Chapter 14: The tree that ate the sky from orbit

## Act I: The Strangled Sky

From orbit, Veyruna looked like a throat being squeezed by a giant, dirty hand.

Half the planet still held onto its natural colors.Full novel: Dragon ball: Primal instinct — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠

There were deep blue oceans that caked the northern hemisphere, green continents split by jagged mountain ranges, and silver storm belts curling lazily over the eastern plains.

Cities glittered faintly on the night side—stubborn, small sparks of civilization that refused to click flat into the dark, completely unaware that their power grids were running on borrowed time.

The other half of the world was already dead.

Massive, gray-brown veins of dead soil spread across the land like cracked glass, creeping outward from the southern hemisphere.

Great forests had turned a brittle, sickly pale color, their canopies looking like ash from orbit.

Rivers that had once carried fresh mountain water had thinned down into dark, greasy lines of stagnant mud.

Thick clouds of golden dust twisted around a single, impossible structure that rose straight out of the center of the largest continent—a wooden trunk so colossally massive it pierced the upper atmosphere, its jagged, gnarled branches clawing toward the open stars like the hand of a buried god trying to drag the sky down into the dirt.

The Tree of Might.

Kallard stood behind the *Wayfarer’s* panoramic cockpit viewscreen, his callused fingers locked around the back of Brakka’s leather pilot chair, and completely forgot how to draw air into his lungs.

He had known the Tree was large.

In his old life, back when his soul inhabited a fragile human frame on a distant world, he had seen the image of this thing caked into a television screen.

It had been animation.

A theatrical spectacle.

A standard movie threat for a weekend block.

A giant, evil tree that sucked a world dry so a rogue Saiyan could get a larger number on his scouter.

It was something for Goku to punch through with a colorful blast before the credits started running.

But the reality didn’t care about animation lines.

Reality possessed scale.

The Tree didn’t simply grow out of the crust of Veyruna; it was actively consuming the planet’s marrow.

Great roots, each one as wide as a metropolitan highway lane, crawled across entire mountain chains, crushing the granite peaks into gray gravel.

Smaller, fibrous root tendrils had punched clean through towns, agricultural fields, supply roads, lakes, and ancient stone temples, tunneling deep into the core to drink the latent life energy of the world.

The upper atmosphere caked around the branches shimmered with a thick, glowing blanket of golden pollen dust, the local weather patterns bending around the wood as if even the wind had been dragged into a permanent orbital loop by the sheer mass of the parasite.

Brakka sat perfectly still in his primary control stool, his multi-jointed arms resting loosely over the steering handles, all four of his unblinking eyes wide as they tracked the thermal degradation meters on his panel.

He was quiet for once—completely, profoundly silent.

And that single mechanical stillness told Kallard a hell of a lot more about the horror below than any warning light ever could.

After a long, heavy minute, the old mechanic let out a slow, gravelly breath through his yellow teeth.

“That…

that is definitely not an official piece of agricultural farming, kid.”

Kallard’s jaw tightened, his fingers digging deeper into the leather padding of the headrest until the seams creaked under his physical density.

“No, old man.

It isn’t.”

“Please tell me this isn’t another ancient piece of demon-wizard magic caked into a root system, boy,” Brakka muttered, his lower pair of eyes shifting to check the ship’s primary fuel pressure gauges.

“My ledger is still recovering from the interest rates on that Malkor contract.”

“It’s worse than magic, Brakka,” Kallard said, his voice dropping into a low, flat register that sounded like cold iron striking iron.

“It’s pure, biological slaughter on a planetary scale.

That tree systematically steals every single drop of vital energy from the soil, the water, the plants, and the people…

and it compresses the whole world’s life force into a single batch of fruit.”

Brakka turned his broad gray-blue head around slowly, all four eyes locked onto the kid’s face.

“Power grown from the marrow of a dying world,” the old man growled, his lip curling back over his teeth in an expression of deep, professional disgust.

“That is an absolutely garbage piece of engineering philosophy.

It’s a complete theft of the baseline.”

“Yeah,” Kallard whispered, his eyes cutting back to the golden haze caking the viewscreen.

“And if someone bites into that fruit…

their active power level doesn’t just rise.

It detonates.

They take the whole planet’s strength and pack it straight into their own muscles.”

The *Wayfarer’s* primary tactical sensor let out a sudden, low-frequency chime, a small white indicator dot flashing green at the edge of the tracking grid.

Brakka’s mechanical fingers moved across the keys, clearing the static lines from the monitor.

“I’m resolving a large cluster of biological signatures near the northern settlement lines.

They’re incredibly weak, kid—their vital indicators are sliding down toward the zero mark.

I’m also tracking at least a dozen active combat signatures centered around the lower root structures near the main trunk.

Mismatched armor plates, irregular weapon cycles…

looks like a bunch of independent raiders or border outlaws.”

He paused, his upper pair of eyes narrowing as his radar Pass registered a final, massive displacement in the lower frequencies near the center of the wooden core.

“And there’s one larger reading sitting directly against the primary trunk gantry, Ronin,” Brakka said quietly, his tone turning serious.

“The signature is heavily suppressed—someone’s holding their energy down behind a wall of discipline—but the container’s too dense to stay hidden from my long-range radar.

It’s throwing off a heavy, hot pressure that’s caking my sensors with static.”

Kallard didn’t need to check the numbers on the screen.

He already knew exactly who was sitting down in that ditch.

A Saiyan.

He could feel the presence deep behind his ribs—not through the refined, highly structured ki-sensing pathways he had learned from the Yardrat focus stone, but through a primitive, biological recognition that sat straight inside his bone marrow.

His own physical frame was reacting to the signal, his blood boiling with a sudden, dangerous heat that made his pulse thud against his temples.

Saiyan blood recognized its own lineage across a sector the exact same way a localized storm system recognized a drop in the atmospheric pressure.

It was an absolute, biological marker.

Brakka watched the sudden, rigid locking of the kid’s broad shoulders, his gravelly voice dropping its biting mechanic edge.

“Kid.”

Kallard’s jaw flexed, his fists clenching tight at his sides.

“I know, old man.

I feel the weight.”

“Do you genuinely know what you’re doing, boy?” Brakka asked, his lower eyes tracking the red lines clearing his screen.

“This contract…

it’s personal already.

I can see the fire flaring behind those eyes of yours.

And in my workspace…

every time a hunter lets his personal lineage history drive the steering column, his choices turn remarkably stupid and expensive for the ledger.

I’m professionally concerned about your coordination metrics today.”

Kallard let out a short, dry laugh through his teeth, though his dark pupils remained fixed on the wooden hand clawing toward his wings.

“You’ve been calling my tactical design choices stupid since the day I dropped out of orbit into your backyard, grease goblin.”

“Yes, kid, but usually I use the term with a substantial amount of professional affection!” the old man growled, his titanium hand snapping shut with a sharp hydraulic ring.

“This time…

I’m looking at a total system failure.

You’ve spent three standard cycles hiding what you are from the tracking grids for a damn good reason.”

“I know,” Kallard muttered, his fingers slowly reaching up to touch the weathered fabric of the dark bandana tied tight across his forehead.

For almost a decade, that dark cloth had been an integral part of the Ronin shell.

