Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Strange Duet ❯ First Movement ( Prologue )

Author's Note: My very first fic! This is an AU story in which Radditzu was
unable to come to Earth, and thus Goku was left to his own devices for two
more years. Various evildoers pop out of the woodwork, as they have a
tendency to do if things get too quiet in the DBZ universe, and Goku is
currently at the same level he was at when he arrives on Namek in the Freeza
saga. The pairing is GxV and Vegeta should show up around chapter 3.

Warnings: None as of yet

Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ and am making no profit, so on so forth.


Strange Duet: Chapter One

The man known as Son Goku had been fishing with his son, enjoying the simple
happiness that came with being in nature with his one and only child, who
was now six years of age. Goku was inwardly delighted that his son was
finally being allowed to learn to fight, as his wife had finally relented in
her crusade to rear the perfect scholar. An incident involving an interview
at a prestigious school, and a somewhat lecherous interviewer propositioning
Goku when he thought that Chichi was out of earshot was to thank for that.

Goku sincerely hoped that the man's physical therapy was doing well, as he
had been very decent about not pressing charges, and it had been somewhat
uncalled for of Chichi to throw him out of that third-story window like
that. Chichi was nice and all, but sometimes she got a little carried away.

Goku smiled at his son Gohan, who was currently napping beside him, tail
twitching as he dreamt. His son had shown great promise; he had already
advanced passed the ki level he was at when he was his age. Goku sighed in
contentment, and since the fish weren't biting, he decided to join his son
in slumber. Unfortunately, the plan wasn't followed when he was blindsided
by a ki blast from behind. Goku immediately scooped up his now awake and
terrified son, and took shelter behind a rock, and began searching for the
unknown assailant's ki.

'This is bad,' he thought. 'Who would be willing to attack me and my son
like out of nowhere like this? Well, whoever it is, it sure isn't anyone
I've ever felt before. I don't think it's human, but it can't be Piccolo
either.'

"Daddy?" Son Goku looked down at his son.

"Yeah, Gohan?" he asked.

"A-are you okay?" The young boy attempted to look around his father's back
to the place where the ki blast had hit.

Goku quickly put on his best cheerful, reassuring face and said, "Don't you
worry about your Dad, Gohan. He'll be just fine. Now you stay here and stay
hidden while Dad goes and takes care of whatever mean man went and spoiled
our father-son fishing trip, okay?" His son nodded slowly, still obviously
petrified, and obeyed his father's wishes.

In truth, the injury that Goku had sustained to his back hurt like hell,
apparently not only was willing to stoop to ambush, but was fairly powerful
as well. Goku powered up and flew up above the treetops and came face to
face with his adversary.

He found himself somewhat taken aback by what he found. It wasn't human,
that much was obvious. The creature had large emerald green eyes, large
ears, and a long poofy tail. Its entire body was covered in fur, electric
blue for the most part, but with a deep royal blue on its chest, the tips of
its ears and tail. The creature had a very strange and exotic look to it,
almost cat-like. Goku wondered what in the world this creature was doing
here and why it felt the need to attack him like this. It had a large scar
on it, which started on its right side and reached all of the way to is
upper left chest. It was plain to see that the injury had been brutal and
Goku could sense a savage, desperate quality to its aura. It was all so very
bizarre.

Goku prepared to question the creature when it suddenly began to laugh.
It was somewhat disturbing, as the creature's voice did not really seem
suited to such a crazed, chilling sound. The creature suddenly stopped
laughing and looked Goku in the eyes.

"Hello, Saiyajin. I finally found you. It took three long years, but I
finally found you. Do you know how?" The creature laughed again, softly
this time. "Shortly after all of your kind are born they have a microchip
implanted in them, right here." The creature brought its left arm up and
slowly pointed to the inside of his right wrist. "Sala is the word in your
language, I believe. It's so that the horrible little murdering whelps can
be tracked should the need happen to arise. It took me all this time to find
that out, and use it to my advantage, but I did. The system I devised can
track a Sala and pinpoint the carrier of one to the planet they are
currently on. Your Sala led me to you, Saiyajin, the last of your foul race,
save your damned prince." The creature narrowed its eyes in an expression of
pure distaste. "And now, I swear I will kill you, and avenge my race and
every other one you've destroyed!" The creature then dropped into an
aggressive battle stance.

Goku floated at the same height as the creature with his fists balled at
his sides. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "Who are you?"

