The Hunt Begins! Dodoria the Terrible!
Kaiou was enjoying a peaceful and relaxing day on his little world. It was one of those rare days where he didn't miss when his planet was much larger and had a bigger racetrack. When he didn't wish he could go back in time and tell himself that the God of Destruction was a sore loser and a big baby. Kaiou sat in his lawnchair and stared out at the endless fields of yellow clouds as he prepared to enjoy a fine lunch of dim sum when he thought he might check in on the group that had headed to Namek. He had told them to go there, after all. He closed his eyes and stretched out his godly perceptions as his antennae dipped and flicked at the air.
It took him only a matter of moments to find the energy signatures of Son Suno, Son Gohan, and Krillin on the Planet Namek. They'd made the journey safely enough, it seemed. Before Kaiou had any time to further analyze their situation, a great and terrible power came screaming to the forefront of his mind and gave him a chill so fierce it seeped instantly into his bones.
"Oh no," Kaiou murmured softly before frantically reaching out with his consciousness to find Son Goku. He had to tell her. She had to know!
OoOoOoO
It had only been a few minutes but Goku was already getting accustomed to the times twenty gravity and was about to bump it up to times thirty when she heard a voice in her head.
'Goku!' Kaiou's thought screamed. Goku smiled as she stood in front of the gravity controls.
"Hey, Kaiou!" she said aloud. Something seemed to be bothering him, she noticed. "Is everything alright?"
'No,' Kaiou thought nervously, 'Everything is not alright! Are you headed for Namek?'
"Yup!" Goku told him. "I'm gonna train really hard 'cause I know Vegeta's gonna be there. If he's anything like me, getting beat up just made him stronger."
'Listen to me,' Kaiou told her, 'As soon as you find your friends, you grab them, leave Namek, and never, ever go back.'
"But Kaiou," Goku protested, "I know I can beat Vegeta if I train!" She had to make up for the way their fight had ended. She'd just been sitting around like a couch potato while everyone else finished the fight. That was okay, though. She'd just try that much harder!
'This has nothing to do with Vegeta,' Kaiou thought firmly, 'This is about Freeza!' That name sounded familiar to Goku for some reason. 'He is the single-most powerful being in the universe. He's hundreds of times stronger than Vegeta!'
Goku couldn't stop herself from grinning. That sounded like a great challenge! "Then I guess I'll just have to train really hard," she told Kaiou excitedly.
'NO!' Kaiou insisted. 'You can't beat him! No matter how hard you train, he will be beyond you! He wiped out the entire Saiyan race as easily as you wipe out a bag of peanuts!' Goku did like peanuts…
"But Kaiou," Goku said again, "If he killed my race, don't I have to fight him?" Not that Goku really cared about the Saiyans. If Raditz and Vegeta were anything to go by, they had all been a buncha jerks! But she couldn't just let Freeza get away with killing all those people.
'No,' Kaiou thought tersely, 'You're not listening. You can't beat him! No one can! There are exactly four beings in the universe powerful enough to stop Freeza and not a single one of them is going to help you!'
"That's good," Goku shot back, "Because I don't want any help! And I don't want to be told what I can't do! Now I've got to get back to training!" Goku summoned all her mental power and forcibly shoved Kaiou out of her mind. Then she turned her focus back to the controls and grinned. "So, a guy even stronger than Vegeta, huh?" She turned the dial up to fifty times gravity… and barely stopped herself from going face-first through the floor.
OoOoOoO
Kaiou sat in shock, sprawled across his lawn. He'd been sent tumbling back from the sheer physical force of Goku pushing him out of her mind and blocking him out. No one had ever done that to him before. Not in his millions of years of life! He wasn't even aware that someone could do that. It was like… hanging up on him!
"Of all the ungrateful…" he muttered as he dusted himself off and walked back to his chair. Kaiou let out a groan of dismay as he looked down at his dim sum scatter across the grass. Just fantastic. His lunch was ruined! He kicked it off his planet in a fit of frustration and watched as it sailed off to fall into the clouds before he stomped over into his lawnchair and sat down in a huff. He'd be seeing Goku again in less than a month, he just knew it. And when she got here, he was going to make her run laps for a century. He'd borrow those hundred-ton weights from South Kaiou. Maybe the guy would even give him back his lawnmower.
