Chapter Text
Parse woke up stiff and groggy on an endless, silent plain, strongly feeling like she was supposed to be dead.
She cracked her eyes open, levering herself up from where she had been lying flat on her back, and stretched out an uncomfortable kink in her tail. The blood rushing back into it cleared her head a little, and she tried to run through the last few hours she could remember in her mind.
She had been beaten unconscious. That was a start. The soldiers had been weaker than her, but there had been so many that she had been worn down over time. She could vaguely remember being dragged away. It had been Durian's forces, she was pretty sure, although she had no idea what the slimy little bastard had been plotting. Whatever it was, it was premeditated. She'd been alone at the time – why? She never went anywhere without her team.
Right. He'd hacked her pod, diverting it. They'd all been heading back home after a mission, but she'd been diverted to the moon for the ambush. She hadn't noticed because it had been such a small change to the coordinates. The moon was so close to-
Parse froze as the clear mental image of Planet Vegeta exploding made itself known. "Oh. Shit."
Her brain finally started working again. If she'd been told last week that Frieza was planning a cull, she would have believed it. His disdain for her people had been very obviously growing; he thought the Saiyans were getting too big for their boots. Still, calling every warrior back to their homeworld and then destroying it was an extreme measure, even for him. Planets were valuable. He must have despised them far more than he had been letting on.
And now everyone Parse knew was probably dead. Teammates, rivals, family. Terse, her twin. Vacado.
"Coward," she muttered. "You damn coward. You knew we could have killed you head-on, you underhanded, disgusting little freak!"
That was about as far as she felt willing to go with processing that right now. Parse scanned her surroundings instead. A grassy plain as far as the eye could see. Green grass, which was unusual. A blue sky, which wasn't. Good air quality, which meant it was either uninhabited, the civilisation was low-level, or they were very environmentally conscious.
She staggered to her feet and examined herself. With the stiffness fading, she didn't seem to be injured. There was no sign of any cuts, bruises, or fractures. The only sign that she had ever been defeated was the small but noticable boost in strength she could feel compared to the baseline she was used to, a sign that she'd gotten a zenkai from the beating.
Her clothes were intact too – the plain, shoulderless black armour with the yellow piping, the matching boots and bracers, the black undershirt and leggings, even the long brown leather coat she'd made to carry her belongings. Her scouter was in her pocket, also undamaged, and when she turned it on she saw that it was fully charged. If someone had taken her to a healing tank before dumping her on this planet, that would account for the lack of injuries, but it wouldn't have repaired her clothes. Something strange was going on here.
That was a stupid thought. Of course something strange was going on here. Parse sighed, raking her fingers through her thick mane of black hair, and recentered herself, focusing on the energy running through her veins. Grasping ahold of her power, she tapped off the ground, and rapidly flew several hundred feet straight up into the air.
The plain extended in every direction. The air was pleasantly warm, and getting warmer quickly as the morning turned to midday. Scanning the horizon, the only sign of civilisation was a vague cluster of small structures, some of which seemed to be moving around slowly. Parse put on her scouter and set it to a planetary-range scan as she slowly turned a full circle. There were a few million power levels, mostly in the single digits or low teens, clustered in a way that implied towns and cities. One cluster, very far away from her, showed significantly higher levels, but even there, the average was only around fifty.
So, the second option, then. A low-level civilisation, probably not one she would have heard of. Parse almost activated her scouter's distress beacon, but hesitated. If Frieza wanted the Saiyans dead, it probably wasn't a good idea to tell anyone from the force that she was alive yet. Better to lay low for a little while, and try to find her way off this planet on her own.
"Shouldn't be too difficult," she said to herself. Most Saiyans, particularly the elites, would have had some trouble with that, but in Parse's eyes, acting discreet for information wouldn't hurt her pride. She didn't need to disintegrate a city every five minutes to prove her power. Inevitably, she'd show this planet the terror of a Saiyan warrior, but she'd avoid calling attention to herself until the time was right.
The scouter detected a small group moving on the ground, heading in her direction. Looking down, she saw a pair of large animals being ridden by two smaller, bipedal figures. Parse turned off her scouter, put it in her pocket, and dropped from the sky, fastening up her coat as she went. It was long enough to cover her armour and tail, so if these people knew what a Saiyan was, they wouldn't immediately recognise her as one.
Walking along the plain in their direction, it didn't take long for her to encounter the group. The people riding the animals turned out to be some kind of species that, actually, strongly resembled Saiyans. They didn't have tails, their hair was thinner, and both hair and eyes were shades of brown and yellow instead of black, but Parse could imagine a Saiyan with their tail hidden passing as one. They both looked male, and were wearing primitive-looking leathers and carrying wood and bronze spears, which boded poorly for this planet's technological development.
The animals were a quadrupedal species, obviously carnivores from the look of their claws and teeth. They looked well-fed, clearly domesticated. Parse realised she hadn't eaten in a while.
