Set about two weeks after In the Rain.
"You'll need these tonight."
Raditz looked up from his breakfast to see Vegeta holding his hand out, a pair of odd pills in his palm.
"Only if you want to go outside, though," the shorter saiyan added, "If you stay inside and keep your windows shut, you'll be fine."
"What's going on tonight?" Kakarrot looked up from his food curiously, "Is something coming an' we gotta hide from it? Is it a strong enemy? Can we fight it instead of hiding? There's three of us, and you're really strong, and I bet that Yamsha guy would-"
"Our going to fight this would be kinda incredibly counter-productive," Vegeta looked awkward, "You see, it's the full moon tonight and- wait, you guys… change… when you look at the full moon too, right?"
He looked so worried that Raditz couldn't help giving a snort of laughter. "It's called the Oozaru form, and, yes, all saiyans who still have their tails are capable of taking it by looking at the full moon or an appropriate equivalent."
"…appropriate equivalent?" Vegeta asked nervously.
"Hn, guess you wouldn't know about it." Raditz held a hand up and formed a sphere of ki. "This is the first part of the False Moon technique. I toss this up and let it mix with the atmosphere, and the light it makes would simulate the lunar radiation necessary for the transformation."
Vegeta looked a little panicked at this. "Oh kami, don't throw it, don't throw it!"
Raditz snorted again and dismissed the orb, but Kakarrot responded before he could.
"Oh don't worry, Raditz used to summon the moon ball all the time on the ship without activating it, he's good at dismissing it. He did it whenever he was feeling mopey or-"
"Shut UP, brat!" Raditz snapped, whacking his brother on the head. Kakarrot clutched his bruised skull and glared at him.
"Evil older brother!"
"Punk-ass little brother! Anyway, you don't have to worry about us turning Oozaru and rampaging," the tall saiyan turned back to Vegeta, "I learned control before Vegetasei- before. And I taught Kakarrot a few years ago."
The should-be prince stared at him blankly. "Rampage? Why would you do that? I was just worried you'd get caught unawares and break your ship or my house by mistake."
"…Vegeta, what happens when you look at the full moon?"
He shrugged. "Oh, you know – turn into a giant mon- er, 'Oozaru,' have to sit on the beach all night to make sure I don't squash or break anything, retrieve everything I can that was in my pockets in the morning and find some new clothes. Really inconvenient, really boring. Why, what happens to you?"
Raditz stared at him blankly for a moment, then stood up. "Okay, that's it – I'm looking your attack pod over."
"My what now?"
"Your attack pod, the vessel you arrived in," Raditz disappeared into his ship for a minute, then came out again with a small bag that clinked and his scouter, into which he was slotting a small disc. "Is it nearby? It would have been spherical and metal."
"Oh! You mean my nest!" Vegeta blinked, "It's inside. Why?"
"Because I want to know exactly what went wrong with it," Raditz snapped, "Losing your memories? Fine, I can accept that, blows to the head happen. But without proper training Oozaru state should be at most a hazy dream of destroying everything and waking up to find out you did, not a minor inconvenience!" he made his way towards the house grimly.
"Hey, wait a moment!" Vegeta followed him with a slightly worried expression, "You're not going to take it all the way apart, are you? Only I don't have another place to sleep, and I'm kinda attached to it…"
"You sleep in it?!" Raditz gave him a disbelieving look over one shoulder, then shook his head, "What am I saying, of course you do. And I'm just planning going to open some panels and take a look at the insides; I shouldn't need to do more."
"Don't worry, Geta," Kakarrot added, patting his arm reassuringly, if somewhat greasily, "Raditz is a great mechanic. And even if he does have to take it apart, he'll be able to put it together again better than it was before!"
"I don't want it better, I want it the same," Vegeta grumbled as they walked into the house.
Kakarrot waved a dismissive hand. "He can probably do that too. Might be harder, though – poor repair jobs make his hands itch."
OoOoOoOoOoO
Half an hour or so later, Bulma landed in the clearing in her jetcopter. She really needed to get a proper lab set up out here as well as her capsule house – these trips between Capsule Corp and the village were getting annoying.
The first thing she heard when she exited her vehicle were voices coming from Geta's house, which became distinct as she opened the door.
"How do you still have higher brain functions?!"
"That's not very nice."
