Chapter 8

Goku woke up. Woke up to something that he might have recognized as a hangover if he had ever gotten drunk, but between his constitution and his undying need to save the universe, he really hadn’t had a whole lot of time to aro around and get drunk. So he pushed himself up to sit on the bed, felt his spine throb, his head was heavy like it was stuffed with raw cotton and his mouth was dry. His whole body ached from the monstrosity of an unforgiving workout the day before had been. (Really, sex fore ore than three hours was just not that fun when you were already tired from sitting still the whole DAMN MORNING.) He groaned, ran his hand over his face and through his hair.

“Vegeta’s evil,” he said to himself, and stood up. The newly regenerated tail wrapped around his waist like a whiny cat and he patted it (like it was a separate part of his consciousness) and walked clumsily to the doorway between living quarters and control room.

Vegeta, naturally, was just fine. He was sitting in the control chair legs crossed, tail resting comfortably, without a throbbing bite on his arm or a headache from hell (or an ache in certain nether regions that was really uncomfortable.) “Kakarot,” was the greeting when Goku finally managed to make his way over to the chair.

He tried very hard to come up with an intelligent question like “where are we in the universe” or did did our tails come back exactly, could you explain your methods to me. Please?” But, really, it was much more satisfying to pick the scrawny bastard up by the neck and punch him. Vegeta understood that it was just a hangover punch, he was sure. Besides it barely had force behind him, and Vegeta just grinned at him.

“We’ll be on Namek in a few hours, Kakarot, go back to bed.” All grinning like it was such a good fucking thing that they were closer now to reviving his dead brother whom he hated and whom Vegeta had questionable sexual relationships with.

He didn’t pout, he just stood there, naked, large, with his tail around his waist and his body aching. He was used to having the ‘after a spar’ aches and pains of being tossed through a mountain but it was something completely different when you were driven to the point of mindlessness our our mate while being held on the edge of orgasm for HOURS. He wasn’t even sure his tail was worth the trouble.

Vegeta patted him on the head like he was a baby or something. But he didn’t say anything. Bastard.

“Fine,” he said, “But only because I’m tired.” Like that was a good enough of an excuse. He ignored Vegeta’s smirk, ignored how easily the little bastard slipped back into the chair and ignored him, and went back to bed. Pulled the covers back up and instantly fell asleep again.

When he woke up the second time, he felt infinitely better. His body wasn’t hng, ng, his head wasn’t better and the tail that was waving arouim wim was actually feeling like a good thing. He felt stronger with it, felt more…uh…manly. It was a Saiyan tail and he was a Saiyan and that made it perfect, really. He sat up in the bed, crossed his legs and assessed the tail. Ran his hands over it and found that he was very pleased with it over all. The fur was glossy and soft, the tail itself was rather long but strong and best of all…nobody was around to CUT IT OFF. (Even if they tried, he was more than willing now to cut off certain tail like emitimities of theirs.)

Vegeta dropped a steaming meat-pocket thing on his lap and he squalled in surprise, jumped back and almost crushed the poor food. This, of course, made his mate laugh and he glowered. “Eat,” Vegeta said and disappeared again, to watch their approach to the Namek planet.

He was starting to think that Vegeta was a bit more anxious than he should be to reach the damn planet and get damn Radditz back. But he kept these angry thoughts to himself, climbed out of bed (again, narrowly missing the poor meat pocket that lay steaming on the sheets) and pulled a pair of pants on. Once he wamewhmewhat dressed he picked up the food and ate it in a few bites.

Then he went back to the control room where Vegeta was still eating his (damn weird-ass saiyan who ate his food ‘properly’…whatever.)

“How much longer, ‘Geta?” Goku asked. Looked at all the numbers on the control panel and realized he had no idea what they meant. Wasn’t particularly worried about this, though.

“An hour and a half,” Vegeta replied, “And your son has apparently gone crazy since we left. Bulma said she had to separate our sons.” He didn’t sound worried about it, in fact, he sounded vaguely amused by it all.

“Crazy?”
<“He’“He’s been aggressive towards everyone, moody, temperamental… Trunks and he got into a huge battle. Apparently they ended up breaking each other’s arms or legs or something.” Again, Vegeta didn’t sound concerned.

“Maybe we should go back…” Goku said.

“No. They’re fine, Kakarot. You should realize that at some point this had to happen.”

“But…Vegeta, this doesn’t sound like normal puberty stuff. We didn’t break each other’s arms or anything.”

“You broke the house we lived in.”

“Yeah…but…I didn’t hurt anyone.” He bit his lip and felt apprehensive about it, didn’t like the way that Vegeta just breezed over his son’s behavior. Because, yeah, sure he hadn’t been around for a long time while Goten was growing up, but he didn’t think his son would just behave that way.

“Radditz killed five people when he went through puberty,” Vegeta said, off-hand, like it didn’t matter because these people were Saiyans, “Nappa broke six fingers and lost one of his toes.” Again, like this…wait…one of his toes?

