Finally. After all these years, I could see a genuine path to survival.
In my previous life, I remembered how the series eventually treated Ki. By the Buu Saga, it was just fuel, a generic battery used to fire bigger lasers or dye your hair a different color. But back in the Namek Saga, Ki control was the absolute meta. It was the only reason Krillin and Gohan survived against Frieza's elite. They were hopelessly outmatched in raw power, but because they could suppress their presence and flare their energy only when striking, they had the upper hand.
The Frieza Force fought like savages. The Earthlings fought like soldiers.
And now, I was aiming to be a soldier.
I stood in the center of the crater, the dust settling around my boots. Unlocking Ki was step one. Controlling it was step two. And the best way to learn control wasn't throwing energy blasts, that was just venting pressure.
The best way was flight.
I looked up at the purple sky. In the anime, Gohan made it look simple. "Just push the energy down," he had told Videl. "Like you're standing on an invisible floor."
Simple in theory. But Videl was learning on Earth, under 1G.
I was standing on Planet Vegeta. Here, gravity was a jealous tyrant. It wanted everything on the ground. To fly here meant constantly generating enough thrust to counteract ten times the weight of my own body.
"Okay," I muttered, shaking out my arms. "Let's see if I can defy physics."
I closed my eyes and reached for that well of power I had tapped into the night before. It was easier to find now. I drew the energy out, but instead of letting it flood my fists, I directed it downward.
I visualized two jets of pressure erupting from the soles of my feet.
Push.
I tensed my legs. I felt the energy surge, hitting the ground with invisible force. Dust kicked up around my ankles.
Nothing happened. I was still planted firmly on the rock.
"More," I hissed. "Don't just trickle it out. Stream it."
I widened the mental valve. The sensation was strange, it felt like my legs were vibrating, like I was standing on a high voltage line. The dust cloud grew bigger, swirling around me.
My heels lifted an inch.
Then, gravity slapped me back down.
I stumbled, nearly twisting my ankle. It was harder than I thought. It wasn't just about power; it was about stability. Pushing too hard made me wobble; pushing too soft did nothing.
"Again."
I spent the next hours in a cycle of frustration. Jump, push, fall. Jump, push, fall. It was exhausting. My Ki reserves, while decent for my age, were draining fast.
But I was stubborn. And I had a logical mind.
It's not an explosion, I corrected myself, wiping sweat from my eyes. It's a thruster. Constant output. Steady flow.
I tried again. This time, I didn't try to launch myself like a rocket. I tried to float.
I poured the energy out slowly, matching the output to the pull of gravity. I found the equilibrium.
My boots left the ground.
One inch. Two inches. Six inches.
I held it.
I was hovering.
My body swayed wildly, my arms flailing to keep balance, but I wasn't touching the dirt. I was fighting the planet, and I was winning.
"Steady," I whispered, teeth clenched.
It required immense concentration. I had to consciously regulate the flow of Ki every millisecond. If I let up, I dropped. If I pushed too hard, I shot up and lost control.
It was the ultimate workout for Ki control. Throwing a blast was easy, you just dumped the bucket. Flying was like pouring water from a bucket into a shot glass while running on a treadmill. It forced me to refine the energy, to make it dense and efficient.
Another hour passed.
The suns were fully set now, the canyon bathed in shadow.
I was twenty feet in the air.
I wasn't wobbling anymore. My arms were crossed over my chest. I rose and fell with a thought, controlling my altitude with subtle adjustments to my output.
I looked down at the crater. It looked small from up here.
A grin broke across my face.
"I'm flying," I said aloud, the wind ruffling my hair.
I felt like superman.
It was a small thing. Every Saiyan warrior could do this. Raditz could do this. But for me, floating above the ground felt like conquering the world.
I did a lap around the canyon, testing my speed. It was draining, I could feel my energy dropping rapidly but the sense of freedom was intoxicating. I even started humming Punckrocker. Yes I was a big nerd.
I landed softly back in the center of the crater, my boots touching down with a controlled tap.
My legs felt like jelly, and my head was spinning from the Ki expenditure, but I had the basics down.
Flight: Unlocked.
--
The next few months were a blur of adrenaline and sweat.
I had become addicted to the grind.
In my past life, exercise was a chore. It was something you did to avoid heart disease or to look good in a t-shirt. But here? On Planet Vegeta? With Saiyan biology?
It was a drug.
Every time I tore a muscle fiber, I could feel it knitting back together stronger, denser. The Zenkai boost wasn't just for near-death experiences; it was a constant, micro-cellular adaptation. The more I pushed, the more my body begged for punishment.
