Serenity In Atonement (season finale part 2):
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'''Endnotes:'''
'''Endnotes:'''
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#This chapter's name is somewhat complex. At one time I was going to write several Halo fanons, to which I may or may not ever do (at this moment in time). This chapter is a reference to that. In one of my stories I had a covenant ship named “Serenity and Atonement”. I really liked that name, so changed it a bit to fit into this story. It is also a reference to Layeeck’s final act, where he was able to finally redeem himself a little bit.
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#This chapter is the only one in all of TF that has stage direction in comparison to the previous chapter. Of course, it had to happen like this, as Ledas' story in this saga resolves at the same time King Vegeta's and Layeeck's do.
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#I loved having Ledas act like Prince Vegeta when he crosses his arms. The way he bosses around the technicians shows how Prince Vegeta has influenced Ledas' personality growth; there are ironic undertones in this, as we all know Ledas and Prince Vegeta will soon be separated for a long time. Ledas' opening scene in this chapter hints at where Ledas would have developed as a character had he not been separated from the prince at the end of this saga.
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#The Saiyan Pod Commander is the only Saiyan Ledas ever kills.
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#Ledas killing the Saiyan Pod Commander is shocking, though perhaps the audience wouldn't catch that right away, since the Pod Commander isn't a major character. But Ledas killing him is very unlike Ledas, almost out-of-character if not for the fact that Ledas is feeling extreme pressure for every second he spends not flying to Frieza's most difficult planet to conquer. He is desperate when he risks his life to get in that pod and go to the planet. Of course, he's very young so he doesn't fully understand the risks of that or the consequences of killing the Pod Commander (had the Saiyan rebellion not taken place that very day). This is Ledas' climax in the saga. His arc is rather subtle in comparison to other characters' (and even Ledas' arcs in future sagas), but make no mistake, I intentionally had him killing the Pod Commander be the defining moment of his Vegeta-like personality, which of course soon regresses when Ledas arrives on Planet Cooler 92.
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#Note that it is only Ledas' adopting of some of Prince Vegeta's personality traits that allow him to survive the Genocide of the Saiyans. That was intentional.
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#I decided very early on, as soon as I had come up with the space pod getaway as Frieza is destroying the planet, that the shock wave of Planet Vegeta's destruction would cause Ledas to bang his head rather violently and send him into a quasi-coma. He would also be knocked off by the shock wave, which provides a good reason for how he ended up in Cooler's territory over a year later. Something interesting to note is that Ledas is only sent to Cooler's region because of Frieza. This may have saved Ledas' life, as if he had stayed with Vegeta, he probably would have been killed on Earth or Namek, if he ever even reached that far in the timeline, of course.
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#Something interesting to note about this chapter is that Ledas' arc is resolved very early in it (within the first 25% of it). The rest of the chapter ties up loose ends with the other characters, some of them minor, but most of them major. The fact that I resolved Ledas' plotline first was due to two reasons: for one, it would be hard to resolve his plot later, as he is knocked unconscious before Layeeck fights The Benefactor, Prince Vegeta gets the news about his homeworld, and The Benefactor is "executed"; but it also has a more symbolic meaning that is related to Ledas lacking personal agency in this saga - he doesn't run the plot, so the plot goes on without him. I wanted that to be very apparent, as Ledas is a mere fanon character. The plot goes on without him. Prince Vegeta joins with Frieza, and years later he goes to Earth. Life goes on whether Ledas is dead or whether he is a prisoner on a far-distant world. I did this so that I could make it clear that I'm not trying to make my character more important than the canon characters, but I still consider him to be a special character, as he does survive the Genocide of the Saiyans through a bit of luck.
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#Dodoria is in the room with Frieza after Frieza blows up Planet Vegeta, but he isn't shown by the camera's point-of-view, so technically he isn't in this saga. He is in ''Outbreak'' though.
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#Zarbon's line about sending people to kill Prince Vegeta and Frieza's response are both taken from the Bardock Special. I added in the line about Ledas though, which provides a tragic little tidbit - Frieza would have let Ledas live and train under him just like Prince Vegeta. Pity that Ledas had a stupid junker for a space pod.
