Barry marched with the rest of her team down the hallway and kept her attention on the walls. There were children's' drawings with crayons and chalk, blood that was still drying from the stampede, and a sterile silence that tainted it all. About an hour ago she stood in the same spot, jammed end to end with people, trying to set a good example for them, and now this was all that remained.
"We can't leave this planet like this," Barry said, but neither her father, her mentor, or Quinny responded. "These people deserve better."
The hallways shook, and her father sped up his pace, leaving the rest of them trailing behind them with each quickened step. "Just because people deserve better doesn't mean that they get it," he said without looking back, "regardless, it's only a temporary misfortune."
"Temporary?" The walls shook again, but Barry, Mireau, and Quinny kept together. "People died, Dad. We told them that they'd be safe, but as soon as Broly went into the roots of the tree tree the entire planet started shaking, this is an earthquake larger than our people have ever recorded and -"
"And you need stop being foolish and have faith! Nappa is in the roots as well, Vegeta is missing, Turles is on his way to the tree," Doctor Lychee said.
"So you're a man of faith now?" Mireau said.
Doctor Lychee's stuffed his hands into the pockets of his lab coat."Something I must have picked up from you. Our years together have taught me much in that field."
Barry said, "Well if you have so much faith then why don't you have some in me for two seconds?!" She caught up to her father, but he kept his attention keenly away from her. "You saw Kakarot and Raditz get to the lab, and that's it? We retreat? Just send me in there, I can take them! I've trained my entire life to fight Saiyans and on the one day that they show up, you have me running away! I'm nearly as strong as Vegeta, just let me get those two and then we can figure out what to do with the tree and getting the people of this planet back safely."
"I let Mireau train you so you could protect yourself when the moment called for it," Lychee said, "and that time hasn't come."
Barry slid and held to the wall to stop from falling. She looked behind her and saw that she had stepped in a slick puddle of blood, her knuckles paled when she clenched her fists. "People are dead that I could've protected, Dad. They finally saw a hint of what the Saiyans could do, and instead of reassuring them, or even helping them get out, you just broadcast a message through the building to go to the teleporters and let them stampede themselves to death."
"A small number of them. Negligible."
Her hand was on her father's collar before she could even think of what to do next. She slammed him into the wall and hardly noticed Mireau putting the blade of his scythe between the two of them. "Negligible?"
"To keep you safe, I would let every single native on this planet die." Lychee gently put his hands on hers. "Our people are worth more than ignorant fools who didn't heed our warnings. We told them to evacuate early, I didn't kill them. Their own hubris did."
Barry gripped him tight, and didn't know who she was holding anymore. Once, this man had stayed up with her countless nights to work on experiments, had taught her nearly everything she knew, but now?
"Barry, let your father go." The glyphs on Mireau's blade appeared with a sickly white glow of light, but it was a warning she couldn't see or hear through her anger.
"You let them die just so you could have what you wanted. You're no better than a Saiyan," Barry said,.
Lychee trembled at the fury in his daughter's voice. "What is needed. Peace for our people, safety for the galaxy from the Saiyan menace. No one ever said it would be bloodless, but it has to be done! Who killed the Great General Nappa? Me! My plan caused it! You want to throw away our chance at eliminating all Saiyans with no Tuffle losses over some burst of emotion. Stop being naive and just think for a moment of the future!"
Her vision turned a solid red as she reeled her fist back, but couldn't move it further. She tried to jerk her hand forward as hard as she could, but something held her in place, as if she was nothing more than a weak child.
Her anger cracked from fissures of confusion. No one here could be that strong. She turned her head to see Quinny, who was holding her back with just one hand.
Quinny smirked as she said, "You need to calm down, or else I'll start thinking that maybe you have some Saiyan in you too."
"Shut up, you little freak." Barry dropped her father to the ground and noticed that Mireau's blade was glowing. The threat was empty, the blade was too far from her to stop her in time, and both of them knew it.
She saw that Quinny's expression hadn't left their face. "You got something to say?"
"No," Quinny let go of her and. "Just impressed is all, my expectations were low for you when I was on the way here, but nice to see a few surprises."
Her anger was quick to redirect, but she never got the chance to use it.
One stomp of Mireau's staff to the ground made the metal floor moved like water. A wave of it lashed out at Barry, grabbed her around the ankle, and dragged her down to the ground.
She tried to get up from floor, but it moved with her, encasing her in an upright spire that left only her face exposed. She gathered ki in her hands to blast at the metal, but stopped. It was made from the same material as Mireau's scythe, ki would only dissipate against it.
"Please," Mireau said. "Don't make this harder than it has to be."
Barry continued to tug at her shackle, trying to rip the metal apart, but it was too strong. "I'm making it harder? I'm the only one here trying to make it right! All any of you care about is killing the Saiyans – and now we're running away, teleporting to another planet, hoping for what? That all of the Saiyans will kill each other? That everything will just fall into place?"
