The Lie in the Legend

Cato spotted the sneer, and couldn't help a well of anger from surging up in her stomach. But, she emit a harsh sigh and forced it back down. She carefully unhooked the mask and settled it upon her belt, abandoning it for the time being. Then, she offered a weak smile towards the other Saiyan in the room--probably a guard or a doctor of some sort.

"You can wait outside," she said, shortly. "I won't do anything to him, and he can't do anything to me."

She gave her a pointed look, to indicate she was serious, before returning her attention to the downed Lottus. There had been a time when talking to him was easy, but that was an almost-forgotten time now. It took her a while to find her words.

"You do need to be coherent in a battle to the death," she stated, evenly. "You taught me that much."

She paused.

"I didn't know you died," she continued. "Not until you were back. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. You look worse than usual, you know--I don't suppose they've let you look in a mirror since they carted you in here."

She couldn't help a small smirk.

"The King must like you," she commented. She couldn't tell whether she was trying to be friendly or trying to get under her former friend's skin. "Most Saiyans would have killed an enemy that tried a stunt like that. Did you say the right things at his inauguration?"

---

Cato managed to retain her calm, even in the face of the shouting Lottus. There wasn't anything he could say to her that she hadn't already told herself a hundred times over, during her long weeks in the depths. She just folded her arms behind her back, watching him evenly.

"I didn't try to kill you with Destron," she stated, keeping her voice measured--unnaturally so, for her. "And you know that full well. If you don't, then you're an idiot. You're free to have whatever deep grudge you want against me. I knew that would happen the minute I took action."

"I turned against you, sided with your enemies, and used the one weapon I knew you hated more than anything else in the world," she continued. "But, I was trying to depower you. It was the only thing I thought might have even the slightest chance of working. I thought it was better to lose you than for you to lose yourself."

She folded her arms over her chest, the calm finally evaporating. Her calm gaze was replaced with something else--some strange mix of emotion, all of them bitter. It wasn't quite hatred, but it was something close. Resentment, disgust, and maybe a flicker of guilt.

"You don't know what it's like to witness someone unleash an ancient power like that, knowing that they couldn't even control the paltry power they had before. Your power exploded, and then every promise you made turned to dust."

"Suddenly, letting Vocado and I evacuate was a mistake--suddenly, the war wasn't ending with Hatchi. You had gone from someone who had made his own promises and turned into someone pledging to burn entire worlds for the crimes of a few."

"Losing a friend to save a friend from that kind of madness seemed worth it. So either I spit in the face of a monster that had consumed my friend--or you betrayed me first."

---

"Was it only euphoria?"

Cato let the question hang for several seconds.

"When I transformed, I felt that same euphoria. If I had my way, I would have killed anyone in my way. Anyone near me. Everything I was afraid had happened to you happened to me when I became a Super Saiyan. It was only by the fortune of Vocado ascending before me that kept him from being a corpse, rotting out in the Crags."

She looked down to Lottus, a frown finding its way onto her features. She couldn't say whether she thought he was right or not. Too much time had passed, and she had too much time to stew with her own thoughts, and her own regrets.

"I had faith in you," she said, finally. "But you're right. Fear got in the way of my reason. I should have tried to calm you down, to help you control the power, rather than trying to weaken you. But you could have blinked and killed me. You could have killed everyone, save for the Chancellor's underling."

She turned from him, pacing away. She wasn't sure what she wanted to say, or even what she had come here for. She only knew that this was inevitable--necessary, even. It was better to get it out of the way now, than to wait until it could place the Kingdom at greater risk.

"Maybe hindsight has provided some kind of clarity to you," she said, bitterly. "But unless you were one of us, one of the ants bearing witness to an explosion of terrible power--you can't have known what it was like. I was afraid, but I was afraid of what you had become--not of you."

"Was I wrong to be afraid?" she asked, turning her gaze to him. "Could I have calmed you down, kept you from incinerating the rest of us, and Plant, and escaped the battle with my life--and your mind--intact? Did I ruin everything for nothing?"

