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No One Else	By : debbiechan Category: Dragon Ball Z > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1423 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own DragonballZ, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-No One Else
- 1
NO ONE ELSE
by debbiechan
Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ, although a little part of me now belongs to Raditz.
Warnings: Strong language, references to sexual abuse of a minor, murder, and yaoi (male/male sexual relations).
A/N: This fic continues the story I began in "Curse the Future." I fell in love with Raditz writing that one and couldn't let his character go.
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"Private log, day one, whatever fucking galactic year it is, fuck if I care."
Raditz let his finger linger on the switch for a moment. When he guessed that the sensitive microphone was recording nothing but his heavy panting, he flipped the switch off. He took a swig of bio-support from the small flask in his palm, muttered "fucking ditchwater," and flipped the switch back on.
"I've got a whole year before I get to that measly blue planet. May as well take a psychological inventory of my fucked-up self before going into sleep stasis."
Raditz laughed. The outburst seemed to steady his breathing, and when he spoke again, it was in a cavalier voice: "I've just taken off in a solo pod without Prince Vegeta's permission. I must be insane. I've defied Frieza's goons before, gotten kicked in the throat for as much, but I've never, ever gone and defied my prince's command. Vegeta told me flat out: 'Raditz, your plan is foolishness. If you pursue it, I will hunt you down and kill you.' His eyes were cold, like he really meant it this time�.
Raditz made a growling sound, deep in his throat. "I don't know how long we stared one another down. I can usually walk away, let the death threats and put-downs roll off my shoulders. He can be such a snotty little prick, but this time his look was a challenge--a real Saiyan thing. Not the usual 'Raditz, hold your tongue,' or 'Raditz, this assignment does not require your support.' Hell, he's been bossing me around since he was a kid. What am I talking about--he's still a kid in terms of Saiyan life spans. What is he--twenty-six? And because he's so scrawny he looks even younger. Royal runt! I'm ten years his senior and almost twice his height, but he's always made me feel puny and dumb�."
Raditz paused here, listened to his own breathing for a moment, then continued. "I cracked. No one can win a staring contest with Prince Vegeta. And I couldn't help it, but I actually bowed, very respectful, the way I was taught in his father's court years ago. I said it low and even: 'My prince�' Did it sound fake, like I was trying to please him? Was I? I don't even know. I'm so used to being fake for him--it's second nature. I do believe at that very moment I was bowing to my better judgement. I had no intention of disobeying him.
"Then he said: 'Kiss your own ass, Raditz,' and he turned his attention back to the bloody scraps in his lap."
Raditz made a fist, and the flask in his palm was crushed to dust. He recalled the way Vegeta's whole jaw sneered as the prince's teeth bit into that asteroid rat. Something about the sight of Vegeta at that moment had filled Raditz with a weird grief as well as rage--how could the prince have been so fucking full of himself while sitting on the muddy ground in a torn uniform? Like he was still the little boy in a high-backed chair at a palace banquet?
"The Prince of All Saiyans?" Raditz snorted. "His whole kingdom consists of me and Nappa--two palace guards still loyal after all these years--and yet he despises us.

He sat there eating his bone--our prince, once the most promising specimen of our race! I stayed quiet, but in my head I couldn't let my plan go. Vegeta answers like a common whore to Frieza, and nothing I can say will persuade him to challenge the lizard! Sitting there eating a bone!"
Raditz ran both hands through his wild black hair and shifted in his seat. He was used to sitting on his own mane, but these ships weren't custom-built for Saiyan heft. His thick thighs smashed against the sides of the pod. He would probably lose a bit of bodyweight during the year-long stasis, and the thought made him growl. If knee-length hair was one attribute he had over the bald Nappa, his formidable size was something he had on Vegeta. Most combatants took one look at the tall one with the intimidating, crazy-spiked hair and assumed Raditz was the leader. A few fireball-lit skirmishes later, though, and it was plain which Saiyan was truly the most powerful of the three.
Earlier that very day, after the planet had been purged of all sentients, Vegeta had taken a blast head-on from a weapons defense system Nappa hadn't fully disabled. The prince had survived that giant explosion with no more than a few burns and melted clothes. Raditz had silently marveled at such strength, and then later, when the Saiyans shot enough rats and birds for a meal, Raditz noticed his sovereign's thin muscular legs behind shreds of uniform. They were all starving on the bio-support Frieza provided them for long missions, but Vegeta--even though the scrawniest--was the most resilient.
"You can still see the royal stuff in him, though," Raditz continued, more softly. "His genes are in a whole other league. Me and Nappa--we lose teeth all the time biting into the crap we find on these worlds. The teeth grow back, but the prince--he never even loses any. He was supposed to be the greatest fucking Saiyan leader in millennia�."
Raditz winced at his last memory of Vegeta. The prince had shot him a look. Those black eyes had known Raditz was admiring him, and they hated Raditz for that. A bright red piece of meat was dangling from those strong white teeth, and then--
What exactly had happened then?
Vegeta had said it in the most deliberate way: "Raditz, even if your brother is alive, he's a third class weakling like yourself, and he couldn't even help us stomp out a campfire."

