"We're old," announced Kohlrabi, glaring at her gray hair in the mirror.

"We've still got some life left in us," I replied, smiling at my wife. There were wrinkles on her face and she was getting kind of chubby, but she was still beautiful.

"We're old and fat and weak, Oca," she insisted. "Look at our liver spots and saggy boobs. We have to go to that Earth planet and kill him now, before we get even weaker."

By "him" she meant Vegeta, our prince. His father the king (also called Vegeta) exiled us from our home planet (also also called Vegeta) and killed all of our offspring in case they turned out to be "deviants" like us. We hardly ever saw the brats anyway, I don't even remember who the fathers of mine were, but Kohlrabi was really upset to lose hers and she vowed to get revenge by killing all of the king's descendants. We had been training ever since, in all kinds of painful ways with many different strange people we met as we traveled the universe. At least we had managed to acquire a nice big spaceship along the way so we weren't stuck in those little Saiyan pods anymore. And on one of the planets we'd visited, I had become Kohlrabi's wife and she had become mine.

In the end our exile had turned out to be pretty lucky for us, as Planet Vegeta was destroyed by the galactic overlord Frieza soon after we left. Most members of our race had been killed, including the king, but there were still a few left alive on an otherwise-unimportant planet called Earth. Including the king's son, Prince Vegeta. I had tried to convince Kohlrabi that with the king dead revenge was no longer necessary, but she insisted that it was.

I knew I wasn't going to be able to change her mind. I tried anyway. Unlike most Saiyans I didn't particularly enjoy fighting, although I was good at it. I would have preferred it if Kohlrabi would give up on killing Vegeta and she and I could just find a nice planet to settle down on.

"What if we're not strong enough?" I asked her, "You know they predicted he would grow up to be even stronger than his father. What if he's stronger than us?"

"I bet he can't do the golden hair thing. We're probably stronger than him at the moment but we won't be for much longer, so we need to go to Earth and kill him now. While we still can."

Kohlrabi had discovered "the golden hair thing" when we were ambushed by some really nasty space pirates and almost killed. Her transformation saved both of our lives, and she made me learn how to do it as soon as possible so I would be able to protect myself.

It was very probable that Vegeta could in fact do it too, we'd heard rumours that something that sounded very much like "the golden hair thing" was how the Saiyan who defeated Frieza managed to do that, but I didn't really feel like arguing about it. Vegeta probably was slightly stronger than Kohlrabi, but with me helping her I was sure we could defeat him if we really had to.

I sighed, and went to the bridge to set a course for Earth. I was sure Kohlrabi would have done that herself before talking to me about it if she could, but she thought of nothing but fighting and had never bothered to learn how to fly the ship.

*

When we reached Earth's solar system, we left the spaceship on a nearby planet. Our spaceship had an auxiliary vehicle, a small shuttlecraft with a cloaking device which would hopefully help prevent Vegeta from finding us before we found him. We took that to the planet our fellow Saiyans lived on, suppressing our power levels so he wouldn't find us that way.

When we reached the planet we got out, and started to look for Vegeta by surreptitiously investigating some of the larger powers we could sense on the planet. There were several big enough that they probably didn't belong to this planet's native inhabitants, a weak species that called themselves humans. The first two high power levels we investigated turned out to be a young Saiyan boy playing in a forest and a teenage Saiyan in a class at a high school.

The next two were together and they were Vegeta and a little boy with purple hair, who seemed to be his son, at a hardware store with a human woman who seemed to be the child's mother. Vegeta was complaining. The human woman was telling him that she needed his help to carry all the parts she would need to repair his gravity room, so he should stop whining and put up with it.

Kohlrabi and I hid behind some shelves and watched them.

"We probably don't really need to kill the prince's kid," she said softly.

"What," I sighed, frustrated. "Kohlrabi, you vowed to kill all of the king's descendents. All of them. If you don't kill the kid you may as well not kill Vegeta either."

"We definitely need to kill Vegeta, but his son can't be more than eight years old. I don't want to kill a little kid."

"Vegeta was younger than eight when his father killed your son and daughters. Why kill him but not the boy?"

She didn't reply, just stood there looking hesitant.

"I'll kill the kid," I told her, "You're stronger than me and I'm sure the kid will be weaker than Vegeta, so you can kill Vegeta and I'll kill the kid. Then we can go look for a nice planet to retire to."

"OK," she said, but she still didn't look too happy about it.

"Should we do it right now?" I asked.

"Sure. Why not."

We transformed and attacked, knocking over shelves of hardware. Humans screamed as I kicked the little boy in the face, knocking him through the wall of the store. I heard Vegeta swear, and then Kohlrabi was knocked through the wall after the kid. I had been right, Vegeta could transform too. And he was stronger than I had thought he would be.

"I don't know who you are, but you'll pay for attacking my son!" he snapped at me.

I turned around to defend myself from him but something hit me from behind before he even moved towards me. I looked and saw that it was the child, his hair now spiky and golden.

"No way, that little brat can transform too?" I muttered to myself. The little kid seemed to be stronger than me, maybe about as strong as Kohlrabi. We were definitely in trouble.

"Get your mother out of here, Trunks! I can handle these old hags by myself!" Vegeta easily knocked Kohlrabi away as she tried to hit him again, then he lunged at me.

He was so fast I didn't have a chance to do anything. He punched me, kicked me, and hit me with energy attacks over and over again, and I knew I was going to die. I was vaguely aware of Kohlrabi trying to attack him, and him hurting her too. I didn't want us to die like this. We should have died in our sleep, in bed together on some beautiful planet with no fighting. Not like this...

"Vegeta! Stop! That's enough!" said a voice—one I'd heard before, it was the teenage Saiyan we'd seen at the high school—and just before I lost consciousness I looked up and saw that the teenager was wearing the stupidest outfit ever, with a silly helmet and a silly cape, and he was holding Vegeta's arm and trying to prevent him from killing us.