The power level had disappeared as quickly as it appeared, but Nappa refused to give up the chase. Somebody on this ravaged planet was stronger than him, hiding somewhere in this wet wasteland of clay and rivers, and they wouldn't escape him.
His blood was pumping not even from the fight, but from what it didn't provide him. Raditz had always been a disappointment, but Broly? When they first brought him onto the ship after rescuing him and his father from that dung heap planet, the child threw such a fit from his weird green pelt getting tossed in the incinerator that he thought he was going to bring the whole ship down. Broly's fit of rage was short lived, he was electrocuted until he passed out, and nowadays everyone was lucky to get five words or an emotion other than curiosity out of him.
He remembered that back when he was growing up, before King Cold and his family came to planet Vegeta, every warrior knew how to get strong, because every city had a Prekkuu. At the end of the month the warriors of each city would gather around for competition, to prove who was the strongest, to end old feuds and start new ones, or just to kill some time and get some nice scars with a story to them.
Just as his father and grandmother before him, Nappa was the strongest of the middle class warriors. He'd beaten out hundreds of other warriors from all across the planet, vowing to never make the same mistakes that his parents and grandparents had made. They wouldn't be stuck as middle class anymore, they could be elites, they could live in seats of luxury, and so would his children and their grandchildren, and maybe someday if they were truly blessed by Ferti one of his descendants could marry into the royal family.
To become a saiyan elite, to become nobility, what higher want could somebody have in life? He'd always had a bloodlust for battle and it was always what made him the happiest, but the choices that came with being a noble were limitless, the only thing that offered remotely that much freedom was being a low class.
And Nappa and his family would never be low class. No matter what, he would fight to keep them out of low-class status even if it cost him his life. Even if his older brother wanted to be a banker, and his baby brother wanted to be a statistician, and his father lost both his arms so he couldn't fight anymore, and his grandmother tried to fill her son's role and lost her life. No, he supported his family, he kept them middle class, he kept them in good standing.
And now they were all dead.
So he watched over low class weaklings, the children of a man who threw the Prekkuu Grand Championship to him. The reason why he never was able to figure out, but that Bardock was always a raving lunatic to begin with. It was probably just early signs of madness.
For as far as he could tell, he'd spend the rest of his life like this, watching over the son of his king, the sons of his rival, and the son of an incompetent colonel. Wherever Paragus was, he was hopefully having a better time than he was.
Because so help him, if he went to where his scouter said that power level showed up and there was absolutely nothing there, the Research and Development department was going to be providing him with a workout worth his time.
After five minutes of flying across the planet, Nappa finally got to the point where his scouter had directed him to. There was a hollowed out hill in the ground, but calling it a cave would be a stretch. It was the same size and shape as a small shed, but despite its modest size, it gave off an air that made Nappa pause for a moment outside.
The entire rim of the opening was hooked backwards, making it seem as if the earth was collapsing in on itself. Even though it was still bright and sunny outside, the entirety of the inside of the structure was completely drenched in darkness, killing any light that dared to try and venture Nappa stared at the entrance, he swore he could hear it breathing a long and droning inhale into short violent exhales, as if the entire structure was giving its last violent bleeding breaths.
Something was off, but knowing that he wasn't a coward or weakling like the others, Nappa stepped in.
Even though the structure couldn't have been larger than the barracks he and the rest of Vegeta Squadron shared, he found himself feeling around for the walls instantly. It was so dark it felt as if the sun itself had been extinguished and when he turned back to the entrance, he couldn't see a single thing.
But he had come through that way, right? It wasn't like he had gotten turned around after only a few steps. He spun around, sweat collecting on his brow as he looked for an exit, but he couldn't see any.
He held his finger up to make a sphere of ki, a blast of energy, anything that could give him light and help him get the hell out of there, but it wasn't any use. The moment the ki escaped his fingers it dissolved like sand hitting the ocean and fell out of his control to the floor, creating a glowing dust that died out as quickly as it came.
Nappa's sweating grew heavier as he felt the trickles running off of his chin and his breathing grew quicker. Something was going wrong and fast.
He remembered a much easier solution was on his face and tapped at his scouter, activating its flashlight that lit his vision with a fluorescent white.
On the ground in front of him was a small sapling, no taller than the hilt of a blade. The sapling stood still as death as the ground underneath it quivered and pulsated, its roots writhing underneath into coils that readied and struck at the soil with a gleeful malice.
In the cracks of soil around the roots Nappa saw blood, not seeping out of the earth, but seeping into the earth and coating the roots.
In search of where the blood came from, Nappa took a step backwards as he slowly turned his head, using his light to follow the trail of blood to its source. Across from the sapling was a pair of clay red hands clasped tightly together as if in prayer. The hands were held together by a helix spiral of roots, with nothing beneath the wrist but the bones and blood that fed the earth.
