Well, here's the chapter it feels like everyone was waiting for. Yep, Goku and Vegeta finally reunited. Enjoy it.

I wasn't sure I'd get this one done in time. Although I had it written up in plenty of time, I got a bit distracted from typing it up by a friend getting ready to leave for a semester in Germany. We've been helping her get ready and trying to spend extra time with her before she leaves. I miss her already. Last night was our final going away party for her. We went to the melting pot, which—for those who don't know—is a fondue restaurant. It's really good but really expensive. I split my meal with two other girls, and I still ended up paying almost thirty dollars. It was so good but so painful to look at the bill afterwards.

Chapter Ten

It felt strange as he flew over the planet, staring down at the ground even as he followed the small ki signature that he'd finally managed to pick up on. The world below looked both familiar and foreign, sometimes alternating between the two within the same moment. When they passed over a city, he spotted a couple of buildings that made him think he knew where he was, but the absence of other visual landmarks and the likely presence of ones that had no longer existed by the time he'd come to Earth would quickly disorient him. The areas outside of the cities were, if anything, even more visually unfamiliar. He was quite glad the he didn't require the visual cues to navigate.

"Are you sure that ki sense of yours is right?" asked Raditz, tugging lightly on the collar of his new red t-shirt and keeping his tail wrapped tightly around the dark gray pants he'd picked out as well. He wasn't accustomed to such loose clothing, and although it wasn't uncomfortable, it felt very strange. Flying slightly in front of him, Nappa seemed quite uncomfortable in a dark green muscle shirt and brown pants.

"You should know better by now than to doubt my ability. I know he's out here. Saiya-jin ki feels different from these people's," responded the boy with a hint of annoyance in his voice. Vegeta had traded in the remains of his tattered uniform for an oversized dark blue shirt and a black pair of what the sales clerk had called "bike shorts" that reached down to just above his knees. That the store hadn't had any in their sizes was the only reason the two men weren't wearing the same pant style. He was quietly thankful for that.

"People?" asked Nappa curiously. He never called those of other races "people," usually opting for less humanizing terms. Where had this sudden regard come from?

Glancing over his shoulder at the man, Vegeta frowned, seeming not to comprehend that what he'd said was at all strange. After a moment, he pushed the concern aside and looked back in front of himself.

They were approaching some mountains now that looked more solidly familiar than any of the man-made places they'd passed over. It wasn't surprising really. Mountains weren't going to change as much as a city of thirty something years without some more than ordinary outside influence, and they'd tended to try keeping the damage they caused to a minimum.

He'd initially been rather annoyed by how much that restricted him, but he'd eventually come to see it as a challenge of its own. It was a challenge of his control over his strength and himself.

Without realizing it, he'd begun to fly faster as they drew nearer to the familiar—if incredibly weaker—ki signature, beginning to outpace the other two. Raditz especially started to lag behind, but he refused to bring any attention to it. That would only invite mockery and scorn from the boy. It really wasn't fair that he was so much weaker than the little runt.

"Prince Vegeta," called Nappa, slowing down slightly so that he was at the same pace as Raditz. "There's no need to be in such a rush. It's not like he's going anywhere."

Looking back at them, he seemed mildly surprised by the distance that had grown between them and slowed down to allow them to catch back up. "I forgot you might not be able to keep up," he said in the closest he could manage to an apology for them.

To Raditz it sounded more like an insult, and he felt a mounting sense of bitterness towards the boy. He knew that he shouldn't feel this way, had no right to feel this way. Vegeta came from a bloodline that had all but guaranteed him superior battle power, and he had been born of blood that should have sentenced him to the lowest of the power classes. He'd already risen above that. He should be satisfied with that, but he couldn't help how unfair it felt that this kid had been born with a higher power level than he was ever supposed to achieve in his lifetime. "I don't need any favors," he grumbled to Nappa.

The large man gave a dismissive snort, staring straight ahead as he said, "It's a bit late for pride now when you're here under the prince's favor."

