You better give those stones.....
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The Hunter closed the distance in three heartbeats.
Up close, he was hideous. He wasn't an Arlian insect. He was a humanoid with pale, leathery blue skin and four narrow eyes arranged in a diamond pattern. He wore piecemeal armor, scavenged shoulder pads, heavy durasteel greaves, and wielded a weapon that looked like a jagged, two meter slab of sharpened turbine blade.
He didn't scream. He didn't roar. He just swung.
The blade whistled through the air, aiming to bisect me from shoulder to hip.
I didn't think. My body, conditioned by Ruca's beatings, reacted.
I dropped flat to the ground.
WHOOSH.
The massive sword passed inches above my nose, the wind pressure snapping my head back.
I scrambled backward on my hands and feet, kicking up orange dust.
"Fast," I gasped, getting to my feet.
The Hunter didn't pause. He twisted his wrists, turning the sword's momentum into a backhand swing.
I couldn't dodge this one. I crossed my arms, reinforcing them with every scrap of Ki I could summon.
CLANG.
It felt like being hit by a speeding hovercar.
I was launched. I flew backward, skipping off the rocky ground like a stone across a pond, finally slamming into one of the transport ship's heavy landing struts.
"Gah!" I coughed, tasting copper. My forearms were screaming. My armor had stiffened on impact, saving my bones, but the bruise underneath was going to be massive.
I looked up. The Hunter was already moving again. He wasn't rushing blindly; he was stalking, his four eyes locking onto my movements.
1,500.
He was twice as strong as me. Maybe more. In Dragon Ball logic, a gap of 20% is a beatdown. A gap of 50% is an execution.
"Think," I hissed, forcing myself to stand despite my trembling legs. "You can't tank him. You can't out-speed him."
The Hunter lunged. A thrust this time, aimed at my chest.
I fired a small Ki blast at the ground between us. BOOM.
The dust cloud exploded upward. It wouldn't hurt him, but it broke his line of sight for a split second.
I jumped, not away, but up. I grabbed the hydraulic piston of the landing gear and swung myself onto the top of the strut, ten feet in the air.
The Hunter burst through the smoke, his sword skewering the air where I had been standing.
He looked up, his diamond eyes narrowing.
"Monkey," he rasped. His voice sounded like gravel grinding together. "You are quick."
"I try," I panted.
He didn't laugh. He jumped.
He cleared the ten feet effortlessly, landing on the narrow strut beside me. He swung the sword in a tight, vicious arc.
I panicked.
I tried to backflip off the strut, but my heel caught on a rivet. I stumbled.
Clumsy.
I wasn't a warrior. I was a mechanic who did pushups. My footing was wrong. My center of gravity was off.
I fell backward off the strut just as the blade sparked against the metal, slicing a chunk of the landing gear off as if it were butter.
I hit the ground hard on my back, winding myself.
The Hunter dropped down on top of me, the sword raised for a downward stab.
Dead.
The word flashed in my mind.
No.
I raised my hand.
I pointed my palm at the ship's external exhaust vent directly behind the Hunter.
"Ignite!" I screamed.
I fired a tiny, concentrated Ki spark past the Hunter's ear, straight into the vent I had cleaned that morning.
The vent was full of residual fuel vapor.
KA-ROOM!
A backfire explosion erupted from the ship. It wasn't a weapon system, just a maintenance accident I triggered on purpose. A jet of hot, black smoke and fire belched out.
It caught the Hunter in the back.
He roared in surprise, stumbling forward, his aim ruined. The sword plunged into the dirt inches from my neck.
I rolled. I didn't stand up; I just rolled frantically to the side, putting distance between us.
The Hunter recovered instantly. His armor was scorched, and he looked annoyed. Not injured. Annoyed.
"Tricks," he spat, pulling his sword from the ground. "You fight like a rat."
"Rats survive," I wheezed, getting to my feet.
My chest was heaving. I was burning energy too fast. He was going to kill me. He was going to peel me open and leave me for Nappa to find.
