Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball
Warning: This story will be written in First Person!
If you don't like that, you probably won't enjoy this story!
First of all, I would like to call your attention to my profile page. Below all that stuff regarding my thoughts on Naruto, I wrote down what I think of Dragonball and the various changes I intend to make to the setting. My collected thoughts can be found there. Since I don't want you to go into this with false expectations of what awaits you ...
... You have returned from taking a look at my profile page?
Good, there are a few things relevant to the story I didn't mention there.
Okay, I really didn't intend to write this story (already have too many projects as it is) – but a few months back, I came across a few Dragonball fanfictions, and I just couldn't help myself. Especially after I realized there are hardly any fics in which Goku is paired with another Saiyan or even Bulma. Which I intended to change with this fic ...
Kakarot, unlike canon, was born with a power level of 10001 and is the Legendary Super Saiyan. This obviously means that this won't be a story about an underdog clawing his way up - contrary to the typical Shonen trope. But about a young Kakarot, who together with his guardian Fasha, lands on Earth.
The pairings will be [Kakarot x Fasha x fem Vegeta x (possibly) Bulma]
Another word of warning - I don't know if this fic has a future - As I'm writing this, I constantly ran into the issue of the power level sweet spot - the requirement for the bad guys to appear at a specific time for them to be a challenge and that even a short deviation would result in a one-sided slaughter. I'm really not a fan ... and I'm not sure if I can bring myself to overcome the reservations I have in regards to this ...
Chapter 01: Bardock Father of Kakarot (Year 737)
The attack ball opened up, and a sunray momentarily blinded me. I moved my hand to shield my eyes from the light and stepped outside. I found myself inside a crater-like I did hundred of times before. Taking a deep breath, I noticed this planet's air smelled of ash and burned flesh, clear indications of battle having taken place here not too long ago.
It seemed as if my team didn't have the patience to wait for me. I smiled to myself. A push activated my scouter, and the search algorithm started to look for the largest battle power in the vicinity. It took him mere seconds to locate multiple strong signals to my right. I slowly lifted myself from the ground and levitated out of the crater just to accelerate to my top speed after ascending above the edge of it.
In mere minutes I arrived at my destination. I slowly descended towards the ground only to gasp in surprise. Amidst the rubble marking heavy fighting around this area, I saw a motionless body lying on its stomach wearing the typical battle armor of Freezer troops.
I remembered the briefing saying only moderate resistance was to be expected with the indigenous population of this planet being of average strength. My team should have been able to handle everything those savages could have thrown at them with ease. No surprise there, really given this planet's weak gravity.
It, after all, was the reason I allowed them to proceed with the mission without me, having been confined to the medical machine after that damned Kanassan survivor did something to me.
I hastened my descent and landed right next to the body. Reaching under the body, I turned it around, which confirmed my worst fears. I brought my fingers to his neck, where I could feel a pulse hardly there and rapidly weakening.
"Tora!" I called out to him. There was a flutter of his eyelids, and they slowly opened. Recognition spread across his face. "Don't tell me you let these meatheads do this to you guys."
"No way, come on. You should know us better than that." He said.
"What happened then?" I demanded to know.
"We were ambushed by Dodoria and his men."
"Frieza was the one who ordered us here," I told him.
"Yes, it was a setup. Frieza, he wants us all dead."
"But why?" I couldn't help but ask, "I mean, after all, we have done. It doesn't make sense. We took the job that even his Elites wouldn't mess with, and we still won."
"You were getting to be the best." he pressed out, "Frieza's getting scared."
"Scared of what?" I wondered.
"Of you Bardock, Frieza's scared of you, don't you see. He is scared of what you might become. You are getting too strong." His voice was losing strength. "Good luck, old friend. I'm sorry." those were the last word he spoke to me before he succumbed to his grievous wounds. I closed the eyes of my best and oldest friends and placed his dead body on the ground.
I stood up and took a look around me, I could see the lifeless bodies of Fasha, Borgos, and Shugesh sprawled out nearby.
So this is what it's come to, how we are rewarded for our hard work. We tried so hard to please Frieza only to end up betrayed.
