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This page, The KidVegeta Anthology/Nowhere to Go, is property of KidVegeta. |
This will be a slightly unconventional anthology page, as Nowhere to Go doesn't exist on this wiki. The text of it - all 21,206 words of it - are nowhere to be found. Only I have a copy of the story, and I have no plans of ever posting it on this site or anywhere else. That's not to say I won't summarize important events and discuss the creation/writing process of it here, though. But there will be no endnotes for this anthology page.
Nowhere to Go has existed, in some form or another, since at least 2012. Sorry, but I don't remember exactly when I began it. Back then, it was called "Prelude to a Nightmare". I wrote three short chapters of it in prose back then. I did minor revisions to those three chapters from 2013-2016, although, to be honest, I rarely re-read or even thought about PTAN during that span.
The summary of the story is posted below. In the original draft of Nowhere to Go, the story featured The Benefactor and Ledas concocting up a hair-brained scheme for him to impregnate a random woman. The reason for this plan was never something I came up with. I just needed a way for him to have a son for the sake of The Last Saiyan. The three chapters included Ledas arriving on the girl's front door as an abandoned child, trying to gain sympathy with the family so that he could move in with them and get closer to the girl. The girl's name was originally Aubrey. Suffice to say, that story was horrible. When I re-read it for the final time in the summer of 2016, I concluded that there was essentially nothing salvageable of the original story. I deleted it and started fresh. And by that, I mean, I changed almost every aspect of the story.
Every character aside from Ledas was renamed. The Benefactor no longer appears in Nowhere to Go (I've since found a different thing to do with his character, and I don't expect he'll be around during the time of The Last Saiyan - not that he was ever meant to have a large role in that story). Aubrey briefly became a variety of other names, mostly Asian in flavor (for a while, her name was Aeko), and later, Hawaiian in flavor, but I eventually settled on Aela as being the prettiest name I could think of. By 2012, I had decided that Nir's mother's name would start with an "A". By late 2015, I had determined it must begin with "Ae". It took me until August of 2016 to come up with her actual name though.
The story was written in drama format - the same format used to write Dragon Ball Z: The Forgotten. I was originally going to write it in prose (as I had written the first draft of the first three chapters), but scrapped that idea when I realized it was impractical and unnecessary. The text color is the same shade of pink as the deleted scenes in TF. I have listed the overall length of the story and of each of the seven chapters here and here.
As of writing this commentary, Nowhere to Go is the fourth longest story of mine, which I think is rather funny. It tells me that I don't have many long stories if this quickly-written tale is suddenly the 4th longest out of 72 stories of mine on this wiki. But it won't hold that position. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Planet Trade Organization, The Last Saiyan, His Majesty's Pet, Chasing Oblivion, and Dragon Ball: Heart of the Dragon will all be much longer than Nowhere to Go once they are completed. I guess I should complete them. For additional perspective, Nowhere to Go is also longer than the entirety of the Prince Vegeta Saga and the Planet Earth Saga of TF, though it is at least 1000 words shorter than any of the other four sagas of TF.
So I don't have that much I want to say about this story. The below summary is pretty self-explanatory. I do want to say that it was fun to write about build up to The Last Saiyan, though. This story really helped me solidify my idea of the timeline leading up to TLS, and I came up with more than a few cool ideas to later put in that story (such as Tess being Nir's aunt, and giving a better backstory to Tyren). With Tyren, his new story in the prologue is based on me reading Beowulf in an English class of mine during the fall semester of 2016. After reading that story, I came up with the entirety of the Dragons of the Dawn/Ledas/Tyren/Aekyarian plotline, and I'm quite proud of that.
Another thing I should mention is that Nowhere to Go became mostly structured after I created the Ledas: A Saiyan's Story page. After I created that page, I re-focused on the story of mine that was at the time called "Prelude to a Nightmare" and placed it on the page under a new name ("Nowhere to Go" is a reference to a line from "You Never Give Me Your Money" by the Beatles).
In the week and months after creating the page for Ledas: A Saiyan's Story, I began thinking about this story more and came up with a general outline. I wrote seven chapter outlines overall, which helped me write this story. Interesting to note is the fact that I didn't know how many chapters this story would be overall until I had finished the fifth chapter (at times, I thought it might be 8 chapters or 10 or 12 - it ended up being 7). And writing it in drama format made the writing go faster, too. Seeing Ledas' tales in full on the Ledas: A Saiyan's Story page, seeing what was left to be written, I came to the conclusion that Nowhere to Go could be completed relatively quickly. At first, I had not meant to start it this year, but after I realized I could finish it quickly, I decided to start it.
