Chapter 7: Heat

Kakarot was made to stay on the ship with the other Saiyans of course, Frieza liked to keep them close as often as he could, but he was not permitted to go on the missions the others left on every so often. Not just yet, it was too much freedom for him just yet. Besides, Kakarot was leverage for making sure the others would return eventually: Frieza doubted they'd leave him behind with how strong the bond was between Raditz and his younger brother now. If Vegeta even attempted to sacrifice Kakarot for the others, he knew Raditz would go off the deep end about it and they'd be short two Saiyans. If they were going to revolt, they had better do it together as a group.

Two Years Later

"Hey Saiyan!"

Kakarot looked up at who had spoken to him. Or Raditz. Or Nappa. Whoever. 'Everyone on this bloody ship addresses us as "Saiyan," like we don't have names,' thought Kakarot bitterly, though he'd learnt early not to lets his thoughts show on his face. This time he was in fact being addressed, by a big ugly pink warrior he knew as Dodoria, one of Frieza's right hand men. 'Well, more like his left hand since Frieza doesn't seem to favor him like the other one, Zarbon.' Kakarot almost allowed a smile to break across his face.

"You missed a spot," Dodoria said pointing with his foot at a shiny, recently cleaned area of floor that Kakarot had been scrubbing away at for the last hour, one of his busy-body chores that Frieza assigned for him while all the others were away, and chuckling as though he had just made a very clever joke. Kakarot looked down at the spot for a full ten seconds then looked back up at Dodoria with an innocent look on his face. "Well?" Dodoria growled, the grin slipping a bit from his ugly face. "Aren't you going to clean it up?"

"Hmmm..." Kakarot said, debating in his head how he wanted to go about the situation. Frieza didn't like him, because he was a Saiyan and that seemed to be all the reason Frieza needed though Kakarot couldn't say the feeling wasn't neutral, but he'd seen Frieza side with Vegeta over disputes between him and Dodoria before, no matter who was right and who was wrong. Could that mean that Frieza hated Dodoria more then Saiyans? Only one way to find out. "No."

"What! What do you mean no!" Dodoria cried. "Now you see here Saiyan, you don't have a choice! You'll do as I say or-"

"I'll do as my prince says," Kakarot retorted. "And Prince Vegeta said he wanted me to obey Frieza-"

"That's Lord Frieza you filthy, little monkey," Dodoria said through clenched teeth.

"- while he was away," Kakarot continued as if there was no interruption. "And Frieza said that I was to clean these halls until you could see your reflection in them. That is exactly what I did. No more, and no less. Now move your dirty feet, they're in my way."

But before Kakarot could get back to work, something knocked him on the back of the head so hard he nearly lost conciseness. Groaning, he looked up to see Frieza hovering behind him and not looking very pleased. Kakarot had a good feeling it was him who had smacked him upside the head.

"You know I won't tolerate backtalk, Saiyan," he hissed. "Don't you ever question authority. I'll kill you if I ever catch you doing it again."

Kakarot grimaced. What he would give to retort how he'd rather die, but now that was out of the question. Frieza didn't even have to use Raditz against him anymore, he just knew how devastated his brother would be if he were to get killed. Kakarot would feel the same way. If they were going to die, Kakarot wanted to be right there with Raditz when it happened so neither of them would suffer. But for now...

"Yes sire," Kakarot said, pulling himself up. Frieza hated it even more if you laid on the floor, however defenseless you looked. "It won't happen again sir."

Frieza looked for a moment like he was just going to leave it at that, but then said, "one week of eating restrictions should do you some good too. No lunch starting today. And if I find that any of the others are sneaking food to you, you'll all go one month without eating anything. Understood?"

Kakarot's eyes widened a bit and he wondered why Frieza was passing this punishment on him, surly it couldn't be just that he'd talked back, but replied all the same, "yes sire."

"Another week added," Frieza said casually. He crossed his arms and seemed to wait for Kakarot to catch on.

"Yes Lord Frieza, sir!"

Frieza nodded. "Very good Saiyan. Carry on." And he turned around, barking an order for Dodoria to follow, and left Kakarot to finish cleaning the halls.