Face burning in anger and shame, the younger man looked as though he wanted to slam a fist into Nappa's face, but he refrained. He knew how useless it would be. Quietly he cursed his weakness, and by association, their strength.

They were beginning to pass over the mountains now, nearing the ki signature, and Vegeta had to actively restrain himself from shooting off towards it at top speed. He was surprised by his own eagerness, but he understood it too. He wanted a genuine confirmation that the things he remembered weren't fake. Even after hearing it from that man on Planet 63, he couldn't completely shake that last lingering sense of doubt until he met someone else who remembered. He needed someone else to tell him that it had all happened.

Coming to a large clearing in the woods, he stopped, looking down at the solitary figure standing in the grass and staring back up at him. It was a small boy with dark, wild hair and a furry, brown tail.

"Kakarotto…" said Raditz, recognizing the boy immediately. He looked just like a miniature version of his father, their father.

Lips twitching into a smirk, Vegeta suddenly dove towards the ground. He faintly heard some exclamation from the men, but he paid them no attention. He watched the boy's face, looking for some sign of recognition. Dark eyes widened momentarily in surprise before narrowing slightly and gaining the sharp clarity reserved for battle, and his lips tilted upwards in an anticipatory smile.

There it was!

Fists collided, Vegeta pulling back on his momentum and much of his ki at the last moment to reduce the force of his punch to something that wouldn't immediately shatter the other Saiya-jin's hand. "Kakarotto."

"Vegeta."

Pulling their fists apart, the pair quickly re-engaged. They traded some light punches and kicks, and Vegeta managed to reject the temptation to flaunt his now greatly superior strength. As vindictively satisfying as it would've been in the short term, it would be no good if he ended up seriously injuring Goku. Instead he kept his ki pushed down to close the gap between them, allowing them to fight on a more even level.

"What the hell? What is this?" asked Raditz in a mixture of confusion, anger, and alarm as he and Nappa continued to hover in the air. He wasn't certain which was the dominant feeling, but the combination made him want to kick the little prince's teeth in. "Why is he attacking my brother?"

"Calm down," said the older man, brows deeply furrowed in a thoughtful expression. "It's not a real fight; you can tell that Prince Vegeta is holding himself back. It's a greeting."

"Greeting?" Among their people a common way of greeting comrades or siblings or even mates that one hadn't seen in a while was to engage them in a brief sparring match. It was how their people reconnected and strengthened the bonds they'd formed with one another. However, this was not a sort of act performed between strangers, and although Kakarotto would not be expected to know this custom, Vegeta was quite aware of it. They were being much too familiar for supposedly never having met before.

"I know. They shouldn't." Either the prince had abandoned propriety altogether or something else was going on.

Slowly the pair descended to the ground, landing a few meters away from the boys. They watched the fighting, noticing how familiar the cubs seemed with each other's styles, but what struck them most was how unfamiliar Vegeta's seemed to them. It was an especially jarring realization for Nappa.

There were certainly some familiar elements about the way he was fighting, but the traditional Saiya-jin style of fighting that the prince had originally been instructed in had become polluted almost beyond recognition. He also seemed to completely his tail waving freely behind him instead of keeping it wrapped securely around his waist. It was almost as though he'd forgotten its presence, but Kakarotto too had his tail out without consideration. Maybe it was a gesture of fairness, but that didn't seem very likely. Freeza had worked very hard to beat any idea of fighting fair out of the boy, demonstrating some of his preferred dishonorable methods on him to make certain he understood them.

For another couple of minutes the fighting continued, drawing to a close as Vegeta and Goku broke apart and straightened up out of their fighting stances. The younger boy was panting slightly and seemed to have taken a couple of decent hits, but nothing looked serious.

"You're taller than me," commented Goku, sounding almost surprised.

"It only makes sense. I am older than you."

A broad grin broke over his face. "Yeah, but I'm used to you being the shorter one. It threw me off."