He walked toward me. He wasn't rushing now. He knew he had me. He was going to savor it.
He raised the sword.
"Die."
I took a deep breath.
I had one shot.
I widened my stance. I dropped my hands to my sides.
To him, it looked like I was giving up. Like I was accepting the end.
The Hunter grinned, revealing rows of serrated teeth. He swung. A horizontal slash, lazy and arrogant, meant to take my head off.
Now.
I pushed everything I had into my legs.
I moved faster than my body had ever moved before. I felt muscles tear in my thighs.
The blade sliced through my neck.
But there was no blood. My image flickered, wavered, and vanished.
The Hunter's eyes widened. He had overcommitted to the swing. His momentum carried him spinning around.
I appeared behind him.
I wasn't holding a sword.
My right hand was raised high above my head. Spinning above my palm was a disk of razor sharp, yellow energy. It hummed with a sound like a buzzsaw.
I had been charging it behind my back while I rolled. It was unstable, wobbling slightly, but the edge... the edge was perfect.
"Kienzan!" I screamed.
I didn't throw it. I was too close.
I slammed the disk down like a hammer.
The Hunter tried to turn. He tried to bring his sword up.
Too late.
The disk connected with his shoulder.
There was no resistance. No crunch of bone. The Kienzan didn't cut; it separated matter.
It sliced through his armor, through his collarbone, through his torso, and exited out his opposite hip.
The Hunter froze.
The energy disk dissipated into sparks.
For a second, nothing happened. The Hunter stood there, a look of absolute confusion on his face.
Then, gravity took over.
His top half slid slowly to the left. His bottom half collapsed to the right.
Wet, heavy thuds echoed in the silence.
I stood there, my hand still raised, my chest heaving so hard I thought my ribs would crack.
I stared at the two halves of the mercenary.
I vomited.
I fell to my knees and retched until my stomach was empty. It was my first kill. It wasn't clean. It was gruesome.
But I was alive.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
"Okay," I whispered, my voice shaking. "Okay."
I looked at the ship. The exhaust vent was scorched black. The landing strut had a slice taken out of it. The ground was a mess of blue blood and guts.
"Nappa," I realized.
I checked the horizon. No sign of the squad yet. I had maybe ten minutes.
I moved.
I grabbed the mercenary's top half. It was heavy, dead weight. I dragged it to a small ravine nearby and kicked it in. I did the same with the legs.
I stood over the body parts. I couldn't leave them.
I pointed my hand down.
"Flash."
I fired a sustained beam of energy. I incinerated the corpse until there was nothing left but ash and scorched rock.
I ran back to the ship.
I kicked orange dust over the bloodstains, covering the blue puddles.
The severed landing strut... I couldn't fix that.
I looked around. I found a heavy rock. I smashed it against the cut metal, denting it, making the clean slice look like a jagged impact from a collision or debris.
"Damage from landing," I rehearsed. "We hit a rock on the way down."
Finally, I checked the spot where the mercenary had fallen.
Something glittered in the dust.
It was a small, metallic cylinder that had fallen from his belt.
I picked it up. It looked like a credit chit, but heavier. A data cylinder? Money?
I didn't have time to analyze it. I shoved it deep into my boot.
I zipped my jumpsuit back up, hiding my armor. I grabbed a rag and started frantically polishing the landing gear, right over the dent I had made.
Two minutes later, the sonic booms cracked the sky.
Three streaks of light descended from the north.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Nappa, Zuto, and Toma landed ten meters away.
They were covered in green ichor. Zuto was holding a severed insect head. Toma's armor was smoking. Even Nappa had a few scratches on his face.
They looked exhilaratingly violent.
They looked at me.
I was scrubbing a smudge on the landing gear, humming a tune.
Nappa blinked. He looked around the empty landing site. He looked at me, alive and un-eaten.
"You're still here," Nappa grunted, sounding genuinely disappointed.
"I guarded the ship, Commander," I said, standing at attention and saluting. "As ordered."
