The moon of Planet Vegeta was high, casting long, jagged shadows across the palace walls. In the Blind Spot, the only sound was the rhythmic thud of flesh hitting armor and the sharp intake of breath.
"Stop dancing!" Ruca shouted.
She swung a fist wrapped in blue energy. It was a heavy, bone crushing hook aimed at my temple.
I didn't block it. I couldn't. Even with my power level slowly climbing thanks to these nightly beatings, catching a punch from her was suicide.
Instead, I stepped into the guard. I raised my left hand, palm open, and slapped the inside of her wrist just as her arm fully extended.
Slap.
I didn't stop the force; I redirected it. Her fist slid harmlessly over my shoulder, the momentum carrying her slightly off balance.
"I'm not dancing," I grunted, pivoting on my heel to deliver a counter kick to her ribs. "I'm surviving."
My kick connected, but it felt like kicking a tree trunk. Ruca barely flinched. She swept her arm back, catching my leg and throwing me across the dirt.
I tumbled, using my tail to catch my balance, and skidded to a halt.
"You're fighting like you're made of glass," Ruca spat, straightening her armor. "You sense the attack, you deflect it, but you don't commit. You have no killer instinct, Cress. In a real battle, while you're busy redirecting one hit, the second one will take your head off."
I wiped a streak of blood from my lip. She was right, of course. My deflection style, a bastardized version of the Gentle Fist principles I remembered from anime, was effective at keeping me alive, but it wasn't winning any fights.
"I'm working on it," I muttered.
I was improving. Slowly. The weeks of sparring had forced my body to adapt. My power was rising, the constant stress of fighting an Elite forced my body to densify. In my spare time, I had even managed to stabilize the Kienzan. I could now hold the spinning disc for a full minute while moving, though I hadn't dared to use it on Ruca. If I slipped and cut her head off, my life was over.
"Again," Ruca ordered, dropping into her stance. "And this time, I'm done moving at training speeds."
My stomach tightened. "What does that mean?"
"It means," she grinned, "if you don't move, you break."
She vanished.
This wasn't the casual speed she had used before. This was Elite speed.
My sensing ability screamed at me. RIGHT. HIGH.
I saw her energy signature flaring like a comet. I knew exactly where she was going to be. I sent the signal to my legs to duck.
But physics was a cruel mistress.
My mind was running at 60 frames per second, but my body was lagging at 30.
Crack!
Her boot caught me in the shoulder before I could fully drop. The impact spun me around like a top. I hit the ground hard, gasping for air.
"Too slow!" Ruca's voice came from above.
She was descending for a hammer blow.
I rolled away, scramble crawling through the dirt. Her fist slammed into the ground where I had been a split-second before, cracking the stone foundation.
"Get up!" she roared, pursuing me.
I scrambled to my feet, panic rising in my chest. I couldn't outrun her. I couldn't out muscle her. I had hit the wall. The Stat Wall. No matter how good my prediction was, if my muscles couldn't carry out the order in time, I was dead meat.
She lunged again. A straight jab to the face.
I dodged it by a millimeter, the wind burning my cheek.
"Is this it?" Ruca taunted, unleashing a flurry of strikes. "Is this the limit of your 'instinct'? You're just delaying the inevitable!"
She was right. I was backing up. I was running out of space. The palace wall was ten feet behind me. Once I hit that, I was pinned.
I needed speed. But I didn't have the raw power to generate it.
Think, Cress. Think.
You can't move your whole body faster than her. But you don't need to move the whole body. You just need to move when it matters.
Ruca pulled her arm back. Her energy flared. She was going for a finisher, a heavy cross that would definitely knock me out.
I hit the wall. Nowhere to go.
"Got you," she whispered.
She threw the punch.
I didn't know what I was doing suddenly. I watched it coming. I centered my breathing. I didn't try to dodge away. I waited.
I waited until the fist was six inches from my nose.