He probably wouldn't give him back his lawnmower.
OoOoOoO
Vegeta touched down on the outskirt of a Namekian village, the first one he'd seen so far that hadn't already been ransacked by Freeza's forces, and used the time it took him to walk to the village to try and force himself to look less fearsome. Which took some doing, as it went against literally every instinct he had cultivated in his life, which was to always look more fearsome. But he knew that the locals would be unwilling to hand over the Dragon Ball if he attempted to take it by force and, while he could easily just kill all of them, then none of them would tell him where the Dragon Ball was. They might have it hidden somewhere that he would never find it. Or worse, he'd destroy the damn thing in the process of looking.
Which would deprive Freeza of immortality, which was good. It would also deprive him of immortality, which was bad.
Vegeta sauntered into the village with a fake smile plastered almost painfully on his face and sought out the village elder. If rule of thumb had taught him anything in his twenty-odd years of travelling the cosmos, it was that on planets like this, the person in charge was often the oldest, fattest, wrinkliest bastard in eyeshot. He found such a bastard walking through what he could only assume was some kind of garden, talking to the other Namekians and using a cane to walk. Vegeta wondered what in the world they could even be growing since their species subsisted entirely on water.
"Excuse me," Vegeta began, forcing amicability into his voice as he felt the wary eyes of the villagers on him, "Might I trouble you for something?" The Elder eyed him suspiciously and leaned on his cane.
"What is it you want, outsider?" the Elder asked in a voice that sounded as old as he looked. Which was quite old. Vegeta kept that frozen smile on his face and held out his hand.
"I have travelled from afar to your… beautiful planet because I have heard legends of your Dragon Balls and what they are capable of. You see, my father was killed when I was a child. I will not lie, the loss has hardened me. If I could only see him again, I am sure that I might become a better person with that weight off my soul." The Elder stared at Vegeta for a long moment and holding the smile became physically painful.
"Very well," he said calmly as he wandered towards one of the alabaster huts. "Who am I to deny so noble a request?" He returned a short while later with the ball and Vegeta's expression of astonishment was the first genuine emotion he'd shown since he came to the village. It was enormous! The damn thing was bigger than his head! The Elder smiled and handed the Ball to Vegeta who smiled right back.
"You are very kind," Vegeta told him. "It is even more beautiful than I imagined. I simply cannot wait until I have the other six. I certainly hope that the other villages will be as amicable as you were." Then, without another word he casually chucked the Dragon Ball into the air and made a sweeping motion with his hand. Before any of the Namekians even had a chance to wonder what the gesture meant, their heads burst like over-ripened fruit. Vegeta smirked as the ball fell into his outstretched palm and let out a long, guttural sound. He was already starting to come around to this place.
OoOoOoO
The trio flew as quickly as they dared while suppressing their power levels to avoid detection as they followed the signal of the Dragon Radar to what they figured would be a Namekian village. They only hoped that the village hadn't been attacked yet by those Planet Trade Organization guys who'd attacked their ship.
"Hey," Krillin whispered nervously as they flew closer, "You guys feel that, right?" Gohan and Suno nodded wordlessly, apparently neither one trusting themselves to speak. The "that" which Krillin was referring to was the three large kis they were flying toward. All three were larger than Vegeta's when he'd attacked Earth and one power in particular was so monstrously large and implacably evil that, if they focused on it too long, they would curl up in a ball and just give up. The three of them dropped down onto a hill overlooking a village and crawled across the ground to peek over the edge of the hill down onto the village itself.
'Oh,' Suno thought sarcastically, 'Wonderful.' There were about a dozen more aliens in Saiyan armor of various shapes, sizes, and species pointing their weapons at a mixture of old, young, and fully grown Namekians. Not even counting the two other guys wearing Saiyan armor who had the two power levels they had sensed before; a skinny blue guy and a big pink guy. The big guy had one Dragon Ball and the skinny guy had two. The Balls had one, two, and seven stars. And they were gigantic!
