Author's Note: Okay, the bad news is that I haven't finished chapter 22 yet and I've been away on a little holiday but heading back into the frying pan at work, so I can't predict when things will be done. Good news is that this chapter is MASSIVE. I probably should've divided it up into two, but I didn't notice how big it was, and now I can't be bothered. Chow down on this folks - there's quite a lot going on.

Raditz and Goku flew low over the forest looking for animals to roast over the fire they'd built.

'Hurry up, brother,' Raditz complained. 'You're slowing me down.'

Goku wrinkled his nose at this. He was not used to being the one to slow others down. 'Go as fast as you want, then!' he told Raditz. 'I'll keep up.'

Raditz laughed. 'Okay then, feel welcome to eat my dust!' And then he took off ahead. Goku took a deep breath and pulled out all the stops, digging deep into himself to pull out the chi he needed to propel himself forwards. If Raditz was faster, the only solution was to push himself harder until he was as just fast, and keep at it until it got easier. Less than a week ago he hadn't known that flying was even possible, but the Saiyans had opened his eyes to a level of power he never knew existed. And he was determined to attain it himself. After all, he couldn't rule out that he'd be fighting against them before their task was through.

Gritting his teeth with the strain, he drew level with Raditz once more. Raditz did a double take and laughed at the grimace on his brother's face.

'You're a little hard-case, Kakarott! If you push yourself that hard you're going to pop something!'

Goku was exerting so much effort he couldn't answer, but Raditz's attention was caught by something moving under the branches of the trees. He slowed and then plunged straight down through the canopy, where there was a strangled bellow, and emerged just a few seconds later with a large four legged beast with green fur and brown stripes running the length of its body. 'What do you think of that one?' he asked the younger boy, and tossed it to Goku who was still trying to catch his breath.

Goku braced himself to catch it. It was the size of a prize bull, and though he'd have no trouble with it on the ground, up here in the air and already tired, he almost fell out of the sky under the limp weight of the animal. Raditz laughed, but Goku stayed up and took his question in all seriousness. He sniffed the animal deeply. It was a bit musty, but had the general scent of a herbivore. He couldn't detect anything bitter or identifiable as poisonous.

'I think it will be fine to eat,' he told Raditz.

'You carry that while I look for another.'

But Goku threw the beast back. 'No. You hang onto that and I'll catch the next.' He took off before Raditz could argue, eyes scanning for any movement under the trees. Then he swooped down through an opening in the canopy and flew through the gaps between the trunks, following a stream through the forest. He figured his chances were higher of finding something near a stream, and within a minute he was proved right. He startled another green-furred animal, which reared up and turned tail back into the thick undergrowth, moving its bulk with desperate speed. Goku felt sorry for it, but they did need to eat.

'Sorry, Mr Green Cow,' he said as he caught up to it. Then he grabbed the thing by its curled horns, flipped over, and pulled himself to the ground. The green bull's momentum had it flying over him, but as he had it by the horns, its hindquarters barrelled over its head. With a pitiable scream it landed on its back with a crack and thundering whomp. Goku got up and quickly made sure it was dead before hauling it with some difficulty into the air. Raditz was waiting for him holding his own kill.

'You're a disobedient little shit, you know that, Kakarott?' he said.

Goku frowned. He didn't particularly feel any compunction to follow orders from the Saiyans, especially his "brother," but he decided not to mention this. Instead he asked a question that had been bothering him.

'Why do all you Saiyans have to keep calling me Kakarott? My name is Goku now.'

Radtiz looked shocked. 'Why wouldn't you want to be called Kakarott? That's an excellent Saiyan name! I mean, our father didn't have the time to give us much in his life, but he gave us our names. It honours him and our mother to use them!'

Goku hadn't thought of this, but he also had no idea if his parents were worth honouring. It was strange to try and imagine them, these two people he had no memory of who had given him life and then sent him away as a baby.

'Did they deserve honouring?' he asked as them both turned back towards the ship.

'Absolutely! Our father was dedicated to the art of battle and to the old king, and there'd never been a third class like him before. And when they wanted to make him a second class and give him a job at the palace, do you know what he did?'

'What?'

'He told them they could give the second-class status and the palace job to me to carry the honour for him. And then he went straight back out on another mission. What a badass! I only wish he'd let me join his squad instead, but he said I was too young and weak at the time. Although, if he had let me I'd be dead right now, along with all the others, so there's that. That's how I ended up working with Prince Vegeta on Frieza's ship. Vegeta's other page got himself killed, so they sent me from the palace, and like two days later - Boom! No more Planet Vegeta…'

Goku wondered if his father had been evil, or if he'd just been really good at following orders. This thing about following orders seemed to be a big deal amongst the Saiyans. He looked at Raditz and thought about the way he always did what Nappa and Vegeta said, even when he didn't want to. He'd probably follow orders even when he thought it was the wrong thing to do. Raditz had been told to kill a planet full of people when he was just a little kid, and he had, which was terrible and mind-boggling to imagine, but he didn't seem totally evil. A jerk, for sure, but Goku wondered, if left to his own devices, if Raditz's evil deeds would be on the small side. But then how could Saiyans kill so many and be so casual about being killers? Where they missing the part that told them killing innocent people was bad? Or maybe…maybe it was he who had had part of himself added to him, maybe by Grandpa Gohan? If he hadn't lost his memories, and if Grandpa Gohan hadn't raised him, maybe he'd still be missing that part of himself too? And all the people on Earth would have been dead a long time ago. It was a horrible thought, but he could still see a silver lining to it. If Goku had learnt the value of life, then these guys could too.

'Why are you so mean, Raditz?' he asked.

'Mean?' echoed his brother, and then laughed. 'Why are you always going on about how mean people are?'

'When you purge a planet, how can you kill innocent people and not feel like you will end up in hell for it?'

'Oh, I will end up in hell,' said Raditz glibly. 'All Saiyans will. That's the way we are, and they taught us that from the cradle. We're all heading to hell to meet with our ancestors for eternal torment, so the best thing to do is to make them proud and enjoy the ride. You should hold that in mind, brother,' he said, grinning widely at Goku. 'All Saiyans are doomed; it doesn't matter what you do. We're conquerors and warriors and our souls are black from the womb.'

'My soul's not black!' Goku protested.

'So you think!'

'You're wrong. And your soul doesn't need to be black either!'

Raditz laughed. 'I like my black soul. Why would I want to avoid hell anyway? Everyone is waiting for me there!'

Goku huffed in frustration. He could see he wasn't getting through to Raditz, and he didn't know enough about Hell or the Next World or souls to be arguing about them anyway. All he had was his gut instinct that told him that, like anyone else, Saiyans had the potential to be good or evil.

'Were our parents cruel?' he asked in the end, just as the ship was coming back into view.

'Cruel? No. Our father's squad thought he was great. Our mother though he was great too, of course,' he said bitterly. 'I think those two liked each other more than they liked me.'

'What about our mother then? Was she good or cruel?'

'Good? Come on, what did I just tell you? Oh, I guess she took good care of me after I came back from my purge. She was always telling me off and scolding me and giving me a bash round the head when she thought I was talking back, but she not as rough as some mothers. I mean she actually gave a crap what I was up to, which I couldn't stand, so I tried to keep away from her most of the time. I guess she was a good mother for a Saiyan.'

Goku tried to picture the childhood that might have been his – a "good" but rough mother, an absent but heroic figure of a planet-killing father, being dumped on an alien planet after being told you were always going to go to hell, and the only way to get home was to kill everyone in sight…It was hard to get his head around as it was so different to the childhood he actually had, but he started to wonder if his brother had been set up to make the wrong choices. And maybe his parents had too. Maybe even Nappa and Vegeta.

Back at the campsite Bulma saw two huge animals and a few smaller ones sitting next to a pile of stinking guts, waiting on the spits for the fire to be ready. Goku and Raditz were splitting wood for the fire – with their hands. She was surrounded by freaks.

'Raditz, come with us,' Vegeta ordered as he marched past the brothers. Krillin hurried over to Goku to tell them what they'd found, or hadn't found, while Bulma put away her hoverbike. Looking between her friends and the retreating backs of the Saiyans, she quickly decided that whatever was about to happen on this ship should have a watchful Bulma-eye kept on it, so she followed the Saiyans up the rampway and up onto the flight deck.