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#It's a cool moment when Layeeck opens his eyes just as Zarbon mentions Ledas. I'm quite proud of that transition.
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#Frieza's line about Layeeck spilling his drink is my favorite Frieza line in this story.
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#Some early reviewers said that Layeeck was reminiscent of Bardock in his scene in this chapter. I can sort of see that - he kind of talks like Bardock, and since the Bardock Special is such a huge influence for this saga, it's likely more than a subconscious move by me. But Layeeck's motivations are different than Bardock's, and they have quite different personalities, so I don't see Layeeck as copying Goku's father in this scene. So what if he curses Frieza? Is that something only Bardock can do? Fuck no.
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#The Benefactor is notorious for badass lines and entrances. This is his first badass entrance, the first sign of his power. I really like his line "Can't let you do that, boss", too. The whole scene came out well in my opinion.
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#I don't know where the inspiration for Layeeck's death scene came from. In general, I like having the occasional extremely bloody moment if it's unexpected and realistic and makes sense for the characters involved. It certainly does here, since The Benefactor is in one of his species' bloodlusts. I suppose Tien losing his arm against Nappa and Yamcha being impaled by Dr. Gero were influences for the death scene, though mine is obviously far more gruesome than the canon scenes.
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#The Benefactor's fight with Layeeck was changed slightly in the final draft. I made it more bloody and gory in the final draft, with an emphasis on The Benefactor eating Layeeck in this scene. He's not just fighting and defeating the Saiyan. He's hunting.
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#In my universe, Layeeck is thus one of the last Saiyans to die. He dies after King Vegeta and his elites challenge Frieza and after Frieza destroys Planet Vegeta. Only a few more named canon Saiyans die later, as do a few unnamed ones on off-planet sites that Zarbon and Dodoria send teams to deal with. As to if Cyleria is killed before Layeeck, I would actually say that she is killed later than him, but only by a few days.
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#In the first draft, Frieza has The Benefactor executed for disturbing him with how he killed Layeeck. I changed that in the final edits, thinking that Frieza wouldn't be horrified by it, but annoyed. The Benefactor doesn't listen to Frieza and makes a bloody mess of his ship, so Frieza loses patience and tries to kill him. Obviously, Frieza in his first form would not have been able to kill The Benefactor at this stage, though it was a surprise attack, and The Benefactor would not have been powered up high enough to easily take the blow. That is why he is genuinely wounded by the attack. The betrayal also is his impetus to flee. He realizes that Frieza doesn't want him anymore, and he doesn't know how strong the tyrant actually is, so he can't take his chances.
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#The Prince Vegeta scene with him and the soldier is written word-for-word from FUNimation's dub of the Bardock Special.
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#Prince Vegeta keeps his emotions guarded, something I noticed in the Bardock Special when he said he would give no reply after learning his homeworld had been destroyed. That is why, in his conversation with Nappa, he has to be the adult. He tells Nappa to pull it together, but he also swears to kill Frieza. His feelings of loss towards Ledas (he realizes his homeworld being destroyed is why Ledas isn't on the planet with him) are very subtle in this scene, understated, and not something Nappa would pick up on. Knowing this was one of my last opportunities to write for Prince Vegeta (in this story), I spared no expense on his dialogue; I think his conversation with Nappa after learning about his species' near extinction is one of the best bits of dialogue I've ever written for kid Vegeta.
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#Obviously, all of you are asking how the end of the Prince Vegeta/Nappa scene works with [[Strength]]. Clearly those two stories contradict one another, don't they? No they don't, homeskittle. Basically what happened is Prince Vegeta ordered Nappa to return to Frieza's ship, sat in his pod for a while, got out, and needed some alone time as the emotions hit him and he struggled to deal with suppressing them. At that point, Appule and Cherion appeared. So the two stories do not contradict one another.
