Hello again, dear readers!
I have no idea what happened last time I tried to upload this chapter… but after several reviewers told me that it was unreadable, I'm giving this another shot. I can honestly say that I've never had this happen before…
Once again, sorry for the very long wait (life being crazy, lots of work at the new job – finally a new colleague was added to our chipper team, and now I actually have time to breathe again!)
I hope this time the upload won't mess up the formatting to the point of being unreadable, and that you like the chapter. More is in the work!
After Chichi left the past, several things happened. The King contacted the Space Patrol and asked them for help against the Planet Trade Organisation, who had just used them to do their dirty deeds.
He and Queen Maris had gathered as much evidence of this as they could get their hands on. They had found several written orders to "just let the dumb monkeys do it" and several dossiers describing the need to exterminate them soon. If Chichi hadn't come they would have been unprepared.
As it was an envoy from the Space Patrol had arrived and it had been decided to admit the Saiyans as part of their protective circle. The head of the Space Patrol send a missive to King Cold and told him to make sure every one of his goons knew to stay away from their allied planets, which now included Planet Vegeta. Their planets were also closed for trading and any contact was prohibited.
King Cold seethed but relayed the message to his sons and their troops. As expected Frieza seethed and yelled for days about the "dumb monkeys betraying him" and how he "needed to get revenge". King Cold forbade him to even twitch a finger in the direction of Planet Vegeta and finally, after threatening to get his mother involved in the matter, Frieza relented.
Just days before the message to the Planet Trade Organisation was send out the last Saiyans departed for home world after having been recalled. Tension still rang high and a feeling of safety hadn't yet set in.
Other than Frieza the Space Patrol, who was highly respected and not even the Icejins dared opposing them, was glad for the new level of strength the Saiyans brought along. Their ability to increase their strength after being injured in battle astounded their new allies and a plan was set to someday be able to completely erase the Planet Trade Organisation and the horrors they stood for as the Saiyans grew stronger. The true power of the Icejins would have to be carefully ascertained and documented and the battle would need to be pre planed even more carefully.
After they managed to slip out of Frieza's iron grip and joined the Space Patrol a new sense of normal started to set in. Bardock's team got permission to travel to Planet Earth to try and gain them as allies – especially the Brief family since Chichi had told them so much about Bulma, who was Kakarot's friend in Chichi's timeline. Maybe they'd even manage to set up a meeting with Chichi's father and arrange a play date of sorts.
Gine still had the picture of an adult Kakarot with his family. She kept it hidden away from prying little childish hands and cherished the knowledge that her boy had been happy.
As it was now Raditz had realised that a little sibling at first could do nothing but eat, sleep, cry and poop. His baby brother had only slowly gained control over his body and was by now shakily walking around while tearing anything he could find out of drawers, cupboards and from surfaces. The little boy regularly bowled over newly erected towers made from blocks and would then laugh uproariously. He annoyed his brother terribly, but Raditz did adore the cubby little thing that looked like his father.
Gine regularly found them together with Raditz reading something for his brother and little Kakarot would stare at the older boy transfixed. She now had countless pictures just like this and she never got tired of seeing them interact.
And she was beyond glad to know that they would grow up happy and loved.
Xxx
Tights sighed. She had just a month left now to obtain any information about Frieza that would turn those two soldiers heading to Earth away from their destructive path. At the moment the young woman was posing as one of that lizard's soldiers and was making her way through the main base.
She was slightly worried and even a little fearful. If she were to be found out as a spy here, she would die. She held no illusions that she could even beat a single of the higher ranked fighters under Frieza's command. Tights was stronger than the average human but out in space that meant absolutely nothing.
Tights tried to look like no one special, just your average grunt on a mission from a higher up. She and her colleagues had spent quite a lot of time scouting out the place and getting a uniform for her to use. She had braided her hair just like it was in style among most females in the Planet Trade Organisation and she would pretend to belong to maintenance – they found out the name of the guy responsible for that so she'd knew his name if asked and Tights managed to create a false maintenance ticket program sending her to the server room.
Some programs were quite easy to access from outside the Organisation. They were most likely seen as unimportant since they held no real information such as the ticket system. Apparently no one saw a security risk in this and the arrogantly thought it wouldn't be used to gain access to restricted areas.
"State your business here." Someone suddenly said next to her just as she was reaching for the access panel. She looked at the person and needed a second to calm her frayed nerves. This mission was turning out to be nerve wrecking.
"I'm Chisa – I got a ticket for maintenance for the server room…" she handed the fake ticked over and looked at the man. He wore a helmet that concealed his entire face and made it impossible to read his facial expression.
"Who ordered this?" he asked after checking the ticket over.
"I don't know. I just got told to go and check it out. Lund sent me." She grumpily looked at the ground and scuffed the tip of her boot on the purple-blue tinted floor. She thought the colour was beyond ugly…
"Great. What are you supposed to check?" Tights could feel the man's cold stare even though she couldn't see it.
"I've been told there is an exposed wire of some sort and that someone might be electrocuted if it doesn't get fixed soon." She shrugged and hoped he'd buy it. He grunted and typed in a code. The door to the server room hissed open.
Tights thanked the man and entered the server room. When the door shut behind her, she started shaking and it took over a minute to subside again. "I thought he'd raise the alarm and they'd kill me!" she whispered and made her way over to the terminal. She connected an external drive to the huge computer and set a program she'd developed to cracking the system for her while she busied herself with pretend-checking for exposed wiring she'd need to fix.