'We need to canvas the rest of the planet for high power levels,' announced Vegeta as he sat down at the pilot controls. 'There are a few on this planet strong enough that it's possible Salda will not be the highest power level we find. Raditz – you fly, I will scan for targets.'

Radtiz say down and took the controls, hitting the button to close the rampway.

'You realise Goku and Krillin are still outside?' Bulma objected.

'Good,' replied Vegeta. 'They can take care of dinner for when we get back.'

'Oh man, they're leaving without us!' shouted Krillin as the wind from the ships thrusters buffeted them and whipped the fire almost out. Then it began accelerating upwards smoothly and almost silently.

'They'll come back,' said Goku sagely.

'What makes you so sure?' said Krillin, almost beside himself.

'We've got all the equipment for making dinner,' said Goku. 'In fact, I'm hungry already. Let's see what we can cook!'

Vegeta had Raditz fly them at low altitude, scanning constantly at the limits of his scouter range. This way they found three other enclaves of survivors on one continent or another, but not a single power reading was above 70. Bulma grew tired of standing and listening to the Saiyans' suggestions and Vegeta's agitated speculation, and instead sat on the long, curved sofa on the other side of the flight deck with Puar, watching the scenery. For the most part it was very Earth-like, and was depressing viewing whenever they passed over a place that had obviously used to be a city, town or village. She couldn't help wondering what her own city looked like now. Craters marked the landmasses at random, some of them filling in with brush and trees. Salda had done this, perhaps over the course of years. Maybe the girl deserved these brutes?

She wondered what would happen if she told Vegeta he had overlooked Salda back at the cave. She took the threat of being gutted seriously, though she was reasonably sure Vegeta wouldn't let Salda carry it out. But what would happen to Salda amongst the Saiyans? What had happened to Salda? It was obvious that the girl had had some kind of change of heart and was now living, perhaps hiding out amongst the people she'd been ordered to annihilate. Death threats aside, that was a significant change of character that couldn't be ignored, no matter how late it came. But dobbing the girl in might get Vegeta back on the road faster. Or not at all. Not knowing how it would affect the plan to go to Namek, she decided to keep her mouth shut for now.

When they touched down to investigate the owners of the high power levels she tagged along the first couple of times, but the novelty of meeting aliens didn't make up the horrible feeling she got seeing Vegeta threaten and intimidate them. He was sliding closer and closer to the edge of his temper, and when he lost his grip, she wasn't looking forward to it.

'Hey, watch your attitude, buddy,' she snapped at him eventually as they stood in front of a terrified family that had been hauled out of their crumbling farmhouse in the middle of the night. 'It's not their fault that they're not your precious Salda, so don't take it out on them!'

'How about I take it out on you, then?' he roared back at her. 'I thought I told you to keep quiet!'

'What are you going to do? Rip my tongue out?' she dared him, deciding to call his bluff on his earlier threat.

Vegeta's eyes went to her mouth, the furious V of his brows trembling over his stony expression. Bulma took a step back and wondered if she'd been wrong about his bluffing. When he took a step towards her, she screamed and scrambled backwards.

'Go back to the ship!' he shouted at her. 'And keep out of my hair!'

Vegeta himself had no issue taking out his disappointment on the aliens. Bulma deflecting his ire onto herself was a different matter though. She made him itch to hit her, but he knew that if he did he'd probably kill her, which was counterproductive. She was not one of his robust Saiyan underlings, and it was like she knew he couldn't punish her that way and was all the more impertinent for it.

He watched her jump back on the hoverbike and give him a reproachful look over her shoulder before lifting it into the air again. A brief vision of himself blowing her up from behind frolicked through his mind and then he growled through his anger before letting it go. He turned to Tarble.

'Go and keep an eye on her. Make sure the idiot doesn't get herself killed somehow.'

He made his way to the next power level above 50 in silence, feeling despair growing in his chest.

When Bulma set her hoverbike down outside the ship she got a little fright when Tarble landed next to her a second later.

'What are you doing here?' she asked, encapsulating her bike again.

'Vegeta sent me to look after you. He was worried you might get hurt,' he said.

'Ha!' she hooted. Vegeta, worried about her! 'Really?'

'Yes, really,' said Tarble earnestly.

'Ha!' she said again and wandered back inside to the lounge, still amused by the thought of Vegeta's concern. Apparently he was more bark than bite towards her, which she decided to credit towards her charm and good looks. I wonder if he really does fancy me a little? she asked herself as she took her capsule carry bag from around her waist. She'd had to put it on a different belt since Nappa snapped the rugged brown one. This one was a patent red, and rather limited her fashion choices when she was wearing it. Searching through and finding the capsule she wanted, she threw it on the ground to reveal a small fridge. Reaching inside she got out one of her precious sodas. She'd been thirsting for something fizzy for days, but as this was all she had, she didn't want to open it in front of the others for fear of it all being drunk. This would probably be the only soda she would encounter until she got home. Until the people of Earth were resurrected.

Her stomach lurched at the thought even as her fingers closed around the cold glass of a cola bottle and she pulled it out and sat there breathing through her nose and swallowing hard for a few moments.

'What's that?' asked Tarble, sidling closer.

'A drink. A fizzy drink,' she replied, twisting the lid off. She took a sip, now that her stomach has settled a little, and sighed in satisfaction. 'So good! Do you want one?'

He sniffed the air and his expression lifted. 'Yes, please!'

'Okay,' she said. 'But if I give you one, you're going to have to answer some questions for me.'

Tarble's face immediately shifted back to suspicion. 'What questions?'

Bulma considered the hen-pecked boy. She knew he spied for Vegeta. She knew he'd told Vegeta about the dragon radar. She figured he was scared of Vegeta and the others, but she also sensed that he was someone who wanted to be helpful and liked. She was determined to make a double agent out of him. She pulled out another bottle and put it on top of the fridge, then perched herself next to it.

'Like…what was Vegeta really going to wish for on Earth?' she began.

'I don't know the answer to that one,' Tarble replied. 'I don't think Vegeta would like it if I told you, even if I did.' He looked sadly at the soda.

'Do you think he was going to make a wish to save the people of Earth?'

Tarble looked uncomfortable. 'I know he promised you that, but…'

'I get it. He tricked me.'

'I think so. He wants to be strong enough to kill Frieza more than anything – probably a lot more than saving strangers.'

He had already given her something that she didn't know. She remembered Vegeta's proclamation that he would "ascend" to a "Super Saiyan" and destroy Frieza at the campfire a little over a week ago. She supposed it made sense that he would wish for the strength to defeat such a monstrous enemy.

Aloud she said, 'Well, I understand if you can't tell me everything. I guess Vegeta is pretty secretive.'

'Yes, he is,' Tarble agreed. 'I don't think he even tells Nappa much of what he's thinking, never mind me.'

'I wonder what he's writing in that journal?' she asked, trying to sound off-hand.

'He says it's a logbook. None of us are allowed to read it though, so I don't really know what kind of things he logs.'

Secret diary, was Bulma's immediate thought. Wouldn't that be a thing to get her hands on? If she could read it without him knowing she could keep tabs on the inner workings of Vegeta – every advantage would count on Namek.

'Where do you and the others keep your stuff when you're not using it?' she asked. 'I've seen you guys reading and writing in quite a few things, but I haven't seen a bookshelf or anything like that.'

'There's more storage inside the sofa upstairs,' he said. 'The seats lift up.'

'Ah. So besides that and the underfloor spaces, are there any other hidden storage spaces on the ship?'

Tarble immediately looked on guard, and she knew that question had been incautious. 'I'm not sure. Maybe you should ask Vegeta – he might know better.'

'Don't worry about it,' she backtracked. 'I'm just impressed that this ship seems to hold a lot more than you'd expect. Erm…'

Tarble looked confused now.

'Here, have the soda,' she said cheerfully, trying to disrupt whatever thought he was running through his mind.

'Oh, thank you!' he said, sniffing it again and taking a sip. 'Ah! I like it! It's similar to some carbonated drinks on Tech-Tech, but I haven't had any since I left that planet with these guys.'

'No soda or boyfriends in space. It's a very sad tale,' she lamented.

