Pushing aside the thought, and mentally scolding himself for having so little focus, he looked over the readings again. They hadn't changed he realized and the thought immediately made him draw his brows tight in frustration.
Sighing for perhaps the infinite time he opened the small thin metal door, revealing the machine's circuits, and turned on the small light he had put in just for this purpose. Otherwise checking the machine's wiring and hardware would be a complete nightmare. He would have to close down the top part of the egg, which took far too much time anyway, and go turn on the lights by hand. If he were to just turn the lights on without closing the egg first the delicate sensors this machine had would in all likelihood go completely crazy on him and ruin a whole week's worthy of data. Not only that but he would have to recalibrate the machine, which meant destroying the moon ball, putting a energy source of known frequency, strength, etc., etc., etc., and once the machine read everything perfectly he would have to create yet another moon ball.
He would be by far the first person to admit that he needed to prefect the technique and the most obvious way of doing so was to perform it as often as possible, but it was beyond annoying.
"Stupid good for nothing piece of crap," he growled as he examined the system's motherboard again. Serves me right for working with off-worlder technology he thought, only to realize the horrors he would go through if it were Saiyan technology.
Finally after a quite scathing search for faulty sensors, bad wiring, damage to the hardware three complete system checks, and a lot of swearing he determined what he had known when he started. There was nothing wrong with the machine, but he was getting readings that as far as he knew were completely impossible.
He closed the panel and slid out slightly. He sat up, hitting his head against the control panel that he had forgotten was there (incidentally resulting in more swearing), and tapped his finger steadily on his thigh.
This is completely impossible...how can there be absolutely no change? he thought.
Pushing his firm body off the floor into the darkness of the room, he turned back to the innocent moon ball. It seemed to be mocking him with its very subtle flicker.
Energy did not just stay in one place. It was against its nature. Bardock knew this but his ever-defiant offspring seemed determined to contradict this simple fact. This little ball, which he had made in a few seconds, was the most stubborn entity he had ever encountered. Excluding of course Seripa.
He wondered for a moment if his actual offspring would turn out as enigmatic and disobedient as this ball
The machine told a far different story from that of established fact. The moon ball, it said, had not fluctuated in energy since it's creation. It should be exothermic he thought. It should be slowly losing energy until it simply fades out of existence. After all he tested at least ten moon balls already with the same results. The ball was effective for a time, but then lost too much energy to withstand any effective use in battle. His goal had been to stabilize the ball so that it could last through hours of battle should the need arise, not to recreate a very permanent full moon.
And finally the last thought hit him. It shouldn't be flickering either. Well at least not if it wasn't radiating energy. He typed a few commands quickly into the control panel; bringing up an overview of the readings for this ball. Bardock's eyes shifted from their usual sharp angle forms to that of wide round signals of amazement.
Well at least now he knew he wasn't crazy
The ball was losing energy, just a very tiny constant amount of it. The rate at which it was degrading was phenomenal; if it kept up this ball could be in the sky for a full twenty-four hours. He gently pressed a few more buttons on the control panel and got a diagram of the structure of his little energy anomaly. Now he was beginning to understand. The ball's center was so compact it was almost like stable matter its self. This center was surrounded by thinner and thinner layers of slowly radiating energy.
Presumably, he thought. This also means that the ball can be destroyed if you disturb the core. A small ki blasts would mostly likely do the trick there, which meant that the ball could be deactivated should the battle end prematurely.
Smiling broadly in an almost completely wicked grin he entered the commands to release him from his self-made prison. As he stepped out into the blinding light of his lab he tossed the annoying shaded protection he wore aside and glanced up at the clock before him
It was lunchtime
The mess hall always had warm smells to it, which clashed horribly with the hordes of sweaty, noisy, incredibly hairy Saiyans who had packed themselves into the feeding frenzy. This was defintly the noisiest room in the whole compound, Bardock decided.
It did not take him long to spot the usual crowd at the usual table, which surprised him because usually none of them ate at this time. This was the time of day when the royal guards got off for lunch and it was the loudest and busiest time in the mess.
He would have placed his hand on the table to announce his presence if he was not deadly afraid that it would be eaten right off his arm. Instead he merely pulled up a seat, reversing it's direction and sitting facing his friends, and debated whether or not to risk a fight with some second class warriors for the privilege of attending a meal.
Toma's glance moved away from whatever it was that he was inhaling by the gallon long enough to just notice him. "Oy! Bardock, when did you get here?"
Toma looked unbelievably ridiculous with renegade food plastered to his face and his hands covered in the liquid innards of whatever it was that he had just consumed. The way Bardock's hunger inched up with the smell of even the leftovers he thought he might completely die.
Iie, he thought. Serves me right for coming down at peak hours. I'll wait a little more. "Just now," he grunted
The conversation that followed was not terribly extensive. Bardock scanned the table to find that all but one of the usual crowd were present; Seripa. When he inquired where the hell "that pesky wretch" had gone off to he found that he was confronted with a chorus of shrugs.
"Probably training," Toma finally concluded.
