Chapter One: Your Wish Has Been
"Take off those clothes," barked Vegeta. The two Earthlings stood blankly beside him.
"And put on those under suits. Do it fast! Freeza's coming!"
Kuririn and Gohan blinked as Vegeta grabbed two suits from a locker in Freeza's unoccupied ship. Both mumbling, the Earthlings begrudgingly yanked at the outer layers of their clothes. Kuririn doffed his orange uniform and Gohan his blue. All the while, the young half-blood grumbled that wearing armor so similar to that of the mass-murderers working under Freeza would mean the demise of his "image." Kuririn, on the other hand, grumbled on behalf of his perplexity.
So much had happened that day. They were on Namek. Vegeta became an ally, at least temporarily. Ginyu switched bodies with a frog. And Goku— thank the gods that he finally arrived!— got his body back and was now healing in a rejuvenation machine. This was certainly one long, busy day. Most likely, though, that was because it was always day on Namek.
Kuririn gasped at the thought of it: day, always and forever. Then he gasped at the thought of being on a foreign planet, fighting an evil alien tyrant, with the aid of a potential evil alien tyrant. He shook his head vehemently; he had long ago given up on making sense of it all.
"If Vegeta needs our help against Freeza," he spoke while tugging on the blue under suit of the armor, "Freeza must be incredibly strong!"
Gohan nodded and blurted a simple, "I'm scared!"
Vegeta handed the twosome their fighting jackets with the pointed pauldrons. He explained to them further about the material of the armor, crossing his arms and watching indifferently as they ogled at the advanced technology.
"How long will it take Goku to heal?" Kuririn asked once he had adjusted to his armor. Vegeta shrugged and approximated that it would take a little less than an hour. Did they have an hour? Freeza assuredly was headed their way. They needed to summon the Dragon immediately.
"Gohan," Kuririn turned to the boy who was swinging his arms to test the battle suit's endurance, "I'm flying to the Great Elder!" Gohan stopped and looked at his little bald friend with a question in his eyes.
"Freeza might be there, but unless we find out how to activate the Dragon Balls, we're sure to lose," Kuririn explained. This only made Gohan want to go there as well, but Kuririn refused him abruptly and then flew off.
"Now what?" Gohan wondered aloud as he stared at Kuririn's shrinking image as he stood outside of Freeza's ship.
"We wait!" a grating voice snapped Gohan out of his thoughts. Gohan swiftly wheeled around to see Vegeta, his arms still glued in a crossed-position.
"Now the question remains: where will we be waiting?" Vegeta continued, "I will be waiting there," he pointed at a leg of the ship, near the entrance door, "Disturb me needlessly, and you will be taking a trip to the rejuvenation machine right after Kakarrot is done with it."
Gohan rolled his eyes. That was his automatic response to almost everything the Saiyajin Prince said now that he was growing used to the man. He watched as Vegeta settled behind the leg of the ship. He watched as Vegeta fell into a slumber.
Gohan wished he could sleep. He was so tired. But the adrenaline would never let him rest. He felt a need to bounce around and pace and glance up at the sky every five minutes to see if Kuririn was back yet.
"No," he frowned at his edginess. He planted his feet in the ground and forced himself to stay still. To distract himself from his sudden urge to move again, he peered at the sky, diligently this time, and tried to reason with himself.
"It'll take two hours to go to the Great Elder," he told himself, "and come back here. What should we do if Freeza comes before then?"
Then, he felt two ki's tickle his own. Something was coming.
He lifted into the air, flying out a bit and thinking to himself, "It's not Freeza. Is it Kuririn? But there are two of them coming."
Gohan saw Kuririn and Dende approach him in the sky.
"I did it, Gohan!" Kuririn shouted. Gohan excitedly sprinted through the air and halted in front of his friend.
Gohan shouted back, "That was incredibly fast! How did you do it?"
"The Great Elder asked Dende to come!" Kuririn answered through an ear-to-ear smile.
"To teach us how to use the Dragon Balls?" Gohan looked to Dende.
The little green Namek nodded warmly, "Yes!" Gohan looked giddy; he was about to amicably force the Namek to speak further, when Kuririn tossed him a furtive glance.
"So what's happened to Vegeta?" asked Kuririn, his voice souring at the sound of the Prince's name, "We hid our ki's so he wouldn't know we were coming."
Gohan turned his head to look. He saw a slight silhouette behind one of the legs of Freeza's ship. Vegeta was still sound asleep.
"I don't think he's noticed you yet," Gohan replied, growing more eager as he realized the weight of his words, "He hasn't slept in a while, so he's out now!" It was the perfect opportunity, and everyone recognized this.
Bringing a tight fist up into the air, Kuririn frowned determinedly. He hunched over as if he were in a secret conference, leading the others to naturally gather closer to him.
He drew out the plan, "Okay! Follow me! Let's bring the Dragon Balls out here so he won't catch on! Even if he notices after the Dragon appears, that might buy us a little time!"
