself many times before that Vegetasei was gone, he had a hard time accepting it now. It must be because he had a confirmation that it was true; perhaps in his heart he was hoping desperately that he was wrong. It was the same with the concept of a trusted one falling into treachery with his loyal workers: he never thought it would happen and never wanted it to happen.
Although many questions have been answered by this single entry, there were many more yet to be answered before Totepo could submit to engaging into a conversation with Toma and Panboukin. Were there any survivors? If so, where were their whereabouts? What happened to the Planet Trade?
What year was this?
Totepo was only satisfied that he knew what he was doing now. At least he wouldn't have such a hard time while he continued on his hunt for answers. He only hoped that each new piece of information wouldn't lead to more questions. He was, after all, a Saiya-jin. Any more research than he had to do was going to be a little too overwhelming for him.