BONUS CHAPTER
Now there won't be a chapter till Saturday/Sunday, Thanks for the support you have shown for this book, I did not expect that you were so eager for more.
Also, for Cress' appearance, I have decided that I will not tire myself out.
{PHOTO}
This is him without the airhead look and slightly less muscular. And of course different clothes.
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A few days earlier...
"I've got all the data on our next mission," I said, dropping the datapad on the table.
"The planet we're taking is called Dra'kor. Similar to Vegeta. Slightly lower gravity than ours. The common soldier reads at a minimum of five hundred."
"Hah." Nappa laughed. "When you said the gravity, I thought we'd be going up against something worth the trip. Turns out it's trash."
"Did you listen? I said the common soldier." I let it land. "There will be stronger ones. Plenty of them."
Nappa waved a hand, unbothered.
"Don't drop your guard. That's all I'm telling you." I picked the datapad back up. "Get to your pods."
I was halfway to my pod when a hand caught my arm and pulled me aside.
No word. No warning. Her mouth was on mine before I'd turned all the way around.
I deepened it. She made a low sound against my mouth
"Mn—" and her hand twisted into my armor, pulling, and I put a hand low on her back and pulled her in until there was nothing left between us. The other hand found the back of her neck. She bit my lip, not lightly, and I felt her grin into the kiss when the sound I made answered hers.
We broke for air. "Hah... hah—" Her breath came ragged, her eyes half-lidded, and she dragged me back down before I'd pulled in a full one.
It went on longer than it should have. Longer than was smart, the squad loading up thirty meters away. The wet sound of it, her hands, my hands, the wall of the bay against her back when I pressed her into it, none of it was careful. She gasped against my mouth, "—mnh," and pulled me closer like the distance offended her.
When we finally parted a thin thread still connected us for half a second before it broke. She was breathing hard and not bothering to hide it this time. "Haa... haa..." Flushed. Looking at me like she was deciding whether to start again.
"Pods," I managed.
She nodded, between breaths, and didn't move for another second.
We went to our pods.
Nappa was grinning at me, ear to ear.
For some reason that made me angrier than anything the Dra'kor were going to throw at us.
—
—
Planet Dra'kor filled the glass of my pod. We were about to land, and I could already sense them, strong signatures down there, plenty above the floor I'd briefed. A proud world that wasn't going to fold easy.
'A hard one. On brand for Frieza.' I let the thought sit, then set it down. Could just be Frieza being Frieza.
*BOOM*
A succession of impacts, one after another. We all landed safely.
As soon as we climbed out of the pods, we were surrounded.
"Can't be sneaky with these pods," I said. Not particularly annoyed.
"Do we need to?" Nappa said arrogantly.
".....Vegeta, Broly, Raditz, you take the mass behind Nappa. Ruca, go with Toma. Zuto, you're with me."
I didn't need cover. And if I did, he wasn't who I'd call for it. But he'd shown something on the last drop, and this was his chance.
"Tch." Vegeta cracked his neck, already turning toward the horde behind Nappa. "Babysitting the loudest one. Wonderful."
"I heard that," Nappa said.
"You were meant to."
Raditz rolled his shoulders, eyeing the crowd, and for once he didn't look like he'd rather be anywhere else. "Behind Nappa. Got it." A beat. "Try not to flatten us old man."
"No promises." Nappa grinned.
Ruca didn't argue the pairing. She just caught my eye for half a second, the set of her mouth saying the thing she didn't, I'd rather be next to you, then jerked her head at Toma. "Come on. Left flank's ours."
"Right behind you," Toma said.
That left Broly.
He looked at me. I looked at him. That was the whole conversation, 'stay close, watch the field, I'll tell you when.' He gave the smallest nod and fell in with Vegeta and Raditz.
He didn't need the words anymore.
That was the thing I tried not letting myself feel good about. But it always failed.
*SKRRAAH*
The first one closed in. They were lizard-like creatures — big jaws, long tongues, black claws, scales over every inch of them, heavy tails dragging the dirt. No weapons. They didn't need them.
