Dragonball: Rewritten

Chapter 3

If he had any hair left, Nappa was sure he would've torn it out by now. He didn't have time to search for the prince when they arrived at the Frieza Force station. It wasn't as if he had to anyway. He was dead certain his highness made it there and was already in the tanks. No one told him otherwise, and he didn't bother asking.

Five long sols of healing later, Nappa wanted to punch himself in the face for not doing that one simple act.

"He's what?!" He grabbed the shoulder pads of the attending doctor's armor, shaking the lizard man back and forth. "Where's his pod?! Why haven't you looked for him?!"

The doctor barely managed to reply, "W-We thought he was t-taking his time! Like he does!"

"He doesn't take NINE SOLS to follow us back! It's a day or two max!"

"M-My a-a-apologiiies!"

"FUCK!" He threw the doctor to the other side of the room, ignoring the screams and shouts of the nurses and attendants all around. He caught the eye of a pink-skinned, blue-haired nurse and grabbed it by the arm, yelling, "Where's Raditz?!"

"S-Still healing, sir!"

"How much longer?"

"A-Another sol! Maybe two!"

"Do Dodoria and Zarbon know?"

The nurse's pause and wide-eyed stare told Nappa the story he didn't need an answer to. He shoved it to the side with a grunt, stomping out of the healing tank room and down the corridor naked, tail lashing hard behind him. It didn't matter that everyone gawked at his burly naked frame, because none of them had a power level to challenge him to put on clothes or else.

He found backup black shorts, armor and boots in the usual depository he, Raditz and Vegeta shared on all the Frieza Force stations, frowning when he saw Vegeta's were completely untouched. Once clothed, Nappa charged his way to the loading dock, where there was bound to be an open communication screen that read back to the latest coordinates of all pods that launched and landed across the quadrant.

Sure enough, he found one, shoving an engineer out of his way when he tried to take the screen from him. People shouted at him for his brute strength but he ignored them, typing as fast as possible on the holographic keyboard.

One by one, the serial numbers and designated flight plans and patterns for each of their pods popped up on screen. His first. Then Vegeta's, which he knew wasn't helpful. Raditz was the one who took Vegeta's pod on the way back. Finally, Raditz's name flashed on screen, and Nappa zeroed in on all the data that compiled and ran down in a list of numbers and names and dates. Line after line zoomed past him, various planets purged, stations visited, trajectories and return flights.

He found the name of the last planet and tapped the touch screen once. A red square flashed over the planet's name and then expanded into another screen. More lines of data cascaded down, Nappa's eyes searching each one. A map of the planet they conquered, the casualties endured, the path of the pod leaving the planet's atmosphere—

Nappa froze at the words written at the very end of the flight log.

Transmission end: 18:14:32.

Signal lost.

5 retrieval attempts made.

Retrieval end: 09:34:52.

His fingers flew over the keyboard yet again, searching for whatever data he could on Raditz's missing pod. But as the minutes passed, no new data emerged. Nothing. All he found was that the exterior was hit, the control panel was damaged, the data got scrambled on the ship...