The short, uneven spikes of his black hair had been kept thinned out and hidden beneath the canvas to break his silhouette.

His thick brown furry tail had been wrapped tight around his waist beneath leather binding straps and matte-black armor plates, pinned down so securely that not a single scouter in the border lanes had been able to resolve his lineage.

He had worn the disguise like a shield, painted his uniform in deep green trim to avoid Frieza’s tax collectors, and stayed three steps ahead of every high-priced bounty squad in the quadrant.

The Ronin shell was useful.

It allowed him to get the contracts, pay off his fuel bills, and survive inside a galaxy that had systematically turned his birth world into ash.

But down there…

on the surface of that strangled planet…

a rogue survivor of his own bloodline had chosen to plant a parasite tree to feed his own hunger.

A Saiyan had looked at the infinite cruelty of the Frieza Force and decided that the only real mistake the empire made was not stealing the marrow fast enough.

He had turned his heritage into an open disease with a battle stance.

And Kallard realized, with a cold, absolute clarity behind his eyes, that if he stayed up here in orbit running his stealth cloak while that tree ate the sky…

then the black-and-green armor plates he was wearing weren’t a shield anymore.

They were just a costume for a coward.

“Bring the cutter down near the northern settlement gates, Brakka,” Kallard said, his voice flat, low, and completely unyielding.

“We’re clearing the pavement tonight.”

Brakka stared at his back for one more long, silent second, his four eyes evaluating the wall of conviction behind the kid’s dark face.

Then, the old man let out a defeated grunt through his nose, his organic left hand throwing the primary lever forward to commit the *Wayfarer* to the descent lane.

“Fine.

But let’s establish the boundaries right now, dramatic bounty boy: if you start delivering any grand, heroic speeches to those farmers before the shooting clears, I am officially charging your account an extra two thousand credits for emotional maintenance labor.

I refuse to run a charity scow.”

Kallard slid his green visor down over his jaw, his dark pupils steady.

“I’ll keep the dialogue exceptionally short, old man.

Just keep the ramp clear.”

## Act II: The Dust of Aven

The settlement was called Aven.

Or at least, that was the designation still registered in the old sector cargo manifests.

Now, it was nothing more than a sun-dried skeleton of white clay houses, collapsed stone walls, and dry irrigation ditches caked in a thick layer of golden pollen dust.

The wide agricultural fields surrounding the perimeter lay completely flat, the crops transformed into brittle gray husks that crumbled into ash whenever the wind caught them.

Dead domestic animals sat rotting in the center of the red dirt roads, their bodies mummified by the extreme dryness of the soil.

The primary water wells had thinned down into shallow puddles of black, sulfurous mud, and the local townspeople—a community of blue-skinned, long-eared laborers—were huddled inside their open doorways, their yellow eyes wide, hollow, and completely devoid of any active vitality as they watched the *Wayfarer’s* landing gear touch down beyond their outer wall.

Kallard stepped down the primary boarding ramp, his combat boots hitting the golden dust with a heavy, structural *thud* that shook the nearest fence post.

He wore his full black-and-green chest plates, his long gray cloak trailing through the dry grass, his face completely masked by his visor line.

An old, wrinkled miner carrying a rusty iron trenching tool stumbled out from a doorway, his cracked lips bleeding as he struggled to hold the metal weapon against his shaking shoulder.

He looked at the scuffed green trim on Kallard’s armor, then lifted his eyes toward the sky where the Tree’s massive wooden branches had completely swallowed the sun into a permanent, sickly gold haze.

“Are…

are there more of you coming down from the upper gates?” the old man rasped out, his voice sounding like dry paper sliding over gravel.

“Did the dark one send another collection detail to clear out our remaining storage vaults?”

Kallard came to a smooth halt five paces from the tool line, his open hands visible at his sides.

“No, old man.

I don’t run on his ledger line.

I’m Ronin.”

The miner looked up at his visor, his yellow eyes tracking the complete absence of an imperial identification stamp on his collar.

“You…

you came down through the atmosphere inside a warship.

You cleared the cloud deck from above.”

“So did the five warriors who planted that wooden tumor in your fields, didn’t they?” Kallard asked, his voice low.

The old man nodded his head weakly, his trenching tool dropping an inch toward the dirt.

“Five of them at first.

A bunch of multi-species brutes carrying heavy blasters and scouters.

And then…

the dark one cleared the hatches.

The one with the wild hair and the dark armor plates.

He just stood there on the ridge and laughed like a maniac when the roots opened the ground up to drink our water lines.

He said our planet had finally been selected for a high-grade transformation phase.”

Kallard’s knuckles popped inside his leather gloves, the cold fury behind his teeth turning solid.

“What’s the call sign he uses on his transponder, old man?”

The miner swallowed hard, his throat clicking against his collar.

“Turles.

That’s the name his scouts shout across the promenade.”

There it was.

The name cleared the air lines, and the pieces of the historical puzzle finished clicking together inside Kallard’s head.

The rogue Saiyan captain from the old chronicles—the leader of the Crusher Corps, a veteran grunt who had slipped through the nets of Frieza’s execution squads by running the dark lanes of the outer rim, using the seeds of the Tree of Might to buy his own strength from dead worlds.

Brakka stepped out from the airlock hatch behind his back, his heavy scanner pack resting over his shoulder harness, his primary mechanical hand cradling a large industrial medical box.

His gray-blue face was wrinkled up with a deep, professional disgust as his meters pass over the nearest house.

“These…

these townspeople are being systematically drained from orbit, Ronin,” the old mechanic growled, his voice a low rasp.

“It isn’t a biological virus, and it isn’t a chemical poison leak inside their wells.

That wooden trunk down on the continent is actively drawing the latent current straight out of their cellular structures through the root networks.

By the time the next rotation cycle clears, their vital indicators are going to hit absolute flat zero potential.”

The old miner reached out with his shaking hand, his fingers catching Kallard by the edge of his green arm guard with a desperate, white-knuckle grip.

“Can…

can your blasters break that trunk, hunter?

Can your ship cut those roots before the wells dry out completely?”

Kallard looked up through the golden pollen haze at the colossal wooden branches clawing toward his wings, the physical pressure of Turles’s energy signature beginning to pulse harder against his bone marrow.

“I’m going to put everything I’ve got into breaking his guard today, old man,” Kallard said quietly.

“That’s the specification I can write on the slate for you.”

The miner’s yellow eyes filled with a sudden, exhausted wave of hope—and that specific visual detail made the weight behind Kallard’s chest plates feel a hell of a lot heavier.

Hope was an exceptionally expensive commodity to manage inside a ditch; it exacted a much larger tax on his stamina than a common fear response ever could.

*ZIP-BOOM.*

Before the conversation could clear the promenade gates, a sudden, superheated bolt of yellow plasma fire tore through the golden cloud deck from a high angle, striking the center of the settlement’s outer stone wall.

The reinforced clay bricks exploded instantly into a massive shower of white rock shards, flying gravel, and hot dust that made the townspeople shriek out in a panic, throwing their bodies flat against the dirt roads to find cover.

Kallard spun his torso around slowly, his dark pupils narrowing beneath his visor as his internal sensing grid automatically resolved the approach of four fresh energy signatures dropping down from the ridges.

Turles’s guard detail had officially cleared their perimeters to greet the new arrival.

