1. Diversions (1/2)
sayian saga
we pick the story during the saiyan saga battle again with nappa laying helpless at vegeta's feet. vegeta glares down at him, clearly disgusted at his failure. he then steps over the
oken man, who is left to watch as vegeta and goku start to duke it out. while everyone else is distracted by vegeta's ozaru transformation, nappa pulls out his controller and summons his pod. he drags himself inside and blasts off.
arriving on frieza planet 79 nappa is dragged out of the pod by some techs and dumped into a healing chamber. when he finally exits, he is met by cui. after some requisite gloating, cui shoves nappa down the hallway to vegeta's healing chamber. nappa is shocked to see the prince's state. that low-class trash of a saiyan managed to best him too? nappa remembers vegeta glaring down at him, like he was nothing. he shakes his head to clearing the memory.
"he was just toying with us." nappa says quietly to himself."what was that?" cui asks, mockingly."nothing." nappa says as he settles down against a wall.
when vegeta wakes, the first thing he sees is the big guy, sitting quietly, against the opposite wall, staring at his feet. he'd thought he saw a pod leaving, and despite the man's failure, if he's honest with himself, vegeta can't blame the guy for bailing. that damned upstart kakarot was, was something else. besides there's bigger fish to fry and the big idiot might just come in handy.
cui is of course standing by and starts berating both of them for going off mission. oh, frieza will have words when he gets back. nappa perks up at the mention of frieza. he's not waiting for them now? where'd he go? they are both stunned to hear that the tyrant is on his way to namek to wish for immortality.
vegeta glances at nappa, and to his surprise, sees a blank mask. he was worried he'd have to do something to keep nappa from blurting out but he's just standing there. vegeta makes light of things to placate cui and after a while they are allowed to find a corner to talk and plan.
nappa again surprises him by speaking first. they need to either get to namek, fast or find a relatively quiet corner of the universe to hide in. frieza won't take kindly to their little excursion and if he gets immortality? there'll be no stopping him. vegeta agrees and lays out his plan. nappa will create a diversion while vegeta steals a pod and heads to namek. after a moment, watching nappa quietly sit there, vegeta angrily tells him to get going, there's no time to lose.
nappa smiles and gets up. he looks back at the prince and, he can see that same look of disgust on the man's face as when he stood over nappa's
oken body. he saw the killing intent then, but, why had he not done it? nappa heads off to the armoury that vegeta told him to hit and after donning some fresh body armour, he picks up a fresh scouter and goes to settle in a corner, out of sight, to wait for the signal.
no, he's not going to wait. the prince is done with him? well he's done with the prince. nappa opens the weapon charging locker and takes aim at the racks of fully charged blasters gauntlets. then he chuckles to himself. instead of releasing the blast straight into the energy packs, he remembers that little bald guy's attack. it had twisted and curved, following the cybamen. if that puny human could do it...
nappa pushes as much energy as he can into it, then with the large,
ightly glowing ball floating just above the weapons, nappa carefully closes the lid. he backs away, concentrating. creeping along the hallways he is starting to perspire. manipulating energy like this is way harder than they made it look. as he steps out onto an auxiliary landing pad, he sighs in relief.
the momentary distraction proves too much and he lets go of the energy ball. the building shudders with an explosion. with the platform suddenly listing slightly, nappa boards the first ship he can get into, throwing out the surprised maintenance tech. the flight controls aren't that different from their normal pods so he punches in and the craft blasts off. as the ship accelerates away, a second explosion rips through what's left of the facility. it vanishes in a mushroom cloud.
"cleaning up your mess, eh vegeta?" he asks an empty flight deck. vegeta had told him what armoury to hit, even what locker to blow up. did he know the reactor would go up too or was that a lucky
eak? "maybe i'll ask him someday."
namek saga
this ship is a scout ship. more roomy than those tiny pods, and almost as fast. fast than frieza's main ships at least. after a couple of weeks, stewing in his own thoughts, nappa steps out onto the surface of namek. tapping the scouter he spots frieza and his men milling around, well over the horizon. he flies off toward a smaller, nearby cluster of powers.
as he flies, nappa wonders how well he can keep his power suppressed. thinking about what those humans and kakarot seemed to do, he had set the scouter to a new purpose. putting it on the deck, he sat in front of it, watching the numbers fluctuate as he pushed his energy down. saiyans aren't known for stealth, but if he wants to stand a chance of surviving against lord frieza, it will come in handy.
arriving at a village, he is met by some very cautious namekians. they have sensed attacks on other villages and this man has a similar, almost malicious energy about him. nappa's first instinct is to barge in and make them give him the ball, but after taking that first step, he again sees vegeta, glaring down at him, across the table at him, like he was nothing. a tool to be used and discarded.
the namekian facing him senses some of this conflict and steps forward. he takes a chance, saying that they really don't want to fight and even if they did, they can tell he's hiding his true power. caught off guard by the almost friendly conversation, nappa pauses, now uncertain how to proceed. should he take a chance of his own? what had crushing everything around him really done? he tells them about the evil frieza, and what he's here for. moori, however, has a feeling that nappa is hiding something.
being pressed, nappa then explains why he's there. he admits that vegeta was probably right. he was useless. so easily beaten by that low-class warrior. but he's going to make up for it. a little namekian speaks up and asks what he will do if he gets his immortality. he'd never actually thought about it. vegeta was the one who wanted that. nappa just liked fighting and, and grinding his foes under his boot. but, that kakarot guy. he was a saiyan too yet nothing like that.
they are interrupted by the arrival of three new namekians. the warriors have arrived and they approach nappa and dende. moori tells them all of what nappa had said and they turn to face him. do they want to fight now? pointing to the scouter, nappa tells them that that would be a bad idea. any fighting will just draw attention. he takes off the scouter and after staring at it for a moment, he tosses it to moori. he explains that these things detect power levels so best they can do is push their power down and avoid unnecessary battles.
"like you're doing now?" the biggest warrior says coldly, glaring down at nappa. "why don't they do the same?" he says, gesturing over his shoulder.
nappa goes on to talk about his time before and then on earth. how hiding your power level was never really a thing. then, battling the human's and that other namekian. he wasn't sure how but, they knew things he'd never even thought about. a couple of weeks in front of the scouter, actually trying to suppress his power had opened his eyes in that respect.
man, he really likes talking.