Dragon Ball Z 1. Prologue Part One

This is a non profit, fan based story. Dragonball, Dragonball Z, and Dragonball GT are all owned by Funimation, Toei Animation, Fuji TV and Akira Toriyama. Please support the official release. (Thank you Teamfourstar for putting it so well. Hope you don't mind me borrowing this disclaimer.)

A Different Legend

* * *

"Bardock, son of Dotato and Leakh, chief of the Roo'It clan, and Warrior of the third class!" announced the herald as said warrior entered the throne room. He was of average height with messy black hair and dark green armor that he wore like a second skin. King Vegeta frowned.

'I've always hated having to grovel to him like this.' thought Bardock

"You requested my presence Sire?" he asked, kneeling.

"Yes. Do you know why you are here?" the king answered, his deep voice booming through the cavernous chamber.

"No, Your Grace."

"Because of your newborn son, Kakarott."

"Sire?"

"It seems he was born with a power level of ten thousand. Such a thing has not happened in living memory, or possibly even recorded history." Bardock was dumbstruck.

"You mean-"

"Yes. After a thousand years, it seems the next super saiyan has been born." the king continued. After taking a moment to regain his composure, Bardock answered;

"I am honored that you think so Sire."

"Indeed. Now we must answer the question of what is to be done with him."Vegeta said, now in a much darker tone.

"What do you mean?" Bardock asked in confusion.

"Surely you know the legends, Bardock," the king's cousin Paragus piped in, his every word dripping with contempt for the lower class warrior.

"After all, if anything is more legendary than the super saiyan's strength, it would be his uncontrollable rage."

"Indeed" said the king. "The last super saiyan destroyed our original home planet. We wouldn't want that to happen here would we?"

"I will make sure he can control it Your Grace, I will make sure he is loyal!" Bardock answered quickly, a note of desperation in his voice. Unlike many saiyans in this day and age, he actually cared about his children's well being beyond what it meant to his legacy.

The king stroked his beard, deep in thought.

"Your Grace, you cannot possibly be thinking of letting the child live! He could be a dange-" Paragus interjected.

"Silence Paragus!"the King spat furiously, " If and when YOU ever become king, then you may tell me what I can and cannot do, not before." He disliked Paragus vehemently. Though they were both rather old by saiyan standards, Paragus was still the same self entitled, power hungry brat he had been in childhood. Vegeta knew he aspired to the throne, although he wasn't nearly competent enough to achieve that goal.

'Though he might have a point on this issue.' The King pondered for a while longer. Finally he came to a decision. 'Either way I'll be killing two birds with one stone here.'

"Due to the danger he poses, the boy will face trial by combat. However, as he is too young to fight himself, I will allow his father to do battle on his behalf. Paragus, you will represent the crown in this matter. If Bardock wins, Kakarot will be sent to a distant planet to be observed until he comes of age. If Paragus wins, he will be executed."

* * *

An hour later they were ready. The balconies lining the upper levels of the courtyard were filled with spectators, and the combatants stood at opposite ends, facing each other. Bardock examined the battlefield. The courtyard was two hundred yards long and seventy-five wide, with fifty foot walls surrounding it on all sides. Said walls, and parts of the courtyard as well, were covered in moss and lichen. Most of the ground was smooth, worn cobblestone, good footing. Planet Vegeta's twin suns beat down mercilessly, baking it all to a crisp. "Begin!" announced the King from his balcony.

Both combatants launched themselves at each other with a pair of sonic booms. Just before impact Bardock leapt into the air, aiming a kick at Paragus' sternum. Anticipating him, Paragus ducked under his leg and spun around to plant his fist firmly in Bardock's kidney. An equal mix of hisses and cheers rose from the audience. While no-one liked Paragus, Bardock was not hugely popular either, and many looked forward to seeing the low class warrior put back in his place. Fighting through the pain, Bardock shot forward, twisting in midair and reversing his momentum back toward his opponent. He caught Paragus with a clothesline that sent him rocketing toward the wall, where he became lodged in the masonry.

Bardock was on him immediately, pummeling him with a barrage of furious punches. Desperately lashing out, Paragus swept down with a double hammerfist, which Bardock barely avoided, before following up with a series of vicious jabs. Bardock fell back as Paragus relentlessly hammered his guard, waiting for an opening. The moment he saw it he leapt up, lashing out furiously with both feet and connecting with Paragus' abdomen. Paragus doubled over in pain, and Bardock kneed him in the face, snapping his head back, before catching him in the jaw with an uppercut. Paragus staggered back, dazed and bleeding.

Not one to lose the initiative, Bardock lunged at his foe with a haymaker, which the still slightly dazed Paragus managed to catch. Twisting, he yanked on his foe's arm, and Bardock yelped as his shoulder popped out of it's socket. Snarling with fury, Bardock repeatedly slammed his left fist into Paragus' solar plexus, sending him stumbling backward, coughing blood and gasping for air. Bardock took the respite to catch his breath before pushing his shoulder back into place with a hiss of pain. After a moment the two opponents began to circle each other warily.

"You're pretty good, for a craven." Bardock taunted.

"I'M surprised a piece of trash like you has lasted this long." Paragus retorted.

In his head, Paragus was fuming. He knew the King expected him to die out here, and he was determined not to give the bastard the satisfaction. Suddenly Bardock launched a flurry of jabs at his opponent's face, forcing Paragus to block high, before striking low with a heavy punch. Paragus blocked, catching the blow as well as Bardock's retaliatory uppercut. Caught in a grapple, Bardock tried to headbutt his opponent, but Paragus kneed him in the face and shoved him away, launching himself into the pursuit. Bardock caught his first punch with a cross-block, only for Paragus to open his palm and send Bardock flying with a powerful kiai.

'Alright then, I guess we're turning things up a notch!' thought Bardock. He quickly launched a volley of small ki blasts at his pursuer, slowing him, and used the opportunity to reverse his momentum. Firing a pair of fully charged blasts, he allowed Paragus to evade the first, only for the second to detonate in his face. Bardock pressed his advantage with a kick to the jaw, followed by a double hammer-fist that sent Paragus spiraling out of control. He hit the ground with a resounding crash, leaving a small impact crater near the edge of the courtyard.

"That the best you've got, you entitled little shit?" asked Bardock as he dropped to the ground. Paragus staggered to his feet and spat out several teeth.

"Not by a long shot!" Paragus began firing a barrage of explosive energy bolts, forcing bardock to launch into a series of nimble evasions. As he dodged, Bardock began charging energy, waiting for an opening in the firestorm.

Suddenly he leapt forward, firing a beam of concentrated energy. Paragus dove sideways to evade, but was still grazed. Rolling away from the blast, he launched himself forward, tackling Bardock around the waist, only to be smashed violently across the back, spun around, and slammed face-first into the wall. Bardock rammed his foe's head into the wall twice more before Paragus caught him in the throat with a flailing backhand.

Bardock stumbled back, wheezing, and Paragus lunged, catching him in a two handed choke hold and bearing him down.

'Lose? To this bastard?!' Bardock snarled inwardly. He hammered Paragus furiously as his lungs screamed for air, to no avail. At last, in desperation, he managed to launch a weak kiai that pushed his foe back long enough for him to take in a single breath of air. However Paragus was on him an instant later, hands clamped around his throat once again. Now thinking somewhat more clearly, Bardock lashed out, slamming his clenched fist home on his opponent's elbow. Paragus howled in agony as his left arm bent in the completely wrong direction. Bardock then cut loose with a massive kiai, launching Paragus into the air. He hit the ground with enough force that the "whoosh" of escaping air temporarily silenced his screams, which soon resumed through clenched teeth.

Now on his feet, Bardock rushed forward and stomped at Paragus' throat, hoping to end the battle. But Paragus rolled quickly away and swept his leg, sending Bardock slamming face first into the ground. Bardock was blinded by an equal mixture of pain and blood as his nose shattered. On instinct, he rolled to the side, Narrowly avoiding being explosively decapitated by Paragus' ki blast. Suddenly seeing a Paragus shaped blur moving rapidly toward him, he rolled around it, kicking out and catching it on the back of the knee. Surging to his feet, he lunged forward and clamped down on the sides of Paragus' head, and began to twist.

Paragus repeatedly slammed his good elbow into Bardock's ribs with strength born of desperation, cracking bones and bruising organs. He coughed blood but did not relinquish his grip on Paragus' skull. The struggle lasted for nearly a minute, neither fighter giving ground. Bardock was on his knees as well now, all his remaining strength focused solely on breaking his enemy's neck. Finally, when it seemed his arms would burst from exhaustion, that his ribcage would completely collapse, Paragus' neck muscles gave out, and with a resounding crack, the courtroom was adjourned.

* * *

Bardock climbed out of the healing tank slowly, still rather sore from the beating he had received that morning. Glancing around he saw several doctors and orderlies of various species going about their business.

'A few years ago we wouldn't have even let them on the planet at all.' he thought to himself. As he pulled on his armor, an orderly made his way over.

"Good, you're awake. Prince Tarble is waiting outside. I believe he wishes to speak with you." he said before quickly making his way off toward another patient.

'Prince Tarble? What does he want?' Bardock thought as he made for the door. Tarble was definitely an odd one, outright refusing to engage in any kind of physical combat, preferring instead the world of words and knowledge, which made him something of a laughingstock among other saiyans. And while his father had oft threatened to exile him as an embarrassment to the royal house, he was still around, finding other means of making himself useful, and in some select areas, indispensable, to the crown. Hesitantly, Bardock stepped into the mostly empty hallway outside the medical wing. Tarble was only about four feet tall, with short, messy black hair, most of which stuck straight up. His tan and white armor was slightly too large, and he seemed uncomfortable in it as he paced nervously.

"Ah, there you are Bardock. I need to speak with you urgently. Come." he said setting off at a brisk pace down a winding side passage. Once Bardock had fallen into step beside him he continued;

"Now, I'm going to be frank. I like you, so I'm going to give you fair warning. You've entered into a world that you are woefully unprepared for. The world of politics. If you continue on your present course alone you will be dead within the week."

"With all due respect, I can handle myself."

"On the battlefield, perhaps, but this is most definitely NOT the kind of battlefield you're used to. It wouldn't take very much for my father to start considering you a threat to his position, something which you certainly do not want to happen if you value your life." Tarble paused to let that sink in before continuing;

"Now I, on the other hand, am rather interested in the ways you might be of assistance. As you, and indeed, everyone on Planet Vegeta are well aware, I have no skill at, nor inclination toward, combat. However, the need sometimes arises for me to employ the services of someone who IS gifted in that field, and while the men my father lends me are more than competent at killing things, they are woefully inadequate in the area of subtlety." Bardock smirked.

"Let me guess, this is where I come in. Well, sorry to break it to you, but I'm not so gifted in subtlety either."

"But you understand the concept at least, and you show considerably more restraint than most. And you're the only person on this planet with those qualifications whom I even remotely trust. In addition, you command a detachment of troops, another very useful asset. The combination of these factors makes you a prime candidate for what I have in mind. So, how do you feel about answering directly to me from now on?" Seeing the look on Bardock's face, he quickly added;

"You would still go on your ordinary missions, but when I need your assistance you report to me. You do not have to worry about this cutting into your normal work to much, and indeed, I think you might find some of my assignments far more interesting than slaughtering the helpless. After all, you do enjoy an actual challenge now and again, don't you?" Bardock thought for a moment.

"I'll do it." he finally answered.

"Good. Now, as a token of my appreciation, I managed to delay the launch of your son's pod long enough that, if you hurry, you should be able to see him off." Bardock looked up and saw that they were near the exits to the launch pads.

"As soon as you're done, meet me at docking bay 12 in the merchant's port for your first mission." said Tarble. And with that, he strode off down the hall, leaving Bardock alone.

* * *

"So, are you ready to go?" asked Tarble as Bardock approached him outside the docking bay.

"Ready as I'll ever be." He paused.

"Actually, one question first. Where are they sending my son?"

"Even if I did know that, of course I wouldn't be permitted to tell you."

"Fine."

"Anyway, would you like to see the ship?" Bardock nodded absentmindedly, and Tarble led him into the docking bay to begin giving the tour.

The Demonslayer was a heavily modified Konatsian patrol frigate with a crew of seven, including the captain; a middle aged Konatsian named Sabre, and the blue skinned, lizard like first mate, Grinner.

"They may not be saiyans, but the crew is loyal. To me at least." Tarble explained to Bardock.

"And why is that?"

"I helped them out of an extremely sticky situation a few years back. Since then we've worked together quite often. Gotten to know each other, as it were. I'd trust them with my life, and that's not somthing I can say about many people."

The craft itself was long, narrow, and sleek, with three high powered plasma rockets for in-atmosphere and subluminal flight and five large, solar paneled electromagnetic drag sails for enhanced superluminal maneuverability, all mounted at the stern. The gracefully curved hull was jet black except for near the prow, where three ancient Konatsian folk heros were painted. Two of them appeared to be playing some kind of wind instruments, while the third was in the midst of using a sword to kill a giant, insectoid monstrosity.