"And if it doesn't," Lychee said, his hands still shaking as he dusted himself off. "We have a second fail-safe."
She'd never heard of a second fail-safe, and with her father's true colors were becoming clearer and clearer with each second, she knew there must've been a reason why. "Second?"
"Mireau, Quinny," Doctor Lychee said, "ensure that my daughter doesn't cause any more interruptions as we get to the teleporter room."
Quinny cracked her knuckles. "With pleasure."
"We will not fight each other," Mireau said, "too many have died for us to bring about our own death's here."
Barry couldn't move her limbs an inch, she could only thrash her head about, screaming profanities as she was carried by the floor. Through all of her anger, she never once noticed the look of rapt curiosity on Quinny's face.
It was no use fighting against Mireau's magic, she was barely good enough to get her own to work, let alone counter someone else's. But if she was just able to get the glyphs to work, to do the one thing he'd tried to pass onto her, she'd have been able to free herself. Instead she found herself carried by a history she couldn't comprehend towards a future she couldn't predict.
She tried to think of anything in the teleporter room that could help her, but there was nothing. Only the teleporter itself in the middle of the room, the computer that controlled it, and the monitoring sphere next to it.
Her path to a destiny she had no say in was lined by a series of corridors that she was so familiar with, they became mundane. Her friendships with the Throhbaqians, their achievements on this planet, she had taken it all for granted. One day they were the newest step into her people's future as heroes of the galaxy, but now she could see them for what they were.
The scowl grew on her face with each passing second. How could she have been so stupid to have not seen it this whole time? "Everything we did here was just an act to get these people to trust you. All you ever wanted was to build whatever tools you needed for your revenge."
They reached the door to the teleporter room and her father turned to face her. He'd shifted from terrified to tired in no time at all. "That would make you so happy, wouldn't it? For me to be the evil villain of your little story; Years of my life dedicated to rubbing my hands together, cackling as I played an entire planet for fools."
He opened the door and walked in, ushering the rest to follow. "I had dreams too once. But fate got in the way." He glanced to Quinny as she followed behind him. "I would've spent decades here working with the Throhbaqians, but our visitor here gave us the opportunity to save this galaxy, and I will do it. If it cost me only one planet, we should count ourselves happy."
Barry looked at Mireau as he held her in place next to him. "Planet?" Mireau asked. "If you think that the earth quakes are so terrible that they'll destroy the planet, I can get the boy out of tree. It should stop them."
"Get him out?" Lychee scoffed at the mere mention of it. "He's a Saiyan, why would you want to get him out?"
"He's a child, he wasn't even born when the war happened."
"That's not what you said when it was Vegeta we were trying to kill."
Mireau's face grew stern as the glyphs on his scythe glowed. All of the metal around them began to ripple like water and Quinny's eyes widened with alarm. "The sins of Vegeta's family are inescapable. They are as tied together to one another as our people are. He has to die or we cannot progress.
If we had known putting Broly into the tree would have these side effects, we shouldn't have done it. Based on his power level he should've only given it a small boost, but every bit would've counted towards the plan of Turles eating the fruit and fighting the other Saiyans. Destroying an entire planet is too much, the people of Throhbaq don't deserve that."
Lychee walked to a computer screen on the wall and scowled as it flickered with each vibration. "The dice have just so happened to roll that in order to ensure the destruction of the Saiyans, this planet must be sacrificed. Now stop altering the base, the teleporters won't function if you keep that up. Then all of us will be dead. Is that what you want?"
Mireau kept his grip on his scythe tight and the metal continued to move.
Barry found herself given wiggle room from the morphing metal. Mireau was the last master of his people's magic, and she knew that he couldn't make a mistake like this on accident.
"That's unacceptable," Mireau said. "If the boy stays in the tree and it continues to grow at this rate, it won't be just an issue for this planet. It will draw attention. If what that Saiyan and our informant here have told us are anywhere close to true, other people will want the fruit that comes from the tree-"
Mireau's scythe quickly turned to the only thing keeping him standing as he broke into a coughing fit. The glow from the scythe's blade dimmed and flecks of blood flew from his mouth and landed on the floor as its ripples ceased.
The metal solidified around Barry again as she got one arm sticking out of it, and used it to put a hand on his shoulder.
She had known Mireau was sick, that his body had been betraying him as he got older, but this was different. The rattles of his coughs, the strength it took for him just to keep himself up. He was dying.
"Dad!" Barry shouted as Mireau's cough worsened and he fell to his knees, out of her reach. His fingers coated with blood as feathers and scales formed on his skull. "Dad, this is worse than usual, you need to help him!"
Lychee sighed and tapped the computer screen. The center of the room opened to reveal a gridded floor covered in glyphs. It could fit dozens of people on it, but Lychee was the only one to get on. "When both of you decide to stop actively ensuring the death of our people, you should follow behind me. It's the only way we can move forward."
