Chapter 11

"Good afternoon, Lord Dodoria. I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to you for organizing my retrieval and I look forward to serving alongside you..."

... was what Ronji was planning on saying, but one look at Dodoria's chubby, dim-witted, bright pink face shut his mouth. He dived to the floor in a deep bow before Dodoria could see the scornful grin on his face. "You won't regret bringing me here," was what he ended up saying, recovering flawlessly from his surprise. He needed to get used to ugly military-types if he wanted a place here. And staying was the only way to fulfill his desire. Ronji could picture it already...

"Looks like you hit it off with the panel," Dodoria observed gruffly. The small room they were in had been assigned to Ronji less than five hours ago, and already it was a mess. Ronji had just come from orientation with Freeza's top scientists to meet them and exchange data. Now his previously-empty room was strewn with blueprints, formulas, and comm numbers hastily scrawled on graph paper.

"Yes, they seem like a good bunch." Though science was a means to an end more than anything else, Ronji couldn't help but feel inspired to be working with smart people. For a change.

"Never mind that. I'm here to talk about your original message to Lord Freeza."

Ronji nodded. "Of course." It had actually taken some time to build a long-distance communicator out of paper plates and the one fruit tray he had in his cell, but it had gotten him off Kaimon.

"You stated that you would give your loyalty and talents to the Freeza Force on the condition that you..." Dodoria paused, frowning. He stared at the ceiling and scratched his chin for a few moments. Then, with a grunt of defeat, he pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. "... Condition that you 'receive a supply of mint and chocolate in any form I want, and as much as I want, for as long as I am in your employ.'" Dodoria crumpled the paper up again and threw it on top of a pile of stray theories. "That right?"

"Yes, that is correct," Ronji said, his eyes gleaming. Just the thought of being able to taste mint and chocolate together made his heart beat faster. He'd never have to suffer through another squashy, moist, spongecake ever again.

"Lord Freeza said that's okay, but only once you get results and your salary will be cut in half to compensate."

"Fine by me!" Ronji sang. "Is that all your business here, Lord Dodoria?"

"You have to show your progress every week or else we get rid of you," Zarbon said, poking his head in the doorway.

"Oh dear!" Ronji cried. "You'll kill me just like that?"

"Unless you give a good reason." And with that, he was gone. Dodoria glowered. He'd only met Zarbon once and already he wanted to tear him apart. Stealin' his thunder. Why had Lord Freeza been so quick to shove them together?

Ronji, on the other hand, was charmed by Zarbon's interlude. He liked the semi-formal vibe of 65 (Of course, he wasn't a lowly soldier! He'd been promoted to Lord as soon as he got out of the ship) and was comforted by Zarbon's neither-fat-nor-pink appearance.

Speaking of, Dodoria was still annoyingly in the room. "I'd better get to work," Ronji said, picking up a clipboard and scribbling something down. "Don't want to get myself executed if I can help it, eh? Ha ha ha."

Dodoria snorted, got a bit more than he expected, and had to spit. He aimed for his discarded paper, but the rose-colored blob of mucus splatted some few feet past it. "Better go," he said thickly, hurrying off. Ronji was left alone, holding his clipboard with a half-finished doodle of a few soldiers bouncing on Dodoria's fat tum.

In the hallway, a foul mood glommed onto Dodoria as he remembered that his plan to get revenge on those Saiyans had failed. He should have gone for the dangerous one... but then again, they had just returned with Ronji a few hours ago. There was still a chance to make Nappa and Raditz miserable, or better yet, dead.

An idea forming, Dodoria ran all the way to the mission room. He was thinking of a planet that had already begun processing, but contact with the assigned team had been lost. It was a gamble, but Dodoria was desperate enough to try. "Where are those two Saiyans?" he panted, bursting into the mission room. "I have something I think they would be best for."

"You just missed them," said the furry mission supervisor. "They already left on another assignment."

Dodoria gaped. They were gone already? "Who sent them off? Was it you?"