Inside, the ship had two decks. The lower deck contained the loading ramp, cargo hold, airlocks, engine room, and dual torpedo tubes. A pair of corrugated metal staircases on either side of the cargo hold led to the upper deck, which housed a small but comfortable crew lounge, cabins with bunks for twenty, a kitchen and galley, and a forward storage area that had been fitted with a dozen healing tanks, ten docking ports for attack balls, and a ladder leading up to the bridge.

"Those torpedos aren't the only weapons we've got," the gravelly voiced captain added.

"She's also got two pair of light auto cannons, and the main gun has a power output of about fifty thousand units, plus decent shielding. Not exactly a dreadnought, but we make do."

"So what's the mission?" Bardock asked, now growing somewhat impatient.

"If you would first arrange a conference call with your troops, I'd prefer if I only had to give the briefing once." Tarble answered.

"You're bringing my men in on this one?"

"Yes. I hope things won't go that far south, but you should always plan for the worst case scenario. As a soldier, I thought this might be obvious to you."

"That particular bit of wisdom is. But I wasn't aware you usually worked in situations with the potential to get that hairy."

"As you will soon learn, ANY situation has the potential to become 'that hairy'."

* * *

_Authors note: This is my first time writing fanfiction, unless you count some REALLY bad stuff from when I was, like, ten, (and not funny bad either, just kind of boring) so please bear with me. I had alot of fun writing this and want you to enjoy it to. _

_If you're wondering what's up with Tarble and his personality, it will be explained as part of the plot. Also regarding some terminology I used; "superluminal" is basicly like "supersonic' but regarding the speed of light instead of the speed of sound. "But wait!" you say, "Isn't it impossible to travel faster than light?" Allow me to explain in layman's terms, although I might get some stuff wrong. (if you want an in-depth, completely accurate explanation, read _Bringer of Death. _Actually read it even if that's not what you're looking for, because it is AWESOME!) _

_Now bear with me, this explanation WILL be long winded, so if you aren't that interested, skip this bit._

_To start, picture hyperspace from _Star Wars _(or slipspace from _Halo, _they're basically the same thing sciencewise) Now picture"realspace" (where we are now) as a crumpled up ball of paper. "Hyperspace" would be the empty areas in between, the "space between spaces" if you will. (I know, I slapped myself)_

_Many supposed means of FTL (Faster Than Light) travel (including instant transmission) are based around either "folding" realspace through hyperspace to make two points in realspace coexist at the same location, or actively entering and attempting to navigating hyperspace.(IT is the second one, which is one of many reasons it is so hard) But FTL travel in DBZ obviously does neither of those, As the ships still appear to be in realspace. And they MUST be moving faster than light, or it would take years to go anywhere, and they do it in weeks or days. So what are they doing? They are in fact using a THIRD means of hyperspace travel. Sort of. They are in fact creating a "stream" of "slipspace" or a "slipstream" that exists in both realspace AND hyperspace. This allows them to travel faster than light without technically leaving realspace. And since they are de-coupled from our space-time, they don't experience any time dilation as per the theory of relativity, explaining why Goku's six day trip to Namek was six days for him as well as for everyone else. _

_PS. While I was going in and adding line breaks to all my earlier chapters I thought I should clarify: a superluminal torpedo in it's most basic form is basically an FTL drive attached to a targeting computer and plated in either tungsten, depleted uranium, or some other extremely heavy metal. They work based around the fact that since an object using slipstream FTL is in hyperspace and realspace at the same time, if that object comes into contact with any other object the two will momentarily "overlap", with part of each object trying to occupy the same space as part of the other. This will more or less completely Fs up the slipstream, forcing the first (or both) object(s) back into realspace, now traveling just marginally slower than lightspeed. The amount of kinetic energy released in such a collision would be downright ludicrous, most likely splitting or fusing the majority of atoms in the first object (or in the case of a torpedo, the projectile). This will cause a fairly large nuclear explosion, as well as tearing whatever got hit apart at the molecular level (at least to a point, if you shot an earthlike planet with one it wouldn't disintegrate the whole thing, though it would most likely cause massive worldwide earthquakes and mega-tsunamis on the scale of a large asteroid impact)._

_And now for the part you've all been waiting for: __**POWER LEVELS!**_

_Bardock-21000_

_Paragus-20000_

_Tarble-1500_

_King Vegeta-23000_

_Thank you to the BoD team for their incredibly user friendly PL system. Seriously, those guys are awesome, check them out._

_Farvel, abschied, proshchaniye, despedida, wakare, and farewell._


	2. Prologue Part Two

This is a non profit, fan based story. Dragonball, Dragonball Z, and Dragonball GT are all owned by Funimation, Toei Animation, Fuji TV, and Akira Toriyama. Please support the official release.

A/N: Got Tarble's PL wrong first time. Have updated it. Sorry for the long wait, I was very busy with school and then I had the worst case of writer's block I've ever experienced. I eventually overcame it, by spending the first half of my summer vacation rewriting the rough draft so many times that it had basically evolved into a completely different story. I eventually picked out a few arcs that I wanted characters to take, as well as some events (read as: epic fights) that I wanted to happen, and tried to piece them together into one cohesive narrative in what I hope will be the final rewrite. But please, don't get mad if it happens again. I don't mean to sound pretentious, but I would rather delay this for months on end than put out a rushed or poorly written chapter. (I tend to value quality over quantity.) I also apologize for the lack of spacing in the first chapter, which was caused by a glitch while I was uploading the chapter. The issue has since been fixed, as has the first chapter.

PS: If you're still rankled over the long update time don't worry, it will hopefully improve with later chapters as in addition to having the rough draft hammered out I will also (hopefully) be able to use a computer to type this up instead of having to do it on my phone. Hope that helps.

Battlefield and Politics

Gohan woke with a start.

'Could have sworn I heard an explosion.' he thought, glancing to the window of his one room House.

A dim orange glow filtered through to cast the slightest of shadows around the room. Leaping out of bed with the alacrity of a much younger man, Gohan dressed quickly in a loose fitting kimono and cap, grabbed his rucksack, and hurried out the door. Outside, the crisp evening air held the slightest taint of smoke.

Gohan's home sat above a riverbank halfway up an old glacial valley on the northern face of Mount Paozu, surrounded by dense forest and steep bluffs. Half a mile down the valley, several small fires were burning out in a stand of bamboo. Curious, Gohan set off down the valley along a disused logging road.

* * *

Toma tapped his scouter irritably. He hated having to command the entire strike team whenever Bardock was unavailable.

"Anyone else able to get any long distance signals Selipa?" he asked.

"Nothing yet." she replied.

"What about the rest of you guys?"

"Not a thing sir." Totepo answered.

"I can't get shit." grumbled Panbukin.

"I guess it's official, we're being jammed." Toma groaned.

"Does that mean they know we're coming?" asked Panbukin earnestly. Toma sighed in exasperation.

'And Bardock was trying to contact us when this hit. Knowing my luck, it was probably something important.' he thought to himself.

* * *

Bardock growled in frustration as his scouter came up with nothing but static again.

"You wanna use the ship's communication suite?" asked Grinner.

"Sure, it's got to be better than listening to

static."

Grinner lead him up to the bridge, with Tarble following close behind. The bridge itself was relatively spacious for such a small vessel, though it still felt somewhat cramped to Bardock. Sabre was seated in the captains chair, close to the viewport, which covered the entire front of the room and the ceiling. Just ahead of him, situated in a shallow crew pit, set flush with the viewport, were two chairs and control consoles occupied by the pilot and gunnery officer. The port bulkhead was covered by navigation consoles and digital star charts, all being minded by a crew member in a swivel chair.

However their destination was a small, shallow alcove on the starboard side of the room, where a bird like Litt technician in a old utility jumpsuit and a headset that looked like it was probably top of the line a decade ago was beginning to doze off, having already gotten the ship take off clearance. Smirking mischievously, Grinner quietly walked over, grabbed the technician's shoulder, and began shaking him violently.

"Yo, Chirpo! Wake up!"

Chirpo squawked in surprise, and began cursing under his breath.

"Don't DO that!" he croaked angrily.

"Oh stop being so irritable and antisocial." Grinner chided, spinning his chair around so that he was facing Bardock and Tarble.

"Bardock, this is our resident communications officer. We just call him Chirpo, mostly because you need a beak to pronounce his real name." Chirpo clucked indignantly. He clearly hated the nickname.

"Can he help us contact my men?" Bardock asked impatiently.

"If it is at all possible, I will." Chirpo answered.

After asking a few basic questions he quickly set to work. Barely a minute passed before he threw his hands up with an exasperated sigh.

"Their long range communications are being jammed, I can't get anything through to them."

Bardock cursed.

"Well, they're assigned to purge GK 4402 D, commonly known as 'Planet Meat'," said Tarble, turning to face Sabre. "Now correct me if I'm wrong Captain, but I believe that is less than ten minutes off of our original course."

"That is correct sir."

"Then perhaps we should investigate this en route. While it is unlikely they are in any real danger, there is the distinct possibility we might need the reinforcements at our destination."

"Of course sir."

Bardock smiled inwardly. He doubted his crew was in any real trouble, and he was looking forward to "spending some time" with Selipa.

"So, what is the mission?" he asked after a moment. Tarble frowned.

"A conglomerate of arms dealers and mercenary captains is meeting on Arlia to discuss several potential business deals. Our job is to crash the meeting and strongarm them into withdrawing support for several dissident groups who oppose Frieza's regime."

"Doesn't sound too difficult," Bardock answered, "so, what do we need the rest of my crew for?"

"Security at the meeting will be extremely tight. Each of the attendees is bringing their own security detail, and they've also hired an elite mercenary company for additional protection."

"Hn." Bardock grunted, sinking back into his own thoughts.

Tarble strode over to the captain's chair.

"How long, Captain?" he asked.

"90 seconds until we break atmo and go superluminal. From there, about a half hour until we reach Meat." Sabre grunted.

"Perfect, we're still nearly an hour ahead of schedule." Tarble muttered to himself, his face grim.

* * *

Only a few smouldering embers were left of the fires as he neared the grove. As he approached, Gohan slowed, straining his ears to make sure he wasn't hearing things. It was still there, muffled and stuttering, but unmistakable. The sound of an infant screaming.

"This planet has already been purged."

Toma only acknowledged Selipa's statement with a confirmatory grunt.

She was right of course. Beyond the veritable ocean of rubble and half buried corpses, and the smoke blackened sky tinged a sickly orange by the fires still burning below, there was the smell. It was a mixture of blood, smoke, fire, and fear. Toma was quite familiar with it. They all were.

"Getting a reading?" he asked after a moment's pause.

"Nothing, we're still being jammed." she answered curtly.

Toma glanced over to where Totepo and Panbukin were digging through the rubble in search of something to eat, having quickly lost interest in the proceedings.

"We should head back, Frieza will want to hear about this." He said at length.

"It was probably Kooler trying to grab the system while it was still disputed with the Konatsian rebels."

"Hn."

They were yanked violently from their thoughts by a massive detonation. Whirling around they spotted a large plume of smoke and dust rising from the site where they had left their attack balls.

"Well now, would you look at this. A pack of dissidents on one of Lord Frieza's planets. Men, I believe it's our duty to kill them."

Looking up at the source of the statement, Toma spotted the five warriors floating above them, and cursed.

* * *

"Our tracking device reports that the pod crashed, exactly as planned, King Vegeta." a frail looking litt technician said nervously. Vegeta smirked.

"Your Majesty," the technician hazarded, "if I may, why-" Vegeta cut him short with a single blow to the neck.

"You may not."

Suddenly the ground began to shake violently, nearly throwing him from his feet.

'What the hell?!'

Vegeta rushed over to one of the stained glass windows of the throne room, only to be blinded by a sudden flash of incomprehensibly bright light.

* * *

Gohan shook off his surprise and rushed down into the crater to the child's side. The boy had a large unruly mop of black hair, much of which was sticky with blood, while yet more blood was sheeting down the side of his face. Distractedly, Gohan noted that the boy had a long, brown tail as he scooped the boy up in his arms and carried him swiftly but gently down to the edge of the river. Finding a calm pool outside the influence of the main current, he poured a controlled stream of his ki into the water until it began to boil. Tearing several strips from his kimono he soaked them in the steaming pool before using them to clean and bind the worst of the boy's injuries.

'Who are you little guy?' He wondered as he gathered up the now sleeping child and began walking home.

* * *

Bardock gazed over the ruins of Planet Meat with trepidation.

"The jamming's cleared up, but we're not getting any other transmissions or energy readings from the surface," Chirpo called over his scouter. "Not even the emergency tracking beacons on their attack balls. You're the only living things down there."

Bardock grimaced. A volatile mix of anger, confusion, and grief was seething within him, threatening to boil over.

"We should set our scouters to scan for extremely low frequency signals. If the transmitter was damaged then the ship might be outside it's broadcast range." Tarble suggested grimly.

Bardock nodded and made the necessary adjustments. Even if his men were already dead, if one of their scouters was still intact they could at least find out what happened.

He started when his scouter began to beep quietly, indicating that it was picking up a signal. Tarble noticed it as well, and after a few moments of fiddling with his scouter he gestured for Bardock to follow and took off westward.