I smiled.
He opened with a punch. I started to slip it — and it was a feint, the tail whipping around to catch me where the punch wasn't.
I saw it coming. I just hit him instead. My fist went through his chest and out the other side, no resistance, like the scales weren't there.
One down.
Then they came in hundreds.
That was the thing about Dra'kor — they didn't flinch at a dead body. They climbed over it. For every one I put down, the gap closed with two more, jaws open, no fear anywhere in them. Off to my side Zuto was holding, carving out his own space and keeping it. Good. Not a babysitter after all.
I went up. Flew out over the swarm, found the mass of them, and brought my fingers together.
"Kienzan."
I sent it through the crowd. It cut a clean road through them, end to end, and curved back for a second pass.
I watched it work.
"I should just call it the disc of death."
It cut through everything it touched. What it didn't touch kept coming anyway, pouring into the space the dead ones left, like the planet had decided it would simply never run out.
I dropped back into the swarm.
The next one came in low. He brushed against me, I shoved his shoulder, caught his tail, and started to spin.
I took him around with me, full circle, and used him as the weapon. The ones close enough to reach came apart against him, and the rest gave ground rather than meet a body moving that fast. I let go on the upswing and threw him into the front of them, then charged into the gap with my aura up.
The next one I didn't get clean.
I went for the same thing, a punch through the chest, the way the first had gone, like the scales weren't there. It went through. But this time I felt it. A half-second of resistance, the smallest drag against my knuckles before he gave way, where the first one had been nothing at all.
I noted it and kept moving.
The one after that was faster. He read my weight shift and tried to turn inside it, actually tried, where the early ones had just thrown themselves at me, and I had to plant and rotate the way Roshi had beaten into me a thousand times in the sand before I could put him down. Structure, not strength. My strength was there. I just didn't need to spend it yet.
Then two came at once, and they came together, timed, one high and one for the legs.
I dropped under the high one, swept the low one's stance out, and came up between them with an elbow that finished the first before he landed. Clean. But it had taken thought. It had taken the full motion, the whole chain of it, where ten of them ago it would have taken a flick of the wrist.
They were getting stronger.
Not one of them. All of them. The swarm itself, climbing, like the planet was feeding power into the line the longer the line held. The bodies didn't stop coming and the ones that came hit harder than the ones before, and somewhere in the mass of them a sound went up, not the SKRRAAH of the charge, something lower, passed mouth to mouth across the field.
They'd worked out where the real one was.
The pressure changed. Dra'kor that had been tearing at Zuto, at the others, broke off and turned toward me. From every side. They stopped defending their ground and started converging, pouring across the field toward the one spot, toward me, jaws open, no fear in any of them even now.
I should have been worried about being surrounded.
I wasn't.
I was grinning.
Because this — this was the thing I never let anyone see. Every drill, every lesson, every technique I'd dragged out of memory and broken myself learning, all of it in one place at once with a whole world throwing itself at me to test it. Roshi's structure under my feet. Kami's stillness behind my eyes, quiet even now. The Kienzan waiting in my fingers, the Zanzoken in my heels, every tool I owned, live and working and mine.
I stopped backing up.
I let them come to me. "Come."
The ones in front of me all flinched, but they still charged in.
*GRRAAHK*
A bit further from here...
"This kid I swear...He's so fucking strong." Nappa said Grinning.
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(Nappa's Pov)
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The runt was carving a hole in the world about a hundred meters off, and I stood there in a pile of lizard corpses watching him do it instead of making my own.
That annoyed me.
Let me tell you about Cress. I've had a front-row seat to the whole stupid thing.
First time I heard the name, it was from the King. He figured the kid for a spy out of the Cold Force. Looking back, it was a dumb thing to even consider, but the brat was quick-witted enough to catch the eye of that green bastard Zarbon, who went around calling him his pet. That's the kind of attention that gets a Saiyan investigated.
