A little boy sat beside his window. The bright sunshine beamed through and illuminated a pile of papers in front of him although this physical illumination did not make the contents of the pages any less confusing. In moments of bafflement, while he scratched his head with the other end of his pencil, the six-year-old found his eyes wandering and focusing on the image of his father throwing punches and kicks outside, striking at thin air.
His father had been going at it for a while, as seen in the sweat building up on his face. Just watching his father stretching his limbs in the outdoors made the little boy sweat too, he dragged the yellow sleeve of his oriental top over his forehead. An answer to the math problem he was solving came to him and thus Goku's son focused on filling up the page in front of him.
He'd better fill every page up, grandpa did venture out into the town to pick these up for him after all. They probably cost a whole lot of money. Plus, mother really wanted him to do good at everything. Sometimes she was even stricter than father when he taught him martial arts. It was mother, most of the time, pointing out flaws in stance or mistakes that he had made while considering his strategy. Father acted so laxly that it might have seemed like he didn't care. He did, in fact, fighting was the one thing he cared immensely about and the boy liked connecting with his father doing the thing that made father open up and be himself.
Another confusing math problem…
The boy of shoulder-length, spiky black hair lifted his head up to look at his father training while he figured out the answer in his head, recalled which formula came first and the priorities of operations. Something was wrong, the little boy was just six-years-old but even he could know that much. Father was just standing there, perfectly straight, watching up and in the distance, as if trying to see something far off in the distance.
"Gohan-chan!" the doors burst open, mother rushed in and approached little Gohan's desk. "Stay indoors, don't look through the curtains. You're still studying? Good, just keep doing that. Focus really hard on your studies. A boy needs to be both smart and strong so keep grinding those books as hard as your father's working out, okay?"
"Is something wrong?" Gohan looked up in a troubled voice. At his early age it was tough to be emotional and not sound a little bit whiny though little Gohan didn't feel like crying. It was just that his blood was pumping and something was bugging his gut. It felt a lot like the times father took him flying and teased him by blitzing dangerously close to mountains or dinosaurs that roared really loud after being startled.
"Don't worry, Gohan-chan. Your daddy and mommy are really strong and they'll protect you. We kicked the demons back to their realm that one time, you know. Daddy will oversee your training today. We'll postpone it a bit further in the evening, maybe after dinner," Chi-Chi gave her son a smile of encouragement before rushing off. Almost immediately after she ran off, Gohan tilted his head to stare at the closed blinders.
Mother said not to worry and not to look. Gohan always did as his mother said, he'd have done as father said too but father didn't really tell him to do all that much. He just kind of watched Gohan and went with the flow. It was much tougher understanding father than it was his mother. Gohan's pinky reached out and slipped in between two pieces of the blinders, with a light turn of the finger there was a tiny opening through which some light went in.
She told Gohan to study but how could he study with the blinders all closed? He needed to open them up just a little bit, at least…
"What is that? It can't be Piccolo…" Chi-Chi rushed out to the yard to join her husband in tracking the large Ki signature rushing at them at incredible speed.
"Don't know, it's nobody we've met. It ain't Piccolo, it could be Chayote if she's suppressing herself but that sort of thing ain't her style…" Goku replied with a serious expression. He didn't like what he felt one bit.
"Well, whoever it is, they're gonna get it!" Chi-Chi punched her open palm and grit her teeth. "We've got a good thing going here and we're doing a great job at running a family. If someone wants to wreck that, they're going to be leaving all sore and battered!"
"I don't know, Chi-Chi, I'm a little bit excited about this new challenge. I feel like we haven't been training as hard as we could have these past years. Training for training's own sake just ain't the same, you know…" Goku stretched out his arms and neck before returning onto the adamant focus on the incoming threat that soon appeared far off into the horizon. It took the airborne giant a good couple of seconds to close the distance completely and float up in the air over the family.
"What is that?" Chi-Chi wondered. Her voice shook but her tone was that of surprise. The man that aimed to disturb the peaceful Son family life was a physical titan, almost twice her size with a blocky head that had a handful of straight scars streaking over his face and he didn't have all that much hair left on his head either. Had it not been for his otherworldly armor and gear, he'd have looked like some caveman blockhead. "That tail…"
Goku noticed the fact that the man wore his tail wrapped over his waist, just like Raditz did a bit after his wife did. He didn't pay that detail much mind before but now that Chi-Chi noticed it, the elements all sort of added up. The incredible Ki, the extraterrestrial armor, and the tail.
