Kakarot's stroll through the subway tunnel was rather uneventful. Turles had been soundly beaten, his hostage was floating powerlessly in his telekinetic grasp, and her son was guiding him towards the Tuffle Headquarters.
It only took a minute to track them down when they tried to run away after he separated them from his fight, but now he was back on track.
Following someone to guide him to the solution wasn't exactly his style, but he figured he'd already lost plenty of valuable time trapped as an oozaru. His fight proved that there were at least strong people besides Vegeta on this planet, so he needed to find the rest of them. If providing a floating sphere of ki as a lantern while he walked with a family through the darkness of the subway tunnels, its very foundation shaking and cracking from earthquakes, was the most efficient way of doing it, then so be it. He needed to find where all the other strong people were at and fight them himself, no matter what it took.
Turles was good,he'd given Kakarot an orderly thrashing that nearly killed him, but the fight didn't quite scratch his itch. It came close, but that was why he had to leave Cooler's Tool alive. Somewhere in Turles was a hidden strength just waiting to be pulled out, but it wasn't his job to pull out their best and beat him at it on this mission, he had to do that to Vegeta. Keeping his new rival alive just assured he had something to look forward to after he left Throhbaq.
But there was one quick detour Kakarot had to make before he could get to his finish line. It was to the most familiar ki he knew and a new one alongside it.
The walk to them however was cautious, as even Kakarot didn't want to run the risk of the Tree of Might. The subway was lined with some weird metal he'd never seen before, and the second he got in it, he lost his ability to sense and of the living beings that he was tracking before he went under. No more birds, no more mice, just an absence of all outside life.
Turles didn't exactly say what the Tree of Might was, but Kakarot knew what a tree was, and made a guess that it and this anti-ki technology were probably related. The tree probably spawned little men made of bark, and if ki was sensed underground, it would send out little barkmen to be dragged back to the tree, and then they drain your blood into the tree to give it power.
He knew he could probably take some tree people, but it sounded tedious, and he didn't want to start degrading the quality of his fights by trying to fight mulch.
Instead, he continued on his path, and tried to make small talk along the way.
"So," Kakarot said to the woman he was carrying, "I forgot to ask earlier, do you like, have a name or anything?"
"..." Her unblinking stare looked down the depths of the tunnel.
"I would just feel really weird calling you, 'lady' or 'kid's mom' the whole time, I mean I went out of the way to learn the kid's name. Who knows, maybe you'll be a great fighter with a name worth remembering too someday."
"I'm going to kill you."
"That's great, that's a good start! You need to have goals if you want to get anything accomplished. You'll probably need some tips though if you want to get that accomplished, pretty long line you're in. I'm Kakarot, Frieza Soldier in Vegeta's Squadron. Well, probably a former to both of those now." Kakarot scratched at his head as he tried to figure out the best lead to give her. "Okay when you go looking for me, tell them I'm in Kakarot Squadron. I'm not really sure if I'll be in Frieza's Army still after all this, but the squadron part is probably going to be accurate, but ask for Kakarot of Vegeta's Squadron if it isn't."
"Why …" the woman's struggle for calmness fought with a fury she could barely contain, "Why would god make somebody like you?"
"Huh?" Kakarot stopped his scratching as his confusion shifted from one subject to another. "A good samaritan? The universe needs more people like me."
She tried to turn her head back to him as she screamed, but Kakarot kept her in place. "You came to my planet to kill everyone here, you nearly murdered my son, and you want me to thank you?!"
"Well so far I haven't killed anyone. I mean, I think so at least. I was in a form I couldn't control earlier, so those can't count." The saiyan's voice grew bitter as he added, "Neither of us would've gotten anything from it earlier."
"Oh? So I'm supposed to be okay with it because it wasn't beneficial? My son's elementary school is in ashes. The radio station I worked at is a pile of rubble. You want me to just forget all of that?"
"Well, I want you to know that all of that is worthless," Kakarot said, "Buildings, memories, all that junk. It's nothing if you can't protect it. I fought you, and now you have a level you know you have to beat."
"I shouldn't have to live my life in fear of monsters like you!"
Kakarot paused as the sound of Vegeta and Frieza's laughter rang through his ears, the sound of them gleefully slaughtering people who hadn't even thought of attacking them yet.
His voice grew serious as he said, "well you did and you will. There's always someone stronger out there." He spun the woman around, lowered her down to eye level, and looked into her amber eyes, "If you want to protect yourself or your son, you'll remember that. Miss….?"