After Zarbon left, the King hauled him in for interrogation. A kid with a power level of five. Five! And somehow he talks his way out, gets the King to reconsider, and lands on my squad for the trouble.
I wasn't happy about it. A weakling on my team, dead weight, one more body to babysit on a drop. But it was an order. I took it.
I didn't like him.
Any other Saiyan with that reading would've died on the first mission. I was half counting on it. He didn't.
Then he started getting stronger. Didn't know what trick he was pulling, went from five to hundreds, said it was a power-up after an injury. No explanation other than that held up at the time. Now I know. He was bullshitting me. Still don't know how he does it, but the kid can hide what he's got. Walk around looking like a five while sitting on a number that'd make your scouter scream.
Then came Planet Meat.
I paid him no mind going in. He survived anyway. More than survived, went Oozaru and made me acknowledge him, broke Zuto's arm, damn near executed him, and went toe to toe with me when I tried to put him down. He didn't even know how to control the form yet and he still made me work. A real danger, that day. The kind you don't forget.
After that the missions piled up and the kid kept climbing. Somewhere in there I stopped being able to lie to myself about it, he passed me. Then he passed everyone I'd ever measured. Strongest Saiyan I've laid eyes on, and he's not even grown.
And the strange part, the part that pisses me off most, somewhere along the way I started to like the little bastard.
Don't know when it happened. One day he was dead weight I was stuck with, and the next I was watching him talk a God of Destruction out of leveling our planet with a plate of food, thinking, that's my Squad Leader. He took my command. Frieza handed it to him and stripped it off me. By rights I should hate him for it.
I don't.
I never liked the Cold Force. But hell, I hate the Frieza Force. And I've been thinking, if it's him, and the kids, and the rest of us behind him...
Maybe we don't have to take Frieza's leash forever.
*SKHRRR.*
Right. The lizards.
One came at my flank, jaws wide. I caught the whole head in one hand and squeezed until it stopped being a head. Another went for my back, I felt it coming, drove my elbow through its ribs without turning around, and the crack of it ran up my arm like a good stretch.
Three more piled in. I waded into them.
I grabbed the first by the tail and swung it like a club, caved in the second, kept swinging into the third, and when the tail came off in my hand I threw what was left of it into the crowd hard enough to take down a row. A claw raked my chest and drew blood. I laughed, grabbed the arm that did it, and tore it clean off at the shoulder.
They didn't stop coming. Good. I didn't want them to.
Every one I put down, I put down hard. Felt good. Felt like every year of kneeling, every yes, Lord Frieza, every time I'd swallowed it, felt like giving the little tyrant a piece of it back, one lizard at a time.
I cracked my neck and looked at the field. Still thousands of them. The runt was still out there showing off without meaning to.
I wasn't about to be outdone by a teenager.
I planted my feet and raised two fingers.
"Let's clear some space."
"HAAAAAAAH!"
My energy surged up like electricity, crackling off my shoulders. This was a technique I'd built myself, back when I was young. Flashy as hell, which made me mad popular with the women, and worked like a charm every time.
I gathered it until it felt fit to burst, until the air around my hand went white with it.
I raised two fingers.
"Break."
FWOOOOM—
A pillar of light tore off my fingertips and split the sky.
KRA-THOOOM.
The beam came down across the field like a blade dropped from orbit. Where it touched, there was nothing left to touch. The ground went first, then the air, then a wall of fire and dust rolled outward in every direction, flattening the swarm for hundreds of meters and throwing up a crater you could've parked a ship in.
When the light died, half the field was glass.
I let the smoke clear and admired the work. A clean stripe of nothing carved straight through the horde, smoking at the edges, hundreds of them just gone.
"Hah." I cracked my knuckles. "Still got it."
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(End of Nappa Pov)
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"That was cool as heck!" Raditz said, practically bouncing, fists balled up at his sides.
"Right?" Nappa thumped his fist against his chest.
"It's just a flashy move. Wasteful." Vegeta crossed his arms and looked at the crater like it had personally disappointed him, though he'd watched the whole thing without blinking, and I doubt a single detail of it had escaped him.
