Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Playing Raditz's Game ❯ The Game Begins ( Chapter 1 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Eighty-seven. Eighty-seven bodies. The number was much too high for his liking, but still not high enough. With that in mind Son Goku dropped another body, another victim, into the mass grave he had built. He hoped they wouldn't stay there, not forever. His heart hurt to look upon them, at the mounds of bleeding flesh that stained the beaches surrounding Master Roshi's home. These people bled and leaked and crumpled in misshapen, unnatural positions from the wounds he himself had inflicted. And for what? The wrath of his brother Raditz would never be satisfied. At least, not by a number so low as a measly eighty-seven. Raditz demanded one-hundred dead earthlings and no less.

Goku didn't think his brother would be offended if he killed more.

But he only had eighty-seven, and eighty-seven would not get him Gohan back. Goku took a step back from the grave before him, sinking further into desperation with each step. He told himself he had to get his son back, and this... this was the only way. Chi-chi would understand. So would Krillen, and Bulma, and all the others. There was no alternative. He had never known the horrid feeling that washed over him as Raditz gave him the ultimatum until the very moment it occurred. Destroy one-hundred earthlings and his brother would return Gohan to him. Fail to fulfil Raditz's demands and... Goku couldn't bare to contemplate it. It made him sick, the hopelessness of it.  There he had been, prostrate on the beach writhing in his own pain while his baby boy's wails filled the air with nothing he could do about it. Raditz outclassed him in every way that mattered – strength, skill, ability. Goku had known from the moment he felt the rapidly approaching power that his own ki couldn't hold a candle to the power that was on its way. Under normal circumstances it was an ideal situation. Goku loved nothing more than to charge into battle without a spare thought to his own self preservation, but there was one simple thing holding the young man at bay.

Raditz had Gohan and Goku would do nothing that would endanger his son.

Attacking his brother on a righteous mission of suicide, however appealing and glorious it may sound, would be to directly place Gohan's well-being in jeopardy. It was a risk that even he was unwilling to take, especially not when Raditz offered a solution so readily to the problem he had created. Kill one hundred humans, pile them on the beach, have Gohan returned to him. The equation was so simple, yet he had delayed action an entire hour after Gohan's kidnapping. His friends swarmed him, insisting they would find another way to save the boy from his uncle, but Goku's heart knew better. There would be no saving Gohan without first playing Raditz's game.

So play it Goku did.

His feet had left behind prints in snow and deserts, stealing away persons to be counted as Gohan had been stolen from him. No one opposed him anymore. Krillin had tried. Tien had tried. Even Yamcha had pulled his head from the sand once he knew what was happening to try to stop Goku from parading down the warpath he had chosen. But as Raditz outclassed him, Goku outclassed the rest of the warriors on Earth. What had been a common joke – no one can stop Goku once he's made up his mind! – was now a living nightmare. His tremendous strength had been turned on the people and planet he loved in the twinkling of an eye, at the moment of a stronger stranger's bidding. And there was absolutely nothing to be done about it.

Eighty-seven.

Goku groaned and sunk to the ground in one of the last patches of pearly white sand to be found on Master Roshi's island. Before him the ocean stretched out in beauty, but behind him his victims rotted, their flesh spoiled from the sun that was now setting. The air around him was permeated with the rank scent of the deceased and the stench assaulted his sensitive nose. His face wrinkled at the unpleasantness and he lamented the heat of the night. Even in this place, in the middle of the ocean, the sea breeze did nothing to alleviate the rising temperature. He remembered there being many nights like this one not so long ago when he had lived on an island not far from this one and trained under the Turtle Hermit. Long, tiresome nights which involved a lot of flopping around while sleep eluded in a bed that seemed to boil in a house that was even hotter. A hollow smile came to his lips at the memory, a ghost of a laugh even building in Goku's throat before he was brought back to the gravity of the situation at hand. Shamefully, his gaze wandered with guilt in his eyes towards his handiwork on the beach and he felt his stomach clench painfully.

Eighty-seven. Eighty-seven people, and he had killed them all.

He sunk his fingers into the sand and marveled as the grains siphoned away the blood that had remained on his hands. Quietly he formed fists in the soft ground then threw the bloody handfuls of sand he had collected far away from his person. He wiped his palms clean against his pants feebly. Physically Goku supposed the blood was gone from his hands, but he still felt it there as if it knew where belonged and who to blame. Disgusted, he stood up and walked to the edge of the island and plunged his arms into the water up to his elbows in an effort to get clean. As he finished, though, he looked back towards the grave and his heart sunk. Ninety-two. No matter how bad Goku may have been at math, he still knew enough to know that meant he was still short a few heads to count and all of his preening had been for naught. With finality he focused his energy, rose into the sky in flight and left the island and its dead tenants behind, thankful that Krillin and Master Roshi had left several hours before with Bulma using one of her capsules.

