Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ or the characters. I do own my own OCs. Yup, I need to add that into the disclaimer now, because I have a lot of OCs coming up that I'm excited to introduce and will be important :3 Yup…exciting, right?

Thank you to all who read and reviewed last chapter, including the guest reviewer. I'm glad people are still into the story. Thanks again for all of the support :)

On a side note, this is probably one of the only stories where I write a chapter and post it immediately instead of hording the chapters, because I just get excited when another chapter is ready to go. I've had to re-plan the tournament line up a bunch of times…I think I re-planned it a third time just this morning. Anyways, hope you like the chapter!

After a long bout of training with the Saiyan general, Peppan needed a water break. The two of them were breathing pretty heavily, but she was definitely feeling worse than he was. Kakarot offered her a towel which she graciously accepted. "You're not bad," the palm tree-haired Saiyan commended. "You're going to do great in the tournament."

"Thank you," Peppan replied before looking away. "Do you think it'll be enough?"

Sensing her change in mood, Kakarot grew confused. "Enough for what? I know we'll be able to stop these creeps from getting what they want."

"I wasn't talking about the tournament," Peppan sighed. "Do you think me being here training will get your brother to actually look at me? He rarely ever does even at my place of work."

Kakarot, as he had told the female Saiyan, didn't really know much about his brother and how his mind worked. For the longest time, he only saw his brothers as the one-night stand type of guys. He never imagined Raditz having any kind of seriously relationship. The fact that he broke if off because Peppan stopped purging was strange. That, and the fact that Raditz said nothing to their family except for Turles, was also concerning.

"I'm not sure," Kakarot admitted, "but just try to act natural. Just attempt to talk to him to see where he's at. I'm sure eventually he'll get over whatever it was that bothered him."

"Who are you talking about?"

Peppan grew stiff, but Kakarot was not bothered by Raditz's appearance in the gravity room. "What are you doing in here, bro?"

The older Saiyan's eyes narrowed at his younger brother before they darted over to Peppan. He scoffed in derision. "I could ask you the same thing, brother," he sneered. "I didn't think you had it in you to be unfaithful."

Kakarot's eyes widened before an amused grin appeared on his face. He couldn't help but laugh. "Funny, Raditz, but wrong. Nothing is going on here. We were simply training for the tournament. Turles took me to that bar you guys frequent and introduced me to Peppan. After he left, we discussed the tournament and training."

Hurt flashed over Raditz's features, though the general had no idea why. "You're entering the tournament?" he asked the woman softly before the anger returned to his voice. "Why? Thought you couldn't stand that life."

"Protecting the royal family by defeating competitors in a tournament where killing is not allowed is much more tolerable for me. You of all people should understand."

"Whatever," Raditz grumbled before he crossed his arms and began to walk away. He stopped momentarily at the chamber's entrance. "Better return to your wife, Kakarot. She was looking for you."

And with that, the long-haired Saiyan was gone.

Peppan felt her spirit sag. Seeing Raditz again in his own home had seemed like a good idea to start, but now she was unsure. "I'm sorry he accused you like that," she offered to the Saiyan general.

Kakarot simply waved her off. "Raditz is just being difficult," he replied. "It's nothing to worry about. Anyways, I need to go find Chi Chi. You're welcome to join me. She's always looking to have some more female friends." He started awkwardly scratching the back of his head. "I guess it's kind of hard considering our family is basically all men."

"I can understand that," Peppan teased with a semi-strained smile. "Sure, I'll go with you."

"No one is going anywhere."

Kakarot and Peppan turned to see Vegeta standing in the doorway of the gravity room, his face looking pale and stressed. "Your mate can wait, Kakarot. I need to discuss something with you alone…" His eyes cut over to Peppan. "In private."

Peppan held her hands up. "No problem, Your Majesty. I'll just…explore a little bit?" She looked over to Kakarot who nodded, his expression growing more serious than she had seen in him.

As Peppan began to leave the room, Vegeta's voice stopped her. "Who are you?" he asked.

She turned to him and quickly bowed her head. "My name is Peppan, my king. I will be participating in the tournament. General Kakarot offered to help me train. I, um, sort of know the family…"

Vegeta nodded. "My mate and his wife are out in the garden. You will find them there."

"Thank you," the woman said with a smile before leaving the other two Saiyans to talk.

"What's going on?" Kakarot asked his friend. He was growing increasingly worried by the second.

"Everything just got a whole lot worse," Vegeta started. "Now…don't tell your mate I told you first, but your father just informed both of our mates about something that's going to make this whole tournament thing even more dangerous."

"What?"

"Bulma is pregnant," Vegeta admitted. "And…your mate is as well."

Kakarot paled slightly. "How far along are they?"

