When you approach a prince

Some would say that darkness is nothingness, those people are wrong, darkness is the absence of something, thus it is something, true nothingness is when even darkness dies.

It was curious, how darkness wrapped around him, almost like a comforting blanket handwoven by a caring grandmother.

He could see a little, for the darkness was not absolute, some measure of illumination managed to exist, yet just that fact that he could see this nothingness was strange, foreign to him, a feeling he had not expected to ever feel again.

He could feel the air enter his lungs, it streaming thru his nose, down his windpipe, filling his lungs, curious feeling it was for sure.

The flexing of muscle, the rotation of the eyeballs, the wetness of the mouth, every sensation, action, the existence of himself, was almost new and foreign in its placement, a canopy of a great many things unfolded just by him existing.

His hand pressed around, strange that he even had a hand, and he could feel the air shift and turn with his every move until he hit something cold and hard, metal he mused, if his remembrance was correct.

Cold, the feeling of heat deprivation, extraction, exchange, search for equilibrium. He feels something upon touching this coldness, but he does not know what, he can not distinguish between happiness and anger, cold and hot are just facts.

Yet this feeling, emotion, heavy, oppressive, and bursting in him, he could feel it and get confused by it.

It would seem that his interaction triggered something, for the thing he was in began to spew forth light, vomiting it out of a specific side, to which he promptly turned.

One would expect it to burn his eyes, so used to seeing nothing, or not seeing anything, that it would hurt him to just see darkness, let's not talk about light, yet no.

With the light piercing his eyes, memories pierced his brain.

'What is this?' He asked himself, remembering many things he knew were foreign to him, for he could not remember remembering them.

The memories flooded him, experiences of ripping apart foes and killing enemies in blood-soaked arrogance hid behind them a noble birth, blinding rage devoured the loyalty which existed once, but was swallowed in the anger and pride.

A bald head shaved from experience and regret was his own, a mustache which almost circled his mouth smiled when he did, a tail wrapped around the waist, a useful weapon, and tool, while great height and mass hid surprising agility and a low cunning behind them.

Had he been a lesser man, had he been the same man as, before the abyss he had found himself in, he would have been swallowed by these memories, digested and stripped for parts to augment those of this man who he has now become, drowning in this overwhelming river of remembrance so much stronger than his pitiful stream.

But he was not the man from before, experiencing the definition of infinity changes any man, it changed him too. These new memories he acquired only told him of who he has become, engulfed by nothingness these memories now too have seen it, and they could not escape the pull of madness.

'I am in Dragon ball, I am Nappa.' He knew who he was, the face which he now wore instantly connecting with the remembrance of his memories.

A sense of childhood nostalgia would have hit him, remembering the face of such an aged figure, yet he could not feel it, an odd sensation he felt yes, but if it was nostalgia or not is not a thing he could discern.

He gripped the edge of the metal object he has arrived in, the pods used by the Saiyans, and instinctively, as was practiced so often before by these memories and this body, he hunched as he emerged from the pod.

A great canopy of sound rushed and swaddled him, his senses, his being whole enshrouded in the silent screams and destruction.

It was quaint indeed, people were screaming and panicking, buildings were crumbling to rubble and the world itself was being toppled, yet all that he could hear is the silence between it all, the silent thoughts, people, and actions, a great antithesis was his re-welcome into existence.

He breathed, the sound of silence, it reminded him of the nothingness, a place so far away, an oxymoron, to not exist is to exist, so is hearing silence, both are equal, both are experiences he has gone thru.

"You finally up Nappa? Here I thought the pod malfunctioned." A voice told him from high above, dripping with arrogance, soaked in self-serving selfishness and coated in vile, evil would be how some people would describe it, curious is more apt in his case, however.

His head cocked back, he looked up, there, high up above him, floating aloft him, his face looking down with a cold, disinterested heat in it, yet all that he did was look back at him, eyes meeting eyes, black on black.

"Huh? What is it, Nappa?" The voice above asked, a scoffing, dismissive tone to it, already having identified itself as the prince of Saiyans without even speaking his name.

"Hurry up, this planet looks like it will be sold well, riches await us." He said, "Immortality does too." Adding another sentence, quieter this time, almost like an afterthought, although it is clear that he valued the second objective more than the first.

Nappa remained stoic. His head bowed down, staring at his feet, memories flooded his system, both body and mind in unison began to work.

Slowly, excruciatingly so, his feet began to lift off the ground, an inch at first, a foot followed suit, rapidly gaining height and velocity until his legs were planted on the same height as his companion.

He looked around, curiously, although he could not tell if it was curiosity or disinterest that made him look, a search for something new and exciting it was, regardless of what pinpoint emotion it is fueled by.

'The dream of mankind, achieved by me, in mere minutes.' A random thought struck him at the moment, the apple of man's eye, a dream which legends told about, and every nation had one legend at least about it, a dream of legends.

Unassisted flight, freer than even a bird in flight, not constrained by the metal prison of a plane nor the red flesh of wings, no parachute to slow one down, nor fans to push one up, flight in its truest, purest, most unaltered form.

"You're being strange Nappa, snap out of it." The prince accented, growling each word as his teeth showed, like a wolf or dog, breaking Nappa out of his musings.

