The heavy cargo transport descended into the Royal Hangar like a bloated, metallic whale, its anti gravity thrusters kicking up a storm of dust and ozone. This wasn't a standard supply run from the mines or the agricultural sectors. This ship bore the stark, angular insignia of the Cold Force.
"Attention on deck!" Overseer Toz barked, his voice cracking slightly. "Offload team, front and center! And be careful! If you scratch the paint on the crates, I'll dock your pay for a year!"
I stood by the tool bench, wiping down a hydro spanner, watching the spectacle. The hangar was buzzing. Usually, the Elite warriors ignored the logistics crews, treating us like invisible fixtures. But today, even the Mid-Class squads had gathered on the catwalks, their tails twitching with curiosity.
Rumors of the "Special Shipment" had been circulating for two days. New weaponry? Siege engines? Maybe those wrist-mounted blasters the Ginyu Force was rumored to be testing?
The cargo ramp hissed open. A team of struggling Low Class laborers, grunting under the gravity, wheeled out three large, pristine white containers.
Rask, standing next to me, leaned on his broom. "Bet you ten credits it's ceremonial capes," he muttered. "The King loves his capes."
"No bet," I whispered back.
Toz marched up to the first crate and punched in the encryption key. The hydraulic locks disengaged with a heavy thunk, and the side of the container hissed open, revealing the contents.
Silence fell over the hangar.
Inside the crate, neatly racked in rows, were hundreds of chest pieces.
But they didn't look like Saiyan armor. Our armor was heavy, segmented plating made of dense ceramic and impact-resistant alloys. It was rigid, bulky, and made a distinct clanking sound when you walked.
This stuff looked like… rubber.
It was a sleek, white material with amber-colored shoulder pads that looked soft and pliable. The stomach sections were made of a dark, ribbed fabric that looked no thicker than a wetsuit.
A murmur of confusion rippled through the gathered warriors.
"What is this?" Vorak, the leader of the Mid-Class squad from the other day, stepped forward. He picked up one of the chest pieces.
It sagged in his hand. He twisted it, and the material bent effortlessly.
"Is this a joke?" Vorak shouted, turning to the Quartermaster. "We ordered combat-grade protection! This is… this is a training suit! It's plastic!"
He threw the armor onto the ground and stomped on it.
"Calm down, Lord Vorak!" Toz stammered, wringing his hands. "The manifest says this is the 'Model-Z' Kinetic Armor. It's the latest issue from the Central Empire foundries. It's supposed to be—"
"It's supposed to be garbage!" Vorak interrupted, kicking the white chest piece across the floor. It skidded and stopped at my feet. "Look at it! It has no density! A stray blaster shot would melt right through this. They're mocking us. The Cold Force thinks so little of us they send us toys!"
The other Saiyans grumbled in agreement. To a race that valued weight and hardness, this lightweight, flexible gear looked like an insult.
I stared down at the armor at my feet.
My heart skipped a beat.
Model-Z.
I knew this armor. Every Dragon Ball fan knew this armor.
This wasn't plastic. This was the most advanced personal defense technology in the galaxy. It was a non-Newtonian, impact-absorbing composite with incredible elasticity. It could stretch to accommodate a Saiyan turning into a Great Ape without tearing a feature the current rigid armor lacked, forcing warriors to strip naked before transforming.
"Hey! Runt!"
I snapped out of my analysis.
Ruca was walking down the ramp from the upper levels. She looked bored, her tail swaying lazily behind her. She wasn't wearing her helmet, and her spiky hair was tied back in a messy ponytail.
She walked past Vorak, ignoring him completely, and stopped in front of me. She looked at the armor on the floor, then at me.
"You're staring at it," she said.
"It's... interesting design, my lady," I replied carefully, picking up the chest piece. It was shockingly light.
"It's trash," Ruca corrected, crossing her arms. "My father is going to be furious. He requested heavy plating for the elite squadrons. If we wear this into battle, we'll look like court jesters."
She snatched the armor from my hands. She pulled on the shoulder strap. It stretched like a rubber band and snapped back into place.
"Flimsy," she scoffed. "I bet I could punch a hole through it without much power."
A dangerous glint appeared in her eyes.
Oh no.
I knew that look. That was the look of a bored cat finding a mouse. I hadn't expected this girl to be a bully.
"In fact," Ruca said, her voice raising slightly so the surrounding crowd could hear. "We should test it. You know, before we file a formal complaint to the King."
She shoved the chest piece back into my arms.
"Put it on, Cress."
The hangar went quiet. Even Rask took a step back, distancing himself from the blast zone.
"My lady?" I asked, my grip tightening on the white material. "I'm a mechanic. I'm not authorized to wear combat gear."
