CHAPTER TWO

Twenty years later…

The enchanted rose flashed and another petal drifted away.

Vegeta stirred and opened his eyes just in time to watch the petal burn.

In the past, he panicked with each fallen petal. He longed to find an end to the curse. Every day he became the beast and every day he lost another small portion of himself. Now it was to the point that he had to be chained in a steel plated room for the protection of others as well as for the protection of himself. So uncontrollable was the beast that even his family and men could not calm him. When he was younger, he could keep the beast tamed but it took all of his energy. He'd wake that night physically and mentally exhausted. Most times, he would sleep the whole night away only to reawaken as the beast. He'd go weeks on end without a single human moment.

Over the years the beast had grown stronger and now it took him over completely. He would wake every night, still exhausted, still scratched and bruised, but with no recollection of the day's events. He'd been told stories, horrible stories, about how as the beast he rampaged the castle, killed young, promising Saiyans, and even tried to attack his own mother.

He shook his head, trying to chase the memories away. The chains clanked together bumping along the fresh scrapes on his wrists and ankles. The beast must have spent half the day trying to break those chains.

"Raditz." He cringed at the sound of his voice. Like always, it was hoarse and raspy, something he attributed to spending his days roaring as the beast. There was a time when his voice had been smooth, but those days were nearly forgotten.

The door to his left beeped and slid open. His third in command, Raditz, stood in the entryway holding a fresh set of Saiyan armor and a ring of thick, brass keys. "Good evening, sire," he said, ducking into the room. He handed the armor to Vegeta and busied himself by unlocking the cuffs around the prince's wrists and ankles. Before, he would offer to coat his scars with a healing salve, but the prince always declined, and Raditz got the distinct impression that his constant offering annoyed Vegeta, so he stopped asking all together.

Vegeta tugged the blue top over his head and jammed his legs into the pants. Saiyan armor was very flexible. It could stretch to fit virtually any shape and size, but the beast had a habit of shredding the material and Vegeta tired of having to order replacements. "Where are we?"

"We're passing the Milky Way galaxy now, sir. We'll be approaching Andromeda within the next couple of hours."

The Andromeda galaxy housed a startlingly small number of inhabitable planets, but each planet was worth its weight in gold. The strongest types of stone and metal in the entire universe could be found within Andromeda, and that was something that Frieza found very interesting. If he could gain control over those precious resources, there wouldn't be a creature alive who could challenge his power. Naturally, a mission of such importance demanded the attention of Frieza's most efficient warriors, so he sent Vegeta and his guards.

"It kills me," he growled. "Kills me that we're stuck having play the role of Frieza's dogs. I'd like to wrap my hands around his scrawny little neck!" He wrung his hands around the imaginary Frieza.

"I know," Raditz agreed, eying the prince's shaking hands with caution. "But the resistance is still strong. Nappa received a transmission no more than an hour ago. Two new planets have been found in the southern hemisphere. They both contain intelligent life forms. Scouts have been dispatched to see if there is a Goku among them."

Ever since Frieza's takeover the Saiyans had been secretly searching for the Goku of Baba's prophecy. None searched harder than Vegeta though.

Frieza was highly amused by Vegeta's misfortune and even went as far as to use it as a weapon against him. He was no fool. He knew of the resistance and he knew of Vegeta's role in it. Any Saiyan suspected of being part of the resistance was shoved in a small room with Vegeta while he was the beast. Lost in rage and madness, Vegeta would end up doing Frieza's dirty work for him and unconsciously kill his own followers.

"Hey!" Nappa's gravelly voice shouted through their scouters. "We got problems! I could use a hand down here!"

The ship banked hard right, so that Vegeta and Raditz lost their balance and had to literally walk on the walls.

"What the hell is he doing?" Vegeta barked.

They flew down from the West Wing, hurtled themselves through the pristine corridors of the ship and had just barely touched down in the command deck before the ship absorbed an impact and quaked so fiercely that they all feared the walls would crumble around them. The red alarm lights sprang to life accompanied by an earsplitting siren.

"Warning, Warning. Hull damage has been detected. Warning, Warning. Hull damage has been detected," the robotic, detached voice of the computer announced.

"No shit!" Vegeta barked, slapping the acknowledge button on the control panel.

But no sooner had that warning been silenced did another one go off. "Warning, Warning. Engine failure has been detected. Warning, Warning. Engine failure has been detected. Emergency landing is recommended."

"There's an inhabitable planet on the outskirts of the Milky Way," Raditz said, punching the keys at one of the panels. A 3D projection of a foreign solar system materialized in front of him and zoomed in to display the third planet from the star. Writing and charts rotated around it, detailing the planets specs. Raditz scanned the charts and said, "The planet is called Earth. It's small with low gravity, but there air is breathable, there's both land and water, and there's even a moon."