* * *

Prince Vegeta snarled as he leapt back to his feet, wiping a steady trickle of blood out of his eyes as he did, and shot a death glare at his sparring partner. Ustrard responded with a sneer.

The big grey skinned brench had been ordered to "spar" with the saiyan prince, something he was none too happy about. He had opened the match with a vicious clothesline that had smashed Vegeta into the wall of the training room hard enough to draw blood, and he wasn't going to let his advantage go to waste by allowing the young prince to get back up.

Rushing forward, he threw a sloppy but powerful haymaker at Vegeta's chest. The prince just managed to throw his arms up in a crossblock, but the force of the blow sent him skidding across the polished metal floor to slam back first into the wall again. His foe followed up with a roundhouse to Vegeta's head, which the saiyan ducked before countering with a barrage of palm strikes to his opponent's midsection. Ustrard just kept smirking.

Furious, Vegeta lashed out, driving his elbow into the kneecap of Ustrard's left leg, which was still extended, while simultaneously smashing his foot into the side of his enemy's right knee, toppling him to the floor.

He attempted to follow up with a stomp, but Ustrard caught his foot and threw him across the room before surging to his feet, completely unhindered by the blows he had just received.

Vegeta hit the far wall of the room feet first and immediately launched back into the fray with a double hammerfist to the head and two simultaneous knees to the chest. Ustrard's mocking grin never wavered. Suddenly his arms shot out, two massive hands grasping Vegeta by the hair and legs. Lifting the child up over his head, he swung down, slamming the young prince's ribcage onto his raised knee. Vegeta spat blood as his sternum cracked, choking the cry of pain that had been welling in his throat.

Letting go of Vegeta's hair, Ustrard swung the prince by his feet in an overhead arc, smashing him face first into the floor. Whipping him around once more, the brench flung Vegeta full force at the wall.

* * *

Bardock and Tarble stood over the heap of bloodied meat that had once been Toma. He was still alive if only barely, hardly strong enough for the Demonslayer's scanners to detect.

"We need to get him back to the ship. He needs a regeneration tank." Bardock said quietly. Tarble glanced over to him in surprise. try as he might, Bardock had been unable to keep all the urgency and fear out of his voice. Combined with the fact that he was stating the obvious, and Tarble began to realize just how badly he was taking this.

Giving Toma another once over, Tarble came to a different conclusion.

"No. If we tried to move him, it would almost certainly kill him. And he wouldn't last long enough to get him into a healing pod anyway." he intoned sadly.

"Then what do you expect me to do?! Just watch him die?!" Bardock shouted, unable to keep his emotions in check any longer. Tarble just gave him a small, sad smile.

Bardock cried out in rage, kicking a piece of rubble into low orbit.

"B-bardock . . ."

Both men froze before turning to face Toma. The old soldier was coughing up blood as he tried to speak.

"Bardock," he managed somewhat clearly "you need to listen to me."

"Toma, what the hell happened?" Bardock finally managed through his shock. Toma finished spitting up another clot of blood before continuing.

"Shut up and listen." he coughed out haltingly. "when we got here, the planet was already purged. Dodoria and his men were waiting for us. They-, they wiped the floor with us sir." He paused to catch his breath.

"But why the hell would they do that?! I know Dodoria hates us, but Frieza would never tolerate-" Bardock started.

"He said Frieza was the one who ordered it." Toma interrupted.

"WHAT?!" Bardock interjected, his voice seething with shock and fury.

"He-,he-" Toma started, before descending into a fit of coughing and gagging.

"Toma, stay with me! You're going to make it through this!"

Toma continued to sputter and gasp desperately, But in vain. His wounds were too severe, there was simply too much blood in his lungs. Minutes trickled by at a glacial pace as he struggled, Bardock desperately spouting encouragement while Tarble looked on sadly. Until at last with a final, shuddering gasp, Toma died.

* * *

Vegeta flipped over in midair and hit the wall feet-first. Pushing through his battered daze on instinct and muscle memory, he launched himself back at Ustrard once again. The brench's smirk widened as he prepared to snag the stubborn saiyan out of the air. Vegeta grinned as well as he cupped his hands together at his side.

"GALICK GUN!"

As he thrust his hands out ahead of him, a flash of violet fire leapt forth, blasting into Ustrard's chest with the force of a small meteor impact. The big brench was thrown across the room with enough force that he ricocheted off the far wall, sailing back into the cloud of smoke and dust that had filled the center of the room. Snarling, he flared his ki, righting himself and halting his forward momentum, only for Vegeta to plant a foot in his abdomen, winding him and sending him skidding across the floor.

The Prince attempted to follow up with a rush, only for his foe to lash out with a swift, desperate backhand. The blow struck his hip with a wet crunch, and sent him tumbling into the ceiling and one of the walls before he could regain control of his flight.

Vegeta grimaced as he quickly took stock of his condition. His hip was smashed, leaving one leg dangling uselessly, and his cracked sternum and broken ribs made every breath harder than the last.

Glaring at Ustrard, his face slipped into a sneer. While nowhere near as battered as his saiyan counterpart, the big brench was still struggling to get back on his feet. Gone was the mercenary's earlier arrogance and bravado. In it's place was a cold and quiet rage.

'Pathetic. Still, a change of tactics would be a good idea.' Vegeta mused.

Seeing that his foe had finally regained his feet, the Prince finished catching his breath before he smirked and called out;

"Ah. I see you're finally ready for round three."

* * *

"What the hell do we do now?"

Tarble glanced back at his impatient colleague.

"First, we ascertain how much of what Dodoria claimed is true. In the meantime, we continue as planned. If Frieza did order this we can't afford for him to know we've caught on."

Bardock grumbled wrathfully to himself for the rest of the flight back to the ship, but didn't argue.

* * *

Frieza took another sip of his wine as Zarbon entered the command bridge, not bothering to turn the hovering palanquin to face his lieutenant.

"What is it Zarbon? I'm rather enjoying the show." he stated smoothly, gesturing to the viewing screen that took up the entire far wall.

Zarbon looked up at the screen from where he knelt. It appeared to be showing a large grey brench and a small saiyan child pummeling each other in one of the training rooms.

"I have the preliminary reports on the saiyan purge. Everything is proceeding on schedule so far. Except for . . . one . . . minor, problem." he announced hesitantly.

Frieza stopped the gyration of his wineglass mid twirl before turning about.

"Explain." he ordered coolly, narrowing his eyes.

"Bardock is currently unaccounted for. Reports indicate that he went awol shortly before the attack on Kannassa, and the transponder in his attack ball went offline en route."

Frieza leaned back in his throne, his tail tapping against the armrest.

"How very . . . interesting." he murmured as he took another contemplative sip of wine. After a minute or so of silence, he spoke again, his tone patronizing;

"It would seem that there are two plausible explanations. First; King Vegeta began to see Bardock as a threat and chose to eliminate him. If this is the case then the situation is already resolved. Therefore, I would posit that it is in our best interest to consider the potential ramifications of the second possibility. Wouldn't you agree Zarbon?"

"Yes. Of course Lord Frieza." he responded quickly, growing more nervous by the minute. Frieza seemed moodier than usual today.

"The other possibility is that someone had business to discuss with him, and facilitated his desertion to that end." the arcosian continued.

"I can think of three potential perpetrators; King Vegeta, my esteemed brother, or Tarble. Now if it was Vegeta, then Bardock almost certainly perished with his homeworld. Nor do I think that Cooler would let him live very long after he finished grilling him for information."

"So the only possibility left to investigate is that Tarble recruited him for the job on Arlia."

"So we're going to eliminate Tarble and his crew as well?" Zarbon hazarded. Frieza smirked condescendingly.

"Not necessarily. While the young prince makes an amusing pet, I keep the older brother around because he is genuinely competent. I will need to confirm my suspicions before deciding whether I want to kill him."

"Speaking of the young prince, have you decided his fate yet?" Zarbon asked with interest and the slightest hint of well concealed irritation. He had always found Frieza's favoritism toward the saiyan to be infuriating.

Frieza's face shifted into a small frown. He was well aware of his lieutenant's jealousy, and was not fond of his decisions being questioned, even silently.

"If he survives his 'sparring match' I will allow him and his two compatriots to live." He said spitefully, causing Zarbon to frown inwardly.

"However," Frieza continued, now with a slight sneer, "my generosity will only last as long as their continued usefulness."

* * *

Ustrard rushed in with a massive over-hand swipe, which Vegeta evaded, ducking inside of his opponent's reach and launching a flurry of ki charged palm strikes. Ustrard shrugged them off and swept his arms in to catch Vegeta with a bear hug, but the saiyan used his small size to his advantage, slipping under the attack once again.

Dropping to the ground, the Prince lunged back up, driving his knee into the Brench's groin. The burly mercenary fell back a step with a yelp, and Vegeta tried to press his advantage, only for a massive grey fist to connect with his gut. As he shook away his disorientation at his new position on the far side of the room, Ustrard surged back to his feet, seething with rage.

"I'm gonna break every bone in yer body for that yah li'll pest!"

Scrambling upright, Vegeta put on his best condescending grin.

"Big talk, coming from someone who can't even beat a child into submission."

With a howl of fury, Ustrard blasted forward, aura blazing behind him. Bracing himself, Vegeta cupped his hands at his side.

"GALICK . . . "

The mercenary barreled through where Vegeta had been standing a moment before. The Saiyan had lept back, launched himself off the wall, and dropped down behind his foe.

"GUN-"

At that moment Ustrard whipped around and slammed his foot into the prince's ribcage. The saiyan was sent tumbling through the air, ricocheted off the wall, and went rolling across the floor. Ustrard grinned as he began collecting a sphere of ki in his outstretched hand.

"Think of a witty comeback for this yah runt bastard!" He crowed as he unleashed a wave of amber fire at the seemingly dazed prince.

Suddenly, mid roll, Vegeta tucked his good leg, tumbling into a kneeling position. Still sliding on one knee, he lashed out with both hands, which were now filled with a condensed violet light.

"FIRE!"

The blast roared forth, connecting with Ustrard's beam in a storm of light and sound and heat. The shockwave drove both combatants back as the surge of energy continued to press ahead, bringing the grey-skinned mercenary to his knees. Snarling in desperation, he grasped the orb of energy with both hands, pouring forth ki in an attempt to gain control of the blast. With a hiss of exertion, Vegeta sent a final surge of energy down the beam.

In a flash, the sphere detonated. A wave of fire and smoke washed over the young saiyan, even as the concussion threw him against the wall like a ragdoll. Slumping to the floor, he glared through smoke at where his opponent had stood, and was shocked to see something moving.

Ustrard was half dragging, half stumbling his way across the room to where Vegeta lay, crumpled in a corner. Much of his formerly grey complexion was replaced by gaping, half-cauterized wounds, while the rest was covered in angry black and red mottled patches where his skin had been burned or blasted away, and only a few tufts remained of his former mane of shoulder length white hair. Of his hands and forearms; naught remained except for small stumps of charcoal, still smoking from the intense heat of the fireball. His eyes were the only part of him that remained relatively undamaged, still blazing with impotent fury.

Seeing his enemy's sorry condition, Vegeta's shocked expression melted into an arrogant smirk.

"That witty enough for you?" he intoned snarkily as Ustrard fell to the floor once again, this time failing to regain his feet and simply pulling himself along by his elbows.

"If not, I have another." the prince continued, raising his hand and filling it with a loose orb of golden energy.

"I haven't had as long to prepare this one, but I think the context makes up for it."

The mercenary looked up in fear, his hate filled eyes reflecting the glare of Vegeta's ki blast.

"After all, they say timing is the soul of humor." he whispered as he let fly.

* * *

Bardock paused his furious pacing when he heard the door to the cargo bay open. Glancing up, he saw Tarble making his way down the stairs to the main storage floor.

"I Have news." Tarble stated quickly, before his fellow saiyan could return to pacing.

"Frieza contacted me." he continued, immediately gaining Bardock's full and undivided attention.

"Strangely enough, he was wondering if I knew where you were."

Bardock's eyes widened in shock momentarily, before narrowing once more in cold fury.

"So then Dodoria wasn't bluffing; Frieza was the one who ordered the deaths of my men." he spoke flatly, barely restraining his rage.

"I came to that conclusion as well, but it gets worse."

Bardock's eyebrows shot up.

"Worse?"

Tarble nodded grimly.

"On a hunch, I asked Chirpo to trace the signal. It took some doing, but based on the coordinates we got, Frieza was just leaving Planet Vegeta."

Bardock's face fell with dawning comprehension and horror.

"You mean-"

"That Planet Vegeta is almost certainly no longer there, and we as a species are on the brink of extinction. Any of our kinsmen who were offworld were most likely killed in their sleep, or ambushed and slaughtered like your comrades. It is a distinct possibility that aside from Kakarot, we are the last remaining saiyans in the known universe."

Bardock silent for several minutes before saying slowly and deliberately, as if he were spending an eternity to consider each word before uttering it; "Actually, I . . . might know another possible survivor."