Nappa shot him an annoyed glance.
"You missed some," Broly said.
He pointed. Off past the edge of the glassed stripe, the Dra'kor were already pouring back in to fill the gap, same as they had every time. The crater hadn't slowed the planet down. It had just made it angry.
"I missed them on purpose," Nappa said. "Leaving you something to do."
"Sure," Toma said, not looking up from the lizard she was finishing. "That's why."
Zuto snorted.
It was the first easy moment any of us had gotten since we hit the dirt.
Ruca drifted over to my shoulder, wiping Dra'kor blood off the back of her hand.
"He's going to be insufferable for a week," she said, low, watching Nappa gesture at his crater for an audience that wasn't asking.
"At least a week."
"You could've stopped him."
"Why would I do that," I said. "It cleared half a sector."
She huffed, that breath through the nose that wasn't quite a laugh and meant she'd let me have it. Her shoulder bumped mine. Just briefly.
I almost said something. I'm not sure what.
Then I felt it.
"Why did you stop moving all of a sudden?" she said, then instantly froze too.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
The scouters went off across the squad, one after another, picking up what I'd already felt a half-second before the machines caught it. High. Coming in fast. Three of them, holding altitude, dropping toward the planet.
"Reinforcements?" Raditz read his scouter, blinking at the numbers. "About time. Didn't think they'd send—"
"Those aren't reinforcements," Ruca said.
She'd gone still the same way I had, her scouter casting numbers across her face that her voice refused to get excited about. She'd felt them too. She was the only other one who could.
"Big numbers, though." Nappa squinted at his own readout, and the grin hadn't left him yet. "Way past these lizards. So they're on our side. What's the problem?"
"The problem is nothing out here is supposed to read that high." Vegeta hadn't looked at his scouter. He was looking at the sky, jaw tight, doing the math the others hadn't gotten to. "Reinforcements for a mop-up don't come in at those levels. Nobody wastes that kind of power on a planet like this." His eyes narrowed. "So why is it here."
Nobody answered him.
The numbers climbed as the signatures dropped closer, and one by one the scouters started doing the thing scouters do when they don't believe their own reading, stuttering, recalculating, the figures jumping. Toma swore under her breath. Zuto's grin died. Even Nappa had gone quiet now, watching his readout climb past anything an ally should be.
I wasn't looking at the sky yet. I was looking at the ground, and at nothing, running the names before the pods even broke atmosphere.
I knew those signatures. I already felt it before.
The Ginyu Force did not get sent to clean up a frontier rock.
There was no reason for them to be here. None that fit the story I knew. The Force showed up for Frieza's prizes, for Namek, for the things that mattered to the timeline, not for a no-name conquest target at the edge of the map, not for a Saiyan squad that wasn't supposed to matter.
This is me. It's because of me.
I'd known it could happen. I'd told myself I'd accepted the risk the day I let myself start changing things. I'd been so reasonable about it.
It turns out knowing a thing can happen and feeling it land on you are two different animals entirely, and I hadn't accepted anything at all.
"Cress." Ruca's voice. Quiet. "Your face."
I looked up.
They were all looking at me now. The whole squad. The banter gone out of them, because they'd seen me cornered and they'd seen me bleeding and they'd seen me stare down a God with a tray of food in my hands, and not one of them had ever seen the expression I was wearing right now.
That told them more than the scouters had.
"Regroup," I said. "Now. Tight formation, backs together, and do not let the locals split you up." I was already moving, already counting positions, already sick with how little time the counting was going to buy. "Whatever lands in those pods, you don't engage it alone. Nobody engages it alone."
"Cress, what is it—" Raditz started.
The sky answered him.
*BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.*
Three impacts, hard and close, throwing up walls of dust and glassed earth. The Dra'kor nearest the craters were simply gone, swept off the field by the landing alone.
The dust hung there a moment.
Then it began to clear.
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Author's note:What do you think is going to happen? 😈