"No, seriously, how? Whoever did maintenance on this last was either an idiot or really was trying to kill you! There's cracks in the exhaust tubes, the fuel lines, and the air filtration system, meaning you'd have had a mix of exhaust and fuel vapor flowing straight into the main chamber, along with the supposedly fresh air. A combination of fumes like that – you should be brain-dead, if not dead dead!"
Bulma walked in to see Geta and Kakarrot watching Raditz fiddle with wires and tubes inside Geta's nest sphere, one of the metal panels flipped up.
"And this wiring!" Raditz added with a level of indignation that intrigued the blue-haired woman, "Look at it! I've got better stuff on the Frag, and it's been over a year since I could get my hands on any decent quality parts! And these nav crystals! They're not even red, they're pink! What were they thinking?!" his tail was lashing angrily as he continued his diatribe.
"Maybe that's why I can control my Oozaru state?" Geta suggested from where he sat perched on the table.
Raditz snorted derisively, "It doesn't work like that."
"Well then maybe I learned how before I lost my memories and it stuck, like with the kata."
"…that's actually a more likely possibility. But you shouldn't be able to sit still in it – not easily," the tall saiyan growled, not turning from the vessel, "It's a form that's meant for battle, for action! Sitting still in it should be like drinking a jug of twerig and trying to meditate afterwards!"
"What's twerig?" Bulma asked, filing the 'Oozaru' thing away for later and going to look over Raditz's should as best she could while avoiding his tail.
"It's a stimulating drink, extremely bitter," he glared over his shoulder at her, "And when did you get here?"
"Just now. So this twerig stuff is like space coffee?"
"How should I know?" he scowled, then turned back to the pod, possibly to find more things to be indignant about.
Bulma circled around to try and get a better look at what he was doing, then squeaked as Geta caught her under the armpits and lifted her on top of it, hovering over her to hold her steady on the domed surface.
"Warn me next time," the blue-haired scientist grumbled, but she looked down at what Raditz was doing eagerly enough. This was her first time seeing the inner workings of the net – Geta had always been adamant about not letting her open it up before, in case she couldn't put it back together or (and she suspected this was the real reason) in case she ran off with bits of it. "What's with the scouter? I wouldn't have thought the ship had ki. Besides, I thought Geta was teaching you how to sense it."
Raditz glanced up at her with a bemused look. "Scouters aren't just for sensing energy. They're also communication devices, though that function's disabled on this one, and can be used to read data discs, which is what I'm using it for now." Reaching out, he swung the panel closed again, then fiddled with it a little, presumably securing it in place. "Anyway, this certainly explains why the prince-"
"Geta."
"The prince," Raditz repeated, glaring at the youth in question, "Is so-"
"Brain damaged?" Geta interrupted sweetly.
"-different." Raditz finished, still glaring and casually blocking Bulma's hand when she reached for his scouter. She kept going for it, un-dissuaded, so he refocused the glare on her. "Cut that out!"
"No way! That thing was neat before I found out it had blueprints or technical manuals or whatever you were looking at with it! And if you think I'm going to pass up a chance to look at genuine spacecraft data, then you don't know me very well!"
"…we've only been here seventeen days, I don't know you very well."
"Irrelevant, and also your own fault for not paying attention."
"You haven't even been here for half the time!" the tall saiyan protested, getting up and backing away a step, which took him out of Bulma's reach.
"Hey, that's cheating! Geta, let me down!" sliding off the nest/attack pod, Bulma followed the retreating figure. "And is it my fault that Capsule Corp relies on my genius to maintain its world-class status in the scientific and technological communities? Now gimme the scouter, monkey-man!"
To her surprise, Raditz and Kakarrot both growled at her last comment, and whereas his tone had been annoyed before, now it was dangerous. "Don't call us monkeys. I'll let you get away with it once, because the prince likes you and you couldn't have known, but it's a bad slur to call a saiyan that. Don't do it again."
Bulma blinked and backed up a step, as though just remembering that the man in front of her was not human and was strong enough to snap her neck with less effort than she's snap a toothpick. Then her jaw firmed and she stepped forwards again, one hand on her hip, the other extended before her demandingly. "Fine, gimme the scouter, saiyan-man."
Raditz stared at her for a moment, then snorted and handed it over. "Not like you'll be able to read it, anyway."
"I'm a genius, I'll figure it out." Bulma slipped the device on, then gave a start. "Oh. Well, that's convenient."
"What is?"
"The writing system you're using – it's Standard," Bulma began to smile. "I can read Standard."