"Technically speaking, yes, but really they sent themselves. They came here and demanded a... 'real mission,' I think that's what they said. Don't know where Lord Freeza found such ill-bred animals."

"Tell me about it," Dodoria muttered. Even so, he was already cooling off. As long as they didn't cause any more trouble, he probably wouldn't bother with such small fry.

Wandering out of the mission room, Dodoria cracked his back. Now, then. It was time to focus on his assignment. And if he remembered it correctly... it was a fun one. Then again, it didn't take much to make him happy. Let him break a few bones and you wouldn't hear a complaint out of him for the rest of the day.

*⁂*⁂*

Nappa and Raditz found themselves above a clueless planet once again.

"Grrr... let's hope this one is—"

"'Better than the last one? I dunno how to say this, Nappa, but... you complain a lot."

"..." Nappa's comm was silent long enough to make Raditz regret speaking. Then he got angry at himself. Half of their formally-glorious race were whiners, the other half, cowards.

But then Nappa surprised him by admitting that Ronji's rescue hadn't been so bad.

"Nappa!" Raditz cheered. "Now I'll have to step up my game. Good job, good job!"

"Don't push it, kid. Let's just get down there."

The planet was small, pockmarked with impact craters, and had the closest gravity to Planet Vegeta that they had felt so far. Maybe around 10 G. Nice planet. It also happened to be the first mission where their spaceships landed dead center in a cluster of locals.

"Is there anything special about this mission?" Nappa asked Raditz. "Anything we have to look out for, people we can't touch, stuff like that."

"No, this is a standard mission."

"Excellent." Nappa's hunger rejoiced at the news. Nothing could ruin a party as much as having to bother with something as trivial as excess instructions.

"Should we start here?" Raditz asked out of the corner of his mouth. He glanced uncomfortably at the locals, so shocked that they hadn't moved yet.

"Of course we're starting here," Nappa said at the normal volume. "Remember? The nearest ones always go..." he trailed off, staring at the sky. A glint of something streaked between the orange clouds. Was it silver? Some kind of silver shooting star? No, that couldn't be it. No space rock had enough traces of silver to be visible from that distance. Unless...

The meteor was only a few thousand feet away from impact when Nappa realized what it was—and how big it was. "Bury the ships. BURY THE SHIPS!"

Nappa's booming voice almost made Raditz jump out of his skin, but he was still a Saiyan. Before Nappa could finish repeating his command Raditz was already hurrying over.

"What's wrong?!" Raditz yelled as he frantically dug up the rocky ground. "What is it with that meteor?"

"If we don't get them out of harm's way, they'll be destroyed!" Nappa shouted back over the local's screams of realization. "Now MOVE!"

A moment later and the two ships were covered with earth. Whether or not it would be enough, Nappa couldn't say. He quickly looked up at the meteor, now blocking two-thirds of the sky. They only had seconds before it was on top of them.

With a sinking feeling, Nappa saw that the most breakable thing around was now Raditz. Nappa dived for him just as the silver fist smashed into the two Saiyans, a few dozen natives, and at least fifty square feet of land.

Nappa expected to be knocked unconscious at the very least. He wasn't. Raditz expected to be burnt to death by the scorching-hot fallen asteroid. He wasn't, either.

They were both alive.

Nappa rolled off Raditz and spat out some hair, an unavoidable consequence of any contact with the kid. "If you don't count the time we spent in sleep, this is the second time we've been landed on in twelve hours."

"I guess you're right. Maybe that's just how it works. Maybe Vegeta was our good luck charm and—"

"Will you stop bringing up—DAMN." Nappa, standing up, had struck his head against the low rocky ceiling. It was invisible in the darkness. "St—stop bringing up Vegeta." Nappa couldn't say any more—he was too busy concentrating on not tearing out Raditz's throat. Head injuries always set him off. Lots of things set him off.

