Chapter 5

Bulma got up out of her chair and began feeling around for the
emergency backup switch. The ship should never have completely shut
off like this.

"What’s wrong, Bulma?" Kuririn called out through the darkness. "Why
are all the lights out?"

"Damn!" She said angrily, flipping the backup switch on and off again
repeatedly. It had no effect. She knelt down and yanked one of the
emergency kits out from under her seat. "Well this is just perfect!"
She snapped, fishing out a flashlight. "They’ve taken control of the
ship. I don’t know how they did it, but our friends from another world
have pulled our ship into theirs and shut off our power."

"How could they have done that?" Gohan asked, as Bulma turned on the
flashlight and began digging under her seat again. "Their ship was
exactly like ours, wasn’t it?"

"I don’t think so," she replied. "That blip on the radar screen was
much too big to belong to a ship our size. They must have deceived us
somehow."

"Yeah," Kuririn said, as Bulma tossed him and Gohan each a flashlight.
"But just who are ‘they,’ exactly?"

"I don’t know," Bulma said, walking over onto the entry deck. "But I’m
going to find out. No one hijacks my ship without a fight. Are you
two coming?"

"We’re with you, Bulma," Kuririn said, as he and Gohan hopped out of
their chairs. "Let’s just hope that we’re not in over our heads.
They walked over and stood next to Bulma on the entry deck.

"Piccolo!" Bulma commanded. The platform slowly lowered itself to the
floor of the enemy spacecraft. Warily, Bulma, Kuririn, and Gohan crept
out from under their ship and peered out at their surroundings.

"What is this place?" Kuririrn wondered aloud. Suddenly bright lights
snapped on above them, making them jump.

"It looks like a hangar," Bulma said. "See! There are some of those
little robotic pods that attacked us earlier!"

"Where is everybody?" Gohan asked as they explored the hangar. "I’d
felt sure that we’d be greeted by armed space pirates or something.
Pretty rude hijackers, huh?"

"Look!" Bulma said, pointing to a hallway on the other side of the
hangar. "I don’t see any other doorways. Come on. It might be a
trap, but we don’t exactly have a lot of options, here."

"I guess you’re right," Kuririn agreed. "But we’d better be careful."

Cautiously, they crept over to the doorway and peered inside. No one
was in there. It was dimly lit for as far as Bulma could see.
Constantly watching all around them, the three wary travelers made
their way down the hallway.

"Well," Bulma said after a few minutes. "Maybe this place isn’t
booby-trapped after all." Just then, gunports opened in the walls,
and they were suddenly aware that Bulma had spoken too soon. The guns
began firing a barrage of bullets at them, and they were forced to run
the gauntlet down the hallway. More guns appeared on the walls as they
ran. They’d fallen into a trap, all right!

"Look!" Kuririn shouted over the sound of the bullets. "There’s a
light up there! Turn right!" They dove into the new hallway,
frantically checking the walls for more gunports.

"If you think that you can kill us with a few pieces of lead, then
think again!" Bulma screamed angrily.

"Don’t make them mad, Bulma," Kuririn said. "They have an advantage
over us, you know. We’re on THEIR turf."

"I don’t care!" Bulma snapped. "We didn’t do anything to them! They
have no right to attack us like this! When I find whoever’s behind
this I’ll give ‘em a few real reasons to shoot at me!"

Suddenly, large, metal doors dropped down from the ceiling behind and
in front of them. Before they had time to react, a strange, corrosive
goo began oozing out of the walls. A little bit dripped onto Kuririn’s
hat and began eating it away. Bulma yanked it off of his head and
threw it onto the ground. The trio quickly flew up a few inches to get
out of reach of the smelly acid.

"What should we do?" Bulma asked, as Kuririn quickly grabbed his hat
before any more of the stuff could get to it. "We can’t stay here much
longer. I’m sure we can avoid this acid for a while, but the fumes are
too overpowering. We’ve got to get out of here!"

