Welcome to Boxer & Rice

Author's Note : Optional mood music: "Khan's Pets," from the soundtrack to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, by James Horner.

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Vegeta smelled fear.

There was no doubt about it. Among all of the species, sentient or not, that he had encountered, fought, beaten, eaten, conquered or fucked over the years, fear always smelled the same; an acrid, cloying odor that never failed to stimulate the Saiyan's nervous system. It brought out the instinctual battlelust, the need for combat and domination that had once made the Saiyan species the most feared in known space.

And will again, he thought with satisfaction. He stalked the corridor of the ship with his personal guard – his Saiyan, female, fertile personal guard – sensing the odor becoming stronger the closer they came to the formidable door at the end. Vegeta knew the source of the fear. He silently thanked the engineers who had sought to economize on power and raw materials by tying the whole of the ship into the same air exchange system. Brownian motion and ventilation fans combined to carry the intoxicating aroma out to him, tempting him sorely not to simply run the rest of the way, tear apart the waiting door and claim his prize. He looked to where Teren walked, one pace ahead, noting that she, too, sensed the fear and felt its pull. Her tail, mostly looped around her waist in the military fashion, bristled slightly, the very tip twitching, tapping regularly above and below the coil.

They finally reached their destination. "Open," he intoned to the door, and it parted to his voice. He turned to Teren, her eyes on his expectantly. "Leave me," Vegeta said to her quietly. "I shouldn't be long, but I will not be disturbed." His voice held no trace of threat or warning, but Teren understood his intentions. He did not wish any interruptions while he inspected his prize, and he would not receive any. She would make sure of it herself.

"As you wish, Revenant," she said crisply, her head bowed. After a respectful moment, she looked up again, her eyes once more meeting his, her voice more intimate. "Will there be anything else, Majesty?"

Vegeta read her voice and her face, divining the question as an expectant request. He considered it a moment, then quickly chastised himself for attempting to rationalize his decision making. The woman wanted him, plain and simple, and had been dropping increasingly unsubtle hints to that effect for some time. Whether it stemmed from real attraction, or the dutiful, slavish devotion she had given him since she was assigned to his service, or both, it really did not matter. Vegeta had never before taken pleasure from a female of his own kind. He had hardly ever seen a female Saiyan during his youth on Vejitasei, and when the planet was destroyed years ago, he believed he would never see one again.

How wrong he had been! Three years prior, he had learned of the planet the ship now orbited, a hidden world teeming with Saiyans, male and female in equal number, immune to the Midwife Plague; a secret legacy of his father and his father's lover – his fathers – and a testament to their genius and forethought. Vegeta thought sorrowfully that the former King would never see the fruition of his plans, the survival and renewal of his people.

And I won't have the chance to continue our own line, he thought ruefully, at least not naturally. The disease that silently plagued him for years, slowly sapping his power, had also taken away his ability to conceive. The information from the Vault that Saiyan scientists had been deciphering for the past few years might hold an answer to his physical problems, a cure for his condition, but the technology they already had could clone him, and provide a sort of continuation.

Still, he thought with an internal smirk, even if he could not reproduce the old-fashioned way, he could pretend. The onna was far past due for a show of appreciation. "Perhaps, later, I might have need of you – your services." He had phrased the last part as a correction, but had spoken the request in a way that made it clear he had not spoken mistakenly.

Teren's tail began to twitch more noticeably, her eyes sparkling with pride and desire. The same Saiyan senses that allowed Vegeta to catch the scent of fear from the room beyond also whispered to him the beginnings of arousal from the figure in front of him. "Of course, Revenant," she breathed huskily.

They stared at each other for a long moment, both of them unconsciously beginning to purr. With a feral grin, Vegeta slowly turned, still looking at Teren, as he walked through the door. Teren bowed her head again in deference, the look of smoldering hunger on her face the last thing Vegeta saw of her as the door slid shut.

Vegeta breathed deeply, inhaling the fear-scent that had now become much, much stronger. Both it and the obvious promise of supplication from his guard excited him, and he felt his groin swell in response. He almost trembled in anticipation and arousal has he turned and walked to the front of the room to the waiting chair, past his living trophy.