She spat at his face and he let it hit him. Best to let a future opponent get at least a small victory so they're not completely demoralized.
"I'm Jaway," she said, her anger now turning to determination, "and I'm the woman who's going to kill you."
Kakarot nodded, then put her back in her previous position without any effort.
The trio walked together through the winding labyrinth of tunnels in a solid silence that only occasionally cracked, but was always immediately plastered over. Kakarot knew that the mother was done talking to him, so he tried the son out of boredom, but it was like talking to a brick wall.
He'd ask him questions about his school, what his family did, anything that could get a rile out of the kid and remind him of what he needed to fight for, but all the saiyan got in response were muffled sobs that they choked back down.
It was a familiar sight to Kakarot, and he thought the odds looked good that the two of them could become strong enough, someday.
The trio's trek continued through dozens of forks in the tracks, past oddly labeled doors with dim red emergency lights above them, until they came to one particular split; Tovak went right, and Kakort with Jaway in tow went left.
"Hey," Kakarot said, "You comin'? We gotta go this way now."
"But …" The boy's voice was barely more than a squeak, so Kakarot cupped his ear to hear him better. "The headquarters is this way. That's where you want to go, right? Where you'll let us go?"
"Yeah sure, but there's something way more interesting this way. Matter a fact," Kakarot said as he looked down the path he wanted to take, "I think I can have what I'm looking for come this way."
Kakarot took in a large breath and in that time, no questions entered his mind. Not a thought as to who the other being was with his brother and how they were as strong as Nappa, let alone considering them an enemy. Not a single brain cell was put to task wondering why his brother was split off from the rest of the group and what could have happened to put him in that position or if he'd chosen it to be that way. Even considering that he was being watched by anyone anywhere wasn't even remotely close to being on the table.
The only thing close to a thought he had was that his brother was nearby, and he was excited to see him.
"YOOOOOOO RADITZ!" Kakarot screamed down the tunnel at the top of his lungs. "IT'S TIME FOR THE TEAM UP, BRO!"
As soon as the words left his mouth, Kakarot heard the sounds of a mad beast rushing towards him. The heavy stomps, the tracks cracking under their feet, the guttural howling, suddenly Kakarot realized that he may have to fight another person.
Kakarot floated Jaway over to her son, putting both of them out of sight from the beast, and then happily readied himself for a fight.
"Slow down!" Raditz's echo boomed through the tunnel, "It's my brother! Heel! Heel, you fool!"
The beast coming towards him switched gears immediately, their feral stomps turning into a cordial trot.
As they got close enough to be illuminated by Kakarot's ki lantern, he had to bite his tongue to hold in his laughter. Sure his brother was missing his tail too, but for some reason he was in his underwear and riding what seemed to be a spherical ball of breathing fur that was bigger than a bison.
"So," Kakarot said, "did you take a few drinks before coming down here or is this just a thing you do now?"
"Wha- They broke my armor!" Raditz said, "I've tamed one of the beasts of the planet and made them my ally. What are you even talking about?"
"But yet you seem to have not even tried to find clothes. I always thought you were more of a tactical type of guy, but if you had to flirt to get them on your side, well who am I to judge?"
Kakarot looked to his hostages. dragged Jaway over to him, and motioned for Tovak to come over as well. "Anyways, this is what I was doing. I found these two future warriors!"
As Tovak revealed himself, Raditz stared at the two of them, and then at his brother. His brother's eyes told Kakarot that he was slightly less enthused about the plan than he was.
"What have you been doing this entire mission?" Raditz said, "Vegeta thinks you've betrayed him, he says we're going to form some new saiyan empire, and almost killed both me and Broly because he thought we were spies.
"Do you have any idea what sort of danger you and your stupid feud has put us in with Vegeta? I was barely able to convince him to let you live. When he wins he'll have you as his thrall, and if you flee or die beforehand - which you seem determined to do judging from all those bruises and cuts on you - then I'll be his thrall! I'm doing everything I can to keep both of us alive, to make sure nobody on our squadron is left in a shallow grave on this planet, and you're making fun of me?!"
Kakarot nodded with a smile. "Yeah, that's about the gist of it."
Raditz used his non broken arm to bury his face in palm and made the groaning sigh that one only earns from being an older sibling.
"Hey, waita second," Kakarot said, "What do you mean when Vegeta wins? I'm gonna win! You know that, you're my bro!"