Kakarot engulfed his lunch the day his eating restrictions lifted. The meals provided for the Saiyans had always been measured so as to keep them from starving to death, but never really fill them up. With the exception of Vegeta, whom Kakarot had a suspicion Frieza favored even if the prince hated his guts, who's meals always contained a little more then everyone else's. But Kakarot wasn't jealous at all for it was Vegeta who had sneakily given him his extra rations to keep Kakarot from doing anything irrational while he "starved."

Today, Vegeta tossed him a little cup package from the bag that always contained the meals specially made for the Saiyans. Kakarot, whose month was full at the time, gave Vegeta a puzzled look and pointed at the offered food with a tilt of his head. Swallowing, he said, "Vegeta I can eat today. You don't have to give me anything extra."

"I don't want it," Vegeta replied simply. Kakarot shrugged and resumed eating what was left of his meal, already farther along then any of the others. Opening the package he found it to be a very tasty pudding, of a flavor he could not place but pleasant all the same, which he then noticed he had never gotten in his lunch before. None of the other Saiyans did either. He assumed it was another of the things Frieza did to favor Vegeta and let it drop in his mind after looking over at the Saiyan Prince.

"This is really good," Kakarot said about the pudding. "Do you know what's in it?" He offered some to Raditz sitting beside him, though his older brother refused it so he offered some to Tora, on his other side. Usually their meals carried on in silence and this wasn't the first time Kakarot had tried striking up conversation. No one replied for a long while and Kakarot assumed today wasn't a good day for talking (apparently not the best day for sharing either because none of the other Saiyans even wanted a taste of the pudding).

"It was my mom's recipe," Vegeta said quietly. He chased what appeared to be some sort of chopped fruit around with his eating utensil. "She made it a lot when I was little. They butcher the end result though, no one could ever make it as good as my mom."

"I would've liked to taste the real thing then," Kakarot said as he finished off the last of the pudding. "Must've been like eating heaven."

From there on the meal continued in silence among them though the room they sat in rang with chatter. Kakarot gathered his trash and cleaned up the crumbs he'd made, stopping only once to think of how Chichi used to do all this for him. 'She'd be proud of me now,' he thought, a tear rolling down his cheek. 'If only she could see...' He got up and made his way across the room to dispose of what wasn't editable in the bag. Then he returned, harassed a little by some others but otherwise unharmed and waited for someone to finish eating as well.

"Vegeta..." Kakarot said slowly as he noticed something about Vegeta for the first time that day. "Are you not hungry? You have barely touched anything..."

Vegeta looked up at him, his face calm and almost blank of expression but clearly hiding something. Indeed he had not lifted a single spoonful of food to his mouth since they all had sat down in their own little corner on the floor (no one ever allowed them to sit on at the tables and the cafeteria was always full to it's limits and then some). The other Saiyans looked from one to the other but didn't say anything.

"I'm fine," he replied. "Just fine." The Saiyan Prince returned his gaze to the food before him and continued to not eat. Kakarot frowned at this, worried about what would bother Vegeta to the point of no appetite, but decided this wasn't worth digging around in just yet. If it persisted and threatened the life of his prince, then he should be alarmed. But skipping out on one little meal would hardly endanger Vegeta. Kakarot of all people should've known this, he had to do it for a week!

"Raditz...Raditz...Raditz!"

The older Saiyan rolled over and acknowledged Kakarot with a reluctant grunt. "Wha-whatta ya wan?"

"Can I sleep with you? Please Raditz?"

Raditz sat up rubbing his eye and trying to look annoyed, though it was too dark even for the Saiyan's to make out details such as this. "No," he said flatly. "Go back to bed Kakarot."

"Please Raditz? Please?" the younger sibling begged. He held onto one of Raditz's arms and stroked it in a pleading way. "Pleeeeaaaaseeee?" he asked as he rested his head on his older brother's shoulder.

"No," Raditz stated firmly and laid back down, making sure to pull the blankets up to his chin. He felt Kakarot shift around and then slid his leg over his lower torso to straddle him, which got Raditz to sit bolt upright. "What part of NO do you not understand!" he hissed angrily.

Kakarot was close to his face now and Raditz could barely make out that he was upset. His guard dropped a bit and he wrapped his arms around his younger brother. "Kakarot, you haven't needed to sleep with me for over a year now. What's going on?" he asked.

