Chapter 2. I don't have time for that

Goten shot me a terrified look. "We have to get out of here."

Maybe, but I was way too curious to leave. These were Saiyajins! I ignored the frantic shake of the head my best friend gave me as I got to my feet and stepped out from behind the collapsed wall. The captain beckoned me over with her one gloved hand, impatience clear on her disfigured, menacing face while she tugged on the other one and balled her white-clad fingers into a foreboding fist. I obeyed cautiously, a very reluctant Goten on my heels.

"Raise your ki to warn your dad." I whispered furtively over my shoulder.

Goten gave a nearly invisible nod to this and I felt his energy flare up with my own.

The captain drew up her scarred brow, gave us both a sweeping look, then put her gloved hands on her hips and demanded in that rough, raw voice: "Tell me where we are."

I froze in front of her, making sure to stay just out of her reach. Even if she was the shortest of the three warriors, standing no taller than the chest of the male Saiyajin that looked like Goku and merely reaching the abdomen of the rangy one with the mohawk, the men towering behind her two pillars of muscle, she was unmistakably the most powerful of the lot, and clearly also the one in charge.

"This is Earth, ma'am." I answered bravely and with the politeness my mom had taught me, yet I lost my courage at the piercing, yellowish eyes that pinned me in place. It were predatory eyes, like those of a stalking lion, and the intensity in them made me feel like she had chosen me for her next meal. I dropped my gaze to the floor. Ridiculous – and mortifying – as it was, what caught me in one of my inescapable mind-loops was the realisation that I had seen this woman naked, had looked far longer than I was supposed to for that unknown thing that made me feel sick and nice all at once. Heat raced up my cheeks like a hot, guilty admission of my misdeed.

At that moment, Goten's dad popped up out of nowhere and took the attention away from me. The three Saiyajins slipped into a fighting stance within the blink of an eye, snarling their disbelief at the man that had come into being out of thin air inside the room.

"Hiya boys. I felt your ki spike. Everything okay here?" Goku asked in his usual blithe manner. There was rice and grease on his face and he was still enthusiastically chewing on something. That wasn't unexpected. Next to sparring, eating was his favourite pastime. He put a hand to Goten's head and smiled widely at me. Then his gaze met the three dumbstruck Saiyajins and he gave a genial wave. "Hi there."

"Blind me, Turles, you and him look like two cheeks on the same arse." the tall Saiyajin with the mohawk said.

Goku's look-a-like sized Goku up, then shot his companion a grin and said in a booming voice: "He is my brother Kakarot."

"Goku." my best friend's dad corrected him kindly. "My name is Goku."

There sounded a nearly inaudible thud of boots touching down in the corridor behind us and I looked over to see my dad enter the room with his arms folded and the usual unaffected expression on his face. It did not give way either at the sight of the three Saiyajins or that extraordinary structure standing in the middle of the room. He was dressed almost exactly like the three Saiyajins. That he had arrived here so soon after Goku, proved that he had taken my signal seriously and used top speed to come to my aid.

"Hi Vegeta." Goku said happily.

My dad ignored this and demanded off the bat: "Explain to me what gives you the nerve to disturb me during training, boy."

No, my dad never was very appreciative of me interrupting his daily – and daylong – exercise routine. He halted beside and just a bit ahead of me, the position a calculated one even if it didn't look deliberate. The shadow he cast over me simultaneously made me feel guarded and dwarfed. It wasn't just him calling me boy pointing out what a long way I had to go before I could measure myself with him. If the female Saiyajin had a presence, then my dad was omnipresent. Everything about him breathed martial excellence. He had the bearing and mentality of a winner and as his son, my whole life was dedicated to making him proud. I thus swallowed the dad I wanted to throw out in relief for him coming here to keep me safe, knowing how much he hated the term. I had argued about that with him only one time. When I told him that everybody I knew called their fathers dad or daddy and no one was complaining, mine had asked me whether he had dadded me, to which I said that that wasn't even a word and he had held out his hands as if this proved his point. He had fathered me, he agreed to my comment, from his loins, and that made him my father. I had adhered, of course. I wasn't going to quibble about semantics with my father. He had little patience with my need to call things into question and I was disinclined to push his buttons.