The source of the fear hung from the ceiling, a series of wires looping around wrists, ankles, head and tail, suspended face-down just a few feet from the deck. A blindfold covered its eyes, but it was clear from its straining movements that it sought to see or somehow sense the one who had just entered the room. As Vegeta passed, he examined the white, lithe form hanging there; the thick, tapering tail, the pawlike claws, the round, smooth head. He knew the formidable power the creature once possessed in its deceptively compact form, had felt it himself firsthand. Fortunately, its abilities had been stripped away from it while it was being regenerated and repaired; even one of the weakling, ningen humans could have easily dispatched it now, if any of that species still existed. Vegeta had no desire to spar with the creature, however. What was more important was that its physical form had been restored – its ugly, alluring, disgusting, eminently fuckable physical form. And now that form was his, its life, its soul, its very existence forfeit, all at Vegeta's whim.

Yes, Frieza was, at last, his.

Vegeta untied the blindfold, letting it fall silently to the deck. He took the remaining step to the chair and sat down, arms folded, legs crossed, exuding the regal bearing that came to him almost as instinct. He smirked as Frieza lifted his head, looking at him dumbly, eyes long unaccustomed to the bright light of the room attempting to focus on his face. After a moment, those eyes widened and Frieza flinched, the wires holding him twisting and rocking with the movement. "You…" he gasped.

"Hello, lizard," said Vegeta almost jovially, as though greeting an old, long-absent friend. "I'm glad you remember me." One hand lifted, pointing at something over his head. "You know your father, of course…"

Frieza strained his neck to look where Vegeta pointed. He gasped again, this time following with a moan of despair. On the bulkhead above and behind Vegeta's chair hung Cold's head, seemingly caught at the moment of death, a single eye bulging and mouth contorted in a rictus of pain. What little there was of the Korijin's neck hung raggedly against the wall, making it clear that his head was not so much cut off, as ripped.

"I didn't think it was possible for you people to get any uglier," said Vegeta conversationally, drawing his pointing arm back to rejoin its folded twin, "but apparently, that's what happens with your species' facial muscles after you die. I apologize for the sloppy presentation, but you must admit the taxidermists did an admirable job with what was left. From what I heard, the strike team that got to him first literally tore him apart. The jaw took quite a bit of wiring, and they never did find the other eye." He chuckled. "It probably became someone's trophy. For the sake of completeness, I should demand it back, but I'll probably let them keep their little token; they deserve it. They did our people an inestimable service."

Vegeta looked more closely at Frieza, his face taking on an aspect that looked almost like concern. Almost. "I understand the teams that took you down left you in a rather bad state as well. Fortunately, they were ordered to bring you in alive, and so you were. Hn. Barely. The surgeons and regen tanks worked overtime on you, but it was worth it, don't you think? You must be relieved to finally be free of those mechanical parts, to move – well, hang – with limbs that are all yours again. The only thing you don't have is your ki, but I'm sure you noticed that by now – the surgeons altered a few parts of your brain. They were careful not to tamper with anything else, but I'm afraid you couldn't summon the energy to light a candle now. You should be thankful; just a few years ago we couldn't have performed such precise surgery. What we learned from the Vault the very first year moved us ahead at least two generations in medical knowledge, and we've only scratched the surface of what's inside. I thought it would only be fair to let you share in our new bounty."

Frieza, his breathing still ragged from witnessing the silent horror on the wall, spoke again. "Where… am I?"

Vegeta smiled, drawing one leg up against his chest. "You are on my personal ship, the Hokori, flagship of the Saiyan Reformed Navy, orbiting the planet Refuge." He chuckled again. "I think the Company called the system GNL-2578, but I like Refuge better." His eyes brightened as he continued. "I really must thank you for finding this place for me. I know of course that you weren't looking for what you found – a whole planet, filled with the species you hated and feared the most. I wasn't looking for it, either. I didn't know it even existed until I learned what happened to the Company scout group you sent to this system. When I heard that the entire contingent was wiped out by giant, armored 'creatures' I knew, even if the official reports had censored out the details: they were destroyed by Saiyan oozaru. I can't describe to you the hope and elation I felt when I realized that I might not be the only one left after all."