The tall saiyan didn't respond for a moment while the blue-haired scientist played with the scouter's controls and made excited noises. Then he did. "All right, how in Dagore's name do you know Universal Standard?! This planet doesn't have space travel yet and it's too out of the way for regular visitors or would-be conquerors – that is one of the reasons I chose it!"
"What?" Bulma pulled herself away from an engine schematic with an almost physical wrench to focus on the man before her.
"How do you know Universal Standard?!"
"Oh, so that's what its full name is! Geta taught it to me, a bit over a year ago now." Bulma responded simply.
"And how did he know he knew it?!" Raditz demanded.
"It's what my label's written in," Geta piped up from where he's reseated himself on his table. "And I still knew how to talk when I woke up, so I guess reading is similar? Oh, speaking of which, we should probably teach you Chikyuugo, since you're going to be here for awhile."
"Your label?"
Kakarrot was the one who asked this time. He'd gone back outside while Bulma examined the contents of the scouter and returned with a couple plates of food. He'd been eating them as the grown-ups discussed things.
In response, Geta reached deep into the pocket where he kept it and pulled out the chain and disc he still carried most places, worn shiny from years of being kept in various pockets. "I was wearing it when I woke up. I think it's a nametag or something."
"…it's an ID badge, the kind Frieza's soldiers generally wear," Raditz said quietly, the sight of the tag dispelling his frustration. He walked over and lifted the small disc from where it hung dangling on its chain, twisting it back and forth. He smiled when he saw the melted side and its carved sigil. "This side should have information on it – your identification code, your rank in Frieza's forces, your formal title. You must have melted all that off and carved this instead."
"What is it, anyway?" Geta held the tag up to eye level so he could look at the sigil, "I've never been able to figure it out, and it's kinda really annoying, not knowing."
The taller saiyan chuckled. "You won't like it, but that's the crest of the royal house of Vegetasei, your highness."
"…still not buying the prince thing."
Raditz glowered at him. "What do I have to do to prove that I'm telling the truth about this?!"
Geta shrugged, totally unrepentant. "I wouldn't bother, to be honest – I'm told I can be ungodly stubborn about certain issues."
"I supposed I shouldn't be surprised at that – that's how you were as a brat, from what I remember hearing. Stubborn, proud, powerful, totally confident in your own strength, a model saiyan." Raditz grumbled, though he was struggling not to smile. "I imagine there aren't many would dare alter their badge like that. You must have done it in the pod before you lost consciousness or shortly before you were sent on your mission."
Geta tilted his head to the side, eyeing Raditz. "You don't act like how you described."
He looked away. "I'm not a model saiyan."
"Yeah, he's the pride of the saiyan race!" Kakarrot spoke up again, expression innocent except for a wicked gleam in his eye.
Raditz pounced faster than Kakarrot could dodge and grabbed him by the head, lifting him to eye level. "We're planet-side, brat, so I can't throw you out the airlock, but don't think that means you're safe."
"Prove it!" Kakarrot challenged, arms folded.
"Fine! Excuse us a moment." Raditz walked out of the house and took off, still holding his brother by the head.
About twenty minutes later, Geta was starting to get worried. And he wasn't sure if Bulma had noticed the other two had left yet. And then, just as he was about to go after them, the brothers returned, dripping wet and smelling like the sea. Raditz looked smug and Kakarrot was sulking.
"He proved it."
"So, why all the different schematics?"
The three saiyans all looked at the blue-haired scientist, but Geta was the one to respond.
"I don't suppose you noticed Kakarrot and Raditz left for awhile there and are now dripping seawater on the floor?"
"Really?" Bulma gave them a cursory once-over. "So they are."
"…have you been paying attention to anything else at all since you put that thing on?"
"Not really, no. It's been mostly fight-y boy stuff that, quite frankly, I don't care about." Bulma shrugged. "Now what's with all the schematics? Only two of these ships look anything like yours, and there's plans for at least six others as well as them and the nest pod plans on here. Why?"
"Because that's the disc that had the plans for the ship types I've integrated pieces of into the Frag's engines over the years."
"Ah. And 'the Frag' is your ship?"
"Yup!" Kakarrot answered first, "It's short for 'the Fragment of Vegetasei!'"
There was silence for a moment before Raditz spoke, avoiding everyone's eyes. "I was nine and feeling melodramatic, okay? And it's bad luck to change the proper name of a ship once it's been given, and the gods know we had enough of that without actively courting more!"
