"Ka..."

Broly lifted himself up in a daze. The world around him was twisting and turning, and while he could feel the rising temperatures of the magma geysers and smell the molten stone and dust clouds settling in the air, he had difficulty truly perceiving them, as if he was in a dream.

"Me..."

The Saiyan made a great struggle to remember what had happened in the past few minutes. No matter how hard he tried, however, his memories cut off at the distressed, desperate calls of the reptilian tyrant Frieza and the sight of his father Paragus, his limp, lifeless body hanging on the ground, a small hole through his armor at the regions of his heart.

"Ha..."

The distant cries and the flickering blue lights finally got Broly to snap to attention. He looked in front of him to see a new enemy: A tall, blue-haired man in a vest and white pants, charging a large sphere of energy in between his hands. Even with his lack of Ki perception training, Broly could still feel the being's immense power weighing down on his shoulders. Once again, in spite of his best efforts, his memory of the events leading up to this point was a blank.

"Me..."

A split-second flash of awareness shook Broly to his core as the true horror of what was about to happen finally hit him. For a brief few moments, he shook and stumbled in place as he tried to summon a Ki blast to dispel the other one or to run away. These attempts failed, each of them being thwarted by a deeply-woven, existential panic that the innocent man had not felt in decades.

"...HA!"

With a triumphant cry, the blue-haired menace fired the broad beam of energy directly at Broly. The green-haired beast could do little more than stare head-long at his ultimate fate. With every joint of his aching and every possibility exhausted, he emitted a final, infantile wail for mercy, screaming for help that would likely not come as his death sentence inched ever closer.

"Broly, wake up!"

The muscular Saiyan woke up to a start, a cold sweat dripping from his face down across his chest. The green sheets of his bed were tangled and messy, partially drooping down to the floor. At the side of the bed were his two most recent friends; the orange-skinned, middle-aged Leemo and the green-skinned, white-haired Cheelai, donning her signature purple jumpsuit.

"It sounded like you were having a pretty bad nightmare." Leemo softly said, holding onto Broly's arm. "We could hear you tossing and yelling from the other side of the hut! Thankfully, it already seems to be morning, so you shouldn't be losing too much sleep." Broly turned to look out the small bedroom's only window, and sure enough, from the outskirts of their cave, he could already see the pale, orange sky, denoting that daytime had fallen on Planet Vampa. It was his fifth day since his life had been irreversibly altered by the battle on Earth. He had spent most of the downtime since then resting from the whole ordeal while Cheelai and Leemo bonded with him and nursed him back to health. The Sensu beans Goku had gifted them had long since healed him physically, but he still needed to take a breath to recuperate from the psychological whiplash the event had induced on his primitive mind: In particular, the death of his father, Paragus.

Broly, Cheelai and Leemo all washed up before heading to the center-most room of their hut. While Cheelai prepared some fresh food and a few drinks from out of the pantry, Broly described the frighteningly vivid recollection of the final moments of his battle on Earth to Leemo. The orange alien nodded his head as Cheelai brought over breakfast. After putting down the plates, she perched her arms on the table and calmly spoke to Broly.

"Listen big guy, that stuff is in the past now. No more revenge, no more fighting against your own will. It's gonna take some time to adjust after such a sudden traumatic shift in your life, but we're here to help you out, ok?". Upon finishing her little speech, Cheelai did an OK hand symbol with her left hand. Broly responded with a little grin and a similar gesture: While the positioning of his fingers still wasn't quite correct, it was a major improvement over his previous attempt back on Frieza's ship. His nerves calmed for the moment, the Saiyan eagerly wolfed down the steaming meats and vegetables on his plate.

By the time their breakfast was over, the comrades wasted no time deliberating on what to do for the day. To their surprise, it was Broly who made the proposal.

"My old routine was pretty simple." he said. "I used to go outside with my dad to hunt for food for half of the day, and I would then spend the other half training. The food you guys brought is great, but it won't last forever."