Barry looked at the computer screen and saw two countdown timers. One to the teleporter's countdown, and another to the base's self-destruct sequence.
She was too stunned to speak. Her father was going to risk killing both of them over this.
"Quinny," Lychee said, "I know you're not officially part of our group, but you have proven yourself invaluable on this mission. Would you like to come with me?"
Quinny's was barely able to contain her bewilderment. "I … still need to get back to my ship. Order directly from my higher ups."
Lychee shook his head. "Not with the Saiyans around it you don't, it's too risky."
"My ship is too advanced to leave in the hands of the enemy. It needs to go off this planet."
"But the base is getting destroyed! You don't need to worry about it falling into their hands."
Quinny paused, bit the inside of her cheek, and said, "My leader will have both of our heads if I don't return the ship. It will make it back to where it left from."
Barry thought that it sounded like an obvious lie, but her father didn't catch it, not in full. He was too busy convincing himself of his own story.
"Ah, I see," he said to convince himself of the truth of it. He turned his attention to Barry and Mireau only to say, "You will see this was necessary."
He disappeared away without any goodbyes or final speeches. No promises of love for his friends and family. He disappeared knowing that he was in the right, and Barry now knew that that was all that ever mattered to him.
She couldn't begin to mourn before the metal around her moved, putting her on the teleporter as its glyphs changed shape.
"Mireau?" Barry saw he was still on the ground, his scythe glowing as he held onto it with his pale hands.
"I'm sorry, but this is something that has to be done." He forced himself to his feet and got to the computer, within a flew clicks the gridded floor glowed beneath her.
"So that's it, you're just going to do whatever my father says? I trusted you, your the only person here who I thought actually stood by their principles, but now I see that you're a coward just like him!"
"I'm sending you away because of those principles, not your father. All I've ever wanted for you was to live a life free from our war, but I can't even tell you that I've helped. You saw Broly, you saw how Nappa was as he cried in my arms for mercy." He shook as he stood and swallowed down the pain. "Those weren't the men who killed my family. They were just two people. I spent everyday training to kill a memory and reality passed me by. The people on this planet, watching you grow up, all those little things were the best thing to ever happen to me, and I'm not about to let them get destroyed."
"Then let me help you!"
"Help?" His laugh was one wet wheeze after another. "Barry, you've always fought against every injustice you see. You're a hothead who lets there emotion pull them to where they go, and that's what I like most about you. It's how I wish I was when I was your age. Brave, heroic even." He stepped onto the teleporter with her and hugged her. "You are not a fool, or a naive child. You are my star pupil and a young woman who wants the galaxy to be better, who questions why it isn't, and that's commendable, not something to ever feel ashamed of."
She saw the countdown timer going down and hugged him back as she held in her tears. "Then let me go and lets save this planet!"
He gave her one last squeeze on their hug, a small one, but the best he could do, then broke it off and got off the teleporter. "It's not a danger that I would ever put you in. If you saw me die in some scuffle and got distracted, or you died because I wasn't able to help you … It was my generation who fought this war, and mine that will end it. I won't allow it to harm any more people."
He stepped off of the teleporter and tapped the ground again with his scythe. The metal around her melted into the ground, so seamless that not a single glyph underneath them was disturbed. "Goodbye, Barry."
She jumped towards him, but wasn't fast enough. She was whisked away to unfamiliar ruins, abandoned pews of decaying wood, where only the rubble framework of a temple stood.
The glyphs underneath her were carved in stone, but worn down and unusable from years worth of erosion. Only the hints of their purpose remained, and it was safe to say that her safe arrival because of them would be the last miracle they ever performed. They were full of still water, covered in algae, and showed her distorted reflection in the warm summer sun, but the glyphs Mireau had made on Throhbaq were still good enough to get her here safely.
Barry ran her hands along the glyph, trying to get them to activate just one more time, but they gave no response, just as they had in all her attempts before.
There was no one around as far as she could see, only the barely standing stone remains of a village rolling green hills, and a clear sky shining down on them all.
It was a warm summer day in an empty land, its silence broken by the cries of a woman in the framework of a temple, both victims to time.
"Huh," Quinny said, "So she still got put on Agri."
Mireau looked at them quizzically, before they let out a sharp wheeze and fell to the floor.
"And Doctor Lychee setting up a self destruct is predictable, but using it to kill all of the Saiyans even after the Tree of Might's roots are stretched out over the planet?" Quinny shook her head. "Bigger bastard than father ever told me about." She looked at the computer. "At least you already know the password. Best of friends, only friends. I'm sure you'll figure it out, I can barely even read this.""
He felt his insides burn as she tapped on the side of the computer screen.
