Set five months after A Single Event.

Monsan – saiyan goddess of luck, wisdom, and water/life.

Bulma gulped, staring up at Shenlong before giving Geta a nudge. "Well, go on."

Geta swallowed. He'd seen the dragon before, but… not like this. Not with him being the one to make the wish, or it being such an important one. Swallowing again, he gave Bulma's hand a last squeeze before stepping forward.

"Eternal Dragon! We ask that you restore the planet Vegetasei to the location and state it was in ten minutes before it was destroyed!"

The dragon's eyes glowed even brighter for a moment. "YOUR WISH IS GRANTED. FARE YOU WELL."

With that, Shenlong vanished and the dragon balls rose into the air and flew off in seven different directions.

"Well, that's that." Geta nodded firmly to himself. "I think I need to sit down now."

Bulma caught him as his knees gave out, and lowered him to the ground. "Geta? You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay. I just… wished back a planet is all. It's kinda wow." He stared blankly into the starlit sky.

Bulma sat down next to him. "Do you wish you'd gone with the others?"

"No," he leaned against her, head on her shoulder, looking at the stars and trying to remember where Vegetasei was supposed to be. "It's the first time they've been home in over twenty years. They don't need an outsider there to ruin the moment."

"It's your home, too," Bulma let her head rest on his.

"No," he repeated, turning his head a little to smile at her, "It might have been Prince Vegeta's home, but I'm not him. It's not my home. I am home." he turned and smiled shyly at her. "I've always been home. It just took me awhile to figure it out. Finding out that it might be another place actually helped."

Bulma laughed. "Geta, you are such a nerd!" she nuzzled his face and leaned more comfortably against him, smiling as she felt a tail wrapping around her waist.

"Hey, Bulma?"

"Yeah?"

"Is it- …would it be okay if I kissed you?"

She blinked and looked up to see him looking down at her, pink-cheeked but serious. "I- yeah. Yes."

"Okay." He swallowed and pushed her upright again and Bulma leaned forward a little and closed her eyes, waiting.

Her eyes popped open again when she felt a brush of lips on her cheek and she stared at Geta, who was now looking straight ahead again, cheeks even pinker than before but a slightly pleased look on his face. It was- That was-

…

…dear kami she'd fallen in love with a nerd…

"Let's try that again, monkey man," she smiled, taking his face in her hands and turning it back towards her, "And before you accuse me of being 'vulgar,' remember, you still have to bear my kid."

Geta's eyes widened and his face went red, but he grinned, "True. I mean, you did hit me in the head with a hand-held radar."

"Mmm-hm," Bulma hummed, smiling as she leaned in and pleased when he moved to meet her halfway.

OoOoOoOoO

Elsewhere, Yamcha and Chichi were sitting on top of Kung Pao Rock, looking through a telescope Raditz and Bulma had worked together to set up.

"You see it?" Chichi asked in anticipation as the man peered through the lens.

"Yeah, a little red dot just appeared." He moved aside so Chichi could get a look. "You getting anything from Kakarrot?"

"Only emotions," Chichi crouched down to peer through the scope, "We're hell and gone out of his range for telepathy. He's excited, though. They'll probably be landing soon. How's the hairball?"

Yamcha laughed. "He'd probably be grumpy if I told you, so I won't." he sat down on the roof of his home, staring in the same general direction as the telescope pointed. "I wish we could be with them."

"It's fer the best we're not," Chichi shrugged, abandoning the telescope to sit next to him. "They need this. We'll go next time – us and Bulma and Geta-"

"Mommy? What are you and Uncle Yams looking at?"

"And my baby," Chichi smiled, turning to see Gohan Pasnep climbing up onto the roof. Getting up, she walked over to gather him in her arms, then returned to where Yamcha was still sitting. "We're looking at Vegetasei, Gohan – Geta and Bulma just wished it back, see?" she held him to the telescope for a better look.

"That's Daddy's home planet?"

"Half your home planet, too."

"Oh." Gohan turned to look at his mother. "Then will we get to go there, too?"

"Soon, when we get word that they've got the planet all tidy," Chichi rested her chin on top of her son's head, smiling, "When they're all nice and settled in, then we'll go visit."

OoOoOoOoO

Just as the memory of escaping his home planet seconds before its destruction had been burned into his memory, so too was Vegetasei's rebirth engraved into the mind of Bardock and every other saiyan who witnessed the event.

Of the original five hundred survivors, only about three hundred remained. Some had fallen at the hands of enemies, others had succumbed to age or illness. But those who survived to see this day did not stand alone in their ships. Their children stood with them, brats who had never seen the home planet of their race outside of shared memories. The population had held relatively steady during the war and, now in this brief period of peace, was beginning to slowly grow again. And now they watched as stardust swirled and gathered, growing larger and larger until, in a flash of light, Vegetasei returned to its rightful place in the universe.