The creature did not drop its battle stance and looked as if it did not
believe Goku's confusion for one minute. "Allow me to introduce myself,
then. I am named Machia, and I am prince of the planet Vellia. You know, the
one whose people you purged of life? I'm sure you remember." The creature's
voice dripped with hate and contempt. "Don't you dare play games with me,
you vicious, murdering, Saiyajin monster, because I see straight through
you, and I won't leave you to destroy this world like you did mine."

Goku narrowed his eye in puzzlement. 'He keeps talking about these Saiyajin.
Something's wrong. I can sense it.' He decided to continue to try and reason
with this strange character. "I still don't know what you're talking about,"
he said. "You must have made a mistake with that system you mentioned,
because I've lived here all of my life, and I've never even heard of any of
those things your talking about." He paused and the asked "And what is a
Saiyajin?"

As Goku spoke, Machia's eyes slowly took on a shocked look, like one who
has been slapped across the face without provocation. Then the look of
revulsion that had been there since he had first addressed Goku resurfaced.
"Enough," he growled "Die!" And then he launched his attack.

Goku blocked the first blow the alien sent his way, and continued to
simply block, not making any offensive moves as of yet. 'This guy's pretty
strong,' he thought, 'but in his mental state, any skill he might have had
has gone down the drain.' It was making the battle somewhat easier for
Goku, allowing him to see to it that the deranged creature was not hurt,
merely expending his ki. 'I don't really want to hurt him,' Goku thought.
'He doesn't seem bad, just somehow sad.'

The creature thought that the battle was going rather well for him. After
all, he wasn't dead yet and the Saiyajin seemed to have trouble fighting
back as it was only blocking instead of taking any sort of offensive. If all
went well, then the Saiyajin would tire out and he could finish the foul
thing off. He threw a punch as hard as he could, straight to the Saiyjin's
face.

And was promptly thrown right to the ground of the green planet he had
tracked his quarry to. He looked and saw a small creature peering at him
from behind a rock. It bore a great resemblance to the Saiyajin, with spiky,
black fur on its head and a brown tail weaving behind it.

'It can only be the Saiyajin's child, but there should be no other Saiyajin
left.' He looked up and saw the Saiyajin descending from the sky to finish
him. 'I have failed, and I'm...going to die!' Unconsciousness claimed his
awareness.

********

A few minutes later, Son Goku arrived at Capsule Corporation Headquarters,
holding the alien by the scruff of the neck, and with Gohan flying behind
him. Having deciding that taking the creature to a normal hospital would
probably cause all kinds of unnecessary and unanswerable questions involving
the patient's species and health care plan, Goku had figured that Bulma
would be the one who was able to sort things out, if anyone.

Hours later, Bulma would muse to herself that it had been such a nice,
peaceful day too. She had been working on creating a new, more economical
version of the SM00015 capsule and making wonderful progress, even for a
genius such as her. It was then she happened to look out the window that she
liked to gaze out of sometimes when she was working when she saw Goku and
Gohan floating in the window next to her, holding a big blue thing, and
promptly fell out of her computer chair.

Goku watched Bulma pick herself off the floor, and wondered idly if all
girls were dramatic as Bulma and Chichi, and tried to remember if he had
ever met one that wasn't. He decided he couldn't think of any.

Moments later, they were in one of Capsule Corporation's five medical
faculties where Bulma analyzed the creature. While she was busy restraining
it to avoid any mishaps, Goku explained that it had attacked him out of
nowhere, but didn't really seem evil. He thought that it had just somehow
confused him with someone else. She discovered that he (at least she assumed
it was a he, though it wore no clothes and she could see no, ahem, evidence
of it being male) was suffering from exhaustion, dehydration, and a blow to
the head she had no doubt he suffered during his run-in with Goku.

"Uh, Bulma?" Bulma turned from her analyzing/gawking to answer her friend.

"Yeah?"

"This, uh, well... this might sound a bit weird, but uh, is there any way to
find out whether or not there's a microchip in my wrist?"

Bulma raised an eyebrow "In your wrist?"

Goku nodded and pointed to his right wrist. "Yeah, my right one."

"Okaaay... follow me." Bulma walked to the door, motioned Goku to follow
her, and led him to the room where she had been working beforehand. When
they got there, Bulma walked over to the closet and began rummaging for what
it was she needed, a device that had originally been created to scan
capsules that had lost their label to see what was inside, but she had
recalibrated it to suit a more wide range of uses once when she had nothing
else better to do.