Vegeta's expression became distant as he silently recounted old memories. "I was still running, then. It took me months to get here, riding trade vessels, hiding in cargo holds, all the while suppressing my ki. That was the most difficult part, but the effort was worth it. When I finally came here, I thought I had died again and found Paradise. Even better was when I found out about the Vault, and that I was the only one who could open it." He suddenly snapped back to the here-and-now, focusing once again on Frieza. "That was three years ago. The rest, of course, is history, and I'm sure you know it as well as I, though I suppose I was quite a bit happier with the turn of events than you must have been."

He brightened once again as he continued. "We spent the first two years learning, building, organizing. When we were finally ready, a year ago, we decided to announce our return with something big. Neevee. You remember that? That must have been a shock for you. The home of the Corporation, supposedly the most well-protected world in known space, next to yours. Three thousand ships folding in past the defensive blockades, coming out of hyperspace much closer to a planet than the laws of physics supposedly allowed. Obscenely powerful weapons taking out half your fleet within minutes, passing through their shields as if they weren't even there. More gifts from the Vault. Then the planet itself. Destroying worlds was a Company specialty, but I'm sure we broke the speed record that day. It only took one hour until you could see Neevee's naked, molten core spinning in the vacuum."

"Of course, we only slagged the place so quickly because we knew the Board of Directors wasn't there. That took a few more weeks, until we found them, hiding on Merotane. I led that one myself, hoping on the off chance that you would be there with them. No such luck, but I did get to meet the Chair again. Do you remember him, that fat, wheezing bastard? I saw him once when I was a boy, when he met with the King. I remember that he never shut up, the sycophantic fuck. He acted differently when we blasted our way into the Board's bunker. He didn't say anything; he just lay on the floor curled up like a baby, gibbering and shitting himself when he saw me standing over him. Did you know his species keep their hearts just under their stomachs? I had to claw through so much blubber to get to that black heart of his and yank it out. Disgusting. Surprisingly tasty, though." Vegeta laughed. "I swear, it really did taste like chicken."

He looked again at Frieza, the Korijin's horrified eyes barely meeting his. "Sorry," he said, "that's a joke the humans had. You probably don't get it." He waved a hand dismissively. "Anyway, it didn't take long to bring down the rest of your empire. Just a few months later, we were ready to go after you and your father. We found him a little over a month ago, and just a few days after that, we located you. Like I said before, your father didn't last long – that strike team was out for blood – but you, you were special, which is why I ordered you to be taken alive. Do you know how many people want nothing more than to kill you themselves, you, the destroyer of Vejitasei, the murderer of the old King?" He sighed. "The original plan was for a public trial, followed by a public execution – your guilt was so obvious, the outcome would have been without question – but I… reminded… a few people of who I was, and what the old blood vengeance laws said. Earlier today, you were remanded to my custody, which is why you are here."

It was true; after long, acrimonious negotiations, Vegeta had rather forcibly asserted his rightful, royal claim to mete out Frieza's sentence and punishment himself. Afterward, Vegeta had needed some time in a regen tank to repair some pulled muscles in his wrist, and the Saiyan government had needed a new Minister of Justice. Preferably one with an intact spinal column.

Frieza started at the revelation, an odd look of hope in his eyes materializing as he realized that death might possibly be avoided. "I… I belong to you now?"

Vegeta smiled at him. "Yes, lizard, you are correct."

Frieza giggled nervously, cravenly. "Surely we can work something out. I'll – I'll serve you willingly. I'll do anything you ask, give you anything you ask! Anything!"

The hope in Frieza's eyes dimmed and extinguished completely when he heard Vegeta's answering laugh, a rich, almost mocking baritone. Vegeta wiped away the tears forming in his eyes as he fought down his laughter. "Lord Frieza, what could you possibly have to offer me? Your father the King is dead, your kingdom destroyed, your homeworld vaporized, your riches confiscated, your people scattered and imprisoned." Vegeta paused as his expression sobered, his face leaning closer to Frieza's. "The only thing you think you can give me is yourself, and I already have that…" He leaned back into the chair. "Under the blood vengeance laws, your life, your very existence, belong to me, not you. Even slaves keep their own lives, but you're lower than that now. You see, you're legally dead already, and the laws and customs regarding the treatment of living beings no longer apply to you. I can do with you whatever I like… and there are so… many… things I'd like to do with you."