* * *

_Power Levels:_

_Bardock (after small zenkai): 23300_

_Toma: 12000_

_Selipa: 10500_

_Totepo: 10000_

_Panbukin: 9750_

_Prince Vegeta: 2150_

_Nappa: 4500_

_Raditz: 600_

_Ustrard: 2775_

_Kakarott: 10000 (with brain damage: 3)_

_Farvel, abschied, proshchaniye, despedida, wakare, and farewell._


	3. Chapter One: Arrival

This is a non profit, fan based story. Dragonball, Dragonball Z, and Dragonball GT are all owned by Funimation, Toei Animation, Fuji TV and Akira Toriyama. Please support the official release.

Authors Note: There is a rather large time skip between the prologue and this chapter, mainly due to the timeline remaining more or less unchanged from the source material during that period. There are differences, but it ended up working better narratively to explain them in-character or as flashbacks.

Chapter One: Arrival

It certainly wasn't the most detestable world he'd ever purged, though that wasn't saying much. The nitrogen rich upper atmosphere refracted the light from the system's yellow star into a shade of cool blue. The air was thinner and more humid than he prefered, with a slightly higher concentration of oxygen than Planet Vegeta had had.

The primarily green-hued plant life in the area surrounding his landing site seemed limited to a variety of grasses and shrubs, which fed several species of small burrowing mammals and what appeared to be flocks of bipedal flightless avians.

Raditz buried his face in his hands for a moment to suppress a groan of boredom. He'd read the reports, seen the orbital scans, and was looking at the firsthand evidence now, but he still couldn't believe how incredibly unremarkable and pathetic this planet was. Situated partway down an arm of it's spiral galaxy, the Sol system was about as off the beaten path as you could get, short of the unexplored regions of deep space beyond the frontier.

Nor did the world's inhabitants seem to be anything to get excited about, beyond marveling at how extraordinarily _weak _most of them were. The planet had only a handful of sapient species, with a power level average of _three. _And these pathetic creatures didn't seem to have any advanced technology either, with their greatest scientific superpowers only being in the early nuclear age at most (For Galick's sake, they didn't even have a unified world government yet!), and the rest of the world still struggling to fully industrialize.

The total lack of any significant features left the saiyan mercenary wondering what interest anyone could have in this place, and rather resentful that _he_ had to be the one to deal with it.

Apparently, the contract for this purge had been assigned to the saiyan army, and, presumably due to it's destruction, was never carried out. The original buyers eventually sent a formal complaint to the PTO, which recently made it through the labyrinthian channels of the Organization's filing system, and found itself on Frieza's desk.

And with Vegeta, Nappa, and Turles participating in an extended campaign against the Konatsian rebels and their ever-growing coalition of allies, Raditz found himself as the only convenient scapegoat on hand.

Grumbling to himself once again, he popped the hatch on his attack ball and clambered out. Stretching each of his cramped and stiff limbs in turn as he did so, he booted up his scouter and began running scans for any abnormal energy signatures on the planet.

' Two hundred credits says there won't be a single worthwhile opponent here.'

As his scouter ran the scans, a quiet rumble in the distance drew his attention to a small dust cloud, trailing behind an ancient looking blue petroleum locomotive. Prioritizing the approaching target, the scouter quickly informed him that the vehicle held a single occupant, with a power level of five. Sighing once more in resignation, Raditz leaned his back against the side of his attack ball and waited for the local to arrive.

Pulling up beside the smoking crater, the earthling climbed out of his transport and began to nervously approach the rim.

"Hey you!" he shouted quaveringly whilst brandishing what had to be some kind of rudimentary projectile weapon.

Tail lashing in irritation, Raditz raised his hand and began summoning up a small ki blast. The broad, squat saiyanoid was a rather grotesque specimen in his opinion, with layers of blubber and thin curly hair covering what little muscle he possessed, and a variety of hideous plant based garments encasing him, all under a generous coating of dust and sweat.

Eyes widening in terror and confusion, the human fired his weapon at the invader. Disinterestedly plucking the slow moving piece of metal out of the air, Raditz barely registered as the man's face fell in dumbfounded horror, before effortlessly flicking the lump of lead back at the earthling. It struck with enough force to kill him instantly, and sent him smashing into the side of his vehicle hard enough to leave a dent.

Raditz's scouter began beeping loudly. Pushing himself fully upright, he glared through the eyepiece, then blinked in surprise at what he saw. Nearly a dozen energy signatures had registered in between one and four hundred; not strong enough to be a challenge, but potentially entertaining to toy around with.

'It seems this assignment won't be _entirely _boring after all.' He thought with a sadistic smirk as he took off toward the nearest of the potential opponents.

* * *

The golden Nimbus tore through the sky toward the coast, sonic boom echoing behind. The landscape whipped past, a blurry patchwork of hills, trees, and farms sapped of their color by the grey predawn light. Off to the north, just over the horizon, Goku could sense the awakening of the massive urban sprawl that surrounded West City, returning to life from it's brief moment of relative quiet between day and night.

Up ahead, the beach cut a thin pale line between the dark masses of the land and sea. From his perch behind his father's leg, somewhat shielded from the blasting wind, Gohan peered out at the foreign environment, eyes wide with wonder as he took in the experience of his first expedition beyond the slopes of Mount Paozu.

"Papa? Is that the ocean?" The seven year old asked in awe. He had read about the outside world, and seen pictures in some of his books, but he had never actually _seen _it before.

"Yep. Is it as big as your books said?" Goku replied with a grin of pride.

"Even bigger!" The boy cried enthusiastically.

They swept past the shore, barely a hundred feet above the surf. Down below, they could make out the dark bulk and running lights of a fishing boat; most likely making an early start to what would be a long, hard day's work. The surface of the water was almost unnaturally calm, with a mirror like sheen distorted here and there by waves which, from their height, looked no bigger than ripples.

Presently, the sun crested the horizon behind them, casting the whole world into backlight. Every shadow stretched for miles, and Goku's keen eyes picked out something other than a boat on the horizon.

"Gohan, look!" He said animatedly, pointing out the growing speck to his son.

"Is that Kame House?" The child asked, his face somehow managing to brighten even further with excitement.

"Yeah." His father answered happily as he watched his son drink in their surroundings.

As the island grew distinct enough to spot the lone structure on it's surface, Goku asked;

"You excited to meet everyone?"

Gohan glanced up at him, and nodded enthusiastically. But his father, having spotted the moment of nervous hesitation he had tried so hard to hide, smiled down at him warmly and put a strong hand on his shoulder;

"Don't worry. They'll all think you're great."

Gohan turned back to the island, now in the near distance, and whispered to himself;

_"Or will they say that because you're my dad?" _

Goku's sharp hearing caught the question however, and not realizing (or understanding) it's rhetorical nature, he responded in surprise;

"Why would they do that?"

Gohan remained quiet, merely wrapping his tail around his day's shin for comfort, both his and Goku's.

He wasn't sure when exactly he had realized that he was smarter than his Papa. Only that it had irreparably shaken his perception of the nature of reality. Before, the fact that his dad was the _best _at _everything_ had seemed as fundamental and irrefutable as gravity or the laws of motion. For it to then be proven false, by him no less, caused him to question things he had taken for granted until then.

Eventually, he had adapted to this new state of being, and begun to move forward with his young life. However he could no longer look at the world with the same level of absolute and total naivete that he had before.

As they came in for landing Gohan noticed several figures on the beach below. Three men were finishing a set of warm up katas in preparation for the day's training while a fourth watched from a lawn chair on the beach.

His gaze was first drawn to the tallest member of the group. The man was well tanned and bald, and wore an odd forest green garment that looked like a cross between a traditional gi and a Roman style toga, revealing a jagged scar that cut diagonally across his chest. However, the man's most noticeable feature was easily the third eye in the center of his forehead. It seemed to shift it's gaze in sync with the other two, for which the boy was thankful. He thought that if the third eye simply stared ahead piercingly, or moved of it's own accord then that would be rather frightening.

Looking away to avoid staring, Gohan instead peered at the second trainee. He was also tan and bald, but lacked a third eye, and was much shorter than the first man, barely taller than Gohan even. He wore a smaller version of the same outfit Gohan's father wore; a blaze orange gi and trousers with a weighted blue undershirt, boots, and wristbands. On the left breast of the gi was the small white and black kanji that denoted that the wearer was a student of Kame Senin Ryu, while the six pointed monastic brand on his forehead indicated he was some kind of monk. The other immediately apparent oddity about the man was the fact that he had no nose; instead there was simply a stretch of smooth, unbroken skin.

The last of the trainees was by far the smallest, being slightly more than half of Gohan's height. He seemed to be bald as well, though Gohan couldn't tell for sure since he wore a black cloth cap with a red ball tassel. He also wore black sweat pants and a sky blue tank top. He was significantly less muscular than the other two, and had no nose like the second man, but that wasn't the strangest thing about him.

His childlike features were chalk white, appearing almost as if they were made of porcelain. The only color he had were his dark pupils, and the bright red circle that adorned each cheek.

The first thing that came to Gohan's mind was a passage he had read about a rare form of vampire called a Jiang Shi, but it didn't quite fit what he was seeing. For one thing, the small (man?) was taking balanced, measured steps as he moved through his kata, and Jiang Shi couldn't walk, only leap.

He was jolted suddenly from his observations by Goku scooping him up with one arm and leaping off of the flying nimbus ten feet above the ground. They landed surefootedly, barely a dozen yards from the whitewashed house at the center of the island. An old man in khaki shorts and and a floral print hawaiian shirt glanced at them over the rims of his sunglasses momentarily, then shifted his gaze back to the trio on the beach before freezing in his lawn chair and turning back to them silently, mouth agape.

Grinning widely, Goku waved and called out;

"Hey everyone! Long time no see huh?"

The three men on the beach turned and joined the old man in gaping openly, though the shorter bald fighter recovered quickly.

"_Long time no see?!_ Goku, it's been _eight years!"_ he said incredulously, his voice surprisingly nasally considering his lack of a nose. Goku rubbed the back of his neck self consciously.

"Yeah, sorry about that, but Chi-chi and I were really busy after our honeymoon, and I just sort of lost track of time-"

As they spoke a casually dressed, aqua haired woman walked out of the house, stifling a yawn.

"Morning everyone." she mumbled sleepily, before slumping into the lawn chair, grabbing the old man's coffee mug, and chugging away.

"Oh. Hi Bulma. I didn't know you'd be here."

The woman, Bulma, stopped dead mid gulp, blinking in shock. Slowly, she lowered the mug, placing it back on the armrest.

"G-Go-ku?"

"Yeah?"

Suddenly furious, she leapt to her feet.

"That's it?! You've been gone for EIGHT YEARS! EIGHT! FREAKING! YEARS! AND ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF IS 'OH HI'?!"

Goku took a step back and opened his mouth to answer, but Bulma didn't seem to notice.

"WHERE HAVE YOU _BEEN_?! AND WHAT FINALLY CONVINCED YOU TO COME OUT OF HIDING?! DID YOU-"

"I came to introduce Gohan to everyone." he managed to get in.

Bulma paused mid-rant and glanced down to the child now half hiding behind his father.

"H-hi." the boy stammered nervously.

Bulma seemed at a loss for words, blinking in surprise before shaking her head vigorously and, upon noticing the boy's tail, finally speaking again;

"Your's and Chi-?" she began before being interrupted by a shout from the porch;

"What on earth is all this noise about?"

Leaning on the railing was a tall, muscular man in grey sweats. His shaggy black hair was long and unkempt, and his otherwise handsome face was marred by several large scars near his left eye, which was half lidded with drowsiness.

"We're never going to finish this conversation, are we?" asked the bald monk in a tone of exasperated resignation.

* * *

Raditz cut off the stream of ki blasting out behind him mid flight, and began to plummet toward a large sandstone bluff with a lone figure seated atop it's crest. He hit the ground feet first, leaving a crater and launching a fountain of dust and gravel into the air. Straightening, he looked over to where the ridge's other occupant was seated in a lotus position, apparently meditating.

He certainly didn't appear to be a member of the same species as the other local Raditz had encountered. Heavily clad in purple gi and pants, large white cape, and purple and white turban, and well over two meters tall, he might have struck an imposing figure to a weaker observer. As far as Raditz could tell through all the cloth, he was completely hairless, with dark green, almost membranous skin, large, sharply pointed ears, and fleshy pink scales on the insides his arms.

Without turning to face the new arrival, or even opening his eyes, the strange man addressed Raditz with what he guessed was false confidence.

"I sensed your approach almost ten minutes ago, but I was hoping you would leave me to meditate in peace. It seems that expectation wasn't particularly realistic. So, who are you and what do you want with me? You may be quite a bit stronger than any of the humans, but that certainly doesn't mean you're qualified to challenge _me." _

Raditz smirked at his opponent's bluff.

"I find your bravado rather amusing, green man. Especially since if you could sense my energy, then we _both _know you have as much of a chance of defeating me as an ant has of slaying a boot." he declared, before continueing snidely,

"As for what I want to do, I _want_ to go back to base, eat something, and take a nap. What I'm _going _to do is follow orders, which means I'm going to kill you and everyone else on this pathetic rock so that my boss can sell it to some drunken tycoon to turn into his private resort or something. Did I miss anything, or does that about answer all of your questions?"

