If One Believed

Chapter 6: As Luck Would Have It

"Father?" Raditz implored quietly.

The boy's eyes trailed a large man's form as he stormed across the room. As he passed, a wave of cold air brushed against the child's face and sent a chill up his spine.

"If you want to leave then so fucking be it!" Bardock spat.

"Oh I will!" another voice retorted from the doorway. "You're blind, Bardock! One of these days you're gonna see it, and it's gonna be too damn late!"

"Father…" Raditz repeated, his eyebrows puckering together in a sort of anxious confusion.

The person standing in the doorway vanished. The sound of a door clicking open, squeaking, and then abruptly slamming shut reverberated its way into the room shortly thereafter.

Raditz didn't understand what was going on. He didn't have the slightest clue why his dad was so mad. He wasn't even a little bit interested in what was happening at the moment. He had something else on his mind.

"Momma won't talk to me," Raditz murmured solemnly.

Bardock placed his hand on a chair and dug his nails into it, while his opposite hand combed through his disarray of jet-black locks. The then three year old Saiyan crossed the space in-between himself and his parent. He tugged at the bottom of Bardock's leg-guard.

"Father!" he persisted more loudly this time. "Sister is dumb… she sleeped too much!"

The hand clenching at the back of the chair trembled. "She's not sleeping," Bardock replied in a grated tone.

"Why is her eyes not opened?" Raditz asked naively.

Raditz could decipher a subtle crunching sound as Bardock ground his molars together. It was soon accompanied by a snapping sound as a piece of the chair splintered in Bardock's curled fingers. He suddenly whipped around and locked his piercing onyx gaze with his son. "She's dead!" he barked furiously. "That's why!"

Raditz's eyes widened and he stared at his father in utter shock. "Dead?" he muttered, barely audible.

"Yes," was the icy reply.

At the tender age of three, Raditz didn't entirely understand the concept of death. He knew that it happened to a lot of people, and that sometimes it spread like an illness. He knew that when someone died it meant that they wouldn't talk to you anymore. They didn't do anything. They didn't even want to fight. Then he would see the big blue flame again. Everyone would wear their best armor to see it, and they would watch in silence as the flame turned the person into ash and smoke. Then he never saw them again.

Raditz shook his head. "No!" he argued, throwing his fists up in the air. "She can't be. I'm mad at her! I still gotta beat her up, and if she won't fight me then it won't be fair! Make her wake up! She can be dead later!"

Bardock narrowed his eyes at the boy and snarled, "You don't get it, brat! She's dead. That means that she's gone forever and she is never coming back!"

Raditz's eyes began to well up with tears. He sniffled and rubbed his eyes with his fists.

"D – Did she go dead 'cause she's w – weak?" Raditz stammered, his chest beginning to convulse as the tears flowed down his flushed cheeks.

Bardock scowled at his son. "No," he replied through gritted teeth. "She died because you are weak!"

Raditz blinked at him and rubbed at his eyes some more. "M – Me?"

"You heard me!" Bardock replied. He snatched Raditz's forearm and pulled one of his tiny hands away from his face. "Enough with the water-works already! You're far too old for this!" he shouted.

"S – sorry, Father," the boy replied in between uncontrollable sobs.

...

Raditz came to with a groan. One eyelid sluggishly lifted halfway to wink at the world in front of him; he yawned. His body felt achy and stiff as a board. He hazily percepted his surroundings as being that of the inside of his space pod. He groaned, sitting up, and blinking away the sleep from his eyes.

"What happened…" he muttered quietly.

...

"Raditz! Take your mother and get off of this planet!"

"Get out now!"

...

Memories of prior events assaulted his brain in a swift wave of lucidity. He groaned again, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his forehead in his hands.

...

"Shit! Raditz! Take your father and get off this planet!" his mother shouted.

Raditz blinked at his father's limp form. "What's wrong with him?!"

"No time! Get out now!"