“But, ‘Geta…”

Vegeta turned and looked at him. “We’ll go back to Earth as soon as we get Radditz, Kakarot. Your son isn’t going to kill anyone. He’s too much like you. Bes,” h,” he said this with great sarcasm as he turned his back to Goku, “The great saiyaman is there. And the string bean, they’ll handle it.”

~~~***

“My name is Dende,” the short green thing said when they touched down. He did his bowing thing, and Vegeta turned to look at Kakarot.

“Isn’t Dende on Earth?”

Even though he wasn’t talking to it, the green thing ducked its head in a bow again and then said: “Oh, I’m a different Dende.” Which was hard to believe, but then, all the green things looked the same to him, really. So he crossed his arms over his chest and took the truth as the kid was saying it. (There was no good that could come from arguing with it.)

“Hey, Dende,” the baka said cheerfully, “We want to use the Dragonballs to bring someone back to life.” Like it was such a simple request and the Nameks were just going to bow and say:

“Of course Goku,” it (the one who called himself Dende) said.

Vegeta felt offended. A strange wave of ‘if I had known it would be that easy…’ struck him as an injustice. If he had asked for the damn dragonballs all those years ago they probably would have either died of fright or laughed their ass off at him. Or maybe give them to Freiza just to spite him. …Probably not the third option.

“Come on, ‘Geta,” the baka said, grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him forward across the face of the planet after the short thing that was referring to itself as Dende. Somehow he had expected this to be altogether more difficult, or to take more time, but Kakarot seemed determined that it would take as little time as possible—not that he blamed the big baka, their sons were locked in some sort of mini-fight-to-the-death back on earth after all.

They traveled for a ways, (which seemed like a long distance but it could have been because he was being dragged through the air by the hyperactive one and contrary to his stubborn show of strength, he was feeling exhausted by the fiasco of tail-regrowth) until they reached a dip in the land and the Dende-imposter turned around abruptly and bowed again.

“We have two wishes left with the dragon this time. If you would just tell me the name of the person you wish to bring back to life.” Like he handed out wishes to everyone that came here and wanted one.

“Radditz,” Kakarot said (he managed to get the name out without growling or beating the living snot out of someone.

“Okay.”

Then he was not released (as he thought that he would be) instinstead yanked closer to Kakarot as they walked the little greenbean work. He rolled all the dragonballs together until they clinked into place and the ground started to rumble. The sky went black, there was a great wave of anti-climatic cold wind and waaaah, there was a dragon. (Drama queen.) The green bean did his ‘oh you are so great and powerful’ nonsense prostrating before the great dragon.

The Great Dragon looked at Kakarot and him oddly, Vegeta found himself being offended by that look. As if the ‘why the hell would those two get together’ extended beyond the short sight of the human race into the (supposedly) benevolent race of wish-dragons.

The namek (he refused to call it Dende) mumbled their wish and the Dragon shrugged its mighty shoulders, said something that could have been ‘why not’ and in a great thunderclap of light and noise, there appeared Radditz. Looking remarkably like he had when Vegeta had last seen him. Clad in armor, long hair behind his back and the omni-present sneer of superiority on his face.

The dragon went away after being assured that there was no third wish at this time. The namek (who only wished he could be Dende) ducked his head and chattered on about how it was so great that the universe’s strongest warrior, savior of the whole universe, the great and kind Goku would see fit to come to their humble little planet to use the dragon balls to wish back…this…thing. (The Dende-wannabe stumbled on Radditz’ name like he was just now starting to realize what he wished back.)

“Yeah, whatever,” Kakarot said. The arm he had around Vegeta’s chest was making it exceedingly more difficult to breath.

Radditz burst out in laughed, doubled over and slapped his knee, laughed until his whole body was shaking and the poor little greenbean got scared off. Then he laughed louder and tears rolled down his face.

“How…” great puff of laughter, “Long…” an attempt to catch his breath, “Have…” more laughing, “I been…” At this point, Kakarot dropped him (Vegeta would have punched him but his mate was doing that uber-silent thing that he often did just before a great bout of violence) and punched Radditz in the face hard enough there was an audible crack.

Radditz, then, stopped laughing. He reacted the way any Saiyan would have reacted, he moved to counterattack, but as he did, Kakarot ascended right into SS 2 and the very ground under Radditz churned so hard and fast that the giant saiyan was knocked onto his ass in the dirt.

Having proved his superiority, Kakarot dropped back down to normal power level and stepped away from his brother.

“You’ve been dead for almost twenty years,” Vegeta said, to answer the question that Radditz never quite got out. “Now get off your ass, we’re leaving.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~***

Goku: *sticks tongue out*

Radditz: *pout*

Vegeta: *rolls eyes *

Goten: I HATE ALL OF YOU! You’re RUINING MY LIFE! *runs away*

Macha

Yes, it was mean to make Bra loose the cheerio. She was enjoying eating that cereal, I'm sure. *sigh* And Goten's gone psycho, unfortunately, but I'm sure I'll get it worked out. Don't tell anyone, but I'm planning on keeping this ficcie somewhere around 20 chaps. I don't feel that there's that much left to tell about these characters.


And yup, I'm trying to get published, anyway. I have one story that's being published on www.keepitcoming.net (it's like 2.22 a month or something and you get nine chapters.) It's called When Real Begets the Unreal (its in the horror sections and the 1st chap is freee! if you want to read it), but I have another idea I want to use (also about vampires, but totally different concept.) But what I was talking about when I whined about getting published is my book. I want to get it published (am sick of editing it) but I have to outline it all that jazz-er-cise. *drops dead* It's a fantasy, so a 'simple' outline is impossible. (Like trying to outline MLS in one sentence per chap.) But it has to be simple! *has mental breakdown*


er...anyway...I'll stop whining now. *walks away*