He didn't want them to see what he had done.


Elsewhere and far, far away from his brother, Raditz sat perched atop of a large rock near the crater his pod had formed during his landing. The bridge of his nose was almost sore and bruised from being pinched as his nephew's utterly disgraceful squalling continuously filled the air. The brat simply did not shut up. Hours ago the Saiyan had tossed the little wretch into his pod to try to negate some of the sound, but it was to no avail. The boy had Saiyan lungs and Raditz would testify to it on all his honor as a warrior of Planet Vegeta, whatever that was worth. There wasn't a Planet Vegeta anymore to be a warrior of, so he supposed the oath was now quite meaningless. He could have said on his honor as a soldier of Lord Frieza, but there was a traitorous little bud of a thought somewhere in the back of his less than exceptional brain that said there was no honor in serving the Colds. The thought grew from a seed planted by his prince so craftily that Raditz could have easily mistaken the thought for his own.

Grumbling, the long haired warrior left his rock and strolled to the edge of the crater to yell at his nephew to shut up some more. His orders were met with defiance which ruffled him, but he had grown used to being ignored by the brat in the past few hours. If his guesses were any good, there would be a point in the immediately foreseeable future when the boy would finally cry himself out and he would pass out in exhaustion. Raditz had some basic knowledge of children from which he formed his hypothesis. While not a common occurrence, brats weren't totally unheard of on the purging station he and the other remaining Saiyans kept as their permanent residence. They were noisy and a hindrance and a fair few of them wound up disappearing – mostly due to their own negligent parents, of course – but Raditz had come into contact with them. It probably had to do with the fact most of the children were given instructions to avoid all contact with Nappa, Vegeta, and himself, and so they found themselves targets for the little buffoons whenever they weren't on a mission for Frieza. All in all it was quite horrific and made for short Saiyan tempers which in turn probably accounted for the disappearances. Weary of yelling once more, Raditz retreated again to his rock.

As expected, Gohan tuckered himself out a half hour later and Raditz reveled in the moment's utter quietness. Using his scouter he assessed his nephew's dormant power reading and deduced he was sleeping. It was normal for an untrained individual's combat strength to dwindle down next to nothing while they slumbered and though Gohan's power level wasn't particularly high when he was awake, it was now almost microscopic. Perfect. Raditz stood once more and approached the crater, intending to release the boy from his makeshift cell. He thought he might even feed him – just to avoid hearing him complain, of course. He was in no danger of starvation at this point, not that Raditz would allow that, either. The brat was of no use if he wasn't actively being used to keep control over his disgrace of a brother, Kakarrot. That was the only reason the whelp wasn't dead by his hand already.

It was then that Kakarrot appeared quite suddenly, as if the very thought of his brother summoned him. In this part of the planet the sun had just begun to dip down beneath the horizon and Raditz smirked at the younger Saiyan in the waning twilight. Kakarrot's face was all business despite his disheveled appearance. His brother's orange gi was tainted an ugly shade of bloody crimson and the fabric had even ripped in some places. The smirk Raditz wore was met with only a steely, steadfast gaze that even he was having trouble reading. Perhaps his baby brother wasn't so predictable after all. Maybe Kakarrot was a real wild card, just like their father before him.

“Give me my son.”

Or maybe, he was just as simple minded as he had originally been lead to believe.

“Now why would I go and do a thing like that?”

“You promised,” Kakarrot reminded him, his voice hard and flat but still containing the faintest twinge of hopefulness.

“I guess I did then,” Raditz chuckled. “Am I to just take your word that you really did kill one hundred of the earthlings?”

“I did,” he spat. “They're on the beach. You can count 'em.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Raditz said darkly, approaching his brother. “You're far too honest and what's the term? 'Good natured' to lie to me. And you're afraid.”

He knew Kakarrot was afraid of him and Raditz would even have liked to think poor little Kakarrot was having trouble refraining from shrinking away from his intimidating figure. The truth, however, was quite the opposite. The younger Saiyan before him was wrapped in barely checked rage and every fiber of his being was focused on not doing something incredibly stupid like blindly attacking. Kakarrot stood his ground and nothing more.