The three nodded to each other and then flew down to Freeza's ship. Alighting ever so softly on the ground, they crept up to the Dragon Balls. Gohan and Dende both took two and flew off while Kuririn balanced three and quickly joined them. All the while, their faces were in knots with the dread of awaking the slumbering Saiyajin.
Safely away from the ship and from Vegeta, the three all reveled for a moment in their tiny victory. That is, until they felt it. Yes, it. It was an awesome wave of power entwined with darkness. It was a viper twirled around an envenomed rapier. It was death wrapped around death.
Dende, Kuririn, and Gohan all leered to their right in pure, untainted horror.
"Fr-Freeza!" Kuririn yelped. It could be none other but he who armed himself with limitless power in his right hand and eternal sleep in his left. Even then, as the three paused for only a moment in their shock, they were wasting time, for Freeza was erupting through the sky, coming closer and closer to them with each passing breath.
"Hurry, Dende!" Kuririn released himself from his fear, "Have it grant our wish now!" In a blunder, the green boy agreed and immediately sputtered out a strange tongue, his hands hovering over the seven yellow balls.
"Takaraputo popurunga pupirittoparo!"
The balls pulsed with light, and the sky went black as if the gods had swept a blanket over the heavens in an instant. Kuririn and Gohan watched on in awe as the green boy let out his last cry, summoning the Dragon.
A streak of lightning shot into the air and out of it formed a green-scaled, yellow-bellied Dragon. Its eyes were red pools reaching out beyond all reckoning of time and eternity. Its shoulders were wide and hunched over. It got progressively smaller the further one looked down its body, until it attenuated into but an ethereal string of light emitted by the Dragon Balls.
"That's huge! It's a lot bigger than the Earth's. A different shape, too!"" Kuririn mused in excitement.
Without removing his gaze from the Dragon, Gohan asked, "Is that Shenron?"
"It's called Porunga here," said Dende, "It means the god of dreams."
And a god imagined only in the wildest of dreams it most certainly was. Kuririn, Dende, and Gohan were but ants before the stooping figure of the Dragon.
"Thou who hast gathered all seven Dragon Spheres, name your wish," a rumbling thunder boomed through the air, "I will grant any three wishes that are within my powers."
"Three!" Kuririn hollered.
Dende pried his eyes from the Dragon and turned to the bald man, saying, "That's right! He can grant three wishes!"
"Incredible!" Kuririn followed Dende's example and glanced down at Gohan, "The home Shenron is incredible! I have a good feeling about this."
"How about we use them?" Gohan egged on. Dende agreed, turning suddenly solemn.
"Hurry!" he urged them, "Freeza and Vegeta may be here soon!"
Gohan and Kuririn's pupils narrowed in surprise. They had completely forgotten their surroundings in the rush of the experience. Turning to each other, they nodded confidently and decided on the first wish.
It was all black. Except for him. Except for Freeza. He stood sneering over the five-year-old Vegeta in a nebulous void. Any other child would have wept for the fear of it, yet Vegeta did not budge. He had his feet planted firmly in an unseen floor and his arms crossed characteristically while his tail thrashed fiercely behind him.
"King Vegeta is dead, my dear," the smooth, feminine ring of Freeza's voice cut through the boy's ears, "He was on the planet, too, when the asteroid came."
The child felt as if the boat of his gut careened. Something was so saccharine about the lizard-man's consolation. Something had to be amiss. Vegeta was only a boy, though, and he had little cognizance of his surroundings, especially when everything was so swathed in darkness. Nonetheless, his gut forced him to test the waters, to sniff out the truth behind it all. What it was that he was testing and sniffing, he could not say.
"So what?" he scoffed, "I could've beaten him. Anyone could've. Had you wanted to, you wouldn't even have needed to lift a finger."
Freeza grinned deviously.
Savoring a flashback of the destruction of Planet Vegeta, he responded enigmatically, "I would have needed to lift one finger. Only one."
What did that mean? Only one? Determined to dig further into something he did not understand to find an answer he could not fathom, he stared into Freeza's cold eyes. This angered the tyrant. Freeza lurched forward and grappled the boy's unguarded tail. Vegeta toppled over in pain as he felt his tail compress within Freeza's stony grip.
"Please! Please!" the child Saiyajin whimpered to his torturer. Begging for mercy, his eyes were full of repentance. At that, Freeza smiled an honest smile. He opened his mouth as if to speak when suddenly, the voice did not match the body. It was a low rumbling, like thunder, pounding into the ears from every side of the blackness. It was loud, so loud that the boy Vegeta closed his eyes to wince.
"Understood!" It said, "I will grant you the first wish!"
Vegeta wrenched his eyes open. He was no longer a boy. He was grown and strong. He rested his back and head on the leg of Freeza's abandoned spaceship.
"Something is coming here!" he growled to himself, feeling a tremendous ki enveloping the planet, "It's incredibly strong! It must be Freeza!"
Vegeta hauled himself to his feet with a vexed expression plastered on his face. Then he realized it. The sky was black.
"What is this!" he roared, perplexed in his rage, like a general would in the midst of heated battle, "Why is the sky black! This planet doesn't have a night!"