Immediately Vegeta's expression turned murderous, and he was struck by a very powerful urge to put all of his power into one punch to that infuriatingly smiling face. He knew that he was always going to be a bit on the short side, but that didn't mean he liked to be reminded of it. Being around Nappa and Raditz, who towered over him, only made him more conscious of his height—or lack thereof as the case was. "That's no excuse. I'm no more used to you being shorter than me."

"But you're not much taller," he continued, seeming oblivious to the other boy's growing ire. "How old are you?"

He glared at Goku for a long moment, looking for very much like he wanted to throttle the younger Saiya-jin, but finally he seemed to abandon that thought, sighing resignedly. "I'm the human equivalent of about twelve."

"Really? I would've guessed you were closer to nine." His smile seemed to grow wider. "You really are short."

"Shut up! I am not short!" Damn it! Why was it that everyone seemed to be picking on that lately? "I am a perfectly average height for a Saiya-jin of my current age."

"So…you're just short on human terms?"

It had to be a family talent of theirs to irritate him, it just had to. Was it their goal to send him into a murderous rage—forgetting that Goku had certainly achieved doing that already. "I'm not human. Their standards don't apply to me. It's just the way our kind age."

Saiya-jins maintained a rather childish appearance into their later teen years where they would go through one rapid growth phase into their adult states. It was a wholly unpleasant experience that condensed the years of hormonal imbalance and general awkwardness that humans endured into a period of roughly six months.

"You know, your voice sounds funny," he commented with a laugh.

"At least I don't sound like a girl," retorted Vegeta, lips quirking back up into that familiar smirk.

He laughed at that too, knowing that he'd set himself up for that and unbothered by it. "You look different too. I never saw you with hair over your forehead before."

"Try not to sound like a complete idiot. I wasn't born with a hairline like that," muttered Vegeta, frowning and tugging lightly on his bangs. Although he wouldn't admit it, he would have preferred it if that hairline had been one trait that hadn't carried through to him. Still, he couldn't quite imagine himself looking like that as an adult.

Expression growing more serious, Goku said, "I wondered for a while if you were even still alive. I couldn't find your ki, and then I figured out that since time had gone backwards you were probably back with Freeza."

His expression twisted into a sneer for a moment, turning quickly into a more neutral expression. "You thought I was dead. Well, there was a while where I wondered if you even existed."

"Why would you wonder something like that?"

"No one else seemed to remember anything, so I started to doubt that any of those future events had actually occurred. There was no evidence in favor of any of it being real and plenty against it."

"Didn't you want it to be real?"

"Moron. Of course I did."

"Then why didn't you just believe it was?"

Vegeta scowled, remembering just how frustrating it was arguing with the other Saiya-jin and his particular brand of logic. "Do you even wonder why exactly I'm alive right now? It's because nobody who's currently strong enough to kill me remembers anything that happens in the future. Apparently very few people are even aware that there was a time shift. Everything around me said that it never happened, and it's hard to argue otherwise when you have nothing but some memories that no one else shares."

The boy cocked his head slightly to one side, seeming to actually consider what had been said. "But you still came."

"I had to."

"To see if it was real?"

Shaking his head, Vegeta responded, "No. I received other confirmation that my memories were real, and I would have passed up coming here if there was some other place I would've needed to go to time back right. I was told that this was the place I needed to go."

"Do you know why?"

"Not really. It seems like something intentionally caused the time shift, but I don't know the specifics. Either way, there are some things that need to be explained to those two," he said, motioning towards Nappa and Raditz, who were watching them didn't seem to have heard any of their conversation.

"They don't remember either?"

"You're the only other person I've encountered so far who does."

"Oh. Well, that explains why they were willing to come with you; they don't remember how they died."

"Killed," corrected Vegeta in a carefully quiet voice. The greater part of him was glad that they didn't remember anything. It meant they didn't remember how much of a monster he became later on, but a small part of him wondered how they would've reacted to him if they had. "Let's not try to sugar coat it. We are each responsible for the death of one of them."