## Act III: The Crusher Grunts

The four raiders descended through the golden pollen mist using high-speed aerial flight packs caked in rust-black paint, their boots hitting the gravel promenade with a series of heavy, structural thuds.

They didn’t wear the polished, mass-produced uniforms of the standard Frieza Force infantry; they carried themselves with the loose, arrogant sloppiness of independent border outlaws who had spent too many cycles robbing un-shielded agricultural colonies.

One of them was a tall, skeletal alien carrying a curved vibro-blade that hummed with a high-frequency power cycle.

A second was a thick-bodied brute with red skin and a hand-cranked mortar cannon mounted to his shoulder harness.

The remaining two were short, wire-muscled scouts carrying old-style imperial infantry long-rifles caked in grease marks.

The leader of the vanguard detail—a red-skinned alien with a broad jaw full of jagged, artificial metal teeth—climbed up onto the flat clay roof of the nearest house, his hand hitting the manual interface switch on his green scouter lens.

He let out a loud, coarse cackle that shook the frequency with static, his eyes looking down at the black-and-green armored shadow standing in the street below.

“Well, well, look what just crawled out of the hyperspace lanes, boys!” the metal-toothed leader jeered, his voice wet and raspy through his mask speaker.

“Another solo rim bounty hunter trying to check the inventory before the primary harvest clears the gates!

You picked an exceptionally poor cycle to visit this world, scrapper!”

Kallard took a slow, deliberate step forward through the golden dust, his hands open and resting loosely near his holster belt.

He kept his energy signature suppressed down to his baseline of nine hundred, his body mass completely folded inward to hide his potential current from their scanners.

The leader’s green scouter let out a rapid series of electronic pings, the data lines flashing across the lens.

“Power level reckoning…

let’s see…

barely eight hundred units?

Is that an absolute joke of a registry line, kid?

You couldn’t even clear a common loading dock detail with that kind of numbers rating!”

Brakka walked out from the brush behind Kallard’s left side, his mechanical hand resting flat against his compact plasma pistol as all four of his eyes blinked in unison.

“They…

they always believe the very first number that flashes on their little green screens, don’t they, Ronin?

It’s an absolute design flaw inside their software architecture.

They have zero professional capacity for critical analysis.”

The metal-toothed leader dropped down from the clay roof, his heavy boots kicking up a cloud of gold powder as he landed five yards from Kallard’s line.

“You’re a long parsec away from a safe station, little bounty hunter!

Hand over your ship’s fuel codes, or we use the mortar to turn your chest plates into scrap metal!”

Kallard didn’t draw a blaster, and he didn’t reach for his side blade.

He simply lifted his right hand, his white-gloved fingers open, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that cut through the humming of the風 wind.

“Clear the promenade, scrappers.

Turn your flight packs around and clear the sector before I decide to make this meeting expensive for your health logs.”

The four raiders broke out into a loud, mocking chorus of cackles, their rifles clicking off their safety selectors in a perfect display of unearned confidence.

“Erase the monkey,” the leader growled, his thumb hitting his gun receiver.

The thick red brute with the shoulder cannon fired first.

*BOOM.*

A massive, concussive shell of orange plasma fire tore through the air lines, the thermal energy aimed straight for Kallard’s chest armor.

Kallard didn’t try to execute a low slide or duck behind a storage box.

He forced his base energy pool to jump up to his standard three thousand combat output, a green afterimage trailing behind his cloak as his body vanished from the gravel road before the plasma bolt could even touch the first strand of his fabric tunic.

The orange shell struck the empty ground where his boots had been resting a microsecond earlier, completely ripping open a dry clay fountain structure and launching a cloud of white stone shards into the air.

Kallard reappeared directly alongside the red brute’s shoulder harness, his movement creating a sharp vacuum loop through the gold smoke.

Before the mercenary could even turn his heavy head around to track the signature, Kallard drove his left elbow straight down into the center of the shoulder cannon’s primary barrel mount.

*CRACK.*

The reinforced titanium casing of the gun shattered under the physical density of the blow, the internal gears turning into a cloud of loose metal pins and sparks.

Kallard completed his rotation by shoving his open right palm flat against the center of the brute’s chest vest, his ki exploding outward in a short, highly concentrated concussive pulse.

*THUD.*

The immense physical force of the strike lifted the four-hundred-pound mercenary completely off his boots, launching his massive red body twenty yards across the promenade where he smashed straight through a white clay wall before dropping into a quiet heap in the dirt.

The laughter died instantly across the frequency, the remaining three raiders freezing in their tracks as their green scouters short-circuited from the sudden data calculation.

The tall mercenary with the vibro-blade let out a terrified shriek of surprise and lunged forward in a desperate, wild horizontal swing aimed straight for Kallard’s neck armor.

Kallard didn’t try to step back to clear his guard lane—he thrust his right hand straight out into the path of the advance, his white-gloved fingers locking tightly around the polished steel blade mid-motion.

The high-frequency electrical current crackling across the metal edge snapped into his glove fabric, biting into his palm skin with a sharp, stinging heat, but the sheer physical density of his Saiyan biology brought the swing to an instantaneous, dead-stop halt.

Kallard narrowed his dark eyes, his fingers contracting around the steel until the vibro-blade sheared completely apart down the center line with a loud mechanical *crunch*.

He completed a fast pivot on his heel, his left boot snapping out in a heavy front kick that caught the tall mercenary squarely beneath the jaw joint, launching his frame into the dirt road where his helmet pins popped loose.

The two remaining riflemen panicked completely, their hands shaking violently as they backed up along the walkway, their heavy infantry long-rifles unleashing a frantic, overlapping volley of red blaster bolts into the smoke cloud. Visit novelping dot com for the full chapter.

*Zap-zap-zap-zap-zap!*

Kallard dropped his torso low into a sliding dash, his boots pushing off the grit grates as he weaved between the incoming energy lines with a fast, mechanical efficiency that didn’t leave a single wasted movement for the lenses.

One red bolt scorched the lower edge of his green shoulder guard, turning the painted trim black, and a second shot burned clean through the side hem of his gray canvas cloak, but he ignored the sting completely, his right arm already dropping to his waist.

“Starfall,” he whispered through his teeth.

Six distinct, marble-sized spheres of brilliant green ki energy formed in a rapid, rotating row along his right forearm guard, humming with a high-pitched vibrating whine that vaporized the golden pollen dust around his fingers.

He thrust his arm forward, his fingers snapping open like an iron claw.

The six green spheres didn’t travel straight toward their chest vests—he displayed the exact level of physical restraint he had practiced since his run on the machine colony, choosing to disable their mobility lines instead of wasting power on a slaughter.

The first two green marbles struck the left rifleman’s weapon receiver casing, the localized explosion turning the alloy into a cloud of melting plastic that caked his gloves.

The third round struck the right scout’s ankle stabilizer pins, short-circuiting his flight pack and sending his body spinning into an irrigation ditch.

The fourth and fifth rounds caved in their primary shoulder guards to break their weapon lines on the fly, and the sixth and final sphere detonated flat against the clay roof directly beneath the metal-toothed leader’s boots.

*BOOM.*

The structural explosion caved the roof plates inward by four feet, launching the red-skinned leader twenty feet through the air until his body slammed heavily against a stone support pillar before dropping into the dust grates, completely unconscious and bleeding purple fluid from his mouth.