Raditz had felt ki crackling in his ears, and his vision had gone foggy the way it does before the transformation to Oozaru. In the absence of the moonlight necessary for that change, though, all a Saiyan feels is frenzy to kill. But he couldn't strike the prince--he couldn't. He heard shouting and realized too late it was own voice: "You! I can't believe you! If my plan is foolishness, then just sitting here as if Kakkarot doesn't exist is weakness. Do you care for your Saiyan heritage? DO YOU? Our people's strength was renown! Our planet would not have been destroyed if we'd only seen Frieza coming for it! Do you even know your own power? How can you call yourself our prince if you throw away this chance to reclaim your kingdom?"
It had all been a blur of rage after that. Raditz had felt himself stomping away. He had caught some conversation from his scouter as he jumped into the pod--Nappa yelling something about high treason and how it was his job to kill Raditz for the prince. And Vegeta's voice--how hard and malicious it was, even when he spoke softly!--saying "Save your strength, Nappa. He's flying to his own death. Whatever killed his brother on that insignificant planet will kill Raditz for us."

Then the prince shut off communications from his scouter. A final rejection. Raditz had felt the silence like a deathblow.
"I'm going to return with my brother," Raditz said quietly. The cramped interior of the spacepod absorbed the words. He spoke again, with more deliberate confidence: "My brother will give us the added Saiyan strength we need to take down Frieza. Maybe upon my return (and if Prince Vegeta doesn't kill me on sight!), I can convince him and Nappa that our kingdom is out there--that, like Kakkarot, there may be other Saiyans lost in the galaxy that can help their prince challenge Frieza.
"In any event, I have nowhere else to go but to that blue world. I've set the trajectory, and I'm staking my honor on this one. Five of my father's brats were shipped off-world in the years before our planet was blown up, and I saw the records--one died en route to his planet, one got eaten shortly after landfall, two came back to Vegetasei after completing their missions and blew up when that world did, and one�.there's one we just don't know about, but his pod transmitted a location for years until finally petering out. There's no evidence my little brother Kakkarot is dead; the pod would have registered a cargo bio-termination code."
Raditz's fingers pecked across the control panel. "The only reason I'm not dead right now is because Prince Vegeta stopped Nappa from frying me�Code twenty-two activated� Maybe there was something smart in that�Code twenty-three�Maybe the wily little bastard figured my ass was cooked anyway, so he was going to take the one chance in a million my foolish plan worked?�Code forty-eight�Why not sacrifice my treasonous third-class ass to some ghost of a hope that maybe�Code four� species: Saiyan; name: Raditz�Activate stasis�Ah, here comes the good stuff�."
The thin yellow gas that would gradually slow his bodily functions into a dreamless coma began to fill the pod. Raditz inhaled deeply. The first effects of these fumes were better than two mugs of Cerbean intoxicant.
***
"Was I really only sixteen when I came into his service?"
Watching vast starry space through the view-shield, Raditz felt like he had all the time in the world. And then all the time in the world began to fold itself into neat squares that fit inside the cramped pod. A memory here, an image there. Everywhere his drugged mind wandered, there was Vegeta's disapproving face--sometimes the face was a smug little boy's; other times, Raditz saw a man's hard eyes and slight, mocking smile.
Raditz tapped his scouter. Transmission to Vegeta still closed. He considered switching off the log. The purpose for his mission had been recorded; that was really all he had meant to enter into the machine. For some reason his arm did not feel like making the journey to turn off the switch.
"I got stared at good and hard the day I showed up at the palace. I swear the king himself did a double take."
Raditz could feel his lips shaping into a smile. Once the relaxants kicked in, it wasn't hard to steer one's mind into pleasant memories. Whatever odd thing time was doing under the drugs, it seemed to be loitering around the days right before Vegetasei was blasted into pea gravel. Raditz's proudest hour had been when he landed the coveted palace job. His army squad companions had teased him about not seeing real combat again, but any one of them would've jumped at the chance to be a royal guardsman. Army youth mythologized the palace, watched news-feed about the royal family like a sport, envied and copied everything about palace life.
"All the Southern Hemisphere army brats were torturing their hair into the royal style those days, but the king didn't know that. For all he knew I came by my hairline naturally and was a long-lost nephew or bastard son! Heh, I didn't go for that pointy-on-top-like-a-tree look myself, but I did fancy that M-shaped brow of the royal family. So I shaved it. Looked royal as hell. The guys in my squad, being pureblood Saiyan, wouldn't shave there because Saiyan hair doesn't grow back. They used these wretched wire things to yank their hair into stupid ponytails--just so more of their foreheads would show! Made them look half bald, not highborn�."
Raditz closed his eyes and tried to conjure the faces of his long-dead squad comrades. When the faces didn't materialize, he opened his eyes and continued his monologue.
"Because of my half-Dunajin mom--thank the gods and her for my awesome hair!--my hairline would grow back in a couple moons, but I never let it. I let the rest grow, though. It was a way to stand out--nice dark hair all the way to my knees. So imagine the looks I got when I walked down the palace halls with fancy hair and all my strength! Me, obviously a Saiyan with a fat brown tail wrapped around my waist, but bigger than almost all the other Saiyan guards! Raditz, son of Bardock, looking like some aristocrat�"
Raditz's smile began to fade. "Looking like some aristocrat but tramping along with eleven other guards--all of us like a row of dogs behind the little crown prince of Vegetasei."
Raditz looked at his physical stats on the control panel. Shouldn't he have fallen asleep already? No, the clock said only a few standard digits had passed. How strangely time moved under the gas.
"The prince was only six when I started work at the palace, but Nappa said the boy was stronger than all his bodyguards put together. All we had to do was stand around and look the part. Talk about a cushy job�.
"One perk the palace had over the army was access to a better sort of whore. I must've hit every brothel in the recreation wing my first night there. Korchian girls with that nice sleek fur all over, and those little reptilian ones who were real professionals--oh, and those Dunajin sisters who made a fuss over my long hair! I bedded more women that one week that I did my whole stint in the Saiyan purging squads!
"Never got around to my real goal of palace life, though. I was going to mate some high-class Saiyan there. I figured good looks like mine were bound to land me in some royal woman's bed. That was twenty years ago�. Now there are no more Saiyan women�. Heh, and what I wouldn't give to find even a mix breed like my mother! I suppose that's why mating some aristocrat mattered so much--I wanted my own pups to overcome their trash genes. I mean, besides the Dunajin whore in my bloodline, there were some low-caste, no good, not worth-their-own-boots Saiyans in there too.