"And you understand how all this works?" Bulma gestured to the scouter, "All the machinery filed in here, you understand how it works?"
"I understand a lot more than that." Raditz pushed some wet hair out of his face and watched her warily.
"Cool. Show me." Bulma started out of the house, still wearing the scouter.
"Show you what?"
"The Frag's engine – show me how it all fits together." Bulma turned around, her fists on her hips. "You say you've got a ship that has pieces of all these other ships incorporated into it and it still flies? Prove it."
Raditz scowled and flared his ki, leaving him slightly crusted with salt but dry. "It flies a hell of a lot better than 'fine,' human!"
Bulma regarded him coolly and repeated. "Prove it."
Growling, Raditz shoved past her, heading for the Frag. Bulma followed with a smug swing in her hips that Geta didn't find at all distracting.
After he'd finished not being distracted, he turned to Kakarrot. "So… wanna spar?"
The small boy, who had still been looking somewhat sulky over getting dunked in the ocean, perked right up. "Yeah!"
Half an hour later, Yamcha arrived to train as well, and the spar developed into more of an extreme game of tag. The human male was still struggling to form ki blasts, but while training with Master Moo-shun had discovered a talent for using ki to bolster his speed, something the instructor had encouraged him to pursue. Yamcha was doing so enthusiastically – Turtle school focused on endurance and power, Crane, he had learned, specialized in elaborate techniques, and he was thinking, rather than try to combine the two concepts as he had vaguely been planning to, maybe he would take the Wolf Fang in a new direction instead – speed and precision. So far Yamcha was enjoying the process.
Two hours later still, all three were panting and sweaty (Geta had lowered his power level to midway between the other twos' in order to get a good workout), and Raditz and Bulma emerged from the ship again.
"Well I'll admit, you know what you're doing around an engine," the blue-haired woman said cheerfully.
"Damn straight I do, not like I could reliably get anyone else to fix it if it broke," Raditz snarked, though he looked rather pleased with himself. He'd actually come to enjoy working on the Frag over the years, and a goodly portion of the data discs he'd acquired during that time were blue prints and such for various bits of tech.
"Right," Bulma finally took off Raditz's scouter and handed it back to him, "I'll give you four months. This will be a grace period during which you will acclimatize yourself to being here, learn Chikyuugo, and familiarize yourself with our tools and technology. After that, you'll help me out with projects when I've got a lab set up here – your official title will be my personal technical assistant. Hey Yams, hey Geta, sorry, gotta run – meetings to get to, scientific laws that need reminding whose bitch they are. Oh, and Raditz?" she smirked over her shoulder at him as her jetcopter decapsulized, "What that all boils down to is 'you're hired.' Ciao!"
Then she hopped into her aircraft and was gone in a blast of air and dust.
Raditz blinked, feeling a little blind-sided. "What… just happened?"
"You just impressed the woman who is going to be head of the world's scientific community in a few years, if she isn't already, and landed a job with the biggest technology company on the planet." Yamcha punched him in the arm lightly. "Congratulations!"
Raditz blinked again. "…seriously?"
"I know, right?" Geta came up, wiping his brow, "I always forget that Bulma really is almost as important as she thinks she is. Don't tell her I said that, though – I've got her convinced I still haven't made the connection between her and Capsule Corp. Speaking of which," he reached into a pocket and pulled out a small case, from which he took a pair of capsules. "Back to what started this whole escapade – it's full moon tonight, have a preventative measure!"
"What is it?" Kakarrot took one of the capsules and sniffed it.
Geta grinned and pressed the button on the end of the capsule he still held, then tossed it in the air. There was a puff of smoke and the distinctive 'poi' sound that helped give hoi-poi capsules their name, then Geta hopped up and caught the handle of the open umbrella the capsule had turned into as it gently drifted down. He leaned it on one shoulder like a lady on a promenade, grinning. "Capsulized umbrellas, for all your moonlight-blocking needs." He twirled it around.
The other two saiyans gaped at him.
"What, don't you have anything like that in space?" Yamcha asked curiously.
"That would be a big no," Kakarrot decapsulized his own umbrella, examining it curiously. "Does it go small again, like Bulma's machines? I thought it only worked for tech!"
"Yup, push that button there," Geta pointed, "And you can put pretty much anything in a capsule – they're not hard to get, and most of the simple ones are pretty cheap. But, more importantly, can we keep Bulma from finding out there are no capsules in space?"
