"Mail's here" Vegeta said sarcastically when that day's communications arrived, interrupting a rather dull meal of "mission roast". Since the planet the last known survivors of Vegeta were on was mostly cleared, the three Saiyans sat down to read what had been sent in order to alleviate the boredom they were currently suffering from more than anything. Aside from mission schedules that would tell them where they were going next, almost every other daily announcement could be safely ignored.

Raditz frowned as he read reread the General Service Announcement about a glitch in the design of the single-person space pods that he and just about every other Cold Empire mercenary traveled to and from missions in, and the steps that should be taken to prevent a catastrophic explosion upon landing. Each time he read through the message, it remained unchanged from the previous reading, indicating that he wasn't seeing things.

It was impossible. It was impossible. Yet, there it was.

Hidden amongst some random code that had something to do with the ships and bases that the message was to be sent to or something like that was his dead father's service number and the coordinates for an out of the way world. An out of the way world whose coordinates he'd recognized because it was the planet his baby brother had been sent to. His baby brother who had been too young to know either of his parents' service numbers in order to use them to acquire rations during a longer than expected absence. His baby brother who had been too young to know the tricks that got around the communications ban. Two things that were never programmed into the bottom of the 3rd class brats that were sent out on exceedingly low-priority planet clearing missions to either die or prove that they weren't a waste of resources. That his father's service number had turned up in a hidden message meant that the man he'd thought was dead for more than a decade was actually alive.

Not knowing what to do or how to respond to this shocking revelation, Raditz showed the message to Nappa. Nappa's eyebrows shot up his his forehead towards his non-existent hairline when he saw what Raditz had seen. Nappa's reaction confirmed that Raditz hadn't just been imagining things out of a wishful desire to have his father who had commanded respect despite his lowly origins here with him. This was apparently real. But, why? Why now?

"There's also a link to an audio file." Nappa said quietly as he pointed to a string of meaningless numbers in the routing information which he'd taken to be someone else's message to a friend or family member since it didn't start with the three digit code that spelled out Vegeta in the old language.

With his heart in his throat, Raditz accessed the audio file that Nappa had indicated. To anyone else it would have just been static, but to a Low Class Saiyan who had learned a variety of ways to get around the Colds' personal communications ban during his childhood...

Raditz turned to Nappa.

"If you hear that I've died..." Raditz signed with a series of discreet twitches of his tail that were meant to leave the alien who'd been foisted onto their group during this mission out of the loop as always. The alien who was sitting at a separate campfire watching them with a scowl as he sat on his pile of supplies which they'd been stealing from every time he left them unattended for more than a half second.

"Understood." Nappa replied with a twitch of his own tail.

"Where is Raditz going?" Prince Vegeta asked Nappa as he watched Raditz's pod depart leaving him with just Nappa and the alien spy Frieza had sent with them as a reminder that he was the one in control.

"To retrieve his brother's corpse." Nappa replied aloud for the benefit of certain nearby eavesdroppers as he signed "To pick up a survivor".

He barely dared to hope. Bardock had been something of a legend amongst the lower classes. Tales of his exploits had even reached the Royal Court, and it had been for this reason that Bardock's son had been admitted into the Royal Guard despite his low birth status. Nappa had been almost honored to serve alongside Bardock's son, up until he realized that the boy definitely was no Bardock, quite far from it in fact.

There had been rumors that Bardock had gone up against Frieza himself shortly before Vegeta was destroyed, and he was willing to believe them. Bardock, who had once made his way into the royal palace and told the King off to his face, had definitely had the balls required to do so.

Perhaps, if Bardock were still alive, he would be willing to face off against Frieza once more, and the monster's tyranny would be ended. Before Frieza and his father had shown up, Saiyans had possessed a modicum of honor alongside their pride. Sure, they'd been poor as churchmice in a famine following the war with the Truffles, but they'd been beholden to no-one.

As Bardock prepared a light lunch that consisted of a couple gallons of that odd red soup which he'd diluted to an appropriate consistency with some bright orange fruit juice, and sweetened to an acceptable level before adding a dash of a fiery liquid spice that the universal translator told him was "Tabasco" sauce when he'd attempted to read the label - meaning that the thing had finally had enough time to adjust to the written language -, ki roasted tan feline, and slices of the amazingly sour yellow fruit that had been properly sweetened and salted, something told him that Raditz was on his way as he had foreseen.

Smiling, he made his way to his son's room with the improvised meal which Kakarot was apparently glad to receive.

Perhaps, with an example to look up to that wasn't a stodgy old parent, Kakarot would finally learn what it meant to be a proper Saiyan, and would stop behaving like a weak animal.

Edited 6-11-15