Light spiked into his eyes, one tinted blue, the crystal shards of glass reflecting his image at him, the face of no emotion stared back from a panel of broken glass having fallen off a building and shattered innumerably so.

Debre and detritus littered the streets, buildings of an alien and unknown design to him have collapsed from their landing, toppled over from their impact, the landing appearing more like a crash than anything else.

Cars overturned, blood spilled, bones crushed and tendons ripped, the carnage was a relative minimum, maybe half a dozen to a dozen dead, too unconcerned he is to properly count.

Faces frozen in shock and fear looked up at the two of them, barely able to do so, for the sun is at their back, many squinted just to look, as they could barely manage to comprehend what was in front of them.

By this point the screams had all died down, even the children whose fathers and mothers had died, or the parents whose offspring perished, were quiet.

Instinctual maybe it was this inclination towards silence upon being met with an overwhelming force, to scuttle away with one's life.

Another oddity arose within him, flying so high above them all, creatures so similar to himself, yet so weak, crushable, a fact he knows and acknowledges.

'I'm not a human anymore, am I?' It was a fact he had long ago been confronted by, yet in nothingness, there is nothing to compare oneself to, there are no humans to tell you that you are one of them or disregard you if it's the opposite, only the blank nothingness for comfort, and much comfort it did not give.

Still, he felt nothing for his bygone humanity, curiosity at most, it was just another fact, a matter of existence, still, to be confronted by it so suddenly, and so directly, something he had never experienced in his madness induced hallucinations, was strange. Not good, not bad, a pit in one's stomach yet an apathy in one's heart.

"Nice little planet, isn't it, Nappa?" The prince asked, a smirk on his face as he looked at the crowd, which had at this point begun to murmur once more, seeing the aliens, who look exactly like them, do nothing but float above.

He still stayed silent, his two eyes, like orbs of glass, rolling around in their sockets, observing and silent.

"Why don't you give them a little greeting," The prince said.

Again, he stayed silent. Greet? Greet them why? What purpose would there be in greeting them, if the outcome was already decided?

Seconds passed one after another, soon a minute had gone by, nothing has happened, both of the Saiyans just standing still, not exchanging words, the prince having grown irritable in the absence of obedience, as evidenced by his scrunched up face.

"Tch, what's wrong with you Nappa? Hurry up." Another cry for urgency and action, yet he saw no reason to do so, so he did not.

He only observed as he had for so many years in the void, just observing, only now he had something to observe, nothingness gets dull, even if that dullness too eventually vanished, leaving behind only that which can never truly exist, nothingness.

"Fine, I'll do it." His patience ran thin it would seem, the prince pointed his finger at the crowd with a near snarl on his face, and without the people even knowing what was happening, although some seemed to understand his intentions on a baser, primal level, he unleashed devastation.

A lithe beam of energy, Ki as it is called here, spewed forth from his finger, infinitely long and incredibly thin, a single motion, a single chop of hand, and the people, as well as the buildings, all separated into two uneven halves.

They didn't even have time to take another breath before they all died.

"Now that's done let's go. We have some opposition on this planet, better get rid of them, wouldn't want them to hinder our search for the Dragon Balls. Immortality can wait for us, might be a fun exercise too." A smile of actual joy plastered itself across the prince's face as he said that.

Automatically and without thinking, in sync as the prince, Nappa lifted his left arm, pressing at the scouter attached to his head a few times, symbols and numbers flashing by with every click until he pressed the right program.

A circle appeared, many complicated symbols next to it, yet he knew what they all meant, and as it scanned around it soon landed in one direction, with two circles and arrows pointing that way.

"Multiple signatures over 1000, surprising, this wasn't here before. No matter, they pose no threat, let's go, Nappa." The prince called and blasted off the ground at a tremendous speed, Nappa found himself following suit, his body once more automatically executing the actions.

A sudden thing hit him, deep inside somewhere in his head, an emotion, not one completely of his own, but assimilated, a deep, heavy feeling at his own body's obedience to another.

And then came another, this one his, his "human" one, and it forced him, made it mandatory, to look back one more time, and so he did.

He glanced back at the now uninhabitable rubble which was once, not so distantly in the past called a city. Even from here the blood, death, and destruction could be seen, yet even as this "human" side of him spoke something he could not find it in himself to care for any of it.

He felt something, however slight it may be, coming from a middle ground between the two memories. Contempt? Is that the name for it? He isn't sure, but it must be close to that, and he isn't even sure for what reason he feels this way, all that he knows is that the sight of all that death and destruction doesn't bother him.

If anything, now as he gets further away from it, he can feel a small tingling in the depths of his existence at the thought of what just transpired, it felt good, enjoyable maybe, that, and something else, something unidentifiable, yet stronger still.

He could feel it, rising, a desire. A desire for something he isn't sure what it even is, but he can feel it well inside of him, another unknown curiosity has come, and he feels propelled to figure it out.

-------------------------------------------------------------

P. S. The title of the previous chapter is a reference to Aristotle's quote: Whomsoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

Although the quote itself is often misrepresented because it is said without context. What Aristotle meant is in a political sense, who can be self-sustaining politically and socially is either a pariah amongst everybody or an almost godlike figure, while modern people (without context) consider it as a representation of how a man is either engulfed in chasing material possessions or so mentally stable that he doesn't need companionship.

This is also a slight bit of foreshadowing on my front.