Kallard stood in the center of the quiet street, a thin trail of green smoke curling upward from his open white glove, his breathing smooth and level beneath his visor.

The blue-skinned villagers peeked out from their white houses, their yellow eyes wide with an absolute, unblinking marvel as they looked at the four elite mercenaries who had been systematically turned into scrap material in less than twelve seconds by a single hunter in a bandana.

Brakka stepped through the dust cloud, his compact plasma pistol resting casually over his shoulder harness as he checked the financial transfer logs on his wrist screen.

“An exceptionally short delivery text, clean physical choreography, and a complete absence of property damage to my ship’s wing plates, Ronin.

I’m officially registering that performance as a highly efficient shift for the ledger.”

Kallard didn’t answer.

He didn’t drop his hands back to his loops.

He kept his visor locked onto the high stone ridge line that rose directly beyond the settlement’s northern perimeter wall, his primitive Saiyan senses tracking a sudden, massive change in the local atmospheric pressure.

The air lines were turning thick, hot, and caked in a dangerous sulfurous scent.

“Those four outlaws were just the perimeter guard detail, old man,” Kallard said, his voice dropping into a low primal rumble.

“The manager of the operation knows exactly whose boots just cleared his gate.

The real meeting starts right now.”

## Act IV: The Shadow of the Lineage

A massive, terrifyingly heavy weight descended across the entire valley all at once, the physical pressure of the energy signature causing the white clay houses to groan on their foundations.

Kallard lifted his head slowly, his dark eyes locking onto the top of a colossal wooden root structure that sliced through the northern mountain passes like a gray wall.

Standing directly on top of the bark ridge, his arms crossed tightly over his chest armor, was a tall, broad-shouldered warrior whose silhouette sent an immediate wave of biological recognition straight through Kallard’s bone marrow.

Black hair, wild, thick, and standing up in that distinct, jagged flame-shaped crown that caked the lineage charts of Planet Vegeta.

A suit of scuffed, deep-purple infantry chest armor lined with a long crimson sash wrapped tight around his waist, and a thick brown furry tail hanging completely free behind his boots, lashing out against the bark with a slow, restless rhythm that looked remarkably dangerous.

Turles.

The rogue Saiyan captain slowly floated down through the golden pollen haze, his heavy combat boots touching the dead soil of the agricultural field outside the settlement gates with a soft *thud*.

He adjusted the manual interface switches on his green scouter lens, his dark eyes wide, cold, and caked in a malicious, predatory amusement as he looked at the black-and-green armored shadow standing in the street.

“Well, well, well,” Turles called out, his deep voice carrying over the humming of the wind stones with an absolute, unearned arrogance.

“I thought my biological scouter lines were running an error loop when we cleared the orbit logs this morning.

I spent ten cycles clearing the outer sectors of this galaxy, and I never once expected to smell the distinct, greasy scent of a living brother warhound caked into a dirty border valley.”

Kallard stepped away from the old miner’s line, his combat boots clearing the gravel as he walked out through the ruined gates to stand in the open field, fifty paces from the pirate captain.

He kept his energy signature suppressed at its baseline, his hands hanging loose.

Turles stepped closer through the gold dust, his green scouter lens flashing rapidly as it ran an automated passport pass through his uniform plating.

The device let out a low electronic beep, the data lines resolving.

The pirate captain’s smile widened into a cruel, mocking grin that revealed rows of sharp white teeth.

“Look at you.

You’re hiding.

You’re actively, systematically hiding every single asset your lineage gave you beneath a layer of cheap scrap iron, aren’t you?”

Kallard didn’t answer.

“Short-cut hair to break the crown silhouette,” Turles jeered, clicking his tongue with a deep structural disgust.

“A dark canvas bandana tied tight to cover the hairline.

A thick leather utility belt manufactured specifically to wrap your tail beneath your waist plating so the Frieza Force scouts don’t realize what’s walking through their ports.

Black and green paint caked over your armor plates to avoid the imperial identification seals.

You’ve spent three standard cycles turning your own heritage into an absolute costume for an outlaw scrapper, brother.

You’re nothing but a ghost wearing a mask.”

Brakka’s hand slowly dropped down to the handle of his plasma pistol, his four eyes narrowing into tight points of light.

Kallard subtly lifted his left index finger into the air, holding the old mechanic in check with a silent, absolute command.

*Hold your line, old man.

This isn’t a conversation for a blaster.*

Turles noticed the microscopic exchange and let out a loud, thunderous roar of a laugh that shook the open frequency with static.

“And you take your deployment orders from an old, one-armed gray-blue junk mechanic carrying a scanner pack?

That is easily the most hilarious piece of data clearing my monitors today!

The proud warriors of Vegeta turned into domestic house pets for a local salvager!

How the hell are you still calling yourself a fighter?”

Kallard reached up with his right hand, his callused fingers locking around the heavy knot of the dark canvas bandana at the back of his head.

He didn’t rush the movement; he executed the sequence with a slow, deliberate precision that carried the absolute weight of a terminal choice.

He yanked the cloth free.

The dark canvas bandana fell from his fingers, dropping down into the red dirt grates of the dead field like a piece of old scrap material.

The hot, golden pollen wind caught the short, uneven black spikes of his hair, moving the crown lines that had been caged beneath the cloth for almost a decade.

Then, his fingers uncoupled the heavy iron buckles along his lower waist plating, releasing the thick leather strapping that secured his midsection.

The thick brown furry tail slid free from its hidden casing, dropping into the pale gold grass behind his combat boots with a fast, restless lash that cleared the dust grates.

It curled slowly through the air, its tip twitching with a raw, biological energy that had been completely starved of expression since the day the red sky caught fire.

Turles stopped his cackling instantly, his predatory grin fading from his silver face as all of his unblinking eyes tracked the movement of the extra limb.

Kallard stood tall in the dead field, his bare face exposed to the harsh gold glare of the sun, his dark green visor clipped to his belt utility rack.

“I survived the destruction of our birth world long enough to decide exactly what being a Saiyan means for my own ledger, captain Turles,” Kallard said, his voice a low, terrifyingly calm rumble that cut through the humming of the wind stones.

“And I refuse to let an imperial parasite who feeds on a dying planet dictate the boundaries of my race’s honor.”

For the first time since their ships had docked in the sector, Turles’s face went dead flat, his dark pupils narrowing into two sharp needles of absolute, unadulterated malice.

He pulled his white gloves tight over his forearms, his body mass shifting into a heavy, aggressive fighting stance.

“Then let’s see what your little choice is actually worth once the striking starts, ghost,” the pirate captain whispered.

They launched at the exact same millisecond.

## Act IV: The Clash of the Lineage

The first physical collision between their fists didn’t just clear the air lines—it completely cracked the concrete soil of the agricultural field down the center seam, a massive shockwave of kinetic force launching a wave of red dust fifty feet into the air.

Fist met forearm guard in a deafening metallic *clank*.

Knee struck knee block with the dense, bone-shattering sound of two iron pillars colliding mid-flight.

Turles hit with an immense, unrefined physical mass that Kallard hadn’t ever encountered from a low-tier border outlaw—his strikes were raw, predatory, and caked in a vicious military brutality that was explicitly calculated to break a bone or cave a chest plate inward with every single exchange.