Vegeta sighed, suddenly looking weary. "As King, I can act on behalf of my people to redress your crimes: the purging, the destruction, the murder. But I have my own list of grievances, too, ones that I can unabashedly say are more personal in nature." All traces of humor and conviviality vanished from his face as he went on. "You took my life away from me, my innocence. You raped my body and belittled my spirit, when I was just a fucking boy. You murdered my father in cold blood, the one person in all the universe I loved the most. You destroyed my home, the place where I learned my alphabets, flew my kites, and played hide-and-seek. Later, you destroyed the human planet where I had just settled, and one by one, killed the ningen I had fallen in with. I would never have admitted it then, but I say it freely now: they would have been my friends, the first real friends I had ever known. You killed the blue-haired onna who would have been my mate. And most of all…" he stood up, stepping the short distance to Frieza and kneeling, their faces almost touching. "Most of all, you… killed… him." He paused for a long moment, his face unreadable, then continued.

"For a long time, I hated him, you know. He was stronger. No matter how much more refined my skill was, his raw power, his raw talent, exceeded mine at every turn. I could have found a lifetime of envy in that alone, but there was so much more he possessed that I did not. He had a mate. Screeching harpy that she could be, they loved each other, and I did not have that. He had a son who adored him, and I did not have that. He had a circle of devoted friends, and I did not have that. I was jealous of him, until you took away all of those things, leaving him and I the last two alive. It was then that I realized how mistaken I had been to hold him in contempt."

Vegeta closed his eyes, remembering. In those last days, it had been just him and Goku, and with their isolation and loneliness came an unexpected closeness. Goku, stripped of his distracting, disarming simplicity and carefree nature, and Vegeta, stripped of his prejudices and emotional walls, found each other to be worthier than they had first thought. They took solace and comfort from one another, and on that last night, before Goku had stupidly, bravely left Vegeta behind to face Frieza himself, they had loved each other, an event whose intense physicality and raw emotion surpassed the few, nascent encounters Vegeta had had with Bulma before she had died. Vegeta had been devastated at Goku's death, slipping into a depression that only lifted when he learned of Refuge two years later.

Vegeta opened his eyes again, once more fixing them on Frieza. He spoke quietly. "He would have been worshiped as a living god here, you know. It would have been glorious, with him at my side, as my mate. The two most powerful Saiyans in history, two revenants, leading our people into a new era. But you took that from me, too."

Frieza had been searching Vegeta's face, seeing the vulnerability on it as he admitted his feelings. He decided to say something – anything – that might assuage the Saiyan, and possibly grant him a reprieve. "He was a worthy opponent. Kakarrot was-"

Vegeta exploded, transforming in an instant into the green-eyed, golden-haired form that proclaimed his elite heritage. "NO ONE SPEAKS HIS HALLOWED NAMES!" One of Vegeta's first acts after his coronation as King was to have the Earth-raised Saiyan memorialized with their civilization's highest, most ancient honor: after a ritual litany of his heroic deeds, the names Kakarrot and Son Goku were never again to be spoken aloud, or used to name another, until the end of time. So sacred was the decree that even Vegeta himself was bound to it, but his reaction now was less out of respectful observance than out of pure rage. While Frieza quaked in terror, Vegeta moved still closer, the nimbus of energy surrounding his body almost blinding the Korijin, the pure heat radiating from it scalding his skin. Vegeta's voice deepened as it thundered, louder and louder, taking on the quality of some hellish demon from the afterlife.