Raditz looked in-between his mother and Tangereen. He couldn't just leave her to fight him all by herself. She didn't stand a chance. His scouter had displayed Tangereen's power level too. He knew.

"No!" Raditz argued. "I want to stay and fight! I want to help you!"

Catsia glared at Raditz. "This is my fight, brat! How dare you insult me like this?" she snapped furiously, then muttered under her breath, "ungrateful child…"

"S – Sorry, Mother!"

...

Raditz opened up the hatch and stumbled his way outside, taking in the purple atmosphere and orange, lifeless cliffs surrounding him as far as the eyes could see.

...

Tangereen motioned his hands in a 'come hither' sort of way. "Hand him over, monkey-boy."

Raditz scowled at the alien. "Make me bighead!"

Tangereen smirked. Raditz could decipher the subtle hiss of his mother cursing. Suddenly Tangereen was in front of him, his fist extended and shattering the distance between the two in a mere instant. Pain exploded in Raditz's jaw and he recoiled backward, dropping his father's body.

Tangereen snatched Bardock's flaccid form by his neck and lifted him up to eye-level, pinning him against a wall. He chuckled maliciously. "Lord Freeza would be furious with me if I let this ape live, and quite frankly, I love ridding the universe of such filth."

Raditz stared up at the fiend frozen in terror. He had no idea how to react. His father was a dead man. He gasped as his father's eyes suddenly opened. Bardock dodged Tangereen's incoming fist by the skin of his teeth only to receive a knee to the gut.

A green flash of ki shot past Raditz's face and smashed into Tangereen, effectively freeing his father. Raditz turned to seek out the assaulter.

"M – Mother!" he exclaimed with a celebratory smile and pride gleaming in his eyes.

...

Raditz turned around in a circle, surveying his entire perimeter in search of another pod. There was nothing. He was completely alone. He punched some buttons on his scouter. His was the highest power level on the planet, but there were others – incredibly weak ones and twos.

Raditz jogged forward, hopping his way up onto the top of a nearby precipice. He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Mother!" he shouted. "Mother can you hear me? Mother!"

He sighed and sat on his haunches. "Where are you?" he muttered despondently.

...

As before - with absolutely no warning - his father passed out again. Catsia glanced over her shoulder at Raditz, an anxious look on her face. "Raditz!" She rummaged around the top of her armor and pulled out two keys. "Look alive!" She shouted, tossing them at her son.

Raditz extended his hands and the set of keys bounced upward and out of his grasp. They clinked as they hit the ground. Catsia didn't skip a beat. "Pick it up!" she ordered while lifting up her mate's body.

"Take your father! Don't argue! Just take him and go!"

Raditz nodded, retrieving the keys and tucking them under his chest plate with his trembling, clumsy hands. He frowned slightly. "But how will you?"

"Shut up and take him!" Catsia snapped.

She was about to toss him to Raditz when a sudden spark of energy caused her scouter to blip and diverted her attention. She glanced to her left, and Raditz followed her line of sight. He gaped at a large concentration of iridescent blue ki heading straight toward him.

He could do nothing but stand frozen as a statue and stare at it stupidly. Meanwhile, something hard smacked into his side and sent him earthward. He hit the ground hard, and a terrifying thought shot through his brain.

He heard a splitting shriek, and he whipped his head in the direction of his rescuer. His worst fear had come to life: his mother was falling back, screaming. Her jugular veins popped out as she clenched her teeth to try and stifle her cry. A mist of blood sprayed into the air and onto Raditz, but he didn't blink. His eyes were glued open. It was as if everything was happening in slow motion. Every sordid detail of it refracted onto his retinas. He could smell and taste the coppery blood. He shuddered when her body hit the floor with a resounding thump.

...

To say that Raditz hadn't properly planned out their escape would be a bit of an understatement. He didn't know what to do other than to get his seriously injured mother off of the planet, but she needed immediate medical attention or she was going to die. He panicked and picked a random planet, and now here he was in the middle of space-nowhere.