"I'm authorizing you," Ruca said, a sharp grin cutting across her face. "Consider it a field test. If Vorak is right and it's trash, it'll crack, and we can send the video to the suppliers. If it holds... well, then we know."
"And if it cracks while I'm wearing it?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
Ruca shrugged. "Then you go to the infirmary. Or the morgue. Depends on how strong you are."
The crowd of warriors laughed. It was a cruel, braying sound. They loved this. A little unexpected violence to break up the monotony of the afternoon shift.
"Do it, Runt!" Vorak shouted from the back. "Let's see if you bounce!"
I looked at Ruca. Her eyes were locked on mine. There was no malice in them, really. Just curiosity and arrogance. She didn't want to kill me, specifically. She just didn't care if I died. When I thought I finally had a friend. This is harsh.
But I wasn't going to die anyway, I just needed to power up instantly when she attacked and then go back to my suppressed state, in theory it would work.
I looked at the armor.
If I refused, Vorak or one of the others might just kill me for insubordination. If I put it on, Ruca was going to punch me.
"As you command, my lady," I said, bowing my head.
I unzipped my grey maintenance jumpsuit to the waist, tying the arms around my hips, leaving me in my weighted undershirt. I pulled the Model-Z armor over my head.
It was a tight fit. As soon as I slid my arms through, the material seemed to shrink-wrap around my torso. It felt incredible. It was like a second skin, moving perfectly with my muscles. I felt lighter, more aerodynamic.
I clasped the side buckles.
"Ready," I said, standing in the center of the open floor.
Ruca stepped forward. She rolled her neck, cracking the vertebrae. She pulled off her right glove, tossing it to Rask.
"Don't worry," she said, raising her fist. "I won't use a blast. And I'll pull it. Let's say... ten percent?"
Ten percent.
I did the math instantly.
If she was 2,000, ten percent was 200.
A 200-power punch hitting a target with a power level of 5 was like a sledgehammer hitting a grape. It would shatter my ribs, collapse my lungs, and likely stop my heart.
She was underestimating the gap. Or maybe she just overestimated the durability of a 'Low-Class.'
I widened my stance. I kept my breathing shallow, keeping my suppression locked tight at 5.
"Whenever you're ready," I said.
Ruca didn't hesitate.
She lunged.
It wasn't a telegraphed haymaker. It was a straight, piston-like jab aimed directly at my solar plexus.
To the onlookers, it was a blur.
I saw her weight shift. I saw the rotation of her hips. I saw the fist coming.
Wait for it, I screamed internally. Don't flare yet. If you flare too early, the Scouters will pick it up.
The fist was six inches away.
Three inches.
One inch.
NOW!
In the microsecond before contact, I opened the floodgates.
I didn't flare my aura outward. I flared it inward. I pushed a concentrated burst of Ki directly into my chest muscles and the lining of the armor, creating a barrier beneath the surface.
My power spiked from 5 to 400 for exactly one hundredth of a second.
BOOM.
The impact sounded like a cannon firing in a tunnel.
The force lifted me off my feet. I didn't have to fake that physics was still physics. Even with the block, the momentum transferred.
I flew backward, sailing ten feet through the air before slamming into a stack of empty supply crates. The metal boxes clattered down around me, burying me in an avalanche of noise and dust.
"Oooooh!" the crowd roared.
"He's dead," Vorak laughed. "Did you hear that crack? That was his spine."
Ruca stood where she had struck, her fist still extended. She frowned slightly.
She looked at her hand. Then she looked at the pile of crates.
Silence settled over the hangar.
I lay in the debris. My chest throbbed. It hurt, definitely. It felt like I'd been kicked by a mule. But nothing was broken. The Ki barrier had dispersed the piercing damage, and the armor had absorbed the kinetic shock.
Showtime, I thought.
I groaned loudly, kicking a crate off my legs.
I sat up, rubbing my head. I coughed, waving the dust away.
"I'm... okay!" I wheezed, standing up on shaky legs.
The crowd gasped.
I walked out of the debris pile. I patted the chest plate of the white armor. There was a scuff mark where Ruca had hit me, a dark smudge on the white material, but no crack. No dent. The material had deformed to absorb the blow and then snapped back to its original shape.
"It works!" I shouted, injecting a note of awe into my voice. "It absorbed everything! I barely felt it!"
I looked at Ruca. "That was amazing technology, my lady! I thought I was a goner, but the armor... it dispersed the impact sideways!"
The warriors murmured. Vorak looked stunned. He looked from me to the armor, reconsidering.
"It took a direct hit from an Elite?" someone whispered. "And the runt is walking?"
Ruca didn't join in the surprise.
She lowered her hand slowly. She was staring at me with an intensity that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
She walked over to me, ignoring the murmuring crowd. She stopped inches from my face. She looked down at the scuff mark on my chest.
"You barely felt it?" she repeated quietly.
