Continued from here, due to lore changes // @queen-jala
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AS THE WOMAN SPOKE, MAIZ'S DISPLEASURE GREW.
A heavy feeling--writhing, twisting like a dirt-covered worm coming up to the surface in times of rain--made itself known within the pits of her stomach. Her legs moved involuntarily, an action that brought her face to face to the other woman--and her jaws clenched at the realization that she may have been wrong (er, right?) in regards to Jala; she did run away, leaving the Saiyans to their fate. She did abandon them in their time of need.
And if she was who she said she was, her cowardice was utterly unacceptable.
Her tail swept behind her in low arcs, brushed up against her ankles, dark brown fur poofed in silent anger. "Get back home?" She asked, in a low voice. "Haha," she laughed without warmth. It was empty, hollow. "What home?"
Though it didn't show on her face, violent, intrusive images flashed through Maiz's mind: grabbing a fistful of Jala's face and smashing it into the ground repeatedly, grabbing the woman's tail, tying it around a boulder and pushing it into the nearest body of water, tackling her to the ground and manually rearranging her facial features with her fists until she was bloody, unrecognizable, begging for mercy---
"Last time I checked--," she leaned into the woman's face with a growl and then interrupted herself. The grip she held over her own biceps were strangling; her fingernails threatened to break through skin and her top row of teeth caught her bottom lip. For a moment, she seemed frozen in time (red light, shrill alarms, Frieza's men ambushing Saiyans indiscriminately, the blood, screams of agony--).
"--Nevermind. It does not matter." But Maiz wasn't talking to Jala then, it was a self-reminder. A warning, an attempt to restrain herself. Coming back into the present moment, she exhaled a harsh breath. The urge to grab the so-called Queen by her top and shake her violently was there, accompanied by a hardened look in Maiz's eyes. For the moment, the Ice Empress decided to play along for sanity's sake. It's not like she knew the Royal Family personally. She didn't.
"I do," she answered. "Any Saiyan worth their ki would rightfully abhor them both." She avoided saying their names entirely. "They should have never been allowed to lay eyes on our planet much less negotiate anything."
Notably, Maiz didn't agree to anything--helping her out with supplies or the offer to kill both Frieza and Cold. The reasoning for the first was simple--there was no home to speak of. Many cycles after she became an adult (in what should have been Saiyan society), she visited the space where their planet was. It was gone. Nothing was there. Nobody was there. If Jala didn't know that, she either never revisited the place where the planet was in her years of hiding, or she might have been held up somewhere. Though Maiz doubts the second option--the woman just said she's been hopping from planet to planet, didn't she? So what happened, truly? Did Jala just forget about her planet? Her people?
Before compulsion (and subsequent reckless decision making) swallowed her, she took herself away from Jala and freed the woman from her scrutinizing glare. She didn't praise Jala on her battle prowess either. It was as if Maiz was a sponge for information; a black sink hole with a freezing aspect. She looked towards the sky again of the unconquered planet, a name which currently escaped her. A cargo ship broke the monotonous colors of a purple and black firmament dotted with hazy, pink clouds. It was going to land, it seemed.
She uncrossed her arms and decided to keep her thoughts and traumatic memories to herself. Jala was not off the hook, but since she was a Saiyan, Maiz would give her the benefit of the doubt. She would have to earn her trust--but the shared heritage (and goal of wanting to murder Frieza) helped greatly.
"--As I've said before, there are few of us left. That is on purpose. What so little of us survived the tragedy that befell our people scattered us to each corner of the winds." Her lips twitched and she briefly frowned again before her face resumed it's neutral state. "It is terrible and unfair. For that purpose," she forced herself to breathe out through her nostrils in a self-soothing motion, "I will warn you of what you need to watch out for.
"Aside from them, there is a law enforcement group. They guard certain planets. Beware of Agents of the Galactic Patrol. They will arrest you for attempting to take over a planet under their protection. If you do not care about that, it's fine. But I refuse to let them stop me again.
"If your goal is similar to mine: re-establishing some semblance of Saiyan society, you'd want a neutral planet with many natural resources," she began walking towards the cargo ship. It was quite a few feet away--nothing a power walk couldn't fix. "Neutral meaning they are governed by theirselves, not aligned to any outside protection. Do research on their allies if they have any. Nearby planets as well. The inhabitants must be molded into what you wish them to be or else you've just done nothing more than empty an unusable planet you can't figure out."
Hence why she's done partial genocides, instead.