"Not that it matters now. Three Saiyans left in all the galaxy now. It's just that two of them have to be fucking Elites, and the third one has to be me: Raditz, third class. Hell, no wonder I sometimes look in the mirror while I'm shaving my brow or snapping my grandmother's fucking slave bracelet over my bicep and think to myself: Holy gods, Raditz, just who the fuck are you? Not the world's ugliest or stupidest Saiyan (that would be Nappa on both counts, even if the bastard is stronger than me), but when you're always in the company of the fucking holy dazzling apex of several thousand years of Saiyan genetic engineering--the perfect Prince of All Saiyans himself--you can get a little down on yourself."
Raditz let out a small sardonic cough. The sound itself made him laugh, and by the sound of that laugh--the length and the whiney pitch of it-- he knew he was fast approaching pre-stasis disorientation. He tried to shut his mind down, to ride the drugs to their inescapable end, but he was still too agitated from the scene he'd made before taking off in the pod. He couldn't shake the image of Vegeta's face. Its pure imperious disapproval, the eyes narrowing under those sharp black brows, the thin lips tensed into a cruel line.
"Oh, he's not so perfect, really. Thinks he is, though, and attitude goes a long way. But all this time in Frieza's army has really warped our little prince. Nappa and I were grown when we got here, so we're not so cracked. But Vegeta--oh, Frieza did a number on him. He's under-sized from malnourishment and not getting the proper training our kind need, jumpy and nervous and �. It's like he takes no pleasure in anything. Eats and drinks enough to stay alive. Spends hours alone in the battle simulation room on�."
Frieza's ship. Raditz didn't want his mind to wander there, but that ship was home now, as much as he and the other Saiyans tried to avoid that fact. Vegeta volunteered the three of them for every perilous assignment available. These missions, besides affording the Saiyans some freedom, kept them strong and wary; even the most intensive rigors of battle simulations on ship could not compare to the unpredictable trials and challenges of planet purging.
Raditz considered that, given how diligently Vegeta trained, one would expect him to show off his skill during actual combat. But no, even as Nappa and Raditz were howling from the thrill of destruction, the prince did not expend his awesome power any more than he had to--he would allow the other Saiyans to exhaust themselves at killing before he would step in and do the detail work. Vegeta's murders were exacting and refined. He never destroyed for the joy of it the way Nappa, in all his vulgar rampages, did. Never bothered taunting the civilians (the way Raditz himself enjoyed), chasing the strongest of them endlessly through the mazes of their ravished cities. Maybe the prince's only delight was in showing up his inferiors? Raditz pictured Vegeta's face again--the smirk on his lips while blasting away a well-hidden survivor shelter overlooked by the others.
Raditz tried to recall Vegeta's face expressing any satisfaction beyond that faint smirk. Was the prince so far gone as to be incapable of experiencing simple pleasure? He kept to himself so much. Vegeta did not appear to be looking for any sort of release, refuge or distraction, ever.