Behind his flawless poker face, Piccollo grimaced. He had figured from the beginning that this stranger was bad news, but he certainly hadn't been expecting _that_. The newcomer wanted to kill him, desecrate his birthright, and sell it to the highest bidder? An insult like that couldn't go unanswered, even if he _was_ completely outmatched.

Floating slowly off the ground, Piccollo opened his eyes and unfolded his legs, bringing him to a standing position, before finally turning to face his enemy. He smirked despite himself upon taking in the invader's bizarre appearance. The alien looked quite similar to most humans, but taller, and far more muscular than all but the largest men. He wore a brown-and-black synthetic looking cuirass with large shoulder pauldrons and a sturdy set of faulds and crotch guard, along with matching boots and fingerless gauntlets. Under the armor he was garbed in a skintight black bodysuit that covered his torso and the base of each limb. However the two features that most raised the demon king's nonexistent eyebrows were the long, brown furred appendage wrapped around his waist, and his impressive mane of ankle-length black hair.

"You know, I've only ever met one other person with hair that stupid, and rumor has it he used to have a tail too. Maybe you two are related? It would certainly explain where the hell he came from." The demon quipped sarcastically, fully unprepared for his foe's reaction.

"A-another saiyan?" he asked in a half daze.

Piccollo was shocked that his comment had had any real effect, but certainly wasn't one to let an opportunity like this go to waste. However, before he could formulate a plan to exploit his foe's lapse in concentration, the alien snapped back to awareness, and the king of demon's quite suddenly found himself pinned to the ground by a large boot.

"Where?"

The single word question contained more than it's own fair share of implied threats, yet Piccollo still hesitated before speaking. He may have hated Goku with a vengeance, however _killing _him was a privilege the demon reserved for himself and no-one else. And he most certainly would get himself killed, trying to stop this invader's plans for global genocide. It would even seem to be a fittingly _noble,_ holier than thou way for the bastard to go. However, _he _certainly couldn't stop the "saiyan" either, and he wasn't particularly fond of the idea of dying here and now.

And then he had an idea.

* * *

Eventually the inhabitants of Kame House settled down enough for Goku to make introductions. Krillin, the monk, proved to be fairly easygoing, if a bit snarky, while the tall three eyed warrior and his small companion, Tien and Chiaotzu respectively, were cordial but stoic, though Chiaotzu seemed openly curious about Gohan, and what his father had been doing these last eight years. Bulma was, as in most everything else he had seen her do so far (after obtaining coffee), enthusiastic and intelligent, yet critical, seeming to heartily disapprove of Goku's recent lack of communication with the outside world. The late arrival turned out to be Bulma's boyfriend Yamcha, who was here recovering from a long, stressful season of baseball with the West City Titans. The old bald man was, as Gohan had suspected, none other than Muten Roshi, the only living master of Kame Senin Ryu, and if his father's bedtime stories (and his mother's rather reluctant explanations of them) were to be believed, a "dirty old pervert". While still not entirely sure what that meant, he did note that Bulma called him this as well on several occasions.

For his part, Gohan was unsure of what to think of these people. These were the heroes (and occasionally villains) of his bedtime stories, standing there as if materialized from the pages of one of his books. Yet as a well educated child, he had begun to learn how to read between the lines of his history texts, and he was well aware that things were rarely exactly as the seemed from an outsider's perspective. And he could only be an outsider, never having fought and bled beside them. Nor, he realized, was his father the most reliable source of information, even if his accounts were firsthand.

"So, should we be expecting a new member of our little training group?" Asked Krillin, winking at the boy out of the corner of his eye.

"No." Goku muttered petulantly, "Chi-chi says she wants him to grow up to be a 'respectable and productive member of society', whatever that means."

"It means she want's him to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or something like that." Yamcha supplied helpfully.

"A doctor?" Goku asked, aghast. "But that would mean he worked at a hospital. How would I be able to visit him. I _HATE _hospitals. They smell awful and they're full of-"

"Goku, most sane parents don't usually drop in on their kids at work." Bulma pointed out. "Besides, it's not like he'd never get to leave the- . . . What the hell are you guys doing?"

Everyone except for Bulma and Gohan was staring intently at the southeast corner of the ceiling in apparent dread and awe. Bulma quickly realized something was amiss when Goku didn't even berate her on Chi-chi's behalf for swearing in front of Gohan.

"What is it? Seriously guys, if you're just messing with me-"

"Someone-, some_thing _is coming." Yamcha deadpanned through his shellshock.

"Even _Piccollo _wasn't this strong . . ." Krillin murmured to himself.

"O-kay then. Scared now."

They all stood in shocked silence for several moments before Yamcha spun around, tackling Bulma and Gohan to the floor an instant before the south wall of Kame House tore open in a flash of light.

* * *

The power behind his last ki blast had been carefully limited, enough to kill the dwelling's weaker occupants, without risking injury to the more . . . entertaining prey.

Raditz descended to the ground as the rest of the house collapsed in on itself, raising a thin cloud of dust. The fibrous slats the building had been constructed from shifted slightly, and the panicked cries of several beings trapped under the rubble began to ring out, along with the calls of would be rescuers.

Clouds of debris fountained away as a pair of bald saiyanoids blasted out of the rubble toward their attacker. Raditz sidestepped the taller foe and backhanded him into the ground before catching his second opponent's fist in one hand. The short warrior attempted to pull away, but the mercenary clamped down on his hand and slammed his knuckles into the dwarf's jaw, sending him tumbling away. Turning, he launched a roundhouse at the other fighter as he surged back to his feet, only for his body to freeze unexpectedly mid swing.

Out of the corner of the corner of his eye he spotted a pale, childlike figure floating a meter or so off the ground, arms outstretched and brows clenched in concentration.

'_Got themselves a psychic do they. Ha. Not a serious threat, but it bears deali-"_

His train of thought was abruptly derailed by a beep from his scouter and a battle-cry from the taller (three eyed?) fighter.

"Dodonpa!"

While not particularly strong, the fast moving beam attack caught the saiyan off guard, cracking his breastplate and knocking him flat on his back. Furious, he leapt to his feet and released a full powered explosive kiai at the psychic and his three eyed companion. The blast stripped a layer of topsoil off the ground, and sent both fighters rocketing out to sea, trailing smoke and blood.

As the red faded from the edges of his vision, the frantic chirping of his scouter rushed back to Raditz's attention, along with the strange, simultaneous chant being recited behind him.

"Ka-"

Spinning about to face his opponents, Raditz quickly registered the three of them standing in a line with identical stances, feet wide with hands cupped to the side, as well as a female and a child cowering near the ruins of their dwelling.

"-Me-"

He froze in shock and bewilderment as his gaze settled on one of the warriors standing against him, the familiar nature of his countenance leaving the mercenary momentarily stunned.

'_F-Father?'_

"-Ha-"

No it couldn't possibly be Bardock. Aside from several obvious reasons, the man standing before him was far too young, not even as aged as Raditz.

"-Me-"

"_The namekian said there might be another saiyan here, it can't be a coincidence-"_

"-Ha!"

Three spears of azure light surged from their outthrust palms, blending together in a wave of pale flame. The broad, rounded head of the beam washed over Raditz, engulfing him in burning agony. An interminable moment later he fell, gasping and breathless, into the water a few meters offshore. Surging back into the air on instinct alone, the saiyan's mind finally finished processing the scene he had just witnessed, allowing him to put a name to the impossibility of his circumstances:

"Kakarott."

* * *

_Power Levels:_

_Raditz: 1200_

_Tien: 420_

_Chiaotzu: 230_

_Roshi: 120_

_Krillin: 395_

_Yamcha: 355_

_Peace._


	4. Chapter Two: Departure

This is a non profit, fan based story. Dragonball, Dragonball Z, and Dragonball GT are all owned by Funimation, Toei Animation, Fuji TV and Akira Toriyama. Please support the official release.

Chapter Two: Departure

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Raditz was floating in place over the ocean, the crests of the waves breaking onto the beach barely missing his feet as he gaped numbly at the man standing beside the smoking ruin of debris and rubble. He barely even registered the three eyed warrior from before dragging his pale compatriot out of the surf, both covered in burns and bruises.

"Kakarott?"

"Wha-what do- you thi- think he's gibbering about?" The short, bald fighter beside Kakarott managed to pant out.

"Who cares? Lets finish him while we have the chance!" the scarred one retorted.

"Guuuuys!" Kakarott moaned petulantly, "We can't just _kill _him. I mean, that wasn't even really a fair fight!"

Recovering his wits slightly, Raditz pointed at his brother.

"You. You're Kakarott."

"Um . . . no? My name is Goku."

"But . . . if you're Kakarott," Raditz continued, hardly noticing the other saiyan's response. "then . . . why the hell is this planet still inhabited?"

"I told you, my name's not Kakarott!"

"Goku," the bald fighter said calmly, "I think this guy might be a few logs short of a bonfire. I mean, even if he's not, he definitely isn't very good at listening!" he chuckled.

"You _ARE_ Kakarott, there's no way you can't be. You look _exactly _like the holos of Father at that age!"

"No, I'm Goku!" Kakarott said slowly and carefully, as if speaking to a particularly dim child. "Come on, say it with me now; Goooo-kuuuu."

"I told you man, he's not all there." The bald one remarked.

Raditz's frustration was beginning to mount, and at the noseless freak's taunt, his fury came to the surface.

"Shut up and die, you pathetic cur!" The saiyan snarled, firing a wave of explosive energy. Kakarott stepped forward suddenly, arms outstretched, and caught the blast with both hands. All the levity had left his features as he strained against the spear of fiery death in his grasp.

With a monumental heave, Kakarott redirected the beam out to sea, skimming the surface of the waves for several hundred meters before detonating with the force of a small volcanic eruption. Turning, the palm-haired warrior glared dangerously at Raditz. The older saiyan stared back, suppressing a shiver. There was something in his brother's eyes that was indescribably _different_ from just a moment before.

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Gohan was scared. Not a small child's fear of something he did not understand, but rather a deep seated instinctive terror he couldn't begin to unravel. All he understood at the moment was that his dad was gone. He peered out from behind Bulma as they both crouched against a boulder near the shore. The wind from the blast his Papa had thrown into the ocean was beginning to die down, leaving the air unnaturally calm. He didn't care. He wanted his Papa back, the one who would bring giant fish home for dinner every weekend, who always let Gohan win when they wrestled or played tag.

He did _not _want this pale imitation, this doppelganger who _looked _like his dad and _sounded_ like his dad, yet acted nothing like him. His dad wasn't angry and silent and scary like the _thing_ that was staring down the terrifying man with the ridiculous hair and the speedo. He just wanted his Papa to come _back_. And also, he admitted to himself, for the stranger who had blown up Kame House to leave.

But neither of those things happened. Instead, they both just floated there, less than a meter above the ground, glaring at eachother. Cautiously, Krillin, Yamcha, and Tien began to spread out and encircle the stranger. Off to one side, Roshi scooped Chiaotzu up over one shoulder and began to jog over to where Bulma and Gohan had taken shelter.

"I hate to admit it, but I think I might be getting a little old for this sort of thing. Or maybe these youngsters have just left me in the dust." He huffed contemplatively.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The saiyan mercenary continued to stare down his younger sibling, the majority of his thoughts elsewhere, racing to both make sense of the situation, and to come up with a plan. His scouter was reading Kakarott's power as three hundred and ninety-six; practically god-like compared to most of this world's inhabitants, but laughably weak next to almost any agent of the PTO. But this was _Kakarott_. He may have only spoken to their Father once since Planet Vegeta's destruction, but Raditz remembered quite clearly the man's pride in his youngest child.

'_Could he be hiding his real power?' _he wondered anxiously. He was well aware that some highly talented individuals (_Turlescough!_) were able to willfully suppress their own energy, allowing them to avoid detection by scouters, or trick potential enemies into underestimating them.

However, this train of thought was violently derailed by a single, disturbing question:

'_What happened to him, and why are the rest of the planet's inhabitants still alive?'_

Raditz was jarred from his ruminations by his brother's voice:

"Who are you, and what do you want with us?" the younger saiyan growled dangerously.

Raditz's tail lashed absentmindedly in shock and irritation as he contemplated how to respond.

"Kakarott, It's Raditz, y-" he began, before realizing his brother wasn't even listening anymore, the entirety of his attention fixated on-

"You have a tail?" he questioned in awe, the carefree naivety from before flooding back with a vengeance.

"Of course I have a tail, so do-What the hell happened to _your _tail?!"

"How did you know that I used to have a tail?"

"_All_ saiyans have tails! And you still-"

"What's a saiyan?" Kakarott interrupted innocently.

Raditz simply gaped for a moment, unable to believe what he was hearing. A small part of his mind was beginning to catch up with the events around him, and now it started to whisper maliciously to him. Noting the small, obviously half-breed child hiding nearby and the camaraderie his younger brother displayed toward the earthlings, he supposed he should have realized sooner. Kakarott, proclaimed at birth as the Super-Saiyan of legend, had gone native.

It wasn't unheard of for the occasional low class child to be taken in and raised by the locals of the world they were sent to purge, but for that fate to befall Kakarott? It was simply unthinkable. The power and fury of the Super-Saiyan was mythical; in the past it had brought galaxies and empires to their knees. How had the pathetic people of _Earth _managed to tame it? For him to not recall the lessons of culture and history provided in his attack ball, Kakarott's mind would have had to have been completely and utterly broken.