She was glad she'd done that when the door hissed open again and the soldier poked his head in to check in on her. "Don't you even know where to look?" he asked crossly when he noticed her checking over several of the servers many towers.
"No one bothered to tell me." She answered, equally cross. He grunted and the door shut again. Tights looked around and saw that he'd left again. She sighed deeply.
The scouter she had donned for the mission informed her that she had gotten into the system. Tights quickly went back to the terminal and ran her searching software over all the files. She was looking for Zarbon and Dodoria with links to Saiyans as well as Planet Vegeta and hoped it would be a quick search before going back to 'checking the wiring'.
She found a cable that didn't look to be connected all that well and grinned. The door hissed open again just as she went to get a new wire and other tools out of her box. "Still not done?" came the utterly grumpy question.
"I'm almost done." She answered with a tight little smile. "Found the wire. I'll replace it now." She told the man and went to the tower she had found. The soldier followed her and looked over her shoulder at the cable.
Tights started sweating – what if he didn't leave and wanted her to come out with him as soon as she was done? "Can you actually change that while the power is on?" he asked her in disbelief.
"Sure. With the right technique it's easy and shouldn't disrupt any running software or transmissions." She carefully opened the clamps holding the wire in place and began detaching it with careful, precise movements. He grunted again and left the room – her work probably seemed unimportant or boring to him and she wasn't sad to see him leave. She sped up her movements and finished attaching the new wire in record time – and a little extra at another tower, just to mess with their server and cause them problems.
Tights then quickly detached her external drive and stuffed it in her bag. Then she left the room after having to knock to be let out. She made her way back through the base, pretended to log out at the time attendance system and left the building and entered the city of Planet Frieza 79. She wandered the streets for a bit before leaving altogether.
The Space Patrol had ships that used camouflage systems to keep them hidden even when entering into the atmosphere of another planet. Tights boarded her team's ship, nodded to them and off they were.
She opened the files she had downloaded from Frieza's servers and was utterly shocked.
The Saiyans had been used by the Cold family to do all their dirty deeds while they held their children's wellbeing over their heads and promised them horrifying repercussions for refusing the missions. Frieza had learned over time about a low-level team of soldiers that kept taking increasingly difficult missions and still managed to complete the objectives. So he started personally requesting the team and sent them repeatedly on suicide missions – which they also completed without losses. In the end, he started to fear the strength they kept acquiring and decided to eliminate the entire race.
Frieza had the team that scared him so badly executed on Planet Meat by his Lieutenant Dodoria. Following that and after acquiring the little Saiyan prince as Frieza's new favourite pet Frieza destroyed Planet Vegeta. The files told that the captain of the low-class group had had survived Dodoria's attack and went on to oppose Frieza all alone.
Tights quickly sent the file to her commanding officer of the Space Patrol so that this crime of the Planet Trade Organisation, the genocide of an allied race because they kept succeeding missions out of fear for their children, could be documented. They would also note the Saiyans down as victims of Frieza's machinations. Dodoria, of all people, had noted down in his report that the Saiyans had come to Frieza for protection after winning their independence over the Tuffles – and not even Frieza's Lieutenants thought it to be all right how he had dealt with his allies.
Following files kept reporting the abuse the three survivors suffered under Frieza. He found it amusing to restrict their diet, deny them time to train and recover and strictly prohibited them from fathering children. She found the order, also by Frieza himself, to have the young female Raditz had bonded with murdered after she found herself happily expecting his baby.
No wonder they were all at least borderline mad.
After sifting through all the files, she called Bulma.
"Tights? Are you okay? What time is it?" came Bulma's sleepy voice when the call went through. Tights cursed silently. She had been so excited to find something to help them convince the Saiyans to change sides that she had forgot to calculate Earth's time. She saw her sister grope around for the alarm clock to find out the time before Tights could calculate.
"I'm fine." She started and Bulma calmed down considerably. "I have the information you asked me to get." She held up the external data storage. "I'll send you some files. I hope you can read the signs used – Earth doesn't use them much anymore." She grinned. "Maybe you'll find them on ancient tablets in Egypt…"
Bulma was wide-awake in seconds. "Oh my God! Tights, how did you get them?" She put on a dressing gown and was halfway across the huge building before Tights managed to send all the files.
"I pretended to be part of Frieza's troupe of goons and just transferred them." Tights shrugged. "It was a piece of cake, don't worry." The last part was only added because of Bulma's horrified expression.
"I thought this Frieza is so super dangerous?!" Bulma yelled at Tights' hologram while powering up her computer.
"He is very dangerous, Bulma. Frieza is no one we'd want to trifle with, believe me." Tights shook her head. "I only agreed to go in because my team and I had planned everything very well. I knew where I was going; we practised how to act… But facing Frieza? That's suicide, Bulma."
Bulma opened the files her sister had acquired and scrolled through them. "This is horrible…" she murmured while reading the reports. "Isn't there anything anyone can do about this monster?" she finally asked after seeing what had been done to Kenna.
"Not by anyone I know. They might respect the Space Patrol because of all the power our allies pack together, but we would never go to open war with the Planet Trade Organisation. They'd probably be able to annihilate us."
Bulma looked shocked. "Then what's the point of trying to convince anyone to desert from his troops? He'd kill us all for that!"
"I don't know. Maybe we can make it look like they left here and then… fake their deaths or something…" Tights shrugged. "We'll find a way. Between you and me no one stands a chance." She tried to smile reassuringly but failed.
Bulma kept reading the reports, looked at the pictures attached to some files and felt sick to her stomach.