Pride Rekindled: Chapter 8

Five Days Later

Papri was woken up from her fitful sleep by a loud bang coming from only a few feet away. The Saiyan shot up in her bunk, raising a hand burning with purple ki at the noise in preparation to blast it to bits for startling her, only to freeze at the sound of her collar beeping around her neck.

As she tried to calm down from being awoken so abruptly, a loud voice rang through the room.

“Wake the fuck up, Saiyan! You've been assigned to the Training Room for testing today! Get your ass to the canteen and grab a meal, then report there for your assessment!”

Said Saiyan blearily turned her eyes to the voice to find a rather short Neijin standing at the entrance to her room, giving her an impatient look.

Having literally just woken up, most of his words flew straight over Papri's head. She squinted at him through the curtain of hair in front of his face as she tried to parse his statement.

His frown turned harsher, “Well? What are you still doing in bed!? MOVE YOUR ASS! Your test is in two hours!”

Papri slowly rose from her bed, planting her feet on the cold floor and giving the impatient a glare, “What the hell do you mean testing? I thought we were free to do what we want unless there’s a mission.”

He looked at her like she was stupid, “What? You're a slave, you don't have free time as long as that collar’s around your neck. Get to the fucking testing chamber!”

He left before Palri could offer a retort, leaving the Saiyan staring at his back angrily as she fumed about her new circumstances.

Slave. The word still burned in Papri's mind even now, five days after discovering her new position in life. The idea that her entire existence was beholden to someone else was almost painful to think about, burning her right down got the core of her very being.

And yet she knew there was nothing she could do about it. That, more than anything, hurt her pride the most.

The Saiyan race had been under Frieza for longer than she had been alive but they were mostly left to their own devices other than the specific tasks they had been assigned. Under the tyrant, at least they had the illusion of freedom to keep them going.

Now, Papri didn't even have that. Instead, she had a collar around her neck to show her of her new position, and a nearly broken skull to remind her what would happen if she tried to change that.

Papri's jaw clenched with remembrance of what had happened the second day aboard this ship. The knowledge of what happened to Planet Vegeta combined with her new lot in life had been too much.

A single offhand comment about her now dead race that was clearly not meant to be overheard had caused her to snap. She gathered as much of her energy that she possibly could in a single instant, turning on her heel to vaporize the bastard who had talked bad about her dead people, heedless of the pain the collar would no doubt put her through during the action.

She had woken up seven hours later with loose teeth and a bruise the size of two of her fists on her jaw. There hadn't been an incident after that and Papri had quickly learned to keep her head down and not make any incidents.

Not until she was strong enough to not care about reprisal at least.

As she moved to get dressed, Papri noted that the other occupants of the room were already gone. Her quarters were shared by two other women, one Fruitian which was a bit of a rarity, and another of a race Papri wasn't too sure about.

Unlike what was usually standard, the Vistri had quarters which were separated by sex. According to her roommates, this was due to several… incidents involving groups of slaves in the past.

Now, Papri may have been young but she wasn’t stupid, the true nature of these incidents was as plain as day to her. Battle highs and burning blood usually meant mating, and when combined with the perpetual tension that came from being a slave, that mating was likely not usually consensual. Rape, in other words.

Papri was glad that someone had common sense or had realized that having their slaves constantly assault one another was just asking for something to go wrong. If anything Papri had seen so far was to be believed, very few of the Vistri’s occupants didn't have the power to at least blow a hole in the hull of the ship.

Personally, if something like that had ever happened to her, Papri would have simply energized every single bit of ki in her body and exploded with enough force to destroy a small planet, vaporizing both herself and her assailant.

Hell was a preferable alternative to being taken in such a way.

The Saiyan frowned as her collar beeped warningly as she pulled on her gloves, reigning in her energy that had been steadily rising while she thought. She had gotten a bit better at keeping a level head over the past few days, mostly thanks to the constant ‘corrections’ she got any time she didn't.

Rima hadn't been kidding when she said that the full power of the collar was nothing to scoff at. It usually took her a few minutes to recover from only a few seconds of being shocked and she was left with jitters afterwards.