"Boring," Zuto spat, tossing the insect head away. "We slaughtered the whole nest. You missed a party, Runt."
"Did anything happen?" Toma asked, eyeing the scorched exhaust vent.
"We had a minor backfire in the thermal exhaust," I lied smoothly. "Dust in the intake. I cleared it out."
Nappa grunted, losing interest. "Load up. This rock is cleared. We're heading back to Vegeta for decontamination."
He walked up the ramp.
Zuto and Toma followed, shoving past me.
I waited for Ruca.
She landed last. She wasn't covered in as much gore as the others. She walked up to me, her eyes scanning me like an X-ray machine.
She stopped.
Her eyes locked onto my neck.
I froze. Had I missed a spot of blue blood?
Ruca reached out and touched the collar of my jumpsuit. She pulled it down slightly.
Beneath the fabric, on the skin of my neck, a dark, purple bruise was forming. The spot where the flat of the mercenary's blade had grazed me.
She looked at the bruise. Then she looked at the "jagged" dent on the landing strut. Then she looked at the disturbed dust where I had buried the blood.
She looked me in the eye.
She didn't say a word.
She just gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. Not bad.
She walked past me up the ramp.
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.
I climbed aboard the ship, the stolen data cylinder burning against my ankle.
I had survived my first battle.
--
The journey back to Planet Vegeta was a blur of noise.
Zuto and Toma were replaying the battle, laughing about which insectoid popped the loudest. Nappa was asleep in the pilot's chair, snoring loud enough to rattle the console, letting the autopilot handle the FTL.
I sat in the cargo jump seat, my arms crossed, pretending to doze.
In reality, every muscle in my body was screaming. My Ki reserves were dangerously low, leaving me feeling hollow and cold. My neck throbbed where the blade had grazed me, and my thighs felt like they had been shredded.
I kept my hand on my ankle, feeling the cold metal of the cylinder through my boot.
Ruca sat across from me. She wasn't celebrating.
Every few minutes, her eyes would drift to me. She didn't look at my face; she looked at my hands, which were still trembling slightly.
She knew. She had seen the bruise. She had seen the scorched vent.
At one point, Zuto stood up, stretching. He looked at me, a cruel grin forming.
"Hey, Runt," Zuto called out. "Get me a water ration. My throat is dry from all the screaming."
I moved to unbuckle my harness.
"Sit down," Ruca said sharply.
Zuto blinked. "Huh?"
"He's tired," Ruca said, not looking up from her blaster. "And he smells like exhaust fumes. If he walks past me, I'm going to be sick. Get it yourself, Zuto."
Zuto frowned, looking between Ruca and me. He wasn't stupid enough to challenge a Garl, especially not over water.
"Fine, Princess," Zuto grunted, walking to the galley himself. "Touchy."
Ruca didn't look at me.
Thank you, I thought.
But I needed more than protection. I needed healing.
I leaned forward slightly, keeping my voice under the engine roar.
"Ruca," I whispered.
She didn't react, but her ear twitched.
"I need a tank," I murmured. "Medical machine. Off the books. I... I pulled something."
Ruca paused. She glanced at Nappa, then back at me.
"The old Medical Bay in Sector 9," she whispered back, barely moving her lips. "It's decommissioned but the tanks still cycle. The access code is 7-7-1-Alpha."
"Thanks."
--
We landed at the Royal Spaceport an hour later.
The debriefing was short. Nappa stood before Commander Garl, bored, while a scribe took notes.
"Planet cleared," Nappa yawned. "Resistance neutralized. No casualties. Minimal ammo expenditure."
"And the new recruit?" Garl asked, his eyes scanning the squad. They landed on me for a second, then moved to his daughter.
"Luggage," Nappa shrugged. "He polished the landing gear. Didn't die. Good for morale, I guess."
Garl nodded. "Dismissed."
As the squad dispersed, Ruca lingered.
"Father," she said.
Garl looked at her. "Report, Ruca. Truthfully."
Ruca stood at attention. Her face was a mask of perfect deception.