"It's quaint. The first time around you died fighting Nappa, but I guess regardless you still died today." She walked over to him and crouched down, resting her chin on her fist as she looked at him. "Yes, it's like the timeline is fighting against change at every opportunity, but my corrections are already locked in. I'll just have to jump ahead to check on them."
"Time travel?" Mireau said as his skin rippled. "That shouldn't … That isn't possible."
Quinny shrugged and. "No, it's just something beyond you and Doctor Lychee's abilities. Shockingly, it took a person exists more annoying than the both of you to make it. But I suppose a terminally ill person knowing I'm a time traveler doesn't change much, now does it?"
Mireau crawled towards them and grabbed onto their boot. His vision got darker with each second, but he saw something in the youth. Unbridled arrogance.
"I'll admit," Quinny said, "I was a little scared when I saw those scouters of yours, but turns out nobody ever really figures out reading suppressed power levels.
"You really thought my story, a Tuffle experiment allying with Cooler to finish off the last of the Saiyans was believable? I guess utter desperation will do that to a people." She laughed, then composed herself. "It was a bit touch and go for a while there, wasn't expecting Broly to get put into that tree, but I guess a few surprises stave off the boredom, and it seems his death is locked in too." Barry reached into a pouch on her suit, and pulled out two syringes filled with a blue liquid. "How about we arrange a deal? I save your life, you save the timeline, and I get the hell out of here." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Though I guess there isn't much to worry about, a positive end is basically promised to us, and I'll be leaving at the first opportunity"
The syringes were right in front of him. She was the only help he had, the only option for him to rely on, and they both knew it was exactly how she had planned it.
He had no trust for her, but faith for a better future, and that the arrogant were always put in their place with due time.
Raditz's eyes shot open and he woke laying on his back. The breeze was gentle and the Tree of Might was gone.
He wasn't dead. Surviving was all he had hoped for when Kakarot told him his plan. He had arrived on time, he'd done what he was asked, and he hadn't died. Maybe that was all he was meant to do.
He sat up and realized something was off, he had five fingers on each hand. Two of them weren't his, but he had all of them. His two thumbs may lay somewhere on the battlefield, probably unsalvageable from damage they had taken over the course of the battle, but the two metallic blue thumbs that were attached to his hand worked fine.
The thumbs ached where they latched onto his wound, but the attachment was clean. The metal looked as if it had fused into his flesh perfectly, the seam between his skin and the metal was as clean as if his original thumbs had been sewn on. The stitching wasn't the red or pink that he would've associated with it though, it was a matching pale blue of his thumbs.
"You're awake," a weak and familiar voice said from behind him. "Don't move too fast, you're still in shock."
Raditz stood up and turned around. Lightheaded, stumbled to his side, but he regained his balance before he could meet the ground. He had done enough falling for one day.
Raditz saw two circles of shoveled dunes of dirt, each dune being spaced an exact equidistant from one another. Within one of the circles was nothing, in the other was Nappa's corpse. His head was covered by a black hood, sparing Raditz from seeing what Nappa looked like in his final moments.
Next to the two circles was the old man with a shovel in his hand. Kakarot, Vegeta, Broly, and a burned body were on the ground next to him, organized into one row.
"Mireau," Raditz said as the Tuffle shoveled the last dune to complete the second circle, "what are you doing?"
Mireau looked at the filled grave for a moment, then looked at Raditz with a tired expression. "Burying the past. An ancient funeral custom among Burgens. I'm the last of them, so I may as well do it one last time."
Raditz looked at Nappa's boots. The battle was over, and now a numbness set in.
"He died as he lived, in a blood soaked frenzy of violence ... but that's an oversimplification." The tired look remained on his face. "He killed millions of Tuffles and I spent my entire life to kill him, and here we are. One man on top of an other's grave and there are still millions of identical ones behind us."
Raditz didn't know how he felt, he couldn't feel much of anything. Everything had gone according to plan, he had lived.
Mireau tapped the metal of the shovel and it melded into its complimentary shape. The Tuffle held the scythe over Vegeta's head. "Do you have any last words to say to your prince?"
There wasn't any way to stop him. There was no ki left to raise and he barely had enough energy to stand up and stay awake. "Why are you gonna kill him?"
Mireau held his scythe's blade to Vegeta's neck for a second longer, then moved it to his side. "What?"
"You don't sound like you enjoyed Nappa's death, but you told me you had to kill him. You weren't in a rush to kill anybody else. Why him? Why now?"
"Hm." The Tuffle took a skeletal finger to his lips and his tired expression changed to one of piqued curiousity. "Are you not going to ask about why your own condition?"
He shrugged his shoulders as much as they would let him. "Its not causing me anymore pain than anything else, so I can worry about it later."
Mireau nodded, then gripped his scythe tightly as his legs shook. "I'm killing him to end the cycle. His father and his army wanted to kill all Tuffles, your father let my family go when he didn't need to. End bad legacies, continue good ones. That's all the good a person can hope to do."