A little freaked out by Nappa's labored breathing in the darkness, Raditz eagerly changed the subject. "This ceiling is barely five feet tall," he said, lighting the cave with a spark of chi in his hand, "and the whole cave thing isn't much bigger than a large closet." Raditz exhaled noisily. "We got lucky." A crater on the meteorite's surface had fallen on top of the two Saiyans, neatly boxing them in. "But we probably would've survived anyway. No stupid asteroid's gonna crush my bones."

Nappa glared, sitting down with a thud. "First of all, it's not an asteroid. 'An asteroid stays in the void but a meteor is greedier. Once it's quite got the ground in sight it's called a meteorite.'"

Raditz only looked confused.

"They never taught you that? The Official Core Textbook of Space Travel and Conquest?" Nappa frowned. "That's depressing. Anyway, this rock's made of pure Jangite."

Raditz gaped. "No... J—Jangite, as in..."

"... As in the fifth-strongest metal in the universe, yeah," Nappa said grimly, rapping a silver wall with his knuckles. "So not only would it have killed us instantly... but now we're trapped."

"T—trapped?" With wide eyes, Raditz dropped down next to Nappa. "So... are we just going to sit here and wait to starve to death?"

"Stop being such an idiot. Of course we're getting out, I just have to think of something. You wanna start pulling your weight? Try to come up with an escape plan before me."

The two Saiyans settled down to think. This wasn't one of Nappa strong suits and it didn't take long for him to lose focus. First he grieved for the days when he didn't need to use himself as a shield just to keep his partner alive. This led him to wonder about their ships... it would be considerably harder for Nappa and Raditz to do their jobs if they were trapped under 1,000 tons of pure Jangite and without a way off the planet. Nappa crossed his fingers for the ships being safely underground. They hadn't had much time to dig the holes... wasn't there an idea in there somewhere?

"We can tunnel underneath," he said. Raditz nodded and started to inspect the ground.

The next second he fell back and sighed heavily in frustration. "There's something wrong... it's like the floor is made out of Jangite, too."

"What are you talking about?" Nappa snapped, taking a look himself. The silver ground beneath their feet reflected their chi light just as well as the walls and ceiling. "What the hell?! How did we end up inside the meteorite?"

"Over here," Raditz said from one of the walls. "There's some normal ground here—the floor isn't all Jangite!"

Nappa crawled over and saw a dull patch of earth pressed up against the wall in the middle of all the silver. It was about six square feet. "Great. We can plant a flower bed before we die. It's not like that pathetic clump of dirt will do us any—"

Raditz, arm buried up to the shoulder in the earth patch, cried out in surprise. "My hand's in open air! I think there's another cave right on the other side of this wall. If we can tunnel through to it, there might be a way out."

Nappa eyed the size of the dirt patch skeptically. He might be able to fit. Maybe.

Raditz screamed at the top of his lungs and ripped his arm out of the hole with enough force to send him sprawling painfully against the opposite wall.

"What happened?" Nappa demanded.

"S—something touched my hand!"

Nappa remembered the crowd of people the Saiyans had landed among. They weren't the only survivors. They weren't the only ones trapped. "First a flower bed and now this," he said, widening the hole that Raditz had dug. "It's getting very suburban. Fine. Let's go meet the neighbors."

Nappa squeezed his shoulders through the hole, very brave of him considering his build. His chest almost got stuck at the halfway point but he exhaled, pushed off the ground with his feet, and managed to force his way forward a few inches. His head was now poking out of the floor of the second cave.

He couldn't even get a look at the cave's prisoners before one of them swung something at Nappa's exposed head. His arms were uselessly pinned at his sides so all he could do was lean away. It hit Nappa square in the jaw and snapped in two. It was just a simple walking stick.

Before anyone else tried to attack him, Nappa wriggled all the way out of the hole. The new cave was much more spacious; big enough to fit at least ten locals. All of which were staring silently at Nappa with their weird faces.

