When I awoke the next morning, I was greeted with a pulsing from my scar.

I sat up, tugging the blankets away and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. Then, taking extra care, I stretched while paying special mind to rolling my right shoulder around to loosen the area. Occasionally, a dull ache from my scar would return, despite that it'd been two years of time since the injury and it was completely healed – not to mention by a senzu bean. For that reason it puzzled me a little, but the pain was infrequent enough to ignore so I never bothered to give it a lot of thought, assuming it had something to do with the nerve ends.

For any warrior, a scar was a testament of strength. It let you remember what you were capable of surviving – physical proof of your triumphs in battle. In Goten's opinion, it meant you were badass and probably had a good story to tell.

By the time I was dressed and cleaned up a bit, the others were already in various stages of breakfast. I joined them, eating my fill until I settled with coffee to finish, grateful that we'd brought it along even in powdered format. Once everyone had completed their main course, we remained grouped together in a circle on the floor of the lounge. We still hadn't agreed on our next move, the circumstances weighing on each of us.

"So," Gohan said, finally initiating real conversation. He'd foregone his glasses today, opting to suffer looking at us through his practically nonexistent close-range focus. (I shuddered to think if my own condition ever progressed so terribly. How did he fight normally like that?) "As much as I hate to put even more pressure on anyone, we really do have to make a decision about what we're doing next. Simple things first – eventually we're going to run out of food."

"Pray tell, how are we going to get new supplies?" Goten added. "Plan A is clearly not an option anymore."

Our original intentions had been to restock at home. We didn't have enough packed for much more than a one way trip to Planet Vegeta, and Saiyans suffered the effects of not eating much faster than humans did. And whether we said it aloud or not, the four – now five – of us would eventually begin to feel cramped after so long aboard our ship. We simply didn't have the space or safety measures in place to do any intense training, either.

"I guess that means we need to buy some from somewhere. The only one of us who would've been handy to Standard Credits was Trunks, but even if there's off-world accounts or whatever for the royal family's money, I doubt they're accessible anymore," my friend continued.

"A valid point," I said. I'd never had to be concerned with wealth before, not when my mother's family was one of the richest on Earth and my father was a king. There was the possibility of my uncle knowing some way to access what credits we needed. But considering his exile years ago by his own father, it wasn't a certain alternative. However, Vegeta had allowed Tarble to return, so perhaps it wasn't too long of a shot.

"That's not all," Gohan spoke up again. "Naturally, the closer we get to the heart of the empire, the closer together everything will be. When Vegeta arrived on Earth for the first time, due to his prior location it took him over a year to get there in an attack pod. Bulma designed our ship to move quickly, but even so, it could still potentially take months for us to be anywhere near the PTO capital, if that's where we're headed. And we have no choice but to make stops to resupply anyway. We could try to work out how to use Dad's Instant Transmission, but..."

"If I don't recognize the ki, there's no telling where we could end up. It's also a lot harder to focus on it individually," Goku said.

I breathed out slowly, running a hand through my hair. Even if we landed on some nearby planet, what was to say the locals wouldn't attack us or refuse to cooperate because we were Saiyans? Any species with a good sense of smell would know for certain what Goku was, or even the rest of us. Using force was a route we could take, but not one we'd agreed on unless necessary. And though our ship didn't use fuel, it did need to be recharged at some point, and it couldn't be running while it did so.

Abruptly, Goten stood up.

"One second," he requested, walking out of the room. The four of us left waited in quiet bewilderment until he returned a minute or two later, with a small bag in his hand.

After returning to his seat, he began rifling through the satchel and emptying its contents onto the table. It took me a moment to place what the bright plastic objects were.

"Is that... candy?" his brother asked. "Why do you have all that?"

"We need something to lighten us up, and besides, when am I ever not hungry enough to pack extra snacks? And you know I'm always a slut for chocolate," Goten joked.

"Just chocolate?" I muttered, recalling how flirty he'd been on Earth whenever some girl said so much as a single word to him.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my best friend," was the sighed response I got before he gently threw one of the packages at my forehead. "You get the dark chocolate for that little comment."

I grinned faintly; it was fun to tease him in return for how often he did it to me. And he already knew the cocoa he'd tossed at me was one of the only kinds I'd eat. (The rest I found either too sweet or didn't like the texture of.)

