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Recoome had never been a coward. In fact, he was most known for being the member of Ginyu Force that would rush into battle first. It got him through life… for the most part. Unfortunately, it took him right to his death as well.
Hell wasn’t so bad at first. Sure, they tried multiple times to escape from it. But that was just because… well… it was Hell. They weren’t going to be remaining in the nicer parts of it for long. They saw what happened to Frieza. Not his ultimate fate, but they were there when he simply… disappeared. They didn’t know where they took him, but it couldn’t be anywhere good.
They found out soon enough afterward. Recoome, as always, was first. This time it wasn’t by his own choice, though.
He was in an arena of some sort. Vague images of people around him in the spectator seats, cheering. This wasn’t so bad.
Recoome worked himself for the crowd, posing, flexing, and doing a few pirouettes. They continued to cheer him on, and he thought that maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe they reevaluated his stay and decided Heaven was better suited for him.
That was when his opponent appeared.
It was that Saiyan who had defeated him. Goku. He’d never forget that face. He was beaten, humiliated. In front of his own team, too.
The phantom of his opponent moved into a fighting stance, making a ‘come on’ motion with his hand.
Recoome gladly complied. He’d beat that Saiyan bastard here in front of all these… people? Regain his dignity. He charged straight for the phantom fighter, swinging hard.
The illusion of Goku raised a hand, quickly stopping him by catching Recoome’s fist. He didn’t even move after that, simply stood there holding it.
Recoome pulled back, but his arm wouldn’t budge. For all of his massive muscles, he felt like there was no strength whatsoever in his movements. He lashed out with his other fist, but something impacting him from the side caught him off guard, sending him flying.
The giant redheaded warrior bounced off the ground, rolling to a stop. That felt like an entire spaceship. When he pushed himself up and looked, though, he found another phantom standing next to the first one.
Vegeta. The one who actually killed him.
Recoome felt anger building in him at the sight of the two Saiyans who’d so completely embarrassed him in battle. He got to his feet and growled, concentrating his ki into his mouth. “Recoome Eraser Gun!” he shouted, opening his mouth to blast the pair away. However, he found that nothing came out. Not a single bit of energy. Like his strength, it felt like it had been simply… drained from his body.
Goku rushed at him during his confusion, grabbing him by the hair and kneeing him in the gut. All of the air rushed from the mutant Ginyu warrior. That felt even harder than the actual Earthling had hit him during their battle. This felt far too real. Goku pulled hard on Recoome’s hair while he was doubled over, tossing him behind himself towards Vegeta. While he was stumbling, a light caught his attention.
Recoome raised his arms to protect himself from the ki blast that was thrown at him from the Saiyan prince. He felt the white heat of it hitting his unprotected arms, and it threw him back once again. He tumbled backward a couple of times before landing on his back.
The warrior already felt out of breath. Where was the power he was so proud of? The agility? The stamina?
In the background, he started registering the sound of the crowd again. It wasn’t cheering this time, though. It was… laughing. Low and rumbling at first. But the longer he listened, the louder it got. An eruption of mirth at his expense.
“Stop it…” Recoome growled, pushing himself to his feet once again. He looked around at the ghostly figures watching him. Their huge, unnaturally wide smiles as they cackled. “Stop laughing at me!” he demanded. “Stop laughing! It’s not funny!”
The two phantoms of his tormentors began laughing as well, faces twisting in a disgusting, twisted parody of merriment. The phantom of Vegeta rushed forward this time, grabbing Recoome under the arms and putting him in a double-arm lock from behind. The phantom of Goku approached as well, pulling a fist back and punching Recoome square in the solar plexus. The redhead cried out as he was used a punching bag for these two monsters. Weak, unable to fight back.
Everyone laughing at him the whole time.
Laughing at how weak he was.
This truly was Hell.
()()()()()
Guldo was the one who panicked first when Recoome had disappeared. The four members of Ginyu Force that had ended up in Hell together had formed a policy of sticking with each other. They couldn’t torture them if they were together. They could pull each other out.
At least, that was what they thought. They hadn’t even thought of the possibility that they’d merely… vanish.
The small, green alien thought he’d be safe if he grabbed onto Burter. If they tried to take him, he wouldn’t go alone.
What a foolish thought.
The next thing he knew was precisely that. Loneliness. Darkness. An empty void.
Guldo looked around, waiting for something to jump out of the darkness. Scare him. Maybe try to drag him away into it.