"I just miss her," Kakarot muttered into the dark. Raditz's heartbeat quickened but he resisted the urge to throw his brother out of the room. "And...I never really liked sleeping alone...It's a comfort thing, ya know? To wake up knowing someone's beside you..."

Silence followed this and the older brother wondered what to do next. "Look," Raditz said firmly, breaking the silence and pulling Kakarot away from his half thoughts. "Lets get one thing straight: I'm not your Mate. Anything you did with her, you will not be doing with me. Understood?" The little brother shifted a bit trying to decode this. Was that a yes to his earlier question or a flat out no? He shook his head. "Get your own pillow and blanket Kakarot, you can sleep with me tonight. But only tonight. Maybe again way later...but this is the only exception I'm making for you right now. Goodnight."

And with that Raditz laid back down and fell asleep. Kakarot reached over and retrieved his blanket and pillow from his bed before laying down next to Raditz wondering what he had meant before he went back to sleep. Smiling in the dark, the little Saiyan snuggled up close to his older brother, who shifted slightly to try and put the distance back between them, and began to pull his hair together in a loose pony-tail in the center of his back. Brushing his fingers lightly through it, Kakarot worked himself to sleep like he had done often when he first came aboard Frieza's spaceship.

"Hmmm...Still no tail then Kakarot?" asked Plenthor. The Saiyan, sitting on an examination table, shook his head. "Well...That's unusual. You say it's been missing for six years now?"

"That's correct," Kakarot replied. "But it was removed for good. It will never grow back again."

The doctor laughed. "It was not removed for good; the regrowth of that appendage is controlled by a hormone inside your body. The gland that produces it is located deep underneath the skin here-" -he tapped Kakarot's rump, right on the spot where his tail had grown and earned a slight yelp from the Saiyan- "-and quite impossible to remove. No, I think there's something that's repressing it from the inside."

Kakarot tilted his head. "Like what?" he asked.

"Like...oh some other hormone, though I can't think of any that would cancel out the first one. Perhaps you've been suppressing it mentally, thinking it will never grow back or holding it back for one reason or another. But I think that now that you're around Saiyan companions more, it'll pop back up again. Now, you're 24 years old, are you? "

"How do you know it'll grow back?"

"Oh. You'll see."

"Hey Raditz!" called Fasha as she laid a hand on the Saiyan's shoulder. "Ooo, you look like hell. Didn't sleep well?" she asked with a smirk.

"Do not remind me," he replied, continuing his walk down the hall to the training rooms. "Kakarot scared me half to death. Of all times to want to sleep beside me, this is not the best one to pick."

Fasha giggled as she followed along side him. "Ahh, are you in Heat again, Raditz? Worried you'll give into temptation with your brother?" She gave a surprised look and covered her mouth with her hands in a clear "Uh-oh!" fashion.

"Shut up!" Raditz growled at her. "It's not at all something to be joking about!"

The female Saiyan waved her hand dismissively. "Oh you can handle yourself for the next few nights. You know I'll take care of you before it gets out of control. Relax. Oh! Speaking of going into Heat, when will Kakarot start his?"

"That's just it," Raditz said, coming to a halt with Fasha only two steps in front of him. She turned back to face him, a puzzled expression on her face. "Kakarot and I are exactly eight years apart. We'll both be in Heat at the same time."

"Wow," Fasha said, raising her eyebrows. "That sure wasn't something I was expecting. What were you planning on doing about it?"

Raditz turned away. "I don't know..." he muttered darkly. "I'm not going to relive that memory again, not with Kakarot. Not even with you between us. But I don't think he'll understand all this; I mean, of all of us he was the only one to secure a full-fledged Mate. I don't want him to be confused..." He turned back to her, a hopelessly lost look on his face.

"Well," Fasha said slowly, thinking through what she was going to say. "I can take you like I usually do. Try him afterward, see how he reacts. If he's okay with it, then we have nothing to worry about. If not..." She shrugged. "Then he just has to ride it out on his own. He'll just be feverish and delusional for a few days is all, and we can't help that."

Raditz nodded his head in agreement.

End Chapter 7!