"One exit, coming right up!" Kuririn said, and he blasted through one
of the doors. They flew away from the poisonous fumes as quickly as
they could, and ran down all kinds of hallways. After about five
minutes of running like this, they stopped to catch their breath and
try to figure out where they were.

"You know, I’d swear I’ve seen this hallway before," Bulma panted.

"I’ve been thinking the same thing," Kuririn replied. "I think we’ve
been going in circles."

"I’m beginning to feel very unwelcome," Bulma said, scowling. "I wish
I could at least see who I’m running from. I’m tired of running
blindly."

"Hey, look at that!" Kuririn said, pointing at an odd panel on the
ceiling. It was somehow different from the others.

"Hmmm..." Bulma said, floating up so she could see it better. "I wonder
what will happen if I move this thing around..." She was answered by a
new doorway opening next to Gohan.

"Should we go in?" Gohan asked. "It’s probably another trap."

"I know," Bulma sighed. "But we have to keep moving. We’re bound to
come to the end of this string of booby-traps sooner or later.
Besides, we can’t go back. We know what’s waiting for us back there."

They decided that she was right. They stepped boldly through the
doorway, which snapped shut almost immediately.

"Here we go again," Kuririn grumbled. Suddenly the floor gave way
beneath them, and they realized in horror that they were about to be
sucked out into space! As they fell down a chute toward certain death,
they simultaneously realized what had to be done. Bulma, Gohan, and
Kuririn stretched their arms downward and shot enormous Kamehamehas
toward the void, propelling themselves back up the chute. They flew
down the new corridor in this way until Bulma found a switch on the
wall that closed a hatch between them and outer space. Panting, they
looked at each other in exhaustion. Fortunately, they were all still
alive. The only loss was Kuririn’s hat, which he’d lost while
propelling himself back up the chute.

"I’m getting really tired of this," Bulma grumbled.

"I’m just plain getting tired," Kuririn groaned. "Not to mention
hungry."

Bulma’s stomach growled in agreement. They hadn’t eaten much today,
because of their inactivity on the ship.

"Is it just me," Gohan asked, sniffing the air, "or do you guys smell
food too?"

Bulma and Kuririn sniffed too. "You’re right!" Kuririn said. "Where
is it coming from?"

"Come on," Bulma said. "Let’s find out." They followed their noses
until they came to a large room. There was a table in the middle of
the room, covered with delicious-smelling food. The table even came
complete with three chairs. Bulma’s stomach growled louder now, and
and her mouth watered with anticipation, but still she was nervous.

"All right!" Kuririn and Gohan exclaimed. They ran to the table and
sat in two of the chairs.

"Hold it, guys," Bulma said. "I smell a rat."

"All I smell is this great food," Gohan said, staring at the dishes in
front of him.

"How do you know that the food isn’t poisoned?" Bulma asked them.
"I’m sure that whoever prepared this table also set all those other
traps for us. How do we know that this isn’t just another trap? Why
should we believe that they’ve changed their minds about us?"

"Well, let’s just sit down for a while at least," Kuririn said, eyeing
the food longingly. "You’re tired, aren’t you?"

"All right," she sighed. She sat down in the other chair. She just
couldn’t shake her apprehension.

"You never know," Kuririn said, poking at his plate of food. "Maybe
they’re about to reward us for making it through that funhouse of
theirs."

"I doubt it," Bulma said, pushing her plate of food away so she
wouldn’t be so tempted to stuff her face. "That’s way to farfetched to
me. I think that’s your hunger talking, Kuririn."

Suddenly a knife shot through the air toward Bulma’s head. She leaned
her head away as it struck her chair.

"What the?" She exclaimed, looking at where the knife struck. It must
have struck some kind of light because it (the light) was blinking on
and off.