"Forget whores. Vegeta acts like he's too good for them. Hell, Nappa used to have that attitude too--this I'm a Saiyan Elite and will not defile my seed by ditching it in an alien body thing, but even Nappa learned how to screw whatever came his way in Frieza's army. Of course, could be that Vegeta's been ruined for that sort of thing by Frieza himself. The poor pup probably doesn't even know where to stick it in, let alone how to�"
Raditz stopped talking. As woozy as he was, he was aware of having ventured into a topic no one dared broach aloud in Frieza's army. On a ship full of polysexual, breeding-age, virile soldiers, sex was still a private business. The bragging and bravado Raditz had learned in the Saiyan army didn't fly on a multi-species ship. Cultural misunderstandings started brawls that distracted from the efficacy of the Icejin Lord's planet purges, so--unless soldiers were off-ship--fraternization was discouraged, and soldiers interacted in an atmosphere of paranoia and distrust. Still, gossiping was hard to squelch. A comment about Lord Frieza's bedtime preferences--should a top lieutenant overhear--could get you executed on the spot, but everyone knew Frieza liked boys, small humanoid ones, and that his favorite for years had been the Saiyan prince.
"Poor pup," Raditz said, his voice a whisper this time. He didn't think Frieza favored the prince that way anymore. It used to be that, after every long mission, Vegeta was summoned before the Icejin Lord for a private audience, and the prince didn't appear until days later, in the halls near med bay, in a meaner mood than ever. But that was years ago.
Raditz could not recall the last time Frieza had given Vegeta any attention at all. The last time the Saiyans were on ship was right after the three had managed to terrorize the population of Sharksai into a surrender. Vegeta had marched himself, along with his kingdom of two, straight into Frieza's chambers to demand a reward. Frieza had laughed at them then. The Icejin had said that occupying such a small world was a task he would have expected his top lieutenants to accomplish in one day, not the three days Prince Vegeta boasted. The Saiyans had been dismissed, the prince had bowed, and that had been that. One would think that Frieza could care less about the prince anymore or his Saiyan soldiers.
Rumor was, however, that Frieza had injected Vegeta with growth-inhibiting hormone in order to keep the prince toy-sized for the lord's pleasure. Raditz didn't believe that. Because two of the galaxy's surviving Saiyans were so large, Frieza's soldiers were assuming that Vegeta hadn't grown to proper Saiyan height. Raditz knew that Vegeta was small for his age, but not so small as to be uncharacteristically Saiyan. And Vegeta didn't look like a boy anymore. If Frieza had meant for Vegeta to remain the pre-adolescent size of those days when the lizard couldn't leave the boy alone, then Frieza would have accomplished that task--no bones about it. Frieza's medical team was the best in the galaxy. Those doctors reconstructed many a soldier from the mangled messes of battle. They could've built Frieza a robotic plaything from scratch.
No, Raditz suspected that, as the boy grew older, Frieza had sensed potential in the prince beyond that of a bed-mate. The miraculous phenomenon of Prince Vegeta's genetic heritage revealing itself as the Saiyan matured fascinated everyone, no less the Icejin Lord. No amount of starvation, abuse, or synthetic hormone could ever have repressed the prince's warrior magnificence. Whenever Vegeta forewent the combat sim rooms for the ship's larger exercise arenas, a small crowd gathered. Vegeta was small, yes, but his speed and power surpassed everyone's on the ship except for Frieza himself and his top henchman. Raditz was certain that Vegeta would eventually occupy a commanding position in Frieza's hierarchy.