But Kallard didn’t try to back away from the weight.

He answered the pirate’s brutality with a tighter, infinitely more structured martial arts technique—years of grinding his knuckles through low-margin bounty brawls, fighting inside narrow cargo bay corridors, and executing the hard survival drills Brakka had designed for his framework had turned his coordination into iron.

Turles swung a massive, wild right hook aimed straight for his jaw joint.

Kallard dropped his torso low beneath the path of the swing, his boots sliding three inches through the dust grates, and drove two short, mechanical punches straight into the center of the captain’s exposed rib plating.

*THUD.

THUD.*

The physical density behind the seven thousand five hundred base strikes made Turles let out a short, wet grunt of pain, his breath escaping his lungs.

But his Saiyan anatomy absorbed the trauma with a terrifying speed; he drew his head back violently and delivered a massive, unshielded headbutt straight to the center of Kallard’s forehead.

*CRACK.*

A sharp flash of white light exploded behind Kallard’s eyes, a stream of dark red blood instantly trickling from his left eyebrow down into his visor line.

He staggered back half a step, his balance broken.

Turles didn’t waste a millisecond looking at the blood.

He lifted his heavy combat boot and delivered a massive front kick straight into the center of Kallard’s green chest plate plating, the immense kinetic force launching the hunter’s broad body forty yards backward across the field, his boots carving two long trenches through the dead gold grass before he brought himself to a halt.

Kallard caught his weight on his right palm, flipped his frame back up onto his boots, and extended both of his open hands straight toward the captain’s chest.

“Static Buster!”

The compressed pulse of green-white survival energy shot through the dust cloud at terminal velocity, striking Turles squarely across his purple infantry plating.

A massive web of jagged white electrical arcs crawled across the alloy, short-circuiting the muscle control lines in his chest.

Turles snarled out a raw, animalistic growl of pure fury.

Before the high-voltage electrical discharge could completely lock down his nervous system, his thin fingers reached up to his shoulder buckles, violently ripping the entire caked chest piece straight off his torso, and hurled the heavy alloy plate across the clearing like a spinning circular saw blade.

Kallard shattered the oncoming metal armor with a single, un-amplified palm blast and lunged back into the lane.

Their fists transformed into a complete green-and-red blur in the center of the field.

A sharp, mechanical hook from Kallard snapped Turles’s head violently to the left, purple fluid spraying from his teeth.

A heavy, backward hand strike from Turles tore a deep jagged gash across Kallard’s lower lip, leaving his jaw caked in red dust.

Kallard triggered a short *Flash Trigger* pulse to reappear directly at the captain’s blind flank, driving a heavy side kick straight into his right knee joint.

Turles’s leg buckled inward with a sharp click of the bone, but he completely ignored the strain.

He wrapped his thick arms tightly around Kallard’s extended thigh armor, anchored his weight against the earth, and hurled the hunter’s broad body completely through the trunk of a dead silver-barked tree thirty yards down the ridge.

Kallard executed a fast roll through the splintered wood, came back up onto his boots, and brought his right arm down to his waist.

“Starfall Cannon!”

Six green marbles of compressed ki energy fired in a rapid, rotating rhythm across the clearing.

Turles executed a fast diagonal leap to dodge the first three tracer rounds, blocked the fourth with his forearm guard, and took the fifth and sixth spheres squarely across his left shoulder plate, the localized explosions leaving two deep, smoking black scores caked into his skin.

The pirate captain stopped his boots ten yards away, his bare chest heaving as his breath came in short plumes of vapor, his dark eyes looking at the smoking marks on his shoulder with a wide, manic grin.

“You’re…

you’re an exceptionally tough little ghost, aren’t you, brother?

Your baseline power rating is almost completely identical to my own numbers!”

Kallard felt the heat flaring behind his own chest plates, his teeth grinding together as he wiped the blood from his lip.

He could feel the technical parameters of the fight clearly: base to base, they were completely matched.

Turles possessed a fraction more raw military mass, but Kallard’s hard-fought control lines and his Yardrat discipline allowed him to balance the margins with ease.

Turles was exactly what he would have turned into if he had cleared the atmospheric gates of Vegeta and learned nothing but hunger—a predator who thought the entire galaxy was just a meat market designed to buy him a larger number.

The pirate captain reached down to a thick canvas utility pouch wrapped tight around his red sash belt, his thin fingers pulling out a small, circular fruit that had been plucked from a lower branch of the Tree above.

The thing was ugly, dark, and caked in a network of glowing gold veins that thudded with a weak, auxiliary power cycle.

It wasn’t a fully matured specimen—the planet’s life support lines hadn’t been completely emptied yet—but the fruit still caked enough compressed vital current to alter the ledger lines of a universe.

Brakka’s gravelly voice suddenly exploded through the radio line, his tone frantic with an immediate panic.

“Kallard!

Don’t you go letting that outlaw drop that fruit into his mouth cells!

The energy displacement values are off the charts!”

Kallard triggered his *Flash Trigger* pulse, his boots launching his broad body forward in a desperate lunge to close the parsec gap before the captain’s jaw could move.

Too late.

Turles bit into the golden fruit.

## Act V: Unleashing the Beast Core

The planet Veyruna let out a sudden, silent scream that had absolutely nothing to do with atmospheric sound.

Kallard felt the entire geological core of the world collapse inward by a fraction of an inch, a massive, nauseating wave of vital depletion hitting his internal sensing grid as the Tree of Might violently vacuumed out the remaining life force from the northern valleys to feed its seed.

Turles’s physical frame underwent an immediate, terrifyingly violent transformation sequence.

Every single muscle group in his chest, his broad shoulders, and his arms expanded by two inches beneath his skin, the muscle fibers turning as hard as reinforced steel plating.

His active energy signature didn’t just rise—it completely detonated, a thick, roaring wall of dark black-red ki aura snapping alive around his boots with a concussive blast wave that tore the gold grass fields apart.

The ground beneath his combat boots fractured into a dozen jagged craters from the sheer kinetic weight of his presence, his green scouter lens letting out a high-pitched electronic whine before the glass shattered into a cloud of fine dust under the data overload.

Turles let out a loud, maniacal shriek of a laugh, his yellow eyes turning a solid, glowing sheet of murderous pride as he looked across the smoke cloud.

“Now then…

you little un-uniformed hero scrapper…

let’s see how your ‘individual honor’ balances the margins against a real god’s premium!”

*Hiss.*

He vanished from the field entirely.

Kallard didn’t even have the time to raise his hands to form a proper martial arts guard lane.

He managed to cross his forearms over his chest plating in a blind reflex a fraction of a millisecond before the blow cleared the space.

Turles’s fist struck his armor like a high-caliber capital ship cannon blast point-blank.

*BOOM.*

The immense, unprecedented kinetic force of the strike lifted Kallard’s broad frame completely off the earth, launching his body straight through three consecutive white clay housing walls of the settlement promenade.

He crashed heavily into the center of the town square, his body smashing through the rusted iron grates of the dead clay fountain before dropping into a broken heap in the mud.

Blue-skinned villagers shrieked out in a panic, throwing their bodies backward into the corners as the gold pollen dust caked the square.

