The fluorescent lights of the office hummed with a low, soul-sucking vibration. It was 9:00 PM, and Zono was the only one left in the cubicle farm. The blue light of the monitor reflected in his tired, bloodshot eyes as he scrolled through endless spreadsheets.
'Just ten more pages,' he thought, his fingers clicking mechanically. 'If I finish this tonight, maybe the boss won't breathe down my neck tomorrow. Maybe I'll actually get a full six hours of sleep for once.'
Zono was thirty-two, a man whose life had become a series of recycled days. Work. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. He had once dreamed of traveling, of learning a martial art, of seeing the world beyond a glass-and-steel skyscraper. But those dreams had been crushed by the weight of bills and the fear of falling behind.
He finally shut down his computer, the silence of the office pressing in on him. He grabbed his worn briefcase and headed for the elevator.
"Another day, another dollar," he muttered to himself, his voice sounding raspy in the empty hall. "Or more like another day, another gray hair."
Stepping out onto the city street, the cold night air hit him. The neon signs of Tokyo blurred as he walked toward the crosswalk. He was exhausted—so exhausted that his surroundings felt like a dream. He checked his watch. If he caught the late bus, he could be home by ten.
'I'm so tired of this,' Zono thought, looking up at the small patch of stars visible between the skyscrapers. 'Is this it? Is this all life is? Just working until you're too old to enjoy the quiet?'
He stepped onto the asphalt as the light turned green.
A sudden, blinding glare of white light cut through the darkness. The roar of a heavy engine and the screech of tires tore through the quiet night. Zono turned his head, his pupils shrinking. A massive transport truck was barreling toward him, the driver's face a mask of panic behind the windshield.
Zono didn't scream. There wasn't time. In that final millisecond, a strange sense of clarity washed over him.
'Finally,' he thought with a bitter, fleeting smile. 'A day off.'
CRUNCH.
Darkness.
It wasn't the cold, empty darkness he expected. It was warm, rhythmic, and muffled. Zono felt small—impossibly small. He tried to move his arms, but they were trapped in a viscous fluid. He tried to open his eyes, but the lids felt heavy and sealed.
Then, light broke through.
A sudden rush of cold air hit his skin, and the muffled world exploded into a cacophony of shouting and the hum of machinery. Hands—rough, calloused hands—grabbed him.
"Another low-class brat," a gruff voice boomed. "Power level is barely double digits. Throw him in the nursery ward C-4. He's a nameless one—parents didn't survive the last conquest on Planet Kanassa."
Zono tried to shout, to ask where he was, but all that came out of his throat was a sharp, piercing wail.
"Look at that," a female voice laughed, sounding bored. "He's got spirit, at least. Welcome to the Frieza Force, little one. Try not to die in the first week."
Zono's vision finally cleared. He wasn't in a hospital. The room was metallic, filled with glowing pods and screens displaying strange, jagged symbols. He looked down at his own hands—small, pudgy, and tan. And then, he felt it.
A weight. A heavy, furry limb twitching behind him.
'A tail?' Zono's mind raced, the fog of death lifting. 'Nursery? Frieza? Planet... Vegeta?'
He was placed into a liquid-filled pod. As the green medicinal fluid rose past his chin, he felt a strange sensation deep within his chest. It wasn't the hot, wild fire he could hear thumping in the hearts of the other infants around him. It was something else.
It was cold. Pure. It felt like the vacuum of space and the heat of a supernova all at once. It was a spark of violet light buried deep under his ribs, radiating a calm that silenced the screaming instincts of his Saiyan blood.
'This isn't normal Ki,' Zono realized, his adult mind struggling to process the sheer pressure of the energy inside his tiny lungs. 'It feels... holy.'
He looked through the glass of his pod. Outside the window, the sky of Planet Vegeta was a bruised red, filled with the silhouettes of spherical spaceships descending like predatory birds.
"I'm a Saiyan," he whispered in his mind, his tiny heart racing. "And if I remember the story... this whole place is going to burn."
He closed his eyes, focusing on that violet spark. He didn't have a system. He didn't have parents. But he had the one thing the Gods used to rule the stars.
'I'm not going to be a foot soldier for a tyrant,' Zono vowed as sleep reclaimed his infant body. 'I've worked my last day for someone else. This time, I'm building my own destiny.'