I didn't step. I exploded.
I pushed a concentrated burst of Ki into my ankles, overloading the muscles for a fraction of a second.
Vwoom.
The sound was subtle, a displacement of air.
Ruca's fist smashed forward.
It connected with my face.
But there was no impact. No resistance. Her fist passed straight through my head like it was made of smoke.
My image flickered and dissolved.
Ruca stumbled forward, her momentum carrying her into the stone wall. She caught herself, blinking in confusion.
"What?" she gasped, spinning around.
I was standing three meters to her left, my chest heaving, sweat dripping from my nose.
I was shaking. My legs felt like jelly from the sudden exertion.
But I was standing.
Ruca stared at the empty space where I had just been, then at me. Her eyes were wide.
"You..." she started, then trailed off. "I hit you. I saw it."
"Your eyes lied," I wheezed, a massive, stupid grin spreading across my face.
I looked at my hands. I had done it. I had actually pulled off a technique. It wasn't just raw power; it was skill. It was martial arts.
"That wasn't speed," Ruca murmured, walking towards me slowly. She wasn't attacking anymore. She looked... baffled. "How did you move without moving?"
"Magic," I joked weakly, sliding down the wall to sit on the ground.
Ruca stood over me. For a second, I thought she might kick me for embarrassing her. Instead, she let out a huff of air that might have been a laugh.
"You're a freak, Cress," she said, shaking her head. "A weak, slow, annoying freak. But..."
She offered me a hand.
"That was a good move."
I took her hand. "Thanks."
I felt a surge of pride. I felt like a fighter.
But on Planet Vegeta, pride usually came right before the fall.
The next morning, the atmosphere in the Royal Hangar had shifted from industrial boredom to suffocating terror.
"Line up! Now! If your boots aren't polished, don't even bother coming out!"
Overseer Toz was in a panic. He was sweating so profusely that his uniform was stained dark grey.
I stood in the back row with the other mechanics. I was wearing my standard grey jumpsuit. The Model-Z armor was safely hidden under the loose floorboard beneath my bunk. I wasn't suicidal enough to wear Elite gear during an inspection.
"What's going on?" Rask hissed from beside me, frantically wiping a smudge of grease off his nose.
"High priority arrival," I whispered back, keeping my head down. "Someone big."
The main blast doors groaned open.
Usually, a transport ship would fly in. But this time, the ship had already landed outside.
Walking up the ramp was a small retinue of soldiers. But they weren't Saiyans. They were aliens, slender, uniform in their perfection.
And leading them was a man who made the very air in the hangar feel cold.
He was tall, with teal skin and braided green hair. He wore a cape and gold jewelry. He was undeniably beautiful, in a terrifying way.
Zarbon.
I stopped breathing.
I had seen him from a distance before, but this was close. He was twenty meters away.
My sensing ability, which had been so useful against Ruca, was now a curse. To my mind, Zarbon wasn't a person. He was a black hole. His power was so dense, so overwhelming, that it made Nappa feel like a child with a sparkler.
Twenty two thousand. Give or take.
He could blink, and everyone in this room would die.
"Lord Zarbon!" Toz squeaked, dropping to his knees. "We... we are honored by your—"
Zarbon walked past him without breaking stride. He held a scented handkerchief to his nose, his eyes scanning the hangar with utter disdain.
"It smells of oil and wet fur," Zarbon commented. His voice was smooth, cultured, and dripping with venom. "Typical."
The Elite warriors, including Vorak and Ruca, were lined up in two rows. They stood at rigid attention. Even the arrogant Vorak looked nervous. He kept his eyes fixed on the wall.
Zarbon stopped in front of Vorak.
"You," Zarbon said softly.
"Sir!" Vorak barked.
Zarbon looked him up and down. "Your armor is scuffed. And you have dirt under your fingernails. Is this the best King Vegeta has to offer? Brutes who roll in the mud?"
Vorak's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He knew that one wrong word would mean death.