I balled my fists at my side and made a silent promise to the bodies of my closest friends standing in their midst. I would get them back for this. Frieza has taken our loyalty and paid us back in blood. I wondered how he would like a taste of his own medicine.
My musings were interrupted by the beeping of my scouter, alerting me to a group of four emerging from within a ruined building nearby. They also wore battle armor combined with the Scouters attached to their heads made their allegiance clear as day. Given the smiles, they wore on their faces and their taunting expressions. It took no genius to know why they were here.
Good, they came just at the right time. The need to burrow my fist into the guts of some filth was about to become painful. So I was glad some volunteers to be on the receiving end of my anger just made their appearance.
"I thought there was a foul smell in the air. So you are the ones." I said in the most disgusted tone I could manage.
Their leader, a pink-skinned muscled guy, said. "Bardock, you crack me up. We had some fun with your crew, earlier. You should have been there."
"You are right." I agreed, "I should have been there."
"Do you really think that it would have made a difference, Bardock? I mean really?" His purple friend mocked.
Guess it is time to find out. I charged at them, fist raised. They didn't wait for me to reach them and evaded my initial attack by jumping up into the air. They split up and brought some distance between each other.
One of them unloaded an energy blast onto my position. I didn't stay around for them to hit me but dodged sideways, fully expecting the blown-up dust following the explosion when the blast made contact with the ground to block their sight, if only for a moment.
Provided I was fast enough, this would be all I needed to turn the numbers a little more in my favor. Having moved to the side, I ejected myself from the ground high up into the air. Flying above them, I saw their eyes were still locked at the ground, waiting for the dust clouds to settle, clearing up the view of my dead body.
They were underestimating me, good. This would make things easy for me. I allowed myself to fall down towards the purple one. He only noticed my approach when I triggered the proximity alarm of this scouter, but by then, it was already too late. The moment he turned his head upwards, my interlocked hands were already coming down hard on his head.
I heard the satisfying sound of his skull cracking under my fists, the dead body rapidly descending towards the ground. The three others surrounding me in the air reacted predictably, all of them firing another KI-Blast my way.
I dodged out of the way, and behind me, the three blasts hit each other creating a huge explosion in the process. You really would think those Idiots would learn from their mistakes - guess not.
I once more used the blinding flash of the explosion and the dust as cover and distraction to get behind another one of them. At the speed I was moving, he was in a headlock before he knew I was even there.
I didn't get a chance to kill him myself because he was hit by an energy blast from the front, killing him instantly. Amateurs, all of them possessing not a shred of situational awareness. They didn't even keep track of their comrades, only relying on their Scouters telling them my position to then fire blindly at me.
When the body of their comrade emerged from the dust cloud, rapidly approaching the ground, They yelled at each other, the stress of realizing that this wouldn't be as easy as they pictured and their lives were actually at risk finally catching up with them.
"Oh no, what have I done!" The leader said, aghast.
"Ingenious move, he is no slouch. Better watch out." the last remaining other chimed in.
"Me, watch out! He is just a low-level. We are the Elites. Now, let's go." was the angry response.
I just gave them a smug grin – two to go.
The remaining two flew at me at high speed. I decided to meet them in the middle and accelerated towards them. I was about to block a sloppy kick of their leader when I had another vision.
I found myself overlooking a fight between two young women. One looked like a decade older Princess Vegeta, her upwards spiked hair and the ponytail a clear giveaway. The other was without a doubt Fasha, but that wasn't what surprised me. No, that reserved to witnessing Fasha kicking the shit out of Vegeta without even trying. I became startled when I heard someone cheering her on. Looking to where the sound came from, I saw a young man greatly resembling myself standing just a few feet away, watching the fight with glee.
When my mind returned to reality a knee made contact with my face, hitting me hard. Even dazing for a second before I could get back my bearings, strong arms grabbed me from behind, locking down my own, holding me in place. This didn't allow me to avoid the follow-up attack, a punch straight into my stomach, pushing the air out of my lungs. The taste of bile lay on my tongue as my attacker went on to pummel me left, right, left, right without pause.