And was this what Vegeta himself wanted? Raditz grimaced in disgust. On occasion, Vegeta had felt it necessary to explain to Raditz and Nappa that the Saiyan humiliation under Frieza was not a permanent situation. "Watch me. When I become the Super Saiyan, I will be the one to overthrow Frieza. I, alone." Feh! A myth from Vegeta's early boyhood. In Raditz's time, battles had been won with the combined might of ordinary Saiyans. He wondered--did Vegeta really believe that he would one day become the Legendary? Or did the story serve to merely stave off desperation?
Raditz thought that if he'd been the one so "favored" by Frieza, he would've killed himself long ago. Vegeta was truly made of strong stuff, the purest of the pure, the finest of the Saiyan Elite. It was impossible not to admire him. Sometimes, it was impossible not to--could Raditz honestly say that he did not idolize Vegeta?
Red blinking characters on the control panel indicated that the pod occupant should now be in stasis. Raditz grinned. He was fully conscious--groggy but still awake. His own Saiyan strength must have increased since he last programmed the gas sequence. He made a mental note to increase the drugs for his next mission and found himself staring at the red lights on the control panel as they blurred. The blurs looked like the short red lapping flames of a campfire�.
By campfire light on long missions, Raditz had sometimes found himself looking at the prince's sleeping face. Amazing how, even in sleep, Vegeta could look so severe. The fantasy never went beyond picturing that implacable face softening with pleasure. The brow relaxing, the mouth parting, the nostrils widening to breathe. Raditz had always relished that look in women--that flushed loss of self-consciousness. Vegeta's face was small, with features delicate as any woman's--it was only that bad-ass attitude that gave it unquestioned masculinity.
If only the prince would allow it. If only Raditz could touch him once, the way such a face should be touched--with tender reverence--then maybe the prince would want to know more about such touching.
That was the extent of the fantasy, though. Imagining Vegeta reciprocating any affectionate gesture was so difficult that Raditz didn't strain himself. Sometimes he had wondered how the prince's voice would sound while being pleasured, but it took some real imagining to get there. Raditz had only ever heard that voice in imperious control, giving commands or making snide remarks. Or shouting when Vegeta let loose a killer burst of ki. Would Vegeta shout when he came? Raditz didn't think so. He pictured the prince biting his bottom lip and groaning.
Raditz shook his head. No use getting a hard-on before a coma--he would only lose it quick as every bodily function dropped to bare maintenance. But what if his cock didn't drop with his blood pressure? The sudden image of his pecker erect for the whole year's journey made him laugh out loud. If only he could dream about a Saiyan woman for a whole year. If only he had been at the palace long enough to have made a memory about one of the high-class bitches there.
But he had been at the palace for only a week. One week. And then Frieza had sent for the boy. Prince Vegeta and his two guards had boarded the ship. Mere hours later, Raditz saw the report on news-feed in the mess hall: his home planet, Vegetasei, had been completely destroyed in an asteroid storm.
***
The next thing Raditz's mind registered was a computerized voice droning: "Approaching destination�landfall in one day�Approaching destination�." He smashed a button with the palm of his hand, and the voice stopped.
He hated this part. Twenty years of constant space travel and coming out of stasis was still hard for him. Saiyans needed to stay active, in body and mind, and the lack of dream sleep taxed them; their neurological make-up compensated by producing too-vivid dreams for a few hours, or maybe even a few days, after stasis. Nappa had explained all this once on Frieza's ship. The prince had been having screaming nightmares following their first long-distance mission, and�

Vegeta�.

Raditz was sure he had dreamt about Prince Vegeta. Something about carrying the boy unconscious off a smoky battlefield? A dream, not a memory--but he could still feel the warm weight of the small body over his shoulder. Raditz closed his eyes and buried one hand behind his thick mane to clutch his stiff neck. He hated waking up, absolutely hated it.
After a couple flasks of bio-support, a few tabs of organ function stimulant, and a swipe of damp cloth across his face, Raditz noticed the vid-feed running on the control panel.
The blue planet he'd seen so many times from surveillance footage was close, mere hours away. New data blipping on the monitor confirmed old data from the files. A pebble of a planet. Rich in mineral resources, no technology to speak of, too small to be sold for colonization, negligible really. Just the sort of rock in the boondocks where a third-class Saiyan infant would be sent.
About half the infants shipped off-world completed their mission within a few years of landfall. Some Saiyan babes required a little more time, and maybe moonlight and the Oozaru form, to destroy a planet's population. About one in five Saiyan kid assassins got wiped out--most often by disease or some natural disaster, but every now and then an aggressive population managed to kill a Saiyan.
A blue world, a watery planet.
"Kakkarot probably ate a bad fruit that made him drunk, and he walked into the ocean and drowned."
Raditz realized he had just spoken aloud, and his voice reminded him of his private log. He switched it on, and--out of habit--pressed playback. He always did that before landfall to reorient himself with his mission. Not that he'd forgotten a thing about this one--it was his most important ever. If Kakkarot wasn't alive, then Raditz himself may as well not be. If Vegeta himself didn't track him down to kill him, one of Frieza's men would have Raditz's tail for insubordination. Suicide wasn't an honorable option, but death by Frieza's men would probably follow a prolonged torture.
He heard his own recorded voice mimicking Vegeta's haughty tone: "Raditz, your plan is foolishness. If you pursue it, I will hunt you down and kill you." And then it hit him like a gift from the gods--Mercy? From Prince Vegeta, of all people? Of course--the prince expected Raditz to fail. It was a perfectly honorable Saiyan thing to kill one's own subservient rather than have him suffer a humiliating death by Frieza's men. Then again, mercy wouldn't be Vegeta's first motive. Raditz' unauthorized leave was going to get all the Saiyans in big trouble.
"Fuck death!" Raditz said aloud. Boosted by the artificial adrenaline tabs and sight of the blue planet so near, the warrior Saiyan felt a swell of bloodlust. Whatever was awaiting him--the same sea monster that ate Kakkarot, a deathblast from the prince, or the most agonizing execution should Frieza's soldiers arrive before Vegeta--Bring it on! Sweat rose on his brow, and his hands closed into fists. He was ready to fight!
But because there was no room to even turn around, let alone stretch his limbs into combat stance, Raditz rocked his large shoulders side to side, making muted thudding noises. So many years of planet-purging, and most of it spent in this stupid pod! So many missions, and most of them no more challenging than zapping asteroid rats in a bucket! The humiliation of working for Frieza! Humiliation--worse than death in a Saiyan's book.

"The poor pup probably doesn't know where to stick it in, let alone how�."

Raditz stopped rocking. The log was playing a monologue he didn't remember recording. Just how long had he let the fucking thing run?
And then he remembered it all.
Not just the meanderings of his mind before the journey here, but all of it--twenty years of suffering the role of the world's worst bodyguard. He would show me mercy before letting me fall into the hands of Frieza's court, and yet I could not save him from the lizard myself.

Whatever was flooding Raditz's veins now wasn't just post-stasis drugs. The feeling was too sickening. Humiliation? Raditz took another swipe of his sweaty face with a wet cloth. If there was still another thing that the prince knew better than Raditz, it was humiliation. Maybe the reason Prince Vegeta hated his guardsmen so much was not because Raditz and Nappa had failed in their duty to protect him from Frieza but because�the idea was too horrible to consider, but Raditz's mind could not veer away from it: had Raditz failed his prince somehow by not killing him?
There was a time, maybe, when the honorable Saiyan thing would have been to put the boy down.
A memory arose: another planet much bigger than the blue one on the monitor, a frigid world with a population who lived underground and had been difficult to butcher efficiently. The three Saiyans had camped near a geyser for warmth. One night Raditz had awakened to a chaos of fireballs crackling, boulders thundering past him in an avalanche, and a cry that sounded like some animal being strangled to death. Raditz had taken to the sky only to find Nappa already hovering there, with a limp Prince Vegeta. Nappa was holding the boy by the shoulders and at arm's length--as if Vegeta might explode. The prince lifted his head a little, and Raditz saw that his eyes were rolled back, the whites showing. He was asleep. And then, in a flash, the prince snapped to consciousness, knocking Nappa to the ground.
Mountains were leveled, the sky went red with fire, and finally, after Vegeta had exhausted himself shooting random blasts, he landed on ground in a defensive stance--legs crouched, arms before his face, eyes wild. Raditz had been so confused. Until the moment Vegeta touched back down on land, Raditz had thought it was the geyser that had gone off, not the prince. But the geyser was quiet, steam floating over a bubbling pool.
No one had been certain then. They had heard the boy scream for nights afterwards. For years afterwards, Nappa and Raditz clung to their roles as all-deferring servants. Vegeta would have silenced any questions or offers of help with a threat to blast their souls into oblivion.