"Disappointing," Zarbon sighed.
He moved down the line. He paused at Ruca.
My heart hammered against my ribs.
Zarbon looked at Ruca. He glanced at his Scouter, which beeped softly.
"Hmm," Zarbon hummed. "Two thousand one hundred. Young. Clean. At least one of you looks presentable."
Ruca didn't flinch. "Thank you, Lord Zarbon."
"Don't let the mediocrity of your peers infect you, child," Zarbon said dismissively, waving a hand. "King Cold expects excellence. Not... whatever this is."
He gestured vaguely at the rest of the squad.
Then, he turned towards the mechanics.
He walked towards us.
Zarbon stopped five feet from me.
I could smell his perfume. It was lavender, masking the scent of ozone and death.
He didn't look at me. He didn't look at any of us. To him, we weren't even people. We were tools.
"The King complains about equipment quality," Zarbon said to one of his aides, his voice loud enough for everyone to hear. "He demands better armor. Better pods. Yet he lets these... monkeys... maintain them."
He kicked a wrench that was lying on the floor. It clattered against Rask's boot. Rask trembled but didn't move.
"Filth," Zarbon murmured. "Absolute filth. It's a wonder they haven't blown themselves up yet."
He turned on his heel, his cape swirling.
"Finish the inspection," he ordered his aide. "I'll be in the throne room. I need to have a word with the King about his... resource allocation."
Zarbon walked away, ascending the ramp toward the palace proper.
The silence he left behind was heavy enough to crush a tank.
I let out a breath I had been holding for two minutes. My hands were shaking. Not from fear, exactly, but from the sheer, crushing weight of reality.
Last night, I had felt strong. I had tricked an Elite. I had felt like I was leveling up.
But standing there, watching Zarbon's retreating back, the illusion shattered.
I wasn't strong.
Ruca was a 2,000. Zarbon was a 22,000. Frieza... Frieza was in the millions.
I was a gnat learning to dodge raindrops while a hurricane was approaching.
"Alright!" Toz shouted, his voice shrill with relief. "You heard the Lord! Back to work! Make this place spotless!"
As the hangar erupted into chaotic activity, I walked back to my station.
I looked at my hands. They were stained with grease.
"Zanzoken won't save me from that," I whispered to myself.
I needed more. I needed so much more.
--
The silence at the Blind Spot was different that night. Usually, it was the silence of anticipation before violence. Tonight, it was the silence of a graveyard.
I sat against the cold stone of the palace foundation, staring up at the unfamiliar constellations. My body ached from the day's labor, but my mind was stuck on the image of Zarbon's retreating back. The casual way he had dismissed us. The sheer, crushing density of his presence.
A shadow dropped from the wall above.
Ruca landed softly. She didn't fall into a stance. She didn't taunt me. She walked over and sat down on a flat rock a few feet away, her tail curled tightly around her waist.
She looked... small.
"He didn't even look at me," Ruca said quietly. She wasn't talking to me, really. She was talking to the dark. "My father is a Commander. I have a power level of 2,100. And he looked at me like I was a stain on the floor."
"To them, we are," I said, picking up a pebble and tossing it into the darkness. "We're tools. Tools don't get respect. They get used until they break."
Ruca turned to look at me. Her eyes were hard, the momentary vulnerability vanishing behind a wall of Saiyan pride.
"I won't be a tool," she hissed. "I'm going to be a Commander. I'm going to be an Elite."
"Rank doesn't matter to the Cold Force," I replied. "Power does. And right now, the gap is too wide."
Ruca stared at me for a long moment. Her mouth opened slightly, and for a second, the mask of the Elite warrior slipped completely. She looked like a scared teenager. Her eyes darted to my hands, then back to my face. She looked like she wanted to ask something desperate. Is there a way out?
But then, she looked at the palace walls towering above us, blocking out the stars.
She closed her mouth. The mask slid back into place.