Hopelessness threatened to overwhelm him as all his dreams of vengeance and liberation crumbled to dust before his eyes. Ever since the massacre of their people, he and the rest of their handful of survivors had kept their heads down, silently swallowing Frieza's lies about a "meteor", all the while secretly dreaming of retribution. Their only, sliver of hope had come from his uncle Turles. When he returned from the distant reaches of wild space and joined the PTO under Prince Vegeta, he had discreetly brought both the confirmation of their suspicions, and the news that Bardock and Tarble both lived, as did the legendary savior of their people.

Raditz had been dumbstruck by the knowledge that his little brother was supposedly destined to liberate their kinsmen from the shackles of Frieza's tyranny. Once he properly came to terms with it, the knowledge had become a blazing fire of hope in his belly, driving him to push on, to survive when he might otherwise have fallen, succumbing to despair and strife.

And all that was left to him now was a mouthful of ashes. The messiah he had been waiting for simply didn't exist; the Earthlings had crippled him, both physically and mentally, Convinced him that he was one of _them, _turned him into a twisted mockery of what he should have been.

"Are . . . you okay?" The shell of Kakarott asked, confused.

Raditz forced down the wellspring of hellish fury and grief rising in his chest. He wasn't going to give up now, not after surviving for decades under Frieza's heel. Hope still remained, he had seen the blazingly cold fury in his brother's eyes not moments before. He could, no _would_, be saved from the hell these humans sought to trap him in.

"Hello, are you still there? Is anybody home?" the younger saiyan hazarded with some amusement.

"K-Kakarott. I'm . . . sorry I wasn't here sooner. If I'd known you were here . . . what they were doing to you . . ." Raditz spoke quietly, his eyes fixed on some invisible point in the distance.

"What are you talking about? I don't even know who you are."

"Don't waste your time Goku," the bald dwarf chuckled, "It seems pretty obvious to me that this guy is completely out of his gourd."

Raditz's gaze snapped back to the present, latching onto the human with a glare full of indescribable hate.

"If you so much as _speak_ to my brother again, I will personally guarantee that your death will be the most horrifically agonizing thing you've ever experienced."

"You _seriously _need to lighten up man, If you'd been around earlier, that overprotective attitude would've scared away every single girl he ever met." the dwarf retorted mockingly.

"Well, I don't know if it would have worked on Chi-chi-" Kakarott started, before Raditz lunged at the short man with a howl of unbridled fury.

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Piccolo was not happy. Not that he usually was, but that was beside the point. He hadn't baited that alien fool to Kame House, faked his own death at the Invader's hands, and followed him all the way here just for Goku and company to _make nice _with him.

For several moments he considered his options, before a cry of rage drew his attention back to the confrontation taking place below. In a split second, he came to a decision, and launched himself into a dive.

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Krillin felt as if he was flying through molasses as he tried in vain to leap up and out of the strange, mulleted man's path of destruction. As if in slow-motion, he cupped his hands to his side, pouring his energy into the familiar azure sphere as swiftly as he was able, hoping to put anything he could between himself and his foe.

Without warning, a blur of purple, green, and white dropped out of the sky like a bolt of lightning, followed closely by the thunderous _CRACK_ of a sonic boom. Instantly, it coalesced into the form of Piccolo planting a double-booted drop-kick onto Raditz's shoulder, sending him careening across the island and leaving a wake-like trench in the sandy topsoil.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, the ex-monk twisted in mid air and cut loose with a battlecry, the Kamehameha racing after his downed attacker. With a roar, the blast detonated, launching twenty yards of beach skyward in a fountain of molten glass.

Behind him, Roshi let loose a shout as he fired a massive kiai to shield Bulma and Gohan from the rain of slag. As the tumult settled, Krillin and the other fighters glared into the steaming depths of the island's new cove, searching for any sign of life.

An instant of warning was all his ki sense gave him before Raditz shot out of the water with a deafening _THOOM_, rocketing straight at him. Desperately, he hurled himself aside, but to no avail; the Saiyan's hand clamped down on his throat like a vice, driving his face into the ground as they tore across the island.

Suddenly the pressure on his windpipe vanished, along with, it seemed, gravity and the Earth itself. However, his brain had only an instant to process these things before the heel of Raditz's boot connected with the back of his neck at several times the speed of sound.

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Raditz's spinning roundhouse struck home with a satisfyingly final sounding crunch, sending the battered remains of the obnoxious dwarf rocketing toward the ground with enough force to leave a crater.

"_KRILLIN!_"

His brother's scream was laced with horror and agony, woven over a rage so great as to send shudders through the entirety of the mercenary's body. A wall of jade energy pulsed out from the younger saiyan's form as he shot away from the earth atop a pillar of emerald fire. Kakarott's shoulder slammed into Raditz's chest hard enough to fracture his cuirass, leaving him winded and defenseless against his brother's ki-charged elbow drop. The blow landed between his shoulder blades, and sent him careening face-first through the ocean and into the seabed.

Shoving himself upright, Raditz launched out of the water, only to be greeted by the closing lines of a now familiar chant;

"-Me-Ha-Me-"

Thinking quickly, he threw his hands out between himself and Kakarott, sending as much energy as his body could withstand surging out through his palms.

"Double Sunday!"

"HA!"

Blue and violet collided in a blinding flash of pale thunder, and Raditz suddenly found that he had no control over his body as it was tossed kilometers over the ocean like a leaf in a gale.

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Krillin blinked back into consciousness to the sound of Bulma and Gohan screaming in terror. His eyes opened for an instant before slamming shut of their own accord in a fruitless attempt to block out the unholy light sweeping over the shore toward him.

His mind surged through the chaos on a wave of pure adrenaline, the sheer amount of raw, deathly _power _racing at him coming very close to leaving him completely dumbfounded. However, one thought managed to force itself to be heard over the screaming of his self preservation instincts:

'_Bulma and Gohan are going to die.'_

Without much conscious thought, he was forcing himself over the beach, moving blindly to put himself in between the screaming bystanders and the fire that he could feel drawing nearer with the passage of every eternal millisecond. Numbly, he realized just how incredibly fast he must be moving, faster than at any previous time in his life.

Planting his feet directly in front of Bulma and Master Roshi, who were both cowering protectively over Goku's son, Krillin called up every last dreg of power his body could muster, throwing it all out in a wall of energy before him with a cry of defiance an instant before the wave of flame crashed over them.

The blast struck his barrier like freight train, ebbing only slightly as it plowed through his every defense, washing himself and his charges out to sea like so much refuse in the wake of a tsunami. He was plunged into the tropical water, and nearly drifted back into unconsciousness on the tide of that warm weightless bliss. Instead he forced his eyes open despite the still blinding light, and pushed his aching body toward Gohan's rapidly sinking silhouette.

His body was functioning on nothing but fumes and a few remaining drops of adrenaline now, and with every motion it cried out in agonized protest. Waves of pain throbbed through his skull from where Raditz had kicked him, yet still he pushed on. He latched onto the drowning child's front collar, and with a final surge of determination he pushed toward the surface. Krillin's lungs were burning almost as badly as the rest of him now, and he could feel his muscles straining against the limit beyond which they would simply cease to function.

With a mental snarl he pushed on toward the still distant surface until, with a final stubborn spasm, his legs went limp and they began to sink once again. His eyes began to slide closed against his will, the ache of his breathless lungs overwhelming his consciousness and driving out all other thoughts save a single emotion: Regret. He had failed to save the child, who even now struggled desperately in his panicked efforts to escape the deadly embrace of the sea.

Absently, he registered the hand that grasped his shoulder and began to drag him slowly upward, and with his final scraps of willpower, Krillin tightened his grip on Gohan and heaved the boy up toward their rescuer before the black emptiness engulfed him.

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Instinct told Gohan that air should eventually alleviate the burning in his chest. This did not seem to be the case. Though it had cooled considerably after the initial fireball had dissipated, the air over this hellish stretch of water was still painfully hot and choked with boiling clouds of scalding steam. Waves churned violently; raging, two story swells crashing back and forth seemingly at random.

Bulma was still clutching his hand as they both desperately tread water. Roshi was bobbing beside them, struggling to keep the unconscious Chiaotzu's head above water. The whole scene was cast in ghastly orange light by the still rising mushroom plume of fire in the near distance. The shockwave had dispersed the scattered cumulus clouds that had formed earlier in the day, though the sun still seemed dim compared to the blazing pillar before them, and a thick sheet of grey steam was spreading outward from the central fireball, casting all their surroundings into relative shadow.

"Whe-, where's Krillin?" he managed to sputter after coughing out a copious amount of water. "Where's my dad, and everyone else?"

"I don't- hah- know. They should -hah- be okay -hah- though." Bulma assured breathlessly.

"But Krillin was just here a minute ago! He was right there!" the boy argued.

"It grieves me to say, but Krillin is no longer with us," Roshi spoke up after several moments, "though it seems everyone else made it."

Gohan's mind struggled to process the meaning of the old man's words for several moments, before realization struck. He had never really encountered mortality before, and though he had a vague understanding of what death meant, the harsh reality of it left him dumbstruck.

He simply floated there for several long moments, trying and failing to come to terms with it. He had barely known Krillin, but the small man had been kind and accepting with him, treating him as another member of the group. And for as long as he could remember, the ex-monk had featured as one of the great heroes of his father's nightly epics, the stalwart companion and sidekick who was always there, watching the other heros' backs.

For him to be dead was akin to claiming that Santa had been murdered, or that the world had stopped turning, or _the good guys lost_. Silent tears of shock began to pour down his cheeks, blurring his vision.

"There's a little fishing town on one of the nearby islands," Roshi continued, "You two should grab ahold so I can tow ya to shore."

Bulma merely nodded and took hold of Roshi's free hand.

"Hang on tight kiddo." she sniffed, and Gohan realized with a start that she was crying too, before his train of thought was interrupted by Roshi kicking out rapidly, propelling the four of them through the surf at breakneck speed.

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Raditz managed to halt his descent several hundred meters below the surface of the ocean, and immediately used his ki to propel himself up and out of the water. His scouter informed him that he was approximately twenty-five kilometers from where he had been when the blast hit, and that Kakarott, the green man, Scarface, and Triclops had survived, though there was too much residual energy from the explosion to pick up any weaker signatures.

Without further ado, he took off toward his brother. Though he was loathe to admit it, that explosion hadn't left him unscathed, and his scouter indicated that Kakarott's power level had spiked as high as 1656 just prior to firing his energy wave. It had now dropped back into the mid-to-upper two-hundreds range but was steadily rising, most likely due to the younger saiyan taking a moment to catch his breath.

His own power had dropped notably, though he was recovering most of the lost energy, and he was beginning to grow severely irritated when he saw his brother's signature take off toward one of the nearby islands. As he shot after him, Raditz briefly noted that the small isle they had been fighting on previously was gone without a trace, swallowed in it's entirety by the furious ocean.

As he came up on the island where his brother had landed, the mercenary noted that it was inhabited, with the shattered remains of a small settlement sprawled along the shore. The water still churned as it withdrew from the land, and Raditz could see many of the helpless earthlings being sucked out to sea by the current. Bemusedly, he also noted Scarface and the old man from earlier repeatedly diving into the surf to try and rescue the drowning peons.

His true quarry, however, was crouching next to a familiar looking, blue haired female, who was currently tending to the injuries of the doll like creature and the half-breed. He dropped down behind them silently, his boots sinking a few centimeters into the frothing surf, and smirked.

"So Kakarott, I have to admit; that was a fairly impressive attack back there, especially considering how much strength you seem to have lost since being sent to this planet." He called out, watching with amusement as his brother spun about in surprise.

"What are you talking about?" the younger saiyan queried with some irritation.

Dropping his facade, the elder brother spoke softly, barely loud enough to be heard over the chaos around them;

"I know these human bastards would have taught you not to question them, but haven't you ever wondered where you came from?"

"Uuuuum? Well . . . Grampa always said he just found me in the woods one day after a fire." he said, seemingly thrown for a loop.

Raditz smirked inwardly, this could very well end up being significantly easier than he had initially thought.

"So, your pod must have malfunctioned and crashed on reentry. That certainly explains alot."

An attack ball that failed to properly decelerate before landing could potentially hit the ground at speeds as high as fifty percent of the speed of light; if Kakarott had been anyone else it would have been nothing short of a miracle that he survived at all. Even as a Super-Saiyan, the fact that he had been basically crippled wasn't that big of a surprise. But Raditz doubted that the loss of power was permanent; if they survived initially, a saiyan could fully recover from just about anything given enough time and training.

"What?"

"You must have realized you're different from everyone else on this planet. It's because you're not from _this planet_, Kakarott. You were sent here as an infant until you learned to control your power, and so that Frieza would never learn of your existence."

"You think I'm an _alien_? And who's 'Frieza'?"

"You're a _saiyan_. The proof was in your tail; Don't tell me you never transformed on the full moon, this planet has one every twenty-eight days!"