Eventually, she came up with what she was looking for. She promptly hooked
it up to an available USB port, before instructing Goku to hold out his
right wrist.

The computer made an odd humming noise before the screen went blank, and
a series of data in an unreadable language appeared to them. Bulma blinked
and stared for a moment and then remarked, "Well this is strange. I can't
read it! Is it encrypted or something? I wonder what it's supposed to
say... Hey, Goku! Goku?"

Bulma turned to look at her friend, who had remained silent since they had
left the medical room, and was now standing and staring at the computer
screen looking like he had been punched in the stomach. Bulma decide that
something must be wrong and attempted to rouse Goku from his stupor.

"Goku?" At the sound of his name, he snapped out his reverie, turned,
and began to walk towards the window. "Goku! Where are you going?"

Goku threw his legs over the window seal and prepared to take flight. Bulma
was beginning to get annoyed by the whole mysteriousness of the situation,
as well as Goku's equally mysterious behavior. She ran towards the window in
a vain attempt to get a hold of him before he took to the air. He stopped
ten feet from the window and turned to her.

"Sorry, Bulma! I need to go to the house and take care of something, but
I'll be back soon! If that blue guy wakes up and causes any trouble Gohan
will help until I can come back! Bye!"

Bulma felt decidedly annoyed now. "Goku you get back here right now and
tell me what's happening!" she screeched with all the screeching power that
she had in her as Goku zoomed through the air and out of sight. She huffed
in indignation, turned to the computer with the strange lettering still on
the screen, saved it, and made a printout of it. Done with that, she marched
herself to the medical ward that she had just come from. 'Well, then, we'll
see about this!

********

Goku arrived at the Son residence, and saw with a modicum of relief that
his wife Chichi was still out shopping, as her being there would have meant
long, drawn out explanations of where was Gohan, what he had been doing,
what he was doing, and what he was going to do. Said questions would no
doubt have taken a long amount of time and would have been filled with his
wife's patented yelling and Goku just didn't have the time to spare. He
wanted to get this done now. Goku opened the door to his house and walked to
his bedroom to where he kept the dragon balls.

Some time ago, he had begun collecting them as a hobby. He now had five.
'Finding the rest shouldn't take too long,' he thought as he picked the five
balls and the dragon radar up and took to the sky. 'I'm sure that guy made a
mistake somewhere along the line,' he thought as he picked the six-star
dragon ball up from where it had been lying in a
remote mountain slope. 'I mean, even if I AM one of those Saiyajin, I
couldn't have killed all those people like he said. There must be some sort
of mistake. The one who did it must have been some kind of criminal.'

Goku found the seventh and final dragon ball in a lonesome desert far
from civilization. 'I'll just call the dragon and I'll wish to know the
truth about my family and where I come from. Then the dragon will tell me
the truth and I'll go back to Capsule Corp and tell that guy and everyone
else what the mistake is and tell them how it's all just a big
misunderstanding, and that'll be that.' Then, having all seven dragon balls,
Son Goku prepared to summon the dragon god Shenlong.
*******

"What is the wish that you have summoned me for?" Boomed the voice of the
dragon god Shenlong. 'No turning back now...' thought Goku as he looked up
at the enormous dragon as it loomed above him. He gathered his courage and
shouted as loudly as he could so as to be heard by Shenlong. "I wish to know
the truth of my family and heritage!" For a moment there was silence, then
Shenlong's eyes began to glow a deep red and he boomed, "So it shall be." A
white light engulfed Goku until he could no longer see the landscape
surrounding him.

********

He was somewhere, but he didn't know where. It was like floating in a sea of
white, and then suddenly he was in a hall, sparsely decorated, with white
walls and a red tile floor. He was being carried. Why did he feel so small?

The man who had been carrying him stopped. A voice came from somewhere, deep
and harsh sounding. It said, "Ah, so this is Bardock's new brat, is
it? Ha ha, he sure as hell looks like him! Are you taking him to find out
his fighting potential?" The man carrying him answered, "No, not yet,
Caula's in a bad way. She wants to see it before she goes." He then he
continued on his way.

Soon the man turned and went into a room where a woman was sitting up in a
bed. Goku's first thought when the man placed him into her arms was that she
was pretty, and that she smelled really nice, but then Goku saw her, really
saw her, and he sensed that she had been weakened somehow. 'She's dying!'
Goku realized with distress.