'Ha! I sometimes wish I'd never left,' he said, trying to chuckle, but not succeeding very well. Bulma locked eyes with him, and for a moment she saw real regret in his eyes before he turned away and dropped himself onto the couch next to her. For a little while they sipped their drinks in silence, and Bulma felt her sympathy for Tarble growing. He really wasn't like the older Saiyans. She felt like she should be taking care of him, not grooming him as an informant.

'Did you like planet Tech-Tech then?' she asked.

Tarble picked at a thread sticking out of the upholstery on the sofa, but didn't look up to answer. 'Yes and no. It was a peaceful place, mostly. I didn't fit in there though.'

'Was that because of the people that you killed?'

Tarble pulled sharply on the thread, snapping it right off, his eyes widening at something horrible only he could see. Bulma immediately regretted asking such a blunt question. 'I guess that was part of it,' he said quietly. 'I only killed people when I turned Oozaru. I couldn't help it, but I still feel bad about it. Most people could never forget what I'd done.'

She frowned. 'How come the others are so gung-ho about killing, but you're normal? Like me.'

'I'm normal?' gasped Tarble.

'Yes. For an Earthling. If you came to live on Earth you'd fit right in. The only odd things about you are that tail and your strength. Just look at Goku – oh, actually, bad example. Okay, Goku is not normal. But he doesn't kill for fun or any reason except when he absolutely has to, to defend himself or others. You're like us.'

'I don't know why I'm different to them,' he said. 'The infant conditioning in my pod never activated. Maybe that has something to do with it.'

'What is this infant conditioning?' She remembered them talking about it that first night around the campfire.

'I'm not sure. Instructions, I think. Education? Maybe Raditz would know. He's the only one of us who received it.' He took a few gulps from the bottle and then finally looked up at her, his expression thoughtful. 'I actually don't think there was any infant conditioning loaded on my pod at all.'

'Why not?'

'Because the Tech-Techies examined and dismantled my pod down to the chassis and they didn't find anything like that on it. Not that they told me about anyway. You might've guessed from their name, but technology is their thing. Also, there was something my mother said.'

Bulma's ears pricked at the mention of his mother. 'You remember your mother?'

'A little bit. She visited me a few times in the nursery and she was the one who put me in the pod.'

'Tarble, level with me – are you and Vegeta brothers? You do look an awful lot alike.'

Tarble looked uncomfortable with this turn of conversation. 'I…I don't know.'

'You know something,' she complained. 'What's the big deal? What's wrong with you being brothers? Other than he treats you like crap.'

Tarble flushed red. 'Vegeta doesn't remember who his mother was, but I remember mine. Aubergina, her name was. Nappa says…that the rumour was that Vegeta was Aubergina's first child. He also said that everyone thought that the father of Aubergina's second child was also the king, but they must've been wrong because it's impossible that a Saiyan elite and a king, the strongest of all, would produce both the most powerful Saiyan ever born and a third class weakling like me,' he finished bitterly.

'Hey, don't call yourself a weakling!' Bulma said. 'I don't think you're weak!'

'You're not a Saiyan,' he said dismissively. Then he scowled, resting his head on his hand and pulling his stiff bangs down over his eyes, the soda forgotten on the arm of the sofa.

'Tarble, if you are the king's son, doesn't that make you a prince too?' she said, trying to cheer him up.

'No,' he replied flatly. 'I'm not a prince. I'm not anything.'

He buried his face in his hand, and worried that she'd made him upset she slid off the fridge and onto the couch. 'Hey, kid, you're not nothing. I happen to think that you are the nicest out of any of these Saiyans.' She put her arm around his little shoulders and he tensed, his head popping back up to look at her in shock. 'Oh, what?' she complained. 'You're just like Goku. You allergic to hugs or something?'

She pulled on his shoulders again, and this time he timidly let himself be gathered in against her, his cheek coming to rest above the wide collar of her scoop-necked tee.

'There,' she said, pleased that her urge to mother him was being satisfied. 'That's not so bad, is it?'

He shook his head no, his nose almost in her cleavage.

'Now, what did your mother say to you before she put you in a pod?'

'To stay safe and out of trouble,' he replied slowly, his voice a bit muffled. 'That she wished she could watch me grow up, but because I was a secret and a weakling, sending me away someplace safe was the best she could do for me.'

What a miserable thing for a mother to say to an infant, Bulma mused. All that Tarble said only added to the mystery of what a Saiyan really was. Growing up on alien planets, growing up in palaces, amongst Saiyans, amongst strangers, with conditioning or without; their personalities were all over the place. Vegeta, the prince who became a slave, was the most mysterious of all.

Tarble slipped his arms around her waist, and she could feel his warm breath tickling down the front of her shirt. She tried not to think about how much she wanted her own mother to be comforting her right now, for fear she would cry, but it made her feel better to be able to comfort someone else, someone who didn't really now what it was to have a loving mother. She pressed her face into Tarble's soft spikes of hair for a second, and was about to release him when a trio of sullen Saiyans flew straight up the rampway and into the lounge, a still-pissed-off Vegeta in the lead. That was a surprise, but not as much as the look of shock Vegeta gave her when he saw the two of them on the couch.

'Girl! Why are you…embracing one of my soldiers?'

Tarble leapt out of her arms like an electrocuted cat and stumbled to some kind of attention. Raditz guffawed, but Nappa looked offended. Puar just looked confused, as Bulma was.

She returned Vegeta's scowl and stood up. 'He's not a soldier, Vegeta, he's just a little boy who could do with someone caring for him now and then!'

'He's not a child! He's older than Brolly and Kakarott!'

'He's…he's what?' She looked over at Tarble who was had turned red.

'He's over ten galactic years. What's that in your Earth years?

'Between fourteen and a half, and fifteen and five eighths,' she replied automatically, starting to frown. This put things in a slightly different light.

'It was h-her idea,' stammered Tarble. 'I would never…'

This didn't seem to please Vegeta any. 'I told you to keep your eyes on her, not your hands!' And then he turned on Bulma. 'DON'T dally with my soldiers!'

Then he stamped away, up the steps and then up the stairs to the flight deck.

'It was totally innocent!' she shouted after him. Puar looked back from Vegeta's shoulder. 'You believe me, don't you Puar?'

'You sly little punk,' said Raditz to Tarble, with a look that was half amusement, half contempt. 'I didn't think the "whipped-underdog" play would work even for you.' He added as he swaggered after Vegeta.

Nappa glared at each of them but said nothing, then followed Raditz, and Tarble rushed away out of sight down the corridor leaving Bulma alone on the lounge and wondering what had just happened.

Their last investigation, like all the others, had proved to be nothing more than a local hero. Now Vegeta stood on the flight deck and scanned for more targets. Half an hour later, another failure, and then another. He tried to ignore the seething anger and disappointment that was burning in him, but it was getting harder and harder. 'Where haven't we covered yet?' Vegeta asked Raditz once they were back on the flight deck again. Tarble and Bulma had followed them up, which reminded him of the earlier scene. He didn't know why the sight of them together jolted him so hard. He felt electrified afterwards, his body almost shaking with agitation and adrenalin.

Now that he'd had a while to think about it he realised that the girl might be telling the truth about it being innocent on her part, though what she thought she was doing, he had no idea. Whatever it was that had her embracing someone she thought a child, Tarble had been a willing beneficiary of her ignorance. One look at the front of his pants had told him that.

Raditz cringed. 'Nowhere,' he said unhappily. 'We've already covered the whole planet.'

'What?' Vegeta asked, stupidly, and then shook himself in frustration. 'We may have missed some area – check it again!'

Raditz brought up a hologram that showed their sweeps around the planet. The scouters had an extremely wide range, and according to the diagram there was no area that would have been out of range of detection. Vegeta inspected the solid red sphere and clenched his teeth. He could feel Bulma and Tarble inching closer to get a look, but they both kept blessedly silent.

'We were sloppy in following up those signals!' he snarled at last. 'We could have easily overlooked one of them!'

'But there was only about ten power levels over 50 on the whole planet! We weren't that sloppy!'

'No, we think there were no more than ten! Take off and traverse the planet again!'

Raditz did so, grumbling under his breath. Around the planet they went again, and Vegeta scrubbed his hands through his hair as he scanned and counted, saving each level into memory. There was only one discrepancy.

'There's an 82 back at the first place we looked, in amongst the rest of that group,' Vegeta said.