Goku frowned as he glanced briefly at the pair. He'd almost forgotten the hand he'd played in his own brother's demise. "How'd you convince them to come all the way out here? Didn't they ask questions?"

He smirked again, but it seemed a bit forced this time. "There were some questions, but they were mostly from your brother. He was the more reluctant one. Nappa wants to believe in me, so he hasn't asked a lot of questions even though I can see he wants to." A shadow seemed to pass over his face as he turned and began to walk over to the others.

"What made Raditz decide to come?" asked the younger boy, following just behind.

"I told him you were here."

"Really?" He didn't seem to quite believe it.

The smirk on his lips seemed to become a little more genuine. "You're thinking of them as the same people you met in the future. Don't do that. They're not them."

As they reached the two men, Vegeta found himself once again being snatched up by the collar of his shirt and lifted up to eye level by a rather irate-looking Raditz. Behind him, Nappa sighed and shook his head with the air of a man who'd this all before and knew how poorly it was going to turn out. "You're not putting it off any more! I may be willing to accept that you knew about my brother being alive and living on this planet, but this is too damn much. What's going on? Why are you and Kakarotto acting like you've known each other for years?"

Unsurprisingly, the boy was unimpressed with his attempt at bullying. They all knew it was a useless gesture, varying for Vegeta from amusing to irksome. Right now he was more inclined towards the latter. "Put me down."

"Tell me what's going on?"

"Or what?" he asked, grasping Raditz's wrist tightly with one hand. "I said that I would explain everything, didn't I? Now, you can either release me on your own, or I can crush your wrist and release myself."

"Don't do that, Vegeta. That's not very nice," said Goku suddenly.

For a moment the two men seemed stunned that a boy so much weaker and of such a low station would have the audacity to speak to the prince in such a familiar, chastising tone. Vegeta, for his part, just looked slightly annoyed. "Way to kill my fun, Kakarotto."

Quickly he readjusted his grip on Raditz's arm, squeezing it so that he hit a nerve and forced the grip on his shirt to weaken until he could easily slip out. Releasing the arm, he sank lightly back to the ground. He shot Goku an irritated glance, folding his arms over his chest in his most familiar stance.

"Did I miss something? Did my little brother just talk you down from breaking my arm?"

"Feel free to thank him later. There are more important things that need to be discussed," said Vegeta with an impatient huff. He was ready to get this explanation over with now. "You're about to get those answers you wanted so badly."

He began explaining to them about how time had shifted backwards, adding in more details for their benefits since they didn't have the advantage of unaltered memories like Goku did. He told them that he and Goku had met each other in the future, skipping over any explanation of his reasons for that meeting and any of the events surrounding it. They still had their memories, so, although they had technically never met before, they still knew each other. The younger Saiya-jin corroborated his claims when they began to make sounds of disbelief at the whole situation.

It was an insane story to be sure, but with the two of them confirming each other's stories, the men seemed to eventually accept what they were saying. As impossible as it seemed, there was something in it that rang true. They knew each other too well for it to all be a lie. That Vegeta's recent behavior had been somewhat off character didn't hurt their case any either.

"So you're not really kids?" asked Raditz, sounding somewhat confounded.

"Only physically," said Vegeta, but he seemed to reconsider that statement as he glanced at Goku. "Well, at least I'm still an adult mentally. I can't say Kakarotto ever was one to begin with."

"Hey!" interjected the other boy, wearing a frown that really looked more like a pout. Vegeta smirked in amusement but said nothing.

It was then that Nappa chose to ask about that topic that the prince had quickly skirted around during his explanation: what had brought them to meet each other? Immediately the smirk on the boy's lips vanished, and he refused to say anything on the matter, leaving it to Goku alone. He skipped over both Raditz and Nappa's deaths and tried to put his fellow Saiya-jin's loss in the least humiliating light possible. He made sure to leave out the part where he'd asked Kuririn to spare Vegeta's life. That didn't stop Raditz from bursting into laughter at it.