Nothing came, though.
“Guys? Burter? Jeice!” Guldo called, beginning to walk. If he kept going one direction, surely he had to get somewhere. An exit, other people, a landmark of some sort.
Anything.
“Guys, can you hear me?” the four-eyed alien yelled, continuing his walk. Still nothing. Not a pebble, let alone a person. “Recoome, did they take you here, too?”
No answer. Nothing. Just his own voice disappearing into the void.
Guldo kept going, determined. He walked. And walked. On and on and on. He saw nothing and nobody, becoming more nervous the more of it there was.
Nervous and… lonely.
Guldo hated being alone. He liked feeling like he was needed. Being able to have others there when he needed something in return. The Ginyu Force had been a blessing to him, as he hadn’t even been particularly liked back in his own home. All he did was steal a couple of things and peak up a couple of girl’s skirts, and everyone treated him like a criminal. But in the Ginyu Force, he was welcome and respected for his unique powers. It gave him somewhere to call home and someone to call friends.
But… none of that was here. “Hello?” he called one last time helplessly. Still no answer. His legs were starting to hurt. How long had he been walking?
He didn’t even know how long he’d been in this emptiness. He stopped walking and sat down on the ground, looking around. The emptiness weighed on him, made him feel heavy and nauseous. He was indeed all alone.
So this was what Hell was.
()()()()()
Burter’s hearts both started beating faster when Guldo disappeared. Recoome had been a shock, sure, but it didn’t really register that this was happening until Guldo.
“Burter!” Jeice’s voice had snapped him into reality. He felt the much smaller Brench-seijin clutch his arm. He could feel how petrified Jeice was, his body heat swelling in response to his increased stress levels.
Burter reached down with his other hand to assure him that everything was going to be alright. He wasn’t going to let them be separated. “Jeice, do-”
It was all he’d gotten out before the world seemed to shift away from him. The last thing he saw before he landed in his new location was the terrified face of the only person he’d ever truly loved.
The blue giant didn’t have time to think about it as he was deposited in what felt like sap. Just an entire floor of it, up to his knees. He grunted as he tried to pull himself free, but he could barely move. He huffed and yelled up at the darkness above him, “Is this it?! This is what you’ve got?! You think keeping me from my speed is the worst you can do to me?!”
Burter received his answer in the sound of the most frightening thing he could think of.
“Burter! Help me!”
The giant speedster stopped his struggling for a moment, looking for where the cry had come from. That was… Jeice. He was in trouble. He needed him.
No, it was a trick. They wanted him to panic. It was the one thing that would cause him to. He couldn’t fall for it. “Nice try!” he yelled at the void around him again. “You think I’ll fall for that?!”
“Burter, please! Where are you?!”
Burter felt that one go straight through his hearts. Jeice was stronger than most thought, even himself, but he was strongest when they were together. When they were a team. The Brench-seijin didn’t have as much confidence as he projected when he was on his own. Burter was supposed to be there for him. To help him be the spitfire powerhouse hidden inside of that beautiful, red-skinned man.
“It’s not real…” Burter muttered to himself, trying to block out the sounds of his lover calling for help. Calling for him. “Just ignore it, he’s not here. He’s… he’s back in the main hub of Hell, where it’s safe.”
The goo he was standing in seemed to rise ever so slightly as he said it to himself, coming halfway up his thighs. That was harder to ignore. He pulled a bit at it, seeing if he could try and get free. His foot managed to move ever so slightly forward. Great, another thousand years, and he might move ten feet.
It was as hard to ignore as the next sound to come at him out of the darkness. The phantom voice calling for him made a panicked, painful sound as if struck. Hard. It echoed across the darkness before going silent.
Somehow that was more unnerving than the sound of Jeice in distress. Because a thought crept into the back of Burter’s mind and began to grow like a thorny vine across his brain.
What if it wasn’t an illusion? What if he somehow was close enough to wherever they took Jeice that he could hear him? Maybe even reach him if he tried hard enough? What if he was ignoring the sound of his crimson-skinned lover when he was in actual need of rescuing?
Burter growled and pushed himself forward in the sap he was entrenched in. It wouldn’t actually hurt to try. There was more risk if he didn’t.
“…Burter…?”
“I’m coming, Jeice,” Burter muttered back to the miserable voice, inching forward ever so slowly. For the speedster, this was like torture alone. He hated doing anything slowly. He found that the more he moved towards the voice, though, the more the sap retreated. It was only halfway up his shins now. Still a slow trudge, but it was progressing.
