Cheap Brother

Inside the Water Drop Ship's rest cabin, the climate-control system hummed as it blew out warm air.

The holographic dining table was laden with a lavish feast—prime marbled steaks sizzling with grease, fresh alien sashimi, golden, glossy seafood fried rice, and several bottles of potent liquor.

After sitting awake without rest for an entire week, Son Goku finally let loose with his appetite. The Saiyan's enormous capacity for food was on full display again, with nearly everything on the table ending up in his stomach.

"Goku, slow down. Nobody's going to steal it from you." Bulma propped her chin up with one hand, smiling as she watched him devour the food. She casually grabbed a napkin and wiped the sauce from his chin.

Son Goku gulped down a mouthful of ice-cold beer, let out a long breath, and leaned back contentedly against the sofa.

Full and satisfied, his thoughts naturally began to stir.

Son Goku looked at the simulated starry sky overhead, and an idea surfaced in his mind.

He had now mastered Instant Transmission, and his power level had genuinely surpassed three million. Setting aside those gods hidden in the shadows, across the universe at this point in time, the only one who could reliably overpower him was Frieza—whose normal power level was 530,000, but who could soar past one hundred million after transforming.

Since Instant Transmission could ignore distance, what if he followed the signal and went looking for Frieza now, paying him a direct visit... Could he take him out while he was still in his first form?

Thinking that, Son Goku did not hesitate. He closed his eyes and once again spread his ki through the spatial grid's rhythm, casting it toward the most chaotic region near the center of the galaxy.

Yet more than ten minutes later, Son Goku opened his eyes helplessly.

He had failed.

The universe was too vast, and living beings were as numerous as grains of sand in a desert. Instant Transmission required a clear understanding of the target's ki. Though he knew Frieza existed, he had never met him in person and had no idea what his ki felt like.

Without a clear anchor, fishing an evil cosmic emperor out of this endless sea of stars was truly difficult.

"Looks like there's no shortcut." Son Goku took a sip from his glass and shook his head to himself.

Just as he was about to withdraw his senses, his nerves suddenly twitched.

In a star region not too far from Planet Yardrat, he sharply detected an extremely unusual cluster of ki.

That ki was not particularly strong, barely more than a thousand at most. Yet its texture gave Son Goku an inexplicable sense of familiarity.

Violent, savage, filled with an intense desire to destroy. Most importantly, when his mind touched that ki, the Saiyan blood that had been calm within him unexpectedly produced a faint resonance.

Drawn by that bloodline connection, a vague silhouette naturally took shape in his mind—tall, arrogant, and with wildly unruly long hair that trailed all the way down to his calves.

"A Saiyan? Long hair..."

Son Goku raised his brow, and the answer immediately clicked in his mind.

Looking across the current universe, aside from Vegeta and bald-headed Nappa, the only long-haired Saiyan who could resonate with his bloodline was his biological older brother—the weakest of them all, Raditz, who had barely appeared in the original story before getting killed off.

"Well, that's an unexpected find." Son Goku set down his glass and stood.

"What is it?" Bulma asked curiously.

"I didn't find who I was looking for, but I accidentally sensed a relative who's been wandering out there." Son Goku rubbed Bulma's hair and gently instructed, "Keep the ship parked here. I'm going over there to deal with some family business."

With that, he pressed two fingers to his forehead. Before Bulma could ask anything else, his entire body vanished into thin air with a soft sound.

Dozens of light-years from Planet Yardrat, on the low-grade vegetation planet designated K-89.

In the muddy swamp, dozens of six-legged native creatures lay sprawled in every direction. Green blood had stained the puddles murky, while a pungent stench of blood filled the air.

Raditz sat atop the largest native corpse, tearing off a chunk of half-cooked hind leg and chewing it in huge bites. His distinctive long hair was caked with mud, and his outdated battle armor was ripped open in several places, leaving him looking utterly bedraggled.

"Damn Vegeta. He always dumps these places on me—natives with barely any profit in them, and tough as hell to boot."

Raditz cursed as he ate, forcefully tapping the scouter at his ear. "There isn't even a decent mineral vein. This fucking trip was another waste of time."

Just as he was complaining—

"Sure is rough. A mighty Saiyan elite reduced to living like some interstellar scavenger."