I took the punches waiting for an opportunity, which came when the pink guy was readying another more devastating punch, aimed at my midsection when I finally acted. I flipped myself and the person holding onto me in the air and moved him right into the path of the punch.
I could hear the shell of a battle armor breaking right under the attack, and the stench of freshly exposed guts was polluting the air. The grip around my arms slackened, and I lost no time to free myself. I gathered a considerable amount of energy in the palm of my hand and in one fluid motion, turned around and fired it right behind me, ending the lives of my two opponents in one fell stroke.
"That was for my crew to you!"
Heavily breathing, I landed on the ground. The fight took more out of me than it should have. Damn those visions. So those guys were some of Frieza Elites I could see why he would like me blue.
The peeping of my Scouter alerted me to another presence. I turned around and came face to face with Dodoria, a pink ugly, heavy-weight creature. "Unfortunate business isn't it, Bardock," he mocked.
"Unfortunate for you, Dodoria. Tora told me you are behind this."
I wasn't given any time to say more when Dodoria suddenly opened his mouth, and a highly concentrated energy beam was coming my way at incredible speeds. I barely had time to raise my arms as I was hit. I put everything I had into blocking the attack, but as it turned out, it wasn't enough by a huge margin. I lost my footing and was swept away.
I must have lost consciousness for a moment because when I woke up, I found myself lying buried under debris at the end of a long swath in the ground with someone was bent over me, reaching for my neck. I instinctively grabbed for the appendage and squeezed.
"Stop Bardock, it's me, Fasha." My eyes focused, and indeed I could make out the sole female member of my crew right in front of me, alive. I released the grip on her arm, she retracted it close to her body, massaging the place I just had her grabbed at.
"I thought you to be dead as the rest of them. How are you still alive?" I wondered.
"I don't know." she replied, "They appeared out of nowhere after we decimated the population of this planet. We were exhausted, tired, and in no state to take them on, and they knew it. They played with us, boasted about their perceived superiority to us while they beat us senseless and left us to die for you to find us. It is you they were after Bardock. Freezer sent them."
"I know. Tora said the same before he ..."
Fasha swayed from her crouched position and had to brace herself in order to fall over.
"Are you alright?" I asked, concerned.
"Yeah, this is nothing a few days in a medical machine couldn't fix." She tried to appease my worries. It clearly wasn't nothing. I couldn't remember having seen her this hurt in the past. She was bruised and bleeding all over, one of her eyes was closed shut through swelling, and given how she winced when she tried to brace herself, she must have more than one broken rib.
"Where is Dodoria?"
"I don't know when I woke nobody was around, and the only thing my Scouter detected was you, barely alive." that reminded me I could have checked for Dodoria myself. I reached for my face only to notice as my hand was already raised halfway that I no longer wore a Scouter. It must have been destroyed through the beam, as was most of my armor, which probably saved my life.
Nonetheless, I was hurt. Abrasions across my whole torso and arms I used to block the attack. Only under great effort, I managed to excavate myself from the rubble. Fasha, at first, stubbornly tried to help but ultimately gave up when she had to accept the fact that she could barely stand unassisted.
"So, what now?" she asked, sitting against some rubble.
"We are going back," I told her without looking up from excavating myself.
"Going back where? You can't mean Vegeta." She flared up incredulously, "Frieza just tried to have you killed. When you go back, he'll know he failed and will try again." and added beneath her breath hardly a whisper, "You can't go back, please Bardock."
"I don't have a choice," I responded.
"What do you mean?" she questioned.
"I have to try and stop him," I said.
"From doing what?"
"From killing us all."
Raising up with a wince, she demanded to know, "What are you talking about, Bardock?"
"Ever since we were on Kanassa, I see things, things that haven't happened yet. In one of those visions, I saw Frieza destroying our home planet." I explained.
"You can't be serious." The look I gave her had her fall silent, making it clear I was dead serious.
"We will go back, and I will try to warn the others to make them see the threat," I told her. But more than anything, I had to make sure my son didn't fall into Frieza's hands. He was too important for me to allow that.
