"I'm through with you, Raditz! You think you're stronger than me, then try dodging this!" Nappa screamed as he pulled himself out of the rock, causing the plateau that he'd been embedded in to crumble. He gathered energy in his right hand, pulling it back, but right before he was able to fire it,
"NAPPA!" Vegeta yelled. Instantly, the energy in Nappa's hand started to fade.
"What, Prince Vegeta? I was just about to send this weakling to an early grave!" Nappa complained. Vegeta didn't answer verbally. He just pointed up.
Realizing what he was getting at, Nappa was confused, "But why, Prince Vegeta?" He asked.
'Nappa's going to lose this fight. Nothing to be done about that. He's just not strong enough. Let's have him do as much damage as possible, then,' Vegeta thought to himself. Aloud, he called out to Nappa, "Just do it!"
Nappa growled before reluctantly bowing to Vegeta's whims, still thinking that he was stronger than the clearly superior Raditz.
He gathered energy in his hand again, but this time his target wasn't Raditz, but the sky itself.
"No!" Raditz realized what Nappa was doing, having seen him and Vegeta use the technique during their countless missions together. He rushed to stop the brute from firing the blast, but it was too late. Nappa fired the ball of energy right up, into the sky.
"No time to look for the real moon, so this'll have to do the trick." Nappa declared, laughing in a mocking manner. He'd already realized the same thing that Vegeta had. Raditz, and both of Kakarot's children still had their tails, but Kakarot himself did not. On top of that, neither of Kakarot's children had even known that they were Saiyans until just a mere year ago, meaning that they likely hadn't had time to train their minds to withstand the Great Ape transformation.
As the five Saiyans there looked into the sky, they all felt something different.
Vegeta and Nappa were assured of their victory. Raditz wasn't going to be capable of stopping both of them by himself. A Saiyan that can't transform against an equal powered transformed Saiyan would just be a liability, after all, not to mention the girl when she'd inevitably start her own rampage.
Raditz agreed with the two's estimates, for the most part. He and Kakarot would have to work together and cut off Vegeta's tail in order to stand a chance against those two in their Great Ape forms, and that wasn't likely to happen. The two were trained warriors, after all. They would protect their tails at all costs. And the girl's likely inability to control herself during transformation would be another problem.
Meanwhile, Goku had no clue what was happening. Why did Nappa throw the energy ball directly away from Raditz, and how come Raditz was so desperate to stop it? He'd heard about the 'moon' thing that swayed the battle on planet Vegeta, but he hadn't thought much of it at the time, so he was completely clueless to the fact that Saiyans could transform at all.
And lastly, me.
'You're really not mad at me?' Shay asked me telepathically.
'I promise. Once we're finished with this, we'll go to the Core and eat all the ice cream that our bodies can handle, just you and me!' I was busy placating Shay. I'd gotten rid of that weakness years ago, back while I was training on the Core, so I wasn't in any danger of rampaging uncontrollably. Naturally, if I hadn't been prepared for them to pull out the transformation technique, then they wouldn't have been capable of using it. Some of my restraints were self-imposed, after all. If I were to go ape and they'd loosen or disappear, I'd be left only with my clothing restraints, as well as the fact that my power was divided, in order to keep myself contained.
If that were to happen, I'd likely accidentally destroy the entire Milky Way. The Seventh Universe itself if my enraged Ape form was capable of using any of my power-enhancing tricks. Not worth the risk at all.
As Piccolo, Tien, Goku and I watched, the other three Saiyans changed into Great Apes. Interestingly enough, the clothes that King Kai had given Raditz as a 'going away' gift were fully capable of growing with him. It was probably some sort of 'just in case' enchantment that he'd put on it, like the ones I'd put into my own clothes.
"Oh no..." Goku said, finally realizing the truth about the Saiyan Ape transformation. He had clearly realized that he'd been the one to kill his Grandpa Gohan. "but... why...?" I knew that my dad would overcome his self-hate at the realization before Raditz's battle ended. From what I knew of the anime, he'd spoken to his grandpa Gohan twice since the old man's death, and both times, the old man had insisted that he'd accepted his death, indirectly hinting that nobody was at fault for it.
Meanwhile, Vegeta and Raditz were looking at me in anticipation, for wildly different reasons. Unfortunately for them, I didn't transform. I didn't much care for the Great Ape transformation. I'd tried it before, and I could control it with ease, but I considered it worthless for anything other than wanton destruction, so I avoided it like the plague in favor of stronger transformations, like Super Saiyan, or my Silver mode.
My current body was actually technically a mutated Saiyan. My tail simply couldn't absorb Blutz Waves like a normal Saiyan's body could, because I didn't want it to. As much as they expected me to transform and lose control, it wasn't physically possible unless I changed my body at the cellular level, which would require me to either have Shay do it, or for me to remove my limiters just a bit. Neither option was worth it for me, so I just kind of sat there, watching Nappa and Raditz grow as they watched me not grow.
Meanwhile, something that I hadn't planned was happening nearby...