'Except we already looked there, remember?' said Nappa. 'What are the chances that she'd be so low anyway? If she only had a power level of 82 the strongest of these aliens would have killed her off years ago.'

Vegeta felt himself deflating around the stone of disappointment in his chest. 'And what if she can manipulate her power level like Kakarott and the Earth-boy can? What then? She could be hiding in plain view!'

'They can't manipulate their power levels that much!' said Nappa. 'Twenty points, no more! So an 82 becomes a 102? That team at the cave would still have killed her easily. She's dead, Vegeta! She must've failed her mission just short of the mark and been killed.'

'No!' shouted Vegeta. 'You don't know that—stop making assumptions! You're forgetting the black-haired girl on Earth who doubled her power level! We need to lower our threshold! We need to check the forties and the thirties...'

'Are you kidding?' asked Nappa. 'How long do you want to stay on this planet? You're clutching at straws, Vegeta!'

Vegeta's eyes flew wide at Nappa's tone. The old fuck was talking to him like he was a stupid babe again.

'Set the ship down, Raditz!' he barked.

'Where?'

'Anywhere!'

They landed on a snowy plain in the dark of night and Vegeta marched downstairs and out. As soon as he was sure Nappa was clear of the ship he turned, leapt and punched him in the jaw. With a cry, Nappa flew back through the air twenty yards, almost taking out a shocked looking Raditz on the way, and crashed into the snow, throwing up a sheet of it like a plow. Vegeta chased after him and landed on his chest.

'What was that for?' roared Nappa.

'What was that for, Prince Vegeta, remember?' Vegeta shouted back. 'You forget yourself too many times!' In fury he raised his fist again and smashed it into Nappa's cheek bone. It wasn't the hardest punch he'd ever thrown through, and a long way from the best form he'd ever shown, but a crack sounded and Nappa howled. Disgusted with the man, Vegeta jumped up into the air.

'I don't need you naysayers and idiots slowing me down,' he said, and turned his back on them, speeding off into the dark.

'Oh, jeez!' whispered Bulma as she watched this. 'I hope Puar is okay.'

Vegeta had blasted off with the little cat still clinging to his shoulder. She wondered if Vegeta had even noticed.

'Fucking son of a bitch!' groaned Nappa, heaving himself up from the ground. He clutched his face. 'After all I do for that ungrateful royal whelp, he goes and breaks my cheekbone!'

'Yeah, but you were asking for it, Nappa,' said Raditz, without sympathy. 'I know better than to talk like that to his face.'

Nappa trudged back inside the ship, and Raditz, Bulma and Tarble followed. Nappa stopped in front of the regeneration tank and groaned when he saw Brolly still floating in it. 'Fuck!'

'Suck it up, dude,' said Raditz. 'It's only a broken cheekbone.'

'Don't be so patronising, or I'll teach you a lesson that'll put Vegeta's to shame,' Nappa spat. 'We may as well go back to the campsite. Who knows how long he'll be chasing this Tuffle tail.'

'What do you mean, a "Tuffle tail"?' asked Bulma, reigning in her volume and demanding tone at the last second. She wasn't as confident about her safety with the two oldest Saiyans when Vegeta wasn't around.

'It's just a saying. Tuffles never had tails,' Raditz explained, as he followed Nappa up the stairs.

Bulma frowned. She'd never heard Nappa criticise Vegeta before, though Radtiz had called Vegeta crazy. What other Tuffle tails have there been? she wondered. Tarble darted around her and up the stairs, avoiding her eye. Bulma dithered, not sure if she wanted to stay down here away from Nappa and Raditz, or go up and be involved with whatever was going on. She started up the stairs, but then felt her knees buckle as Raditz took the ship up again. She quickly squatted down where she was near the top of the stairs and hung onto them, scared she would be tumbled back down them at twice Earth's gravity.

'Calling the search for the Saiyan girl a Tuffle tail is kind of unfair,' she heard Raditz say. 'It was a good idea. I mean, she could have still been alive.'

'Oh, it's not the idea,' said Nappa. 'It's the fact that Vegeta doesn't know when to face facts and give up. He'll just keep on flogging the camel until it falls to pieces when any sane person would admit it died long ago. That girl Salda is dead, end of story.'

'He just has to investigate every last possibility,' said Raditz. 'You know what he's like. He wouldn't be satisfied with admitting almost-certain failure if there's the slightest, microscopic, gnat's-foreskin hope of success.'

'Yes, and it drives me nuts,' sighed Nappa. 'Look at all the time we've spent hunting for Turles. Two years and nothing. No solid leads, no first hand witnesses, no physical evidence at all…And he says he's still not done with that yet.'

'What?' said Raditz, have gasping, half groaning.

'I know.'

'Why is that bad?' she heard Tarble ask. 'Turles has the Tree of Might, so we want to find him, don't we? Wouldn't it be really good if we did?'

'Well, maybe,' said Nappa. 'If it were true. Which we don't know it ever was. We've been following rumours and nothing else. All we know for sure is that Turles was a third-class shithead who did a runner from the PTO about twenty years ago and some people have talked to some other people who said that Turles ate their planet, but no one can find any of these people or their shrivelled up planets. And for these rumours we've been pissing around on spaceships on the arse end of the galaxy for two years.'

'Well, the rumours had to come from somewhere,' reasoned Raditz.

'Yeah?' replied Nappa, still sounding pissed off. 'Maybe Turles spread them himself. Probably before getting himself killed. He was not much of a Saiyan, even for a third-class.'

'But if he has, or had, the Tree of Might, isn't it worth looking for him anyway?' asked Tarble.

The gravity began to ease off as the ship neared the highest point that Raditz was going to take it. Bulma could probably stand up now, but didn't. She had a feeling that she was hearing a conversation that wouldn't be happening if they knew she could hear it. What was this Tree of Might?

'Well, I think it's quite likely that the Tree of Might is a pile of bollocks too,' said Nappa, in reply to Tarble. 'If there really is a tree that sucks all the life out of a planet and gives all that power to the person who eats the fruit, Turles would surely rule the galaxy by now. But instead, no one has heard boo from him for more than a decade.'

'Couldn't he just be somewhere really remote in the galaxy, turning planets into power?' suggested Raditz.

'A trail of dead planets would be hard to miss, wouldn't it?' said Nappa. 'The Tree of Might is no more than a myth. If I'd had my way, we'd have been using the last few years to set ourselves up in hiding – maybe take over a distant planet and get the natives to worship us as gods or something. Or even just have stayed in the PTO. Frieza's an asshole of a boss, but the job was better than traipsing all over the galaxy, on the run. Now we've got more stupid daydreams to go chase with fucking dragonballs on Namek…'

'The Earth's dragonballs weren't a daydream,' Tarble protested.

'The Earth dragonballs weren't,' Nappa agreed, 'but they still got us a big fat zero.'

'You are such a downer sometimes, Nappa,' Raditz complained. 'Can't you be an optimist just once?'

'No! Expecting the worst means I can live a life of very few surprises.'

'Well, in that case you may as well turn yourself back in to the PTO.'

'Believe me, if they'd take me back without killing me, I'd go at this point,' Nappa said.

'What?' gasped Tarble. 'But they're our enemies!'

'Shut up, Nappa!' said Raditz, on the verge of laughing. 'You don't mean that!'

'Maybe not. But the longer I'm stuck on a ship with no action, the more attractive a life of endless purging and battle sounds.' Then he sighed loudly. 'But Frieza is going to fillet and flambé Vegeta before he ever forgives him, so there's no going back for me either.'

'So you're not going to ditch us in the night?' joked Raditz.

'Of course fucking not! I swore to protect and follow the prince, ungrateful little shit that he is at times. My place is by his side, for better or worse.'

'He broke your cheekbone just five minutes ago!' laughed Raditz.

'Yes. Well,' muttered Nappa darkly. 'That's the price you pay for serving headstrong, high-strung royalty. Don't forget you swore an oath too, Raditz.'

'You do realise that we made our oath to King Vegeta, and he's been dead for quite a while, along with all the other Saiyans? The only ones left to care about our oaths are us and Vegeta – no royal guard are going to hunt us down if we broke them.'

'You're going to leave Vegeta?' cried Tarble.

'You are fucking joking aren't you, Raditz?' growled Nappa.

'Shit, guys!' said Raditz, laughing again. 'Calm down! You should see your faces right now! I only meant that if we stay with him it's not because we're afraid of being tried for treason. It's for other reasons.'

