Bardock sat in the cave he had found and finished splinting all of his son's breaks with the flimsy Earth materials he had gathered from the medical center when he had taken his son out of the hands of that incompetent, and now dead doctor. The boy had awoken shortly after they'd landed in this cave which had been selected for its defensibility and quietly submitted as he ministered to him. The only noises the child had made as he tended to his injuries and set his breaks with the medical skills he'd been forced to gain over his career was the occasional hiss of pain that escaped through clenched teeth. He felt a small amount of pride in the fact that after his son had become fully conscious, he didn't shame himself by screaming while he tended to his wounds.
The boy is rather weak. I barely even threw him and he broke at least seven bones. How is he going to become the man I saw defeat Frieza in my visions of the future? he thought as he watched his slumbering son who had mercifully fallen asleep after his arms had been splinted and his ribs tightly bound.
While the thought of purging another planet after what Frieza had done to Vegeta sickened him, he didn't know any other way to train a Saiyan as weak as his son without the use of a regen tank. This planet was supposed to have been purged already anyway, and the fact remained that the boy hadn't done his job. If someone came to check up on Kakarot and discovered his lack of progress, he would be severely punished if not killed outright, and he didn't want his son to be killed by Frieza's minions before he was ready.
No, he thought when he realized that he was reaching for rationalizations and grasping at straws. You saw in the visions that nobody would come until after he was grown. What's bothering you about this is that he's been living off these humans as some kind of pet. You saw how they coddled him, and how the female stroked his hair as they put him in the vehicle. This has nothing to do with his assignment for Frieza, you want to make him destroy them so he can regain his Saiyan pride.
But, his mind continued. You saw how his strangeness made him stronger in those visions...
As he sat watching his son, wondering what kind of life the boy had led in the thirteen plus years since he died and whether his son's destiny was because of or in spite of his most unusual upbringing, he suddenly remembered the comment the incompetent doctor in that poorly equipped hospital had made about "Special Patients". Perhaps these creatures did have regen tanks somewhere despite their complete absence from the medical center and withheld such treatment for his son for an unknown reason that had to do with the fact that he'd been marked him down as "special". He would have to go and talk to the people that had kept his son to find out. If there was a regen tank anywhere on this planet, it would simplify things and keep him coming to a decision that would send him back to Hell before the week was out.
Not clearing any planets was the only condition of his return after all. If he got Kakarot to do it, and he participated, it might be considered him doing it according to that legalistic bullshit that so many societies adored, and he'd be back in Hell long before he could help his son defeat Frieza.
He would have to look into the regen tank problem before he made the decision to walk that fine line anyways.
Knowing that it would be okay to leave the boy alone for a few hours since the cave he had selected was too high up a mountainside for almost all kinds of land predators to reach and the opening too narrow for any large flying predators, Bardock set out for the island where the people who had kept his son lived in order to get answers so he could make something of a plan.
At a distance away that was fast closing, Muten Roshi the Turtle Hermit sat watching the night sky, worried about his student. Hours earlier, he had learned that the doctor who had been treating Goku's injuries had been killed by the boy's newly returned father and that Goku had been taken. The poor boy who had been without his family for so long had made a desperate wish, and the results had been dangerous and highly unexpected. The child had been hoping for someone who was like Gohan when he had made that wish, and he had gotten a monster instead.
Come to think of it, he should have expected this from Gohan's earliest letters about the boy...
Suddenly, a streak appeared over the horizon breaking him away from the dark regions his mind was heading towards. Soon, it was apparent that said streak was a person who was rapidly flying towards him.
Great, Tsuru Senin is the last thing I wanted to deal with today on top of everything else. He thought the second he realized that what had disrupted his musings wasn't an aircraft.
The streak came closer and proved itself to be the only person other than the master of the Crane School and his students that the Turtle Hermit had seen fly, Goku's father. Almost the instant he realized exactly who was approaching, the man landed in front of him.
"What do you want?" he asked as he took a defensive stance, knowing it was futile as he did so since the gulf in power between them was so great.
"I wish to talk to you and your companions about my son." the man said, giving him a cold, condescending look.
