Set a month after Meet Moo-shun.

"-ucking brat, when I get my hands on you I'm gonna- gonna- frigfinmidgengrff!"

Turning a bend, Yamcha found Raditz sitting on a log, swearing to himself, and the reason for his ire was immediately apparent. The saiyan's long hair, an unruly mass of spikes on any day, looked like a ball of yarn after Pu'ar was done with it, a crazy mass of snarls and knots.

"Rough night?" Yamcha asked, not without sympathy as he approached the larger man.

"Punk-ass little brother." Raditz glared up at him balefully. "It's one of his favorite tricks when he's pissed at me. And since his highness taught him to hide his power, I can't even track the little shit down and give him the beating he deserves."

"Here, let me get a look." Avoiding the lashing tail, Yamcha moved closer while Raditz growled to himself. "Dang, he really did a number on you, didn't he? At this point, it might be easier to just cut some off and start ov-"

He didn't get a chance to finish, as Raditz had spun around and pinned him to the ground, teeth bared in fury.

"You so much as try to cut it off and there won't be enough of you left to mark where you fell, let alone bury!"

Yamcha gaped up at him for a moment, scared out of his mind and all too aware that the large man could easily carry out his threat. Then his brows lowered and he met Raditz's scowl with one of his own. "What the hell, man? It's just hair – it's not like I told you to cut off your arm or something! I was only talking about the bottom foot or so – give it a year, maybe two, and it will grow back!"

Raditz blinked and backed off, tilting his head much like Geta did when he was confused. "Is that how quickly human hair grows?"

Yamcha sat up gingerly, still frowning. "Yeah. Why, how fast does saiyan hair grow?"

"If I'm calculating correctly, the regrowth of the amount you casually suggest loping off would take about five years."

"Five years ?!" he gaped. "You've got, like, five feet of the stuff! How the hell do you have so much – and how does it stay so long? You're not much older than me!"

Raditz shrugged. "Our hair is like any other part of a saiyan, tough and durable. It is usually slow to grow or return, the one exception being during our growth spurts." Fingering one snarled lock, "We're born with full heads of hair, in the style we will wear all our lives. All pure saiyans have black eyes and hair, and the shape your hair grew in was part of your identity. So we never cut our hair. We just didn't. Cutting off an arm would almost be better – an arm can be regrown in a regen tank, and it would require no loss of self."

"Huh," Yamcha sat up, considering this information, "Guess that makes sense, then. It certainly explains how Geta's managed to keep his hair so perfectly shaped, living alone like he does."

Raditz smiled. "The prince looks very much like his father before him, much the way Kakarrot could be the spit of our father."

Yamcha smiled back. "I guess you take after your mother, then?"

"No," Raditz shook his head, "She looked very different from me, though her hair did hang to around her shoulders instead of spiking up. She said she'd never seen anyone with a mane like mine. She was really proud of it." His smile grew wistful. "She was very gentle, for a saiyan woman. When I was younger, I thought this made her weak, but now, having lived like we have for so long… I miss her. I tried so hard to be like father as a child, but her lessons have ended up holding as much weight as his – more in some cases. And Kakarrot… he has our father's looks, but our mother's heart. I wish he could have met our parents."

Yamcha frowned, remembering how likely it was that Geta, Raditz, and Kakarrot were the last of their race.

As they had talked, Raditz's tail had slowly stopped lashing and coiled back around his waist. Yamcha didn't have the nuances of saiyan body language entirely down yet, but Geta only tended to wrap his tail when he was feeling uncomfortable, so it was probably time for a change of subject.

"So, since cutting's out of the question, we're stuck with combing. Come on, I'll give it a try."

Raditz waved him off. "Don't bother, this isn't the first time Kakarrot has pulled this little stunt – I'll sort it out."

"Oh, turn around!" Yamcha stood up and brushed himself off. "You might be able to do it yourself, but I can do it better!"

Raditz scowled at him over one shoulder. "What makes you so sure of that, human?"