Raditz didn't move his hand from his face as he spoke. "I'm your brother, which is exactly why I'm warning you that you're going to lose." His composure finding its way back to him, he looked up and added, "You should thank me for my quick thinking and him for the brief moment of mercy he somehow agreed to. Without the entire squadron to hold him accountable for saying it, I doubt he'd repeat it. Maybe he got nostalgic and remembered when you looked up to him."
"I still do," Kakarot said, "that's why I have to beat him. Why I'm gonna beat him."
"And then what, you kill him? It's a Prekku, Kakarot. There's not exactly many outcomes for it, and I don't think that the Prince of All Saiyans is going to take kindly to a low class warrior and Frieza's favorite soldier beating him. He'll choose death before he submits."
Kakarot rolled his eyes at his brother. "Oh come on, you don't think my plan is that straightforward, do you?"
"I don't know what to think about you anymore! You don't tell us anything, hell, you don't tell me anything!" Raditz's grip tightened on the beast as his voice raised, "You used to tell me everything before we went on that mission on Thaw, we were the Brothers of Bardock, and now … it's like you treat me like I'm some lackey! I just go to planets and kill the people you don't find interesting and the one's Broly can't bring himself to kill! What do you even do with those people, Kakarot? What are you even working towards?"
Kakarot knew how to press everyone's buttons, but he knew that something different was happening. He thought he was going to have some light banter with his brother before the two of them ran off to the enemy's headquarters, but something was wrong. It was like he hurt his brother by existing.
"Um," Kakarot hadn't exactly prepared a speech for this sort of thing, he just knew it was something that was true. "I'm working towards getting stronger. I need to become stronger to be free. I thought that was something you learned on Thaw too."
"You wanna know what I learned on Thaw, Kakarot? What I learned when I saw Vegeta blow River away like she was nothing? When you take somebody that kind, that strong, and kill them for nothing but fun? I learned that no matter what, you need to set the situation so that you survive. There are always people who are more powerful than you, and you exist at their mercy. Either you adapt so that they can see a reason to keep you living, or they kill you. That's it. Keeping your head in the direction somebody points it in is the only way you get to live."
Raditz looked at Kakarot's hostages, and Kakarot could see the dots connect on his face. "That's why he kept you alive, isn't it. So you could just be a warm up for him someday? " He made a dry laugh and his voice was exhausted as he said, "You'll probably be the ones to kill us someday with how our luck has been."
Kakarot didn't know how to respond and his hostages knew they couldn't. In the silence of his brother looking at him, begging for an answer, something that would prove him wrong, Kakarot only blankly stared at him.
"Whatever," Raditz said as he gave a light tug on the monstrous beast's hair and it turned around, heading away from his brother. "I'm going to the enemy headquarters, or wherever this creature is leading me. You can come with me or not, since you'll only do what you want to anyway."
Raditz went back the way he came, and Kakarot followed behind him.
"Um, Raditz? Bro, where are you going?" Kakarot asked as he caught up to his brother, floating Jaway behind him and Tovuk chasing behind them.
Raditz didn't look at his brother, he only continued going forward. "I'm going the same path as I was before. This beast has something they want to show me after I saved their life, and I trust them. More than I can my brother who doesn't seem to care whether any of us live or die. It's only about setting up the next fight for the Legendary Kakarot."
"Well what do you want me to say?" Kakarot said, "Do you want me to hold my head down and just hide for the rest of my life? I can't do that and you know it isn't what our dad would have done! I can only get stronger if I push myself, so I'll push as hard as I can! No matter what it takes, I -"
"You need to stay alive!" Raditz winced as he turned too fast at his brother, aggravating his broken arm. "All that matters is that you stay alive, how do you not understand that? Or did Frieza and Vegeta just convince you that your life doesn't mean anything?"
"Well why even bother being alive if I'm not strong enough to make my own choices?"
"Because I need you, alright?!" Raditz needed one arm to maintain his balance on the beast, and the other was too broken to move. The tears flowed freely down his face as he talked to his brother in the only way they knew how anymore. "We got to hundreds of planets, and do you wanna know what the only constant is? It's you four and Frieza's army, the only thing that stays the same are the people who torture us and the people who we travel with.
"Before our planet was destroyed, I used to come back home and me and dad would tell each other about our missions, and I would get so excited. I'd ask him all these questions about what he saw on other worlds, but he wasn't observant, just loved the thrill of the fight, so I'd always keep track of things on my own and tell him about them. I had a stupid little audio journal on my scouter for each planet and I would just babble on and on to mom and dad at the dinner table every night I was back home.