"YOU TOOK HIM AWAY FROM US! YOU TOOK HIM AWAY FROM ME! THERE ARE NO DRAGONBALLS LEFT, NO WISHES TO BRING HIM BACK! YOU WILL PAY FOR HIS DEATH FOR ALL TIME! WHATEVER PAIN YOU CAUSED HIM WILL BE NOTHING COMPARED TO YOURS! HOW LONG DID HE SUFFER AT YOUR HANDS, LIZARD? I ASSURE YOU THAT YOUR TORMENT WILL LAST MUCH LONGER! IT WILL NOT END!"

The aura of power surrounding Vegeta suddenly extinguished itself like an explosive exhalation, his hair and eyes slipping once again into their usual black. Vegeta laughed, nervously, as he watched the trembling prisoner hung before him. "I'm sorry," he said casually, a shaking hand running up to smooth over his upswept hair, "was I raving? He always brought that out in me, you know." He walked, as casually as he could, behind Frieza, out of his sight. He leaned momentarily against a bulkhead, winded, bringing his breathing back to normal. He had surprised himself. He had not been able to transform for weeks, a mark of the inevitable progress of his disease. A small part of him was pleased that he could still summon the anger and passion to bring about the change, however briefly.

"Yes, lizard," he said after a while, when the shaking in his limbs ceased, "I can go Super, too, just like he could. It's funny; he told me that anger was what finally let him break through and transform, the first time he fought you. I transformed for the first time not long after he died, and do you know how? By giving up… through complete apathy. How fucking ironic that was – I had spent years training to achieve the Transformation, only to finally grasp it when I had convinced myself that there was no point any more. Attaining it by letting it go – it sounds ridiculous, like one of those contradictory religious riddles his bald little friend sometimes spouted off."

He walked in front of Frieza again, his back to him, looking off into space. "Letting go – it became my mantra. I let go of everything, my cares, my scruples – even my pride, once in a while – all to get back at you. Do you know how many worlds we burned through, how many billions we killed, to get to you? I realized that I had to become more evil than you, more amoral – to move beyond hate – to defeat you, and it worked." His back still turned, he moved his head to look at Frieza. "It worked. I have you now, all mine. For that, I think it was all worth it."

He strode over to a paneled bulkhead off to one side, within Frieza's view. He touched the corner of a panel, and it opened silently on a hinge, revealing an array of handheld tools and instruments. Some were sharp, some were blunt. All promised great pain. Frieza groaned again.

"Oh, don't worry, lizard," Vegeta said, his voice resuming its conversational casualness, as though his outburst moments before never happened, "I won't be using any of these on you right now. Later, of course, but I don't have much time to play tonight, I'm afraid. Oh yes!" he exclaimed, his eyes lighting on one particular tool. He took it from its hook on the wall and held it out in admiration, its two curved blades flashing in the light. "Isn't this something? Doesn't it look positively evil? The humans called it a mezzaluna. This one belonged to the bluehair's mother. Would you believe they used it for chopping food? I'd love to see what it does to your flesh, but again, it's a toy for another time." He hung the implement back on its hook, then closed the panel, sealing away the compartment of horrors. "I've thought up many pleasures with you, great and small. It'll take quite a while to run through them all, but I promise I'll go slow. You once told me to savor more, do you remember? And I will savor, trust me." Vegeta winked at him. "You and I have all the time in the world, now."

That wasn't quite true, however. The progression of his disease was such that unless a treatment were discovered, in a few years time, his body would no longer be able to generate enough ki to stay alive. The sequence of evolutionary steps that had enabled the Saiyans to wield incredible energies left them vulnerable in an important way: without ki, they would die, and Vegeta was running out of it. He had already told Teren that his last wish would be to have Frieza brought to him at the time of his death, so that each would be the last thing the other saw, as Vegeta used his final energies to choke the life from the Korijin. One last burst of power, and Vegeta would be content to leave the universe behind, knowing that he had, in the end, dispatched Frieza himself. To tell Frieza this, however, would be to let him know that his suffering would end soon, and hope was something Vegeta would not give his former mentor, ever.