Kallard pushed his weight up onto his right elbow, his whole torso shaking violently with severe, exhausting tremors as his vision spotted with dark patches.

His left arm hung limply against his side guards, the bone joint completely deadened by the concussive shock wave of the punch.

The power level rating clearing Turles’s aura after biting the fruit was sitting somewhere in the high twenty-thousands—an absolute, unyielding mountain of brute force that his baseline strength couldn’t compete with for a single breath.

Turles dropped down into the center of the town square, his black-red aura cloud throwing off a blinding heat that vaporized the black mud beneath his boots.

He walked closer with a slow, arrogant stride, his long tail lashing behind his sash.

“Stand your boots up, little ghost.

I thought you said you had decided what a Saiyan means for your ledger.”

Kallard’s jaw clenched with an absolute, desperate fury, his green visor sliding down over his chin as he reached deep down into his abdominal core—past the seven thousand peak, past the metrics, straight down into that darkest well where the ancient beast was sitting behind its stone door.

*Open the tap completely,* his mind commanded, his human soul releasing the leash all at once.

*Let the flood lines clear the basin.*

“Primal Instinct!” Kallard roared out.

The green ancestral fire caked into his DNA detonated through his bloodstream like a dose of liquid adrenaline.

The brilliant, dangerous emerald green light flared bright deep within his dark pupils, a massive ring of crackling green ki aura snapping alive around his boots with a concussive roar that blew the loose clay fragments clean out of the square.

Every muscle fiber in his broad shoulders and back expanded to its maximum structural density, his active power level jumping straight past twenty-two thousand units to balance the margins.

He forced his boots to push off the ruined fountain grates, his body launching forward in a horizontal line that carried him straight under the pirate captain’s guard.

He drove both of his heavy combat boots straight into the center of Turles’s exposed stomach muscles, the physical force of the strike launching the giant captain completely out of the residential square, his body flying backward through the air until he hit the gold grass field outside.

Kallard dropped into a low combat crouch in the dirt, his chest heaving violently beneath his black armor as his lungs fought to extract a single drop of oxygen from the pollen dust.

The green ancestral aura was roaring across his skin like a solar flare, the severe muscle pain burning through his nerves, but his mind remained rock-steady behind the visor.

He wasn’t a wild, uncoordinated animal anymore—three cycles of hard hunting and the Yardrat focus stone had taught him how to handle the beast core without letting the cerebral control lines snap.

Turles rose up from the golden grass drifts, a line of dark purple fluid trickling from his white teeth, his manic grin returning to his face as his black-red aura flared back into life.

“There he is!

There’s the real warhound hidden under the costume!

Let’s clear the clearing, brother!”

The second phase of the duel wasn’t a common bounty shootout—it was a full-scale regional war caked in dust and fire.

Primal Kallard struck with a terrifying, predatory velocity, but his movements remained perfectly caked in discipline.

He didn’t waste a single spark of his energy on loose, theatrical displays; he utilized every single lesson he had recorded in his logbook over the cycles.

The ice moon of Cryon-7 had taught him how to sense a target through a cloud of static gray fog.

The Yardrat escort had taught him how to seal his valves to prevent his ki from being redirected.

The refinery core on Morrow Rock had taught him to focus his weight straight on the enemy’s primary terminal hubs instead of wasting punches on the armor armor plates.

And Brakka…

the old four-eyed bastard had taught him to keep his brain running faster than his muscles if he wanted to live long enough to clear the invoice.

Turles possessed a fraction more raw physical power from the fruit, but Kallard’s hard-fought technique and his compact, compressed energy control allowed him to trade blows on an equal ledger line.

He dodged a massive black-red energy beam by a fraction of an inch, his cloak lining singeing from the heat, and countered instantly by launching a compressed *Nova Bomb* straight into the captain’s left flank.

The green sphere detonated with a concussive roar that launched Turles ten yards across the gold grass.

Turles answered by executing a high-speed axial bank, his knee driving straight through Kallard’s left green rib guards with a force that caved the alloy plates inward, followed by a massive, downward hammer blow that buried Kallard’s broad shoulders deep into the volcanic dirt grates of the field.

Kallard didn’t stay down in the ditch.

He triggered a short *Flash Trigger* pulse to burst upward through the dirt, his right fist driving straight into the center of Turles’s jaw joint with a force that made the pirate’s skull ring.

Turles let out an angry, wild shriek of a laugh, ignored the purple blood spraying from his lips, and extended both of his open palms straight toward Kallard’s visor line, his black-red energy pooling at his knuckles point-blank.

*BOOM.*

The close-range energy blast completely engulfed Kallard’s broad frame, a massive wave of dark thermal light filling the center of the field.

For a single heavy second, the black-and-green armored shadow vanished completely from the tracking monitors, completely swallowed by the smoke.

Then, Kallard tore straight through the path of the fire main line, his mesh tunic smoking, his skin caked in deep plasma burns, his face visceral with an absolute, unyielding fury as he drove both of his open palms flat against Turles’s exposed stomach.

“Double Static Buster!” Kallard roared out, his voice a primal bark.

A massive, double-barrel pulse of compressed green survival energy detonated point-blank against the pirate’s abdominal muscles, the high-frequency kinetic vibrations ripping through his internal cell structures and short-circuiting his nervous system control loops instantly.

Turles’s entire broad frame convulsed violently, his yellow eyes rolling into the back of his head as his black-red aura cloud flickered and died out into darkness.

Kallard completed the sequence by executing a tight mid-air rotation, his heavy combat boot snapping out in a downward heel kick that struck the captain squarely across his temple hair lines.

*THUD.*

The massive physical impact launched Turles’s body straight down into the dirt, his frame hitting the ground with a force that left a permanent five-yard crater in the field.

For a single heartbeat, Kallard hung in the air lines three feet above the ground, his chest heaving as he thought to himself: *The line is processed.

The captain’s guard is completely broken.*

He was wrong.

## Act VI: The Roots of the Parasite

*CREAK-GROAN.*

Before his combat boots could even touch the grass grates to clear the clearing, the entire length of the volcanic stone ridge behind his back suddenly erupted with a deafening, structural roar of protest.

The Tree of Might itself moved.

The colossal machine network caked into the wood had resolved that its primary biological investor was on the verge of a total system termination.

A dozen thick, gnarled wooden root tendrils, each one as wide as a ship transport crane, shot out from the loose dirt like a nest of giant metallic snakes, their paths caked in golden pollen dust as they rocketed across the field at terminal velocity.

Kallard’s arms were still trembling violently from the *Static Buster’s* energy output, his internal stamina reserves running dangerously low on oxygen.

Before his muscles could coordinate a defensive *Flash Trigger* launch to clear the lane, the heavy root tendrils slammed tightly around both of his forearms, his waist plating, and his ankles, locking his broad frame down with an iron, unyielding vice grip.

The structural wood contracted with a force that made his caved-in chest guards scream out in a mechanical protest, the rough bark stripping the skin off his wrists as it dragged his body backward against a massive granite rock face.

Turles slowly pushed his weight up from the center of his crater, his thin fingers wiping a thick stream of dark purple fluid from his yellow teeth, his face completely twisted into an expression of raw, maniacal rage that had zero academic arrogance left hidden inside its lines.