"Not very. By the time the tournament happens, they will still be able to hide the fact. But…those energy reading devices…Frieza and his men will know."

"Tell them they can't wear the scouters," Kakarot demanded, growing a bit irritable and defensive. "It would be an unfair advantage."

"You're saying exactly what I was an hour ago when we were told," Vegeta stated. "I already tried to suggest that with Bulma. She is afraid that Frieza will retaliate if we take too much away from them. We're already taking their chance to kill and bring weapons away. Not to mention, if they lose, Frieza will not get what he wants and may retaliate anyway."

"Exactly," Kakarot responded. "If he is already going to retaliate, taking their ability to sense our unborn children away is the best option. They can't know."

"Agreed," Vegeta answered. "Which is why my mother is talking with our mates right now, explaining that."

"We're in deep water, aren't we…" the general mumbled, shaking his head.

"Unfortunately," Vegeta scoffed. He couldn't wait for all this tournament nonsense to be over. Hopefully, Frieza would take the hint and give up, but something about that thought already struck Vegeta as false.

Peppan left the gravity room and started to head towards the garden when Raditz appeared in front of her. "I didn't take you for a homewrecker," the man snapped bitterly.

Taken aback, Peppan just gaped at him before she regained her composure. "What are you talking about? We were only training."

"That's a load of bull," Raditz scoffed. "You're a treacherous little bitch, you know that. Even if it was just training, how could you do this to me? Coming into my home and getting to know my brother after you threw me away."

"I…I didn't…" Peppan tried to say. Raditz knew full well that he was the one who ended it. "Raditz…it had nothing to do with you. I just…those lives, the children. I couldn't live with myself anymore. Please, you have to understand."

"I understand that you're selfish and that you never gave a damn about me or our team," Raditz spat. "And I don't want anything to do with you, so if training with Kakarot was some ploy to get back into my life, end it now, because it will never happen. Go find someone else to whore yourself to. I'm done."

Raditz turned his back on the female Saiyan and walked away, not seeing the devastated, heartbroken expression on his former lover's face. Her hand gripped over her heart as she struggled to breathe. She felt, now, that the gravity room was empty and headed back to the sphere, locking herself in there. Falling to her knees, she let out an agonized scream as she prayed for the pain to stop. Of course, she couldn't be so lucky.

At dinner, everything was tense. Raditz was irritable. Kakarot and Vegeta were both worried and thinking while their mates looked to them nervously. Bardock was quiet, as were the queen and Nappa. The twins just looked between the intense adults and shrugged, wondering what was going on. Gohan sort of knew what was up.

"So," Bulma said to interrupt the heavy silence, "we have some news."

That caught Raditz's and Turles's attention as well as the children. "What news, mom?" Trunks asked warily. He wondered if it had anything to do with the tournament and the destroyers of her home world.

"Well, both Bulma and I had been feeling a little under the weather lately…"

"Under the weather?" Turles questioned.

"It's an expression that means 'sick,' Uncle Turles," Gohan explained.

"Yes, well," Bulma responded, "it turns out that both Chi Chi and I are pregnant."

The room grew very quiet, and instantly heavy once again. "You're kidding, right?" Raditz asked. Then he looked to his queen. "You always seem to have bad timing, don't you?"

"Shut up," Vegeta bit out, barely touching hiss food as he tensed.

"What does 'preg ant' mean?" Little Vegeta asked, his brows furrowing in confusion.

Vegeta's heart stopped when he heard the question. He had never talked to either of his kids about any marital activities between him and their mother. His own past haunted him, how his father had hurt his mother and basically explained the purpose of a concubine when the prince was old enough to talk. He never wanted that for his children, and now he actually had to explain to them that their mother was having a child. They inherited the woman's curiosity, and he knew the conversation would not stop there.

"Being pregnant means that a woman is going to have a baby," Gohan explained, not knowing that the king was having a conniption.

"How does a woman get a baby?" Trunks questioned.

"Are you serious?" Turles muttered before looking at the king. "Our dad gave us the talk when we were younger than this. Don't tell me you haven't even tried."

"Considering the talk I was given, this should come as no surprise to you," Vegeta grunted, looking away from Turles and back to his sons who both looked so confused.

Gohan seemed to pick up on Vegeta's hesitance and decided to do the talking for him. "Okay, boys, well…when two mates really care about each other, they have children," he said sidestepping anything about the horrors the king had witnessed. "They have these very private training sessions only for them and because of those sessions, and woman may end up pregnant with a baby."

"Really?" both boys voiced in unison, clearly surprised by the very idea that training could lead to babies as well.

"Yeah," Vegeta grumbled out. "Let's go with that."

Bulma chuckled at how red her mate became at Gohan's very prudish interpretation. She looked to her boys and smiled. "Of course, that's why parents need their special training time. You never know when a baby is going to show up."