As Raditz listened to him talk, he realized there was something wrong with the sky above them. It looked like ship debris was blotting out the sky, but then he pieced together what it was, chunks of the tree were floating around the atmosphere.
There was a clear visual that something had happened on the planet, which meant the Ginyu ship would be coming here soon, and kill them regardless of what he even did here.
With this newfound finality on his life, Raditz replied, "You don't believe that."
"I don't?"
"No, I know you don't. If you did then Broly would be dead, but he's here, safe and sound."
"Your point being?"
"Broly's legacy is killing too. His father was a murderer, a general just like Nappa, but he gets to live?"
"Our data didn't suggest that Broly was a killer. He was just like us, a low class that happened to be in a tough situation."
Raditz made a wry smirk. "Alright. There it is, that's it. You can go now."
Mireau's smile was genuine. "You are much more of a philosopher than I remember your father being."
"You guys were steps ahead of us for this entire mission so you obviously knew a lot about us. Some point, somehow, some way, it sounds like you learned too much and changed your mind. Nappa is dead, the closest living thing to your oldest enemy, and you don't even sound remotely excited? That's because he changed over decades and you hate it.
I could never imagine Nappa being a general or leading armies, he's a bodyguard, he took us to buffet competitions, taught us how to plant a saibaman, how to forage for food." He tried not to look at the corpse. "The Great General Nappa died years ago, you killed an oaf who loved talking about how great things used to be, and how great he thought we could be."
"I helped kill someone who never paid for this crime."
"And did doing it bring everyone you knew back?" He looked at Nappa's corpse and knew that for all the times the differences they had, their legacy was the same. On any of the thousands of planets they had visited, if Raditz had died, his killers would ask the same as they stood over his own corpse.
Mireau observed him. Raditz had become a master at faking tears to ensure his survival, but these weren't anything of the sort. He rubbed them away before they could fall, and felt the cold metal of his new thumb against his cheek.
"Some victories are so hollow," Mireau said, "that you begin to wonder if they're worth what you lost."
Raditz didn't look away from Nappa. "Right." He looked at what remained of his family. "I don't want to win or lose. I just want to go."
"And Vegeta would be the first one to stop you. You leave him behind, the Ginyu's find three corpses. With enough time laying low, everyone would believe that you, Kakarot, and Broly had been blasted away during the battle with Turles."
He looked at Kakarot, then back to Vegeta.
"Prince," Mireau said, "do you think he would do the same for you?"
"That's the second time you've called me that," Raditz said, "Why do you keep doing that?"
"Because it is the role you deserve, it's the one that will be handed down to you in seconds. You will be the Saiyan with the most seniority and you're the one with the best mind. We've watched everything your team has done, heard everything they have done. A warrior who hates fighting is the one who should lead. Vegeta is a man bent on destruction to sate his pride, it's the same trap that I and Dr. Lychee fell into. You've seen the power he possesses, his survival will bring only misery to the galaxy, if he survives at all."
For the first time, he truly looked at Vegeta. Broly looked fine enough, Kakarot's damage was something he'd seen firsthand, but he'd only sensed Vegeta's otherworldly power. It was something he couldn't pinpoint exactly, but something was wrong with him.
"He's crippled," Mireau said, "Turles did enough damage to his lower spine that it would be a miracle if he ever walked again."
"But his strength," Raditz said, "We need his strength to survive. I felt it, that had to have been the Legendary Super Saiyan!"
"You don't need anything! You are a smart man, you will find a way without him." Mireau's grasp on his scythe grew firmer as his frustration rose. "I'm dying, my colleague is marching into obscurity, the Great General Nappa lies dead. Let me finish this, we have to move forward."
Raditz stepped forward, one confident step after another, until he stood with Mireau and Vegeta. He'd already come within an inch of death half a dozen times today, if this was the last time he would do it, then so be it. "If you really believed that, you wouldn't be asking me if it was okay to kill him."
Mireau's face was unreadable.
"Nappa is already dead and I know he died protecting Vegeta. I'm not about to have two of us die over this planet."
"He thinks of you as expendable trash, and you would do this for him? You'd be his caretaker until the end of his days?"
"He's my brother." The words were new to him and odd to hear out loud, but they were true all the same. "He's just like Kakarot. They both do whatever the hell they want and are arrogant beyond belief, but I'm not going to stand here and watch them die."
He looked the holder of their deaths in his eyes and waited for him to blink.
A trickle of blood ran past Mireau's lips as he smiled. "The bloody thirsty General Nappa was starting to become a loving parent, you're starting to become a brave man like your father. I'll trust your judgment that there's hope for Vegeta as well."
Mireau moved the blade of the scythe from Vegeta's neck and resumed using it as a walking stick.
"Take it," Mireau said as he leaned forward on the scythe.