I wasn't just running laps anymore. I was integrating flight into my combat drills.
I would hover upside down, doing handstand push-ups while using my Ki to push down against the ground, artificially increasing the gravity on my arms.
I would fly through the canyon at breakneck speeds, practicing sharp turns that made my vision grey out from G-force, only to snap into a dead stop inches from a rock wall.
My body was transforming. I was lean, but it was the deceptive leanness of a predator. My shoulders were broad, my core was a slab of iron, and my tail—once a sensitive weak point—had been trained to wrap around boulders and crush them.
I felt powerful. I felt alive.
But there was one itch I hadn't scratched yet.
It was a quiet night. The canyon was lit by the pale glow of the moons.
I stood facing a massive spire of rock, about ten meters tall.
"Okay," I whispered, shaking my hands out. "I'm alone. Nobody can see me. Time to be a total cringe-lord."
I widened my stance. I drew my hands back to my hip.
My heart was racing. I had practiced this motion in front of a mirror a thousand times as a human child. I had dreamt of this moment.
I cupped my hands.
"Ka..."
I visualized the energy. Not a thruster this time. A bomb. I pulled every scrap of ambient Ki from my body and condensed it into the space between my palms.
"Me..."
A sphere of blue light materialized. It hummed with a dangerous, chaotic vibration. The ground beneath my boots cracked from the pressure. It was heavy, magnetic.
"Ha..."
The light intensified, casting long, dancing shadows across the canyon. The air smelled of ozone. My hair whipped back as the energy sought release.
"Me..."
I locked my eyes on the rock spire.
"HAAAAA!"
I thrust my palms forward.
The recoil hit me like a physical shove.
A beam of azure energy, thick and spiraling, erupted from my hands. It screamed through the air, illuminating the night with blinding intensity.
It connected with the spire.
There was no explosion. No crumbling. The rock just... vanished.
The beam disintegrated the stone on contact, carving a clean, glowing tunnel through the base of the spire before dissipating into the sky.
A second later, the top half of the spire, no longer supported, slid off and crashed to the ground with a thunderous BOOM.
I stood there, smoke curling from my hands.
I stared at the destruction.
Then, I dropped to my knees and pumped my fist in the air.
"YES!" I whispered-shouted, trying to keep my voice down but failing miserably. "Oh my god. I did it. I actually did it. Eat your heart out, Roshi!"
I looked at my hands, grinning like an absolute idiot.
I had fired a Kamehameha. A real, lethal beam attack. If ten-year-old me could see this, he would have passed out from pure joy. I was literally living the shonen dream.
I spent the next ten minutes just giggling and looking at the rubble. It was childish, but for a moment, the crushing reality of Frieza and the impending doom faded away.
I was just a fan living the dream.
But the dream had a number attached to it.
I calmed down, my breathing returning to normal. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the battered Scouter.
"Alright," I said, putting it on. "Let's see what that cost me."
I scanned myself.
TARGET: SELF. STATUS: RESTING. POWER LEVEL: 400.
The grin vanished from my face.
I tapped the side of the device, thinking it was glitching.
"Four hundred?" I muttered.
I scanned again.
400.
The blood drained from my face.
Four hundred wasn't just "good."
Raditz, a full-grown adult soldier, was around 1,200 (or 1,500 depending on the source). I was seven. I was already a third as strong as Raditz.
More importantly, 400 was solidly in the range of the Mid-Class elites. Children my age in the Low-Class sector were usually sitting at 50 or 60. Even the bulky laborers at the depot were only around 300.
"Crap," I hissed.
This was bad. This was actually terrible.
If I walked into the Supply Depot tomorrow radiating a power level of 400, I wouldn't just be praised. I'd be flagged.
The Administration monitored sudden spikes. A Low-Class runt jumping from 15 to 400 in a few years without any formal training?
That screamed "anomaly."
Anomalies got tested. Anomalies got sent to the front lines to be shock troopers. Or worse, if they thought I was a mutant type like Broly (not that I was anywhere near that level), they might just decide to purge me to be safe.
"I can't go back like this," I realized. "I'm a lighthouse in the dark."
I sat down on the ground, crossing my legs. The euphoria of the Kamehameha was gone, replaced by the cold, hard panic of survival.
I had to learn to hide it.
"Suppression," I said. "Earthling style."
I closed my eyes. I could feel the energy boiling under my skin. It was loud, chaotic. My recent training had increased the volume of the tank, and now it was overflowing.
In the show, they always described it as "hiding your presence."
