[ Contents | Chapter 27 | Chapter 28 | Chapter 29 ]

Deceiver's Legacy

By Dragoness Eclectic

 

Chapter 28

Raditz growled softly and shook his head, sending waves through the great mane of hair that tumbled down his back. His small mouth flattened into a thin line of disgust.

Nezumi looked up from her console. "What? You've been silent for the last hour or two, and, by the way, I think I've located some of your robot transmissions."

"My head aches and I'm hungry." Raditz sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I've been through most of it now. Probably missed a few things--had to fast-forward through years of nothing happening, but I've got the picture."

"Well?"

"Time for something to eat." Raditz leaned back, stretched, and headed for the main hatch. At Nezumi's astonished expression, the big Saiyan smiled faintly. "I'm hungry. Can't think well like that."

Nezumi closed her eyes and counted to ten silently. "Fine." A bit of mischief danced in her eyes as she got up and stalked after him. "How 'bout a couple of steaks, rare, dumplings, and a little something on the side?"

Raditz stopped suddenly and looked back down the companionway at here. The very tip of his tail twitched slightly. "No. No! I'll make my own food!" He hurried off to the galley.

Nezumi stood open-mouthed for a few seconds, then put her hands on her hips. "I don't believe this! What is wrong with that man?"

* * *

Later...

In the ship's small galley, Nezumi nursed a cup of hot chocolate. "Okay, now are you going to tell me the bad news?" she asked Raditz

Raditz popped the last spring roll in his mouth, savoring its taste. "Yeah." He looked disgusted again. "My father... " The long-haired Saiyan shook his head. "My father was wiser than he knew, to leave her service. Too bad he wasn't wise enough to leave it sooner." Raditz licked the last taste of lunch off his fingers.

"Well?"

"Naranja is an elite noble, and has some of the worst blind arrogance I've ever seen--to the point of madness. Even Vegeta will recognize his mistakes and learn from them, even if he won't ever admit to anyone else that there is any possibility of him making a mistake. Naranja can't or won't do that. Her ravings--and that's the best word for her personal journals--blame everyone and everything else for her screw-ups." His brows lowered in anger. "That's when her 'screw-ups' weren't deliberate maneuvers to murder people that offended her."

"She killed off the rest of the Saiyan commanders on planet, deliberately leading them into ambushes. Sometime between killing off her main rival and the death of Lord Col--an event she doesn't like to talk about, but that I think she brought about--she found the main control center for the robots--and somehow acquired control of them. After the rest of the commanders were dead, she pulled rank and took command of the lower-ranking guys."

Nezumi nodded.

"So far, simple enough. One of the lower-ranking people she got rid of along the way was 'the witch who took Bardock from her'--my mother, Kinoko." Raditz's jaw tightened. "It was covered up and reported at the time as a robot attack, but Naranja was proud of what she'd done; boasted of it in her journals." Dark eyes stared at the overhead; his face remained impassive, save for a single muscle twitching in his jaw.

"She lured Kinoko away from her team by pretending to be Bardock, newly arrived in his pod. I don't know how she did it, exactly, but Jinkouseian technology let her make illusions, let her change her scent. She killed Kinoko with a surprise blow, laughing at the look on my mother's face when her 'lover' killed her..."

Nezumi's eyes widened in horror; she bit her lip, squelching the automatic response of "I'm sorry." The standard platitudes just didn't seem to fit.

Raditz just shook his head and continued, "When Frieza's assassins came after her team and the back-up squad, the Saiyans thought it lucky that the warbots targetted enemies with the highest ki first--Frieza's assassins-- giving Lechuge time to take out what he thought was the command computer's bunker. Naranja really sent him after an expendable reserve depot; back then, she wanted the Saiyans to think they could survive on the planet under her leadership.

"They never knew why Frieza's assassins didn't return, because they didn't hear the transmission back to Frieza's base that pronounced the Saiyans dead at the hands of the Jinkousei warbots, nor did they hear the report that declared the planet worthless due to the battle damage inflicted on it. Those transmissions came from the communication computers of Jinkousei's robotic defense network, computers controlled by Naranja."

"They heard the news of Vegetasei's destruction over the scouters of Frieza's many soldiers--and unlike the riff-raff, Naranja's company knew that no comet had done the job. Comets didn't send teams of assassins to mop up." The bitterness welled up in Raditz's voice. "So with Frieza out there on a rampage and nothing to go home to, it was easy for Naranja to convince them to stay on Jinkousei permanently, and bow to her rule." Raditz sighed. "She boasted to journals how she set it all up."

