An Amity Revived
Chapter Three
Sure. Bring all of them back except for the most important one.
Why are you on my side now?
Well, you're in enough trouble as it is. Might as well not let this go undone.
You just want to get me busted, don't you?
I thought you said to never leave a job unfinished. That's what you are doing right now.
I'm too worn out.
You're pathetic.
Ah, so you do want me to get into trouble! ...Wait a second. 'Most important one'? He is no more special than the others.
I wish you would've realized that a long time ago. Well, are you going to revive him or what?
I can't. I'm sorry, but I just... can't.
Darkness started to settle around them. It was almost amazing that there was actually still nightfall. Without life, the clouds did not allow any light to penetrate to the galaxy. All the heat and light stayed within the planet. That was not the case with this planet though. Heat stayed, light escaped. It must be the type of clouds Meatsei produced. Either that or it was the stamina of light energy of the nearby star. Whatever it was that allowed full days and nights, it helped the Saiya-jin with time management.
They had been walking for a long time, going down the long crevice. Panboukin often complained about having to walk when they knew how to fly, but Celipa pointed out that if they wanted good, solid answers, they had to take the long way. She always ended the bickering with the invitation: "If you want to fly, go ahead. But do you know exactly where we're going?" It was enough to shut him up about the subject for about an hour before he complained about it again.
Her point was made clear whenever they passed by an object of the past. It was always a piece of armor. Sometimes it wasn't Bardock's. In fact, only half of the time was it their old commander's shred of attire they found. The other half was their tiny pieces of armor that they found. It told a story, which the group would keep to themselves until the very end.
Luckily or unluckily, the end was drawing nearer. The ditch was narrowing as the trio progressed inch-by-inch. It brightened up their spirits, and their pace started to gradually quicken with every five to ten steps. The frequency of complaints died down with every passing line left in the soil. However, Celipa was the only observant one while the trip continued. She was the one who discovered most of the debris, and she was the first one to notice something unlike the other artifacts. Something quite peculiar.
Without saying a word to the two men, she sidestepped immediately to the edge of the trail. She lightly stepped outside of the crevice and walked towards the object silently. She didn't retreat unnoticed. The two males ceased their hike when Panboukin turned his head to say something to her. Perhaps another protest. It didn't matter; he saw her interrupt the moderate tempo of the walk --although they had been speeding little by little-- and demanded to know what caused her sudden change of interest. There was a silent agreement with the two men: best follow her rather than ask questions.
Right when they caught up to her, Celipa halted. They were only two steps behind her, one on each of her sides, and observed what she saw. She did nothing and said nothing. She merely stared at the emaciated structure before her with her arms folded aesthetically beneath her breastbone. Totepo shared her emotion that was shown on her face: a cold expression while he stood in the same position as she. He, too, kept silent.
However, Panboukin was downright surprised and bewildered. He made no attempt at all to hide it. "What the hell...?"
The figure in front of them was a gruesome sight for the weak eyes stomach. It was something seen almost everyday in the average Saiya-jin life, just not as revealing. It used to be a living being, but the flesh was half-eaten away. All that was left were a few entrails almost vanished and the bones that were still in place. The form of the body was in a pained position, as if he had more bones broken than bones in his body. His skull had a huge gash at the side of it. His armor was cracked and was buried at least a centimeter underneath dust.
The Saiya-jin knew who this was. Well, not exactly who; they couldn't name who this creature used to be. But they knew that he was one of the assassins that had killed them. He had been a light purplish creature, a quite common being to find in the Planet Trade. He had not killed any of the three Saiya-jin on the planet now, which they considered a very lucky thing. To be killed by this creature would have been a disgrace.
"Something happened," Celipa murmured under her breath, just barely audible to her two companions. She just had to say something to break the silence of astonishment, despite the foolishness the line produced. There had been a thirty-second gap of stillness ever since Panboukin announced his surprise, and she just couldn't stand the noiseless atmosphere.
"Bardock was here, wasn't he?" Panboukin answered. However, neither of the two looked at him, for they knew he was actually leading to a point. "He's supposed to be stronger than all of us by at least a thousand points. He could've easily killed this asshole."
"True," she replied simply, without straying her eyes away from the skeletal body. Finally, after forty seconds longer of reticence, she moved her foot to the side and walked alongside the ditch instead of inside of it.
"Come on," she instructed, walking away with the normal, expressionless face that she had claimed for herself ever since resurrection, "we're not going to make any more progress if we just stand here."
Agreeing with the female, the two males followed, knowing that --like she had been the past few hours-- she was correct.