"Kakarot…" the man grumbled in a husky but booming voice. "Found you!"
"You're a Saiyan, aren't you?" Goku fixed his wristbands and flexed his shoulders, seeing the way this guy was put together, and, knowing his upbringing, the Saiyan raised on Earth prepared for a brawl.
"Follow me," the giant muttered, had it not been for his oversized chest and the brutish strength of his lungs, his grunts would have been utterly unintelligible but they sounded a lot more coherent now. "Your father wants to see you."
"My father…!?" Goku blanked out in shock. "Did you say my father?"
"Listen, you blockhead, Goku-sa isn't going anywhere. If his father wants to come to visit, we'll host him. I'm making dinner in a few hours. Knowing Goku's appetite, feeding him, his father and a big fella like you will put a strain on our supplies but sitting by the table and eating together is something families do," Chi-Chi yelled at the large man who appeared greatly confused by both her presence as well as the state of the planet.
"Ugh… What is going on?" the blockhead ground his teeth as he placed both of his hands over his head and yanked on his two spiking patches of hair growing on both sides of it. "Kakarot isn't the most powerful power level on this planet, the planet ain't wiped out, some Earthling broad is hassling me…!"
"Chi-Chi is right. I'm not some Kakareek or whatever you guys call me. My name's Son Goku and I'm a Saiyan raised on Earth. I've got a family now and if my old man's really come down to Earth I'd like to meet him but I ain't leaving Earth behind." Goku objected, appearing troubled by how upset the Saiyan giant was getting.
Without a warning, the brutish Saiyan began flickering at hi-speeds up in the air, running circles around Son Goku, Chi-Chi, and their family home. Goku's eyes followed the Saiyan's movements, letting him go only when he moved to a blindspot behind him but even then his Ki sensory allowed him to stay in track of his opponent.
"Yaaagh!" the supersized Saiyan roared out as he began thrusting his palms forward, firing off a barrage of Ki blasts at everything in his sight. The flat objection to his limited understanding that Son Goku was issuing, this Earthling woman, this supposed family home, they were all causing him a massive headache so they all had to be reduced to ashes so that his head would stop hurting already.
Goku moved in an instant, he dashed in before the rush of Ki blasts and deflected every single one of them with relative ease, focusing on the attack and ensuring that it didn't threaten his home. The stray Ki blasts flew off into the distance and detonated far-off. A few of them might have gone as far as Aru Village but Goku had little control over where he deflected the blasts. His entire focus was on protecting his family home.
"You bastard!" he howled. "My son's in there!"
"Son?" the almost-bald Saiyan scratched the bald part of his head, rubbing off some layers of dry, dead skin off of the scarred area of his face that way. "Son is good, more Saiyans…"
"As if we're going to help you now that you attacked us!" Goku clenched his fist out in front of him. "I'm sending you flying back to where you came from, you hear me!?"
The aura of the furious warrior unfurled in a wild burst. In a blink, Goku appeared right before his opponent and spread his arms out, unleashing a powerful bubble of Kiai that overwhelmed the giant and sent him flying upward. Like a heavens-piercing arrow, Goku dashed after him and elbowed the Saiyan right in the gut before kicking him even higher up until the Saiyan flipped back over the clouds and somehow managed to wriggle into a stable position.
Reeling and panting, wiping blood and slobber off of his face, the humiliated Saiyan turned on his scouter. The son of Bardock had only moved a couple of times this entire brawl and yet Borgos had failed to track him each and every time. He forgot to measure up Kakarot's power level but he was never meant to hit him in the first place. Kakarot's was supposed to be the top power level on this planet bar none. Bardock went after the strongest one…
"17 065!?" Borgos growled. "The brat is almost as strong as Bardock…"
Goku and Chi-Chi erupted from the clouds together, rushing after the Saiyan and overwhelming him both at once. The brutish physical titan flew back to put some more space between him and the husband-wife team that came at him but they were too fast and didn't give him much leeway. That little pest Kakarot called his wife didn't hit nearly as hard as he did but she still threw him off-guard and even the tiniest flinch opened Borgos up for a beatdown from Bardock's brat.