"You like these ones, right Gohan?" Goten said, sorting out the confections.

"This is really nice of you, Goten," Goku piped up. "You even remembered all our favourite flavours!"

"Yeah, it's really no biggie, but – um..." The half-blood trailed off when his father tugged him into a hug. "All I did was bring chocolate."

Despite his insistence that it didn't matter, Goten was clearly happy to be receiving attention from his dad. Every time he did, he'd light up a little bit. Still, Goten was a pretty selfless person overall, so he deserved the things that could make him happy.

Back home – when it had still been there – Goten would come for a few months and then be gone away for several longer. After being on Earth, I'd always felt his energy in my peripheral senses, and seeing him had just been a matter of flying to his house or he to mine. And as I'd been new to the planet, he'd been determined to show me everything. I remembered how Goten had made a point of coming over with all sorts of food to get me to try. Or he'd bring films, or invite me to places in the city or the countryside and introduce me more fully to Earth's culture. Some things I'd already had an idea about, others were completely new to me.

During our time training, he'd fallen asleep from exhaustion leaning on my shoulder more than once, determined for his strength not to be left behind ours. And of course, now he needed it – I'd wound up dragging him into my family's problems again. He'd already died for it once before.

While I'd been lost in thought, the conversation had picked up again without me. I chose to listen to the different opinions bouncing around as I took a bite of my chocolate, savouring the rich flavour.

"I mean, you could pass for someone who isn't a Saiyan. No offence," Goku said to me. I blinked at him, trying to understand his statement without context.

"What?" I said.

"When we need to resupply. If we likely have to interact with people who hate the Saiyans right now, you'd be able to lie low thanks to Bulma's genes. And another benefit of being a hybrid– your scent isn't as certain of a give-away. Unless they already know what the Prince of Saiyans looks like, you could get by incognito. Even Goten and I are too risky due to our appearance," Gohan elaborated.

"Heh. Work those blue eyes and Briefs charm, and we'll get the shit we need for free," Goten chortled.

I cast him a weak glare for poking fun at me before adding my thoughts. "There's still the question of what to do even if we're able to restock without hassle. The ship will need to be recharged soon as well. But what are we going to do after?"

"You mean the survivors," Goku said. "Well, if Vegeta's alive, then there's bound to be at least some Saiyans with him. And him being the king and all, unless he's hiding from everyone else too there will be word going around."

If Vegeta's alive. He'd stated it so casually, like the underlying inverse was the more probable scenario. Wasn't it, though? Even if my father hadn't been on the planet when it was blown up, with this supposed war going on and no contact from him in months, it became increasingly unlikely he was still alive, or at least not severely incapacitated. Frieza would have no doubt tried or succeeded in killing him.

We did have the Dragon Balls, but we'd need them to bring back the planet – no, just the people who'd died on it. That meant by the time they were ready to be used, I'd have to choose between reviving my father or reviving the extinguished Saiyans. But if it really came down to that and the second option was chosen, all those people would still have nowhere to go. And because of the time limit, my father would never be able to come back. Never.

Not only would my mother be heartbroken, what Saiyans had survived would be leaderless. Except their half-caste prince, who was starting to feel like the thing he'd been raised to do was bearing down on him too fast.

"What about Frieza?" Goten said suddenly.

"What do you mean?" I echoed.

"The rest of us don't actually know much about him," he replied hesitantly. "I mean, I'm sure if we'd known he was this big an issue, Dad probably would've been more insistent about handling it years ago."

"Vegeta told me some things, and I've gotten a little more from, y'know, reading his mind when I thought I needed to. And then he and Bulma and me had a talk when you got back from that trip you did, Trunks. But Frieza was never around, really. I learned later that he threatened Vegeta, but I wasn't there at the time and he never came near the planet anyway. Not once in all these years. I'd have loved to see how strong he was – is – but I wouldn't know the first thing about finding him since I can't recognize his energy. Space is big," Goku said.

I didn't know why Frieza had left the Saiyans alone for so many years. Trying to dredge up the memory of my conversation with him, despite it being fogged a little, some things still stuck with me – Father and Frieza hadn't spoken in person since around the time I was born. Frieza hadn't known what I'd looked like. He'd also mentioned having a father of his own, in the present tense. And at least one sibling, whom I'd heard rumours of before. The PTO commander wasn't alone.