By unspoken consensus, Bardock's ship led the others down to an expanse of desert near what had once been the capital city. The first breath of air, the bone-familiar gravity, that step onto the red sands… far more than one person wept, and many got no further than a few feet from their ships before their knees gave out. Some lingered hesitantly at the entrances of the ships, mostly the younger generations, the many of whom were barely past their first growth spurt, though Bardock saw his sons over by some melkai bushes. Kakarrot was speaking to his brother with quiet enthusiasm while Raditz nodded vaguely, his own eyes caught by the scenery, drinking it in. He understood his son's distraction – it was like a dream, standing on his home world that had been gone for close to a quarter century, knowing that he could finally, finally step down and go back to being just a soldier again, instead of having to run everything. It would be a relief to just be Bardock again.

The scarred saiyan jumped a bit, having gotten caught up in his own thoughts, when Paragus came up and clapped a hand on his shoulder, followed by Tora and Celipa. "Well, Bardock," he said, his voice loud and carrying well in the almost-silence, "You did it. You brought us home, and you brought down the bastards who stole it from us in the first place."

"Ah, come on, Paragus," Bardock began to protest – it wasn't like he'd done all this alone, or even been the one to restore the planet – but he was interrupted by a shout.

"HAIL, COMMANDER BARDOCK!"

It was quickly picked up by others, passing from mouth to mouth, altering a little as it went.

"HAIL, BARDOCK, OUR COMMANDER!"

"HAIL BARDOCK, THE GOLDEN WARRIOR!"

"HAIL BARDOCK, LEADER OF THE SAIYAN RACE!"

And then-

"HAIL BARDOCK, KING OF ALL SAIYANS!"

This cry was picked up with, to Bardock at least, terrifying swiftness.

"HAIL, KING BARDOCK!"

"HAIL, OUR KING!"

The saiyan in question found himself lifted on shoulders, despite his protests, a red blanket somehow draped around his shoulders like a cape – and where had they even found that on such short notice?! This was not how things were supposed to be going! In desperation, he rose off the shoulders carrying him and made the jump to super saiyan, a feat still held in enough awe that it silenced the crowd. Bardock looked around with a vague sense of panic.

"Have you idiots lost your gods-damned minds?! I can't be king, I'm just a soldier, a third class!"

Celipa snorted. "You honestly think you can hide behind that old excuse? They were talking about re-evaluating your rank even before they turned on us."

"And since when do third classes have yellow hair?" Tora added, grinning.

Glaring at his friends, Bardock powered down. "There are others who could rule us, better candidates-" 'People who actually want the job…'

"Yeah, like that other guy who's been running the Resistance since it started!" a voice in the crowd yelled.

"Or the guy who started it in the first place!" another added.

"Nah, he's an asshole," came a third, to the amusement of everyone but the saiyan in question.

Bardock growled, grasping at straws as he tried to find a way out of this situation. "You're not thinking clearly right now! If you were-"

"Bardock," Paragus flew up beside him, though maintained a slightly lower altitude, "This isn't a spur-of-the-moment thing – we've been discussing this for months, and everyone agrees."

"And isn't that something?" Celipa called up from the ground, looking far too amused, "The entire saiyan race agreeing on something that doesn't involve hitting anything!"

There was more laughter as Bardock gaped at her. Then his eyes narrowed and he turned back to Paragus, pointing a finger accusingly. "You- you're the one behind all this."

"Not really," Paragus shrugged, smirking, "Everyone's thoughts were going in the same direction. I just suggested now would be a good time to force you to agree. Oh, and I got this made up."

Reaching into a pouch on his belt, Paragus pulled out a heavy chain of white metal, from which hung a large disc. A round white stone was set in its center, surrounded by a many-pointed star of blue and teal, and Bardock stared. The medallion of the ruler. The physical symbol of the kingship of the saiyan race. Which had most likely been destroyed when King Vegeta was killed. But, no, this looked too new, and Paragus had said he'd had it-

…that complete and utter bastard.

While Bardock was still frozen with a combination of shock, horror, and rage, Paragus held the amulet up over his head and shouted. "AT THIS TIME, CAN ANY AMONG US THINK OF ANOTHER MORE WORTHY TO WEAR THIS THAN THE MAN BEFORE ME?"

"NO!" saiyan people responded as one.

"ANYONE WE'D RATHER GIVE IT TO ANYWAY?"

There was some laughter at this, but again the crowd shouted no.

Paragus turned and grinned at his friend. "No point in fighting it, I don't think even you can out-stubborn the entire saiyan race all at once. And really, if you didn't want to rule, you shouldn't have shown us how good you are at it."