A voice dripping with disdain drifted over from behind Raditz without warning.

"Who?!"

Every hair on Raditz's body stood on end. Without even turning his head, acting on the instincts forged by a life on the edge of death, he hurled the meat in his hand backward like a concealed weapon. His body lunged forward like a leopard, then spun sharply in midair into a defensive stance.

Yet when he saw the black-haired young man standing at the edge of the swamp, his entire body froze as if struck by lightning.

Raditz's gaze locked onto Son Goku's face, his eyes widening round with overwhelming shock.

Black spiky hair, hard facial features, and that familiar feeling that seemed to rise from the bone...

"Bardock... Dad?" Raditz blurted out instinctively, then shook his head hard. "No, Dad died with Planet Vegeta when it was hit by that meteor! Could it be... you're the little brother who was sent to Earth back then..."

"Kakarot?!"

Looking at his biological older brother, whose mud-streaked face was so shocked his voice had cracked, Son Goku spoke with casual teasing in his tone.

"Nice to meet you, my bargain-bin big brother. But let me correct you—in Earth's terms, my name is Son Goku now."

"Son Goku? Don't disgust me with some name from a low-level planet!"

After his brief shock, Raditz's expression swiftly turned from disbelief to lofty arrogance. He looked Son Goku over with utter disdain. "The blood of the strongest warrior race in the universe runs through your veins! As long as you're a Saiyan, your name will always be Kakarot!"

Raditz snorted coldly, his gaze dropping to Son Goku's bare lower back. "Where's your tail? You don't even have a Saiyan's noble tail anymore. What a disgrace! What, couldn't make it on Earth, so you came to beg your big brother to take you in?"

He clenched his fists, his knuckles cracking as he advanced step by step. "Perfect. There aren't many Saiyans left. Come with me and pledge yourself to the great Lord Frieza. With your bloodline, you can at least serve as decent cannon fodder for him..."

Before he could finish, Son Goku sighed.

Without assuming a fighting stance, Raditz did not even see how the person before him vanished.

Bang!

A dull impact rang out.

Raditz felt as though a starship traveling at full speed had slammed head-on into his abdomen. His eyes bulged, and stomach acid mixed with scraps of roasted meat sprayed from his mouth.

His towering body curled like a shrimp and crashed heavily into the muddy swamp, sending muck and water flying everywhere.

Son Goku slowly withdrew his right leg, walked to the edge of the pit, and looked down at Raditz as he twitched in agony.

"Raditz, honestly, I really hate hearing you go on about Lord Frieza this and cannon fodder that," Son Goku said casually.

"Been a dog for so long that you've forgotten who you are?"

Raditz clutched his stomach, and even his breaths carried the taste of blood. He struggled to raise his head, and at last, undisguised fear filled his eyes as he looked at Son Goku.

What the hell had that speed and strength been just now?! He was a high-class warrior—yet he had not even had time to react?

"What kind of monster are you...?" Raditz gritted out, cold sweat and mud streaming down his face.

"I don't have time to waste on nonsense. I only beat you down so you could quietly listen to a story."

Son Goku crouched down, meeting Raditz's eyes in the mud.

"Did you know? Planet Vegeta wasn't destroyed by a meteorite at all. That Lord Frieza you keep talking about feared the legend of the Super Saiyan, so he personally used an energy ball to blast our home into cosmic dust."

Raditz's eyes flew wide open. "Bullshit! How could Frieza possibly...?" he roared hoarsely.

"Believe whatever you want! When Bardock charged Frieza's spaceship alone to meet his death, you were probably still playing exterminator for someone on some alien planet."

Son Goku stood up, ignoring Raditz's collapsing expression.

"I'm not killing you because Saiyan blood still flows through your veins. But the way you look now, like some lackey, is really too ugly."

Son Goku stepped forward and grabbed Raditz's mud-caked long hair. Just as Raditz tried to struggle, he delivered a precise chop to the back of his neck.

The Saiyan warrior who had terrorized the universe for years rolled his eyes back and passed out completely.

Dragging the unconscious Raditz along, Son Goku pressed two fingers to his forehead. With a soft sound, he vanished from the desolate swamp.