"Nappa is correct," she said smoothly. "The boy stayed with the ship. He spent the entire mission cleaning. He showed no combat initiative, no tech skills beyond basic maintenance. If he is a spy... he is a very lazy one."
Garl frowned, tapping his chin. "Disappointing. Or he is deeper cover than we thought. Continue monitoring him."
"Yes, Father."
Ruca saluted and walked away.
I watched her go from the shadow of the hangar door. She had just lied to her father, the King's right hand, to protect a Low Class mechanic.
She was all in.
--
Sector 9 was a ghost town. It was an older part of the palace complex, abandoned when Frieza gifted the King the new medical wing. The halls were dark, lit only by flickering emergency strips.
I found the Medical Bay. The door was jammed, but I pried it open with a pry bar I had brought from my kit.
Inside, rows of Medical Machines stood like silent coffins. Most were broken, their glass cracked or fluid drained.
But Ruca was right. Two at the back were still humming.
I stripped off my jumpsuit and armor. My body was a roadmap of bruises. My neck was purple. My shoulder, where the Hunter had slammed me, was swollen and hot to the touch.
I punched in the code. 7-7-1-Alpha.
The machine hissed. The glass rose.
I stepped inside. The green fluid rose, warm and smelling of antiseptic and bacta.
I put the mask on.
The fluid covered my head. The weight of the world vanished.
I floated in the suspension, letting the machine do its work. I felt the Zenkai boost creeping in. It wasn't a huge one, I hadn't been near death, just beaten up, but my power was inching upward.
700... 710... 720...
I closed my eyes.
I stayed in the tank for three hours. When the cycle finished, the fluid drained, and I stepped out, gasping for air.
My pain was gone. My bruises had faded to yellow smudges. I felt lighter. Stronger.
I dressed quickly.
Now for the real work.
I sat on the cold floor of the medical bay and pulled the cylinder from my boot.
It was a standard mercenary chit. Heavy, encrypted.
I pulled out my datapad and a splicing tool.
"Let's see who paid you," I whispered.
It took me twenty minutes to bypass the biometric lock. The mercenary had been sloppy; he used a standard encryption key.
The file opened.
It wasn't a mission log. It was a transaction receipt.
TARGET: Unit Two / Cress. OBJECTIVE: Termination. Make it look like a casualty of war. PAYMENT: 5,000 Credits. SENDER: Royal Treasury - Authorization Code V-King-Alpha.
My blood ran cold.
V-King-Alpha.
Vegeta.
King Vegeta.
I stared at the screen.
It wasn't Frieza. It wasn't Zarbon. It wasn't even Commander Garl acting on suspicion.
It was the King himself.
The interrogation... the "useful tool" speech... it was all a lie. He didn't want a spy in Nappa's squad. He wanted me dead, but he couldn't kill me in the palace because I was Zarbon's property.
So he hired a mercenary to do it on the mission. A "tragic accident" in the field. Nappa wouldn't ask questions. Zarbon would assume I was just weak.
"He wants me gone," I whispered.
The realization hit me harder than the Hunter's sword.
I wasn't a player in the game. I wasn't a pawn. I was a loose end.
The King was paranoid. He didn't trust my story about Frieza being scared. Or maybe he did, but he decided that a Low Class who knew too much was too dangerous to keep alive.
I closed the file. I crushed the cylinder in my hand, the metal crumpling like paper.
I wasn't safe. Not anywhere.
If I stayed in the squad, the next mission would have two mercenaries. Or Nappa would get a direct order to shoot me in the back.
If I ran, they would chase me to the ends of this universe.
I stood up, pacing the small room.
I was trapped between a tyrant who wanted to enslave me and a King who wanted to murder me.
"Fine," I growled, my aura flaring around me, bright and angry in the dark room.
If the King wanted me dead, he was going to have to send more than one mercenary.
I looked at my reflection in the glass of the medical tank. My eyes were harder. My jaw was set.
I wasn't just surviving anymore.
I was going to war with the King of the Saiyans.