"I think, during those thirty years, she was semi-rational. As far as she knew, Bardock was dead, and her Saiyans were the only survivors. There were those who chafed under her rule, but they tended to have fatal meetings with wandering warbots." Raditz leaned back. "At first, she did a good job of convincing the Saiyans that she was the only one strong enough to fight the warbots off--until someone figured it out."

"That she was controlling them?" Nezumi asked.

"Yeah. I think it was Lechuge, or Patata. I think he saw too much back when he trashed the supposed command center, and thought too much about the continued behavior of the robots. Or his wife did. He wasn't quite in my father's league, but he was no fool, and Bardock always said Patata was a sharp one. Whoever it was, was smart enough not to confront Naranja openly--he just spread the word to all the rest of the Saiyans."

Nezumi shuddered. "Did they rebel? Is that when she murdered all of them?"

"Nope. That was nearly twenty years ago. There wasn't anything they could actually do about it, so no point in rebelling. The senior sergeants just let Naranja know that they all knew, so no point in lying about it anymore." Raditz paused, searching his mind for the right words.

"Naranja took public pride in her command of the robots--now her story was that she'd saved them all from Frieza. Always she was desperate to be respected as a powerful, ruling noble who deserved the power of command. However--"

"--she was really pissed at whoever spilled her secret?" Nezumi ventured.

"Yeah. She seethed about the 'secret traitor' who had found out her secrets and 'betrayed' them to the others. I think she started to lose it around then. She suspected Lechuge, mostly because he'd been my mother's squad sergeant; over the years, she 'tested' his loyalty in more and more extreme ways--arduous missions, discipline of the others, personal services to her..."

"At some point, Patata quietly disappeared from sight and the records; I think Lechuge set up their house out in the jungle to keep his wife out of Naranja's sight and mind. Naranja's 'personal service' requirements got rather.. intimate in the extreme, and I expect that her jealousy got just as extreme. She seems to have thought of Lechuge as her personal possession. It's also possible that Naranja exiled Patata, but there's no note of that in her journals."

Raditz sighed. "In a way, what finally happened was caused by me." At Nezumi's shocked look he continued. "Naranja heard the transmissions between me and Vegeta. She finally learned that other Saiyans had survived, and she learned that Bardock's son, Kakarrot lived. In her journals, she took that to mean that Bardock also must be alive--and on Earth.

"Bardock was the man who had never failed her, and she wanted him back. Lechuge was no longer good enough--and I get the impression he sensed this and tried to avoid Naranja's attention by retreating to his jungle homestead." Raditz paused for the right words again.

"Naranja snapped at Lechuge's 'desertion', and went hunting him. She found Lechuge, and Patata, and their children, and lost what little sanity she had. Here was evidence, to her mind, of Lechuge's utter treachery--he was so unfaithful to her that he'd had children by another woman! Not only that, but the others had conspired to cover up his treachery, so they were traitors, too."

"But, Patata was Lechuge's wife! Before he met Naranja, right?" Nezumi said, bewildered.

"I told you Naranja was insane. Her reality revolves around her and her alone. No one else has any needs or relationships except those with Naranja. If they do, they are traitors to Naranja." Raditz looked down and muttered, "A lot like Frieza..."

Raditz continued. "You saw what she did to Lechuge and Patata. When Naranja was killing him, Lechuge told her what scum she was, and reminded her about how she'd failed to deceive the Saiyans about her control of the robots, and how they all knew and mocked her behind her back. That was a mistake on his part, but I can understand it--he was striking back the only way he had left.

"After she was done with him and Patata, she went after the rest of the Saiyans, for their double treason." Raditz scowled. "Apparently Lechuge's kids managed to escape, and she went after them. From what Perejil told me, they resolved to split up: Zana fled into the jungle, while Perejil stole Naranja's pod and took off--to Earth, as it turned out. Unfortunately for him, Naranja decided to chase down her stolen pod, caught up with him on Earth, and killed him."

Nezumi looked sharply at Raditz. "So Zana is still out there? Or--" She could not bring herself to finish the thought.

"--or did she die in the jungle? Eh, she's a Saiyan child. Unless the robots got her, or she starved, she's likely still out there." Raditz frowned. "I've been getting some odd readings on my scouter."

CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 29


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Copyright 2002-2005 by Dragoness Eclectic