With only the thought of getting to the bottom of whatever he was experiencing, Nappa walked over to the had to be something inside of those hands, they were probably controlling the tree with some sort of device or cursed Namekian Magic. The alternative was something he didn't like or want to entertain.
After crouching down Nappa shoved his finger into the opening between the two thumbs of the Namekian's hands, a primal urge telling him that touching the vines could be a death sentence.
His finger felt something hard and he curled it back, trying to get it into his hand. The hands were clasped together like vices, requiring Nappa to use all the strength in his hand to retrieve the object hearing the bones pop and move in the hands as he pulled back,.
He looked it over in his palm, it was just a sphere. A perfect spherical stone that was no larger than a seed.
"Wh…what the hell?" Nappa said, looking at the rock as he struggled back to his feet. He took a breath and realized his mouth felt warm, chunky, and moist, a coppery soup forming against his teeth. He clenched onto the stone tight with one hand and then put a finger into his mouth with the other hand. When he pulled his finger out and looked at it, the world went quiet and still as the sight overwhelmed his senses. His finger was covered in blood and clay.
He turned back and could see the exit now with his light, but it looked so far away. It could've been Fifty yards, one hundred yards, it seemed to just keep growing and growing, stretching to consume the whole planet with each passing second.
Nappa sprinted towards the light, but couldn't stop the blood from pouring out of his mouth. His tail began going erratic, causing his balance to fail him. What was once his signature charge was now changing into a lazy stumbling as Nappa heard the pulsing of the ground grow larger and larger.
Closer and closer.
The roots of the sapling shot out from the earth and wrapped around Nappa's mouth. He bit down on them hard as a reflex, but the roots stayed strong, gushing blood and clay as Nappa bit down on them. He tried pushing forward, but the roots held him place as he screamed a blood curdled howl and his nose began to flow a crimson slush.
More roots shattered the earth and latched onto him, wrapping around the bridge of his nose and cutting off his breathing. He was thrown onto his back by the roots, barely able to gather the strength to look at the exit. It was shrinking smaller with each second and his whole world was growing darker with each second.
He wouldn't let this happen to him, he couldn't die here, not to some damn tree! He tried to power up but it was impossible. With each burst of ki he tried to let out the roots only grew stronger, dragging him faster and harder until he was back at the sapling.
The roots around his mouth and nose joined together and sprouted new segments that crawled down his neck, creating a tight mesh to wring the life from him. With a thunderous groan,the earth opened beneath him, sucking him in with a mucousy mud that burned at his skin as it engulfed him inch by inch.
There was so much blood, he was so tired. He was going to die being consumed by some tree and no one would ever even find him. He knew they may be able to find his scouter, but they would never find him, every single bit of him would be long gone by the time that happened.
He would die nowhere and for nothing. Just like every saiyan under Frieza.
The light from his scouter crushed as the earth ate him whole.
"Death Beam!" Kakarot shouted as his needle wide blast penetrated the mile long cave. "He's here, I found him!"
The hole Kakarot made in the cave started regenerating to close itself, but Kakarot shot at it again and again, a blitz of blasts until it looked like swiss cheese.
"Careful you idiot!" Raditz shouted, "You'll kill him if you hit him, and I don't even sense his power level anywhere, how could you possibly know where he is?"
"Because I can sense him! Just trust me and shoot, both of you!"
Raditz charged a blast in his hand and looked at Broly who was already doing the same.
"Where do you need us to shoot?" Raditz asked.
"I'm covering the middle section. Bro, you fire two clicks to the left with a volley. Broly, you do the same on the right. Go on my mark." His steady barrage of blast since he'd arrived hadn't stopped as he coordinated his plan, spending as little energy as possible with each blast. He held his free hand into the air for a moment, then clenched it into a fist as he shouted, "Now!"
The blast from the three hit the ground with the strength of an orbital bombardment as Broly and Raditz created craters in the planet that sizzled and fumed with the smell of burning metal.
Kakarot's blasts got stronger and faster as he picked up on the scent, it was blood, more of it than he'd ever smelled in a decade and some years of conquering planets.
Within seconds, Nappa had been dug out. The brutish saiyan laid on top of a pedestal of earth carved out by the three, and everything around him destroyed. The roots that had once wrapped around his nose, mouth, and throat had been blown away, each of the joints that held them together dissected by Kakarot's blasts.
The second he was visible, Kakarot swooped down and picked up Nappa. "I got ya, battle buddy." He said as he flew up.
"Is he …?" Broly said as he lazily pointed a finger at Nappa's non-moving body.
"No," Kakarot said, "I can still sense his energy."
"No, you can't!" Raditz said, "If my scouter can't pick it up, why in the world do you think that yours is able to?"