Raditz put his hand on it. He could still feel the Tuffle's ki falling, and when they sat down in the grave next to Nappa's, he knew that would be the last time they got up.
"You should go to Yarth," Mireau said, "Its been hundreds of years since my people moved there. Most of our people assimilated to where they landed or were conquered, but small pockets of true believers exist on all of them. Yarth was one of the first clusters to split off from Plant, you may find safety there."
Raditz felt the scythe in his hands, it was far lighter than he felt comfortable with it being. "So you know we won't use our pods."
Mireau shook his head. "Not unless you want to secure your deaths. Even with the nanites working on your body, you'll probably only have the time to send off one pod after dismantling all of its tracking features. I stopped the base from destroying all of you earlier, now I've set it to explode the next time the teleporter is used, it's the safest way off of this planet."
"Nanites?" Raditz asked.
"Your new thumbs. I put ones for regeneration in you and your brother. You'll notice your ki and your strength have already begun to come back, but I only gave enough for your brother to stop his death. Scars, cuts, burns, those are small enough to heal as if they were normal, but your thumbs will remain as they are. Getting body parts completely blown off is something you replace, not regenerate." He reached inside of his robe and pulled a syringe from its pocket. Inside of it was a sliver of blue liquid. "Self-replicating once it meets a bloodstream, one of the pinnacles of Tuffle Technology. Most of it had to be used on you to get you standing, but what remains is more than enough to move Vegeta."
Raditz took the syringe, it would only be a matter of time until one of them needed it. "You didn't use it on yourself?"
"What I have can't be cured." He looked at his hands, they had become gnarled with scales as he sat. "I was the first Tuffle to undergo cross genetics. Some thought it would win us the war, but the Day of the Apes came first. I have a bit of every creature from our planet in me, was always more proud to be an archive than a weapon." His hands bent and contorted, cracked and sizzled, but he was silent as he watched them become coated in gills and a viscous fluid. "Without moderation and curation, I suppose all archives break down at a certain point."
The window to flee without being caught shrank with each second. He wanted to be angrier at the man who helped kill Nappa, but he felt only regret when he looked at him. He had let Mireau go, he had failed to kill Turles, he had run from every real fight he ever could. The blood may as well have been on both of their hands.
"Goodbye, Mireau."
Mireau held out a blood soaked rag from his pocket, Nappa's makeshift eyepatch. "Goodbye, Prince Raditz."
Raditz took it looked at his team. He picked up his brother, Kakarot, and to ignore the words coming out of his mouth, but his mumbles soon turned too coherent to ignore.
"Prekku." Kakarot's said, "When do I get to do the Prekku?"
"It's over, Kakarot." Raditz hoisted him over his shoulder and bent down to get Broly, but Kakarot firmly grabbed him by the hem of his jumpsuit.
"No, it's not." His voice was pained, his eyes only cracked open, but were filled with determination. "Wake him up so we can fight, we gotta settle this. I know he can still fight."
Raditz looked at the unconscious Vegeta. "Mireau, what'll happen if I put the syringe into Vegeta?"
"He'll live," Mireau said as his head slumped forward and his hands rested on his knees. "But there's not enough in there to repair the damage he's taken. Those nanites can do a lot, but it would take more than what's in the syringe to repair his entire spinal column. Any amount will make sure he doesn't die on the way to the teleporter, but he needs to go to an actual hospital. Give his body its time to properly heal."
Kakarot tugged on him again and Raditz's anger rose.
"Nappa is dead," Raditz said, "there's not going to be anymore fighting today."
Kakarot looked at him with utter confusion. "Well of course Nappa is dead, what does that have to do with anything?"
Instead of dropping his brother onto the ground like his first instincts told him to, Raditz did something much worse. He began to craft a plan, one he remembered having over many nights of his life, sometimes out of frustration, other times out of jealousy, but it was never with the pure unabashed fury that he possessed right now.
Raditz placed Kakarot down, jabbed half of what was in the syringe into Turles, and then put the other half into Vegeta. Without saying a word or waiting to see how they would respond, he out Turles over his other shoulder, and flew to the only place the two of them belonged.
The five Saiyan pod's were the luckiest objects on the planet. Sure they had rolled around some, gotten dirt caked onto them, but they rested together with only destruction around them.
Kakarot's pod had rolled during the earthquakes and was face down in the dirt, but with one kick of Raditz's boot, it was put to its proper position. He grabbed the opening latch, jerked it open, and tossed Turles inside of it.
Turles didn't move as he hit the pod's cushion. He was breathing, and that was all Raditz needed.
He pressed his finger on Turles's burnt skin and the soldier screamed awake. If he was conscious, he could listen, and Raditz hoped that he also understood. He repeated the plan to him, and with each one of Turles's agonized breathes, he could see the burned man breaking down. Some part of him knew he spoke the truth.