The setting sun. Crimson skies. A desolate planet. Demolished buildings. Perfectly still weather. Vengeance burning within the victim. All genuine elements for the upcoming battle. The prediction had been --at the beginning-- a very short fight, the Saiya-jin killed immediately. Things didn't quite turn out the way the assassins predicted.
Drifting in the air, the amphibious alien took it upon himself to finish the brown-tailed being off. He assumed that it would only take two attacks to take the Saiya-jin out of the living world. First, the left hand jet out in front of him, sending a ray of light towards the ground. It was the assumed location of the victim. Wasting no time, the right hand did the mirror image of the left hand's previous actions in the same direction.
Once the explosion of the two bombs had been seen and heard, he smirked and chuckled with triumph. Too easy, in his opinion. At least the others had been much more of a challenge, although he never really slain any of them. He didn't feel disgruntled though. He finally had his chance to do his job, his duty, to one of them.
However, his celebration came two seconds too soon. The tiny, green-tinted compact computer that was held on his left ear and over his left eye started to respond to a source of a being right over his head. Wide-eyed, he snapped his head up. Bemusement quickly transformed into horror as he saw his doom looming over him.
The Saiya-jin himself did not hesitate at all to attack. The emotion of revenge was well expressed on his face: a tight frown, infuriated eyes... a worse than deadly scowl. His arms were brought up beyond his head, the forearms and wrists just behind his skull. His fists were clasped together in a firm fist, and his next move was well predicted. The fish-like creature had no time to defend himself.
Both of the Saiya-jin's arms arched over his head, and then the fists smashed into the purple alien's skull. The scouter broke into tiny little pieces upon impact, automatically flying off of his head. No one has ever realized how delicate a skull can be, for his head seemed to have compacted together. The lifeless body plummeted down towards the earth, calling the battle to the Saiya-jin's favor at the moment.
But the other assassins have still yet to attack...
In a mere fifteen minutes, more events had occurred than expected. The three revived Saiya-jin had reached the end of the crevice right when the planet was completely filled with darkness. There had been a passing tornado, but it never came too close to the monument of "The War of Revenge". It appeared near enough to the trio to make them have to shield their eyes, but it never hit them. Was it a miracle? Or was it just a coincidence that the cyclone never came near and disturbed the placement of each artifact?
It didn't matter to the Saiya-jin. The element that had caught their attention was their death site, where they had been betrayed and murdered. Their little band had separated to inspect the landscape, each with their own bewilderment and interest. All had memories flooding back into their minds when they approached the exact place where they had died, whether they wanted it to or not.
The flashback of the female's death was the same one that had returned to her during her lone hike at the beginning, during the time she was trying to avoid the pain the sharp, flying dirt that had hit her. She hated the event, hated having to die the way she did with the emotions she felt. It hurt, but there was nothing she could do about it. The only thing she could do was hide it the way the two men were skillfully doing.
Totepo remained silent, never uttering a sound while he reflected on his death, the battle, the deaths of the others, and the sneers worn on the assassins' faces. He had done the most wandering, inspecting everything he could. He was amazed to see that some of the crew's blood had permanently stained on the rubble that they caused. There were no red fluids across the gravel, but that was expected. Perhaps the materials used by the inhabitants to create these buildings were the cause. Or perhaps this was something he never knew before, too ignorant to pay attention to.
No matter. It wasn't too important anyway.
Panboukin disregarded his flashback as if it was an annoying fly, and told himself it wasn't anything worth his time to worry about. In fact, after he walked around the border of the battlefield, he approached Totepo, already with his bored expression. He had passed his death site on the way, but he ignored it the way he ignored his brutal memory.
"Well, there's nothing interesting here," Panboukin announced to him, looking absolutely disgusted. "You want to get off this sorry planet and go home?"
Before Totepo could respond --he was actually considering to do so-- the armor-less woman approached them with the same attitude as Panboukin had. Except the first thing she said was nothing of boredom or disinterest. "Amazingly enough, nothing has changed as I remembered it. Just without the dead body of Panboukin," she added with a badinaged smirk.
"Shut up," Panboukin snapped, not in the mood to be teased. Celipa laughed quietly in response, the first gesture of pure delight anyone has shown since resurrection. He snarled, and then moved back to what he was trying to get an answer for earlier. "Anyone up for going back to Vegetasei?"
The chuckles having left the petite woman, she shrugged and shook her head. "There's nothing left for us here. We might as well."
Totepo silently nodded his agreement. The decision was unanimous. The Saiya-jin took off towards the direction of where they remembered leaving their pods, the monument now only a scarce reminder drilling in the back of their minds.