'Holy crap!' Krillin thought in surprise. 'Those Dragon Balls are bigger than Gohan!' The skinny guy and the big guy stood at the sides of a small, horned, and seemingly-naked alien sitting in some kind of floating chair and talking to one of the Namekians. He was an older Namekian by the look of him, with another older Namekian beside him and two children hiding behind his legs. As luck would have it, the little guy had the terrifyingly huge power level.
'Really?' Suno thought suspiciously. 'That's what he looks like?'
'Hey!' Krillin thought defensively. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Shh!' Gohan thought with a glower before they could get into too big of a mental argument. The small pink man was the one doing the talking and he seemed to be switching languages every few sentences as the older Namekian he was talking to didn't respond. He was growing more agitated with every new language. Finally, he started to speak English.
OoOoOoO
Freeza let out an aggravated sigh and clenched his fists irritably. If it weren't for the bony protrusion surrounding his skull, there would have been a vein clearly throbbing with anger at his forehead.
"Now listen here, good sir," he said, forcing himself to stay calm and keeping up in the stylings of a gentleman. Even so, he grew more and more furious with every syllable, "I am Freeza the Divine. You have already frustrated me and wasted my time by forcing me to speak inferior languages, worst of all Galactic Basic. So you had better pray to whatever filthy slug god you believe in that you can understand me right now, or I will…" Freeza paused and cleared his throat and his voice was calm and measured when he spoke again. "Or things will get unpleasant for you."
"My name is Moori," the Elder Namekian said calmly despite the threat hanging over his head, "And I understand you. But I do not understand why you are here."
"It's obvious, isn't it?" Freeza asked rhetorically. "We are here for the Dragon Balls, my good man." He gestured to Zarbon and Dodoria, who hefted their Balls to show. "As you can see, we're already most of the way there. However, I do so sincerely hope that we can reach the transaction more amicably than the last four villages did."
Moori frowned as he let his arms drop to his sides and his hands spasmed for a moment, as if he were going to ball them into fists before he changed his mind. "What do you mean by that?" he asked. "What happened to the other villages?" Freeza lifted a hand to his mouth to cover his chuckles.
"Oh, I'm afraid it's a rather unpleasant business. I couldn't tell you." Then he turned to Zarbon with a smirk. "Zarbon, do tell the good man about the unpleasant business." Zarbon gave a chuckle of his own and a toss of his head to hang his green braid over one shoulder.
In a flash, he was gone, then he was beside the taller, leaner Namekian at Moori's side, hanging in the air. His leg flew out and smashed into the Namekian's neck. There was a horrible snap and the Namekian fell dead to the ground. Moori watched in horror as he tried to shield the two children, Dende and Cargo, with just his hands as another villager screamed in fury and fired a blast of ki from his palm at Zarbon. He tossed one of his Dragon Balls into the air and vanished again, the blast hitting one of Freeza's regular soldiers, who shrieked with the pain of death and whose scouter exploded before he collapsed to the ground a charred corpse. Freeza watched the Namekians search for Zarbon in a panic before he drolly pointed upwards. The Namekians looked up with terror in their eyes to see Zarbon high above with one hand overhead, deadly light radiating from his outstretched fingertips before he swung his hand down and blasted the attacking Namekian into oblivion. He landed at Freeza's side and held up his hand for the Dragon Ball to land in perfectly. The soldiers gave a cheer and Moori's face turned purple with rage.
"You would murder my people and our brothers in other villages," he snarled through gritted teeth, "And you expect me to hand you our Dragon Ball?"
"I most certainly do expect that," Freeza replied, "Otherwise, you will die. Really, isn't that a lot of trouble just for my eternal life?" Moori's eyes went wide with horror and his jowls shook with restrained rage at the idea of a creature so awful becoming immortal.
"You listen to me, you filth," he growled despite his terror. "You will never have our Dragon Ball! I would sooner die than see it in your hands!" Freeza rolled his eyes.
"How noble," he muttered sarcastically as he slowly raised one hand. "So your life isn't worth my immortality… but what about the children's, I wonder?" Cargo and Dende cried out in terror and huddled against Moori's legs.
"You… you would kill children?!" He asked in horror struck disbelief. Freeza only laughed at him.
