Day Three: Morning

[Belle Hibiki]

The shockwave from the blast was greater than he could have ever expected it to be. The majin suddenly felt himself being bodily lifted off the ground and hurled back into the trees by the concussive force of multiple, tightly-packed explosions.

He threw his arms out desperately. By some miracle he managed to hook one around a low hanging branch, and he clung fiercely to the aged oak with all that remained of his strength. He gritted his teeth, anger pulsing a hard rhythm against the backs of his eyes as the destruction unfolded before him. Seventeen!

Bark, dirt and rock pelted him as he held on, and wind whipped and buffeted his body about like a beleagured musical chime left out in a hurricane. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity (but was really only a matter of seconds), the fury of the detonation faded away, and it was only a few seconds more before he uncoiled his malleable body from the flora, now lopsided, and dropped to the ground.

The devastation was both awe-inspiring and sickening. He opened his mouth, but could not think of anything to say.

In fact, now that he thought about it, he didn't want to say anything. Fury like molten fire coursed through every atom of his puttalin body, and he felt a familiar bestial roar rising up in his throat, clawing its way out from his lips in a strangled snarl. "Me... kill...!" The words spit from his mouth. He could say nothing else.

Something was wrong.

Where the fresh surge of power lanced through his putty-like flesh it came alive, but that very fury made it impossible to think. His conscious thought was blotted out, eradicated just as completely as Android Seventeen had been. Again a pulse rippled through him, and crimson lightning leapt from his childlike frame and shattered a jagged hole in the ground. It was beyond his control, beyond anything he had ever experienced.

Child...

"Agh!" he screamed. He clutched his head with all four hands, finding himself suddenly collapsed over on the edge of the blast zone as a torrent of images ripped through his mind. "No...!" His voice sounded small and wretched in his ears, hoarse and witchlike as the power continued to swell outwards. His body was beginning to bulge, to bloat - or at least felt like it - and his fingernails tore scratches in his scalp, hooking viciously into the vents on top as he felt the delicate structures inside of him beginning to tremble and crack at the seams.

Child...

Do you remember?

A distant blue star, a endless void flashed before his eyes, flitting away from his mental grasp so fast... He felt like he knew it, but from where? Was it one of the places he had floated through after Bibidi's abandonment? No, and yet-

Remember!!!

He spun in space. He turned. Something large, something enormous loomed just out of sight. He tried to look...

And then abruptly the tenuous connection snapped inside of him, and with a jolt everything fell away. He looked up into the faces of Super Buu and Violet, their faces confused, half-angry and half-worried. Maybe they had thought he was going to puke out his guts like that stupid little kid had.

Goddamn monkeys.

He blinked at the thought, and then belatedly it hit him; it wasn't just the vision that had disappeared from his mind, but nearly everything else. He opened his mouth to try and say something, but he couldn't give the words shape; just thinking them was painful. He couldn't speak.

It was like going blind for a second time.

"Me..." he whispered once, swearing inwardly because that was easy, and then promptly collapsed back, his eyes falling shut as exhaustion slammed into him.