"They won't believe us, hell I have trouble believing you, and we fought side by side for years. How do you think we can manage to convince anybody else?" she argued.
"I don't know, but we have to try," I said as I was finally able to free myself. I walked over to her. "Come, we don't have any time to waste." I lifted her up and flew us to the landing site where our attack ship was located.
By the time I landed, Fasha was unconscious. I gently placed her into the capsule and activated the auto-pilot, then walked over to another and did the same.
The flight was a short one and served to confirm my fears. During my approach, I could see Frieza's ship approaching the planet, and there was a moment where I was sure I could read his mind. I felt his intentions, his plans to destroy us all.
My capsule landed in the designated spot on the landing deck. The hatch opened, and I dragged my injured body outside. Two persons came close to check out who it was that had landed. The first one greeted me.
"Bardock, hey are you alright?"
"Yeah, please I need to go, move!" I pushed my way past them and heard them shout from behind me.
"Hey, man you better go straight to recovery, and you are just in time if you want to see off your son. His departure was delayed when your approach was noticed." The second person shouted after me.
Shit, I had hoped he was already on his way. Gine and I tried our best to accelerate his departure. We couldn't hide for much longer what he was. Even before Frieza tried to have me killed, he was at risk.
I had to make sure he was gonna survive and be nowhere near here, especially should I fail. He then might be our only chance. I turned my head and found the capsule of Fasha, the hatch still closed. I walked over and opened it from the outside. Fasha was lying inside, sleeping. Placing my hand on her shoulder, I jolted her awake.
Startled, she took a moment to come to, "Bardock... where are we? Is everything alright you look like you have seen a ghost."
"We don't have much time. I will go and try to stop Frieza."
"I will go with you," she said as she tried to sit up and with a wince fell back in her seat.
"No, you're in no condition to fight."
"Bardock, If you think I would abandon ..."
"Stop," I commanded, "that's not it. I have a task for you. I want you to find my son Kakarot. He's due to be sent on his first mission. I want you to find him and go with him to whatever planet he's sent. Should I fail, you two will be all that's left of our race, our final hope at revenge and the survival of the Saiyans."
I was about to turn away from her when she grabbed my arm. "Please, don't make me do this. Don't send me away. Let me fight and die with you."
Shaking my head, I told her, "I can't allow you to do this. My son will need you; to train, guide, and protect him. You are the only one I can trust with this."
"I love you." she blurted out a last desperate attempt to sway my decision.
"I know, and if your feeling had any meaning at all, you will do this and protect my son as if you would me, promise me."
With a defeated look in her eyes but no less sincere, she conceded, "I promise."
"Good," I said, "before you go make a visit to the medical Bay and take a dose of the anesthesia they give us before they put us in those medical machines, it will induce a coma. Hopefully, this will be enough to fool the Scouters of Frieza men so that they will ignore you. Good luck, Soldier."
I just hoped Gine didn't slack of in dosing Kakarot. Otherwise, this precaution would be moot.
Either way, it was out of my hands. I ran towards the main building of the space dock only to stumble as another vision hit me. I saw the planet Vegeta explode in a ball of fire, vanquishing all the life upon it in the process.
I gritted my teeth, righted myself, and increased my speed to the maximum I could manage in my battered body. I ran through a seemingly never-ending stretch of corridors until I finally reached the mess hall.
It was filled to the brim with Saiyan warriors about to set off to a mission or those returning from one, enjoying their time. Unaware of what was coming. I reached one of the tables and placed my hands on it to steady myself, trying to silence my body, which was screaming at me to lie down to close my eyes only for me to slip and fall down.
One of the Saiyan warriors sitting at the table stood up and came to me asking. "Bardock what's wrong?" I ignored him and picked myself up again.
"Listen, everybody," I shouted, "it's Frieza he's coming for us."
"Us?" I heard, murmured from one corner of the room.
"you mean you, right?" another one chimed in.