"Up here you don't have to hold back, Goku-sa," Chi-Chi glanced at her husband after the two delivered a combination flying kick to Borgos' face and sent the giant flying back and crashing down to Mount Paozu down below. Despite falling through the clouds and crashing down, neither one of the pair lost the track of their opponent. The fact that the enemy didn't know how to suppress his Ki only served to bite him in the behind by making him a constantly glowing beacon.
"He's doing something!" Goku tightened his focus and dived down to land right before his opponent. The Earth-raised Saiyan aimed to cut the brute's path in rushing back to the Son family home and he did just that, though it didn't look like the brutish Saiyan was still looking to obliterate Goku's home.
"Grrr… If you won't come, I'll have to bring you to your old man battered and unconscious!" Borgos yelled out, spreading his arms to the side and opening his jaw. "Angry Launcher!"
A bright mouth-beam with enough power to shake the ground beneath the feet and make the surrounding mountains crumble and the nearby waterfalls to flood the area now that there were no more rocky formations shutting them off careened off toward Goku. Chi-Chi joined in beside her husband while the two extended their palm outward and formed a Kiai push that served as a barrier to prevent the mouth beam from causing any unwanted damage by absorbing most of its force and detonating him before the two.
"Dammit, even the Earthling's got a power level of 1108…" Borgos bellowed before turning his scouter toward the Son family home. "Hmph… His son's just a twerp, we can probably make do without someone with a measly power level of 384…"
"Haven't you gotten the hint yet?!" Goku yelled out at the Saiyan invader. "You can't beat us so get out of this planet already! If my father's siding with bastards like you, I'm gonna kick his ass and knock him flat too if he shows up!"
"Heh… You can tell that right to his face, Kakarot, right after we both smash your little, sad family to pieces like the Great Apes…" Borgos smirked with a smile that was missing a few teeth. The wear and tear that this pathetic union between a Saiyan and an Earthling put on him was just perfect, just the kind of thing that Borgos needed before joining Bardock in his coup on Planet Vegeta. The Saiyan extended his right arm to the side and formed a bright and crackling sphere in it.
Borgos' eyes widened as he could no longer see Kakarot in front of him. The giant's attention faltered and shifted to his hand, which no longer fostered the gleaming power ball. It was then that fragments of Goku's spiky hair settling back in their usual position stood out and forced the giant to look down. The pain was very slow to set in but Borgos' vision faded out at almost the same time as he felt Goku's elbow hitting him right in the solar plexus, effectively turning him off.
A fiery aura was bursting forth from Goku's pores and caressing his hair as it flowed as if affected by perpetual weightlessness. The body of the Earth-raised Saiyan had buffed up and caused him significant strain as he staggered back from the enemy he had just knocked out and observed as Borgos collapsed on the ground. The giant's eyes were whited out and his Ki signature had reduced to a meaningless, barely simmering spark.
"Goku-sa…" Chi-Chi ran up to Goku as the Saiyan warrior rushed to turn off his Hot-Red mode which he tapped into out of some primal fear born in his gut of what was about to happen. "You used it… Let's go home, I'll fix you up something to eat and get you something nice to drink up and replenish your fluids."
"Yeah… I don't know what got over me, I can't explain it but… It just felt like… Like I had to come at him with my full power, soar as high up as I could, or else something terrible might have happened," Goku looked at his trembling hands and felt so much of his remaining strength burning away. He hadn't fought seriously for seven years, only engaging in image training and some moderate, daily workout sessions which had left his body completely devoid of the memories of what it felt like to fight like going to war. Just one, light spark of Hot-Red had nearly broken Goku's body altogether though the enemy laid beaten.
Chi-Chi walked up to the lying behemoth with a furious glare in her eyes. Goku turned back at her, he felt confused about what he saw and the full fighting intent still burning up in his wife. The realization of what she meant to do didn't hit him all at once, it came in fragments. Chi-Chi really loved this family life stuff. She struggled with it at times but she reveled in learning to cook better and teaching Gohan both martial arts and science just as much as Goku loved his training. It meant everything to her to have the family life that she always wanted to have and this man threatened all of it.