"Get out of here! Quick!" Bulma barked, jumping up from her chair.
"It’s another trap!" She tried to push a confused Kuririn and Gohan
away from the table toward where they entered. Suddenly a shadow
appeared over them. Gohan and Kuririn bolted before Bulma realized
what was happening, and with a loud clang she was surrounded by
darkness. She could hear the muffled voices of Gohan and Kuririn and
their fists as they pounded on the outside of her metal prison. She
tried to feel her way to a wall, but was grabbed tightly around the
middle by an unknown attacker.

"Whoever you are, you’d better let me go right now!" She said angrily,
struggling to get her arms free. Suddenly a hole opened above her and
she could see in the light that a big metal claw of some kind was
holding her.

"Huh?" She said. "What happened? Where did this come froooooom!"
She shrieked as the claw lifted her up to a platform high above the
floor. She struggled violently to free herself.

"Freeze, or we’ll shoot you!" Someone said next to her. She suddenly
realized that was surrounded by children with guns pointed straight at
her head.

"Bulma!" Gohan and Kuririn yelled. "Are you all right?"

"Forget about me for the moment!" She called back. "You two need to
watch out too! You’re surrounded!"

Kuririn and Gohan gasped as they realized she was right. It was as if
these children had appeared out of nowhere. They were all armed and
they all had their guns pointed at Kuririn and Gohan.

"What the hell is wrong with you kids?" Bulma snapped at the armed
children crowded around her. "First you attack our ship, then you
make us go through all kinds of deadly traps, and now this! What kind
of sadistic misfits are you anyway? We didn’t do anything to you!"

"Liar!" The boy closest to her exclaimed. "It was your kind that
robbed us of our parents and our planet! We have every reason to
destroy you!" He pushed his gun closer to her face.

"Rapid teleport!" Bulma yelled. Now that time had stopped, she was
able to free herself from the metal claw that held her. She figured
as much. It was only logical that machines that were powered by
electricity would be easily manipulated during teleportation. She
floated out in front of the platform and turned around to look at the
children some more. She couldn’t switch back to real time just yet.
She had to think. Perhaps she had been wrong in assuming that their
aggressors were totally deserving of a severe beating. They obviously
had mistaken Bulma and her friends for someone else. Someone terrible.
Maybe they should try to talk things out before doing anything rash.
Bulma decided to try to talk things out first. Still, it wouldn’t
hurt to take precautions. She took the guns from the hands of each of
the kids on the platform and tucked the stack of weapons under her
arm. She snapped back into real time and allowed the kids in front of
her to react. They jumped back in fear and confusion when they saw
her hovering there with their weapons.

"Now just calm down," she said, trying not to sound threatening. "If
you’re afraid I’m going to hurt you, you can rest assured that I won’t.
I don’t fight children. I just want to know who you guys think we are."

"Don’t play dumb with us!" The same one said to her. "We know you’re
three of Freeza’s cronies!"

"Freeza?" Bulma said, genuinely confused. "Who’s Freeza?" Suddenly
she sensed a rise in ki down below. Kuririn and Gohan were getting
angry. They were ready to fight.

"Uh-oh!" She exclaimed. This wasn’t good. They certainly didn’t want
to fight these kids. A lot of innocent lives could be lost.

"Here! Take these!" She said hurriedly, shoving the pile of guns at
the one who had snapped at her earlier. "I’ve got to stop my friends
from making a big mistake!" The boy fell back from the weight of the
guns as Bulma shot down towards Kuririn and Gohan. They were just
about to fire energy blasts at the crowd of angry, threatening children
when Bulma touched down in front of them. Gohan stopped himself in
time, but Kuririn let a small energy ball escape from him. Bulma
blocked it without too much difficulty.

"Hold it!" She said angrily. "Will everyone please just calm down?"

"What’s the matter, Bulma?" Kuririn asked frustratedly. "What are you
doing?"

"Kuririn, I’m ashamed of you!" She scolded. "How can you even bring
yourself to fire on innocent kids like that?"