"You could fill a planet with the children I've murdered," he replied. "Several, actually." Then he blinked after lingering on that thought for a moment. "Come to think of it…" he murmured and dropped his hand back into his chair to begin counting. If he assumed that an average planet could hold an average of five billion people… Only accounting for the people he had personally killed… If he factored for the percentage of the populations that were made up of children…
OoOoOoO
'Mom, Krillin,' Gohan thought, 'We have to do something!'
'What can we do, Gohan?' Krillin asked. 'You can sense those guys' ki! We're outmatched.'
'But…'
'He's right, Gohan,' Suno thought reluctantly. 'I know it's awful, but we just have to wait for them to leave.'
OoOoOoO
"Hey!" cried a voice from above that, frustratingly, tore Freeza out of his calculations. It was going to be bugging him all day and it would just be sitting at the back of his mind no matter what he did. He turned his eyes skyward to see a trio of Namekians that, judging by the relieved and delighted expressions on the villagers' faces, must have been some sort of champions or heroes. He tapped his scouter and stifled the urge to chuckle. If these were heroes, this was going to be hilarious.
As the Namekians landed, Freeza got a better look at them. They all had on the same frilly white collars that the rest of their species seemed to be required by law to wear. The tallest and most traditionally "heroic" looking wore a white cape and dark blue pants with a yellow belt. The second-tallest had on an orange vest and red pants and the shortest, stockiest, and jowliest of the three wore a billowing purple shirt and lavender pants. Normally, Freeza would commit all of these details to his superior eidetic memory, but they would all be dead in a minute or three, so it didn't matter.
"So it's true," the jowly Namekian said. "Some outsiders have been terrorizing our citizens and stealing the Dragon Balls!"
"You…" the caped Namekian growled as he and the other two looked at the dead Namekians with mounting righteous indignation. "We're going to make you pay for what you've done, you monsters!" Freeza laughed.
"Monsters?" he repeated mockingly. "I say, I believe that's the most polite insult I've had used against me in years." He laughed again before the mirth disappeared instantly. "Kill them." The soldiers charged forward and screamed with bloodlust, their arms transforming into cannons that filled the air with blaster fire. The Namekian heroes dashed easily through the blasters and dispatched the dozen Freeza shoulders with ease. Freeza blinked with mild curiosity as his men fell dead around him.
"That don't make no goldang sense," Dodoria muttered as he tapped at his scouter. Moori watched as they used the devices at their ears and he quickly pieced things together.
"Indeed," Zarbon agreed while he tapped his as well, "Their Power Levels don't seem nearly high enough to–" Moori was suddenly struck by inspiration and flew up into the air. He thrust his hands out and ten blasts fired out from his fingertips, precisely striking every scouter, on the living and the dead.
'If they cannot sense our life energy,' Moori thought, 'Then they cannot find the other Dragon Balls!' Dodoria dropped his Dragon Bal and rubbed at his face with growing fury before he launched himself up into the sky at Moori. The elder Namekian saw the beast rushing up towards him and prepared for death.
'No good goldang stupid green fuckin' bastard,' Dodoria thought with his hands outstretched, 'When Ah get mah hands on him Ah'm gonna–'
"Dodoria!" Freeza snapped in a scolding tone and the Kinglerian came to a dead stop in midair at his master's call. "Did I tell you to kill him?"
"N-no," Dodoria muttered before he hung his head in embarrassment and let his arms drop to his sides.
"If he dies, how will he learn the price for his defiance?" Freeza asked before jerking a thumb at the three Hero Namekians. "Kill them first so that he shall suffer!" Dodoria flew down eagerly at the promise of murder, landing in front of the three Namekians with a "BOOM!"
"You think you can take us on by yourself?" the Caped Namekian asked. "You're outnumbered, can't you see?" Dodoria chuckled.
"Only thing Ah see," he told them, "Is dead men." Freeza chuckled. Dodoria could be almost eloquent when he chose to be. The three Namekians charged at Dodoria. Then they were all dead, scattered across the village. It was over so fast that it seemed like time had almost skipped in that moment. Dodoria dusted off his hands and looked proud of himself as Moori landed in front of him in dumbfounded terror. What sort of monsters were these? How could they be so powerful?! "Mah boss'll be havin' that Dragon Ball now," Dodoria said. "If'n it ain't too much trouble. Ya did go and break our shit so Ah figure it's only fair." Moori growled wordlessly and Dodoria cracked his knuckles. "Y'know, Ah ain't killed a kid in almost a week. Startin' to forget how it feels. Sure would be a shame if Ah had to use them boys to refresh mah memory."