"They are Saiyajins." I said instead and rather obviously while pointing out the strangers across from us.

My dad had assessed the whole situation, the three Saiyajins included, within about a second, found no challenge, let alone a threat, and issued a hardly animated: "So they are."

The captain was looking at him very hard in return. She took a step towards him with a rough, accusatory: "You!"

I stared up at my dad, wondering if he might know her, but if this was so, his expression gave no indication of it. He just stood there, apparently waiting for something.

"The suns blind my bleeding eyes." the captain muttered and she cast a disgusted look at the structure behind her.

The column tirelessly rotated its disks, unhampered by the predatory eyes that glared the promise of infinite suffering into them. Her men weren't quite that brave and expressly avoided meeting her gaze, theirs aimed ahead at nothing. When she looked at my dad again, he seemed more inanimate than the structure.

"It is you." she said. Seemingly battling a sudden chuckle, she took a steadying breath, then threw her head back and let out a spell of loud, almost deranged laughter. "Oh, the fucking ironies of fate! I vowed that I would not rest until I completed the task I was sent out to do. Turns out we had to be put to rest to get it done. Take heart, you big bleeders. Here is our lost prince, safe and sound and a man grown no less."

The two male Saiyajins stared at my dad dumbfounded and the one who looked like Goku turned to the structure mumbling an incredulous: "Fuck me sideways. How long have we been doing back-flips in limbo?"

Then, as if remembering themselves, the men both went down on one knee, put a fist across their chest and bowed their heads with a solemn: "My Prince."

And, as though their actions made her aware of herself again as well, their captain abandoned her wry sneer, gained a soldier's formality and saluted my dad promptly with the same gesture the men had made, on her knee and with her fist over her heart. She was very swift to get back up and issued: "Prince. Or should I say King? With your father's passing..."

My dad rejected her outright. "If you know of my father's passing, then you must also know what fate has befallen our people. To what end should I have declared myself king?"

The captain took him and his words in silently, that wryness shadowing her scarred features again. She did not allow it room and gave a firm nod. "Well met then, Prince Vegeta."

My dad ignored the recognition he was shown, though I expected it must please him. I couldn't count the many times I had heard him grumble about the lack of respect he was given by what he called those bleeding Earthlings.

The captain looked back at the men still sitting silently on their knee behind her with a fist across their chest, then saw fit to give my dad an impatient glare to which he seemed to remember something as well. With a clipped upward motion of his hand, he signalled that they should rise. The men did and their captain stepped forward to brusquely bring up her bent arm in my dad's direction. He considered it a moment, then reached out and clasped his hand to her forearm. She did the same to his and they shook curtly, making me understand that it was a variation on a handshake. Saiyajins apparently shook arms instead of hands in greeting.

"That mark you bear." my dad said as he cut the captain loose and folded his arms to take on his usual pose. "You belonged to my father."

"I did." she confirmed, her gloved finger seemingly reflexively coming up to touch that flamelike mark under her left eye.

It wasn't a fashion statement after all. I couldn't guess what it might mean that she had belonged to the father my dad never spoke of. That was a subject I truly dared not touch on because it got him in a mood so dark, it scared the wits out of me. A king he had been, this granddad – grandfather – I knew nothing about. King to a people that were now extinct apart from the few standing in these underground ruins with me.

The captain seemed irked somehow and put forth an adamant: "That is, before my reinstatement in the royal guard. Your father himself relieved me of that position. The mark is no more than a keepsake."

My dad paid no mind to the apparent gravity in her words. He gave her whole appearance a fleeting look and demanded: "What is your name?"

"Captain Akane of the Marauder S4." she announced, righting her back further as if to make her words and herself count. Then she indicated the two men at her back and introduced: "This is my commander Turles and lieutenant Ringo."