'My oath still means a lot to me,' said Nappa. 'I still remember the joy and the weight of responsibility when the King told me I had been chosen as the prince's bodyguard. You've no concept of the honour that was placed on you when you took your oath, do you Raditz? Completely wasted on you, young, ignorant third-class. But you're right - we stay with him because we're Saiyans, and he is the greatest of us.'

'Hmm. He is a dick but, yeah, I guess that's it,' said Raditz. 'If Vegeta died, I don't even know what I would do.'

'That's right. He gives us purpose. Something to follow and believe in.'

'Something to believe in? Are you talking about the Super Saiyan?' said Raditz. 'I thought you didn't believe in it.'

'I don't,' Nappa replied. 'We Saiyans are great enough without needing to reach some fairytale transformation. Vegeta would do better if he dropped the idea. He's not going to magically sprout the power to defeat Frieza.'

'You don't believe in the Super Saiyan?' said Tarble, sounding scandalised. 'But I thought it was Saiyan history! That's what Vegeta told me!'

Nappa made a grumbling noise of disapproval. 'The Legendary Super Saiyan is just a story they tell to the nurslings and young soldiers to make them fight harder. Vegeta believes it because his own father told him he would be the Super Saiyan one day. Poor kid was too young to realise his father was just dazzling him with the same stories all parents tell their brats. Now nothing I say can convince him it's not truth writ in stone.'

'Hang on,' said Raditz. 'This is an ancient legend of the Saiyans we're talking about. Oral history, handed down generation to generation. It must be based on something! I don't think all the adults would just lie to all the kids like that!'

Nappa snorted. 'Are you still a true believer, then? You're almost as naive as Vegeta.'

'I'm not naïve!' retorted Raditz. 'I'll tell Vegeta you said that, though.'

'Don't you fucking dare!' objected Nappa. 'If either of you go repeating a word about of what I said to him, I'll beat your liver out of your asshole! I was just letting off steam. Vegeta does not need to hear about it.'

'Nappa! You know I was only joking about telling him!' protested Raditz.

'I definitely won't, I swear!' squeaked Tarble.

'Good.'

Bulma felt the gravity begin to lessen even further. They were descending, and she crawled backwards down the stairs as quietly as she could, heart pounding. She wasn't sure what Nappa would do to her if he found out she'd overheard their conversation but she was sure it wouldn't be good. That wasn't the only thing that scared her though. She found it highly disturbing that Raditz and especially Nappa didn't have as much faith in Vegeta as she'd thought they did. Her world had shrunk very small of late, and its cornerstone had just been chipped.

Vegeta found and discarded a dozen or more power levels between 20 and 50 before he admitted to himself that Nappa was probably right. There were only these hopeless, clueless green and yellow-eyed aliens living primitively amongst the ruins of their civilisation. He didn't need more than a second to examine each one he found, and then he shoved, shook and threw the rejects aside, causing the Daemon to cry out and scream, 'Stop! Vegeta, don't!' until Vegeta knocked her off his shoulder again. She always clawed her way back on though, clinging on in grim silence as he flew as fast as he could to the next bleep on his scouter.

'No!' he shouted when he spied his thirteenth target, herding animals along a river near a broken city. It was a boy, just a young boy who turned and ran at the sight of him, calling for his parents. Salda would have been killed or captured immediately if she had been as remotely weak as this, but instead she had terrorised the planet and disappeared! She had been far stronger than the dregs of this race! Whether she'd been defeated or brought down by illness or even hitched a ride off planet he would never know.

'Gods Damn it, it's over!'

In a breath he gathered a handful of chi and launched it into the city. It tore a hole through a skyscraper that had already been topped, the explosion followed by the tinkling of thousands of shards of glass falling into the empty streets. He followed it, roaring as he went, pulling up more chi into his arms and until it spilled out, a hot angry pink. The streets were full of refuse, vehicles, bushes, trees and stunk of mould and old rotten flesh. He let the chi burst out of his outstretched hands, slamming into the buildings each side, crashing through them and igniting the detritus, a maelstrom of cinders and burning dust pouring into the street behind his as he shot through, screaming his disappointment at the uncaring planet.

'You killed her!' he shouted, pausing in a dark square where a metal statue still sat proudly, mounted on a rearing beast high on a plinth, bronze as dark as the skin of the people who created it. 'You fucking useless, good for-nothing planet killed a Sayian female!'

The heat and ashes of the destruction he'd left behind him caught up, and rolled over him as he blasted the statue to scrap, then the building behind it, then everything, fucking everything! Let this planet burn to the ground as it should have done!

Dust and smoke collapsed in on his temper, forcing him up and out of the zone of hell he'd just created with his wild blasts. Coughing, he sucked in breath and hovered, shaking and spluttering above his pointless destruction. He knew it was pointless—one of his most treasured hopes and schemes was on the brink of being crushed beyond a hope of success, and expending his chi in a fit of anguish didn't fix that.

Hearing sobbing he was confused for a second, for though he certainly felt like crying, there was no way he would let himself. But it came from beside his ear.

'Daemon, what they hell do you have to cry about?' he growled, sniffing and wiping away the tears that smoke had made in his eyes.

'You scared me!' the cat cried. 'My fur was singeing! My claws! Ow!' He felt her try and release her grip on his collar. He hadn't even noticed until now how deep her claws were in his skin, and it rather stung. 'My claws hurt from hanging on,' she finished. 'I think I might've broken some of them.'

He reached up onto his shoulder and pulled her down, trying to uncouple her claws from him as gently as possible – for his own sake as much as hers. She looked quite a mess, with bits of ash in her fur and streaming eyes, shivering in his hand and glaring balefully at him. He held up one front paw and then the other between his thumb and forefinger while she squeaked, 'Ow, ow, ow!' There was a little blood on the claws, and some up where they met the joints, but he wasn't sure if it was his or hers. They didn't seem loose or broken though.

'You'll be fine,' he told her, quite annoyed. 'And if not I'm sure the girl will treat you back at the ship.' If he'd lost his Daemon for something as senseless as a tantrum in an abandoned city he'd have made a bad situation even worse. The shapeshifting Daemon was an amazing little find whose usefulness he felt he'd barely scraped the surface of, plus a Daemon was quite a status symbol. 'Why didn't you tell me you were in danger of falling off?'

'I DID!' it shouted back. 'When I was screaming "Stop! Help! Vegeta, I can't hang on!" over and over and you just ignored me!'

'Huh. I didn't hear you.'

'I know!'

'Hmm.' He supposed he would have to be more careful with her if he didn't want to lose or damage her. She was a delicate thing – no more sturdy than a toy. 'We'll go back to the ship now. Can you hang on or should I carry you?'

The cat looked stricken, and then her lower lip came up, trembling and she started crying again.

'Argh, Daemon, why are you blubbering again?'

'Because...I can't believe I am having to ask you to carry me!'

Vegeta growled. 'Shut up, Daemon. Just for that I won't be gentle.' But despite that threat he was reasonably gentle, tucking the bundle of fur into the crook of his arm and turning in the approximate direction of the ship. He used his free hand to press the button on his scouter. Raditz's and Nappa's power levels weren't in range though.

'Oh, sons of bitches! They've gone back to the campsite and left us here on the other side of the planet!'

Back at the meadow it was still only late afternoon. After they landed, Bulma took the opportunity to inspect the solar uptake system. Vegeta was right, there was something wrong with it. She had been examining the data from the last several months, and the rate of uptake had been steadily lowering. Of course, the amount of solar energy the ship was exposed to in various locations in the galaxy was always changing, but the trend was noticeably downwards, and now the batteries were sitting at a worrying 7%. She got Raditz to show her where the ships tools were, and a sectioned ladder, both stored under the platform floor.

Outside she assembled the lightweight ladder and clambered up to the upper curve of the ship. Using the tool from the kit that was specially designed for it, she unlocked the shiny panel before her and lifted it. For all the world, it looked just like a plate of shiny, dark, almost chromed ceramic, but underneath she saw the gold contacts that would be pressed into their corresponding points on the ships hull. Everything looked to be clean and in order. She moved to a second tile and a third and a fourth, but they all looked fine.

