Ch. 7: Off the Beaten Path

After a month and a half on Snake Way, Goku was exhausted, so when he came across that street cleaner who offered to give him a ride halfway, he was thrilled.

As it turns out, sleeping on the back of a street cleaner that barely fit on the road wasn't a good idea, especially when the punishment for falling off of the road was a one-way ticket to HFIL.

"Duh-uh! Aghh!" Goku grabbed his head, confused by the inexplicable pain as he stood up. He had no clue where he was.

"I honestly didn't think you'd actually be coming here, Kakarot." A familiar man was standing in front of Goku. This particular person instantly put him on guard. After all, he was the reason that Goku was dead.

"Raditz. You're looking for King Kai, too? I don't think he's gonna be willing to teach the likes of you."

"You idiot! Don't you know where we are? We're in hell!" Raditz yelled at his brother.

Goku freaked out "Hell!? Oh no! I must have fallen off Snake Way! Now what am I going to do?"

At least it explained what Raditz was doing... there... wait... "Hey, where's your halo?" Goku asked the Saiyan brute.

"I lost it around the time I got my body back. I also gained a little knowledge. Isn't that right, kid?" Raditz shouted. Goku followed Raditz's gaze, only to find a little girl around Goku's daughter's age. chilling on a cliffside, watching them. She was the only other person within eyesight.

"Just remember the deal we made, Raditz." She called back, clear annoyance in her voice.

"What deal?" Goku asked suspiciously. If Raditz was brought back to life by this girl, then he would have died for nothing. None of his friends would be strong enough to stop him yet.

"Eat this, Kakarot." Raditz tossed him something. It was a piece of fruit.

"Is it poisoned?"

"You're already dead." Raditz reminded him, rolling his eyes. Remembering that, Goku ate the whole fruit, all reservations thrown out the window. Immediately, Goku could feel his stamina, drained from the long run, replenishing at an incredible rate. He even felt stronger, light as air.

"Now fight me, Kakarot."

Goku didn't understand what was happening, but he was always up for a fight. After all his running, he was far stronger than he had been back when Raditz had wiped the floor with him. He trusted that he now stood a chance.

"Double Sunday!" Raditz yelled, starting off the fight with his special move. Goku managed to dodge and got in close for a flurry of punches and kicks, which Raditz dodged or blocked with little difficulty.

"Come on, Kakarot!" Seeing an opening, Raditz kicked Goku in the side, throwing him backwards. Goku crashed into the same cliff that the girl had been sitting on, but neither Saiyan was worried about that at the moment.

"Kamehameha!" Out of the rubble came an energy wave, but Raditz deflected it into the sky, where it exploded. The wave was followed by Goku, faster than before.

"Saturday Crush!" 

"Solar Flare!" When Raditz tried to use another special move against him, Goku blinded him with a Solar Flare, and kicked him as hard as he could. "Kamehame-"

"Why you!" Raditz started gathering his own energy,

"Double Sunday!" Raditz released his Double Sunday energy wave again.

"HAA!" Goku fought back with his Kamehameha. The clash of the two beams seemed to shake the entire section of hell that they were in. 

...

After the clash, everything was quiet. Shay looked on. Both fighters had been knocked unconscious from the clash. The perfect result. They'd both get notably stronger from this.

"You did good, Raditz." She muttered, materializing a door right between them. This was a temporary doorway that would disappear once they went through it, but it would lead to the halfway point on Snake Way.

While the original Goku had taken 177 days to get to King Kai's, she expected this new, stronger Goku to get there in another 30 days or so, brother in tow, just like Raditz had promised her. That would extend Goku's time there by over a hundred days, and give him a training partner in Raditz, who would be a great ally to have in the future.

On top of that, she and Shenron had agreed to work together to ensure that Goku and Raditz got to Earth during the Saiyan's arrival, rather than a full day after.

Since her Mistress was planning on expediting the fight between the Saiyans, that would give them just enough time to save Piccolo, and Raditz would be able to explain the danger to Namek once he got there.

Piccolo would never ignore a danger to his home world, so they'd probably end up on Namek all without having anyone die. This was the plan that her Mistress had come up in after a hundred years of thought.

(This plan had never actually been run by Hanna. Shay's actual job had been to make Goku stronger and get him through Snake Way faster, by turning his first misstep into his last and adding training to it, but she had misconstrued it horribly due to her obsessive loyalty towards Hanna. Being busy, Hanna had just kind of glossed over the fact that Raditz existed at all.)

...

"Come on, Kakarot. Get up, you're not that hurt." Goku woke up to Raditz standing over him with his hand extended. Not as wary of his brother after their battle, he took his hand and let him help him to his feet. There was a moment of awkward silence between the two brothers.

"Kakarot, I want to apologize to you for everything I did. With my time here, I've realized how small minded I've been in the past. I should have been working to make myself stronger, rather than forcing you to come kill for us." After dying Raditz had realized how useless the money that they gained while conquering planets was in the grand scheme of things. There wasn't much point in fighting for anything that you didn't truly believe in, and money wasn't worth putting belief in.

"I believe you. You learn a lot about someone when you fight them with everything you have, Raditz. What are you going to do now?" Goku asked.

"First off, we should leave this place. After that, I have a certain debt to repay." Raditz told his brother. He had promised Shay that he would get stronger for himself, and that was what he was going to do. Raditz had no idea what he was going to do once he and Kakarot got back to the realm of the living, though.

He considered Vegeta and Nappa to be friends, but he also hated them at the same time. He wasn't ready to fight against them quite yet, but he wasn't about to help them either. He'd have to make a choice eventually, but now wasn't the time.

"Alright, but how to you think we'll do that?"

"You really are an idiot. See that door over there? It'll take us about halfway down Snake Way. Then we'll have to run the rest of the way, if you're up for it." Raditz told his brother. 

"How do you know about Snake Way?"

"The girl told me. I promised to go to King Kai's and train with you in exchange for my life." Raditz explained. Shay hadn't told him to keep it a secret, after all. Part of the mission that her Mistress had given her was to watch over these two until their training was complete, so she planned on showing herself eventually once they got to King Kai's.

"You coming, brother?"

"Wanna race?"

"You're on!"