Vegeta's eyes darted to the window. Perhaps they could make it to the Andromeda Galaxy? But one look told him otherwise. There, in the vastness of space, was a storm brewing. Meteors and lightening swirled all around them. The power on their ship flickered, threatening to go out completely. If they lost power, they'd be doomed to drift into space until either the issue was fixed or they all died. Seeing as Raditz was the closest thing to a scientist they had on board (and that was only because his father, Bardock, was a real scientist) Vegeta didn't like the odds.

Nappa gritted his teeth and held on tight to the steering wheel. The muscles in his arms bunched and twitched each time a meteor came close and whenever lightning struck near the ship. "Your orders, sir?" he asked with a touch of impatience leaking through his voice.

"Veer right," Vegeta said. "We're going to Earth."

##

"Bulma! I wasn't expecting to see you for at least another week or two."

Bulma offered a sheepish grin to Mr. Canady, the owner and manager of Canady's Hardware—a place that Bulma considered to be a Heaven on Earth. "I ran out of three-band capacitors. Can you believe that?"

"Three-band?" Mr. Canady repeated. "But I've just sent off a request for more. Capsule Corp submitted an order for sixty cases. Surely you must know that?"

"Yeah I know. But I thought you'd have one or two lingering around the store somewhere."

She was right, of course. Tucked into the farthest corner of the store were three packs that someone had decided not to buy. She scooped them up and was just checking out the latest line of socket wrenches when the ground beneath her began to tremble. Hammers, nails, boards and even power tools were flung from the shelves.

Mr. Canady hit the ground and covered his head with his beefy, tattooed forearms. "Get down, Bulma! It's an earthquake!"

But Bulma wasn't listening. She groped on to one of the display cases to keep her balance and started awestruck out of the storefront window. The sky, which had only moments ago been clear and littered with stars, was now clouded over. Bright flashes of red and yellows erupted from behind the clouds and the sound of a long, continuous crack of thunder deafened her. But that wasn't the worst part…

Something was cutting through the Earth's atmosphere, something longer than it was tall that had a disk-like shape to it…. Something big.

"Aliens!" Mr. Canady yelped, his normally gruff voice transformed into a high soprano and he scrambled under the checkout counter.

Once it broke through the clouds, the craft tore through the sky like a metallic boomerang, two trails of smoke and exhaust streaked after it.

"It's gonna crash!" Bulma darted outside just as the side of the spaceship clipped the peak of one of the surrounding mountains and then crashed into the neighboring mountains completely.

People flooded the streets, looking out at the crash site and gawking at the bright trials of light that the craft had strewn across the night sky. Some grabbed their cameras and started snapping pictures, others took off towards the mountains, hoping to get exclusive footage. More still scooped up their loved ones and ran in the opposite direction, screaming things like, "It's the end of the world!" and "We're being invaded!"

Now there's a thought, Bulma thought, chewing on her bottom lip as she considered the likelihood. What if they were being invaded? If that was the case, then those aliens had some seriously bad luck. Not only did they blotch the landing, but they crashed in the mountains… where Goku lived.

##

"Well this is just perfect," Vegeta seethed and put a boot through the left side vertical thruster. "Not only do we have hull damage and engine failure, but our satellite has shorted out so we can't even call for help!"

The thought of not having to hear Frieza's constant drone had him elated. He couldn't stand the little prick. The problem was that if they stayed out of communication for too long, the tyrant would think they'd gone rogue and start taking out the Saiyans by the handful.

Raditz and Nappa hung their heads. Normally they were very diligent when it came to landing, but with the engines failing and the fact that this planet had a thick layer of atmosphere to punch through, they'd lost control of the ship and had caused more damage than what they'd started with. Not to mention (and neither of them would dare say it out loud) that Vegeta kicking holes in their thrusters didn't help their situation at all.

"S-sire," Raditz began, "Just before we lost power, the analyzer picked up definite traces of intelligent life forms on this planet. Perhaps they're advanced enough to aid in repairs."

"You'd better hope so! Because if we don't get our shit together, and I mean fast, then Frieza's going to take it out on our people's hides! … Well? What are you waiting for!? Get moving! You better have an adequate scientist here before sunrise!"

The duo snapped to attention, gave a mechanical salute and took off into the sky.

For a while, they flew in silence, both still stinging from Vegeta's words. They both knew he was right. It had happened in the past when a crew of Saiyans went missing. Frieza would go berserk and start wiping them all out.