Next she went back inside and looked for the junction box where all those wires from the solar panels came together to feed into the batteries. The ship's manual told her it was in the ceiling of the laundry. Unclipping the ceiling panel she revealed the metal interior wall of the ship and opened the actual panel. As it fell open she was doused with stinking, rusty water.

'Arghhhh-eurgh! Gross!'

Well, problem found. The enclosure of the junction box had been taking on condensation. The rubbery seal around it was crumbling and had let up steam from the laundry. The junction box was a mess of corrosion. Many of the points looked to be rusted through altogether. She tried to unscrew the front of the box to see inside and the screw disintegrated under the screwdriver. Basically it was hosed.

After taking a shower and changing she went back up stairs to examine the logs again. In the name of caution she expanded her search. What she found alarmed her.

As the sun set they ate the meal that Krillin and Goku had prepared. Raditz didn't say so out loud, but even he privately thought that the dinner the boys had come up with better than his own usual. Raditz decided it me be on account of the game being particularly good. There was no way those little snot-noses could've out-cooked him.

Vegeta didn't come back for dinner. so with great self-restraint, they left aside a decent helping for him and began to ready themselves for bed, bringing blankets and furs out into the meadow. The weather and climate was mild, so it made a change from all the nights on the ship. Nappa was halfway through laying out a fur when he froze.

'What is it?' asked Raditz, thinking that Nappa looked like a man who sensed an episode of explosive diarrhoea near at hand.

Instead Nappa's blank face broke into a wide grin and he stood straighter. 'I just had a thought!'

'What's your thought?' asked Raditz suspicious of his elder.

Nappa sniggered. 'I think I'll pay another visit to that camp of survivors. There's a certain stropy green-eyed female that I'd like to "interrogate" a little more closely.'

'What?' said Raditz, but Nappa took off without further ado before Raditz had quite figured out what he meant. 'You revolting, old bastard! Thank you for leaving me stuck here with the brats!'

Bulma returned to the campfire in time to see Nappa disappear into the night sky. 'Where's he off to?' she asked no one in particular.

Tarble had been watching Nappa's exit too. 'To interrogate the leader of the survivors again,' he said.

Bulma frowned, but there was nothing she could do about Nappa, whatever he was up to. Krillin and Goku threw their furs down on the ground, but she was not thrilled at the thought of sleeping in a field on an alien planet and no Vegeta close by to ward Nappa and other monsters off. After considering her options she pulled out her capsule house.

'Boys, you're sleeping in the house with me tonight,' she told Goku and Krillin as she threw the capsule on the ground.

'Aw,' protested Goku. 'I wanted to sleep outside.'

'Tough.'

As they filed in, Tarble trailed them and stopped near the door.

'May I come in too, Bulma?' he asked. Bulma turned to see his slightly hunched stance. 'It's okay if you don't want me to,' he added.

It was kind of sad and kind of irritating to observe his lack of confidence. She knew it was possible that he wanted to come in because Vegeta had told him to gain entry and report his findings back to him, but she had nothing to hide in the house itself. Maybe revealing that would put Vegeta more at ease.

'Sure. You can have a look.'

He did, and looked around curiously as Krillin flopped down on the sofa and Goku automatically headed to the fridge.

'Don't get comfortable,' warned Raditz. He was standing in the doorway, hunched over so that he could stick his head inside.

'Stay out!' Bulma told him. 'You're not invited!'

'See if I care about your stupid pop-up house,' he retorted. 'I'm just warning Tarble that he's on second watch after me. In fact, you're all on watch tonight. One and a half hours watch each.'

'What?' said Krillin. 'What are we watching for?'

'Who knows, that's the point, isn't it?' Raditz told him.

'Even me?' said Bulma, incredulous. 'What am I supposed to do against some threat? I can't fight - I can't even fly!'

'You've got eyes, don't you? All you need to do is stay awake, stay alert and be ready to give the alarm. I don't see why you should be the only one who gets a full night's sleep just because you're a weakling girl.'

Bulma bit her lip, wanting to protest that she was not playing the "girl card" but also wanting to play it because she didn't want to keep watch.

Raditz held up the com unit so they could all see it. 'Whoever is on watch gets the unit. It's got the time here so you can keep track of it, and there's an alarm that will go off if one of the alerts on the ship is triggered. If that happens, waste no time – wake everyone immediately, got it?'

'Got it,' the Earthlings repeated.

'I'm taking first watch,' he continued. 'Tarble, you can have second, then…Little Miss, Baldie and Kakarott.'

'My name is Krillin,' said Krillin, in sullen tones. Bulma scowled at Raditz. It seemed to be a point of insult amongst the Saiyans to "forget" Bulma's and Krillin's names, as if they weren't worth remembering.

'Krillin isn't even really bald any more,' said Goku. Bulma looked at Krillin and realised this was true. A fine fuzz of black hair covered his skull and Krillin reached up and rubbed it self-consciously.

'Yeah, get your facts right!' he said to Raditz, but Raditz just snorted, unimpressed.

'Whatever.' And then he strode away, leaving the door wide open.

Bulma awoke to a gentle shaking of her shoulder.

'Bulma!' whispered Tarble. 'It's your watch.'

Bulma sighed and yawned and got up, throwing on a hoodie and her sneakers in the dark. She followed Tarble back out into the night. When he headed off towards the campfire she whispered, 'Goodnight, Tarble.'

Tarble looked back in surprise and a shy grin spread across his face. 'Goodnight, Bulma,' he whispered back. 'I'm sorry about earlier.'

'You're sorry that I hugged you?'

'I shouldn't have accepted it,' he said unhappily.

'That's crazy - it was just a hug! It didn't mean anything. You Saiyans are all nuts.'

'You thought I was younger than I was,' he replied, sounding quite unhappy about it. 'I guess I am really small. Small enough for you to mistake me for a very young child, which would have made the hug okay. But I'm not.'

'What are you talking about?' she whispered back urgently. 'Your age has nothing to do with it! Yes, I thought you were younger, but you're a friend. You felt bad. I hugged you, end of story. Don't Saiyans hug their friends?'

She could see his confusion by the flickering firelight.

'No,' he said. 'But I don't think we're supposed to have friends either.'

'Well, tough, 'cause you've got one.'

She walked away before he could argue any more. Could nothing be simple with these people? Tarble's embarrassment annoyed her, as did the other's reactions to an innocent gesture of comfort. But what also annoyed her was the way their reactions made her think that Tarble might have enjoyed the hug more than he was supposed to. It was all tainted now!

She wasn't sure how to go about "being on watch", but she did know that she would be deeply uncomfortable sitting or standing in the wilderness of an alien planet at night. She went and got the ladder from where she'd left it leaning up against the wall in the main living area. In passing she stopped in front of the naked living room adornment – Brolly still hung peacefully in the chamber, his hair fanned about his face. It was a sweet face, a classically handsome one. One that didn't look capable of an evil thought, let alone proposing killing the rest of the crew and setting off to conquer planets.

'Freak,' she said aloud. 'You look so sweet but you're poisoned.'

Brolly's eyes cracked open just a little, as if he heard, and she jerked back from the glass in fear. He didn't move though, other than that.

'Brolly? Are you okay?' she asked, and then felt like a moron because of course he couldn't answer. 'If you can hear me, I hope you're all right. We're on our way to get you help. Okay? Hang in there!'

His eyes slipped slowly shut again as if to say hanging in there was all he could do.

Shaken, she hurried outside with the ladder and used it to climb up onto the top curve of the ship, crawling on hands and knees to the glass dome of the flight deck where it started to flatten out. There she threw down a fur and leant against the glass of the dome and settled in for her vigil, feeling far more secure with her overview of the surrounding meadow.

As it tended to when she was alone and unoccupied, her mind turned to the near extinction of her species and the role she found herself with in reviving it. After sometime, she heard whistling that got closer, and she tensed, ready to scream, but then Nappa landed in the radius of the fire's glow, apparently very cheerful about whatever he'd been up to. She sat very still so he wouldn't notice her while he took off his armour and shirt and lay down on top of his fur, and thankfully he was snoring before too long.

Hyper-vigilant and hyper-anxious she stared in the direction of every creak, crack, rustle and chirp, but even so, she couldn't have missed Vegeta's return. He dropped to the ground with just a whistle of movement, but then swiftly kicked the sleeping forms of Nappa and Raditz.

'Ow! Fuck, what was that for?' cried Radtiz.