Beautiful Saiyan. Even when there had been a whole world of Saiyans, he had been the most beautiful. Distinguished in spirit, mind, and strength.
The boy, wild-eyed in front of the bubbling geyser�. The haughty child at the palace who wore immaculate armor and a little red cape�. The angry-faced soldier in the tattered clothes�. The man who gave the orders, tossed the insults, stood apart from everyone, arms folded in front of his chest�.
Raditz opened his mouth and, this time, in this dream, his mouth landed on Vegeta's neck. The flesh there firm under his exploring tongue, softer at the throat, firm again along the jaw, and then a wet paradise as those lips parted. Would the prince's hands reach for him or would they fall back against the pillow, fingers spread wide in amazement? Did Vegeta know what it was like to be mouthed so reverently? Would he be able to taste the deep, earnest ardor of a real Saiyan?
Raditz growled softly as his mind unloosed more images, ones he hadn't allowed before. Vegeta's small compact body coming out of its clothes. Unlike Raditz with his fancy hair and Dunajin bracelets, the prince cultivated such an unadorned, austere look--always wore long-sleeved, dark uniforms. Raditz had seen the prince undress before in plain view, but in this fantasy, Vegeta was inches away as muscular arms and legs slid out of their simple coverings. Bronze skin, darker than most Saiyans Raditz could remember, certainly darker than his own. Skin hairless and lustrous. Dark pink nipples and the lighter pink groin. The bundled, turgid tissue of those areas just begging to be kissed.
Everything about Vegeta had always seemed set on a hair-trigger. It wasn't hard to imagine him tense with longing--muscles twitching if Raditz so much as breathed on them.
He would nip at such anxious flesh with dry lips first. He would run his cheek against Vegeta's warm chest. He would press his fingertips against that perfect abdomen. Then his kisses would moisten the area around the nipples. He would breathe warm air over the wetness and suckle each nipple gently, lingering at each for only seconds.
Gentleness. True reverence for his Saiyan strength. Sincere awe for his Saiyan beauty. Raditz was sure Vegeta was a virgin to these things, especially gentleness. Nothing Raditz could imagine doing to Vegeta would ever put the prince in med bay. How sickening that the prince of the greatest warrior race in the galaxy had been so defiled by an Icejin, and that Vegeta had never known the pleasure of mating with his own kind.
Raditz wanted to rescue his prince, to somehow break into that prison of not-feeling and carry his body out into a new landscape.
But wasn't that the other dream, the one with the boy? This dream was where Raditz was licking his way across the hard, sleek hillocks of a man's abdominal muscles, tonguing towards�. Raditz imagined that Vegeta's cock would look like his own, a simple Saiyan stem, only darker. Raditz also imagined that what Dunajin whores were best at was something he himself could not do for too long. He would lick the prince's cock a little, just to get him ready, that's all. Swirl his tongue around the tip, press his lips against the tiny hole, nuzzle the underside of the shaft with his mouth but never opening to take it in�.
Raditz's thighs opened as far as they could. His hands flew beneath the flap of armor covering his crotch and started to fondle the warm genitalia there. The soft sack undulating, the engorged cock starting to wet his fingers. There was not much room for both hands between his legs, but Raditz's imagination made enough space for the Saiyan prince's slim torso. Raditz would not fuck the prince. No, he could not imagine doing that. His prince's place was above him. He would hold the prince's cock and guide it where�.
Imagining that his own slick fingers were the prince's slender shaft, Raditz nudged his way into his own hole. The mere fullness there caused his cheeks to flush. The pressure, as the fingers began to rock inside, made him moan. With his other hand Raditz pumped his cock, imagining it pressed against his own belly as Vegeta rode him. Oh yes, he was connected with Vegeta, and the smaller Saiyan was on top--a bronze-skinned, slender-hipped beauty who was fucking with the tentative rhythm of a novice. Raditz thrust his own pelvis forward to establish a more fervent pace. Yes, Vegeta would like that--a challenge. He would thrust back harder, until both Saiyans were slamming hips at one another.

Beautiful Saiyan, what would your face look like now? The sneer when he bit into the asteroid rat--that half-starved ferocity? Yes, hunger and hatred, a crazed longing for all the splendors of royalty denied. Raditz saw Vegeta's mouth snarl. That deadly precision in battle--oh yes, the prince would discover the spot that made Raditz moan and hit it again and again with deliberate malice. Oh to see Vegeta's chest heaving from the effort--nipples dark and erect, corded muscles of that slight neck straining, shoulders glistening with sweat. The prince would learn to fuck like a champion the first time. Prince Vegeta would fuck and fuck his loyal subject's ass with merciless, splendorous power. Yes, yes, yes.