Raditz didn't expect him to have the strength to respond. He only left him with one piece of advice to sit with before he closed the hatch."Remember what I told you. Do anything other than that, and you'll wish I had let you die."
One gamble was completed, only one left to go. He walked over to his own pod, and looked down on Kakarot. He had passed out on the journey over, and that would make everything easier for the both of them.
He ripped one of the pod's panel open, tore out the wires from the ship's tracking component, ripped the piece out with a firm yank, and threw the device and its wires into the dirt. After he slapped the panel back into place, he rolled up the sleeve of his jumpsuit, and looked at his armband. It was the last thing he had left of his father, and now it would be the last thing Kakarot had left of both of them. He pulled it off of his arm, and placed it in his brother's lap.
Raditz leaned into the pod and pulled down its navigational screen, it powered on, and he made the taps he had thought about for years. Set location, confirm location, lock navigation until destination is reached, launch when the door closed. That was all it took to seal in his brother's fate.
He thought about waking his brother, but the choice was made for him as Kakarot forced himself awake again, groaning as he his eyes opened into slits.
"Hey bro," Kakarot said as he clenched his chest. "I'm … I'm really not feeling too hot. Maybe you were right, I could wait like a day or two for the Prekku."
"When did you know?" Raditz stood with his foot on the rim of the pod's door frame and held onto its sides.
"What?"
"When did you know that Nappa was going to die?" Any sense of love had left his voice. He looked at him as he was, the man who had almost killed them all.
He watched his brother's face change from the clownish demeanor to something unsettling, a face he rarely ever saw him put on, one built piece by piece by a killer's practicality. It wasn't malicious or hardhearted, it was just a matter of pure business. "The second both of you came out to fight Turles."
Raditz's grip tightened on the pod. "So why didn't you let me kill him?"
"When did you have a chance to kill him?"
"When I was holding him down! I had him dead to rights and you did nothing!"
"Because we would've had to kill you!" Kakarot tried to lean up, but the pain was too much. He fell back into his seat and took a breath. "Neither of us wanted you dead."
"Do you think Nappa wanted to die?"
"No, but he probably knew he was going to."
"Then you should've just let me make my damn choice! I'm the weakling here, I'm the one who fell behind, I have one moment to save all of us, and you let Nappa die!"
"I didn't let N-"
"Why didn't you kill Turles yourself, huh?! Sounded like you had all the opportunity in the world to, you won your fight pretty handily, but you let him go!"
"So I could fight him later! You know I needed to do that."
His hands wouldn't stop shaking as he let go of the pod. He crouched down and imagined it, wrapping his hands around his brother's throat, choking him until he could say something that made sense. "Why did you need to do that?"
"To get stronger."
"To let the man who you know wanted to kill us go. How many people are out there like that, Kakarot? How many people in this galaxy are training right now, hoping to kill everyone you know and care about?"
"However many missions we've been on since Thaw, give or take a couple hundred." He was unrepentant, staring back at him with what should've been mortal wounds, unconcerned about collecting more. "I tell them who we are, what squadron we're with, my name, anything they want to know to find us. All so that we can get stronger."
"Well some of us don't get stronger, Kakarot. Some of us get cut in half and left on ruined planets."
"That's the cost."
"Of?"
"Being able to do what you want. Do you really want to live for the rest of your life cowering? Wondering who's going to decide you deserve to die today?"
"I do that now because of you!"
"You do it because you never challenged yourself! You've always ran. You're my brother and I love you, but I need to get stronger for all of us to survive." Kakarot slumped down in his pod. A large chunk of the Tree of Might floated above them, covering them both in darkness as he glibly said. "Maybe I should train with Broly. I can make him strong enough."
He could no longer keep his hands away from Kakarot's throat. The muscles in his arms burned and his new thumbs twinged, but he ignored the pain as he strangled his brother.
"I ran so that we could live! All you needed to do was shut the hell up, keep your head down, and follow orders. That is all Frieza has ever wanted of us and it's all Vegeta will want too! If I'm trusting anybody to lead us, it sure as hell won't be you. It will be someone who can actually think more than one second into the future. Someone who won't throw our lives away for his own personal training!"
Kakarot flailed in the pod, slapping at Raditz's arms as he gasped for air, but he wasn't able to break his hold.
Finally, Raditz knew what it was to be the strong one, the one who was actually in control of the situation. His grip tightened until his knuckles went white, and he could feel it coming, the moment where he would shout at him again, where he would be right and get the final say. He pulled his brother closer, the debris above them passed, and he saw the fear in his brothers eyes.
Kakarot thought he would kill him, just like the millions he'd killed before him. And he knew Kakarot thought that because it would make him feel strong, because it was practical.
He let go of his brother's neck and looked at his hands. He didn't know who he was anymore.
As Kakarot coughed and wheezed, he looked at the imprints of his fingers around his throat. They were his fault, just like it all was.