"No," I screamed, trying to get them to understand, "I mean us, you, me everyone here. It is true. He is scared of us. He wants us all dead. My crew is dead, thanks to that Freak."
"Bardock gets his tail whipped, and it's the end of the world, right." One in the crowd mocked me.
"Maybe you guys should stop pretending to be Elites." someone joked.
"No kidding, Bardock, welcome to the real world, buddy boy."
"It hurts, doesn't it." a female voice said in false sympathy.
"So Frieza is scared of us, hmm."
"Let's calm down and leave him alone."
Fools all of them, I thought to myself, as I was pleading one last time to them, "you are all dead. He's on his way."
"Come on, Bardock."
"Fine, believe what you wanna believe, but I'm gonna try and stop him." I resigned myself to have to this alone.
I ran outside only to end up standing on a sandy plain extending as far as my eyes could see.
"Bardock," I heard someone calling out to me. I looked around, trying to find who it was. My eyes finally settled on the back of a person my height with similar hair.
"Do you know who I am?" I was asked.
"Yes," I answered, "you are my son."
"It is not too late, father, to be different," my son turned around, and I was looked at by someone with the eyes of a true warrior. I felt a shudder run along my spine, "than him," he was replaced with Frieza, who was grinning at me.
I was returned to the stairways I was climbing in order to reach the open. What was this madness this felt real? I couldn't stop, not now. I resumed my run and exited the building.
I looked up into the sky. I could see Frieza's ship slowly descending towards the planet with my bare eyes.
I had to stop him even if I had to do it with my own two hands. `Frieza I'm coming for you, you murderous self-serving traitor. It is over. For my friends Tora Borgos and Shugesh, this is it for you.´
I focused on what energy I had left and pushed myself from the ground taking flight towards Frieza. Long before I could even reach my destination, dozen of soldiers emerged from the ship, trying to intercept me.
My approach must have been detected, and this was Frieza's way of reception. I grinned. They wouldn't be able to stop me. There was hanging far too much in the balance for me to allow them to. They created a cordon around Frieza's ship, attempting to block me off.
I accelerated to reach even greater speeds, to break through their lines. As I came closer, they all gathered energy in their hands and shot it my way. Their blasts were so numerous, leaving no space between them, the barrage came close to a solid wall approaching me at high speeds.
Aware that I would be unable to slip through, unharmed, I braced myself for impact and just pushed through.
My body was hit numerous times, aggravating my already serious injuries. My head and ears were ringing from the explosion going off all around me.
But no matter how hurt I got, I didn't stop. I powered on. When my sight finally cleared, they were right in front of me, Frieza's men. Most of them were caught utterly by surprise that anything could have survived the onslaught they unleashed upon me.
Before they could recover, I was amidst them. The first one I barreled into, I put my fist right through his heart and moved right to the one behind him, cracking his skull. To my right, there was a flicker of movement, I didn't hesitate for a single moment and sent a KI Blast that way. I didn't take the time to watch whatever was responsible for the movement I saw being vaporized, since I was already moving to the next one whose life I ended with a kick that broke his spine with a sickening sound.
Another one of Frieza's men was flying into my path. With ease, I slipped under his fearful and sloppy thrown punch and retaliated with a devastating effect, as I burrowed my hand in his warm and wet guts. By the time I removed my hand from his body, two more had taken his place, levitating right in front of me. Behind them, Frieza's ship was hanging in the air unmoving - taunting me.
I drew back both my hands to my side and gathered the energy coursing through my body into my fists. With a yell, I flexed them forward and blue energy erupted from them, hitting the obstacles right into their torso, leaving two smoking bodies behind that gravity took a hold of and returned them to its unrelenting embrace.
I felt a stinging sensation on my left flank. My course swerved from the momentum I received through the hit. I managed to stabilize my flight just in time to block a knee aimed at my head. The impact against my hand had me wince; my ribs hurt like mad.
I tried my best to ignore the pain and countered with a punch to my opponent's side. My fist went deep into his tissue just as I was hit from behind. My head snapped forward. I lost my orientation momentarily, and when I regained it, dozen of energy blasts were about to hit me.