He looked up at the black-and-green armored shadow pinned against the rock face, before his eyes shifted to track a fresh branch of the Tree that was hanging three feet above his forehead.

Perched directly on the edge of the wood was a second circular fruit—this one larger, denser, and glowing with a brilliant, sun-bright network of gold veins that indicated a near-complete capacitation pass.

“The…

the Tree protects its primary collection detail, brother!” Turles wheezed out, his voice hoarse as he reached up his long thin fingers to pluck the seed from the wood.

“Every single root on this world is hard-wired straight into my own ledger!

If I drop this second course into my system…

the whole planet’s baseline is going to click flat to zero, and your little individual honor won’t even be a footnote in the archives!”

Kallard’s green pupils widened into circles behind his visor as he watched the alien’s fingers close around the golden skin.

*No.

Absolutely, profoundly no.

Veyruna dies before the turn of the shift, and I won’t have enough air left in my lungs to finish the exchange.*

He forced his muscles into a frantic, desperate contraction, his teeth grinding together as he tried to tear his arms free from the wooden clamps, but the roots were pulling potential current straight from the planet’s core—their density was entirely too massive to be broken by his base strength.

Suddenly, the golden pollen haze above their heads completely split wide open in a blinding flash of blue-white fire.

The matte-black nose of the *Wayfarer* dropped through the cloud deck at terminal velocity, her custom sub-light thrusters emitting a world-shattering, house-crushing roar of white fire that filled the entire valley.

The cutter was flying entirely out of bounds, her wings scraping the red stone canyon walls to leave a massive trail of yellow sparks, but Brakka was piloting the sticks with a frantic, suicidal genius that didn’t care about the landing specification sheets.

The ship’s primary forward plasma cannon was glowing with a bright, superheated white light as it locked onto the lower gantry of the Tree.

Brakka’s gravelly voice roared out through the ship’s external public address speakers, the audio line clipping badly from the old man’s absolute, unadulterated fury.

“HEY!

YOU OVER-GROWN WOODEN RESIDUE TISSUE HARVESTER!

MIND THE MANAGEMENT!”

*BOOM.*

The forward cannon fired a single, maximum-capacity pulse of concentrated shipfire point-blank into the Tree’s lower trunk section, fifty yards above Turles’s head.

The blast didn’t possess enough potential current to destroy a five-hundred-foot wooden structure outright—but Brakka had placed the round beautifully, right against the primary structural sap lines.

A massive, fifteen-foot hole was violently punched straight through the center of the bark plates, the internal wood turning into a cloud of liquid cinders.

A colossal geyser of superheated, glowing golden sap erupted out from the wound like burning biological blood, spraying across the field with a high-pressure hiss that smelled of scorched copper and boiling grease.

The massive root tendrils holding Kallard’s arms suddenly let out a sharp mechanical spasm, their internal data lines short-circuiting from the trauma to the main trunk, their grip opening up by a fraction of an inch.

Turles snapped his head around slowly to look up at the black cutter hovering in the mist, his silver face completely losing its manic grin, transforming into a mask of pure, unadulterated biological rage that made his veins stand out like blue ropes across his forehead.

“You…

you old, one-armed gray insect scrapper…

you just put a hole through my primary collection main line!”

He dropped the golden fruit into his belt pouch, his propulsion lines flaring into a blinding black-red blaze as he launched his broad frame straight upward into the air, his vector aligned straight with the *Wayfarer’s* cockpit window.

“I am going to tear your head completely off your steering column, mechanic!

And I’m going to plant the next seed straight into your corpse!”

The words hit Kallard’s ears through the wind, and inside his chest cage…

something went completely, terrifyingly still.

It wasn’t a flare of his core heat.

It wasn’t the unrefined, chaotic roar of the beast form, and it wasn’t the loud bickering code of a mercenary.

It was an absolute, freezing silence that settled straight inside his thoughts, wiping the gray fog from his vision in less than a microsecond.

He stood up from the rock face, his arms hanging loose at his sides, his boots planted wide against the dead soil.

He looked up at the red shadow climbing toward his ship.

He looked at the old four-eyed mechanic wrestling with the controls behind the glass viewscreen—the first and only person in his entire second life who hadn’t tried to use his muscles for a profit margin, hadn’t sold his identity keys to the marshal’s office, hadn’t feared his lineage template, and hadn’t expected him to be a cold-blooded monster to clear a spreadsheet.

The old, grumpy bastard who had spent three cycles patching his skin wounds, teaching him how to walk like a survivor, yelling at his ears for being an idiot, feeding him terrible protein soup, giving him a clean ship to cross the stars, and giving him a fake name that had slowly transformed into a real, honorable life.

Kallard brought both of his open palms together at his right hip, his callused fingers curving into a tight bowl shape.

“Primal Instinct,” he whispered to the wind.

And then, he forced his mind to reach past the stone door entirely, ripping the hinges straight off the structural frame.

## Act VII: The x4 Finish

His physical body let out a short, agonizing shriek of a groan as the power flooded completely beyond the form’s normal safe operating boundary lines.

The green ancestral light inside his pupils exploded into a solid, blinding sheet of brilliant emerald fire that had zero human margins left hidden inside its lines.

Every single blood vessel along his neck and forearms popped wide open under the pressure, a thick stream of dark purple fluid trickling down to his elbows as his muscles expanded past their safety thresholds.

His active power level didn’t just triple—it limit-broke straight into a **four-times multiplier**, his raw energy output launching past thirty thousand units all at once to tear the atmospheric air lines of the valley completely apart.

The blue-skinned villagers down in the promenade fell flat onto their knees in the dirt, their hands flying up to cover their ears as the invisible, immense kinetic weight of his presence caked the square with a legal dread that made the buildings shake.

The *Wayfarer’s* internal bridge alarms let out a high-pitched, terrified scream as the scanning droids registered the scale of the spike.

Brakka’s voice crackled through the static line, a raw, breathless whisper caked in pure terror.

“Kid…

your…

your primary vital indicators are turning completely red…

drop the tap before the core collapses…”

Kallard didn’t answer him.

He didn’t have the breath left inside his lungs to waste on a dialogue line.

He focused every remaining drop of his life force into the palm bowls of his hands, forcing the spinning green-white energy to compress down into a single linear cylinder that was so dense it looked like a solid spear of white light humming between his fingers.

“Galaxy Breaker,” Kallard whispered, his voice a low primal roar that cut through the thunder of the engines.

Turles resolved the sudden, world-shattering numbers clearing his scouter frequency from mid-air.

He spun his broad torso around in a panic response, his black-red aura cloud flaring into a final, desperate shield as he cupped both of his hands at his waist to form a colossal black-red sphere of raw destruction current.

“I am the strongest warrior clearing the rim lanes, monkey!” Turles screamed out, his yellow eyes wide with a maniacal fury.

“I’ll turn this whole clearing into an incinerator pit!

CALAMITY BLASTER!”

He fired.

The massive black-red energy beam screamed downward from the upper clouds like a falling mountain of fire, its path aimed straight for Kallard’s head bandana.

Kallard thrust his open palms upward toward the sky.

“GALAXY BREAKER!”

The spiraling column of dark green-white force erupted from his knuckles with an absolute, deafening roar that split the atmosphere lines across the planet.