"Come inside then." the Turtle Hermit said, before turning to enter his house, silently praying to every deity that he, his students, Lunch, and Bulma who had stayed out of worry for her friend would survive the "conversation". It was not like he could refuse the man.
When he seated himself at the table in the house that he'd followed the elderly creature with the shell on his back into, Bardock looked down at the few mouthfuls of food that had been set before him. He had rather coincidentally arrived in time for the humans' evening meal, and his host had decided to invite him to the table. Looking around, he noticed that the same amount of food was on everyone else's plates. How was his son so healthy if this was all he got to eat at each meal?
Looking at the angry faces of the others at the table, and the way they kept looking back and forth between him and the plate, he realized that they understood Saiyan eating habits and that this had been a deliberate slight.
"If I may ask, how did my son become your pet?" he said, looking at the most senior member of the group, getting straight to what had been gnawing at him the most. The man's answer would determine whether the man died quickly or slowly. While he couldn't clear the planet, he could still clear certain individuals, such as this lot his son had so shamefully grown dependent on. The only reason they weren't already dead was because he needed answers that only they could give him at the moment.
"Pet?!" the bald, bearded, shelled creature yelled in surprise after he quit choking on his drink. "Goku's not a pet, he's my student!"
"Student?" he asked, wondering if there was anything of any sort of value that the bald creature could teach his son. Learning that his son hadn't stooped so lo as to become a pet was a relief. Apparently, the boy indeed possessed a modicum of pride.
"Yes, he came to me almost two years ago seeking training in the Martial Arts." the elderly creature who claimed his son as a student said, studying his reaction in a way he was familiar with since it was one of the first things a Saiyan learned to do. Those who didn't learn to step off of dangerous ground didn't live long.
"In fact, the man who had found and adopted him was a former student of mine as well." the old creature continued.
"If I may ask, where have you been for the last thirteen years?" The elderly creature asked, trying and failing to keep an accusing look off of his face.
"Dead." he replied.
"Oh. That explains alot..." the elderly creature said. The looks everyone else around the table gave him seemed to state that he had clearly deserved it. He had, but he wasn't about to admit it.
Deciding to get his next question out of the way and leave, he turned to the blue haired female that had transported his son to the medical center where that incompetent doctor had worked. She had displayed the fact that she had access to some technology he hadn't seen before, so technological questions would be better directed to her rather than the owner of this primitive shack with it's elderly refrigeration unit that sounded like it was on its last legs.
"Why wasn't my son put into a regen tank?" he asked directly, watching her reaction carefully in order to gain clues to whatever answers she wouldn't want to tell him. Her microexpressions would tell him where best to direct an actual interrogation.
"What's a regen tank?" the female, who was either in late adolescence or early adulthood asked with complete honesty.
That answered one question, but left others. Apparently the appellation "Special Patient" meant something else. Something he would have to figure out soon.
Following the question he got in response to his question, he spent several minutes explaining what a regen tank was to the blue-haired female after taking the two seconds necessary for the consumption of the food that had been set before him. He expected that his explanation would take only the few seconds it would take to explain the general purpose of a regen tank, but the female had asked several highly intelligent questions about the technical aspects of the device.
He almost regretted asking what his son had been doing while he was dead after he'd finished his discussion on regen tanks with the blue-haired girl who was beginning to sketch outlines for a device when he had been stuck sitting there for hours - half starved - listening to everyone tell him about how his son who was quite obviously brain damaged lived alone in the mountains for years, went on three quests to gather some magic wishing balls and participated in a Martial Arts tournament. Apparently, from the way these people spoke, his son's actions were something they believed he should be proud of rather than a reason to bury his face in his hands and pray that the guys back in Hell never learned about this.
He gathered a couple of things from their story, 1) he would have to find a way to get off-planet with the boy and find a competent doctor as soon as possible to fix the brain damage, and 2) when he gave the boy "The Talk" (which he had left to his mate to give to Raditz, and would have had her give to Kakarot if she hadn't died), he was really really going to have his work cut out for him.
When he got back to the cave where he had left his son, the boy was sleeping peacefully despite the fact that some sort of small scaly-tailed mammal was chewing on his ear.
Edited 5/22/2015