'Vegeta! We were asleep!' complained Nappa.

'Yes, and I am not, because you thoughtless baboons abandoned me on the other side of the planet! Thank you for the extra-long refreshing flight back!'

'We didn't know how long you'd be!' plead Nappa. Bulma stood up on to get a better view of Nappa kneeling in front of Vegeta. He was still taller than the boy whilst kneeling, but it only added to the patheticness of the sight. 'Sorry, your Highness. We didn't know you wanted us to stick around.'

'Sorry, your Highness,' echoed Raditz.

'Apology accepted,' said Vegeta, turning away. He disappeared out of sight, and she heard his footsteps going up the rampway into the ship. Just as she was sitting down again she jumped in fright to see a dark blob float up over the edge of the ship towards her.

'It's me,' it said in a hushed voice.

''Puar?'

'Yes. What are you doing up here?'

'Keeping watch. Raditz is making us all do it.'

'Oh.' The cat was looking more bedraggled than usual.

'Are you okay?'

'Mostly,' said Puar, floating over to collapse on the fur next to Bulma. 'I'm exhausted and I have very sore paws from hanging onto Vegeta.'

'Why didn't you just let go of him, then?'

Puar gave her a withering glance. 'I'd have either been left in the middle of nowhere, or been fried to a crisp by the monster fire he started.'

'He started a fire? Why would he do that?'

'He was really upset about not finding the Saiyan girl, so he burned some city down. Bulma, it was so scary! He just made piles of energy pour of him and knock buildings down and set everything on fire! I thought my fur was going to catch alight.'

'Oh, gosh.' Bulma tired to imagine the power it would take to do that. Until she'd met the Saiyans, the most she'd seen chi used for was the Kamehameha wave. What Puar was describing was more like what she'd seen the Frieza's men do to West City, only worse. 'Is he still really pissed off?'

'Not as much, I don't think. Except at Raditz and Nappa for moving the ship. It took us hours to get back. He carried me the whole way because of my sore paws.'

'Really? An act of kindness by Vegeta?'

'I think he felt bad because it was his fault I got hurt and could've died.' She lifted herself back into the air with a yawn. 'I'm so tired, I'm going right to sleep.' And then she floated away, down to the front door of the capsule house and let herself in.

Bulma sat there a little while longer considering a Vegeta was kind enough to send Tarble to look after her and to carry Puar all the way back to the campsite. And who was also very upset. She had seen how upset he got when things went badly for him. And she knew where Salda was – the very thing that he wanted. She wondered if maybe, just maybe she should reveal Salda. Perhaps she could exchange her knowledge about the girl and get some kind of promise from him in return...like a promise that the Earthlings get the first wish on Planet Namek? Well...that was a very long shot, and she didn't know how to get Vegeta to keep his word. She already suspected that he would have broken one vow when he said he would wish to save the people of Earth. Still, maybe it was worth seeing what some gentle prodding around the subject turned up. She could still hear movement inside the ship, so she decided to give it a go now while there was no one to interrupt.

She held the aerial of the com unit in her teeth while she shimmied down the ladder, then tucked it under her arm to run to the rampway. She paused at the bottom of it, just in time to see Vegeta tear a book in half in temper and throw both halves into the flames of the holographic fire. They bounced off the wall behind it and landed on the floor, untouched by the false flames. Before she could stop herself she hooted with laughter, drawing Vegeta's attention to her presence. His scowl deepened even further, and though it was too dark be sure, he seemed to be blushing. He turned towards her, gliding menacingly forwards, his tail coming free from around his waist and lashing back and forth in agitation.

'Mock my misfortune, female, and it will be the last thing you do!'

Bulma found herself slightly abashed. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to laugh. You must admit it was quite funny though.'

He growled, his face lost in the shadow as he loomed at the top of the rampway.

'I said I was sorry!' she protested. When he made no move she took a couple of steps up the rampway to see his face better, but she couldn't.

'Tell me what's wrong. Maybe I can help,' she suggested, thinking about what Puar had said.

'You can't help,' he said scornfully.

'Don't be so hasty in your assumptions,' she replied and stepped around him, heading into the fire-lit lounge and the two halves of the book, which had been ripped not down the spine, but across it. She recognised the cover—a photo of a very colourful pair of lizards. Vegeta had been reading from it several times over the last few days.

'Is it that you can't find Salda?' she asked, leadingly.

Vegeta followed her into the room, still flicking his tail from side to side.

She read to title with a little difficulty. '"Back from the Brink – A Conservationist's Guide to the Recovery of Extremely Endangered Species."' She gasped in surprise, and Vegeta swiped it out of her hands again. She looked up at him noted his uneasy expression.

'You weren't...planning on applying this to the Saiyans, were you?' she asked, blushing as the implications of that hit her.

'Why not? We are an extremely endangered species after all.'

'It's got a picture of lizards on the front! Surely it's a program designed for animals, not people!'

He stalked around her and slumped onto the couch, crouched forward with his elbows on his knees as he thumbed through half a book. Bulma glimpsed diagrams of family trees, illustrated with little silhouettes of a generic four-legged mammal.

'It makes no difference,' he said. 'Genetics are genetics, and a genetic bottleneck is what we must overcome if there is to be more generations of Saiyans. The chances of finding two Saiyan females have plummeted to practically zero, and the chances of finding even one are slim to none. I am down to one last possible plan of action, if we ever find a female, which seems less than likely.'

'So you wanted Salda for this breeding program you've got planned? And here I kind of thought you just wanted a girlfriend or something.'

'"Girlfriend"?' he huffed. 'My concerns are much larger than that. The plan would take priority over any individual's desires.'

The lack of choice this implied was rather disturbing to Bulma. Her brief meeting with Salda hadn't been endearing, and the girl had nearly wiped out another species herself, but revealing her now would be sentencing her to a life of...what exactly?

'Let me guess the plan,' she said, sitting down on the arm of the couch, facing him. 'You get hold of a Saiyan woman and somehow convince her to produce lots of Vegeta Juniors for you, right?'

'Wrong.'

Her eyes flew wide. 'You mean you all share her? Take turns "breeding" some poor girl?'

Vegeta looked revolted. 'No!'

'Well, what then?'

'As Nappa is older and less likely to survive until the first generation is mature, he will be the stud of the first generation. It will be his task to produce enough daughters so that I, Raditz, Brolly and perhaps the others may take a female to breed with. Kakarott is Raditz's brother – they carry mostly the same DNA, and Tarble is...a disgrace, so their genetic contribution is not as essential. It will be mine, Raditz, and Brolly's job to produce at least a male and a female each. That second generation will all be genetic cousins, but at least they won't be brothers and sisters. With some careful management and observation to weed out defective individuals, they will be able to breed amongst themselves without too much genetic degradation.'

Bulma was torn between some small admiration of his scientific approach to the issue and horror at the coldness of it. Where was the love in a breeding program? Certainly she could never imagine a young girl like Salda loving a brute like Nappa. Instead she imagined a lot of screaming and violence and endless misery.

'You can't do that!' she said.

'Why not?'

'What if the girl doesn't want to be bred like an animal with Nappa of all people?'

'I'm her prince. She should follow orders like any soldier.'

'What?' she screeched, popping to her feet again and staring down at him. 'Do you realise what you're proposing?'

'Saving the species?'

'No! If this girl doesn't like Nappa, and I almost guarantee that she won't, then what do you think that's is going to be like for her?' She watched a blank look creep cross his face. 'Did you even think about that at all? You won't let Nappa or Raditz "force themselves" on me, as you put it. Will you be just fine with another girl being held down screaming, night after night? Or if not screaming, tolerating and hating that man's filthy body on her?'

Vegeta looked suddenly appalled, but rallied. 'It won't be like that. She will understand her sacrifice for the Saiyan race,' he insisted.

'She might not! She might not give a crap about the Saiyan race!'

He thought on it a second and then huffed. 'If it really becomes an issue, I guess she can pick whichever one of us the wants. Nappa will just have to make sure he survives long enough to contribute his DNA to the mix.'

Bulma decided that moment there was no way she was revealing Salda's secret. 'And if she wants none of you? What about the daughters? What if they don't want to be paired off amongst you?'

