Carried Away By a Moonlight Shadow (Invite)

There’d been an odd confusion when the Heran had landed in Hatchi City and dropped the unconscious and broken form of a Saiyan girl on the floor outside one of the medical facilities that the Tuffles ran. Regardless of what explanation had been given, or the lack of an explanation, they’d taken her beaten body and checked it over thoroughly and swiftly, Saiyan anatomy certainly not foreign to their scientists and doctors who had spent decades figuring out how to stop them. Whatever had happened had left the young woman in bad shape…internal bleeding, multiple broken bones including several cracked vertebrae in her upper neck, lacerations of varying depths on her exposed skin and nasty brain swelling as well contusions over her entire body. The Tuffle doctors were also surprised to find trace amounts of Destron in her system above what they would expect to find with just a brief encounter with gas.

Jagaimo hadn’t even felt them strip her down out of her ruined clothes, or apply the various sensors to her skin before they’d fitted a breathing mask into place and submerged her in a healing tank. The strange liquid had gone to work immediately pouring into open wounds and saturating her skin to seep through to her bones, knitting the flesh and tissue together at a highly accelerated rate. Other medications were pumped through various tubes into her bloodstream to help counter the Destron as best they could as well as reduce the swelling in her brain.

Now after several days of floating around in the strange goop most of the Saiyan’s superficial wounds had healed up and most of her broken bones were on their way to mending…various stages of repair work and regrowth taking place inside her body to fuse any breaks together once more, stronger even than they had been before unbeknownst to their owner or the Tuffles keeping her under observation. The internal damage was also well on the way to mending but there would be days…a week even before everything was fully healed and a clean bill of health was given.

What puzzled many of the doctors that were involved in the healing process the most was when it came to reviewing the young woman's brain scans. She had yet to regain consciousness even once inside the tank which would normally not have been a concern given the extent of her injuries but what made them curious was the level of brain activity they were detecting in the Saiyan, even in her dormant state. For all intents and purposes the scans they were making were detecting levels of activity they would expect to see in a soldier engaged in heavy combat on the battlefield, they even had the comparison scans from their own troops from during the war…and while not identical to the Saiyans they were showing surprising similarities…however the fighter in the tank hadn’t moved a muscle since she was put into the healing fluid to save her life.

“What do you suppose it means, that her power can’t be detected by our scouters?”

The speaker was an older Tuffle in a white coat, fingers dancing over the tablet in her hands to make more notes and adjust the various drug cocktails that had kept her patient alive these past days.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s a trick? But if you ask me we should have left her out on the street where the Heran dropped her. Nothing good is going to come of having her here. They’re to blame for what's happened here. For everything.”

The younger Tuffle practically glared at the unconscious form of Jagaimo in the tank as he spoke, something in the edge of his voice speaking about a distrust and dislike of the Saiyan’s as a whole rather than just this one girl. The older of the two shook her head, a half smile on her lips,

“She’s not a monster Raimu, she’s barely out of childhood, and whatever you might think, not all of them are…we have our own monsters as well, don't you forget.”

She gave the younger Tuffle a stern look without saying any names, leaving Raimu to nod slowly in acceptance, the both of them going back monitoring her vitals before leaving the room, the tank one of many used in the medical facility for those patients to injured to be treated in a standard ward…The younger Tuffle moved on out into the corridor without a second glance, ready to continue their round but the older woman looked back once more whispering more to herself than to anyone else,

“Whatever happened it didn’t kill you…don’t give up now.”

—-------

The arena looked so much bigger this time around than it had before and no matter how long she walked for, the girl found that she never got any closer to the sides, they always seemed to be just as far away as when she took her first steps towards it. And had it been raining then as well when she’d fought the other two? She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the heavy downpour that ran in streams over her slender face and through the thick mane of hair that was plastered to her back. Every so often a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky illuminating the torn up field of battle, stone cracked and splintered all around but no signs of any bodies. There was no one else here…well no one that wanted to talk as far as she’d managed to tell.

Something moved on the edge of her vision as the thunder rolled overhead, the rain unrelenting in its torrent. Why didn’t her opponents make a sound when they moved through the ankle deep water? It splashed and sloshed as she shifted her feet and moved around so why not for everyone else...The lightning flashed again and she let out a cry of pain, dropping to one knee in the shallow water, the shadowy figure darting past her once more. It wasn’t much taller than her but it was bulky looking despite the ethereal composition it seemed to have…and that damn giant sword…it always got her and always from behind, no matter how fast she whipped round to face it, whatever it was just faded away before the young Saiyan could catch it. She was constantly being stabbed in the back and there was nothing she could do about…it was infuriating…and this damn rain…Jagaimo screamed up at the stormy skies.

As if mocking her, another crack of thunder peeled through the sky and the clouds lit up while a fork of lightning crashed down some distance away. The young Saiyan girl screamed in frustration again and wiped the water from her eyes, letting out a sobbing sigh and dropping onto a rock that protruded from the water, knees tucked under her chin, arms wrapped round them…she was so tired. Where was everyone? Why wasn’t anyone even watching the fight?... Why couldn't she remember how'd she gotten to this place?

—-------

Sensors on the side of the tank beeped and chimed as the screen showing the live scan of her mind shifted its colours once more…the healing gunk in the tank rippling for the briefest of moments before things began to settle down once more...