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#The biggest change in this entire saga was The Benefactor's fate. In the original draft, Frieza weakened him and then Zarbon executed him on an ice planet, leaving two guards to make sure he was dead. The Benefactor then awoke, killed the two guards, and escaped in one of their space pods. In the updated version, Frieza tried to kill The Benefactor after the alien refused to listen to the tyrant's command. His body was then thrown out with the rest of the bodies of the Saiyans who rebelled. The original version was something that bugged me very soon after I wrote it. It simply wasn't a very good idea. I didn't like it. So it was the priority when I did the final edits on this saga. I spent more time trying to rectify that weakness in this saga compared to all the other weaknesses I perceived (and tried to fix in the final edits). The new version is significantly better, in my opinion, and also makes way more sense from a plot perspective.
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#The conversation between Zarbon and the soldiers about the Saiyan's rebellion is a cool little moment, influenced by such refrains in the Dragon Ball Z anime; despite that, I added in the scene only during the final edits for the chapter, years after I had last watched the Dragon Ball Z anime through. It's a very understated, bleak scene, with veins of irony too. King Vegeta, once an important figure in this saga, is just a body being thrown in the trash by a low-level soldier. The soldiers will titter and converse about his rebellion for a short while and then probably never think about it again. But it was something that consumed King Vegeta for the entire saga and had huge consequences, so that contrast is cool. I got the visual image of King Vegeta's body being thrown in a garbage ship alongside The Benefactor's right before I did my final edits for this saga. I thought it would be cool if I could explain what happened to his body as a side bit of history.
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#Zarbon hears the same whispering Layeeck did in the previous chapter. That is just The Benefactor mocking him.
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#Layeeck's and King Vegeta's bodies are in the garbage ship The Benefactor hijacks meaning their final resting place is Lauto's Planet, which Ledas returns to. It's cool to note that Ledas was so close to his father again in the next saga, even if it was just his father's corpse, without knowing it. I also had fun coming up with King Vegeta's final resting spot; it just a little thing, but it's one bit of trivia that always strikes me as wicked cool.
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#The Benefactor pursues Ledas, not Prince Vegeta, because Ledas isn't going towards Frieza's ship. Going after Prince Vegeta would be too risky, especially in The Benefactor's wounded state. He wants to kill both Ledas and Prince Vegeta to get back at Frieza. Revenge is a dish best served cold, a Klingon once said. But I like to think of it more as how Hattori Hanzō from ''Kill Bill'' called revenge a forest, not a straight line. It's never simple and it's easy to get lost in. That is what is happening to The Benefactor here. He wants to make Frieza suffer. He knows there are no more Saiyans. Frieza can't get a new set of boys to train. Since Frieza took such an interest in them, perhaps The Benefactor is feeling jealous, comparing them to himself when Frieza found him on his homeworld. Either way, The Benefactor wants Frieza to hurt for making him hurt, and the easiest way to do so is to kill Ledas and Prince Vegeta. Afterwards, he would have expanded his killings to others like Zarbon and Dodoria before tackling Frieza himself if The Benefactor thought he was up to it. If The Benefactor hadn't been wounded so much (and underestimated how wounded he actually was), he would have found and killed Ledas and then found and killed Prince Vegeta without anyone being able to stop him. For my fanon universe, as well as the canon one, that would have had profound effects. It's good he wasn't able to find either of them. Lauto imprisoning The Benefactor in the next chapter also was a major reason why the alien's plan was never acted upon.
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#Great Spirits, the closing theme to every TF saga, was a song I had first heard around the summer of 2010. It affected me greatly after hearing it the first time. I don't know why the song resonates so strongly with me - I consider it one of the greatest TSFH songs ever, as well as an all-time classic in its own right. In terms of sound, it has that solemn "credits music" vibe to it. There's a sense of emptiness, of loss, of battles won and lost and pain all around. There's also a little moment past the middle of the song with some wood flutes that will make me tear up if I'm not ready for it. The flute part has a spark of boyish energy that reminds me of Ledas and Prince Vegeta together doing some shenanigans. The sense of loss and sadness in this song coupled with that flute moment made Great Spirits the perfect closing song for each saga. I briefly considered using a different song for each saga's close, but Great Spirits is so perfect, so emotionally varied, that it works perfectly with all six saga finales. However, it has the most resonance, to me, as the closer of the first saga.
==Endnotes==
==Endnotes==