"Get some sleep, Cress," she said, her voice hollow. "If we're going to be tools... we might as well be sharp ones."
She stood up and leapt back onto the wall, disappearing into the night without another word.
I watched her go. I knew what she had wanted to ask. But I was glad she hadn't.
Because I was selfish.
--
The next morning, the Royal Hangar was a mausoleum.
Usually, the air was filled with the sounds of pneumatic drills, shouting, and the roar of engine tests. Today, it was silent. The mechanics moved like ghosts, terrified of making a sound. The Elite warriors were absent, likely confined to their barracks or training halls to avoid offending the "guests."
Overseer Toz was pacing back and forth in front of the main bay, wringing his hands so hard his knuckles were white.
I was at my station, pretending to calibrate a fuel injector. In reality, I was calculating.
Zarbon is here, I thought. The timeline is accelerating. I need a ship. Pod 712 is almost ready, but I need launch clearance codes. If I hack the terminal tonight...
"YOU!"
The scream shattered the silence.
I froze. It wasn't Toz. It was a voice that sounded like grinding glass.
I looked toward the VIP landing pad.
A soldier from the Cold Force, a lizard-like alien in purple armor, was holding Overseer Toz by the throat, lifting him a foot off the ground.
"We requested a refueling of the Lord's shuttle!" the soldier hissed. "And you send this... incompetence?"
He gestured to the floor.
Lying there was Goro, my roommate. His neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. Dead.
Beside him lay a fuel hose, leaking blue fluid onto the pristine white floor. Goro must have fumbled the coupling. Nerves.
"P-please!" Toz choked out, his legs kicking. "It was an accident! I'll do it myself! I'll—"
"You are shaking," a smooth voice cut in.
Zarbon walked down the ramp of the shuttle. He looked at the dead body of Goro with mild annoyance, then at the leaking fuel.
"If you are shaking, you will scratch the paint," Zarbon said calmly. "And if you scratch the paint on my personal shuttle, I will have to skin you to polish it out."
Toz made a whimpering sound.
"Find me someone who isn't a twitching coward," Zarbon ordered, checking his nails. "Immediately. Or I purge this entire hangar and bring in my own crew."
Toz was dropped to the floor. He gasped for air, his eyes darting frantically around the room.
His eyes landed on me.
No.
"Him!" Toz shrieked, pointing a trembling finger in my direction. "Unit Two! Cress! He's the specialist! He maintains the Elite pods! He reads the manuals!"
I felt the blood drain from my face. Toz had just painted a target on my back to save his own skin.
Zarbon turned. His amber eyes locked onto me across the hangar.
"The manual-reader," Zarbon mused, recalling the conversation from the day before. "Step forward."
My survival instincts were screaming at me to run. Zanzoken out of there. Hide in the vents.
But logic, cold, hard logic, clamped down on the panic. If I ran, I died in seconds.
I put down the fuel injector. I wiped my hands on a rag. I walked forward, keeping my head bowed, my suppression locked at 5.
I stopped three feet from Zarbon and the dead body of Goro.
"Sir," I said, my voice steady.
"Your overseer claims you are competent," Zarbon said, looking down at me. "Your peer there..." He kicked Goro's corpse. "...was not. The coupling on my ship requires a specific torque sequence. Do you know it?"
"Class-4 shuttle," I said, reciting the tech specs I had memorized from the stolen data-pads. "The intake valve is pressurized. You have to bleed the air lock before engaging the fuel line, or it sprays."
Zarbon raised an eyebrow. "Correct."
He stepped aside.
"Refuel it. You have three minutes."
I walked to the ship. My hands wanted to shake. I forced them to be stone.
This was the trap. I saw it closing around me.
If I failed, I died like Goro.
If I succeeded... I became visible.
I grabbed the hose. I bypassed the standard locking mechanism and manually vented the pressure valve. Hiss. I aligned the coupling. Click. I engaged the pump.