"Chi-Chi, he's already done. Let's go home, I'm starving!" he called out to her while his wife's fists trembled pressed to her thighs, she clutched at her dress, leaving nasty wrinkles in the cloth.
"He's going to come after us again when he wakes up," she cried out.
"He won't, he's in no condition to fight. He'll have to find a place to recover his strength before he can come after us again," Goku waved his hand in dismissal. "By that time we'll have gotten even stronger, we'll just stop him again,"
"And when he'll recover he'll grow stronger too, he's a Saiyan – just like you, just like Gohan-chan. Didn't you see what he tried to do, what he wanted to do before you knocked him out? He wanted you to destroy everything and leave it behind, to go off to space like Chayote!" Chi-Chi turned her ire back and focused it all on Goku.
"Come on, Chi-Chi, you know I'd never do that. That's just a sign that we can't let up on our training, that's all. We can still be a family, just like you always wanted, it's just that we aren't a normal family," Goku shrugged.
"Don't you think I know that?" Chi-Chi cried out, throwing her arms up and down in a fit, "That's all I used to want – a normal family just like everyone else's. It's just that… At some point, after being married by Kami himself, after having to fight an invasion of demons just to protect the peaceful family life, I've come to realize that we'll never have that and… I was okay with that. But now… Seeing this kind of thing happen, it's like… All the fighting is closing in on what little normalcy we've established."
"Chi-Chi…" Goku approached and hugged his wife before pulling her away and holding her arms so that he could look right down at her and she could see and hear him too. "It's been seven years since we last had to protect the Earth. Didn't you have a feeling that we'd need to do that eventually? Be it Piccolo or the Saiyans or whatever…"
Before the two could finish talking, they heard a cry of a familiar voice in the distance. Goku let go of Chi-Chi only for the woman to walk up from his side and look up into the distance and see a familiar quartet closing in. Krillin, Yamcha, and Muten Roshi landed nearby with Puar floating beside Yamcha's shoulder. The three ran up and greeted Goku and Chi-Chi.
"Goku, it's been years! Where were you, Bulma couldn't reach you! We wanted to tell you about the Saiyans but everyone's been so busy, I guess even Upa didn't tell you," Krillin rubbed the back of his head before noticing the unconscious Saiyan behind his friends. "I see you beat up your Saiyan too… He didn't make it then, he didn't turn into a Great Ape,"
"No, but there are still wild clashes all over the planet…" Goku turned to the north with a grim look. "I can sense Piccolo's power level taking some serious dips, he might be in trouble. I hate to admit it but… He's the strongest out of us all right now. We need to help him out."
"Yeah, he might be our best chance at fending these Saiyans off," Yamcha turned to the north-west where Piccolo's power level was struggling against something of similar size to his own. Another Saiyan, no doubt, and the strongest one yet.
"Chi-Chi, I hate to ask you of this but…" Muten Roshi looked up at Chi-Chi.
"Go, Goku-sa. I'll go back home and comfort Gohan-chan, make sure that no one tries to wreck our house again. Someone has to watch him and I won't be able to keep up with those guys anyway," Chi-Chi nodded and gave Goku a stern look. She didn't scold him for what he had to do, just made sure to make him swear to her without speaking anything out loud that he'd do what needed to be done. Make sure that his family was safe over everything else.
There was not a hint of gloom in Goku's face, he nodded with a goofy smirk of excitement before taking off alongside Yamcha and Krillin. The three were gone in a blink. Chi-Chi turned to the martial arts veteran and blinked a couple of times with a blank expression.
"I can't keep up either. Not the martial arts part, I'm just not the flier I used to be, I guess…" Muten Roshi sighed. "Unlike you, I can't just take my training more seriously, my old bones just ain't what they used to be…" the old man cracked his back with a few stretches before acting out like he was in pain, looking for comfort so that he could slip in a careless slap at Chi-Chi's breasts or two but the woman, whether because she saw him through, or because she was otherwise occupied, just took off to the west.
"Wait up! I want to meet this little Gohan!" Muten Roshi yelled out and raced after the worried mother.