#kulilin

but he didn't, and now they have to deal with him again. the guy they definitely aren't able to beat now that they've swapped out goku for bulma (sorry bulma, but. y'know).

sure, vegeta wasn't the strongest person on namek by a longshot at that point, but he was the one krillin had already run into. just one more threat they had to face that completely outclassed them, but unlike everyone else on namek, this one was there specifically bc krillin hadn't killed him when he'd had the chance. and he had no reason to think vegeta would be even a little forgiving over the "sparing your life bc my bestie has a fightcrush on you" thing (or anything else. not a super forgiving guy in general)

and now here he is, with a five-year-old alien hybrid and a non-combatant engineer. he's the only adult fighter in their little trio and i think that would've been when it really hit him that there wasn't anyone he could go to for help. no roshi, no goku... and if they fucked up, no dragon balls.

that's a lot for the poor guy to be dealing with on top of a good chunk of his friends having been murdered right in front of him. iirc, krillin was the first of the main characters to die in dragon ball, and he was still dead when chiaotzu and roshi died, so goku dying at the start of dbz would've been the first time he actually saw one of his close friends die. then said friend's son is kidnapped (by the little brother of krillin's own murderer, no less) and he can't do anything about it bc everybody's gotta go train for the even stronger aliens that were on the way, and then almost everybody dies, they lose the dragon balls, and goku just barely gets there in time to stop nappa from turning gohan into a son pancake.

krillin gets a brief hope spot in which goku hands nappa his ass on a silver platter, but then it turns out nappa's boss (who's just been sitting there laughing his ass off as all of krillin's friends are dying) is an even bigger asshole than nappa, kills him without even trying, and just when he's trying to get goku's kid to safety, they realize "oh shit yeah i don't think goku is actually quite strong enough to win this", so they have to go back. he has to fight the guy whose minion he could barely deal with.

and after everything, he agrees to spare vegeta's life. just because goku asked him to. and it immediately comes back to bite him in the ass. can you imagine if the ginyu force hadn't shown up? i can't imagine vegeta would've teamed up with gohan and krillin (TEAM THREE STAR!) without an immediate threat he knew he wouldn't be able to handle, so it's very possible he would've killed them right away (i doubt he could've taken nail at that point, but he probably could've killed at least one of the earthlings before nail either stopped him or he ran off).

Patron original art reward! I was asked for any "Dragonball Z" character. I picked Krillin because so much of my love for DBZ is in the fashion choices, and I just adore Krillin's personalized trucker cap. <3