"For what, the full moon?" Bardock snapped back. "It's not like we're going to be doing anything. The full moon is just a show for nobility. A bunch of over powerful fools showing the universe how strong Saiyans can really be rather than putting that power to use." His fist closed on the final verse as if to accent the strength behind it.
"Jealous Bardock?" a deep casual voice jabbed. He looked down the table, although he already knew who it was that had spoken, and glared at the sharp black eyes that were highlighted only by their whites in the poor lit mist of the mess hall.
His eyebrow arched up slightly as he growled, "Why would I be?"
Celera shrugged, "How the hell should I know? I don't spend my time worrying what you low level males concern yourself with."
"Feh, you should talk chibi."
Celera was a bit surprised by the extra venom he put into that last attack. She smiled in spite of herself and lifted up the flawless plastic cup for a sip without noticing that the cup was already empty. "You pathetic saiya-jin have you got nothing better to amuse yourself with then playing 'my ki is bigger then yours'? Had I the time I'd beat you myself."
"That sounds like a challenge," Bardock growled back. "And what are you so busy with. We are stuck here until the end of the full moon."
Toma elbowed him playfully in the arm. "Awwww. forget it, you know these women, always moody. Celera's just mourning the loss of our great champion and comrade in arms."
"Ha," Celera snarled in response. "If I had desert eyes I still would not mourn that pathetic..."
"What happened, who died and where?" Bardock asked.
Toma shook his head in response. "No, death would have been a blessing. This was an defamation.."
"Oh the stupid high class loser lost his tail," Celera snapped. "You're getting all emotional over a man that would have killed you without a second thought to it."
"Of course he would," Toma sighed and then turned his attention back to Bardock. "Rotabaga lost his tail during battle; we just received word of it today."
"It hasn't grown back?" Bardock's eyes grew wide with surprise.
"Bizarre, isn't it. It got cut off and hasn't grown back. None of the meds can explain it and they've tried everything."
"Not really," Bardock said nonchalantly. "I've actually heard of it before."
He suddenly felt the sting of his friends' eyes all focusing on him at one time. Bardock smirked almost evilly as he noted Celera's mouth hanging ajar at his statement. He toyed with them for a few cherished seconds by remaining silent and uninterested in his own story.
"You mean this sort of thing has happened before?" Toma asked.
"There are a few reports in the research packet the King had made up concerning desensitizing of that particular appendage."
He was met with more than a fair share of dumbfounded looks.
Celera sighed and after rubbing her eyes in frustration said, "He means that it may be a side effect of that special training they make the elite go through."
Bardock leaned in toward the table, relishing in the attention he rarely got, and lowered his voice. "The evidence says that the reason elites can be trained to overcome the tail problem is that their higher fighting power makes the tail unnecessary."
"UNNECESSARY???" his friends gasped.
Bardock nodded, "They never found out why, perhaps it was because the risk of any one damaging an elite level Saiyan's tail in combat was so low."
Celera eyed Bardock for a moment in suspicion. "What causes that high power level anyway?"
He would have looked at her with confusion in her eyes. He would have snapped something at her just for the hell of it. He probably would have done these things, but while was thinking up the correct combination of responses the loud speaker clicked on in the mess hall.
The hall went silent. The loud speaker was very rarely if ever used in the mess hall. It had been built to warn Saiyans to prepare for battle should someone attack Vejitasei and while the idea of someone attacking the Saiyan home planet seemed totally absurd even in the dawning of the empire, it's presence was never completely forgotten.
A rough Saiyan voice came over the line. "Celera report to central security for clearance into the royal chambers immediately."
Then there was nothing.
"Royal chambers???" Toma exclaimed. "Cel... Celera what's this about."
Celera looked up at the speaker as if she was waiting for it to provide an answer. What is this about? She wondered with an uncontrollable sense of fear filling her bones. "I don't know," she mumbled.
That is so much like her. She's always getting herself into trouble.. Bardock thought. If there weren't so few Saiyan females Celera would have been executed long ago for insubordination. She still might be, he figured. The King never did like the idea of freezing Saiyan gametes rather than live harvesting, but he may have changed his mind. The thought did not completely please him.
Celera was more uncontrollable and irritable than any Saiyan and was bitchy at times, but even he knew that it would be a great mistake to try to remove her. As he walked back towards the labs he hoped for her sake she kept her mouth shut.
Try as he might he could not completely rid himself of the topic. Something about Celera had picked his senses and they refused to let him concentrate on anything else until he uncovered what was wrong. There's something different about her lately, he noted. But she doesn't seem injured either mentally or physically... damn stubborn woman. His thoughts were interrupted when he was jarred off balance by another force moving in the opposite direction. Bardock looked up from his position on the floor to find Seripa staring back at him.
"Gomen," she said curtly. "I didn't see you Bardock."
Bardock nodded as he lifted himself off the floor and brushed his lightly scuffed armor off. "Neither did I. Where have you been--" He was cut short by his own observations as to her condition. Like Celera there was something different about Seripa, but unlike Celera it was obviously it was injury. Could he have really slammed into her that hard?
To her credit she tried her best to hide it. But still her frame was sagging like her skin was made out of lead, her tail dragged limply behind her, and there was something off about her stance though he couldn't quite figure out what. He noticed that she pulled herself up with the assistance of the wall and her face tightened to a small filch when she shifted her hip.