"I still don't buy it," Little Vegeta said, "but it's as good an explanation as any. Just as long as it's mates training. I've been training with this girl and I don't want a baby."

There was a round of laughter around the table from Kakarot's family, but Vegeta and Bulma just looked at their son in a daze. "Oh man…kid, you really don't have to worry about that for a long time," Turles guffawed.

"You're training with a girl?" both Vegeta and Bulma asked at the same time.

Little Vegeta shrugged. "Yeah, Tomala. She's pretty good. Only kid out there that challenges me. She can be really annoying, though."

A small smirk made its way to Vegeta's face as his eyes met Bulma's. He could already feel how amused his mate was, as was he. Neither of them had expected their son to show interest in anyone this early, but it already seemed like the boy had interest in this girl. "You should invite her to train sometime," the king offered.

His son seemed to linger on the idea before he nodded. "Yeah, that's a good idea. Training with the kids isn't going to help her much. We both outclass them."

"Wow…he sounds so much like you when we used to train with other kids at that age," Kakarot remarked humorously. Then, he noticed something that he should have noticed earlier. Of course, earlier he had been tense with the news about his wife being pregnant. "Hey, where's Peppan?"

"Who?" Bulma asked, having not met Peppan earlier like Kakarot had expected.

"Feh," Raditz spat before he shoved some food in his mouth. "She's probably gone doing exactly what I told her to do."

"What did you tell her to do?" Kakarot questioned anxiously.

"Told her I was done and that she could go wh…throw herself at some other interested party."

Vegeta glared over to Raditz, though he was thankful he managed to cover up his accidental slipup. He saw Kakarot glaring at his brother as well. "Did you ever think that maybe your words would hurt her?"

"Why do you care?" Raditz growled. "Don't bud into my life, Kakarot. I'm not in the mood."

Kakarot shook his head and tried to sense Peppan to see if she was still in the palace. She was, though her energy was intensely erratic, and she was in the gravity room all alone. "Shit, I'll be right back," Kakarot said hurriedly as he nearly flew out of the room.

"What in the world was that about?" Bulma asked. She saw Chi Chi glaring at the seemingly indifferent Raditz and realized that whatever it was wasn't good.

"You should go with them," Vegeta announced, eyeing Raditz as well. "The woman is in the gravity room."

"What?" Raditz asked, sounding a little surprised. "What would she be doing there?"

Vegeta didn't answer the question, but he could already feel that something was off with the woman he had met earlier. Eventually, he said, "Your words affected her more than you realize."

With that, Vegeta stood up and moved to lead his family back to their quarters for the night. Tarble stood up with them, having been silent the entire dinner yet wanting to talk to his brother and Bulma about what was going on in the lab while they had been preparing for the tournament. Everyone else looked to Raditz who finally decided to get to his brother and Peppan.

Kakarot found Peppan crumpled on the floor curled into a ball as she sobbed silently. He was thankful that her energy hadn't been erratic because she tried to put the gravity up too high like Vegeta had done when he attempted to distance himself from Bulma all those years ago. Still, the fact that her energy was fluctuating so badly was cause for concern. "Hey, Peppan," he called out softly. The woman didn't respond. "Peppan, listen, it's me, Kakarot."

"I know," she whimpered, refusing to open her eyes. "Please, just leave me alone. I just need to be left alone. This pain has to stop."

She sounded like she was out of it, slightly delirious and past her breaking point. "What pain, Peppan?" Kakarot asked. "Did you hurt yourself in here? Did you try to turn the gravity on?"

"No," she replied in a whisper. "Please, I can't talk about it here. He'll come back and say those horrible things again."

"Who?"

"Kakarot, I can't do this anymore, the coming here, the training, none of it. I just can't do it."

"Look, if you're worried about the tournament, you're very strong, Peppan," Kakarot assured her. "I doubt you'll get hurt."

"I don't care if I do get hurt in the tournament," Peppan answered, still hiding within herself. "I'm not talking about the tournament, Kakarot. I can't be around your brother. It hurts. I feel like someone is stabbing me repeatedly in my heart. I can hardly breathe. Just leave me alone in here. I can't go out there and face him. It's too much."

"Peppan, what did Raditz say to you?" the kindhearted Saiyan questioned. He was growing worried for the young woman in front of him. She was not talking rationally, yet everything she was saying made sense. Kakarot had his suspicions, but he couldn't be sure until she said that she didn't care if she would get hurt and that the pain would stop. He didn't realize why neither Peppan nor Raditz had seen or felt this before. It was clear to him as day. Peppan was acting as though she had been rejected by her mate.

The two of them must have bonded and mated a long time ago, and Peppan was now feeling the effects of the rejection since Raditz had berated her earlier that day, crushing whatever hope she had left.