There was another sound of Jeice crying out, and Burter kept his hearts under control. At least, until words accompanied it. “Let me go!!”
“Don’t touch him!” Burter screamed into the darkness. It was reflex, mostly. But the sounds caused him to try and go too fast, stumbling and falling to his hands and knees in the muck. He pulled his hands back up and cringed at the disgusting feeling between his fingers. He pushed himself up and determinedly kept going, trying to reach that voice that seemed so close yet was too far away.
What kind of Hell was this?
()()()()()
Jeice felt panic well up in his body and hit him in the throat as he backed away from where Burter had been standing a moment ago. Where all three of his companions had been. Now they were gone. All gone.
The Brench-seijin turned and fled from the spot. He didn’t know if he could escape the fate that had befallen his comrades, but he’d try. He kept seeing Burter in his mind, the last words that didn’t even finish falling from his lips before he was gone. He closed his eyes, feeling tears sting his eyes as he ran as fast as he could.
Kami-sama, why was he so useless?
“Completely useless.”
“A weak-willed coward.”
“Who would want someone like that on their team?”
Jeice stopped running and opened his eyes, looking around quickly. He knew this room. It was his living quarters on the ship he shared with the other Ginyu Force members. Nice and secluded, right next to the engine room. The familiar sounds and heat soothed him a bit. Maybe it had all been a nightmare. He never went to Namek, they didn’t die.
“Wouldn’t you like that?”
“To go back and redo it all again.”
“Maybe this time you won’t be such a coward.”
“But who are you kidding?”
Jeice went rigid at the voices coming from around him. Where were they coming from? They all sounded like… himself. They were coming from everywhere as if the walls themselves were talking to him.
Not that he needed the walls to tell him any of this. It wasn’t anything he didn’t say to himself when he was alone in this room. Wondering how he of all people managed to get chosen to be in the elite Ginyu Force. To fight alongside the amazing Captain Ginyu and his hand-picked squadron.
“Why is that?”
“It isn’t your skills, surely. No, you’re nothing special.”
“You can’t stop time. You have no super speed. You’re not particularly strong. You can’t swap bodies with other people. What can you do?”
“You can throw a ball of ki at people. Just like everyone else.”
Jeice closed his eyes again, putting his hands against his ears. No, he couldn’t think like that. Burter was always reminding him that he was here for a reason. That Captain Ginyu saw something in him that he didn’t see in anyone else. He was respected. He had a place here.
“Of course Burter would try to keep you around.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t get any without you.”
“At least you’re good for something.”
Jeice shook his head. He couldn’t block the voices, no matter how hard he tried. He let go of his ears and hurried to the door, pressing the button to open it. It didn’t even budge. Of course, it wouldn’t. The Brench-seijin looked around the room for another way out. He couldn’t stay here where his worst thoughts bombarded him. “Come on, there’s gotta be a way outta here,” he muttered to himself. Having his own voice over the others, even if they sounded the same, gave at least a little comfort.
“You’ll never find a way out of here.”
“You’re not smart enough for that. You’ve never been that smart.”
“Salza was always right. You never could live up to him.”
“Oh, shut up,” Jeice muttered through clenched teeth, standing on a chair and banging on one of the reinforced windows. He could see nothing but an empty void outside of it. No stars, no planets. Figures. “Salza was a pretentious asshole.”
“Maybe, but at least he wasn’t a coward.”
“A weak coward who left his friends behind.”
“Worst, who left the man he was supposed to love behind.”
Supposed to? “I do love him!” Jeice snapped at the voices. It felt silly immediately, being as no one else was there.
“Then, why did you run away?”
“You turned and ran like a scared little rabbit as soon as given a chance.”
“Burter ended up dead because of you.”
“That’s not true, shut up,” the red-skinned man hissed, walking over to the bed. There was nowhere else he could try to get out. The rooms were designed to be strong enough to withstand a full assault, just in case anyone had some nightmares that ended in fireworks. Being right next to the engine room, Jeice’s was specially reinforced.
“Isn’t it? You ran when he was knocked out.”
“Not that you had many choices. You’ve never been strong enough to beat opponents like the Saiyan.”
“Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up…” Jeice started chanting, trying to drown it out. He couldn’t, though. The more he said it, the louder he shouted the words, the louder the voices became.
He was trapped in his own Hell.