My dad absorbed this blank-faced, but that changed when his gaze shifted to Goku beside him and he granted my best friend's father the contemptuous look that always made me want to cringe. "We have seen how welcoming you are to lost brothers." he said, his voice dripping with the sardonicism he was so well known and disliked for. "Perhaps you could keep this one alive. We are so few now."

The remark visibly stung – like my dad had doubtlessly meant it to – and Goku gained a regretful expression as he took in the male Saiyajin that stood across from him like his mirror image. The only things setting the two of them apart, were Turles' darker skin and a fierceness in his face that Goku's kind features lacked.

"I am sorry I had to… do that…" Goku stood firmer and declared: "Raditz threatened my son. I had to protect him."

Turles seemed to bother little about the brother slain, nor did he look to be concerned with holding the man who was responsible for it accountable. "My brother was blinkered, and dead to me long before you went and done him in. The day he enlisted, he became a heap of ashes in the making. Stupid cunt took up the notion that there was more glory to be gained climbing rank and file on the oppressor's side." Turles' smile was rueful despite the harsh judgment. "As the eldest, bringing him to justice should have fallen to me. You did me a kindness, little brother. I would not have had the stomach for such."

"I have no stomach for such either." Goku echoed. The wording sounded misplaced coming from his mouth. It made him look silly. He was childlike even in his petulance when he opposed the suggestion that he had gladly done his brother's dirty work. "That is not the way I am."

"Leave it behind. Raditz dug his own trench." Turles said. He looked at Goten and winked. "I am no threat to you or your son."

Goten positively beamed up at the man and apt as he was to voice whatever insights he might gain, he said: "You are my uncle."

"Nuncle." Turles agreed in his own vernacular. It wasn't entirely unfamiliar to my ears since my father spoke much in the same fashion and it was all universal tongue, though the Saiyajins spoke it in much harsher tones and peppered their sentences with curious words. "A strong boy you have here, Kakarot. It would have made father proud."

"I really do prefer Goku." Goku said, his benevolence returning to him at the unknown brother's declaration of peace.

"Whatever, Goku." Turles dismissed that. His smile widened so that he was now the perfect reflection of the genial Goku, except for the tiny gap in his big front teeth. "That was a right neat technique you used to get here. Tell me, where did you pick that up?"

His captain was apparently of the opinion that the two brothers had been given enough room to air old hurts and reach agreement over it. Her gaze had not left my dad once throughout the exchange and it did not do so now that she addressed her commander. "Hold the chinwag, Turles." she ordered before putting her hands on her hips and demanding: "Where is that sadistic cunt?"

"Cold is dead." my dad said.

There had come a change to his stance as well and I had no idea what that was. He was apt to be relentlessly clear in his communication, verbal and non-verbal and especially when it caused embarrassment on the receiving end. The only thing I could ever catch him holding back on was his anger and that only when it was directed at my mom. He was staring the captain down in return, but the exchange wasn't exactly hostile from his end. It was just intense, and aimed, and lasting longer than I had the patience for at the moment.

I broke in on the staring-match by stepping up to my dad's side and announcing smugly: "I killed him."

The captain's piercing eyes finally left my father and bore down on me, the weight of her glare almost palpable and making me lose courage fast. Her small mouth twisted into a sneer that threatened to turn my insides into water.

"Oh, I doubt that very much."

My dad swept me aside deftly with his leg, so successfully putting me back in my place and out of her reach. He didn't seem to mind my boasting though, because he said just as smug: "He did. He put an end to Frieza as well."

The captain was sneering at the both of us now and I realised that my dad had not removed me from her sight as much as he had gotten me out of his way. He almost seemed to relish the scourge of her glare.

"That is quite a claim. How in the name of Sweet Mother Victory, did a mere boy slay the two strongest fucking warriors in the universe?"

I took reassurance from my father's bravery and from the safety of my place behind his back, I said proudly: "I wasn't a boy then. It was future me. I travelled time. Cut them both down with one sweep of my sword."