I wrote the first chapter on August 14, 2016. I usually wrote one chapter a day - though rarely I wrote a partial chapter and then continued it on another day. I always gave myself at least 24 hours between finishing the first draft of a chapter before re-reading it to edit and finalize it. The last chapter was finalized on September 12, 2016. I wrote the chapters in two main bursts - the first four in mid-to-late August, and the final three in early-to-mid September. The writing went very quickly. The entire 21,206 word story was fully completed in less than a month, which is a great feat, I think.
This story has immense value to me. I had a lot of fun developing Ledas' character in this period of his life, and there was lots of set up for The Last Saiyan, a story I've been wrestling with since 2012. I gained significant clarity on several major plot points of that story in the writing of Nowhere to Go. This is mostly true for stuff related to Tess and Tyren. As well, I finally came up with an idea for what to do with Ledas. In truth, before writing this story, I didn't really have an endgame for Ledas - I knew he'd be around in TLS in some capacity, but with the writing of this story, I came up with a precise role for him in TLS and I mapped out the rest of his life. That's a character who's existed since early 2010 - I finally came up with his fate in late 2016 (specifically, on August 31, 2016). So yeah, a lot of significant stuff happened in this story and Nowhere to Go also helped me come up with explanations and ideas for other aspects of the furthest stretches of my universe (I don't plan to write any stories beyond TLS, timeline-wise, as of this moment). For that alone, Nowhere to Go has been a wonderful surprise, born of an old, bad idea, and refined into something I am proud of. I will not be rating this story, however, since it's mostly a collection of deleted scenes.
Nowhere to Go summary[]
So, in terms of the actual story, most of it is just sexual stuff - deleted scenes, if you will - featuring Ledas, Aela, Aela's sister Tess, and others. I probably won't get into much detail about those scenes ever, as they aren't important except for the last one, where Ledas and Aela conceive Nir. Ledas finds Aela and Tess working in a whorehouse that they were sold to after their father fell into debt from excessive gambling. Aela is 16 years old; Tess is 18 (she was younger when she was originally sold to the whorehouse). Neither can leave until they bring in enough money to pay back the debt to the whorehouse owner that their father wracked up. Their lives are pretty miserable. Ledas finds them through a curious series of events that involves a football (soccer) game, a crazy hobo, and a small amount of zeni.
Anyways, he soon falls in love with Aela after meeting her, and he spends most of the story trying to woo her. One of the things he tries (to get with her, because he's absolutely infatuated with her) is to promise to get her out of the whorehouse - he will find money to pay for her and Tess' debt to the whorehouse owner (a rather boring man named Mr. Mitani) - if she has a kid with him. Of course, Ledas doesn't reveal why he wants to have a kid with her very directly, but it's implied in the text that he knows he doesn't have much longer to live and wants to continue his bloodline before dying of old age (which is funny, since Ledas still looks like the same 12 year old kid he's looked like for so long even in the 931 Age). Tess doesn't like Ledas for a variety of reasons - most importantly, because she thinks he's a muto because of his tail. This physical feature later plagues Nir throughout The Last Saiyan.
The story is a slow-progression love story that ends with Aela falling in love with Ledas, and the two of them conceiving Nir. Tess runs away and joins the Ordained - the military force of King Jibal. This is primarily setup for The Last Saiyan. The Ordained in particular are a major force in that story, and Tess appears in TLS as an Ordained officer who is the girlfriend of the point-of-view character, Lín Eire.
The other major storyline in this story involves the Dragons of the Dawn and their attempt to get Ledas to help them destroy a pair of demon lords (they know that Ledas is the strongest being on Earth, so that's why the DOTD goes to him for help). It has been foretold that two massively-powerful demons will soon arrive and wipe out all life on Earth. The Dragons of the Dawn are a mystic cult of Makyans descended from the original group of Makyans who came to Earth in the 4237 Before Age. They contact Ledas at multiple points in the story (I believe 4 total times before the last scene with them), although the only member Ledas actually meets face-to-face is the Dragon of the East. The Dragon of the East tells Ledas of two demon brothers who have been foretold to come to Earth to destroy it. The Dragons of the Dawn have the gift of foresight - they can see into the future. And so they can see when the demons are going to arrive, and what's going to happen afterwards if nothing is done. Basically, the Earth will be rendered lifeless if nobody stops them.
Ledas eventually agrees to help them defeat the demons, albeit reluctantly. Clearly, by this point (roughly the 931 Age), he's not as interested in protecting the Earth or fighting fearsome foes as he had been in the past. The story ends during the opening of the prologue of The Last Saiyan as the Dragons of the Dawn suddenly transport Ledas and Aela to the spot where the demons will be arriving on Earth. Ledas does not expect to be transported when he is (Aela is only brought along with him because he's touching her at the time), though he ends the story by going Super Saiyan and flying up to a burning rift in the sky where the demons are supposedly going to be coming through at any moment.