I crossed my arms in front of me and weathered the assault, and before the dust could settle, I was moving again. Four fast-fired blasts took care of another few of Freezer men that were in my way. The fifth scared witless at my ruthlessness and losing his comrades surrounding him, took a knee to the head and splattered it like an overripe fruit squashed under someone's feet.
Another wave of energy blasts was fired at me, this time ignoring those in my vicinity. Apparently, they no longer could be bothered to care about hitting their own men. I flew into the guard of the one trying to kick me while grabbing onto his raised thigh with my left and his hip on the other side of his body with my right and moved with him in a half-turn not a second later his back was littered with an explosion.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another guy approaching my back at high speeds, I shifted my position, and his attack went nowhere, passing harmlessly in front of my face. I grabbed his battle armor at the collar and hem and pushed him ahead of me, using his body as a battering ram and shield to open up away.
He didn't last long, a few dozen impacts on his body I could feel through the recoil transmitted to my arms, and the light left his eyes. I threw his useless body away and found myself once more surrounded on all sides. Was there no end to them?
I was breathing heavily. Trying to get as much oxygen into my lungs as the thining atmosphere allowed. My blood was trickling down my body staining what little clothes still clung to my body. Every cell making me up was aching, screaming at me to stop this madness, but my mind was jubilating. I had never felt so alive like I did at this very moment.
"FRIEZA!" I roared at the top of my lungs, "COME OUT AND FIGHT ME, YOU COWARD!"
Instead of capitalizing on me calling out to him, his troops just stayed exactly where they were, hesitating. That's when it became clear to me, they feared me, feared coming closer, being the next one I would kill on my mad dash to reach Frieza.
I couldn't help myself, but grin it seemed like my situation wasn't as bleak as I thought. I might actually stand a chance.
My musing was cut short when the top hangar door of Frieza's ship opened up, and Frieza himself emerged. The fear struck Soldiers all around me started to hail their leader, and the fear was replaced with awe and relief.
Frieza stopped his ascent, hovering right above his ship, sitting atop his transport vehicle like a King on his throne. From up high, he was looking down on me and his men, creatures beneath his notice; insects, nothing more.
Repugnance was clear to see, being the dominant emotion on his face. I laughed with my goal right in front of me. There was still a chance to avert the future I have been hounded with.
"No way,you have lived long enough. Actually, it has been too long for my taste. Frieza, listen up, we quit. All of us got it. We don't work for you. We are free. You can find someone else to do your dirty work. Oh yeah, there is one last thing."
I started to gather all that energy that was left within my body in my right hand and focused it to its highest degree.
"This is for all the people that we killed in your name. I wish we were never foolish enough to obey you." And with that, I tossed the accumulated energy Frieza's way.
Meanwhile, he didn't dignify my words nor my presence with a single word of his own he was just staring at me, with his men only levitating all around me. He continued to stare unfazed and just lifted his index finger, and suddenly without warning above it, a huge amount of energy was gathered in a ball-shaped form rapidly increasing in size.
It took mere moments for it to expand to many times the body size of Frieza's when my blast struck the ball and left it completely unaffected. As if it was nothing. I just stared at the ball growing in size unimpeded, the growth only stopped after the ball reached a size greater than Frieza's huge spaceship. With a crazy laugh, Frieza flicked the energy ball right at me.
Around me, Frieza men were screaming, begging him to spare them. But it was already too late, for them and for me. The last thing I saw, before I was engulfed by the energy making up the ball was a vision.
I saw my son standing across from Frieza, in an unfamiliar stretch of land, poised to strike at him, standing to the side out of the way. I could make out Fasha having his back with a proud smirk on her face.
That was when I realized it. It would be my son who will be the one to defeat Frieza. The one to take revenge for all those that suffered at the hands of him. He was all I ever hoped he would turn out to be my son "KAKAROTT!" were the last words leaving my lips that I happily screamed at the night's sky until Darkness embraced me for one last time.
Authors Notes: Contain excerpts from the Bardock special (English dub)
Not overly much to be seen here in this chapter - just the general premise.