"Um, what are you talking about? Grampa mentioned . . ." Kakarott trailed off, realizing that Raditz was no longer listening; instead he was smirking at the bluenette, who was wearing a look of abject shock.

"_She _knows what I'm talking about. Don't you, Human."

Gulping, she nodded silently.

"Then . . . the Thing that killed grampa . . . was me?" Kakarott stammered in horror.

Not liking the direction the conversation was headed, Raditz quickly continued:

"Kakarott. Little Brother. Our people have a legend, of the most powerful warrior the universe has ever seen, reborn every thousand years. _You _were the strongest saiyan child born in a millenium.

You were sent here on _the day_ that Frieza destroyed our homeworld. You survived the crash, and then I just happen to stumble across you? It can't be anything short of destiny! Our people's ghosts are crying out for vengeance, and those of us who still live are ready to fight for our liberation! You have the strength to bring Frieza to his knees, and to repay him for every drop of saiyan blood he has spilled! Don't you realize? You can come home now!" He ranted, growing more excited with every word.

Kakarott (and everyone else who had heard) simply gaped for several moments, before finally responding;

"Uuuuuum, okay, but I already have a home _here_. And a family too." he said, gesturing to the half-breed child, "I can't just up and leave."

"_We're _your family, _I'm _your family! You can't just abandon us to our fates like this!" the mercenary snarled; shock and hurt giving way to indignation and anger.

"I just met you today, and you didn't make the best first impression when you _murdered_ Krillin. And you seem downright _amused _by all the innocent people dying here. Sorry, but you don't seem like the kind of person I'd like to make a habit of associating with."

Raditz was speechless for nearly a full minute. What had his brother become? What had this bizarre, insidious world turned him into? The Super-Saiyan was beholden to nothing and no-one beyond his own strength and honor, and his bloodlust was the stuff of legend.

The elder saiyan realized that his earlier thoughts had been correct: this _Place, _these _People, _they had _tamed_ Kakarott. Twisted him into a shallow mockery of his true nature.

"Whoever did this to you, I swear I will make them _suffer _for it_, _brother." He declared, hardening his resolve.

"Did what to me?"

Raditz smiled sadly. "Come with me brother. I can help you."

Kakarott straightened, glaring at his sibling.

"I've given my answer. I'm willing to let you leave in peace, but if you keep starting trouble and killing innocent people, I _will _stop you."

Raditz sank into a fighting stance, thoughts heavy. His brother still had the fire of a true warrior, it was simply misdirected and smothered by this world's pretentions of morality.

"I can't leave this planet unless you come with me, not when I know you could still be saved."

Kakarott raised his guard, bending his knees as he dropped into a low defensive pose.

"This is your last chance to leave unharmed. I suggest you take it."

"I'm afraid I can't do that. I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry to."

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Gohan watched in horrified fascination as his father and the man who claimed to be his uncle squared off once more, with Tien and Piccolo circling in stealthily from behind. The tension in the air was thick enough to taste, it's coppery tang overwhelming to the young demi-saiyan.

Then, with the distinctive whooshing CRACK of the sound barrier being thoroughly shattered, Piccolo was rocketing towards the tall saiyan with energy blasts charging in both hands, Tien and Goku an instant behind. Raditz simply vanished, reappearing above the Demon King and backhanding him into the ground before neatly planting his boot under Tien's chin. With the triclops out of commission for the moment, the mercenary turned to Goku, seizing him by his outstretched fist and flipping him over his shoulder and into the silty ground.

"This is _your _last chance to leave this planet in anything resembling a dignified manner, Kakarott. If you keep resisting, I'll be forced to carry you out of here slung over my shoulder like a child throwing a tantrum."

"Not. HAPPENING!" Goku snarled as got back to his feet and ripped off his undershirt, which hit the ground with an audible THUD. His boots and wristbands quickly followed, and Piccolo could be seen nearby removing his cape and turban.

"What the hell are you two doing?" Raditz asked, flabbergasted.

"Removing our training weights." Goku responded with a grin.

"Dodon Ray!" Tien's golden finger-beam shot between the rivals, striking Raditz in the chest and staggering him.

Goku and Piccolo immediately capitalized on the opening, hurtling toward their opponent to drive home a pair of vicious overhand blows. Raditz slid back nearly a foot, but barely flinched, retaliating by immediately grabbing both of his assailants by the front of their shirts, slamming them together, and lobbing them one after the other at the now charging Tien. The triclops managed to leap over Piccolo, only for Goku's skull to collide with the bottom of his ribcage, sending them both sprawling.

As the three fighters regained their footing, the saiyan held both hands out palm up, and began gathering two spheres of lavender ki.

"Double Sunday!" he cried, launching two thick energy beams at Piccolo and Tien, who dove in opposite directions to evade them.

Piccolo was grazed, and let out a cry of agony as his left arm evaporated. Tien managed to dodge the blast, only for Raditz to appear behind him, grab him by the head with both hands, and punt him out to sea.

Turning on his heel, the saiyan mercenary swept Goku's legs even as he prepared another blast with which to finish off the downed Demon King.

"Kamehameha!"

Raditz sidestepped with a smirk, but instead of being cupped between Goku's hands as he expected, the azure fireball served as the spearhead for a double booted spring-kick to the bottom of the saiyan's outstretched hand. The mercenary yelped in surprise as both ki balls detonated at once, filling the area with a thin haze of smoke, and triggering a concussion that made Gohan's ears pop and sent Raditz hurtling into an abandoned storefront.

The saiyan mercenary was quick to regain his feet however, and wasted no time clotheslining Gohan's father through several nearby warehouses. Levitating straight up several dozen meters, his arms crossed, he snarled:

"Just give it up already, Kakarott. You won't beat me, and neither will your little earthling friends. Tell you what; if you stop acting like a spoiled little brat and come with me without any more fuss, then I'll let the inhabitants of this planet you seem to like so much survive."

Gohan was struck with a deep-rooted pang of terror. His Papa wouldn't do that, right? Leave him and his mother alone, go off into space, be one of _the bad guys_. The demi-saiyan worried for several moments before he realized that he was afraid because _he didn't know the answer, _and that fear was rapidly turning to anger, a deep, burning rage in the pit of his stomach, all focused on the man who wanted to _make _his Papa choose between his family and what was _right_.

"LEAVE MY DADDY ALONE!"

Before he even fully registered what he was doing, Gohan had launched himself at Raditz, screaming like a rabid animal as he slammed his fists and feet into the full-saiyan's torso again and again. The mercenary reeled under the onslaught, falling back, winded and choking on blood, but Gohan wasn't finished with him.

The demi-saiyan surged after his prey, still howling at the top of his lungs, and grabbed hold of his disgustingly long mane of hair. Pressing forward with another series of shouts, Gohan drove his forehead into Raditz's face, one, two, three, four times, reveling in the sensation of the man's nose crumpling like a wadded up piece of tissue paper.

With a final shriek of rage, The child drove both feet into the top of his uncle's sternum, sending the mercenary plummeting into the town's water treatment plant with a thunderous crash.

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With a surge of fury, Raditz flared his aura with enough force to send the disgusting human waste and everything else within a hundred meters of his body shooting away in a blast of smoldering flotsam. Wiping the blood off his face, he took a moment to catch his breath, each one sending a dull ache through his cracked ribs and fractured collarbone.

He supposed that he shouldn't be particularly surprised. He'd always heard that, on the rare occasion that a saiyan managed to actually beget living hybrid offspring that weren't horribly deformed, the resulting half-breeds could often be unstable and difficult to predict. If this one had inherited even a fraction of his sire's true power and bloodlust, then Raditz could be dealing with a very dangerous beast indeed.

He could see the boy in the air over the docks now, panting with exhaustion, his rage apparently spent. The thick clouds that had engulfed the sky were starting to come down as fat grey raindrops, stinking of soot and fire and ozone. Levitating a few meters, he also spotted Triclops and Scarface, the former still bruised and panting from their last skirmish, heading in opposite directions in an attempt to outflank him.

Smirking, Raditz shot several hundred meters straight up and unleashed a barrage of explosive ki bolts, focusing mainly on his two current opponents, but still leaving a generous sprinkling for the rest of the town. As expected, the two would-be heroes dove and zipped about, trying desperately to deflect the blasts away from any civilians, growing ever more wounded and weary as they did.

Noting that Kakarott was now moving away from his son to rejoin the fray, the mercenary fired a large spread of blasts toward the inland portion of the settlement and dropped from the sky toward Triclops, before suddenly vanishing a fraction of an instant before they would have collided. Reappearing behind his nephew, Raditz seized the boy by the scruff of his neck, causing him to cry out in shock and fear.

He was not overly comfortable with his current plan, for though he felt no real attachment to the half-breed, he was not fond of causing his brother this kind of pain. But sadly, he seemed to be running out of options, and the younger saiyan remained adamant in his refusal to cooperate.

"Kakarott." He called out over the hellish cacophony below, infusing his throat with ki. "It grieves me that this has become necessary, but you leave me no choice. If you don't come with me right now, I'll be forced to break the child's neck." he declared with finality.

"I think you're bluffing." The now one-armed namekian responded flippantly; "You may slaughter those you view as lesser creatures by the billions, but I don't think you have what it takes to kill one of your own, much less _family_." he finished with a smug glare.

Raditz nearly dropped the half-breed in the fit of laughter that followed the green man's outrageous claim. But Kakarott was shooting his gaze back and forth between them, uncertainty in his eyes. Suddenly the younger saiyan glanced toward a third figure, and following his gaze on instinct, the elder brother was left defenseless against Triclops' attack.

"Solar Flare!"

The mercenary reflexively raised his free hand to shield his eyes, but it did him no good; the flash was mind-bogglingly bright. He managed to keep a hold of the now panicked child and, feeling a shift in the air currents behind and below him, blasted himself a kilometer and a half straight up.

'_You fool, Kakarott!_' he cursed silently. The idiot had forced his hand; he _couldn't _go back on his word.

Raditz began to tighten his grip on the boy's neck, cutting off the flow of blood to his brain, but a barely noticeable thought sprang from the back of his mind, halting him from simply crushing the struggling child's trachea:

'_What would Father do?_'

Raditz knew the answer to that; Bardock had never really subscribed to the Royal Family's stance on the racial superiority of the Saiyans, or their zero-tolerance policy toward half-breeds.

'_That's because the only things Father has ever wanted out of life are good food, good fights, and the occasional good fuck._' the mercenary thought wryly, remembering Bardock's complaints that ever since he became chief of their clan, he had been getting to much of the third and not nearly enough of the second.

'_The boy has potential,_' he conceded, '_and there are less than a dozen saiyans left in the known universe. It would be . . . wasteful to kill him._'

Loosening his hold before the child passed out, Raditz took off back toward his pod, thoughts whirling.

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Raditz stood alone next to the crater that his attack ball had left in the midst of that desolate stretch of grassland, gazing contemplatively at the dim sparks of the stars. The thrice damned humans apparently had terrible night vision (on top of their many other failings); even with a decent sized mountain range between them, the orange glow of the nearest major population center reflected off a layer of patchy clouds, giving the deluge of water that fell from them a hellish gleam to match its stink.

He was drawn from his musings by the garbled beeping of his battered scouter, and began scanning the sky for signs of movement, cursing the cracked eyepiece that had rendered the main display unreadable. He soon spotted them; four figures streaking through the driving rain, one lagging significantly behind the tight formation of the other three.

Landing across the crater from his brother, flanked on either side by Scarface and Triclops, Kakarott drew himself up to his full height and glared menacingly.

"Raditz, where's my son?!"

"I saved him from the fate that befell his father. He's young; it shouldn't be too hard for him to adapt to his new surroundings, and he'll be better off for it." the mercenary stated calmly. "Besides, children deserve to spend quality time with their grandparents, don't you think?"

Kakarott and his two followers were speechless for several moments, during which the namekian landed quietly off to one side. Raditz remained stoic, observing as his brother struggled to process everything he had just said.

Suddenly, realization seemed to dawn on the younger saiyan, who began to tremble with rage.

"How could you?" he choked out.

"It was for his own goo-"

"HOW COULD YOU?!" Kakarott howled in rage as he launched himself over the crater, emerald aura blazing.

Raditz blasted his ki out explosively, forcing his body aside with barely a centimeter to spare. The younger saiyan turned toward him faster than he could see, and drove his fist into his gut. Gasping, the mercenary involuntarily crumpled inward from the pain as he choked in agony. Two interlocked fists slammed into his back, propelling his face toward a rapidly approaching knee. The collision pulped his already broken nose, and sent him tumbling through the air, completely dazed and disoriented.

He landed face down with a wet thump, mouth and eyes rapidly filling with thick clay-like mud. Pushing himself upright, he spat and wiped away the bloodsoaked muck. Kakarott was walking toward him slowly, his stride deliberate yet feral, like the pacing of a caged animal.

"Give. Him. Back." His brother growled.

"Kakarott I-" Raditz started, before a rapid backhand sent him skidding several dozen meters across the field before coming to a halt at the younger saiyan's feet.

"GIVE HIM BACK!" Kakarott screamed, hoisting Raditz up by the battered remnants of his cuirass.