I visualized my body as a fortress. The energy was a bright light shining out of every window.
Close the shutters, I thought.
I took a deep breath and tried to pull the energy inward. I imagined layers of lead wrapping around my core, smothering the light.
It was difficult. My body wanted to be strong. It fought me. The energy pushed back, trying to flare up. It felt like holding a beach ball underwater. My muscles trembled with the effort.
I checked the Scouter.
380... 350...
"Lower," I gritted out. "Bury it."
I focused harder. I clamped down on my own life force, suffocating it. It was physically painful, a tight pressure building behind my eyes.
200... 150...
Sweat beaded on my forehead.
"It's not enough," I gasped. "I need to be trash. I need to be a Five."
I visualized the energy not just as light, but as a roaring fire. I imagined throwing a heavy, wet blanket over it. Smoldering. Barely there.
100... 50...
My heart rate slowed. My breathing became shallow. To the outside world, I was becoming a stone. A statue.
20... 10...
I held it there. My entire body was tense, fighting to keep the lid on the pressure cooker.
5.
"There," I whispered, afraid that speaking too loud would break the concentration.
I stood up slowly. I kept the mental clamp tight.
I walked a few steps. The Scouter flickered.
5... 6... 5.
It was working. But it required constant, active focus. If I got surprised, or angry, or even too excited, the energy would spike back up.
I threw a jab at the air.
In the instant before my fist snapped out, I opened the mental gate just a crack.
Flash.
The Scouter screeched.
350.
My fist cracked the sound barrier.
Then, as I pulled my arm back, I slammed the gate shut.
5.
The Scouter displayed an error message: READING UNSTABLE.
I wiped the sweat from my brow.
"Okay," I panted. "I can work with this."
I had a new weapon. Deception.
To the world, I was Cress, the grunt with a power level of 5.
But underneath? I was a loaded gun waiting for a reason to go off.
The walk back to the Iron District was a torture test of my new discipline.
Keeping my power level suppressed to 5 wasn't just a mental exercise; it was physical restraint. It felt like walking with a corset made of lead wrapped around my lungs. My natural state, my "resting" energy, now wanted to hover around 400. To crush it down to single digits required me to consciously sabotage myself, shallowing my breath and relaxing my muscles to the point of near-atrophy.
By the time I reached our housing block, I was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with the Kamehameha.
I expected the apartment to be dark. It was usually empty this time of night, with Sela working the late shift at the meat processing plant.
But as I stepped through the hiss of the hydraulic door, the lights were blazing.
The air smelled sharp. It was a mix of sterile cleaning fluid, ozone, and the unmistakable, copper tang of blood.
I froze in the entryway, my hand instinctively going to the wall to steady myself. My Scouter, which I kept off to save battery, was unnecessary. I could feel the energy in the room. It wasn't high, but it was new. A fresh signature.
"You're late," Sela's voice cut through the hum of the ventilation.
She was standing in the center of the main room. She wasn't wearing her armor. She was in a loose, grey medical gown, her hair matted with sweat, her face pale. She looked like she had just gone twelve rounds with a granite wall.
But she wasn't resting. She was standing in front of a cylindrical tank that hadn't been there this morning.
It was an incubation pod. A standard-issue, Low-Class growth capsule. The glass was thick, bubbled, and filled with a pale green suspension fluid that glowed softly in the harsh room light.
I walked forward, my boots clanking on the metal floor.
"I was... training," I said, the lie coming easily now. "Is that...?"
"Your brother," Sela said. Her voice lacked the softness human mothers had in the movies. There was no cooing, no tears of joy. There was only the satisfaction of a job completed. "He arrived early. I didn't make it to the clinic. Had to use the emergency kit."
She gestured to a pile of bloody towels and a terrifying-looking medical laser near the sink. She had given birth, alone, on the kitchen floor, and then cleaned up the mess.
Saiyan women were built different.
I approached the tank.
Floating inside, suspended in the green liquid, was a baby.
He was tiny. His skin was wrinkled and pale, and a thick tail drifted lazily in the current of the fluid. An oxygen mask was clamped over his small face, and wires were attached to his chest, monitoring his vitals. He looked like a miniature, angry old man floating in pickle juice.
"He's small," I observed, mirroring the words Karr had said about me seven years ago.
"Small, yes," Sela agreed, tapping the glass with a fingernail. "But dense."
She picked up a datapad linked to the pod's sensors. A rare look of approval crossed her face. It wasn't love, it was validation.
"Look at the readout."
I leaned in. The screen displayed a scrolling list of biometrics: heart rate, bone density, neural activity. But the only number that mattered on Planet Vegeta was at the bottom.