They looked like cartoon suns... but not the friendly "smiley face with lines for sunbeams" kind. These guys looked like those creepy, pagan, human-faced suns with wavy hair. Their limbs were long and thin, their hands were big, their feet were tiny. And the bags under their eyes made them look permanently suspicious.

Since this was Nappa's first real look at them, Raditz slipped into a room that was dead silent. "Are you having a staring contest?" he whispered to Nappa. "Let's just get it over with and kill them so we can—"

"We come in peace!" Nappa said loudly with a friendly grin. "We're just two, uh, tourists out to see the galaxy."

"Don't bother lying," said a sun that wore a patch-covered tweed jacket. "We know you're here to kill us." Nappa's fake smile dropped, to Raditz's relief. "You'll have to wait until we're all out of here before you can start, though."

Nappa frowned. "What do you mean? You found a way out?"

"Our planet has been plagued by these meteorites since the beginning of time. We have a means of dissolving the Jangite, so we won't be stuck here for long. But if you try to hurt us, I'll call the whole thing off from my comm. Kill us and you kill yourself."

Nappa crossed his arms and leaned against the cave wall. "Then I guess we'll wait it out with you. I'm Nappa and he's Raditz. We're Saiyans."

The sun shrugged. "Never heard of you."

That didn't make Nappa happy, especially since none of the locals looked scared of him. Didn't they know that Nappa and Raditz were going to kill them once they were in open air?

"Well, we came from the other end of the first half so that's no surprise there," Raditz said helpfully. Then he sensed Nappa's rising temper. "But never mind. We introduced ourselves, now it's your turn. Don't be rude." His ten year old voice was doing its best to sound menacing.

Nappa almost laughed at Raditz's attempts to match his own mood. He was a surprisingly good sidekick. Now if only he was a little stronger...

The sun raised an eyebrow and glanced at his companions. None of them were paying much attention. "You don't know who we are? Didn't they tell you anything about this planet before you were sent to conquer it?"

"I guess they did..." Nappa rolled his eyes. "But why would we bother paying attention? We're just here for the fights."

"Who knew the Inba Group was so sloppy?" the local muttered to one of his friends.

That caught Raditz's attention. "'Inba Group...?' That's not who we—"

"Just tell us your name and how long we're stuck here," Nappa interrupted. "I'm bored."

The sun smiled. "As you wish." He reached inside his coat and pulled out a bottle. The two Saiyans' eyes narrowed warily and they braced themselves. The sun drank from the bottle, gargled for a few seconds, and then swallowed. "That's my name," he said. He took another swig. This time, he spat it out vocally, making a sound somewhere between "blub" and "pah". The liquid—it seemed to just be water—splashed at Nappa's feet. "And that is the name of our species."

Nappa stared at the ground a second, a smile growing on his face. He chuckled. Then he grabbed the sun by his tattered lapels and dragged him roughly against the cave wall. "It's kind of funny how your names are unpronounceable. So why can you speak our language perfectly? Patches—that's your name from now on—I don't think you're being very honest with me."

"I don't think you remember," Patches (Ronji would be proud) said. "One word from me and you'll never get out."

"How do I know you aren't just bluffing?" Nappa grinned. "People have lied to try to save their skins before."

Patches gulped. Nappa took pleasure at seeing the sun man begin to break down. "I'm telling the truth," he said nervously, Nappa's big hands dangerously close to his throat. "They've probably already started. We'll be free in less than half an hour." Patches got a sly look on his face. "But the two of you might not last that long."

"Who do you have up your sleeve?" Raditz asked, scanning the group. "They all look like you, and if you were a fighter your confidence wouldn't have wavered."

"Wake him up," Patches said to the group. A few worried mutters and everyone crowded forward, making a space at the back of the cave.

There lay a sun clearly different from the others. Where they had sticks for limbs, he had logs. Where the locks of their hair were gentle and wavy, his were long and unkempt. Where their hands were normal, if three-fingered, his were armed with scythy grey claws.