"I think... maybe it wasn't just Frieza my father was worried about," I said thoughtfully. "Even if he'd managed to kill him... I think Frieza has family elsewhere in the galaxy. Could be they're as strong as he is and Vegeta wouldn't be able to handle all of them. Think about it – whether to fill the power vacuum left if Frieza died or to seek revenge, that's at least two other people with their own empires coming after you."

"If a Super Saiyan isn't enough to defeat him, what if it's not enough to defeat his family members? We can't know for sure yet, but if that's true, it means... you're the only one who might have the power to win against them," Gohan said to me.

"Three against one isn't great odds," Goten added, "but still, we're basing our theories on a whole lot of maybes. We've gotten stronger over the years too. Even if Trunks somehow isn't strong enough alone, the four of us against one Frieza makes him no match. We can take them down one at a time. And we have Dragon Balls."

Gohan put a hand to his chin in thought before replying. "Yes – and that's not all. I think I know where we could get more."

We all turned to stare at him.

"You see, Shenron is limited by the fact that you get a max of a single wish per year. If more than one of us were to die in separate events, we wouldn't all be able to return due to these constraints. But ever since I found out that Piccolo wasn't a demon but a Namekian, I was curious and began doing research over the years, both from delving into Planet Vegeta's archives and from what Kami could tell me. There's an old myth among spacefarers that tells of certain Namekians being able to grant wishes – they've all kept themselves concealed after some natural disaster befell them a long time ago. As they were thought extinct, their planet's location isn't common knowledge anymore. But besides that, the myth is referring to Dragon Balls, as I realized from piecing everything together," he explained.

"So... we need to find the Namekian planet?" Goku said.

"Planet Namek, yes. Besides what I've read, I really have only Piccolo and Kami to go off of for how Namekians behave, but – well, I guess that's a special situation. Whatever the case, I'm sure we can convince the Namekians to allow us access to their Dragon Balls," Gohan finished.

"How are we going to find them in the first place?" I asked.

"Well," Gohan mused, "that's the thing. Years ago, when your mom was building her first spaceship, she was given the one Kami had arrived in from Namek. From what I remember, that meant it had already been sitting for a couple hundred years so she could only use some of its parts as a basis. It would've had Namek's location, but since Bulma disassembled it, the only ones to have the coordinates would be the PTO."

"Maybe. But let's say we do find Namek – shouldn't we wait until we at least find Vegeta before making a wish? Even when our Dragon Balls are working again, that will still only be two wishes and they need to count. If anything worse happens in the meantime, we ought to save it," Goten said.

"Earth's Dragon Balls still won't be regenerated for several months. As of now, no wishes are possible. While we could save using the Namekian Dragon Balls, it wouldn't hurt us to locate them beforehand. Although, that means we'd have to be careful about keeping their importance a secret. One wish is enough in the wrong hands – we really don't need any more sociopaths with access to immortality."

"Are you talking about King Piccolo or Vegeta? 'Cause neither of them actually got immortality," Goku wondered aloud, "and Vegeta's not as bad anymore."

"What do you mean 'not as bad'?" I blurted. And who the hell was King Piccolo, as opposed to the regular one? It sounded dimly familiar; something from stories Mom used to tell. But I was more concerned about my father's history than old bedtime narratives.

"Well, when we first met he tried to kill me, and obviously that didn't work, so then he tried to kill me again and that didn't work, except by the time he couldn't try anymore we realized his spaceship was broken. We sorta tricked him into thinking we 'used up' the Dragon Balls to bring me back to life, but that still left the problem of him being stuck on Earth, so..." he trailed off.

I'd never heard this story in full, only bits and pieces. Even the current short recount was more detailed than the version I'd been given. "Then what?"

"Uh, then Bulma had to build him a spaceship. It's complicated."

"She built him a spaceship... after he tried to kill you," I attempted to clarify. "Several times."

"Yeah. We couldn't just keep him on Earth, and we kinda... worked out an agreement that if we built him a ship, he'd leave Earth be. 'Course, Bulma was the only person aside from her dad who could try to make such a thing, so she started to, but Vegeta got impatient to leave before the ship was perfected. So he wanted to take Bulma in case any technical things went wrong 'cause she was the engineer. Bulma said no, I said I'd go with her for protection, we all argued a lot and then we all went. Then Gohan snuck on board because he didn't want to leave me. We were all a little bit crazy."