The figure of the Dragon loomed on the edge of Vegeta's vision. Vegeta hurled around to soak in the image of the beast completely, his mouth ajar. He screamed with wrath, without words. He screamed a throat-tearing bellow.
"What is that! What is that monster!" He chased his eyes around the whole scene before him in order to make some sense of it. He noticed there was something missing. Then he went livid.
"The Dragon Balls! Kakarrot's brat! They're gone! Damn, damn, damn! Those brats tricked me!"
Vegeta darted toward the Dragon with his anger rolling into an overflowing boil. A vein pulsed in his forehead, and his eyes bulged a little as he, like a stroke of lightning, fired through the air. Soon, he could spot three dots standing before the glowing Dragon Balls.
The thunder voice of the Dragon rumbled again, "This is simple! I will grant your second wish!"
Second wish? Already the cursed traitors had squandered two precious wishes, two wishes he, Vegeta, Prince of All Saiyajins, could have used! The boiling water of his wrath exploded into a frothy foam of madness.
"I have granted your second wish," the Dragon boomed, "Now what is your third."
Vegeta would sooner be damned than let them take another of his wishes, if any wishes remained, that is. He slammed into the earth, dust and rock crumbling and flying beneath his leaden footing. Before him were the three imbeciles—Kuririn, the brat, and one of those green things. They groped around dully, calling out "Piccolo!" in a weak-willed manner.
The madness took Vegeta and actually became visible, as his spit bubbled out of the side of his mouth through the force of his vibrating growl. He clenched his teeth hard, using every little tension as a release of his rage. His fists, too, squeezed together as he stooped forward in a feral fighting stance. The edge of his tongue caught between his teeth, but he continued to clamp his jaws together, biting the edge straight off. Red mixed with the white foam now pouring from Vegeta's mouth; it matched the color of his protruding, veiny eyes.
Hearing Vegeta's crash landing, the three imbeciles whirled around toward him. They gaped in fear when they saw the awful sight. At the slightest provocation, it seemed that he would jump for the throat.
"So that's how it is!" he screamed, "How dare you leave me behind! I'm going to kill you!" The veins on his forehead pulsed visibly, rabidly, as his anger more and more seemed to want to physically burst through his being.
"Fools! You've just brought someone else to be killed by Freeza! The only way we can win is for me to become immortal! You little shits!"
He stepped toward them shakily, as though it were difficult for him to make any physical movement that did not cause death and destruction.
The three imbeciles cringed, and for fear the boy Gohan stuttered, "W-w-wait! We were granted three wishes! There's still one left!"
Kuririn turned to Gohan angrily, "Bakka! Shut up!"
Immediately, Vegeta's body was freed from some invisible weight. He was still incredibly tense and his eyes were still bloodshot, but the foaming stopped. He was able to move again without having to cause death—at least for the time being.
"I'm glad I heard that!" he sighed with a smile drowning his face. It was a smile that Kuririn and Gohan never saw him use before, not the entire time he was on Earth nor the entire time they fought beside him on Namek.
He parted his lips and bared his teeth. The smile looked more like a delighted snarl, but only due to lack of use. One could tell by glancing at him, that he looked to be witnessing a divine spectacle.
He was looking at himself, and he saw that he was god!
"Make me immortal now! Do it now! Freeza's almost here!" he commanded. The imbeciles hesitated, but he saw in their faces the realization that he was their only choice, the only divinity that could reach out a hand of mercy and pluck them away the pit of doom.
Sometimes, though, patience was not an option for god. One had to slap the imbeciles to save them from their blindness. So that is what he did. Vegeta lunged onto Dende and jerked the green boy to his face with two divine hands, trembling with excitement. Words were useless.
Grinding into Dende with onyx eyes, Vegeta shook the boy and slapped him over and over.
"Save your idiot planet, you imbecile!" Vegeta spat into the boy's face, "Save it by making me your savior!"
"Dende!" shouted Kuririn from behind Vegeta, "Grant his wish! He's pretty evil, but he's better than Freeza! It's our only way out of this!" Vegeta smirked proudly at the bald imbecile who had at last realized his place and Vegeta's power.
"Okay," Dende sighed. Vegeta let the green thing slip from his grasp and ordered the task be done. Dende turned toward the Dragon, while the Prince was overcome by that same toothy smile as before.
He thought to himself, "Now Freeza won't be able to kill me! And even if I can't beat him now, I'll be able to soon enough! The whole universe will be mine!"
Lifting his hands up, Dende pleaded for one last wish from the Dragon in his ancient tongue. The Dragon's red eyes flashed like a brooding thundercloud.
At last, it opened its broad, frog-like jaw to reveal rows of jagged teeth.
Then it slowly rumbled, "Your wish has been—"
Like a flash of lightning, it disappeared, and the black blanket on the heavens was removed. The Dragon was gone.
A/N : That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I have decided to continue the story. I will be rereleasing an edited version of the original fifteen chapters in the meantime and then finally, I'll be updating.
Thank you for reading. Please share your input!