"You lost to my little brother and his friends?" howled Raditz, feeling almost as good as if he'd been the one to beat him.

"I could've killed them."

"You were trying to show off then?" asked Nappa, surprising Goku with the almost parental tone he was using. This really was very different from the way he remembered the man. "You wasted your energy playing around, so when you really needed it, you had had nothing left."

"Not exactly…" he muttered, face burning in mounting anger and embarrassment.

If anything, Raditz's laughter seemed to grow louder and more excited, oblivious to the dark glare aimed at him. He was really pushing it. "You got shown up by a third class and a pack of no-count humans!"

"We just got lucky. He was stronger—"

A hand suddenly slammed down on his shoulder, nearly causing his knees to buckle as his brother interrupted. "Don't be so humble. You should be proud at having been able to defeat him."

Sensing Vegeta's energy slowly swelling, Goku frowned at the man's behavior. He was about to get himself seriously hurt. "I didn't beat him though."

"What?" Raditz frowned in confusion, and the mounting ki seemed to drop back down slightly.

"He beat me. I'm pretty sure he broke most every bone in my body. He just didn't get the chance to kill me."

"Didn't get the chance? What happened to him?"

"I got hit by the damn genki dama," he grumbled, shifting uncomfortably at the memory. That had probably been the single most painful non-lethal attack he'd suffered in a fight. Being on the receiving end of even a severely diminished one had allowed him to understand how devastating an attack it had the potential to be.

"The what?"

"Long story. Very painful," he said shortly. It was obvious that he was becoming tired of this topic. The tip of his tail twitched and he stood with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. "None of that's important now anyway. We need to change time back to the way it was."

"Why's that such a big deal?"

"Because we're altering the timeline, bringing about who knows what kind of variant future."

Goku's brows furrowed for a minute. "Wouldn't that just make a different timeline, like, what happened with Trunks?" Nappa and Raditz were confused again.

"I don't know. This sort of time travel seems like it might operate differently from the type that he used. We may be creating a divergent timeline, or we could very well be changing out own future. Either way, I can't see where this would make for a good future," he mused, brow furrowed in thought as he stared at nothing in particular.

"Why do you say that?" asked Goku innocently.

Looking at the other boy with an expression that indicated this was a situation needing to be taken with great seriousness. "Our fight won't happen if I'm already here in any timeline."

Making a sound of disbelief, Raditz asked, "You actually want to go through with a fight you already know you're going to lose?"

Of course, he still disliked thinking about that loss. He hated remembering the sting of humiliation as he'd been forced into retreat and the dual rage and shame he'd felt as his life had been spared at the last moment. That a human he could have swatted like a fly under normal circumstances had managed to pose an actual threat to his life—with a sword of all things—had burned him deeply. Even so, the hate he'd felt for it and his former enemies had faded, eventually. "It was an important fight. That fight pushed us to Namek, pushed us to confronting Freeza."

"You fought Freeza?"

He snorted disdainfully. "He's been dead for a decade and a half in our time."

Quietly Goku smiled at Vegeta's evasion of the question. He'd certainly fought against Freeza, but he'd also ended his part in that fight by dying in a most humiliating way. The greater embarrassment for him was probably that he'd openly cried and begged for a man he'd sworn vengeance against to defeat the tyrant. It wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been resurrected shortly afterwards and had to face those people who'd been witness to his shameful display.

"That sound like a good enough reason to change time back," said Raditz with sudden enthusiasm. Nappa maintained a thoughtful silence behind him. "How do we go about doing that exactly?"

"Could we use the dragonballs for this?" asked Vegeta suddenly, ignoring the man's question and the extremely bewildered looks now on his and Nappa's faces. They didn't know what these dragonball things were, but they sounded rather vulgar.