The Dragons of the Dawn swear that the demons are too powerful for Ledas - especially since there are two of them. They have a plan though: they will be able to drain/steal the demons' energy if Ledas can stall the two demons for a short amount of time. They are not certain if Ledas can even do that much, which is perhaps a little odd, since they should be able to see into the future. Basically, it appears they know things that Ledas doesn't, and yet aren't telling him the full story about what's going to happen in order to suit their own purposes. These Makyans are peaceful and not bad people, like Garlic, Garlic Jr., and their henchmen. They are long-descended from those ancient demons. But they are demons too, so they have a connection with the two demons being sent to Earth. They have just the kind of powers needed to humble these demons and take their powers from them. This quote from the story illustrates the basic strategy worked out by Ledas and the Dragons of the Dawn:
"We are not so unlike them – just demons of a different skin. But we recognize the folly of their hunger, of their bloodlust, and we will work with you to end their tyranny if we can. You cannot defeat them. They are too strong. And there are two of them, yet only one of you, I’m afraid. Hold them off… that is all we ask of you, Ledas, son of Layeeck. We require five minutes – that is all. If you can hinder them for that long… together we may save the universe." |
So as you can see, the Dragons of the Dawn are trying to save the Earth, just like Ledas, but they may be taking advantage of him. Nowhere to Go ends before Ledas meets the two demons in combat, however. In fact, the two antagonists don't appear at all in the flesh in Nowhere to Go.
So who exactly are these two demons being sent to Earth, and why are they being sent there in the first place? Well, one of them is named Tyren. He's the younger brother - the weaker brother. His older brother Aekyarian is a larger, more ruthless, stronger demon. They were banished from the demon realm after they attempted to usurp control over the entire realm following Dabura's abduction by Babidi and later death at the hands of Majin Buu. Essentially, after Dabura was taken from the demon realm and killed, chaos befell that entire plane of existence, and that is something I will expand upon further in a future story of mine - but not this one.
"The brothers Aekyarian and Tyren are peerless warriors. They are too powerful for you, or anyone else in this universe. We have seen it. We know." |
Aekyarian is stronger than Tyren. Both are stronger than Ledas. But Ledas will have to hold them off for a few minutes as the Dragons of the Dawn enact their desperate plan to save the world. Will he succeed? Will he fail? The entirety of their battle is seen in the TLS prologue (KV note: as of 9/12/2016, the prologue of TLS is still the original draft version - this version is not canon to my universe any more; I will be re-writing it to show the titanic clash between Ledas and Tyren and Aekyarian sometime in the future). The fates of Ledas, Aela, their unborn child, Earth and all its life, and perhaps even the universe itself is left unclear as this story ends.
4/2/23 update[]
The Last Saiyan has been canceled. Details can be found here. Nowhere to Go is also non-canon. Furthermore, Ledas is no longer around in Age 932, meaning Aela and Tess and some clientele are no longer his lovers and these characters no longer exist.
The fall of TLS/NTG was precipitated by me non-canonizing and removing most of the deleted scenes in Dragon Ball Z: The Forgotten in June of 2020. Removing most of Ledas' lovers was done first and foremost because the older I've gotten, the more I appreciate the concept of monogamy. Ledas being bisexual means that this is not entirely possible, but before, he had significantly more sexual partners and was overall just a whore. College KidVegeta appreciated that style of Ledas more so than adult KidVegeta. When those scenes were removed, I immediately thought to also non-canonize Nowhere to Go, but knowing that that would require Black as Blood to be rendered non-canon too, as well as requiring rewriting much of the opening of TLS, I never went through with it, leaving that problem to be sorted later.
The second major blow to this story's canonicity was the existence of Dragon Ball Super. When I wrote NTG over the summer of 2016, DBS was still in the middle of the "Future" Trunks Saga. Because we did not know where Super would go (and at least the manga is still going as of this addendum, so we still don't), I didn't realize at the time that I would want Ledas to remain fundamentally in the present, to find his mate in that time period, have children, get stronger, and ultimately live out his life before Age 900 comes around. While Chari did exist in 2015, her brother did not, and she was meant to die during Heart of the Dragon; the writing of Country Matters in 2017 produced Olivien. With his addition, the need for Nir no longer existed. Ledas even being alive so long in the future stretches credibility. I simply no longer liked the idea of this story, so it's gone.
Nir will exist, but his mother won't be Aela. I may end up reusing bits of this story for future stuff with Nir's mother, but I can't be sure. The Dragons of the Dawn will continue to have a plotline that will be resolved in a story not named The Last Saiyan, although I doubt they will come into contact with Ledas as they did in NTG.
Part 70 ---->