"Give him back!" The younger saiyan choked, tears now streaming down his face as his legs collapsed under him, still holding his brother's armor like it was a lifeline.

"Kakarott. Brother."

"Why? You sent him off alone! Into space!"

For what seemed like the hundredth time that day, Raditz supposed he shouldn't be surprised. This world's primitive rocketry based vessels would make any extraterrestrial travel extremely perilous, and Kakarott certainly wouldn't have any way knowing otherwise.

"He's going to be fine brother, I sent him to Father. He'll grow into a warrior you can be proud of."

"Yes, I've been meaning to ask about that." a harsh voice cut in from Raditz's scouter.

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_A/N: Once again sorry about the wait (College finals. nuff said). I also apologize if Raditz seems too "nice" compared to his behavior in canon; in my mind he's still just as much of a dick, but he's also in a very different headspace regarding his brother. _

_About his comments in regards to Gohan's mental health; this is an actual thing that happens sometimes, with the example I usually use being wolfdogs. _

_Domestic dogs (_Canis lupus familiaris_) are technically a subspecies of grey wolf (_Canis lupus_). However, the behavior of the two is very different even from birth, and while one could make reasonably educated predictions about the behavior of a pure wolf or pure dog, with a crossbreed things get a little iffy. For instance, you might get an animal that looks like a dog but acts like a wolf or vice versa, or the really nasty one, an animal with a wolf's predatory disposition, and a dog's total lack of fear toward humans (Some scientists hypothesise that violent attacks by wolfdogs may have been the inspiration of some werewolf myths)._

_This certainly isn't guaranteed to happen (when I lived up by the Canadian border, there was a couple half a mile down the road who owned a wolfdog which was perfectly well behaved, if slightly antisocial), but it's common enough that you would be hard pressed to find one that would make a good pet. _

_With a saiyan - human hybrid you would also have to consider that while they may look extremely similar, their biology and behavior would be vastly different. Humans evolved primarily as communal foragers and scavengers who also engage in opportunistic hunting, as opposed to saiyans, whose behavior is more indicative of a pack predator that grazes when prey is scarce. This translates to massive difference in social norms and hierarchy. _

_While overt violence and physical fitness do play a major role in human politics, greater importance, especially nowadays, often falls on the control of information and the manipulation of other key players. With saiyans I imagine it would be the reverse; they certainly have no shortage of schemers, but they're also a lot less shy about just beating the shit out of each other (though this probably also has something to do with the fact that their society is basically a clan based pseudo-feudal monarchy, with the monarchy part being a relatively recent development)._

_One of the things I'm actually the most excited about in this fic is using the little bits the show gave us to try and extrapolate an entire culture and history for the saiyans (or at least enough to pass inspection). Yes I did grow up reading Tolkien and Pratchett, why do you ask? Speaking of, Terry Pratchett passed away recently, which sadly means no more _Discworld_. Fuck. Also, the website started eating my line breaks again, so I had to improvise._

_Anyway, kind of got sidetracked for a while there, but here are the _**Power Levels: **

_Goku (with training weights): 396 normal, 1656 enraged_

_Goku (no training weights): 450 normal, 1710 enraged_

_Gohan: 225 calm (though he doesn't know how to tap into it at will yet),1225 enraged_

_Piccolo: 425 with weights, 475 without_


	5. Chapter Three: The Enemy of My Enemy

This is a non profit, fan based story. Dragonball, Dragonball Z, and Dragonball GT are all owned by Funimation, Toei Animation, Fuji TV and Akira Toriyama. Please support the official release.

Author's Note: Sorry for the wait, spent the whole summer trying (and failing) to get a job, and then these last few weeks college has really been kicking my ass. And fair warning; not all the scenes in this chapter take place in strictly chronological order. Also, I just realized that I completely forgot to write in the scene where Bardock gets his headband. But yes, he does have it.

Chapter Three: The Enemy of My Enemy

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"Yes, I've been meaning to ask about that." a harsh voice cut in from Raditz's scouter, leaving the mercenary frozen in horror. "You see, I've just finished reviewing the past hour or so of your scouter feed, and find myself disappointed in a surprisingly varied number of ways."

"Pr-Prince Vegeta, sir." Raditz stammered. "I-"

"Save your blubbering and excuses, fool."

"My lord, please. I-"

"So," Vegeta continued, now ignoring his subordinate entirely, "this is how you repay my years of generosity. You betray my trust in favor of a crippled failure and my weakling coward of a brother?

Not to mention that if Frieza gets wind of any of this he'll have every last one of us put to death. I suppose we'll just have to tell him you've gone AWOL and deal with you ourselves. I'd ask you to not bother running, but it looks like you've already taken care of that problem yourself."

Yamcha thought the saiyan was doing a rather good impression of a dying fish, despite his seeming inability to respond. Goku was staring at Raditz in shock, His mind already strained by the chaotic events of the preceding day.

"Though, it will take us at least a year to get there, so if your brother really has as much potential as you think, then I suggest you put him on a proper training regiment. I do prefer there be at least some struggle, though I expect you'll end up being a disappointment in that regard as well."

The connection went dead. For several seconds no one spoke, until Yamcha broke the silence;

"Well . . . _fuck._"

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Consciousness came slowly to Gohan, arriving in bits and pieces as he struggled to open his eyes. His mind remained fogged for several minutes as he blinked repeatedly to clear his vision. It took him several more moments to recognize the interior of the spherical contraption Raditz had stuffed him into, but this was quickly shoved aside when his gaze fell on the the porthole set into the exit hatch.

Jarred from his lethargy, he unbuckled and pushed himself upright, only to send himself bouncing off the ceiling. Seizing a hold of the crash webbing, he managed to regain control of his momentum, and carefully maneuvered his way over to the porthole.

No matter what angle he looked out from (and without gravity there were no shortages), all he could see was an endless black void, speckled with the dim, infinitely distant glow of far-away stars. These he scanned desperately, searching for anything even resembling a familiar pattern. There were none, not that the large, blue ringed violet blurr obscuring the center of his field of view was helping any. The boy wracked his brain, for every scrap of information he had ever found in an astronomy textbook, but eventually admitted defeat; he had no idea where he was.

As the reality of his predicament set in, Gohan began to panic, curling into the fetal position and sinking into full on hyperventilation.

"Warning: Current oxygen consumption exceeds maximum capacity of onboard atmosphere recycling systems. Please remain calm and reduce your respiration rate." said an overly relaxed feminine voice.

The demi-saiyan yelped and managed to send himself ricocheting off the walls once again.

"You appear to be experiencing severe disorientation; recommendation: Take your seat and reapply crash webbing." The voice said disjointedly, vaguely reminding Gohan of a text to speech program.

Still gasping in terror, he struggled to comply, wrestling himself back into the seat with some difficulty.

"Warning: oxygen consumption still exceeds safe levels. Reduce your respiration rate, or application of sedatives will be initiated."

Gohan closed his eyes, and focused solely on his breathing. He may have never done any actual martial arts training with his dad, but he had still been allowed to learn several basic relaxation and meditation techniques. Once his breathing and heartbeat had slowed to a semi-normal rate, the demi-saiyan opened his eyes, pointedly _not _thinking about the hard vacuum less than a meter away on all sides, and addressed the voice from earlier;

"Com-Computer?" He guessed tentatively.

"Registering query prompt; please state query."

"Can you take me back home?" the seven year-old asked hopefully.

"Terminology: 'Home' not recognized. Please rephrase query."

"Take me back to Earth."

"Terminology: 'Earth' not recognized. Please rephrase query."

Gohan took several deep breaths to keep from panicking again, before thinking over possible solutions for several moments. After a pause he spoke up again:

"Computer. Return to previous destination."

"Cannot comply. User: (Name not registered) is not authorised to reset destination. Would you like to sign in as a different user?"

"Yes please."

"Cannot comply. User: (Name not registered) is not authorised to sign out without prior authorisation from official personnel."

"Then what _am_ I 'authorised' to do?" the seven year-old snapped.

"User: (Name not registered) is listed as: confined for their own safety, pending official reprimand. User: (Name not registered) is authorised to request provisions and amenities necessary for the survival of a 31.59 kilogram juvenile male saiyan."

Gohan slumped back in defeat.

"Can I at least register my name?"

"Cannot comply. User: (Name not registered) is not authorised to alter personnel files."

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"Just hand it over!"

"Why?"

"What's it to you? _You're_ going to learn how to sense energy the old fashioned way. So give it!"

"What are you going to do with it?"

"None of your business!"

"It most definitely _IS_ my business; it's _MY _scouter!"

"Fine! I'm _hoping_ I can use the tech in this thing to start scientifically analyzing and weaponizing ki."

"It won't work. Nothing you could possibly make will be capable of leaving a scratch on Nappa or Turles, much less Vegeta."

"_Challenge Accepted._"

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"I think this is a horrible idea." Grinner stated pleasantly from his chair near the forward viewport.

"No one asked you." Bardock grumbled.

"Whether or not it's a good idea, it's what we're doing." Sabre interjected "Bossman gave the say-so, and I don't argue with Bossman without a good reason."

"Fishface here _does_ kind of have a point though." Chirpo croaked, gesturing at Grinner with his free hand. "I'd wager a month's pay that the PTO got that message as well, and they know we'll come running. If they've got any sense they'll have an entire squadron of pursuit corvettes waiting for us at the rendezvous."

Leaning in the corner with his arms crossed and one eyebrow cocked, Tarble finally spoke up.

"Except only we know where the rendezvous will be; since he had no idea where we were, Raditz just sent his attack ball in the general direction of the frontier. And considering the remoteness of the Sol system, it'll take quite a while for _anyone_ to intercept it. I'm reasonably certain that if we push her, the _Demonslayer_ can make it in a week and a half at most, well before any PTO forces." The former prince finished, glancing over at Sabre for confirmation.

"Closer to two, with our auxiliary heat sinks out of commission. Without replacements we won't be able to run either the engines or the slipstream generators at full capacity for more than a few minutes at a time, and that with good breaks between to cool down."

"Two weeks? I suppose that is cutting it a little close. But we still can't afford _not to_."

"I still think this is a terrible idea." Grinner repeated cheerily.

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Yamcha dropped quietly to the grass outside the Son homestead. Mustering his courage, he called out:

"Chi-chi! We need to talk!"

"I'm not dealing with you cronies right now!" She retorted from the back yard.

"I need to train so I can go rescue my baby boy, since _someone_ is too busy buddying up to certain kidnapping genocidal maniac to be a proper father."

"Look Chi, I hate his guts too, the sonovabitch murdered Krillin. But this is bigger than any moralist arguments about past actions. The only thing that matters _now_ is that the rest of the Saiyans are gonna be here in a year, and if we don't stop them, they will kill _literally_ _everyone_. Every last man, woman, and child on the entire planet.

Which means that we need to do everything in our power, no matter how vile or reprehensible, in order to stop them. Even _Piccolo_ is teaming up with us on this one."

Chi-chi remained silent for several moments. Cautiously, Yamcha continued his attempts at persuasion.

"You know, everything in our power doesn't just mean allying ourselves with violent psychopaths; we could use every hand we can get."

A pause.

"FINE! But don't you _DARE_ expect me to be friends with him."

"I don't think _anybody_ expects that."

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"I told you guys this was a bad idea."

"_I _think you all owe me a month's pay."

"None of us called your bet."

"Not like you have a single credit to your name anyway, Grandpa."

"Keep calling me that and I'll shove your head up Grinner's ass."

"Why _my_ ass?"

"Because _you're_ the one who jinxed us."

"It's only _half_ a squadron of corvettes."

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"Proximity warning. Commencing emergency deceleration."

Despite the valiant efforts of the pod's inertial dampeners, Gohan was flung forward by the negative momentum, his crash webbing straining to restrain a body that weighed several times what it had on Earth. The edges of his vision blurred red as blood flooded his brain.

With another violent lurch, the young half-saiyan was slammed back into his seat as the pod dropped back to subluminal velocities. Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, Gohan finished waking up and groaned.

"What just happened?"

"An unidentified vessel was confirmed to be closing with this craft head on at 13.39 lightyears per hour at a distance of approximately 0.5 lightyears, and emergency deceleration was initiated.

The other vessel has since dropped out of slipstream and disappeared from sensor contact at an approximate range of 4.3 million kilometers. Two additional contacts, identified as PTO Commercial Defence Corps interceptors, have also been detected at approximately 7.5 lightyears, closing at 12.7 lightyears per hour."

As the demi-saiyan's head reeled from reflexively attempting to calculate what all those numbers meant in relation to each other, the computer spoke up again:

"Hail received from unknown vessel- . . . Command Override. Initiating standard docking procedure."

Gohan gulped audibly.

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_A/N: So yeah . . . it turns out the space travel in _DBZ _is just as over the top as the rest of the show. I crunched some numbers, and assuming (based on the shot of them buzzing over galactic center on their way to earth) Vegeta and Nappa started their year-long voyage from somewhere on the near side of the Canis Major Overdensity, then an attack ball has a cruising speed of roughly _25000 _times the speed of light! That's almost 3 lightyears per hour (2.854 to be more specific). And these ships appear to be _relatively slow _compared to larger vessels. _


End file.

Dragon Ball Z, Adventure, Drama