She shuddered at the memory, still feeling the electrical burns running along the length of her neck from the last time the collar had activated. The burns had healed quickly just like all of her wounds, but the phantom pains were more than enough to keep her from wanting to activate it again.

Bot’s datachip slotted perfectly into her new scouter just like her old one, and she pressed the button on the side for a diagnostic scan to make sure that she hadn't messed anything up in her tinkering.

The chip was completely inert of course, as it had been since Grinn. Papri hadn't been able to get ahold of the materials or tools to modify the device in such a way to interface with the chip, but just having a place for it there in the first place gave the Saiyan a modicum of comfort in an otherwise shitty situation.

Speaking of shitty situations, Papri grimaced as her collar beeped, “I'm going, I’m going.” She said, making her way out of the room and into the ship.

~~~

As Papri had quickly come to find out, the food inside the canteen was nothing more than nutrient rich food bricks covered in a slimy sauce that was apparently supposed to make it slightly appetizing. It didn’t. Even after several days of eating this slop, the Saiyan’s stomach roiled and churned at the sight and smell of what was supposed to pass for a meal on the Vistri.

She couldn’t afford to pass it up though, not anymore, and so she plugged her nose and forced it down as she had quickly learned to do, shoveling it into the back of her throat to ensure she tasted as little of the disgusting food as she possibly could.

Nutrient rich meant something different to Saiyan. When the teens and adults of your race could easily eat through several hundred pounds of food and still feel hungry coming out of it, suddenly switching to a diet consisting of a block of grain and dried meat less than two pounds heavy was nothing but a massive downgrade. Insufficient for even the youngest Saiyan’s needs.

Papri grimaced as she finished her ‘meal’, only feeling the hunger in her stomach deepen as the last of it slipped down her throat.

“I need to get this damn collar off.” She thought to herself angrily, nobody around to hear her since she was sitting alone, “Then I'll actually get some real food.”

Papri had been both shocked and somewhat elated to learn that slaves on the Vistri didn't always stay that way. Oh sure, some of them did, the majority really, but there were always a special few in each new batch that managed to gain enough power and skill to actually be of use in battles instead of just cannon fodder.

These individuals were given freedom from their binds and allowed to become actual members of the Vistri’s crew. That was the position that the Saiyan was aiming for.

Papri's ears perked up as she caught the sound of footsteps making their way in her direction. She looked over to find a group of people had stopped a few feet away from her table, grinning down at the Saiyan mockingly.

The apparent leader was a tall, humanoid alien woman with sea green skin and a somewhat muscled body. Bright orange hair fell down to her lower back and acidic green eyes peered out at Papri from underneath the fringe.

Papri knew this woman, it was Dessa. The woman was someone that Papri had seen and heard of before in passing due to her being one of the stronger slaves on the ship, but she had never actually talked to or interacted with her in any way before just then.

And yet it seemed that the alien was taking issue with her despite that, given the sneer on her face as she looked down at Papri.

“So you're still alive, Saiyan?” Dessa crossed her arms, looking down at the teen with bemused disgust, “I'm surprised. I thought after that stunt you pulled the other day they would have turned your collar on and kept it like that.” She said, referring to Papri's outburst.

One of the woman’s flunkies, a particularly gross looking Vermera with poorly maintained and flaking scales, spoke up with a sharp-toothed grin, “Of course she’s not dead, Vessa. She’s the last female of her race. I bet they’re just waiting for her to prove that she’s not worth shit before they turn her into a breeder or sell her off to the highest bidder!”

Papri did her best to ignore them despite the anger that the statements caused, scoffing at their remarks as she stood from her seat.

Only as she went to remove herself from the room, Dessa stepped into her path, “Where are you going? I was just trying to have a friendly chat.” The woman smiled in an insincere way, “How has your day been? Make any new friend?

Papri clenched her fist, breathing deeply through her nose to keep her calm, before walking past the woman and towards the door.

“Hey shitslinger, I asked you a question.” Papri froze as Dessa put a hand on her shoulder, preventing her from walking away as she did away with any veneer of civility, “What? Did your parents not teach you manners before they were turned into space dust?”