Someone screamed. Raditz felt his consciousness shift into wakefulness and realized his neck was bent in a painful way against the pod, his mouth was open, and his hands were limp under his armor, the whole area inside his short pants sticky with semen.
The control panel blipped and whirred. Air swept through his nose, filled his chest, and flew out his mouth in a steady rhythm.
Prince Vegeta. It was always all about Prince Vegeta, wasn't it? There had been no other reason to stay alive for the past twenty years. No one else to serve, no one else to admire, no other source of purpose or meaning. The prince was all that was fierce and resilient about the Saiyan people; he was the tragedy of a ruined, defiled planet; Prince Vegeta was Vegetasei; he was Raditz's home and all he had ever loved.
In the quiet of the small pod, Raditz knew this now. The fact was bigger than his own body in the cramped space. He, Raditz, son of Bardock, a mess of Dunajin hair and a miserable third-class identity crisis all unto himself, he, Raditz, loved Vegeta, the Prince.

There was something humiliating and, at the same time, freeing about that fact. After all, hadn't Raditz defied his prince? Hadn't he (was it a whole year ago now?) flown away from him in a fit of exasperation? Over what? The prince's refusal to challenge Frieza? Or had it been a fit of rage over the impossibility of Raditz's own feelings for Vegeta? Whichever--the defiance seemed like such a small and pitiful act to Raditz now.
What was waiting for Raditz at landfall? His own death, as Vegeta had predicted?

"Save your strength, Nappa� Whatever killed his brother on that insignificant planet will kill Raditz for us."

At the memory of Vegeta's words, Raditz felt an urge to prove them wrong, to defy the prince all over again. Defiance, the word had a new flavor now. A small surge of exultation fired in his veins, and he charged up--maybe from the endorphins of recent sexual release or maybe from the simple strangeness of a new perspective over his own actions. He suddenly believed that he was not going to die. He did not want to die. He wasn't going to give Vegeta any opportunity to knock his courage down again.
"I am Saiyan," Raditz said aloud. The microphone wasn't switched on, but there was, as always, an image to whom the words were addressed--the apathetic face of Prince Vegeta. "I am Saiyan," Raditz continued. "I am the son of a warrior people. I may or may not find my brother here, but I will not suffer the humiliation of working for Frieza one more day. I will fight him. With or without you, my prince�." Raditz paused here. He could not imagine challenging Frieza without Vegeta. In truth, Frieza's death belonged to Vegeta. But the prince was playing a dangerous waiting game. It was the same game Vegeta's father, the king, had played with Frieza. Nappa had told him the rumors--that it was not an asteroid storm, but the Icejin Lord himself that had destroyed Vegetasei. That King Vegeta and a whole army of Elites had fallen trying to rescue the prince from Frieza's ship. In end, prolonging Saiyan humiliation had not saved the planet.
"He killed your father, " Raditz said. "He killed our people. He took you like a woman and defiled the throne of Vegetasei. I could not save you, but I can save myself. I will fight him alone and die, or I will fight him with you and--Vegeta, how can you not see that the only way to defy him is with the strength of a true Saiyan army behind you? We will defy Frieza. The four of us--you, Nappa, me, and my brother--a Saiyan for each of his limbs. A power to match his. And you, my prince, will have his head. We can defeat him. We will rip him to shreds and toss the pieces like confetti into the air!"
A sudden blipping in his ear made Raditz start. His scouter was picking up a power flying at unusual speed across the ocean of the planet below. One DNA pattern, flashing in a steady sequence on the pod control panel, seemed to match data on the scouter. Raditz pecked one finger at the device on his ear, and with his other slightly trembling hand, he pushed some buttons on the control panel until the information he suspected registered plain as a supernova on a spectrometer.
His face beamed.

"Kakkarot," Raditz whispered.

END

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A/N: The rest of the story is told in the first episode of Dragonball Z, when Raditz lands on Earth and confronts his brother Kakkarot! This piece, my first attempt at yaoi, had many midwives. Thanks go to LisaB, Manzai, Denmark de la Croix, the ever-inspiring Pixelgoddess, and the many readers of the DBZ Fanfic Salon for their comments on early drafts.
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