“If you believe me then give me Gohan,” Kakarrot said firmly, earning another laugh from his older brother.

“But he just quieted down,” Raditz crooned. “I was beginning to like him. In fact, I think I might keep him.”

Kakarrot's restraint broke at that moment and his fury got the better of him, catapulting him into action when he had been forcing himself into dormancy. His fists flew and were deflected, his legs aiming for any opening his trained eyes saw but his kicks repeatedly missed their mark. Raditz was larger, stronger, and more skilled then his baby brother and when he was embarrassed enough by Kakarrot's odd and erratic behavior, he decided it was high time to toss his own punch. His fist connected with Kakarrot's jaw with a distinctive crack.

Kakarrot stumbled back, his hand flying to his damaged jaw with lightning speed, and Raditz stepped over him. He picked his brother up by the front of his orange gi, marveling for a brief moment at the added weight of the garment before tossing him like a rag doll straight into the rock on which he had been sitting. There was only the sound of a dull thunk as Kakarrot befriended the rock and so Raditz wasn't too concerned that he might have seriously hurt his brother. The older Saiyan clicked on his scouter's communications unit, tuning it to the frequency of his home purging station

“Raditz? What do you need? All our readings on your pod are fine.” The crackling voice on the other end of the receiver belonged to a scaly alien who controlled the hangar who probably should have known better for his health than to question a Saiyan.

Raditz growled in response, “I am sending back my brother Kakarrot in my pod along with his offspring. Send a second pod to the Earth coordinates for my use after I finish purging the planet.”

“Yes, sir. Of course. We will prepare rooms for the Kakarrot and child.”

“Excellent,” Raditz said. “Put them in Nappa's charge. He'll know what to do with them.”

He exited communication. Nappa and Prince Vegeta were due back from their purging mission any day now with a prolonged intermission until their next assignment. He fully trusted that the other remaining Saiyans would prove adequate caretakers for his brother and the boy. With any luck, and Raditz was for some reason or another a phenomenally lucky person, Nappa would have already put Kakarrot through the wringer and trained him up to the level of mere embarrassment, not disgrace.  Raditz didn't really care what they did with the whelp.

He crossed the grassy patch between himself and the rock where Kakarrot lay in a heap, too woozy perhaps to stand up. It was painfully obvious that his brother was far too used to being the strongest super power on the planet. Raditz nudged him with the tip of his boot and Kakarrot groaned. Yes, it was clear that no one had just tossed his brother around in a long, long time. Might as well reiterate the lesson, he thought. Raditz smirked and hoisted Kakarrot up over his shoulder, moving down into the crater where his pod lay. Unceremoniously he whacked the keypad with a brutal swipe of his tail, springing open the pod door. Inside, Gohan lay in the large seat, his small body tiny enough to use the cushion that barely allowed clearance for Raditz's hulking frame as a bed. The little boy stirred, sitting up and rubbing his eyes sleepily.

“D-daddy?” he yawned, his wide eyes slowly coming into focus.

Raditz punched the toddler square in the nose. “Shut up.”

Gohan promptly began howling again, the sound grating on his uncle's last and straining nerve. He reached in the pod and yanked the whelp out by the tail, the poor boy lolling into a state of comatose as all lower caste Saiyans did when their tails were grabbed so viciously. None too carefully, Raditz placed Kakarrot into the seat where he had previously been keeping Gohan then tossed the brat inside along with its father. He idly messed with the computer, ensuring his kin would be knocked out most of the trip and double checking to be sure they were going no where but to the purging station because he really didn't want to go through all this trouble only to loose them in the space boonies. Satisfied, Raditz initiated the launch sequence and dashed away from the pod so as not to get caught in the closing door and rocketed into space along with them.

Climbing up to the edge of the crater, Raditz sat down on the ledge and watched as the pod seemingly flung itself out of the atmosphere. He personally didn't really understand the dynamics of the pods, but he knew the technology behind them was trustworthy enough and he hadn't ever had any trouble out of the pods assigned to him. The Saiyan leaned back on his palms as his pod disappeared into the night sky and sighed contentedly. Everything since he had landed on this backwater planet had gone exactly as he planned, a testament to his uncanny luck no doubt. A fiendish smile graced his lips as he laid down on the hard earth, tucking his hands under her head and he closed his eyes, the gentle sounds of quiet nighttime nature to lulling him into sleep. He would catch some shut eye first thing, he decided, then he would destroy the planet's infrastructure tomorrow.