"Easy. My hands are smaller than yours." Yamcha grinned and held up the body parts in question, wiggling his fingers. "I'll be able to get into the knots more easily."

"Hn, fine." Raditz growled, sitting down on the ground in front of the log, "But only because the prince trusts you. And you'd better know what you're doing!"

Yamcha perched on the log behind him and laughed. "Believe me, I've had my own tangles to deal with – sheesh, you weren't kidding about sturdy, this stuff's like wire! – anyway, riding up to a mark with your hair flapping behind you may look great, but it takes forever to brush the knots out afterwards. Great effect, though, so I always left it loose."

Raditz glanced over his shoulder at him. "Mark?"

Yamcha looked up from the knot he was working on. "Yeah, mark. You know, target, score, victim – I used to be a bandit."

The saiyan's eyes widened. "A bandit? You?"

"Yup!" grinning, he went back to the untangling process. "Lord Yamcha, king of Diablo Desert, that was me!"

"Incredible. But I guess this planet has a low enough overall power level that I shouldn't be surprised someone like you could pull that off." Raditz smirked at him.

"Hey! I'll have you know I placed in the top four at the last Tenkaichi Budokai, and the guy who beat me got second in the tournament! Not to mention that I trained with Son Gohan, who was a student of the Kame Sen'nin himself!"

"All of which I'm sure would be extremely impressive if I knew what it meant."

Yamcha swatted the saiyan's shoulder, scowling when the taller man didn't have the decency to even pretend to wince. "Freaking aliens with your lack of Earthly knowledge- oh kami, the little shit wove burrs in here! Seriously, what did you do to that kid to get him so angry at you?"

Raditz snorted. "He's pissed because his pursuit of the hot-tempered female has yet to show signs of success, and he says it's because I've given him bad advice."

Yamcha chuckled. "And here I thought you probably insulted his power level or something."

Raditz chuckled as well. "Nah, if there's one thing that brat isn't, it's weak. He's only about fourteen, but he's already catching up to me. Give him a few years and he might even surpass Vegeta at the rate he's going."

Yamcha paused for a moment to look over Raditz's shoulder at his face. "You sound proud of him."

"Damn straight I'm proud of him!" Raditz said, "The prince had the highest power rating at birth ever when he di- er, went missing, and even after having lived on this soft little backwater for so long he's still light years ahead of me! Kakarrot, on the other hand, was born with a power level of two." Sensing confusion from the man behind him, he added, "For the sake of comparison, Bulma has a power reading of about twelve. Kakarrot was pretty pathetic by saiyan standards. If father hadn't stolen him from the nursery, he probably would have been sent off to some backwater planet to prove himself worthy by purging the local inhabitants or unworthy by dying in the attempt – either way, you'd never have met him."

"P-purge?"

"Yeah." Raditz snorted again. "Saiyans used to be part of the planet trade under the rule of Frieza, may he rot in hell. We'd purge valuable planets of sentient life so they could be sold to the highest bidder."

"Oh." There was a moment of silence, then Yamcha spoke hesitantly. "What would have happened to Kakarrot – did it happen to you?"

"No. I had a much higher power level at birth, so I was kept on-planet and trained. I was on my way to meet my future team for my first purging assignment when father grabbed me, shoved Kakarrot into my arms, shoved us both in a ship, and launched our asses into space. He'd left a scouter with a data disc in it that had more information on it – it's that scouter I still use as a disc reader, actually – basically saying Frieza was going to betray us, to hell with saiyan pride, take my brother, run, and don't stop until he finds us or we lose our pursuit. Well, I haven't heard from him since, but we finally outran everyone a few months back, and I found us this place to hide on. You know the rest."

"Whoa."

"Mm."

The silence returned for a moment.

"How old were you when all that madness started?"

"Eight."

Yamcha's hands slowed in their task as he thought about this. "I seem to recall you mentioning that Geta was five when he went missing? And he'd been sent on what I'm guessing was a purging mission?"

"Hn, yes. Vegeta was a prodigy, much like Kakarrot. I… am not."

