"Eternal Dragon, I summon thee!"
Vegeta stirred a bit in irritation, his eye twitching as the seven large dragon balls laid before them unmoving. "Why the bloody hell isn't it working?"
"No, you have to summon Porunga in Namekian," said a green figure, taking the trio by surprise as it phased into view. "The Grand Elder sent me and I came as fast as I could."
"Hurry, we've not time!" exclaimed Vegeta as he clenched his fists. "The Ginyu Force will be here any minute now!"
"Takkaraputo popurunga pupirittoparo!" said Nail without a moment's hesitation, reciting the password that Guru had informed him of moments prior.
A bright light erupted from the orange balls, consuming everything in their vicinity with an intensity greater than any of Namek's three suns, before a seemingly-eternal darkness overtook the planet.
"Who has summoned me?" boomed a great muscular dragon - not too similar to Shenron, Krillin noted, but in many ways much more grandiose - as it escaped from the dragon balls, glowing bright like a candle in the dark. "I shall grant you any three wishes you desire."
"Make me immortal!" yelled Vegeta, desperate to get a word out.
The large dragon stared at him, unblinking.
"I believe that you must make your wish in Namekian should you wish Porunga to grant it," said Nail, calmly.
"So then we were never really in any danger at all!" said Gohan, appreciating the brilliance of the security behind Namek's dragon balls. "Frieza never would have been able to get his hands on his wish because a Namekian never would have helped him."
"Enough of this gibberish," growled Vegeta as he glanced to the lush green sky. He could sense the Ginyu's presence, they could have very well landed by now. "You heard me grean bean, hurry up and make the wish."
"Not so fast!" said Krillin. "Gohan first, then you… and then we get our friends back."
"I am beginning to grow impatient: speak now or forever remain silenced," said Porunga with a strong voice.
"Grr… fine, but, so help me, if you choose to betray me... I swear that I will blow this entire planet and any chance you have of bringing those pathetic friends of yours back to life to smithereens," said the prince as he crossed his arms. "Just pick up the pace already, we don't have much longer."
"Now that I think of it, Goku's on his way here and I sure would feel a lot more comfortable if he was the immorta-"
"Shut up, midget, or you'll be the first to go."
"... right. I guess that settles it, Nail, please ask Porunga to make Gohan, here, immortal," said Krillin, assuming the role of group leader for the time being.
The Namekian-turned-warrior complied with a nod. He turned to face the dragon and repeated the wish.
The dragon's eyes glowed a red bloodier than any ruby Vegeta had ever held before it spoke. "It has been done! Your wish has been granted. What is your next request?"
"Huh… I don't feel any different," said Gohan as he stretched his fingers around. "I hope it actually worked."
"To think that someone so young has been burdened with immortality, not knowing the curse that eternal life brings… it is truly a bleak situation," pondered Nail.
Krillin took a quick look at Vegeta, who menacingly raised a hand in the air, purple ki coating his fingertips as he threatened to make good on his promise. He gulped. "As much as I hate to do this… a deal is a deal and I guess we don't really have much choice now. Ask Porunga to make V-Vegeta immortal."
Nail's gaze hardened. He was well aware that the man in front of him had played no small role in the genocide of his people - at least one fifth of them had been slain by his hand alone - but he was not so naive as to believe that the child standing beside him could vanquish the menace that was Frieza by himself. Himself and the bald one weren't nearly powerful enough to even contemplate taking the eternal life for themselves. Vegeta was without a doubt the strongest of the four, and probably the most ruthless.
He didn't like it but it had to be done. Silently, he just prayed that by granting the Saiyan immortality he would not end up creating a monster worse than Frieza could ever become.
The words rolled off his tongue as though he were being forced to drink mud instead of water; they were rough and almost made him want to vomit but the proud Namekian didn't allow that to stop him from making the wish.
"It has been done," declared the ferocious dragon. "Now what is your third, and final, wish?"
Vegeta grinned, an eye on the halfling to the side of him, as he admired his body. "I want to take a moment to soak this in. This moment of greatness will become infamous, etched boldly into the book of time, for I, Vegeta, the prince of all Saiyans, have achieved immortality!"
"Don't get ahead of yourself," said Krillin, knowing that if he didn't keep Vegeta's ego in check they were all goners. "If you can feel an increase in power, that means there's no guarantee you'll be able to beat the Ginyu Force… just that you can't die."
The Saiyan straightened up a little bit but did not say another word.
