Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ.
But I do have the flu, so if you sue me, all you'll get is germs. And I don't
think you want that. I will share my ginger ale and crackers though. I'm not a
totally meanie.
* * *
Meanwhile back at the Gravity
Chamber…
"Come on, Vegeta! What's
going on?"
"I told you not to follow me
Kakarot! Now get out of my site."
Goku moved in front of Vegeta
as the smaller man threw punches at an imaginary foe. "I didn't follow you," he
said with his goofy smile starting to appear on his face. "I got here at the
same time you did."
"Damn instantaneous movement!"
"So is she a full-blooded
Saiyan? Like you and me?" Goku took the Prince's silent glare as an affirmative
answer and continued on his train of thought. "She looks younger than Gohan, so
she would have been born after Vegeta-sei was destroyed. But that's what I don't
get. I only know of male
survivors. So unless there's something about
Saiyan breeding that I don't know…"
"There were more survivors of
Vegeta-sei than just us," the prince started as he shut off the gravity in the
chamber. "The strongest of us were already off world working for Freiza. Others
suspected Freiza might take their children or worse, so they devised a
plan. They would send more of their
children out on missions, like you were sent.
"More adults started taking
on off world missions, too. Freiza assumed it was out of loyalty to him. Then
the space pods started 'malfunctioning', veering off course and eventually
exploding. Freiza assumed this was because of Saiyan stupidity. He couldn't
have been more wrong.
"It was a Saiyan genius that
that devised how to make the pods transmit signals back to Freiza that showed
them veering off course, malfunction, and then disappear as if they had been
destroyed. He never knew it but his loyal pets were slowly evacuating their
home world and relocating on another planet."
"What about the ones sent off
as babies, like me?" questioned Goku trying to absorb all the new information
the other man had given him. It was, by far, the largest amount of information
Vegeta had ever told him of their home world.
"Piggy-backed on the
implanted mission directions, was the information telling them that once they
completed their task to go to the new location in stead of Vegeta-sei. When you
hit you head, you must have lost that as well as your orders to destroy Earth."
"Oh," the brain damaged Saiyan
said as he rubbed his head. "Is that how you survived?"
"No you idiot! I was one of
Freiza's Saiyan slaves. I was contacted later, after the planet was destroyed
and told about the refugees. They weren't sure that they could trust me,"
Vegeta smirked almost reminiscently. " Heh, they still didn't trust me even
after I went there…"
The Prince of All Saiyans had
a look of horror on his face. He slowly sat down on the floor, leaning his back
against the control panel. He lowered his face so he was staring at the ground
in front of him. Then in a quiet voice, he spoke, "They probably think that it
was I who betrayed them… that I killed them."
"Killed who?" the
third-class-born warrior ask as he sank to the floor beside the prince. He did
not receive an answer for a long time and was beginning to think that he would
not get one.
"That bastard had told me
that he had my pod tracked. That he had found their hiding place," Vegeta didn't
have to explain who the bastard was Goku knew he meant Freiza. "When I fought
him on Namek, he told me that he had just received word that his men had successfully
destroyed the planet they were on."
"So that's why you just
seemed to break down…" Goku remembered but did not mention that he assumed that
that had been the reason Vegeta had cried while dying.
"I didn't want to believe
him," he continued wetting his lips nervously. "So after you got back and we
were waiting for the androids, I had to see for myself. There was nothing left.
They were all gone…Freiza had taken everything from me for the second time in
my life. And at that moment, I just snapped. Right there in space, where they
all died, I snapped."
"You went Super Saiyan for
the first time…" Goku sat there not knowing what to say. The girl must have
reminded him of all he lost. Wait a minute if she's alive… Goku jumped to
his fee when he came to the realization. "If the saiyan girl is alive, then that
means that they all must be!"
Goku grabbed Vegeta by the
arm dragging him out of the Gravity Chamber. "Come on, we have to find out why
she came for you."
Vegeta dug his feet in and
wrenched his arm out of the taller Saiyan's grasp. This sent the still moving Goku
face first into the grass.
"Whoa, now what's the problem?"
the grounded Saiyan ask looking up.
The other Saiyan had turned
and started to ascend the stairs into the chamber again. He stopped for a
minute thinking; he then lowered his shoulders in resignation. "If they are
alive, that means I abandoned them. That I abandoned her…"
Goku ran up and stopped
Vegeta by placing a hand on his shoulder. "You didn't think that they were
alive. You've spent all this time with what you believed to be the only Saiyans
left. She should understand that once you tell her. I don't think she knows you're
not the only Saiyan here," they both jumped when they heard someone swear
loudly in Saiya-go. " We better go, the boys must have brought her here."