"Ah." Yamcha grinned ruefully to himself. "Me neither."

Raditz glanced back at him, one eyebrow raised. "I thought you were supposed to be some amazing martial artist – one of the strongest around."

"Yeah, and I had to work my ass off to get here. Krillin – that guy who beat me? – he's only fifteen now, and that tournament was two years ago! Not to mention with you saiyans showing up, I can tell it won't be long before I'm left in the dust. But if that's the way of it, well… 'there's always someone stronger,' as Master Gohan used to say, and being outmatched won't stop me from fighting!"

Raditz nodded approvingly. "That's a very saiyan attitude."

"Eh, I try. Now hold still, this is a bad one…"

OoOoOoOoOoO

"They should be just around this turn, I can feel their ki!"

"Good!" Bulma strode after Geta crossly, "I swear, they were supposed to meet us for lunch hours ago! I thought you saiyans never missed a meal!"

"Well, as far as I can tell, normally we don- oh, that's what that sound was!"

As they had approached, first Geta, then Bulma had become aware of a loud rumbling in the air, something like if a lion could purr. Now, as they rounded the bend, they found it was coming from Raditz, who was lying on the ground on his stomach with his head in his arms. Perched on the middle of his back was Yamcha, carefully finger-combing the sea of black hair around him which, while still spikey, looked far sleeker than usual.

Sensing their energy, Yamcha turned to smile at them. "Hi, guys! I'm just helping Raditz out with his hair – Kakarrot made a mess of it last night. Also, I have discovered how to make a saiyan purr, a fact which I am going to exploit to no end!"

"Doooorrr thrrrs to yurrrr," Raditz mumbled, barely able to get the words out, "See irrrrf yurrrr dorrrrrn't purr~…"

"That's if you ever let me stop, right?"

"Yrrrrrs…"

OoOoOoOoOoO

This is one of the earliest scenes I ever wrote for the Geta!verse – the third, actually, and the only one that wasn't expanded upon (First was Bulma and the Monkey Prince, second was Desert Bandit in the Jungle). This scene is also where Radcha sprang from, that ridiculous ship I so adore – this is it. The very beginning.

Also, as one of those people with ridiculously long hair, I can verify everything Yamcha says to be true, both in regards to insane tangling and the unknotting process afterwards sometimes being worth it.

I will accept that saiyan hair grows very, very slowly (maybe not as slow as Raditz says, but he's making a rough estimate), and that it reaches its maximum length by adulthood, but this 'saiyans hit adulthood and it never grows again' thing indicated in the manga? No. Sorry, no. Alien monkey-men I can accept. Firing bolts of energy from your hands, I can accept. Transforming into GIANT FRIGGIN' APES I can accept. But hair, even the sturdiest hair, eventually wears out and falls out or breaks off. That's how hair works. Plus, saiyans are fighters; if their hair never ever grew after adulthood, they would all look like Nappa by the time they died! So, my thought is that saiyan hair is very sturdy and usually grows very slowly, so once you're an adult, it grows at about the same rate it wears out, so there's no longer a noticeable difference in length from one year to the next, or even one decade to the next. If you cut it shorter than maximum length, the growth speeds up a little – enough so that it will eventually reach maximum length again – but it's gonna take a long time.

In this world, Saiyan hair is very thick compared to human hair – closer to a horse's mane or tail, though still a tiny bit thicker than that – but it is also very, very smooth, so it doesn't feel coarse to the touch. Not silky, just very smooth. All human hair is fine compared to saiyan hair, and most of it feels pretty soft to them.

Why yes, I do put far too much thought and importance into/on the most random details. I'm also having waaaaay too much fun with saiyan society.

Raditz is used to being on the run and not being around people other than Kakarrot for the most part. He's adapting quickly, but he's still a bit jumpy, and still saiyan, so rather more casually violent than your typical human. Kakarrot's adapting a lot faster – he had even less social interaction than Raditz, so he's less hardwired to be on edge in a crowd or around strangers.