POTENTIAL LATENT BATTLE POWER: 38.
I blinked.
Thirty-eight.
It sounded low compared to the numbers I dealt with now, but for a newborn Low-Class? It was phenomenal.
I was born with a 2. Karr was a 400 after decades of fighting. Most Low-Class infants hovered between 5 and 10. A 38 at birth meant he had the potential to hit 1,000 by adulthood without even trying hard. He was born stronger than the average depot worker.
"He's a sturdy one," Sela said, tossing the datapad onto the table. "He won't be a runt. He might even make the cut for the shock-trooper academy if he keeps this curve up."
She looked at me then, her sharp eyes analyzing me. I instinctively clamped down on my suppression, ensuring my aura felt as weak and pathetic as possible.
"Unlike some," she added, not with malice, but with a simple statement of fact. "He has Karr's chin, but he has my temper. He was kicking before he even came out."
"What's his name?" I asked, looking at the floating infant.
Sela shrugged, pouring herself a cup of water. "I registered him as Lett. Short, simple."
Lett.
I looked at my brother. Lett. Lettuce.
"Welcome to the salad bowl, kid," I thought, a strange feeling settling in my gut.
I didn't know how to feel.
In my past life, I was an only child. I didn't have siblings to compare this to. But here, looking at this tiny, unaware creature, I felt a disconnect.
He was a Saiyan. A pure-blooded biological weapon in the making. If nature took its course, he would grow up to be just like Sela, or Karr, or Raditz. He would be cruel, arrogant, and violent. He would conquer planets and kill innocents because that's what his biology screamed at him to do.
But right now? He was just a baby floating in a jar.
He was my brother.
And he was a 38.
He had a future. If the planet didn't explode, Lett would actually be respected. He wouldn't have to scrape and scavenge and hide like I did. He wouldn't have to pretend to be weak.
"Are you going to stare at him all night?" Sela asked, sitting down and wincing slightly as she adjusted her posture. "Or are you going to help me reset the filtration unit on the tank? The regulator is sticking."
"I'll do it," I said, snapping out of my thoughts.
I walked around to the back of the pod. This was my domain. I popped the service panel open. The wiring was messy, standard hastily installed tech.
"The intake valve is clogged," I said, reaching in with my small, dextrous fingers. "And the power coupling is loose. If you hadn't fixed this, the fluid would have gone toxic in six hours."
"That's why you're here," Sela muttered, closing her eyes. "Fix it. Then go to sleep. You have a shift tomorrow."
I worked in silence, the hum of the machine vibrating against my fingertips.
I fixed the coupling. I calibrated the oxygen mix. I optimized the nutrient flow.
When I finished, the green light on the console turned a steady, healthy blue. The hum of the machine smoothed out into a gentle purr.
I walked back to the front of the glass. Lett was sleeping, his tiny fists curled up.
"Thirty-eight," I whispered to him, my voice barely audible over the hum. "Good start. Better than me, anyway."
I looked at the scrolling numbers one last time.
In a normal world, I suppose this would be the moment I promised to protect him. The moment I vowed to be the big brother who shielded him from the harsh realities of Saiyan life.
But I wasn't a hero. I was a rat on a sinking ship.
"Good luck, kid," I thought, my expression hardening as I pulled my hand away from the glass. "You're going to need it."
I turned away from the tank without looking back. Sela was already asleep at the table, her head resting on her arms, a combat knife still within reach of her hand.
I walked to my closet-sized room and collapsed onto the thin mattress. My body ached. My Ki was throbbing, demanding to be released, but I held the seal tight.
I closed my eyes, staring up at the dark ceiling.
The arrival of Lett changed nothing. It didn't change the fact that Frieza was out there. It didn't change the fact that this planet was a ticking time bomb.
I had spent three years breaking my body to survive. I wasn't going to throw that away for a sentimentality I couldn't afford. If the time came to run, I was running. If there was only one seat in the pod, I was taking it.
Sela, Karr, Zorn... and now Lett. They were just people I knew. NPCs in a game that was rigged to crash.
"Focus," I muttered to myself, shutting down the tiny flicker of guilt before it could take root.
My goal hadn't shifted. I needed a ship. I needed off-world clearance. And I needed it before the sky turned red.
I rolled over, turning my back to the door and the new life in the other room.
"Every Saiyan for himself," I whispered into the pillow.
And for the first time in a long time, I slept like a baby.
--
Author's Note: Leave a Comment, a power stone if you enjoyed. Also take the time to review, it helps.