Timidly, one of the suns closest to him picked up a rock and threw it. It bounced off his face and he snorted awake. Raditz half expected him to froth and snarl like a wild tiger in captivity, but the sun only sat up.

Patches made his way through the crowd until he met with the wild sun. He crouched next to him and whispered something in his ear. Nappa and Raditz tilted their heads, trying to listen in, but they didn't catch anything. Patches put his head on the wild sun's shoulder and pointed at the Saiyans.

The sun lifted off the ground and floated over the crowd towards them. He touched down in front of Nappa, who matched him in height.

"I'll kill you," he said, making more of a casual choice than a threat.

"No fair!" Raditz complained. "Why do they always ignore—"

"Shh." Nappa pushed Raditz away without breaking eye-contact with the challenger. He knew a warrior when he saw one, and he wasn't letting one second of this battle be dirtied with Raditz's whining.

Without wasting a word, the Saiyan and the sun crouched into fighting stances. The entire room inhaled in anticipation.

The instant everyone exhaled, the fight began with Nappa. Attacking on the less-guarded exhale disrupted your enemy's breathing cycle and could throw them off their guard for a few seconds. Especially if you aimed your blows at their stomach, forcing air out of their lungs even as they inhale sharply from surprise.

But breath strategies were very old and very common to this side of the galaxy. The sun grabbed Nappa's fist before it made contact, hijacked his own momentum, and flipped Nappa over his head. The sun jumped up when Nappa was directly above him and headbutted him even higher. Nappa was the one struggling to catch his breath. The sun grabbed him by his sides and scraped him back and forth against the rocky cave ceiling.

The rest of the suns cheered as Nappa struggled to free himself, pinned to the ceiling. Raditz winced, even though he knew Nappa's armor would stop him getting more than some shredded skin on his arms and legs. Still, the wild sun must be a lot stronger than any of their previous enemies. Raditz had never seen Nappa trapped for so long.

Nappa finally managed to pry the sun's hands off him and he fell heavily to the ground. The cave wasn't big enough to give him time to prepare as the sun fell after him, and he could barely knock his opponent away.

This continued on for fifteen minutes. The sun was not only matching Nappa, he was pressing him back. Slowly, in small ways, but Raditz saw them all: a stumble here, a punch taken full-force there...

"Remember, you wanted this," Raditz couldn't help but point out during one of the ebbs in the fight.

Nappa glared at him with dark eyes rimmed by cuts and bruises. "Did I say I didn't? This one's just a little hard to crack."

Raditz wished he hadn't spoke as he saw the sun come at Nappa from behind. That sneak-attack cost Nappa two teeth and it was Raditz's fault. Nappa would probably take it out on him later.

Raditz frowned as he watched Nappa lift off the ground from the force of the sun's uppercut. That was the fourth time Nappa had been thrown towards the ceiling this fight. Could the sun be doing it on purpose?

Another question: why were they sent to this planet if there were superior powers living here? Was there some mix-up with the files?

His brain rejecting the thought of paperwork, Raditz turned back to the fight. Nappa was in bad shape. His strength was starting to be affected from the damage he took, and it would be all downhill from there. Raditz wrinkled his nose after watching for a few seconds. Ugh.

Wait, since when did he not like watching battle?

Raditz got up off the ground after losing his footing from the shock. "Thank god," he muttered. It was this particular fight that was gross to look at. It was too top-heavy. Both of them were fighting only with their arms, and the sun kept driving Nappa up.

Why didn't they use their legs and feet?

"Nappa, you have to kick him!" Raditz yelled. The suns, realizing he knew their secret, all piled on Raditz to keep him quiet.

"What?! Wh—why?" Nappa spluttered, focusing too hard to say anything more.

Raditz, using every point of strength he had, fought his way through the pile of bodies to the surface. "Because they can't SEE—" A hand clapped around Raditz's mouth, dragging him under again.

