Goku awoke to the sound of a startled squeak and the sound of something living smacking into a rock. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw were the broken remains of a rather large rat. The second thing he saw was the being that had killed the rat. The same being that had thrown him to the ground so hard that he still hurt all over seconds after he first laid eyes on him. His father.

This was the first time he had gotten a good look at the father he had waited an entire year to see. On first inspection, and second, and third, he didn't look very nice. Appearancewise, he and his father looked very much alike, same hair, similar faces, et cetera, but there was something about the man that practically screamed "Mercenary" in the same way that the worst sort of mercenaries he'd encountered did without so much as moving a muscle. The lines around his father's eyes and mouth had a certain arrogant set he'd seen before while fighting the Red Ribbon Army; usually on those who were confident in their superiority and enjoyed the chaos and the destruction they caused as well as the suffering they left in their wake. He felt his tail bristling as the man noticed that he was now awake and came closer.

Bardock watched as his own child backed away from him in fear. This was not how a Saiyan child was supposed to act. A Saiyan child was supposed to charge forward and attempt to eliminate the threat. Failing that, the child was supposed to make as graceful a retreat as possible, saving as much face as possible, and showing absolutely no weakness in the process. The boy had lived amongst these humans for far too long, and their weak habits had brushed off on him. He needed to find a way to get his son and himself off planet soon so he could get his son out of their influence and teach him how to be a proper Saiyan.

Space itself would pose many dangers though, amongst which were Frieza's men whom he would have to avoid. Then, on the other hand, there were those Dragonball things that could theoretically grant any wish which made a good argument for staying for at least another year until they recharged. As far as he knew, this was the only planet that had them. He had never encountered any in his rather extensive travels prior to his death, and never heard of anyone else encountering them either. If they could bring him back from the dead, they could bring others. It was possible that he could use them to restore the Saiyan race.

Sighing, as he realized that leaving before the Dragon Balls recharged and he would be able to assess their actual value versus their potential value would be an incredibly stupid move, he turned to deal with the cowering brat who was allegedly destined to defeat Frieza. Since he was practically trapped on the child's home ground, and would have to be so for a while longer, he would have to take a different approach to dealing with the brat who would likely run off and disappear if he followed his first instinct, which was to beat some sense and some Saiyan pride into the brat. Had he been able to just slam the child into his pod and depart for parts unknown, he would have. But, since he was practically trapped on this planet, and things would more than likely end in a time-consuming search that could take years since he couldn't destroy everything until he'd found his son, years his son couldn't afford to take off of his training, he would play by his son's rules.

For now.

Having had pets when he was younger and had the time and the patience to deal with them, he knew what to do with the creature that had none of the pride of his race. Moving slowly to show that he wasn't a threat, he eventually got close enough to his son to pick him up like one of those lizards from that one planet he'd cleared way back in...

Having gathered the small cowering creature which he was beginning to suspect - contrary to his visions - was as completely worthless as he'd classified him at birth, he departed the cave and set out to find another place to set up housekeeping. Kakarot's blue haired friend had given him something called a capsule house after a rather long and spirited lecture when she had learned that he had left him in a cave. Knowing from personal experience that a cave wasn't the best place to recover from serious injuries, or minor injuries with a long healing time for that matter, he had accepted the item that he'd been informed turned into a reasonably sized dwelling complete with kitchen and bathing facilities.

After finding a clearing in a forest that looked to contain an adequate number of animals to feed a recovering Saiyan, he set his son down at the edge of a clearing and followed the instructions the blue haired human had given him in order to cause the house to materialize, since the house capsules had to be primed first in order to prevent potentially fatal accidental activations by children. Within seconds, the clearing was filled with a medium sized dome shaped house. Once a bit of examination revealed that the house wouldn't revert back to capsule form without a several deliberate steps, some of which had to occur indoors, being performed, he was satisfied with the gift that had been given more to his son than him. Going back to the edge of the clearing, he then picked his son up and carried him inside where he set him down in one of the rooms that had been furnished for sleeping.

A self guided tour of the house revealed that it had two sleeping rooms, a room that contained a shower a sink and a basin of water that would swirl around and go down a drain when a lever was pulled down that was supplied by a tank and some sort of water collector that he would examine further later, a sitting room with a primitive entertainment center, a kitchen with a pantry stocked with canned and dried goods and a freezer stocked with frozen fruits vegetables and meat, and a covered generator for electricity. All in all the place wasn't bad. He would have to go hunting later since there was only enough food for maybe two meals, three at the most.

Back at Muten Roshi's house, Goku's friends were wrapping their heads around the fact that Goku was an alien. Until that evening, Muten Roshi had thought his former student had either been drunk or high when he had written to tell him how he had found a vicious baby with a tail near a space ship. In light of this new information, Krillin realized that he had been unable to beat Goku because his friend had simply been born on an entirely different level, and would continue to rise preventing him from defeating him in the future. Yamcha mentally raised the tally of aliens he was friends with to two as Puar had confessed to being one years earlier. Bulma was wailing over the number of opportunities to study him that she had missed however.

Lunch just smiled vapidly and made everyone a midnight snack. She had known for a long time that Goku wasn't human. There was no way in hell that a child that ate as much as Goku did could be.

Edited 6-11-15