They both knew the other sensed the power levels coming closer. The Ginyu Force had finally decided to find them, and Raditz had to make sure they never would.
"Raditz-"
"I'm doing what should've always happened to you, Kakarot. We're going to Yarth, and I'm sending you to Earth. Your journey should take two years. I don't know how far apart the two planets are from each other, and frankly it isn't important right now. Kill the people there, subjugate them, I don't care – but you need to change. Who you are right now will get all of us killed. I'm not about to spend the rest of my life hoping that you haven't inspired someone to kill you, or me, or all of us over your obsession to get stronger."
"Raditz—"
"I remembered the coordinates to Earth from your pod's log and wiped it. Turles won't be able to find you, none of the Colds will. You'll be all on your own. We'll come to get you once the Empire is established." He grabbed his brother's hand and held them in his own as he looked him in the eyes. "Do not try to find us."
"Raditz, you know that's the reason I was able to give you some of my ki, right? How you were able to come in and get the save," Kakarot said. "I was finally able to be like you for once. I knew what it was like to be afraid, I was afraid of losing you guys."
Raditz gripped his brother's hands firmly one last time, then let them go. "I'll see you soon, Kakarot."
"But I don't want to go." Kakarot tried to get out, but Raditz pushed him back and closed the pod door leaving him to press his face and hands against the glass as his pod rose into the sky. "Raditz! We can do this together. I'm sorry!"
Raditz turned his back on him and went to the other pod. After tapping it on its side, it rose into the sky beside him.
Kakarot saw what remained of Turles's burnt body for the first time. His own reflection in his pod's dark red glass perfectly overlaid his rival. Just as quickly as the connection had formed, the two pods shot away from one another, and Kakarot looked for his brother.
He saw Raditz run away and pressed his fingers against the glass, crying out as for something he couldn't change. "Raditz! I didn't mean to make you mad, I was just playing around!"
His pod rose through the clouds and his brother became impossible to see, he could only feel his ki, bursting for one moment then going as low as it could the next. He was dashing away and cutting off his ki so that no scouter could pick it up, just like River had taught them.
An automated voice played from within the pod, "A long journey has been initiated. Entering hibernation sleep."
His cries didn't stop as he rose past the debris circling the planet, or when he entered the void of space. They only trailed off as the pod's air grew thick and he drifted to sleep. "We could do it together," Kakarot murmured as he gripped the cloth Raditz had left him. "I shouldn't have lied to all of you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
It was the longest travel Kakarot had experienced in his life. For two years he slept, and for two years he dreamt. Often he would dream of his brothers and Nappa. They were always together, whether it be feasting, battling, or sitting and enjoying the moments after. When he was with them there was never a nightmare.
Only when he felt the death beam charge on his fingers, the horns form on his head, and the laughter of Frieza leave his mouth did he jolt awake. The thick air in his pod would gas him to sleep immediately and the cycle would begin anew, ruining one dream after another until he reached his destination.
Gas exited out of the pod's exhaust ports as blazed through the sky. The pod crashed into a snow covered field and Kakarot sat awake, watching the snowflakes land on the glass and melt of his brother's pod. Without a scouter to give him any information, he made two guesses: It was Age 758, and if he didn't find somewhere or something warm he'd be worrying about frostbite before the night was over.
He tied their Raditz's cloth around his arm, looked down at his damaged armor, and groaned at his wounds. Hibernation wasn't the same as healing. The pod had only preserved him, his wounds from Throhbaq had only gotten good enough to move around with during his sleep. The pods were designed to keep them alive so that they could get to the next healing chamber, to return to Frieza. Worse than still feeling the pain of the aching wounds were the memories they brought back.
With one push the pod's door opened and he forced himself out of its warmth into the bitter cold, then closed it behind himself to make sure no snow would get in to ruin it.
The winds of the blizzard blew heavy, and Kakarot took in a deep breath as he stood still. He grabbed a clump of snow and slid it under his armor, it felt good against his aching chest. It didn't numb it completely, but it did help to ignore the pain.
His brother would be here soon, and he needed to get stronger. He sent him away because he wasn't strong enough. He needed the type of power that stopped his brother from ever being afraid again.
He sensed only power levels in the single digits and let out a groan of frustration, the planet was full of nothing but weaklings.
A power level flared itself for one second, then dispersed, and his agony turned into anticipation as the hairs on his neck rose. They made people that strong on this planet?
Kakarot rose his ki as high as he could, wincing as he reached only a tenth of his strength, but enough to blow the snow around him before he turned his power back down. His opponent raised their ki to match his exactly, then disappeared again.
An Earthling who could not only sense ki, but was stronger than he was at his best?
Kakarot looked in their direction, high off into the dark sky, and smiled. "Alright, Earth, that's what I'm talkin' about!" Kakarot screamed to the heavens. "Let's have some fun!"