The woman, Goku's mother, held him in her arms for a moment, and seemed
content to just look at him. Finally she spoke to him. "My darling little
one. You have no idea what you've done to me, do you? How cruel you've been
to your mother. She's going to die now, you know." She smiled at him. "So
very innocent. It's okay, I don't blame you." Her voice was growing quiet
now, as though she were tired. "I think I'll name you Kakaratto." She
slumped against the bed and was silent. The infant Kakaratto, sensing what
had happened, suddenly began to cry loudly. "Mama! No!"

Colors streaked past Goku's vision, and he felt as if he was moving at a
great speed. Suddenly he was floating in the upper atmosphere of a large
red planet. He saw a vision of a man who looked just like him, fighting
against a horde of aliens; and screaming for someone named Freeza to come
out and fight him. 'My father?' thought Goku. He then saw when Freeza came
out of his ship and killed his father, then obliterated the planet below in
one attack.

Colors once again zoomed by and he felt time pass, faster and farther
this time, until he was in a curved white hallway, with a strange sterile
and cold feel to it. Doors stood at every two feet or so. Strange creatures
marched by, dressed in armor. None of them paid Goku any attention. 'I guess
they can't see me,' he thought. One of the doors opened up and a tall, burly
man with long spiky hair down to his knees emerged. Goku saw with
astonishment that he had a brown tail wrapped around his waist. He fell into
step behind the man. The man appeared to be talking into a device mounted on
his ear, which had a green lens that went over his eye.

"Yes, prince Vegeta. No sir, nothing out of the ordinary. Yes sir, I
understand. Excuse me Sir, but I have been meaning to tell you something
lately. You see, my younger brother was sent out on an assignment, but he
never returned." There was a pause. "It was just before that, sir. He was
sent out in a pod modified for infants." Another pause, longer this time.
Goku could hear shouting coming from the device, but he could not make out
the words. Whoever it was, he sure sounded angry. "I-I'm sorry, my Prince,
I'll send you the coordinates as soon as possible."

At that moment, one of the aliens bumped into the man, and he was knocked
against the wall. "Watch where you're going, Saiyajin dog! Wouldn't want any
accidents to happen, now would we?" The creature grinned, and Goku saw that
it had some truly nasty-looking green teeth. It was shorter than the
longhaired man by a few inches, had a green scaly body, a stocky build, and
small dark green curved horns on its head.

The man growled at the creature. "You should watch where you're going,
Bitzet. No Saiyajin would ever be afraid of any idle threat." The man
lifted his nose up, crossed his arms, and a look of disgust crossed his
face. "Least of all a foul smelling, weak, ugly-ass creature like you." Out
of nowhere, a beam of ki came from behind and sliced through the man's back,
passed through his body and out of his chest. The
longhaired man held his hand over his heart, staggered for a moment, and
fell to his knees. His eyes were wide with pain and surprise. A creature,
the same species as the scaly green one walked up, its hands on its hips. It
wore a triumphant smirk on its face. The longhaired man fell face down onto
the floor and lay perfectly still.

The larger creature stood next to him and looked down on his prone body.
"Tsk, tsk," it said. "Will you Saiyajin dogs ever learn to know your place
and keep your tongue in your head?" They both laughed, a horrible hissing
sound.

Goku was left for a moment, stupefied, suspended in the vision of the
past that the dragon had given him. 'This is horrible. Is this all that the
dragon is going to show me? So much pain and death,' he thought.

After a few seconds, he felt himself being pulled again, and he found
himself surrounded by the same white light as before. He felt a strange
sensation, and images of his birth race began racing into his mind,
knowledge and information ran by his brain at light speed. History, myths,
culture, language all came to him in the blink of an eye.

Finally, a vision of a man like him, a Saiyajin, with a lithe, graceful
body and a dark flame of hair atop his head. He had a ruthless and callous
look on his face, and yet Goku found himself drawn to him. 'My prince,' he
thought. 'The only one left in the entire universe that is like me. My
prince, Vegeta.'

Abruptly, the vision of his prince was gone. He had returned to reality and
Goku collapsed to his hands and knees from the shock of it all. The dragon's
eyes once again glowed red and the dragon balls simultaneously rose to the
air. "Your wish has been granted. Fare thee well." Then the balls scattered
and the dragon vanished.

Goku slowly stood up and scratched the back of his head in contemplation. He
stopped when he felt it. 'My scar, the one I got when I fell on my head as a
baby... It's gone!'