"Alright, now Nail, ask him to wish all of the people who died on Earth because Vegeta and Nappa showed up back to life," said Krillin as he massaged his temples gently. He could also bring Goku to Namek more quickly but that would be a waste of a wish since, by his count, Goku was due to arrive any day now.
"You Earthlings already got your wish, so why don't you let me wish back all the Namekians? It's only fair," Nail pointed out.
"There's no point," said Gohan. "Even if we do bring all the Namekians back, there's nothing to stop Frieza and his goons from killing everyone here again. Plus, it means that Kami will come back to life so we can use our dragon balls to bring your people back when this whole mess is all over."
"Gee for all of your dad's fighting spirit that you have, you sure inherited just as much of Chichi's brains," said Krillin with a grin. "So let's get this over and done with so we can kick those Ginyu freaks back into the hole they crawled out of."
Nail sighed. "I suppose you're correct." With that said, he turned to the dragon and spoke the last wish.
"That wish is beyond my powers," said Porunga calmly. "It cannot be done for I can not revive multiple people."
"Oh no…" said Gohan as he looked down sadly at his now-immortal hands. So they had failed after all… coming to Namek hadn't helped bring their friends back at all.
"Seriously?" asked Krillin with no small amount of distaste in his voice before the bald man snapped his fingers. "Wait, I've got it! Nail ask him to revive Kami and Piccolo of Earth, since they're technically both two halves of the same soul we can revive them with a single wish."
"And then we can use the Earth's dragon balls to bring back the others!" exclaimed Gohan. "Please hurry, Nail, we need to make sure we bring Mister Piccolo back before the Ginyu Force arrive."
Nail nodded. "That would be wise." He glanced back at the pinnacle of Guru's legacy - the strongest eternal dragon in existence - before translating Krillin's words.
"It has been done! All three of your wishes have been granted and so I shall return to my eternal slumber," said Porunga as he disappeared back into the dragon balls with another burst of light. Suddenly, as though someone had lifted the curtains over a dark room, the darkness disappeared and Planet Namek returned to its beautiful and bright self. The seven balls - all the size of Gohan's head - hovered in the air, rotating in a circle for a moment before they all rocketed off to different corners of the planet, turning into solid stone as they did so.
Krillin didn't have a chance to blink before Vegeta fired off a powerful ki blast at Gohan. A few more followed and suddenly the young boy was engulfed in blasts that each felt powerful enough to blow up the sun. The former monk's face twisted in shock, unable to properly comprehend the scene in front of him.
"You bastard!" exclaimed Krillin, raising his hand as he prepared a Destructo Disk. He didn't care if Vegeta was immortal or not, the Saiyan's head was going to be cut straight off. "We had an agreement!"
Vegeta held out a glove palm. "Slow down there baldy, watch." He gestured towards Gohan, or at least where he had been standing before - the area was engulfed with far too much ki for him to see clearly.
Slowly the ki began to dissipate, evaporating like it was water being absorbed by a sponge, and the air cleared. No-one was standing in the midst of it. Gohan wasn't there.
He wasn't crouched behind a rock or something either. In fact, Krillin couldn't even sense his energy.
"I-I don't understand, I thought the dragon said that the wish had been granted!" exclaimed Krillin is disbelief. How was he going to explain this to Goku? To Chichi?
As if by magic, a dull yellow light - not too dissimilar to the main light bulb in the ship Krillin had arrived on Namek in - began to scan the air where Gohan had presumably been standing. It took its time, pulsating a strange amber colour, but steadily it began to… reconstruct?… Gohan's body, starting with his boots that were an exact replica of the ones Piccolo wore and slowly making its way up his body, finally reaching the bowl cut that was his hair - much to Krillin's relief - after about thirty seconds.
And then suddenly, Krillin found himself face-to-face with a grinning Gohan who was quivering slightly, glad that he wasn't following in the footsteps of his mentor too soon.
"It worked!"
"I'll be damned," said Vegeta, with a smirk. "That means that no matter what the Ginyu's do, we'll survive. Or at least us Saiyans will, I can't speak much for baldie over here."
"We'll be able to hold our own," said Nail resolutely, unsure whether or not he was glad the plan had worked.
"It also means that our power levels haven't suddenly increased - those blasts clearly killed your body was destroyed. We're still not out of the woods quite yet but we're pretty damn close," said Vegeta with a nod as he looked towards the sky. "Can you feel that?"
"Wow... that power, the only thing I've ever felt that's exceeded it was that one time when we were face to face with Frieza himself," said Krillin in awe.