"We're still all crazy," Gohan chuckled.

Goku nodded, grinning. "Heh. After we left, we were gonna just drop Vegeta off on his planet, but yeah, things got interrupted when we crashed way before reaching it. It was a bad plan and just got worse from there, but then two bounty hunters started going after us. Our group kept getting separated – oh, it's a really long story. But right after Bulma got back to Earth, she figured out she was pregnant, and that was that."

"I... I'm starting to think you guys are a little more than just crazy," I said after a pause. I knew that both my parents could be reckless, yet I was really beginning to doubt the 'unflappable genius' image Mom put forth. Her younger days made her sound more like a full-blown mad scientist. One with a questionable preference for unstable alien royalty at that.

"Pfft. With these people as our parents, we didn't stand a chance," Goten said, shifting in place as he tried not to laugh at the expression I was making.

"Well, everyone thought it was crazy that Bulma went back to Vegeta after you were born," Gohan said to me. "We all thought it was a lost cause, yet... When one of the bounty hunters came back for revenge, she took you as a hostage. Unfortunately, it caused your guardian soldier to die trying to protect you, but Vegeta managed to follow the hunter and save your life."

"... I don't think I've heard that story," I said, "and I have no memory of anything like that happening."

"You were still quite young. Of course, that was also around the same time Frieza realized you existed. I think Vegeta believed that with his people behind him, he could finally escape Frieza's grip – or at least establish himself as an equal. I wasn't there, so I can't give details, but... it's obvious that Vegeta failed... and was forced to make certain promises as a consequence," Gohan said.

It was obvious which promise he was referring to, the one I hadn't known about until Frieza practically had to spell it out to make Vegeta reveal it.

I shook my head almost imperceptibly. I'd come all this way for my mother's sake, and my sister's. If I started doing this for me, my own frustrations would get us nowhere.

I felt the weight of Mom's communicator in my pocket, knowing she was expecting me to call at some point. Naturally, I was putting it off – thanks to the lie I'd concocted, and hadn't told anyone about but Gohan, she would discover the truth if she asked to speak to Goten or his dad. And if his dad got suspicious about anything, he could simply read my thoughts without my knowledge and tell Mom the truth anyway.

However, right now, I chose to set that aside for longer yet. There was someone else I was desperate to talk to, but the last thing he'd said of consequence was that he wanted to set things right. Set things right by leaving me behind, when it's obvious now that he would've needed my strength more than ever.

I didn't know if there was some sort of distance limit for how telepathy worked. Every so often I'd set a few minutes aside where I could concentrate, though the only thing I'd gotten in return was the feeling I was talking to myself. Even if it wasn't working, it was almost like meditation in the way it could relax me.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I stared out at the view into space. It was mostly darkness, with little pinpoints of light, like holes poked into a black fabric. Because of the great distance, it was probable that some of the stars I saw weren't there anymore; only their beams of energy left casting through space until they hit the edge of the universe. If there was such a thing.

Collectively, our group had decided to make for the nearest trade port or station of size. A crowd meant we'd be less conspicuous, even if we assumed my appearance would go unnoticed by those seeking Saiyans. We'd also get more substantial information, as if groups of Saiyans were banding together there would certainly be PTO armies looking for them. The idea was that I could pass as an ordinary soldier to infiltrate, and be led right where I needed to go. Goku's Instant Transmission and the size of my energy meant he'd be able to locate me, as long as we weren't on opposite sides of a ki shield.

Our only current flaw in the plan was the credits we'd need, but for that, I was going to talk to Tarble. If there was nothing he could do, we'd have to steal the supplies, which would make things a bit trickier. I was confident now, though, that my uncle would have credits for us to borrow.

I wiped my mind of clutter, allowing myself to relax.

I don't think you can hear me, I sent out.

Naturally, there was no response.

Maybe you're just too far away. Maybe you really don't know this technique. Or maybe you just don't want to talk to me.

The stars stared back, sombre.

Are you even still alive? If you are, we're coming to drag you back. But you've left a fucking mess this time. I might even have to kill Frieza for you.

I closed my eyes.

Maybe I am better off without you.