Chapter Text
“God damn it, Kakarot—, if we’re stranded here because of you,” a loud hiss snapped the silence of an otherwise empty field and a meek apology quickly followed.
“I said I was sorry—Vegeta, c’mon—.”
Kakarot—the accused—held up his hands in defense, at Vegeta’s approach; but his partner had already crossed from the front end of their damaged ship, over to where he stood at a distance. He had been smart to keep that distance, because the instinct of his comrade was to knock his head off the moment he got his bearings and realized they were likely unable to recover from the damage they’d sustained. Even worse, with much of their cargo lost in the process.
“You absolute buffoon—you better hope this planet has something we can use for resources! Or we’re fucked out here. The power is almost completely dead. Unless I get find something to fashion a new connection, I can’t even get communication back on,” he got close in his face and growled at him, showing teeth to further express his exceptional disappointment. Kakarot was hardly meant for coming along for any of his trips into space to begin with, but he had some expectations of him not to get them stranded on some damn alien planet. He told him not to touch anything he didn’t know about.
“You’re smart—I know you’ll figure it out—“
“That is not the point you damn clown—if there’s nothing on this planet that I can fashion off; then it won’t matter if I’m smart or not...we’ll be stranded here.” He tapped the device fashioned to his ear—a clear glass display panel that came over his eye, attached to a covered circuit board—and sprung the little electronic piece to life in an attempt to read the surroundings. There would be no real way of determining at a significant distance, but if there was anything close by it might tell him...After a few minutes of combing the area, the device beeped back at him and he scanned the reading it retrieved. “It’s picking up some congested set of low power levels within its reach. If there’s any civilized town. I’m going to go raid it.”
“Do you have to…? Can’t we ask for their help…?”
“With the universal language of what, Kakarot? Chances are they don’t know what we speak out here. There are no artificial satellites in orbit, that I saw when landing us. That leads me to believe they’re not all that advanced, if they’re even civilized. Hell, if I kill a few of them with overwhelming brute force, they may even revere me as a god and just hand over anything I want.”
“Vegeta—“
Vegeta spun on him quickly, pointing a finger in his face, still wound up from the excitement of the ship going down and somehow managing not to die in a blazing fire with it. “You know what I do out here, damn it. You didn’t have to come. I said I’d take one of the others, and you decided you wanted to go all of a sudden. Nappa annoys me, but he’d have come. And your brother too. Hell, even Broly, and I’m fairly certain I’m like a bite sized snack to him if we crash landed and had to fend for ourselves. No, you wanted to come. Knowing full well that pillaging was going to happen.”
“...I...wanted to spend time with you,” Kakarot moved several step back and leaned against the cooling hub of their ship and turned his face down.
“Maybe out here was not the time for it,” Vegeta rubbed his temple with his finger and thumb and did his best to cool his temper down. It would help neither of them for him to explode at Kakarot. It was not going to get them off the planet. “You don’t have a mean bone in you. We’re not here to trade, not on these missions, Kakarot. We already lost the cargo from the ship we intersected, but if we can get back to the last checkpoint, maybe I can take the pieces of that ship to repair ours. So I’m going to go find the first sign of civilization and see what I can grab and you, do what you are best at.” He looked around him at the wilderness and gestured in a wide arc. “And find dinner out there, natureboy, you can handle that?”
Kakarot turned his head up, brows turning together a little, feeling a little mocked; but he knew that Vegeta was serious in placing some value on his skills in hunting. Who knew how long they’d be there. The least he could do was find and cook dinner. “Yeah, I got this. Just...don’t kill everyone?”
“No promises, Kakarot. If they have and give me what I want, they’ll all be just fine. But if I have to pry it from them, then I’m going to pry it. We’re pirates. That’s what we do. Now, I don’t sense anything strong enough to be concerned about. But if you need me, then the scouters can still reach between each other at least, so keep it on. Last thing I need is to come back and find out you’ve been eaten by some giant creature.”
“The biggest alien worm.”
“Don’t you even play with me, Kakarot, I won’t even try to save you,” he hissed at him, bristled by the very idea of coming back to that. He would definitely just leave Kakarot to die.
“I’ll make sure I cook it before you even realize you’re eating very big worm.”
“Go fucking hunt—” He threw his arm out, pointing for him go make himself useful and to stop threatening him with things that made his skin crawl. “I will be back. If I’m not back in an hour, then open communications, but I won’t be longer than that. Thirty minutes tops. Don’t go off too far. I don’t want anything to happen to the ship. If it’s damaged worse, then we’re really in trouble.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. I think I can handle this much, ‘Geta. I messed up, but I’m not touchin’ anything else, okay?”
“Right...I’ll be back.” He repeated, knowing he had already said it once, then twice. But leaving Kakarot to his own devices on an alien planet made him feel uncomfortable. He knew he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, but his inexperience in hopping planet to planet, left him with some weakness for handling himself on an unfamiliar world. But he shook his head and left Kakarot to his own devices.
If his idiot partner could strand them on a planet in a short time, then he could be alone for a short time while Vegeta went to seek out a solution.