"I'm fine," she answered for him. "Is Celera alright?"
Bardock gave her a blank look. He knew that she and Celera often sparred in the early hours of the morning and he knew that Celera tended to play a little rough, but she didn't play that rough. "She seemed fine, why?"
Her composure was much better now. She had lifted her posture up and shifted her shoulder back, relaxing them just slightly. Her tail had curled up around her waist too. With a swift brush of her hand Seripa lifted away the dreary look in her eyes and pushed her black troublesome hair out of her face. "I gave her a good knock this morning, almost clear through a wall."
Bardock doubted Seripa could give anyone that kind of "knock" in her condition. And apparently his thoughts had become a little more transparent then he had assumed because she answered his look again.
"I was feeling better this morning, it just starting hurting again..." They way she talked it seemed as if she was out of breath, but yet her breathing was steady and smooth.
He looked her over again. "You look like you haven't slept in a while," he casually responded. "It you're injured you should spend sometime in the tank--" He stopped when he saw her open her mouth to say something and backed off with, "but of course you're fine so why bother?"
Seripa couldn't believe how much faster Celera had become so suddenly. Her blows were being knocked away like so many twigs trying to stand against gale force winds and every blow of Celera's she blocked seemed to ring in her bones until it felt like needles were being jabbed into her nerves.
It was inevitable that she, in contrast, would be slowing down. But this was no comfort to Seripa even if it was inevitable. She was tiring out, she knew it, and even the implication that say was not recovering staring her in the face was not going to stop her from summoning up all she had for this fight.
However, Celera might.
She managed to toss Celera across the room with one lazy swipe. That fact that surprised her until she saw that Celera merely used the blow as a way to propel herself off the wall and right onto Seripa's back.
And Seripa, much to her detest, barely saw it coming until she heard Celera's almost deep roar shake the circular room. She turned to see Celera's face almost touching hers and then felt her nails dig into to her skin as Celera latched on.
Frustrated, but running on empty, Seripa try to swat Celera off her back. Celera's thin frame gave her the advantage here as Seripa could never really seemed to get her off. "Fine" she concluded. "You want it that you can have it that way."
"Giving up already?" Celera stung
"I got a few new tricks." Seripa didn't offer anymore than that as explanation before she concentrated her ki just millimeters away from her skin. Celera watched her skin seem to glow but never ignite into a battle aura, and for a second she assumed that Seripa just didn't have anything left.
But as the glow intensified she realized that Seripa was condensing her aura into a second skin around her. "Trying to build a shield? That still won't get me off you."
Seripa chuckled beneath her wild smile. "Wouldn't dream of it," she said as she brought her hands before her face, spreading her fingers wide. Sparks crackled between her fingertips as they passed her nose. She waved them over her face and then flashed out both arms.
In an almost earthquaking explosion her second skin expanded and formed a bubble around her that quickly began consuming everything in its path. The force of the shield threw Celera off Seripa's back and slammed her into the rounded wall of the sparring room. The bubble continued to expand around Seripa until it was not compact enough to do anymore damage and at that point it faded with a brilliant blaze.
Seripa sank to her knees. She was spent, and as she noted so was Celera.
Celera pulled herself up and out of the large dent that had housed her. She was able to stand and shake off most of the damage, but from the silent groan she expelled as she did Seripa knew a rib or two were broken. And from the way she was favoring her left side over her right she might have also fractured her knee cap.
Celera was very good at not showing when she was hurt, better then Seripa at least. She managed up a stupid grin and nodded some approval to Seripa. "I'm hungry," she added as she exited the sparring room.
For a while Seripa felt the sort of dazed bliss that only comes from just waking up when your body would really prefer going back to sleep. And then she realized why she woke up. The same reason she hadn't gotten much sleep last night, the pain.
She clutched her abdomen angrily. Damn why won't you just heal! she cursed in her mind before her nose picked up on a presence.
The darkness for the most part provided her with no help in determining who it was, but after a few minutes she recognized the smell. "Bardock?" she growled almost spitefully. "What are you doing here?"
At first he didn't answer. Bardock wasn't stupid; he could probably even see that she was ready to attack him as soon as his voice revealed his location. His eyes presumably had already adjusted to the darkness so chances were good that he saw this and now knew exactly why she was in pain on top of that. Finally Seripa heard him draw in a heavy sigh and ask, "Does this happen every time they extract?"
Had her abdomen not painfully protested again she would have assaulted him for such an intrusion. Instead she snickered, "What you think it's painless? The Saiyans who run the medical program don't exactly understand the need for anesthesia."
"That's not what I asked."
She sat down on the Spartan bed and spread her legs out a bit to relax her body slightly. Leaning back on her hand she answered frankly, "No."
Her sight was beginning to return to her in the pitch-blackness and she saw Bardock shake his head like a disapproving guardian. Then he rose and walked silently towards the door. "Get some sleep, the full moon is tonight."
Right, she thought. Like anyone could sleep with a score of Oozaru's running around.... horny Oozarus.