"The armor is incredible," I insisted, tapping the chest piece. "It's like hitting a gel wall."
Ruca narrowed her eyes. Her tail flicked behind her, agitated.
She knew.
She had felt the impact. When you punch something soft, it gives. When you punch something that hits back, there's a reverberation.
She had felt a wall.
"Right," she said slowly, a strange smile touching her lips. "Incredible technology."
She turned to the crowd.
"You see?" she shouted. "It holds! If it can keep a pathetic runt like this alive against my punch, imagine what it will do for us."
The mood in the hangar shifted instantly. The mockery vanished, replaced by the Saiyan lust for better wargear. Vorak was the first to grab a chest piece from the crate.
"I want the large size!" he barked. "And the shoulder guards!"
Chaos erupted as the warriors descended on the shipment, fighting over sizes.
Ruca didn't move. She leaned in close to me, her voice dropping to a whisper that only I could hear.
"That armor is good, Cress," she murmured. "But it's not magic."
I froze.
"You braced for it," she whispered.
I swallowed, my throat dry. "I... I just tightened my stomach muscles, my lady. Survival instinct."
Ruca chuckled. It was a dark, amused sound.
"You're a terrible liar," she said. "Keep the armor. It's 'damaged' anyway."
She stepped back, her expression unreadable.
"Meet me at the Blind Spot tonight," she said, her voice barely a breath. "Two hours after moonrise. Don't make me come find you."
She turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd of looting warriors.
I stood there, clutching my chest. I had the armor. I had survived.
But my cover was blown. At least to her.
I looked down at the white chest piece. It was mine now. A piece of the Frieza Force elite gear.
Well, I thought, a mixture of dread and excitement churning in my gut. I wanted a sparring partner. Looks like I just volunteered to be a punching bag.
I grabbed my toolkit and the rest of the 'damaged' armor set, leggings and boots that had spilled out of the crate, and hurried toward the barracks before anyone else decided to test my durability.
Tonight was going to be painful.
The Blind Spot was freezing.
The wind howled through the narrow gap between the palace foundation and the outer wall, carrying the biting chill of the upper atmosphere. It was pitch black here, hidden from the sensors and the prying eyes of the guards.
I stood in the shadow of a buttress, wearing my new armor.
I had spent the last hour adjusting it. It fit perfectly. The flexibility was unreal. I could high kick, crouch, and twist without feeling any restriction.
I straightened.
I could feel someone approaching.
Ruca dropped from the wall above, landing silently in a crouch. No thud. No dust. She was wearing her training gear a dark bodysuit and light sparring gloves.
It's really not in my habits, but I found myself staring at her.
She stood up, dusting off her hands.
"You showed up," she said, sounding slightly surprised. "I thought you might run back to the slums."
"And miss a chance to get beaten up by an Elite?" I replied, trying to sound casual. "I'd never forgive myself."
Ruca smirked. She circled me, looking me up and down.
"So," she said. "Four hundred."
I stiffened.
"Don't look so shocked," she said. "I have a Scouter too. I checked the logs from the hangar. When I hit you, the sensors on the wall picked up a micro-anomaly. A spike of 400 lasting 0.01 seconds. The computer flagged it as a sensor glitch."
She stopped in front of me.
"But we both know it wasn't a glitch."
I let out a sigh, dropping the act. My shoulders slumped.
"Are you going to report me?" I asked.
"Report you?" Ruca laughed. "Why? Because a Low-Class mechanic learned how to do a few pushups? The King doesn't care about a grunt with a power level of 400. You're still fodder."
"Then why are we here?"
"Because you're weird," she said bluntly. "You can change your power level at will, this is beyond weird."
She assumed a fighting stance. It wasn't the sloppy, brawling stance Nappa used. It was sharp, balanced.
"I'm bored, Cress," she said, her eyes gleaming in the dark. "The Academy cadets are predictable. They fight like animals. You... you're hiding something. And I want to see what it is."
She beckoned with her hand.
"Come on. Show me what a 'mechanic' can do."
I looked at her.
This was it. No more hiding in the corner. No more lifting crates.
This was my first real fight.
I took a deep breath. I felt the energy in my gut, the fire I had been suppressing for years.
I didn't flare it all the way up. I kept it tight, controlled.
I slid my right foot back. I raised my hands, not in a Saiyan brawler stance, but in the Turtle Hermit style stance I had practiced a thousand times in the mirror. It was obviously clumsy but I still wanted to do it.
Ruca raised an eyebrow. "What kind of stance is that?"
"Earth style," I whispered to myself.
"Ready," I said aloud.
"Earth style?" Ruca repeated, tilting her head. "Is that some backwater planet we conquered? Never heard of it."
She didn't wait for an answer.
She disappeared.