Papri grit her teeth hard enough that her jaw clicked at the comment. She tried, she really did, but Dessa’s insistence on having a problem caused the Saiyan's already fraying temper to snap.

She turned on her heel as Dessa's hand fell from her shoulder, striking out with a punch intended to send the woman to the floor.

Her eyes widened as the alien blocked it just as easily as Papri blocked the Krakir’s claws back on Grinn. Dessa smirked as her attack slammed into a slender green palm ineffectually, before blurring to Papri's vision.

The next thing the Saiyan knew, she was on the ground, cradling her already damaged jaw. Her tastebuds were inundated with the taste of copper as her mouth was filled with blood from her bleeding gums, and she grimaced as she ran her tongue over her teeth. Several of them had been loosened by the strike.

As she spat on the floor to clear the blood out of her mouth, she turned her eyes up and glared at the group of aliens who laughed at her misfortune.

“Clumsy bitch!” Dessa laughed, “Weak clumsy bitch. Can't even stay on your feet after a shitty attack like that?”

Papri grit her teeth, heedless of the pain it caused as she shot to her feet, “What did you call me?” She practically snarled.

“Oooh, scary.” The woman laughed im Papri's face, causing her anger to build, “Look at those eyes boys, I told you she was something else. That much anger and she still hasn't blown up. Seems she's a cut above the rest of her pitiful race.”

With those words, Papri finally reached her breaking point, “Oh you want me to blow up!?” The Saiyan snarled gathering her ki until she was almost glowing with energy, “I can blow up!”

Vessa grinned almost there excitedly at her words, “Then show me.”

Papri's muscles tensed and her palms splayed towards Dessa's middle as she prepared to do just that. Just before she managed to release her built up ki however, she was interrupted by the dual beeps of both her and Dessa's collars activating.

Papri was sent to the floor, clutching her neck in agong while Dessa managed to somewhat bear with the pain, placing her hand on a nearby table to stop herself from falling further than her knees.

The room went quiet as all the inhabitants stopped whatever they were doing to watch the two of the writhe in agony. Some were uncomfortable while others were enjoying the show, but all eyes were on them.

Eventually, after several excruciating seconds, the shocks stopped. Papri's muscles remained tensed for a long moment before slowly unwinding as she slumped to the floor, breathing heavily from her still-bleeding mouth.

As she recovered and slowly got to her knees, clenching her smoking gloves, a voice rang out, “No fighting in the canteen! Next time will get you thrown in the brig!”

Papri looked over, squinting her blurry eyes as they alighted on a rotund alien with dark red skin waddling towards them.

He put the remote that he had used to activate their collars awaybas he reached them, before turning to Vessa, “If you need to blow off steam grab someone who isn't the fucking Saiyan. You might be up next for promotion but you're still a slave and you will be punished like one for acting out.”

Vessa just stared at him with lidded eyes, breathing heavily and not making any attempt to respond to his reprimand.

He pointed at Papri, “And you! You've been assigned a task already. Get to it. You've got ten minutes before I activate your collar again.”

Papri nodded slowly, not able to speak thanks to the pain still coursing through her body. The alien kept an eye on her for another moment, before scoffing and turning away, making his way out of the canteen and leaving Papri on the floor.

As the Saiyan slowly, painfully, got to her feet, Papri’s ears perked up at the sound of footsteps and she shot her head towards Dessa, expecting the orange-haired woman to have something else to say to her.

She was instead left confused as she was met with the woman’s retreating back as she walked away from her, smoke rolling from her shoulders where the electricity had singed her hair onto the blue pads of her armor.

The woman’s comrades gave her confused looks as if they had expected the same thing that Papri had, but quickly hurried after their leader as it became clear that she had nothing else to say to the Saiyan, leaving Papri alone as the canteen returned to its usual volume.

Papri shook her head angrily, putting the odd behavior out of her mind as she limped out of the canteen, ignoring the stares that followed her out.

She still had testing to get to and she doubted she'd enjoy another shock like that if she dawdled too long.

She still didn't know exactly what this testing was supposed to be, but a large part of her hoped that it meant that she would get to beat her fists against someone's face.

It would be the perfect outlet for the rage and anguish that she had been holding in for the last several days.