No one knew for sure why he was so adamant about keeping the Saiyans under his thumb, but some were convinced that it had something to do with the legendary Super Saiyan. They thought that the tyrant was actually afraid of them. They thought that he knew he'd never survive if one of them managed to transform. But, as the more logical Saiyans would point out, that was highly unlikely. The last suspected transformation took place over one thousand years ago and, as legend tells is, that Saiyan was only able to maintain his transformation in the Oozaru form. Since a full moon on Planet Vegeta only happened once every eight years, they doubted anyone would be reaching legendary status any time soon.

It was Nappa who spoke first.

"He's right you know. If we don't at least get that satellite up then Frieza will panic and hunt down our families."

Raditz nodded his understanding, but decided not to dwell on the subject. The only family he had left was his father, Bardock, and Frieza would never dare to kill him. There were a very few number of scientist who were as brilliant as his dad. Nappa on the other hand had just been mated to a female warrior named Naomi and the couple was expecting the birth of their first son any day now. The last thing he wanted to do was fret over the consequences when Nappa had so much more to lose than he did.

"Look, down there!" Nappa said, cutting through his thoughts and drawing his attention to a small, oddly shaped dwelling tucked in the mountains. Half of it had a peaked roof, and the other half had a domed roof, then off to the side was another smaller building, also with a peaked roof. They touched down and studied the marking on the door: SON HOUSE.

Despite the fact that they'd never seen these particular markings anywhere else, they had a pretty good idea as to what they meant. Years of planet pirating exposed them to similar markings and they almost always had the same meanings.

"Well," Radtz said and pushed the door open, "they're intelligent enough to have a written language. That's a good sign."

Nappa ducked inside and kept crouched low to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling. Raditz, however, didn't have any trouble walking around at all. As a matter of fact, judging from the height of the chairs and tables, he was certain that the beings that inhabited this planet were close to his size.

"Doesn't look like anyone's home," Nappa said, peering in the rooms off of the hallway. "But on the bright side, these creatures appear to utilize a lot of the same comforts as us: beds, sofa's, kitchens. Can't be too dumb, can they?"

"Hey, look at this," Raditz said, picking up a photo of a dark-haired woman holding a bundle of blankets in her arms. "Can you believe it? They almost look Saiyan, don't they?"

"Yeah," Nappa agreed, a surge of relief pulsing through him. "That's good. At least now we know what we're looking for. There's got to be more of them around here somewhere. Let's go look."

But Raditz was barely listening. His eyes were lingering on the child the woman held in her arms. There was something about him, something in the shape of his face and the way his eyes were set just a touch too far apart and the way his grin cocked up higher on the left than the right—something… familiar.

"Come on!" Nappa insisted. He was already outside, ready to take off and glaring at Raditz impatiently.

Raditz gave himself a small shake and joined his partner outside. But still, that kid's face continuously floated back to the forefront of his thoughts and he found himself wondering where he'd seen it before. It wasn't until he heard the sound of approaching propeller blades that he shoved the face away completely. "Look!" He shouted, and pointed to a hovering craft coming up on their left side.

They frowned at the helicopter. It was bulky and loud and didn't move very fast—outdated technology—but it was a start.

"I'll check it out," Nappa said and, like a flash, appeared in front of the chopper and the very frightened looking camera crew within.

"Oh my God!" one of the men screeched. "It's one of them! One of the aliens! We're rolling right? You're getting this, aren't you?"

The cameraman nodded, but from the violent way his hands shook, Nappa doubted he was catching much of anything at all.

He wrapped his thick fingers around the cameraman's throat and with one, swift tug, yanked him out of the chopper completely. The cameraman shouted out and started flailing his arms and kicking his legs, dropping his camera and whatever footage he'd been able to get in the process.

"Stop your squirming!" Nappa barked. The little man obeyed immediately. "We require the assistance of a scientist. Where can we find one?"

"A- a—s-s-scientist?" he stuttered. "I-I dunno."

"Well you'd better figure it out," Nappa growled, forming a small but deadly ki ball in his palm.

The man eyed the strange light and seemed to somehow know that he didn't want that light coming anywhere near him. He raised his eyes skyward, lost in a thought-prayer hybrid when inspiration struck. "Oh! Oh! I know! Capsule Corp!"

"Capsule Corp?" Nappa pressed, "Explain."

"It's where Dr. Briefs lives," the cameraman said, his feet still wheeling themselves in mid-air, trying futilely to put some distance between himself and the threatening light. "He's a genius. H-he can help you. N-no problem."

Nappa grinned a hungry grin and pulled the terrified man's face within an inch of his own. "Point the way?"

##

Author's Notes—All right, here is chapter two. This is when the story really starts to roll. Sorry it took so long to post. I kept looking for the perfect cover image for the story, but I just can't find one that I like! These are the times that I wish I could draw…

If you see any typos, let me know! I tried to get them all, but I have a bad habit of missing them in my own writing.