Bardock glared at him, then looked around the crowd desperately, looking for a way out of this. Nothing. He was trapped, out-maneuvered, and finally he threw his hands up in disgust. "Okay, fine. FINE! I'LL BE KING!" 'Until I can find a way out of it…'

There was a roar of approval as Tarble, who had flown up to join them, took the medallion from Paragus and hung it around Bardock's neck, then drifted back and bowed, right fist over his heart. A physical display that the young royal accepted him as his sovereign, the dirty traitor.

The crowd roared again, only to be interrupted by another rumble. All faces turned upwards to where clouds had been gathering, unnoticed. And, for the first time in almost a quarter of a century, it began to rain on Vegetasei.

"IT'S A SIGN!" Tarble shouted enthusiastically, "THE GODS APPROVE! MONSAN HAS GIVEN HER BLESSING! ALL HAIL KING BARDOCK!"

"DAMMIT, TARBLE, QUITE ENCOURAGING THEM!" Bardock shouted, but he was drowned out by the cheers and general celebration and, finally, gave up for the moment, shaking his head and grinning. They were home and it was raining and the war was finally over – not just ended but over. Let them celebrate. And if they still wanted him to be king when the rain stopped, well… he'd deal with that when the time came.

For now, he dropped the red blanket on Paragus's head and flew over to his sons, who smirked at him. "I assume you brats knew about this, too?" at their non-committal shrugs he snorted. "This is what I get for encouraging saiyans to learn subtlety. Come on – let's go find a good spot to wait for the melkai to fruit."

OoOoOoOoO

The moral of this story: don't mess with Paragus; he will come up with an overly-elaborate plan to get back at you, even if it takes him years to implement it. ;)

I've been planning something along these lines since I started this fic. To my mind, Bardock was always going to make the jump from the Commander to King, and he's going to be trying to wriggle out of it every way he can (short of actually doing a bad job at it – he's put too much effort into his race's survival to send them crashing and burning). Don't think this makes Raditz and Kakarrot princes, however – Bardock's going to make Tarble his heir, to general approval. Tarble's been training to lead his people his whole life, he's much better qualified than the other two, even if they are stronger than him. The same logic also rules out Geta as an heir – he's possibly the least-qualified of the four of them, with his chronic shyness and dislike of leaving the jungle for too long. Eventually, Bardock will abdicate in Tarble's favour and Tarble will take the throne (with Broly at his side), but that's not going to be for several decades at least, because no one will let Bardock go through with it until then.

And don't think Bardock didn't get Paragus back – here's a brief snippet from future essays on saiyan political structure and its history:

"The position that most races would call 'grand advisor' or 'royal vizier,' in saiyan society, is relabelled as the king or queen's 'Paragus,' in honour of the first to hold this position after the defeat of Frieza, Paragus the Long-Suffering. This was not done on purpose, so much as coming about as a result of people referring to Anyan, the saiyan woman who replaced him, as 'King Tarble's Paragus' or 'the new Paragus.' Other races heard the saiyans calling her this and assumed it was her proper title, which led to her being addressed as 'Paragus Anyan' in several formal settings.

The saiyans heard this, found it hilarious, and kept it. Paragus himself, who was still alive at this time, though retired, was never quite sure how he felt about all this."

I frickin' love writing the saiyans as a group – they're so very willing to give each other a hard time in the name of their own entertainment, so happy to be casually violent with each other. It's great! Also, do the saiyans as a whole know about the dragon balls? No – they just know that the people on Earth found a one-use 'undo' button that could fix their planet, and the saiyans seem to be a pretty do-it-yourself sort of species on the whole. I'm also going with the idea that wishing a planet back is different than wishing a sentient being back in terms of time limits and such.

Final fun fact: this segment did not originally have Bulma and Geta doing their formal get-together. Because I didn't actually write that scene before I started posting it. However, so many of you asked me when and how they were getting together, and I didn't have the heart to disappoint you all. So there you have it – thirty-two stories and they're finally together. :)

(laughs quietly) And, well… that's it. With a final wish on the dragon balls, our heroes head off into the rain or the desert, ready to begin this new journey. It's been great sharing this story with all of you, from those of you who have been on this ride since the very beginning to those of you who only joined recently, thank-you. Thank-you for reading about this crazy little AU of mine, thank-you even more if you left me a review at any point!

I'm hoping to start another long story sometime this year – probably early Fall at the soonest, more likely later, because it's taking a long time to write. This one's going to be sticking much closer to canon (while also straying much farther from it at the same time (because you know me, I can't help but be contrary)), and it's going to be in a much more normal, multi-chapter format than this series was. I won't be uploading as regularly anymore – maybe I'll never pull off such routine updates ever again – but rest assured, this isn't the last you've seen of me in this fandom.

Until then, thanks again for reading! And I hope you enjoyed my story. :)