"'Innocent?!'" Kuririn said incredulously. "What do you mean
'innocent?' They were about to shoot us!"

"Why shouldn’t we?" The oldest-looking one asked angrily. "You did
the same thing to all our parents!"

"Huh? What do you mean?" Kuririn asked, shocked right out of his
anger.

"Kuririn," Bulma said, "these kids think that we helped some guy named
Freeza destroy their civilization and their parents. That’s why they
attacked us."

Before anyone could say anything else the whole ship quaked violently,
and bulma was nearly knocked off her feet. An adolescent girl ran out
to report.

"Zeshin!" She cried to the older-looking boy. "We’ve entered an
asteroid field! The ship will be torn to bits if we don’t do
something, and that last impact has already caused some small fires in
the eighth and ninth sectors of the ship. They’re too close to the
fuel lines to be insignificant for long."

"Bun, you’re in charge!" Zeshin barked at the one who had snapped at
Bulma earlier. "Assign some people to watch these three and send the
rest to go handle those fires with me. You go to the bridge and try
to fly our ship through these asteroids. Now let’s move!"

Bun quickly did as he was told. Soon the whole ship was a bustle of
nervous activity. Only ten children had been assigned to to watch
Bulma, Kuririn, and Gohan, and the poor kids were so nervous and
scared that they weren’t even paying attention to their captives.

"What should we do?" Kuririn asked Bulma. "Should we leave while we
can? When they get past this asteroid field they’ll probably try to
execute us again."

"Yeah, but look at them, kuririn! They’re just kids! How are they
going to get themselves out of this? We’ve got to help them!"

Suddenly of the steel panels above a large group of the kids began
creaking and groaning. Bulma, Kuririn, and Gohan nodded at each other
and flew over toward the panicking children, just in time to keep the
thick chunk of metal from crushing them. The children looked up in
shock and fear as their rescuers dropped the panel harmlessly off to
one side.

"Are you all right?" Bulma asked them. Gulping, they nodded back.
She smiled warmly at them and then turned back toward Gohan and
Kuririn.

"Here’s my gameplan," she said quickly. "Gohan, Kuririn, I want you
two to try to keep these kids out of harm’s way and help them put out
those fires. While you do that, I’m going to go to the control room
and try to help them pilot us out of danger. With luck, we’ll show
them that there are decent people in this universe yet!"

"Let’s do it!" Kuririn said.

"Yeah!" Gohan agreed.

"All right!" Bulma said, turning to head toward where she’d seen Bun
go before. "Now, you two be careful!"

She ran through the hallway past dozens of panicking children.
Luckily, she didn’t have far to go. She suddenly found herself
standing beside Bun, who was frantically trying to keep the ship from
hitting the giant asteroids. Bulma quickly studied his actions so she
could get the gist of this ship and how it worked. Smiling happily,
she discovered that it was not unlike those of her home planet. She
could do it all manually by keyboard, too.

"Move!" She ordered, shoving him out of the seat and sitting down.
Immediately she began typing out commands to the ship’s main computer.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Bun asked her viciously.

"Keeping us all from getting killed, that’s what!" She retorted.

She deftly maneuvered the ship past the enormous rocks, to the amazement
of Bun, who had stopped complaining by now. After about twenty minutes
of hard, strenuous dodging, they were finally past the field of
asteroids, and Bulma rested her fingers.

"Whew!" She said. "That was close!" She turned to smirk at Bun and
found herself staring down the barrel of a gun.

"Hey!" She said angrily. "What’s the matter with you people? Can’t
you get it through your thick skulls that we’re not here to hurt you?
I just saved your lives, for Kami’s sake!"

"Ha!" Bun growled. "You only did that to save yourself. You three
don’t give a damn about people like us. You’ve got to be in league
with Freeza. Only people associated with him could do what I’ve seen
you three do today."