Vegeta clenched his jaw, working over the question in his head. 'If it ever gets that far, we'll deal with the problems as they arise,' he said eventually. 'But as there are no females to object, and it's getting more likely that there will never be, it's all just pointless conjecture, and I'm not giving the plan up for possible issues. I wouldn't expect someone from a race with such a dearth of potential partners to understand.' He dropped the pieces of book and sat slumped, staring at the ground between his feet.

Bulma considered that what he said was true. If she never told him about Salda, he was probably never going to get his Saiyan brood and the Saiyan race would die out. An entire species extinct, not exactly on her hands, but she still felt a little guilty about it. Then again, maybe it was a good thing if the Saiyans were no more. She felt an unexpected sympathy for Vegeta as she settled on her resolution to let them die out. His plan, while typically high-handed and lacking in compassion, was in a way, noble.

'Hey,' she said softly. 'Don't you know who you're talking to? I'm...one of two humans left in the universe. We're even more endangered that you guys.'

Vegeta snorted but didn't look up. 'At least you have one male and female among you.'

Bulma flinched. 'No way! Krillin and I are never happening!'

He finally looked up, astonished. 'You would let your whole race die out because you didn't like the choice you were left with?'

Bulma knew she had no intention of letting her race die out, but she wasn't about to tell Vegeta that. 'You got it, Buddy! Krillin may be a friend, and he may think all his birthdays have come at once if I gave him the go ahead, but there is no way I am going to let him tap this,' she said, indicating her nightgown- and hoodie-encased self. 'Eurgh!'

He gave a short laugh and looked her up and down. 'Not even to make children?'

'I don't want kids, so no. Anyway, if we did, what are our children going to do? Marry each other? That's a genetic bottleneck. Hey, wait a minute - is that part of it?' she asked, startled by the thought as it occurred to her. 'You want children?'

He laughed for real now. 'Do I look like someone pining to be knee-deep in squalling infants and untrained children?'

'No. Not really. I think you'd make a really terrible father,' she joked in return, although she wasn't really joking and he didn't seem to care.

'It would be the only way to begin rebuilding the Saiyan Empire, that is all.'

'Oh. I pity anyone who found themselves with you as their father.'

He grinned up at her, unashamed. 'Any child of mine would no doubt be gifted, and so I would give them no quarter in their raising or training. It would not be able to complain that it was not given the best chance in life.'

'But a father needs to do more than just train their children. You mean train them to fight, don't you?' she asked, but then she saw him smirking and realised he was teasing her.

'Of course. For everything else, they will have their mothers, but they can't be allowed to grow too soft.'

'Wow, it's a hard knock life for a Saiyan kid,' she commented, and then stepped back as Vegeta stood up.

'Hardship hones the blade. That's why I'm so sharp,' he said, grinning at his own compliment as he gathered his blue fur and his blanket and headed for the door.

She followed him back to the exit, wondering how she managed to cheer Vegeta up with that conversation, but cheer him she had.

'Wait a minute,' she said to his back, digesting his last comment. 'What hardship honed you?'

He stopped on the rampway to answer her. 'Do you imagine that the creature responsible for taking me as a hostage and destroying my planet and people was a kind master?' he said, and she could barely see his face in the shadow, but she could hear the derision in his voice. Now that she thought of it, it was kind of a stupid question.

'No. I was more thinking of the specifics,' she lied.

He was silent for a moment. 'Why?' he asked.

She shrugged. 'I don't know. Just trying to understand you better, I guess.'

The pause this time was even longer. Bulma started wondering if she'd transgressed some Saiyan taboo with that statement.

'Well, I don't understand you either, so we're even,' he said before walking out into the open air. She trailed him, remembering that she was still on watch and not doing a very good job.

'Hey, we saved you some dinner,' she told him.

'Where?'

She showed him the large covered stockpot that they'd left on the outer coals of the fire to keep warm, piled full of mash, meat and sauce. He used the pink oven mitts to pull it out off the coals and over to the fresh felled tree that was serving as a bench. Not having anything else to do, Bulma brought him the cutlery that had been set aside on the end of the log and sat beside him. He'd already started to eat with his fingers.

'Uh,' he said when she presented him with a fork and a spoon, then took them off her and set to in earnest.

''S good meat,' he said between mouthfuls.

'That's because Krillin helped cook it. He actually seasoned the meat.' The smell of it was rather appealing actually. She had had only a mouthful of the meat at dinnertime, fearing that mystery alien beast might be poisonous or disagreeable, and just stuck to the mash and vegetables, but no one had gotten ill, and being up so late she'd gotten hungry again.

'Hey, can I have some of that?'

Vegeta halted mid-chomp, a strip of meat protruding from his lips as he stared at her in surprise. Bulma stared back at him, not sure why he was acting like this was a big deal, but after a moment Vegeta chewed and swallowed his mouthful and slowly inclined the pot towards her.

'Thanks,' she said, reaching in and pulling off a small hunk with some difficulty.

They ate in silence, or at least wordlessly, as Vegeta's untamed table manner was not all that quiet. When Bulma was done she sat looking out into the dark, checking the time on the coms unit occasionally. Her shift was about done.

Vegeta put down the empty pot and pushed it aside with his foot. He was feeling somewhat better with his stomach full and Bulma's company, even though she'd disparaged his plan. She seemed to have no compunctions about arguing against him. None of the others did so. Obviously he'd be less than pleased if they did; his will was accepted, or if it wasn't, like with Nappa today, there was consequences. He couldn't treat her the same way, and his threats didn't seem to stop her, but at the same time he could actually debate with her. She still pissed him off, but didn't incense him like Nappa's questioning him did. He wondered why that was. All his life they're only been two positions he'd held – absolute control or absolute, teeth-grindingly humiliating servitude. With Bulma he held neither position.

She had actually made him question his own plan. He was right – the chances of putting it into action was very low, but she was right in that he hadn't really thought about how it would be for the female. When he imagined it at all, he imagined a faceless female stoically accepting her duty to stay pregnant for the rest of her childbearing years. After what Bulma had said he found himself inexplicably imagining Nappa pinning Bulma down while she fought and screamed…He shuddered. That made no sense – it wasn't even going to be Bulma, but now when he thought of a female, he thought of her.

He looked at her profile as she stared into the night, her expression blank and relaxed. She certainly seemed to be getting comfortable around him lately. Even having the cheek to ask for some of his food! True, he'd known she wouldn't take much, and he'd had enough in that pot to spare and not go hungry, but he'd still had to struggle with himself to offer her any. He wondered why he struggled at all – if anyone else had asked for some of his food he'd have told them to get lost. And if any of the others had been watching he definitely wouldn't have given her any. That he had made him feel an odd thrill, like a slightly naughty secret shared between them. He eyed the low neck of her nightshirt, where the upper slopes of her breasts invited the gaze lower. He had a sudden urge to press his face there like Tarble had, and shook his head at his own errant thoughts. He was used to ignoring these kinds of thoughts about the random female aliens that crossed his path, but ever since he the first night he had spied on Bulma through the window of her bedroom they'd been occurring more and more. She'd been dressed for bed in silk boxers and flimsy sleeveless shirt, sitting cross-legged in her chair by her desk, talking on a communication device in one hand and soldering circuitry with the other. He wondered if those short, silky pyjamas were going to make an appearance on the journey to Namek...

Dammit, I really am turning into Nappa and Raditz! he scolded himself as he dragged his mind away from its contemplation of her body and back to other aspects of her self.

'I'm not sure I've ever heard you keep your mouth shut for so long,' he observed.

Bulma's head snapped round to glare at him and her mouth popped open to retort, but then she closed it again, refusing to rise to his baiting. Instead she put her nose in the air.

Vegeta grinned, then sniggered. 'It suits you.'

'Go to hell,' she spat back, her aloofness failing at the first hurdle. Vegeta laughed. And then the unit in her hand began to cheep cheerfully.

'What's that?' she asked. 'Does that mean my watch is up?'

Vegeta stared in horror for a full five seconds before he could get his breath to come back enough to shout.

'EVERYBODY UP! Freiza is in range!'

Author's Note: Uh oh! Cliffhanger!

Hey, did you know that the We're Just Saiyan Community and the Unnatural Lovers website are holding the first Semi-Annual Feature Awards for Bulma and Vegeta fan fiction and fan art? You can check out the links on my profile if you would like to make nominations and later to vote. Nominations are open to the 29th of September 2014.