Cheelai and Leemo thought over what he had said. They didn't have any better ideas, so they went along with it.

"So, where can we find some of those spider guys?" yelled Cheelai, her blaster holstered on her hips. Broly led the group of 3 across the stone cliffside, with Leemo in the back, holding a large gun with both hands, keeping an eye out for a potential ambush. The leader of the pack did not respond, at least not right away. However, after walking for a little longer, he held his hand up and stopped in place, his alien friends stopping as well. All of them took a moment to carefully survey their surroundings.

Before the other two could even react, Cheelai grabbed her blaster and fired several rounds into the distance, placing the weapon back into the holster as quickly as it had been unsheathed. When Broly and Leemo looked towards where the shots had been fired, they saw the corpses of 5 large spiders at the mouth of a small cave, all of them with smoking bullet holes in the center of their heads. The others did not say anything, but they could tell by the overly prideful look on the green girl's face that she was pleased with her performance.

The hours slipped by as the day wore on. Broly's crew continued to scout the rocky surface of Vampa, scavenging for more spiders and eggs. Broly eventually decided that afternoon had come and it was time to have lunch. Cheelai and Leemo did not know how he knew this; the scenery appeared no different than it did earlier that morning. However, they trusted the Saiyan's judgment. As they sat down, Leemo pulled out a capsule from one of his pockets and tossed the device on the ground. Following a puff of smoke, a barbeque grill appeared. Leemo turned on the grill while Broly haphazardly ripped off a few legs from the spiders they had hunted, placing them on top of the device. After letting them cook for a while, he carefully removed the legs and handed them to his partners.

"Maybe they'll taste better cooked." said Leemo before he bit into his leg. After only a few seconds of chewing, however, he held up his hands to cover his mouth and jumped up, his cheeks bulging. Without saying a word, he ran off. Cheelai nervously laughed before biting into her food. Unlike her friend, she was able to stomach it much better. It wasn't great, but she had eaten worse: she considered the meal on par with the typical rations she had to contend with while she was still in the Frieza Force.

About 2 minutes later, Cheelai finished her food. She turned to see if Broly was making more and if she could have some. To her surprise, however, her friend was neither cooking nor eating. He was standing up, but he wasn't doing anything, rather, he seemed to be blankly staring into the distance. Cheelai walked up behind Broly and poked him on the shoulder.

"What's wrong, Broly? Are more spiders about to attack us?"

The Saiyan did not acknowledge her at all. Cheelai continued to try to grab his attention, but even when she briefly succeeded he would go back to carefully observing the jagged hilltops and rock formations in front of him. Even when Leemo returned from relieving the contents of his upset stomach, Broly simply ignored him. Finally, after a nearly minute-long awkward silence, the two aliens began to hear Broly mumble something under his breath. While Leemo was utterly stumped as to what he had said, Cheelai perked her ears and listened in more carefully with suspicion, listening in for what she thought the man had said.

"Dad!" Broly loudly exclaimed, startling the others. He began wildly swinging his head side to side, searching for his supposed father. Cheelai wrapped her arms around his waist trying to get him to calm down, but it only seemed to make him more agitated. She was forced to let go lest she be violently swung around, but thankfully Broly seemed to relax pretty quickly upon looking around some more and not finding anything of note. Once the scene had concluded, Cheelai wasted no time questioning Broly about this sudden outburst.

"What's this about 'dad', Broly?" Cheelai asked.

"My father, Paragus. I saw him standing on top of the rocks. He was looking right at me!" after saying this, Broly pointed up to some of the rock formations. Cheelai inspected them carefully, but there was zero trace of Broly's deceased parent anywhere in sight.

"Listen Broly," Cheelai began, "your father... your father's not here anymore, my guy." Despite her soft tone, she could already see Broly gritting his teeth, his eyes very briefly flashing yellow. In a way, she could relate to Broly's mounting anger: There was nothing that infuriated her more than thinking about the cruel demogogue who once took care of the poor man. "His death wasn't your fault. Just stay calm for now. I'm sure you were just seeing things, but if you see him again, tell us right away."