"Put your weapon down, Bun," Zeshin said. He had just arrived with
Gohan and Kuririn. "These three aren’t with Freeza. I’m sure of it
now." He told them about how Gohan and Kuririn had rescued other kids
countless times after that.

"These guys can’t be with Freeza," he claimed, "because Freeza’s men
would never do something like that."

Bun looked close into Bulma’s eyes. After about a minute he seemed
satisfied. Bulma had not noticed it before, but Bun looked a lot like
Yamucha.

"I believe you," he said to Zeshin. "I don’t see the evil in her eyes
that I saw in the eyes of Freeza’s soldiers." He turned to walk out.
He stopped and tousled Gohan’s hair as he left.

"I’m sorry we doubted you," Zeshin apologized. "We’re all pretty jumpy
around here. Freeza’s still looking for us."

"Who is this Freeza, anyway?" Kuririn asked. "What exactly did he do
to you and your homeworld?"

Zeshin shuddered. "Freeza and his minions are the worst kind of evil.
They came to our planet and killed all our parents. Only we children
were able to escape. But even so, of all the ships full of children
that flew away, only our mirrored one has thus far escaped destruction
from Freeza. All the rest of our brothers and sisters have been killed
at the hands of that maniac."

"Why did Freeza kill all your people?" Bulma asked.

"They wanted to sell our planet to a barbaric race of people who had
destroyed their own planet with wars and pollution," he said
disgustedly.

Bulma, Kuririn, and Gohan looked at each other in amazement. This was
all too familiar.

"These people sound a lot like Saiyans," Bulma said. "The Saiyans
tried to do the same thing with our planet. By any chance, did Freeza
and his men have long, furry tails?"

"No," Zeshin said. "Some of them had tails, but they weren’t like
that. They seemed to be from lots of different races of people, but
they could all do what you three can do. You know, shoot energy from
your hands, fly, things like that. Anyway, to tell the truth, I’ve
never seen Freeza before. None of us have. All we’ve seen are his
soldiers."

"Oh," Kuririn said. "So where are you all going now? You can’t very
well go back to your own planet now."

"Yeah," Zeshin said. "I know. So we’re going to the planet of one of
our homeworld’s trading partners. They said that they’d be glad to
take us in."

"That’s great," Bulma said happily. "At least you all have a place to
go."

"Where are you three going?" He asked them.

"We’re going to the planet Namek," Gohan answered. "And it’s very
important that we get there soon."

"It’s strange that you should say that," Zeshin said. "We passed Namek
only two weeks ago. We know a shortcut, if you’re interested."

"We sure are!" Bulma said, grinning at Kuririn and Gohan, who grinned
back. Zeshin gave her the coordinates, and they all went to the hangar,
where all the rest of the children were waiting to bid them farewell.

"Goodbye Zeshin... Bun." Bulma said, shaking their hands firmly.
Kuririn and Gohan did the same. "I sincerely hope that you all make
it to where you are going."

"And the same back to you," Bun said. "I’m sorry I ever made such an
accusation. You three are the best aliens I’ve ever seen. And I’ve
seen quite a few."

Bulma and Co. laughed at this innocent but hilarious statement.
Everyone waved goodbye as Bulma, Kuririn, and Gohan got into their
ship and sped away.

"Where were they going, anyway?" Bun asked Zeshin, as they turned to
go back toward the bridge.

"Namek," Zeshin replied. "I hope they make it safely there."

Bun suddenly grew strangely pale. "What?!" He exclaimed. "Run that
by me again!"

"Namek," Zeshin said again, looking at his friend in puzzlement.

"Oh no!" Bun said, clenching his fists. "No! They can’t!"

"What in the world has gotten into you?" Zeshin asked him. "Why
shouldn’t they go to Namek?"

"Because," Bun said, shaking angrily. "I overheard one of Freeza’s
soldiers say before we left that Namek was Freeza’s next primary
target."


On to Chapter Six...