The men halted their mounts in front of her, and looked down on her with unworried grins. Parse's scouter had detected both their power levels as less than ten, but she felt an odd wave of discomfort when they looked at her.
"Look what we have here!" one of them said, in the most punchable tone Parse had ever heard in her life. "A collarless wench wandering the plains alone!"
"Such magnificent hair!" said the other, in a tone that seemed to be agreement. "I may keep this one myself! She could be prettier, but my collar will suit her well."
Parse blinked. Different greetings were normal for different planets, but that didnt' sound like it would be acceptable anywhere. "Are you coming on to me?" She tried to limit the threat in her tone; she still wanted information out of these people.
The first man laughed. "Slow even for a wench. I'll make this plain for you, woman. You belong to us now. Kneel, or we'll have to kill you, and it would be a shame to waste hair like that."
"Ah. Slavers." Parse nodded. She'd seen this kind of thing before on primitive planets, although it was odd for there to only be two in a slaving party. "I'll save both of us time, then. I am a Saiyan warrior. I am not weak, and I do not kneel. Where can I find a spacecraft on this planet?"
Both of the men exploded with laughter. "Not just slow, Sathak, insane!" said the second man through the peals. "Oh, I'll be keeping you close, wench. You'll amuse me greatly."
Parse's eyes narrowed. "Did either of you hear a word I said?"
"Oh, we heard you, wench." The first man – Sathak? – kicked the side of his mount, which crouched into a clear threat display. "I'll be giving you one final chance to kneel for me."
"I can see that you don't have scouters," said Parse, no longer bothering to hide her irritation. "And you clearly haven't heard of my race. So I'll give you one warning; this isn't a fight you'd want. Just point me in the direction of someone who can get me off this rock, and I'll let you both live."
"Hear that? She'll let us live!" crowed the second man, pulling his mount into the same crouching stance. Parse sighed wearily.
The first mount leapt forward, baring its fangs. Parse met the pounce with a backhanded swing, catching its mouth with her forearm. Those long predatory fangs shattered like toothpicks against her bracer, and the creature was thrown to the side like a ragdoll, the redirected momentum snapping its neck. The man was thrown along with it, and screamed as the corpse fell on top of him.
Parse turned smoothly to the second man, flicking a few droplets of blood from her arm. He was frozen mid-grin, but his mount, probably more intelligent than he was, had started to react, rising from its crouch and beginning to turn away. Parse raised her hand, and the man opened his mouth, but before he could make a sound, she fired. It was only a basic energy blast, the same thing any Saiyan child could do instinctively, but it turned man and mount's flesh to carbon instantly, and only took seconds to disintegrate their bones as well, leaving nothing but smoke and a cut-off scream floating in the air.
The man trapped under the dead mount screamed again, this time in terror. He struggled to get away, but his legs were pinned, and he clearly didn't have the strength to pull them out. "Witch!" he gasped. "Sorceress! Whore of demons!"
"Saiyan," said Parse calmly. The catharsis was doing wonders for her mood. "Tell them that, when you get to hell. They know us down there." She pointed at him, but before she could fire, a pillar of flame fell on her head.
Startled by the sudden heat, Parse whipped around and fired a beam into the sky, in the rough direction of the heat's source. There was a little tactile feedback as something tiny above her crunched into nothingness, and the fire stopped. Her armour and undersuit were flame-retardant enough to be fine, and Parse herself was unharmed – she'd been too strong to be harmed by fire by the time she was five – but her coat was a ruin. It fell away from her in tatters, her scouter dropping to the ground with a thump.
"What the fuck?" she yelled into the sky, before turning to the trapped man, who was staring at her in mute horror. "What the fuck was that?"
The man mumbled something incoherent. "Speak up!" she yelled, pointing at him and summoning a ball of energy at the tip of her finger.
"Flame death!" The cry tore itself from his throat. "The Flame Death – you survived the – oh gods, what the fuck, what are you?"
"Not helpful." Parse stepped closer, giving the man a good view of the light from the energy ball playing over her face. "And I said twice already. I am a Saiyan warrior, and there is nobody on this rock who can hope to challenge me. Goodbye." She fired, and his head turned into a shadow of soot.
Alone again, Parse let herself relax, scooping the scouter from the ground and setting it on her face. That had gone less than stellar. She'd have to find some more people and hope they were more reasonable if she wanted information. In the meantime...
The smell of the bodies was starting to make her hungrier, although these people didn't look appetising. Among Saiyans, you had the right to eat anything you killed, but these people looked enough like Saiyans for the idea of eating them to feel like cannibalism, even if they were clearly very different.
But Parse had options. She looked over at the mount corpse. The face was little more than a smear of red jelly, but most of it was still intact. She walked over to the body, picking it up in one hand, and picking up the man's spear from underneath it with the other. Testing its weight, she wondered if it would make for a good roasting spit.