Nappa let down his guard, getting a punch in the face. But he had noticed the bags under the sun's eyes. They were huge. They were forcing his eyes half shut.

They were cutting off the bottom half of the sun's field of view.

Nappa kicked the sun in the shin. The sun didn't block. Nappa kneed him in the stomach. The sun gasped as the breath was knocked out of him. He bowed his head to keep track of Nappa's feet, so Nappa laced his fingers together and brought them down on the back of the sun's unguarded head.

The tide had shifted and it was Nappa's fight. Good job, Raditz.

Just when the two Saiyans had properly gotten into dealing with their group, a crack of sunlight snuck in through the Jangite. They were free. And they were all warmed up and ready to move on to the rest of the planet.

*⁂*⁂*

Vegeta looked up just in time to see the sun duck behind a cloud. This was bad... the clouds on this planet were thick enough to completely block out sunlight. In a matter of seconds it would be pitch black. And Vegeta was already hurt.

"You let down your guard!" The retreating sun was blocked as Vegeta's opponent (a hulking giant with skin like metal) came down on him from above.

Vegeta smashed through five floors of the solar tower they were fighting in. As he struggled to get up, the light faded on all sides. His opponent would find him in seconds, being able to see in the dark and all, and he had to be ready.

But that blow had almost finished him... the guy he was fighting would give Nappa a run for his money. He could literally feel his chi pouring out of him and into the blackness. His opponent dropped down somewhere in front of him. Vegeta took a breath, closed his eyes, then faced his invisible enemy.

"You know where I am," a voice said in surprise.

"Give up. I've already killed all your friends, you're only prolonging this," Vegeta panted.

"I can just build more of them and you're in worse shape than I am," the voice said. The metal man thought he had this in the bag.

Vegeta smiled in the darkness and came forwards, putting his hands out in front of him. His opponent spoke but Vegeta couldn't hear over his focus. The moment the man decided to attack, a ball of Vegeta's chi materialized behind his head.

"Got you, you bastard," Vegeta muttered as the room was bathed in purple light. Before the man could turn around, the energy collided with the back of his skull. His defenses down, he was killed instantly.

The force of the explosion pushed Vegeta, exhausted, out the window and into the empty air. He couldn't see the ground so he had no idea how high up he was.

It was almost thirty seconds before Vegeta struck the planet's surface. The darkness deepened as he nearly lost consciousness, but he managed to hold on. If he lost it now there was no telling when, or if, he'd wake up.

Vegeta still hadn't pulled himself out of his collision crater when the sun came out again. He wasn't quite bleeding out, but if he strained himself it wouldn't be long before he did.

After a few hours, he gingerly climbed up out of the crater. He limped over to a nearby house, loaded up on food for future journeys, and slowly made his way back to his spaceship. As he tried his best to patch himself up, he caught himself wishing for the high-tech medical facilities back in the Freeza Force.

"Only one thing for it," he muttered, picking through his supplies. He'd have to go back. He'd always known, at the back of his mind. His current situation—using the galaxy to hide from the Force like a mouse would the cracks in a cellar wall—was no life.

But it was training. An interstellar expedition, hopping from planet to planet and fighting everything that had a face all the while. Every Saiyan's dream...

Of course Vegeta wasn't satisfied with that. Now that he finally knew what it was like to fight, he finally appreciated that Lord Freeza had the best and brightest warriors of the galaxy working for him. And then there was Lord Freeza himself. Vegeta couldn't avoid his rival much longer.

Yes, he was definitely going to come back. But not now, not when he hadn't even been gone three years. He'd head back once he was strong enough to destroy entire cities with a gesture, once he was so strong they'd have no choice but to take him seriously.

As Vegeta glanced at his planet files, snacking on some kind of meat, he knew the dice he was rolling. For every day he was out, unchecked in space, Lord Freeza was a little more likely to kill him when he returned.

Being a Saiyan, Vegeta could hardly contain his excitement at the thought.