Then my best friend ruined my moment by adding what I wanted to omit out of fear for the captain's wrath. I did not dare imagine what she would do to me if she learned that I caused her, her commander and her lieutenant to get buried down here my whole life without anyone knowing.

"He used the God Breaker to blow up this ship." Goten said.

There was no wrath. The captain assessed us all with her predatory eyes alternating between us, evidently weighing our words long and hard. She didn't believe us.

"But that means we are free." the tall man with the mohawk said in sudden realisation. He grabbed his captain's shoulder and repeated in a louder, excited voice: "Akane, we are free!"

"And we found our prince." Turles chimed in. He grinned at Goku. "And my brother."

"You feel free for a certainty, Ringo." the captain snapped. "I am still your captain."

She shook his hand from her shoulder with a very vicious snarl, obviously not as readily accepting of the story they were told and indeed, she eyed us all with such suspicion and hostility in her disfigured face that no one seemed willing to break the tense silence that followed. No one but my dad, that was.

"So, what is your plan?" he asked, thoroughly unimpressed with her and not bothering to hide it, but he gave recognition to the title she insisted on by adding: "Captain."

"Plan?" she echoed put out. Then she resumed as if stating something that was a given: "You were the plan, Prince. Your father sent us out a long time ago to find you. We are at your service."

I couldn't really comprehend the something that passed over my dad's ever unaffected face then. It was gone in a flash, but when he answered, it was very expressly: "I hardly think my father has any more use for your service. And I require it even less."

The captain looked to be grossly offended by that, but she wasn't given the chance to speak when Goku piped up: "You guys should stick around. I would like to get to know you better, Turles. You are my brother after all." He turned to my dad. "They could stay at the CC. You have loads of space there. I would take them home, but our house is too small to fit in three more people."

"I know you get thrown telling your arse from your elbow," my dad drawled. "but even you must grasp that there is no chance in hell the woman will agree to putting up three Saiyajins."

"Well, they can't sleep outside." Goku argued, bypassing the insult like he always did.

"We very well can." the captain told him and then she gave my dad a plain threatening look. "And we will."

"Don't be silly." Goku broke in on yet another staring-match, blithely waving the captain and her murderous glare away. "I bet Bulma wouldn't mind. She took you in, didn't she?" he pointed out to my dad with a simplicity that portrayed his childlike nature again.

It sounded legit to me so I pleaded: "Ah come on, father. Can they stay with us?"

"Yeah, come on, Vegeta." Goku said in the same manner. "It will be fun having these guys around. We could all train together."

"I am not asking the woman, Kakarot." my dad returned impatiently. "She will mind and I will never hear the end of it."

"I will ask her." Goku offered hopefully – and ahead of me – bargaining with my dad as if he was a kid begging for sweets.

"Enough." the captain demanded and I could see the two male Saiyajins prick up even if her command wasn't meant for them.

Nobody spoke. Goten was holding his breath, his gaze crossing mine. He looked ready to lose himself in a nervous fit of laughter and I felt the same well up in me. The captain was giving Goku that murderous look now. It moved him as little as it had moved my dad, but I knew that this was because Goku refused to give it attention in the same way he never let my dad's antagonism touch him. Goku was everybody's friend whether they liked it or not.

"I do not need you to plead with our prince on my behalf." the captain hissed up at Goku. The wry smile she regained, had a challenge to it that was meant for my dad, but aimed at the glove she started arranging snugger around her fingers while she put forth a cynical: "He has dismissed us and we will be honoured to sit on his doorstep until he does require our service."

"Father." I pressed, though carefully and through my clenched teeth. I wasn't even sure who's feathers I wasn't trying to ruffle here. My dad's or the captain's or both.

"Vegeta." Goku mimicked me again, but he did it openly and he added with conviction: "We have to help them out."

My dad scoffed, spun on his heel and marched out of the room into the blue, tube-lit corridor without another word.

I took this to mean that he agreed and apparently the captain did as well. She strode out right after him and signalled the male Saiyajins to follow. I grabbed Goten's arm to pull him along, overtook the captain at a run and went after my dad cheering: "Yay!"