Normally prisoner 456 arrived late to sparring sessions between Zukki and Negi. Today on the sixth day following the child's temporary departure from the prison, by coincidence, he and the new warden arrived just moments away from each other.
Negi would come in later, metaphorically dragging her feet to work, while 456 found himself waking earlier each day he anticipated witnessing the sparring session. Participating only made his mind that much more anxious to wake up.
So when their eyes met, both of them made a brief wide eyed reaction. Negi slightly amused and 456 a tiny bit bewildered for having immediately faced his target after gaining a renewed sense of motivation.
Change, that is what was going through his mind. Could he really make a difference when she decides everything?
"Kid.." Negi broke the silence with her crisp mature voice, a tone that is ready to rebuke the reject's entire motivation. "She's not coming back. How many times do I have to tell you?"
Negi sounds annoyed, but there was no reason for her to interact with him the way she does. Giving him a warning rather than using him as a punching bag.
"I'm ... .not here for her" 456 struggles to choke out the words. His legs are already quaking from some inner acceptance of the pain that will follow.
He just grips his thighs with both hands forcing them to stop. Negi raises an eyebrow as she watches him look down and then up again at her.
"Ha..haha, alright then come on. If you can't attack me this is the last day I'll be humoring you." She starts, giving him her own type of motivation before planning to break it like all the other victims in the past. Followed by the continued false narrative that is, "since Zukki isn't here anymore i won't be sticking around"
"What?" he doesn't really understand the part where she says she's humoring him, in fact he has always been oblivious to her whole game, it's always gone over his head. "Oh..umm"
The boy seems to always be in a perpetually confused state when it comes to strangers he isn't used to. Especially the intimidating type like Negi in front of him.
"Oh come on..just come and punch me..kick me already I'm getting annoyed by your indecisive little.." she growls while tapping the side of her thigh.
This only makes the boy recoil. The line of his lips curling up and down in terror-like confusion. The window for change felt like it was closing rapidly and he reversed his step. Thinking about all the people who have attacked him.
Before Negi could regret the random bit of patience she gave him, 456 was dashing towards her. The slowest efforted dash she had ever seen. Leaving herself wide open, hands on her body suit that ends at her thighs.
His fist moves back half tightened, not knowing where to put his strength. Barely recognising where to direct it. Somehow his arm flew true….
Tap!
Right into the women's pelvic area to barely a slap of a sound.
He looked up at her like a puppy jumping up to meet its master. Negi's laugh was barely contained before her knee crashed into his chin.
Thump! Crashhh!
He flew back a few feet into the gravel with his eyes rolled back behind his head. Knocked out instantly.
"Sh*****t, tch" Negi clicked in disappointment as if she snuffed out the only genuine interesting moment to her in the past couple of days, aside from her sparring session with nappa.
She took a long moment, swinging her head back and forth before putting her hands on her hips. Searching the kid for any signs of getting up. Her first thought was to take him to a healing chamber, not out of pity, but rather the most convenient way to restart this scenario the way she favored it. Only for the thought of using their resources on a reject like him to disgust her.
The hesitation bothered her and she quickly grabbed him by the back collar of his armor. Whisking him away and leaving him in the infirmary. She was sighing at her own boredom when a cooing alien boldly interrupted her step.
"Hello Warden, dropping off a present are we?"
She had flown so fast through the halls none of the prisoners could see her, even if they focused their eyes. The wind in the air was an odd feeling on the spines of some of the saiyans as their tails stood up straight briefly, but they hardly cared to ponder it. Yet when she turned to leave there was that hesitation again.
"How long till I can knock that one around?" She demands.
"Oh give him an hour" her eyes glanced at 455 over in his little corner, his eyes glued to a book.
Negi caught her glance. An all too obvious tell that a warrior with keen eyes such as her couldn't miss, especially her bored gaze searching for proper entertainment.
The woman had her back turned. Following her gaze she took a purposeful single step towards the boy at the corner.
The purple triceratops was about the same size as the woman, however she couldn't be any smaller with the way she holds herself in this moment. Despite this terrified stature, she shuffled into the way of Negi's gaze. 455 is still somehow blissfully unaware of the danger.
Every saiyan has a modicum of acknowledgement of those in the restoration field, so she thinks twice before blowing her away.
".. Būdo? You are the only nurse in this trash heaps old fashioned infirmary. I would really hate to put our only repair woman out for a day. These prisoners must get scrapes and bruises all the time" Negi whispers in a low roar down the woman's ear as she shoves by her.
Būdo frowns as she watches her precious student get gripped by his scruffy hair and kidnaps him. Only leading her to rush over to the remaining child with spikey hair and check to see if it will only be just an hour before he wakes up again.
***
455 barely had the time to turn his head before realizing she wasn't at the desk any longer. That he wasn't by his teachers or even in the infirmary. What he saw was an impossible rush of corridors and hallways, ones he swore he was familiar with before the early morning light flashed his eyes.
When he opened his eyes after blinking he was face to face with Negi, the Warden, and a terrifying figure he was all too familiar with these days. At least he was familiar with how she spent her time here and how significantly stronger she was compared to any person he had ever met.
"Whaa.." 455 reacts very much confused at the absolute shift in space. His limbs dangled, hands reaching up to grip the hand that was currently clutching at his hair. "Ahh!"
"Alright you're taking that other one's place" she says once they were eye to eye and 455 reacted. He intuits her thought process to mean his friend 456, but she tosses him forward before he could respond.