Yamcha shook his head sadly. "I doubt it – if they say they have an equivalent, she'll want examples, and silence only works so well with her."
"She's going to be so smug."
"Oh yeah."
"They're not even her inventions, her dad made them!"
"And has a silly detail like that ever stopped her in the past?"
"True."
'So, why do you need to avoid the moonlight?"
Geta faltered for a brief moment, then turned to smile at Yamcha. "What are you talking about?"
"Oh~ no," the ex-bandit folded his arms, "You don't get to wriggle out of this one. You were talking to Raditz and Kakarrot about preventative measures and avoiding the moonlight. Why would you need to do that? You've been out at night when the moon's out before, I've seen you."
"It's a full moon tonight," Raditz responded when Geta squirmed and didn't answer, "He was making sure we wouldn't cause problems in our Oozaru state."
Yamcha's brows drew together in confusion. "What's 'ozaru?' A saiyan thing, I'm assuming?"
"It's the great ape form," Raditz answered, and at the blank look this got him turned sharply to Geta, eyes narrowed. "They don't know about it, do they?" the should-be prince shook his head, not meeting his eyes, "Then they find out tonight. I'm not getting thrown off the planet because this comes out at a bad time!" he turned back to Yamcha, "Contact the woman, let her know her presence is needed tonight." He hesitated, then added, "Is there an open area nearby? We'll need to go there to do this. It will need to be large – several miles at least."
"There's a place at the opposite end of the jungle," Geta's voice was subdued but audible, "I've never been there, but I've seen maps of the area – it's the edge of the Diablo Desert. We should be fine out there." He glanced at Raditz and bit his lip. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"
"No," Raditz gave him a level look, "But it is necessary."
"…can I come with you guys on the Frag if I get thrown off the planet, too?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Geta, but I highly doubt we're going to react that badly," Yamcha interjected, a little miffed at the shorter man's lack of faith in him and Bulma.
Geta just gave him a gloomy look. "I'm going to hold you to that."
OoOoOoOoO
Heh heh heh… looks like it's time for another secret to be revealed, Geta… Also, holy crap, a two-parter!
Anyway, this is one of the big reasons Geta is so different than Vegeta – like Goku, he's also got brain damage, though it's a different type and thus manifests in different ways. One way is, of course, the memory loss, another actually is his ability to sit still in Oozaru form. Also, if you've been paying really close attention, you may have noticed that he sometimes jumps from one emotion to the next very abruptly, with little to no transition between them – this is the reason for that as well. I'll admit, Geta is a spazzy, slightly cracky character, but I have put a lot of thought into him, and why he behaves as he does. ;)
I put a lot of thought into this whole thing, actually – I've got a height and age chart, with notes for characters like Kakarrot who are going to be growing. I've got two timelines as well – the canon timeline and the one for this universe, so I can keep certain events like the Budokai on schedule and figure out when everything happens in relation to everything else. All these things I had to go out and make – it's surprisingly hard to find a detailed timeline for DB and DBZ, accurate height and age charts, too. The passage of time is very important, and I actually keep pretty close track of it when I'm writing stories that cover longer periods of it – I had a simple one for A Ghost's Story, too.
I really enjoy the idea of Raditz as a mechanic – it's something that's very easy for me to picture him doing, so he's generally at least a little savvy in this area in any world I put him in, even if it's not shown. Not always, but generally. In case you're wondering, no, he's not on Bulma's level of genius, but he has grown up with space technology, which is a lot more advanced than the majority of Earth technology, and he's worked with it all his life to varying degrees. Therefore his innate understanding of it and how it can be used is much more advanced than most peoples' on Earth. Not to mention, in this universe at least, he is very skilled with it, and enjoys working with it a lot. (also, just fyi, he is still wearing that red armband of his)
On a side note, it's interesting to me just how different Kakarrot and Raditz's skill sets are compared to the rest of the group's – they have no idea how human society works, even in regards to certain basic matters, and abilities that are ordinary to them are extraordinary to us. "So, yeah, then the whole ship rocked, which was how I could tell the leftward thrusters were off, so Kakarrot took over piloting while I went to fix it. …no, he was eight at the time. Yeah, he's been flying the Frag on his own since he was, like, six or something. Why, don't your six-year-olds know how to fly cars or anything?" 'cause, fun fact? Kakarrot's actually a better pilot than Raditz is – it freed him up to do more maintenance around the ship, navigate where they needed to go, and basically take care of both of them.