Moori's face paled and he dropped his head in defeat. "Very well," he said weakly. "I will give you the Dragon Ball. Just leave the children alone."
"Finally," Freeza said amicably, "You're listening to reason!" Moori disappeared into a hut and returned a moment later with the four-star Dragon Ball. He held it out with his head hung in shame and Freeza plucked it out of his hand with his psychokinesis and handed it off to Dodoria. "Just one more thing, my fine friend, and we'll leave you to… bury your dead or burn them at sea or eat them. Whatever it is you savages do." Moori seethed wordlessly as Freeza folded his hands in his lap. "You see, now that you've destroyed our scouters, it will be a shade more difficult to find the other three the villages. Would you be a friend and tell us where they are?"
Moori swallowed nervously and pushed down his fear. He would never do that. He had sullied his honor enough today by kneeling before this tyrant but he would never betray his people and send doom upon them.
"Children!" Moori shouted over his shoulder as he flung up his arms protectively, "Run!" Cargo and Dende broke into a mad dash while Freeza groaned and massaged his temples.
"Oh," he muttered ponderously, "So we're back to the 'I'll die first' rubbish, are we?" Then he shrugged. "Dodoria!" Dodoria grinned before he opened his mouth and a yellow beam of energy shot out of his mouth and whizzed past Moori's shoulder. Moori barely had time to turn his head and watch as Cargo was struck dead by the blast and fell into a crumpled heap. Dende came to a stop and looked down tearfully at his brother in terror.
"C-Cargo…" he whimpered. Moori let out a scream of grief and rage but Dodoria was already on him, his huge arms wrapped around Moori's neck.
'Porunga,' he thought solemnly, 'Protect our people.' Then Dodoria twisted his arms and Moori died with a horrifying snap of his neck. He let Moori's body drop to the ground and turned his attention on Dende with a malicious chuckle.
OoOoOoO
'I can't watch any more of this,' Suno thought as she started to move. 'We've got to do something!'
'Don't worry,' Krillin thought, 'I think I have a plan.'
Gohan was already gone.
OoOoOoO
Dodoria lifted one huge arm as he loomed over Dende who was frozen in fear but, before he could do anything, he was hit by something with the force of a space pod dropping out of orbit. The hit sent him careening through one of the Namekian huts while Freeza and Zarbon stared in shock at a small, pale-skinned, red-haired humanoid who floated down beside the little Namekian boy. Apparently he'd kicked Dodoria.
Dodoria groaned and pulled himself out of the destroyed hut, rubbing a hand against a crack in his shell.
"What in the hell're you, boy?" Dodoria asked in a mixture of amusement, curiosity, and anger.
"Someone who'll stand up to jerks like you that thinks murdering kids makes them tough!" the boy shot back. Freeza let out a single laugh of surprise. The boy certainly had guts. Guts that Dodoria was about to spill all over the grass but guts nonetheless.
Before Dodoria could rip the child limb from limb, however, two more of the strange humanoids- a short, bald one and a tall one with long, red hair- flew in from out of nowhere and uppercut Dodoria off his feet.
"Grab the kid!" the bald one said before he and the first one flew off. The tall one flew after them with the Namekian child bundled up in its arms. Dodoria grumbled as he picked himself up and rubbed at the back of his head. Somehow the attack from the two seemed to do less damage than an attack from the one. Curious.
"They're getting away, Dodoria," Freeza pointed out.
"Mmhmm," Dodoria muttered as he ran a claw along the crack in his shell with some concern.
"What do you think you should do about that?" he asked. Dodoria blinked stupidly. He did everything stupidly. "KILL THEM, YOU HALF-MEASURE OF A HALFWIT!" Freeza screamed. "Well, no," he corrected himself, "Kill two of them. Bring me back one for questioning. I don't trust any alien I don't own." Dodoria was still standing there. "NOW!" Dodoria flew off obediently and Freeza went back to his thinking. Starting with Planet Vegeta…