"The most powerful one is undoubtedly Captain Ginyu. I don't know how we're going to handle him but we'll have to manage somehow. The weakest one is Guldo, he's a fat slob of shit and you should be able to deal with him quite easily. The other three are about the same. The brute, Recoome, is a heavy hitter- kind of like Nappa. The other two are meddlesome, fast and annoying so we're going to have to deal with them somehow."
"Shouldn't we wait for Goku to show up?" asked Krillin. "I mean, I know it's not much but it would certainly even the odds a little, right?"
Vegeta snorted. "Unless Kakarot has gone under one hell of a training regimen, we'll only make things worse for ourselves by waiting for that buffoon. Besides, the two of us - the only ones that really matter are immortal - so what could go wrong?"
"I guess you're right, at least at the end of the day - no matter what - Gohan will survive so things can't go too wrong," said Krillin with a bit of a nod, though he didn't really like the reasoning behind it all too much. "Here they come... they're about a minute or two away."
"One more thing," said Vegeta, speaking with the arrogance that only he could ever hope to exude. Krillin was sure that immortality had only made that undertone more pronounced in his voice. "Power up to your maximum for me, kid."
"Why?" asked Gohan, a little unsure whether or not it was a good idea to trust Vegeta. He seemed to be using him as a guinea pig of sorts to test out the limitations of his own immortality.
"Just do it, brat, we don't have much time left," said Vegeta, the irritation in his voice quickly overcoming the arrogance.
"Okay, if you say so," said Gohan, as he took a glance to Krillin who gave him a slight nod. WIth a grunt, Gohan clenched his fists and yelled as his aura flared to life, exploding outwards like a lion marking his territory with a great roar.
"Hmm… stronger than I thought but not quite strong enough to defeat me like I said earlier," mused Vegeta as he dropped into a defensive stance. He didn't know just how fast Burter actually was these days but he sure as hell wasn't going to let himself be caught by surprise. Not when his dream was so close to being realised - he was just a few nasty training sessions and some clever planning away from crushing Frieza's damn head under his foot. "Do you feel any different since you last powered up to your maximum?"
"I've not had a chance to since Guru gave me that boost," said Gohan, still unable to understand what the trickier of the two was up to. "My resting power level feels about the same since then."
"Hmm, so then I suppose you didn't get the boost after all," said Vegeta as a frown overcame his features but he soon shook it off. Immortality was the cake. Being able to exploit his race's ability to come back stronger from near-death would have just been the icing. Either way, it was still his birthday.
"You mean that boost you were telling us about back when you killed that pretty boy who was hanging around Frieza earlier?" asked Krillin, recollecting that he'd come to a realisation that the special boost had been what had pushed Goku so far above them all.
"Zarbon? Yes, immortality is good but for the present moment it means jackshit if Frieza can crush us one thousand times without so much as lifting an arm," said Vegeta as he readied himself to take on the Ginyu Force.
"I'm still pretty surprised that you haven't turned on us already. You got your wish, after all," remarked Krillin as he too lowered himself into a stance - one of the first that Roshi had taught him, and thus very familiar.
"The more of us to take on the Ginyu Force the better, though I'd be more than happy to oblige with your request after we've dispatched with them," said Vegeta without missing a beat.
"Don't get any bright ideas, remember that Gohan's an immortal and has the potential to grow much stronger than you," said Krillin. He had to hand it to the kid, he was, what, six years old? And he was already the third strongest person he had ever fought against.
"Shut up," said Vegeta as he narrowed his eyes. "Don't say anything more, they're here!"
"Oh my," said a purple alien creature that Vegeta quickly recognised to be Captain Ginyu as he arrived on the scene, the rest of his group in tow. Surprisingly, there were no theatrics. "It seems that we were perhaps a little too late; the little monkey seems to have already made his wish."
"Laugh it up you freak," said Vegeta with a grin. "I've already killed Zarbon and Dodoria on this planet, and I can tell you that you're not long for this world."
"Why?" asked Captain Ginyu as he raised an eyebrow. "Because you've achieved immortality?"
Vegeta's brow furrowed a little. How did he know that?
"Poor monkeys, always so predictable," said Burter with a grin.
"It seems you've grown quite strong as well," said Ginyu with a smirk as he spread his arms and legs. "Fortunately, I have just the solution for a man who can't be killed."
Ginyu punched a hole in his chest. Vegeta's smirk faltered.
"Change, now!"
...