Landing on his hands and feet like a cat, he doesn't hiss, just tilts his head up at her first. Rising to his feet with hesitance. His little stature no taller than the boy from before, aside from the spikes that crown his head, 456 might always edge him out in height that way.
"And..what am I doing?" He speaks like the incoming task would be a chore, but his voice sounds the same as a moment ago while he was being dangled.
"Come attack me right now!" She demands of him
"Attack you? Why would I do that…. actually how would I do that?", and here come the monotonous questions from the curious soul that is 455.
Negi was taken aback, not from the philosophical attack, but rather the sheer annoyance that she wasn't just getting the exact replacement for the time she had lost already.
"How, why, it doesn't matter."
"B-but it does"
"If you don't hit me, I'm going to make you suffer kid"
"Aren't you going to do that anyway?" He asks another question that sends Negi briefly over the edge.
Smack!
She slaps the absolute hell out of him, holding back of course, as he tumbled to the side. His cheek is already turning a deep harsh crimson that stings upon touching it.
"Ouch.." he looks up at her from his side on the ground, muttering a monotone whine of pain. If he were a human he probably would cry, but his saiyan dna seemed to make him resistant to true child-like behavior. "..like that"
"Get up!" She shouts without the slightest hesitation.
This time the boy listens.
"Now come over here and hit me. I don't care how or where, just that you come at me like a real saiyan would" her eyes peered down at the boy with cruel expectations in mind after commanding him once again.
"Because you are the Warden?" Somehow the kid has the balls to ask yet another question, his curiosity not dying in the face of fear. Though his knees were starting to knock against each other.
He was starting to think about the fact that he didn't just get knocked out, meaning she really could control her strength. Terrifying possibilities cropped up in his mind, questions he almost did not want to have answers. If he knew the word masochist that may be how he described his own mindset right about now.
"Because.." Negi raises her hand once again after muttering incredulously.
"No more questions" she then adds sharply right after lifting the kid by his cheeks. Painfully squishing his lips into an uncomfortable pucker. "You are going to hit me when I put you down otherwise I'll.. kill you" The minor bit of hesitation was due to the fact that she was bluffing, avoiding the death of prisoners was literally in her job description now.
Negi expected a spark of the truest fear, when in reality all she got was a wide-eyed acknowledgement of her intentions. Somehow 455 was not afraid–not that he caught her bluff specifically, just that he trusted his own list of rules for life here in this prison. It all harked back on the fact that his teacher already explained that it's against the rules; in a place he recognizes as his home. His logic went that she hadn't killed them already and was capable of holding back her strength, so she would at worst only send him back to where he wanted to be in the first place.
She didn't drop him right away. This boy had already called her bluff. Negi was beginning to believe in more ways than one, that she had lost her touch. Then finally she follows the same line of logic, going through his head as she remembers her brief visit to the infirmary.
"Hehehe, almost had me, kid, but now I got you figured out." She cackled a bit, before announcing her own understanding of their exchange.
Of course he was curious about what she was talking about. His answer would come soon enough, right after Negi dropped him to the ground.
"I'll have to ban you from visiting the infirmary" she declared to just the right expression she expected–well his face barely morphed, but looking close Negi spotted a twitch of the eyebrow. A minor quiver of his lips before they parted to exhale a response.
"The place where.." he froze mid sentence. "Where, teacher, is? Isn't that somewhere, where everyone needs to go?"
455 naively let what he cared about be known somewhat bare to the worst person.
"455" she refers to his number, dehumanizing him, before explaining it. "you don't need to go anywhere. You go where I tell you too"
The boy couldn't argue and no other questions seriously popped into his mind. Above all else, his teacher told him to listen to any of the older Saiyans. Being in her infirmary was the safest place she could provide, but outside it was anyone's game. Where the stronger willed do as they see fit. Killing was truly the only rule they all abided by, don't kill each other, and absolutely do not kill the alien staff.
"So get up on your feet and attack me like you want to kill me. Or I'll personally make sure you don't step foot in the infirmary ever again" Negi threatened deviously.
The moment of hesitation seemed to last forever. 455 clenched his fist, remembering the First punch he ever saw. That first time someone demanded something of him, this felt devastatingly similar to the start of his life. Disappointing someone when he hardly knew what he was to do. From the moment he learned that he could learn, 455 was profoundly struck with the desire to understand why.
He waves it up and then remembers another punching angle he waved down. His fist clenches harder and then softer, his fingers unfurl and refurl. 455 struggles on where to put his thumb.
"Grrrr" Negi was literally growling, grumbling a low sound due to her impatience. "Come on!" She complains.
The sharp "come on" he hears makes the boy lock his fist into place, thumb properly curled over his clenched fingers. He had been staring at his hand now in the same position others used it to harm him.
455 looks over at Negi like a man readying a gun to shoot. His legs slowly carry him over to his target and he swings his arm back and throws the fist hazardly to the first place that was in its way.
Pat!
He hits her thigh that sounds like he was lightly patting a cushion. Then he was already pulling away and looking up to see his results. All he received was a disgusted look.
455 desperately wondered what the point in this moment was for.
"No better than the other one…whatever..you wasted enough of my time" Negi scoffs and back hands the boy just enough to knock him down. Leaving him awake and aware of his surroundings.
"Go get the other one. Bring him here"
"Hmm" 455 feels hurt deeper down than he let on. Part of him hated not understanding how to properly attack, further back in his mind, it also hurt to know this failing was tied in some small way to something he did care about. "Ok"
"Don't answer, just go" she demands.