I watched the flow meter. Perfect seal. No leaks.
I finished in two minutes and fifteen seconds. I disengaged the hose, wiped the port with a clean rag to ensure no residue was left, and stepped back.
"Done, sir," I said.
Zarbon walked over. He inspected the port. He ran a gloved finger over the metal. Not a drop of fuel. Not a scratch.
"Hmph," Zarbon grunted. "Adequate."
He turned to the lizard-soldier.
"Update the personnel manifest," Zarbon commanded, his voice bored. "Transfer this asset from the Royal Maintenance Corps to the Cold Force Auxiliary Logistics Division. Effective immediately."
Toz's jaw dropped. "L-Lord Zarbon? But... he is my worker! You can't just requisition palace property without—"
Zarbon didn't even turn his head. He simply lifted a single finger.
A thin beam of pink energy, no wider than a pencil, shot from his fingertip.
It pierced Toz's forehead with a wet thwip sound.
Toz didn't scream. He simply ceased to be. His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to the floor, landing in the puddle of blue fuel next to Goro.
The hangar went dead silent. The other mechanics stopped breathing. Even the air circulation seemed to pause in terror.
"I can," Zarbon said, answering the dead man's question as he wiped an imaginary speck of dust from his glove. "And I just did."
He looked back at me.
"You have a name, monkey?"
"Cress, my Lord," I answered. My voice was calm, but inside, my mind was screaming.
This was the worst-case scenario.
If I stayed a Low-Class mechanic, I was invisible. I could steal a ship and leave. But being transferred to the Cold Force? That meant I was now property of the Empire directly. I would be logged, tracked, and monitored. If I tried to run now, I wouldn't just be a deserter from a backwater planet; I would be a thief stealing from King Cold himself.
"Cress," Zarbon tested the name, finding it distasteful. "You are literate. You have steady hands. And unlike your late supervisor, you seem to understand that silence is a virtue."
He gestured to the dead bodies.
"Clean this mess up. Then report to the Guest Quarters in the East Wing. My personal datapad has a cracked screen, and I require it fixed before the evening meal. Do not make me wait."
"Understood, my Lord."
"And Cress?"
Zarbon paused on the ramp, looking back over his shoulder. His eyes were cold, beautiful, and utterly predatory.
"Do not think about running back to your slum. You are no longer a citizen of Vegeta. You are my personal equipment. If you go missing... I will simply incinerate the entire Iron District to flush you out. Am I clear?"
The threat hit me like a physical blow. He wasn't bluffing. He wouldn't hunt for me; he would just burn the haystack to find the needle.
I clamped down on my fear.
"Crystal clear, my Lord."
Zarbon smiled. It was a terrifying expression.
"Good pet."
He turned and ascended into the ship. The lizard-soldier followed, sneering at me as he passed.
Words alone wouldn't be able to describe what I felt when he said this. For a moment, fleeing this damn planet was not my first priority. I was going to make him pay.
I sighed. I need to calm down.
The ramp hissed shut.
I stood alone in the center of the hangar, surrounded by the smell of fuel and fresh blood.
The other mechanics were staring at me. They weren't looking at me with mockery anymore. They were looking at me with horror. I wasn't just 'Two' anymore. I was the property of a monster.
I looked down at the dead body of Toz.
"Well," I whispered, my voice trembling slightly as the adrenaline crash hit me. "I wanted to get off-world."
I knelt down and picked up the fuel hose, coiling it neatly.
"Looks like I got my wish."
I was trapped. I had used my skills to survive the moment, and in doing so, I had shackled myself to the very tyrant I was trying to escape. I wasn't a rat in the walls anymore.
I was the wolf's chew toy.
I looked toward the palace towers, where the Guest Quarters were located.
But the definition of survival had just gotten a hell of a lot more complicated.
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Author's note: How was it ? If you enjoyed, leave a power stone and comment to let me know how you feel about this.