"Maybe because I've learned a few tricks over the years," Kakarot said with a wink as he looked at his brother, unable to read his expression. Why did he look so afraid? "While you taught yourself how to read or whatever, I wasn't exactly learning math."
Kakarot opened up his palm and formed a ball of energy in his hand, causing Raditz to recoil in shock and Broly to raise an eyebrow.
"If you hit him with even that much energy you'll kill him," Raditz said, "we need to get him back to medical before he -" Kakarot raised his palmful of energy into the sky and looked at Nappa's chestplate.
"Kakarot, stop!" Raditz shouted, but he was too slow. Kakaraot had shoved his entire fist through Nappa's armor, punching him directly in the chest.
Kakarot had transfused some of his ki into Nappa to give him an extra jolt since his ki levels were at a critical low. There was only so much the scouters could pick up, but that's what learning practical skills was for.
"Easy," Kakarot said proudly as he looked up to his older brother, a carefree grin on his face.
"Y… you murdered him." Raditz was so stunned he could barely speak.
It only made Kakarot laugh as he loosened his grasp on Nappa, holding now by the collar of his armor. "C'mon sleepy head, wakie wakie!" he said as he shook him about like a wet rag.
Nappa took a sharp gasp as if he'd been saved from drowning and immediately vomited clumps of clay, bark, and blood onto the ground hundreds of feet below.
"So you feel better?" Kakarot asked as he looked his brother in the eye. Sometimes "I told you so" was better left unsaid, but not unfelt.
Nappa however was shaking in Kakarot's grasp like a leaf, his words a hollow wind whispered from his lips, "Eo …. Eo caschti moret. Eo eoy noet slabil. Eltem slabil debhen moret tasí eltem sil'te podno vivoy. Eo eoy sil'te! Eo eoy sil'te!"
As Nappa broke down into a hysterical sob in Kakarot's grasp, the three of them could only look at each other with concern.
It had been so long since Nappa had taught him how to speak Saiyan, that Kakarot could barely remember anything. He knew that with their scouters on, Raditz and Broly probably didn't have a reason to be speaking it either, unless they wanted Frieza to catch them "Speaking monkey."
He could always just respond with galactic common, and Nappa would probably understand him even though his scouter was broken, but that wasn't the point. Kakarot wasn't exactly the sharpest brightest bulb in the room and he knew that for a fact, but he also knew that Nappa needed to hear their language, not their conqueror's, if he wanted Nappa to hear him.
There was one phrase he could remember, and it may get them all killed to say it, but it needed to be said, and Nappa needed to be saved.
He lifted Nappa up and held his grip firm to the front of his collar so that Nappa wouldn't fall down, then held his left arm out, hooking it as if flexing his bicep and said, "Eo eoy esu amigog, guerrern."
Kakarot glanced over at Raditz and Broly. Without hesitation, Broly came forward and said the same, putting his right arm up next to Kakarot's. After a moment of reluctance, Raditz did the same and put his left arm up next to Kakarot's, forming three columns of arms up.
Like a spell was cast, Nappa snapped out of his breakdown, his tears ceasing as he wrapped his arm around all three of his fellow saiyans and said, "Z etu sonap Emí amigog, guerrern."
They shook their arms together one and then spaced away from another. Each of them taking a moment to absorb what they had just done.
"Thank you … Kakarot," Nappa said as he opened his hand and looked at a spherical stone, then chucked it as high as he could, breaking the planet's atmosphere and hurling it into space.
"Eltem slabil debhen moret tasí eltem sil'te podno vivoy…" Nappa said wistfully as he shook his head.
"Guessing the cave was an enlightening experience?" Kakarot said.
"No," Nappa said, "It was actually pretty dark."
As Raditz groaned in agony at the two's stupidity and Nappa and Broly's weak laughs were reinforced by Kakarot's boisterous laughter, the group flew towards their pods with Kakarot in the lead.
They may have just made all of their lives significantly more difficult, but their bonds had grown stronger yet, and that was all Kakarot really cared about at the end of the day. After all, how could you enjoy life if it wasn't at least a little difficult?
Plus, none of the squadron asking why he came to this planet in the first place was a nice little bonus itself. That type of difficulty was something he was excited for, but it wasn't quite time to show them.
"Hey Kakarot …" Nappa asked as the group lazily flew to their ships, "How'd you know to come looking for me, I mean, I wasn't exactly sending out a distress call or anything."
All three of the saiyans gave Nappa a concerned look. Kakarot assumed that maybe his scouter had gotten too damaged to display the time before he was knocked out, but Broly was the first to speak.
"You were gone for four hours."
The color left Nappa's face and his silence returned.
"What's wrong?" Kakarot asked.
"Two minutes. I couldn't have been in there for longer than two minutes." Nappa shook his head to throw the thought away and the rest of the trip went in silence, all the way until they got back to Frieza's ship and received the big news. It was time to go on their next mission.