"I still remember when they told me you were going to go on your own mission to the Milky Way Galaxy, that backwood planet called Earth. I was so excited to see what you'd found once you were finished, to see what type of world my little brother could make. But you wound up with me instead, and I couldn't have been happier.
"I used to cry every night when I thought about home, but then I would look at you, crawling and screaming your stupid head off, and I knew that you were home. You were all that was left, you were my brother, and I was going to protect you."
Kakarot could see that the pain in his brother's arm was overwhelming and wished that he could help him, but something in his gut told him it wasn't the right move. His brother clutched onto his elbow and leaned forward, resting on the beast as he continued.
"I always thought I was a failure when it was just me, Vegeta, and Nappa. Everyday I had to prove my worth to them or else I was just a laughingstock, but then you came along, and Broly too. At first I thought it was so funny to tease you, to make fun of you for being weak, but I only did it so I could feel strong, so that I wouldn't be the weakest person in the group anymore. We all laughed at you for thinking you could be as strong as Vegeta, but … on Thaw I learned it wasn't just some stupid dream, you had talent. You had the ability to at least come close. But I never could. Some of us are always just meant to be weaklings."
A moment of silence passed and Kakarot said, "Yeesh, you finally done talking yet?"
"Yes, brother. I'm done talking."
"Oh thank the gods. You see how banged up both of us are and you try to talk my ear off like that?" He said with a laugh. "No need to worry about being weak, you almost killed me just now!"
His brother did not laugh.
"Alright, well. Listen," Kakarot said as he scratched his chin, hoping the way to put into words what he was feeling would fall out of his few stray strands of stubble, but he had no such luck. He would have to brave the battlefield of words with only his own intelligence to guide him.
"You may not be strong with your fists, but your brain is really strong, which is, like, almost equally as good as being good at being punching strong! You're the smartest guy I've ever met, and I'd trust you to lead me any day anywhere in the galaxy. Heck if you were leading us, I wouldn't even challenge you to a Prekku, because I knew I would be in good hands for life."
Raditz scoffed. "I'm not a leader." He looked down at his mount, a foe he saw an opening for a truce with and took the second it was possible. "I'm a coward."
"Well, that would make for a really great leader," Kakarot said matter-of- factly, "you wouldn't throw us into fights just to prove how strong we are. You'd put us into fights to actually get places."
Kakarot knew it was a good silence as soon as they entered it. Not the silence of tension, but of adjustment.
"So," Raditz spoke cautiously, even fearing to entertain the thought of the idea as he said them, "you're challenging Vegeta to a Prekku not to kill him out of revenge, or because of Frieza's will, but to show him that he's a bad leader? To try and reform him in some sense?"
"Exactly!" Kakarot said as he smacked his own forehead. "That's what I've been trying to say this entire time, hasn't it been obvious? Oh, and fighting is fun, that too."
Kakarot looked at his hostages as if they would back him up. He saw their scowls, and then went right back to having the conversation exclusively with his brother.
"Obvious?!" Raditz said. "You've been talking in damn circles for weeks now! Is this your way of trying to formulate a plan?"
Kakarot knew that exasperation, his brother was back to his old self, and he couldn't be happier to see it. "Yeah! I mean, it wasn't super easy for me to get out with all those scouters on us, first I was gonna beat Vegeta, then teach him how to get real strong, and then we would beat Frieza like two weeks later and do whatever we want with all that new free time! Pretty great plan, huh?"
"No, actually." Raditz said. "It's a pretty damn stupid plan that's not even bordering on suicidal. It is firmly into the suicidal camp. It has set up a flag there and is doing a parade."
"Well what would you do if you were me?" Kakarot asked.
The younger saiyan wasn't taken aback by how wide his brother's eyes bulged at the question. It was something that he, as a younger brother, had become an expert at over the years.
"How in the hell would I know what to do in your situation if I don't know anything about your situation?!"
Kakarot nodded for a moment, let the question marinate in his mind for a moment, and then came up with the most tactful way he could to ask the question. He counted the options off on his fingers. "Good point, do you want to know about the guy I left alive from Planet Roug and is now living inside of the root thingie, the saiyan that looks like a clone of me, is just as strong as I am, and planted the Tree of Might thing that the guy from Planet Roug is in, or how Cooler set up this entire situation as an attack on his Frieza to try and humble him?"
His brother looked like he was going to be sick.
"Raditz?" Kakarot snapped his fingers at his brother as he remained gobsmacked. "Hellloooo? Time is kinda of the essence here. We got places to be, Vegetas to fight, c'mon pick one."
"Start it," Raditz quietly croaked out, "start it from the top."