"In the morning, planetary local time at the capital, we'll be leaving the system. I'm taking a brief vacation, and you're coming with me. We're going to your home world – or what's left of it. It's just a ring of dust now, orbiting its primary, but I've heard that if you watch it long enough, you can sometimes see little artifacts, pieces of buildings, bodies. You and I can watch together for a while, before I start breaking my instruments in. We'll finally be taking a more direct route, through Namek space, or what used to be Namek space, we think. We've had to go around them for over a year, and now it looks all clear again. I've always wanted to see what real empty space is like…"

Over a year ago, while the Saiyans were still marshalling their forces, they received a message, an incredibly powerful transmission sent out in all directions from New Namek: YOU WILL NOT ENTER NAMEK SPACE. WE WILL PROTECT WHAT IS OURS. Since then, no one could enter Namek space; scouts, ships, whole fleets of all governments and persuasions traveling through hyperspace couldn't fold into normal space closer than a sphere almost one light-year around the Namek homeworld, for reasons no one was able to fathom. Those who tried to enter via normal space were invariably destroyed at the edge of the sphere, hit fast and hard by ships that moved and reacted almost too quickly to be believed. Only weeks ago, another message had been sent out: WE WILL LEAVE NOW. Observation posts around Namek space reported a brief gravitational lensing effect, as though the entire area was being warped and twisted. Then, nothing. The curious and the treasure-hunters who investigated not long after found that while there were no longer impediments to travel in the area, there was nothing to see. New Namek, the trinary star system it orbited, and every atom of matter that had been inside the interdicted sphere was gone, from asteroids to interstellar hydrogen. It had been as though a family, convinced that the neighborhood had finally gone to hell, had indignantly packed up and left town in the middle of the night, taking the house and all the property with them. It was a bubble of truly empty space now, bordered at its edges by some oddly ionized gases, probable remnants of whatever the Nameks had done. Vegeta had no idea where they had gone, and did not particularly care. For him, it was one less thing to worry about for the new Saiyan Empire.

"But first," he said, walking in front of Frieza once more, "I think I'd like to fuck you." Frieza started at this, noticing that one of Vegeta's hands had slid down to his groin, slowly rubbing the growing stiffness. "Long ago, you had your way with me more times than I can count, and never gave me the courtesy of trade. It's only fair, I think. Hn. Relax, I'm so worked up already, this probably won't take long." He moved both hands to his hips, sliding the fabric covering them down his thighs and around his ankles. Stepping out of the pooled cloth at his feet, Vegeta began absently stroking himself. Frieza groaned again in fear, his limbs pawing impotently in the air.

"What's wrong? It's nothing you haven't seen before. Granted, you always paid much more attention to the other side of me. You should be thankful that one of your old students has come back to show you what he's learned. I'm grown now, as you can see, and I have a little more experience under my belt. Then again, you really got off on innocence, didn't you? It broke my heart, knowing that I wasn't your youngest fuck…" He walked directly behind Frieza, grasping his ankles and pushing them apart. He paused, staring. "The tail, I think, is going to get in the way." Vegeta powered up briefly, the sizzling energy called forth to one of his fingertips slicing easily through the cable holding Frieza's tail, and the tail itself, coming off cleanly at the base. As Frieza howled in agony, Vegeta tossed the severed limb in front of them, bumping and sending the chair screeching back across the floor.

"Don't worry, lizard. A day or two in the regen tanks, and you'll have another tail, good as new. Of course, I might just cut that one off, too, but I promise you that any damage our fun might cause will be patched up, so you'll always be fresh and ready to play. That way, we can do this over and over again, forever. Isn't that good to know?"

Without further preamble, Vegeta thrust into him. He sighed in satisfaction, even as Frieza sobbed in pain. Grabbing Frieza's hips roughly, he set a comfortable rhythm – at least, comfortable for him. The blood and ichor flowing from the stump where Frieza's tail had been dripped around and into the opening Vegeta was invading, making for a delicious slickness.

He lowered his head to whisper in Frieza's ear. "You belong to me. You are me. You made me what I am, and now I will make you, from this day forward. Never forget that, lizard." He began to thrust more quickly as Frieza's cries spurred him on, making his pleasure mount. No, he wouldn't last much longer at all. No matter, there was always tomorrow. And the next day, and the next. And the next.

"Yesss…" Vegeta hissed, his climax nearing. "Scream for me, koibito…"