"Very well," Broly responded, "but I'm still sure I saw my father."

The rest of the day was not at all exciting. While Broly didn't see any mirages of Paragus again, he did seem to have been shaken by the whole ordeal. No matter how much time passed, he seemed to be much more distracted, often stopping during walks to look around for extended periods of time. The training session they had planned was cancelled, for Broly was no longer in the state of mind to be training. By the time they returned to their cave home, the pale orange sky was already getting darker. From there, the group silently did minor errands around the house until the emerging dust storm outside denoted that it was time to eat one last meal and head off to sleep. And so they did; all except for Broly.

No matter how hard he tried, the Saiyan remained restless. Prior to Cheeli and Leemo's initial arrival, he was already used to sleeping on the ground with no walls to block out the predators of Vampa nor the violent storms that ravaged its surface at night. But even with that new luxury along with a comfortable green bed, Broly could not fall asleep despite having attempted to do so for almost an hour. His mind was still preoccupied by his earlier sighting of Paragus. He wanted to believe Cheelai's advice so badly; perhaps it was just a mirage, maybe his grief was messing with his head. But it didn't add up: He hadn't experienced mirages since he was a small child, let alone one of a person so vivid and clear.

Broly decided to try one more option. Once again going back to his youth, he remembered how after his tail was first removed, he would stare at Vampa's moon when he was having particular difficulty going to sleep. He outgrew this some time ago, but he figured that now it was worth another go. As Broly raised his body upright, however, he noticed something odd. Normally at this time of night, the moonlight would be cast directly onto the sheets of his bed. This time, however, the light was mostly gone. It wasn't that the moon wasn't there or that the light wasn't being cast: He could still see patches of brightness on the green covers. Rather, it seemed like something was blocking the moon's glow from fully shining onto his bed.

Then, Broly heard something unusual: a muffled tapping on the glass of his window. With angst and caution, he finally turned to see what was creating the noise. He was briefly startled upon seeing a humanoid figure. Despite the fact the figure was merely a silhouette against the shining moon, Broly could tell its body was facing right towards him. He would also distinguish a few basic features: In particular a mat of spiky, upright hair and the outlines of a beard, shoulder pads and a cape.

The two stared each other down for a brief few moments. It was then that Broly's gaze shifted from the indistinguishable face of the humanoid to its moving left arm. The arm itself was slowly being lifted up to the window, and as the hand became visible, it could be seen that the figure was holding some sort of rectangular object. By squnting enough, Broly could make the object out to be some kind of remote.

Broly could no longer keep his emotions under control, making no attempt to conceal his next action. With a distressed yell for his estranged parent, he jumped out of his bed, his feet furiously crashing against the floor and shaking up the entire house. He paid no heed as he recklessly ran through the rooms of the hut and through the front door, smashing into furniture as he did so.

Cheelai and Leemo were woken up by the ruckus. The green girl heard the increasingly loud cries of the simple-minded son attempted to summon his father's attention. She hastily got out of her sleeping robes and into her combat outfit with Leemo following suit. By the time they barreled out the door, however, it was too late. Broly was already at the mouth of the cave. They tried desperately to catch up with him, but the Saiyan physically surpassed them in every way. Combined with his head start, his friends could only watch as he sprinted straight into the furious, murky dust storm directly outside their refuge, chasing after the apparition as his screams became progressively more distant.

Cheelai refused to give up, however. She rushed back inside the main room of their hut and started to sift through the various shelves to see if there was anything that could help them chase after Broly. Thankfully, after only emptying half a dozen capsules, she was able to find two pairs of goggles for her and Leemo. The two strapped on the goggles and holstered their blasters, nodding to each other as they exited their home again and entered the storm to chase after their new best friend.