Raditz collapsed forward onto the orange dirt. The individual grains dug into the skin of his face uncomfortably. He clenched his hands into fists and slammed them repeatedly onto the ground as hard as he could, causing it to form small craters.

"Idiot, idiot, idiot!" he hissed under his breath. She might already be dead…

Raditz pulled himself up out of his prone position and exhaled a slow and shaky breath. "I'm not leaving you, Mother."

He tapped away at the buttons on his scouter. "Where's your pod? It's not in the system. Of course, you guys deactivated the tracking… I guess I'll just have to look the old fashioned way."

Raditz took to the sky. He shielded his eyes from the sun as he flew overhead, scanning the ground for any trace of his mother's arrival.

I sent her first. She should be here… somewhere…

After about half an hour of flying he finally caught sight of something metallic glinting in the powerful sun's rays. Raditz soared toward it at top speed. He grinned.

Yes! That's it! It has to be!

Raditz landed behind the aircraft and ran around to its front. "Mother!"

Raditz skidded to a halt when he caught sight of a puddle of blood at the face of the pod. The hatch was open and the inside was completely empty – save for more blood.

"No…" Raditz murmured. "No, no, no!" He ran his fingers through his thick black mane.

The puddle led onward into a subtle trail of blood drops in the dirt. Raditz bent over and pinched a small portion of the blood stained dirt between his thumb and finger.

It's still wet. I just missed her.

The trail of blood led to a small village comprised of cave dwellings carved into the face of a large mountain. Raditz entered the largest of the holes at the foot of the mountain. There was no light source inside so Raditz lit a small tuft of blue ki above the tip of his index finger to illuminate his surroundings. Strange carvings adorned the cave walls, but the pathway was entirely smooth – interrupted only by the small trail of blood his mother had left behind in her wake.

"Mother!" Raditz called out. "Can you hear me? Where are you?"

Only silence responded. Raditz quickened his pace down the hallway, taking a turn into an opening to the right, and rapidly descending deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels.

At long last, Raditz finally came upon an opening into a large cavern. It was lined with patches of enormous crimson crystals that glowed and alighted the room with a blood-red hue. In the center of the cavernous space was a pool of liquid as black as a starless night sky.

He spotted his mother floating belly-up on the surface of the water. There were three small furry creatures surrounding her and they were holding up their arms with the palms of their hands parallel with the long axis of her body. A soft humming sound reverberated in their throats and continued to echo around the enclosed space.

"Mother!" Raditz exclaimed, breaking the tranquility and sprinting toward her unconscious form.

Upon noticing the brash intruder, the little creatures clicked at each other in fear and fled in the opposite direction. Raditz jumped into the pool. He picked his mother up bridal-style, and shuffled his way back onto land. Raditz pulled his mother's soaked hair out of her face and gently smacked the side of her cheek.

"Mother, wake up!" he pleaded.

Catsia groaned and her eyelids fluttered open. She gazed at her son's face with a puzzled expression for a moment before sitting up.

"What happened?" she murmured mostly to herself.

She then suddenly placed her hand on her upper chest where she'd been hit. The skin was nearly uninterrupted. It was almost entirely healed – a surface wound only.

"What the?" she muttered with shock. She turned to face her son. "Raditz, I'm healed. What did you do?"


A/N: Thank you for the reviews and the favorites! I will try to update soon! :)

jonathan: You aren't the only one who wants Goku to be with Bulma in this story. I'm considering it, but I haven't gotten that far yet. Thanks a bunch for the suggestions.

Hedgehog of Time: You could say that, but probably not in the same way. This family member is already in existence. :)

Tellemicus Sundance: Thanks for the feedback! :) You'll probably also be seeing more of Vegeta and Nappa before that point - what with Bardock's visions and all ;) I also want to explore how the early departure of Raditz would affect Vegeta.