To a normal eye, she had simply vanished. But to my mind's eye, honed by years of sitting in the dark trying to feel the 'warmth', she was a raging bonfire in a pitch-black room.
Left. High.
The sensation screamed at me. I didn't think; I ducked.
WHOOSH.
Her boot sliced through the air exactly where my head had been a fraction of a second ago. The wind pressure alone stung my ear.
I rolled to the side, scrambling to put distance between us.
Ruca landed, looking genuinely surprised. She looked at her foot, then at me.
"You dodged," she said. Her tone wasn't praising; it was confused. "I didn't telegraph that. My shoulders didn't move. How did you know I was going left?"
"Lucky guess," I panted, raising my hands again.
"Once is luck," she muttered, her eyes narrowing. "Twice is skill."
She came at me again.
This time, she didn't just lunge. She unleashed a flurry of strikes.
Jab. Cross. Hook. Kick.
I could feel them all. It was like watching a video game with the hit-boxes highlighted. I felt the intent behind every strike before her muscles even fired.
Right. Chest. Dodge. Low. Sweep. Jump. Overhead. Block.
I was moving like water, slipping past punches that should have taken my head off. For a glorious ten seconds, I felt untouchable. I felt like Goku. I felt like a master.
Then, reality kicked in.
Or rather, Ruca kicked in.
I sensed the roundhouse kick coming from my right. I knew exactly where it was going to hit. I sent the signal to my brain: Duck.
But my body was a Low-Class body with a power level of 470. Ruca was an Elite with a power level over 2,000.
My mind said move. My muscles said loading...
I wasn't fast enough.
CRACK.
Her shin connected with my forearm as I tried to block. The impact was devastating. Even with the Model-Z armor and my internal Ki reinforcement, the force rattled my bones. I was thrown sideways, skipping across the frozen dirt like a flat stone on a lake.
I slammed into the palace wall, sliding down into a heap.
"You have good eyes," Ruca said, walking toward me casually. She wasn't even out of breath. "You react before I move. It's almost like you can smell me coming."
I groaned, forcing myself to stand up. My left arm was throbbing. It wasn't broken, but it was going to be purple tomorrow.
"But," Ruca continued, closing the distance, "you're slow. Your reaction time is elite, but your limbs are heavy. You're like a pilot trying to fly a broken ship."
She didn't give me time to recover. She grabbed me by the front of my armor and threw me.
I didn't sense that one because there was no wind-up. I just went airborne.
I flipped in the air, thank you, flight training, and managed to land on my feet, skidding backward.
"Fight back!" Ruca barked. "Stop running! Attack me!"
I gritted my teeth. She wanted an attack? Fine.
I centered my energy. I couldn't use a beam, it would be too bright, too loud. I had to use physical reinforcement.
I charged.
I channeled every ounce of my limited Ki into my legs, exploding forward. I closed the gap in an instant.
Ruca grinned. She stood her ground, waiting.
I threw a punch aimed at her face.
She tilted her head to the side. The punch missed by a millimeter.
I followed up with a knee. She caught it with her palm.
The difference in stats was depressing. It was like fighting a boss in an RPG when you were ten levels under-leveled. My attacks just bounced off her guard.
She grabbed my wrist, twisted it, and swept my legs.
The world spun.
WHAM.
I hit the ground hard, the wind knocked out of me. Before I could move, Ruca's boot was on my chest, pinning me down. She applied just enough pressure to make it hard to breathe.
"Pathetic," she said, looking down at me. But she wasn't sneering. She was analyzing. "You have zero technique. You throw a punch like you're afraid to hurt your hand. You overextend. You leave your ribs open."
She removed her boot and offered me a hand.
I stared at it for a second, then took it. She pulled me up with effortless strength.
"But," she added, dusting off her gloves. "You predicted six of my strikes. No Low-Class should be able to track my speed. How are you doing that?"
"Instinct," I lied, rubbing my sore chest. "I grew up in the Iron District. You learn to watch for shadows."
"Shadows don't move that fast," Ruca countered. She walked a circle around me, her tail swishing thoughtfully. "Whatever it is... it's useful. You're weak, Cress. Painfully weak. But you're not blind. I can work with that."
"Work with that?"
"I need a moving target," she said simply. "The training drones are boring. They follow a program. You... you adapt. You're going to meet me here every other night. I'm going to beat the weakness out of you. And in exchange..."
She smirked.
"I won't tell the Quartermaster you stole that armor."
I let out a breath. It was blackmail, but it was also the best offer I'd ever received. A sparring partner who wouldn't kill me (probably) and who could teach me how to actually fight.
"Deal," I said.
---------
Author's note: Do you like the direction this is taking ? Or do you feel this is too boring ? Actually I had written a whole arc but I scrapped it. Anyway hope you enjoyed this chapter.