Giving it a bit of thought, Goku frowned and scratched his head. "I guess they might be able to fix things, but I don't know if something like this is within Shenlong's power. We don't have a dragon radar to find them anyway, and the only person who could make one for us is…"

"Bulma…" finished Vegeta. He sighed heavily as one hand rose to cover his face.

It had all very quickly become too confusing for either of the men to follow the conversation, but they still wanted to understand. "Who is Bulma?"

For a long moment no one said anything. The rather sheepish expression on Goku's face seemed to say that he didn't think it was his place to tell them, leaving it up to the prince's discretion whether they found the answer or not. Slowly he pulled his hand away from his face, wearing a suddenly tired look. "She is my wife."

Now his desire to come to this planet and restore time made more sense. It wasn't about having killed Freeza so much as it was about coming back to and regaining his woman. He wanted his life back.

A frown creased Nappa's face. "That is not a Saiya-jin name."

"I know. She's human."

Chuckling darkly, as though he'd just heard the punch line to a really great, twisted joke, Raditz asked, "Whatever happened to 'I will never mate with anyone outside my species'?"

"Shut up."

"Seriously, what happened?" persisted Raditz. "Were you just that desperate for a lay?"

Ki suddenly shooting up, Vegeta launched himself at the long-haired man with an angry growl. There was a loud crunching noise as boot made contact with nose and Raditz was thrown several meters away by the force of the blow. Blood gushed out of his nose, and he quickly reached up with one hand to slow the flow.

Vegeta leapt into the air and came down hard on the man's stomach, sending the air rushing out of his lungs. Extending one hand towards Raditz's face, the boy began to charge a ki blast. "Say that again," he taunted in a low, dangerous tone. Raditz gulped nervously, having difficulty swallowing around a sudden lump in his throat and held his silence. "Idiot. Say anything like that again and I will kill you. Do you understand me?"

Nodding his head slowly, he managed to stutter out, "Y-yes…"

"Good," said the boy, reabsorbing the ki into himself and stepping none too delicately off of Raditz's stomach. He looked at the other two as though daring them to say something else on the matter.

"We should go see if Bulma has the radar at this point, or maybe, if she remembers to, she can make one for us even if she doesn't have one already. I'll go get the four-star ball, and then we can get going," said Goku, wearing a small smile despite the threat that had been made against his brother. He was glad to have something to do now.

"No," said Vegeta sharply.

"What?"

"There will be no us involved in this. Give me the dragonball. I'll go on my own." He wanted to see his wife alone. No one was going to come with him for this.

Here you go guys. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. It should get a bit more action-y in the next one.

Thank you to FireSenshi2, kitsuneluvuh, Green. on. Black (Well, I'm sure you can guess at least some of Freeza's plans, but you'll have to wait to see it.), kitsuK8 (Yes, chapters like the previous one can still be useful, and it was actually quite important because of what happened at the end.), VeggieBlueRaven (I'm not going to abandon it. Right now I'm rewriting the old version I had posted before the two year break I took from the fandom, but this version of the story has only existed for about six months now. I said that I would try to keep to a monthly posting schedule, and I've managed to do pretty well with that so far. The plan, for now, is to just continue on with that.), Obelisk of Light (Eh, I've always imagined that Freeza was quite fond of Vegeta. To me, it's like he finds Vegeta interesting and entertaining because of his rebellious, independent nature. He isn't like all of those other spineless sycophants, so he breaks up the monotony a bit. Now, I'm also firmly settled in the camp that thinks he abused and raped Vegeta, but I look at it more like war rape. It is used as a demonstration of dominance and control over the victim, so I don't necessarily see Freeza as being gay either.), GoldenRat (They've got some time. Freeza still has to travel to Earth, and we don't know exactly how far away he is. Of course, they don't yet know he's heading towards them.), Vetygas Rath (Of course I remember you! I was so happy to see your name again, and I'm glad that you're still interested in reading this after so long.), Luke, and leneypoo for your support of my story.