"Please, just go. I want to be left alone. I'll leave soon, I promise. I won't come back here. Just tell Raditz that he'll never have to see me again."

Kakarot didn't know what to do. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do for Peppan. Only his brother could assure her that he didn't hate her. Maybe when Peppan left, Raditz fell rejected, too. All of this could have been some sort of revenge to make Peppan hurt as he was hurting, damaging their bond further. This time, though, Raditz had pushed a little too hard. Now, he'd have to fix this.

As Kakarot exited the room, gaze sternly focused on the door, Raditz showed up. "Is she all right?"

Kakarot couldn't help but scoff, nor could he help the retort that came out of his mouth. "Why do you care?" he jeered mimicking Raditz's words from earlier.

The words made the older Saiyan cringe, but they did not deter him. "Answer the damn question."

"No, she isn't." When he saw concern flicker in Raditz's eyes, he shook his head. "She's a wreck right now. She can't handle the fact that she was rejected by her mate."

"What?" Raditz roared. "What are you on about? Peppan and I aren't mates!"

"You're an idiot," his brother grunted. "If you want to deny it, fine, but think about it for a minute. Did you feel pain when Peppan left the team, right here?" He placed his hand over his chest. "Did it hurt to breathe?"

Raditz's silence was all the answer Kakarot needed. "The two of you bonded, and you've been pushing her away. You assumed that she wanted nothing to do with you after she left, but you're wrong. Come on, Raditz, we all purged. It was hell. I could barely handle it, and I can already tell she has a softer heart than I do. Didn't you see her falling to pieces? Didn't you feel her? The only reason she's been training here the past week was in hopes of seeing you and attempting to fight for you, and the first thing you do is insult her and tell her you were done with her."

The older Saiyan looked away, not wanting to answer his brother and prove him right. "It's none of your business, Kakarot."

"When someone I've been training for the tournament and is mater to my brother doesn't care what happens to her at the tournament, it becomes my business."

His brother looked shocked. "She didn't really say that, did she?"

The only response Raditz got from his brother was a shrug before the younger Saiyan walked away. Kakarot did stop, though, to say one last thing. "Just remember, it's never too late to change."

Raditz watched his brother's retreating form until he was out of view completely before he turned his attention to the gravity chamber. He could feel Peppan's energy fluctuating erratically and grimaced, feeling immense guilt. His brother was right, as much as he hated to admit it. He didn't remember taking Peppan as a mate or her mating with him, but that was most likely due to the fact that they were usually drunk when they were together. The signs were clearly there.

He could feel her presence in his mind now that he was lingering on that thought. She felt miserable, and he knew he caused that. It felt like a heavy weight was placed on his chest. He knew he needed to make all this up to her.

Cautiously, Raditz knocked on the door to the training chamber. There was no answer, but Peppan's energy halted. She probably knew it was him, yet she did not come to the door.

He had already hurt her enough for the day, so he wasn't about to barge in on her. Though his pride hated that he was letting her control the next move, he waited patiently.

It felt like hours had passed, in the span of ten minutes, before Peppan finally came to the door. She was clinging to the metal, staring up at him with hurt and fear, her eyes red and puffy and her tail wrapped tightly around her waist. It had been a long time since Raditz had seen her this vulnerable. Last time, though, the king could be blamed. This time, Raditz was fully responsible. His brother's final words rung in his head, but he could not speak.

"What do you want?" Peppan's quiet voice spoke. Raditz felt a bitter swirling in his chest. This was not the woman he remembered.

"Can we talk?" Raditz tried. He left all of the bitterness he had directed towards her earlier out of his voice. "It's important."

Instantly, Peppan's demeanor changed, most likely in attempts to save her pride. "Oh, so now you want to talk?" she snapped. "Sorry, but I'm leaving. A treacherous bitch like me had no place here. You made that pretty clear earlier. Maybe I should take your advice and do what you've been doing this past decade."

"Peppan, listen," he attempted to reason with her.

"No," the female Saiyan replied harshly. "You want nothing to do with me. Well, that's fine, because I'm done here, too. Don't worry; I won't ever bother you again."

In his shock, Peppan was able to push past him and flee the palace. Raditz remained in the same spot for a while, hand moving slowly over his heart. He could feel Peppan's pain and anguish, and it didn't help that she was now trying to push him away to make his rejected of her easier on her. Once again, his brother's words echoed, but Kakarot had been wrong.

It really was too late, and Raditz only had himself to blame.

A/N: So, everyone here is probably thinking, "hey, where's the BXV?" Well, I wanted to get this stuff out of the way. I have some family moments planned for the next chapter. That will hopefully make up for the lack of BXV. After all, we have to remember, they're in the middle of planning a tournament while running a planet. Doesn't leave much time for interaction…heh…