---

"I was never far from you in power," Cato pointed out. "As soon as I learned the legend was so wildly inaccurate, I knew it should be possible for me to achieve the power."

It wasn't entirely honest. There was a time where she doubted, even witnessing the transformation of Nasu after Lottus, that she could ever reach the same level. But, by the time she pried herself out of whatever quagmire she had found herself in, wasting her days away in the dead metropolis, that much had become clear to her. It had become not just a possibility, but a necessity. 

"I wouldn't pin your hopes on the inevitability of return,"' she added. "You may have found your way out of Hell once, but that fact could make your next death all the worse. How are you so certain they'll only send you to Hell next time? For all we know, they could have a worse fate planned for those who escape their grasp."

Even as she said it, she rather doubted it. She knew next to nothing about the Afterlife, but if there was something she was fairly certain of, it was that nobody of any import in the cosmos cared about what happened on petty mortal planets--Plant least of all. If they did, she couldn't see why they would have allowed entire cities to be wiped out by war or wonder-weapon.

As Lottus rose, Cato stood her ground. He was always tall, but she could have sworn he was standing even higher than usual. It was something she might have wanted to ask about, were the circumstances different.

Instead, she folded her arms over her chest and stayed planted.

"I'm not afraid of you. You'll find that I've surpassed you as a warrior since our last battle."

She let the comment sink in, before continuing on.

"So, who should I be afraid of? Taori? The King who, what--ran out of fuel and had to be towed back to Plant only to find he'd lost his throne?"

---

Cato listened quietly for a moment. She wasn't sure how to really process any of it--the big ogre stamping paper, finding the souls of the deceased, any of it. She also wasn't entirely sure whether or not her relationship with Lottus was still such that she could even ask for him to elaborate.

"It doesn't reflect kindly on our ancestors that they thought it was once in a generation," she noted. "Either we belong to a generation of prodigies, or the Saiyans of old were remarkably weak. I can't imagine that the war on Plant had that much of an impact..."

If it was the war on Plant, then there was some irony in it all: that the Tuffles' best efforts to evict the Saiyans might just have enabled them to grow stronger. Maybe Destron gas had a way of activating that part of a Saiyan's biology that seemed to empower them upon each defeat. Certainly, she had managed to walk out of Hatchi City with greater powers than before.

"I suppose that means I shouldn't go around fearing death. But, it was never really death I was afraid of. Dying is inevitable, but dying well isn't."

She wondered if she would have the stomach to defy the heavens themselves and escape the Afterlife as Lottus had. Maybe it would depend on what she had left to prove when she fell.

"Was her soul--?"

She didn't speak the rest of her question. Somehow, it didn't feel right mentioning her name.

---

"He couldn't get back to Plant in time to keep from losing his throne, but he got into hell?"

The other names bounced off of Cato. She didn't recognize any of them. It made sense to her that demons would be able to infiltrate the afterlife, but for a seemingly ordinary Saiyan to be able to do it--she figured it was probably better not to think about it. It was beginning to sound like life and death weren't the concrete concepts she used to be so confident in.

"I knew an Arcosian who was obsessed with balance," she said after a moment. "But I could never really grasp what he meant by it. I always sort of suspected that people who preach about that sort of thing will be able to bend their world-view to whatever suits them at the time. He might have been different, but... you'd need to be some kind of clairvoyant to actually figure out that stuff."

She remained quiet at the story of Rapini. She supposed it wasn't the worst thing in the world: if her soul was recycled, then that meant she went on living, in some way. Granted, it was hard for her to imagine what that was like--what any of it was like.

"I don't think I understand enough about all of that," she finally said.

"But, you won't hear me crying about the Gods. Did you know they've actively tried to interfere with our world? They look down at us for the state of things here, and yet they get their hands into things and contribute to making them worse."

She paused, letting the moment pass--and giving time for Lottus to cool down, as much as someone like him ever did.

"Whether you like it or not, fate will probably see us as allies again soon," she began, carefully. "I don't plan to sit on my hands and do nothing while everyone I care about goes off to war."

---