The immense recoil force of the discharge tore two long, three-foot-deep trenches through the volcanic stone beneath his boots, his clothing mesh instantly vaporizing into a cloud of black ash as his skin split apart into a dozen branching fissures from the wrists straight up to his shoulder joints.

The two massive energy beams collided in mid-air, fifty meters above the field.

*BOOOOOOM.*

For one single, frozen second, the entire sky above Veyra-Tal turned a solid, blinding sheet of black and emerald green light.

The localized heat and atmospheric pressure were so immense that the falling golden pollen dust was instantly turned into a cloud of boiling chemical steam that blinded every visual drone in orbit.

Turles laughed like a maniac from the center of his aura, his thin fingers pushing more potential current into the line.

“The Tree made my muscles completely untouchable, brother!

You’re nothing but a hiding coward running from his own shadow!”

Kallard’s green beam began to shake, the structural alignment along his wrists fracturing under the immense weight of the feedback loop.

The sharp needle of pain shot straight through his chest cage, his left side flaring with a white-hot fire as his muscle tissue began to tear away from the bone marrow.

The black-red *Calamity Blaster* drove his green light back by three inches, the heat closing in on his visor.

The Tree of Might let out a low, rhythmic groan behind his back, the roots drinking more water lines to reinforce the captain’s blast.

The planet Veyruna dimmed by another fraction of an inch, the cities on the night side clicking flat into the dark one by one as their vital current was emptied.

The *Wayfarer* listed violently to the port side, her wing plates smoking from the sheer shockwave of the beam clash.

Kallard looked up through the blinding emerald glare at his ship’s hull, and his human soul remembered the bandana falling into the red dirt of the promenade.

He remembered his thick brown tail lashing free in the wind stones’ music.

He remembered the old woman organizing her fruits, and the twelve laborers sitting on the medical cot after he cut them down from the chains.

*I survived the fire long enough…

to decide what a Saiyan means for my own ledger.*

“And I choose…

to break the machine!” Kallard roared out, his voice a primal bark that ripped through his vocal cords.

He stepped his right boot forward into the trenches.

One inch.

Then a second full step through the gravel grates.

He reached down past his four-times limit, dumping the very last remaining drops of his biological life force into the cylinder, completely ignoring the structural alarms clearing his brain.

The *Galaxy Breaker* didn’t widen into a loose, unrefined *Nova Bomb*—it grew heavier, denser, and infinitely more absolute, the dark green-white core turning into a solid drilling laser that caked the space with a terrifying kinetic weight.

Turles’s predatory grin vanished from his silver face in less than a hundredth of a second, his yellow eyes narrowing into small circles of pure, unadulterated primordial horror as his black-red beam began to shear apart down the center line.

“No…

no!

The…

the container shouldn’t have that much volume!

It’s a complete mathematical violation—”

Kallard released the final surge.

The violent emerald beam completely swallowed the *Calamity Blaster* whole, erasing the red energy lines from orbit in less than a breath.

The drilling laser traveled straight up the lane, swallowing Turles’s broad frame inside its core.

The Saiyan pirate let out a single, sharp shriek of agonizing terror as the green fire systematically tore through his black-red aura, his red armor plates, his stolen fruit power, and his physical flesh, turning his cells into a cloud of cosmic vapor before he could even click a manual override switch.

The *Galaxy Breaker* carried the blast wave straight into the burning fifteen-foot wound Brakka had opened in the lower trunk of the Tree of Might.

The compressed energy cylinder detonated directly inside the master processor core of the wood.

*BOOOOOOOOOOM.*

For a single heavy second, the entire planet Veyruna went completely, terrifyingly silent, the howling of the wind stones cutting off into an absolute void.

Then, the Tree of Might began to die.

Massive cracks of blinding green-white light raced up the bark plates from the base straight to the upper atmosphere branches, the wood turning white before it sheared apart.

The colossal gnarled branches caked around the stars shattered into billions of drifting tinder shards, and the great roots crawling across the mountain chains recoiled from the earth with a violent pneumatic spasm before turning into dead, hollow gray pulp that crumbled into dust.

The golden pollen dust caked around the atmosphere ripped completely apart in a massive wind tunnel flash, the real, clean blue sky of the world clearing the gates for the first time in days.

Kallard slowly lowered his hands back to his sides, his broad frame standing tall in the center of his trenches for two seconds.

His arms were completely blackened from the wrists straight up to his shoulder guards, his skin caked in deep, branching white scars that glowed with a faint emerald green light before fading into raw, bleeding burned flesh.

Then, his knees turned to rubber, the ground tilted sixty degrees to the left, and his body dropped face-first into the red dirt grates of the field, his consciousness snapping flat into the dark.

## Act VIII: The Long Green Sleep

Brakka manual-forced the *Wayfarer* down onto the dead gold grass outside the settlement gates before his primary engine nozzles had even finished cooling their loops, the landing struts hitting the dirt with a violent, structural *crunch* that sheared off a secondary safety rail.

The primary boarding ramp slid downward with a frantic pressurized *hiss*, and the old four-eyed mechanic ran down the metal grates at a full sprint, his heavy leather coat flying behind his harness as his boots caked the golden dust.

He didn’t carry his diagnostic slate, and he didn’t check his fuel logs; his organic left hand was shaking violently as he dropped down onto his knees in the dirt beside the kid’s limp frame.

He pressed his thick gray-blue fingers flat against the side of Kallard’s brown neck marrow, his lower pair of eyes wide as he searched for a vital indicator.

“Kid,” Brakka whispered, his gravelly voice dropping its biting mechanic edge completely, turning into a flat, terrified rasp that sounded remarkably old.

No response from the flesh.

The body was cold, caked in black ash and white dust.

“Kallard.

Talk to me, you stubborn little idiot.

Open the damn lens.”

Nothing moved inside the clearing.

The blue-skinned villagers stood frozen near their white clay walls, watching the old alien from a safe distance line.

Brakka’s face twisted into an expression of raw, unshielded panic that completely broke through every single wall of professional cynicism he had spent decades building around his shop.

He reached down with his primary mechanical titanium hand, carefully sliding his fingers beneath the kid’s scorched shoulders to hoist his heavy, dense framework off the dirt grates.

“You absolute, monumental, non-profit piece of muscle-brained garbage,” the old mechanic whispered, his white hair mane shaking with emotion as he dragged the kid’s body up toward the airlock ramp.

“I explicitly told your ears…

do not go making me explain your death report to your goddamn ghost.

I refuse to handle the administrative labor.”

He carried him inside the hull, the heavy airlock door sliding shut behind their heels with a final pneumatic *thud-lock*, cutting off the sounds of the singing valley completely.

The next forty-eight hours clearing the Veyruna sector were nothing but a chaotic, blurred loop of automated alarm sirens, flashing red indicators, and the constant, frantic ticking of the medical bay monitors.

Brakka kept the kid’s vital indicators from hitting flat zero using every single high-gravity stimulant capsule, emergency blood expander pouch, and stolen antibacterial medical patch the *Wayfarer’s* storage bins possessed.

But the engineering analysis clearing his monitors was completely disastrous: Kallard’s body hadn’t simply been caked in physical plasma burns from the mortar fire.

His internal nervous system had completely given out under the strain.

Forcing twenty-one thousand units of unrefined ancestral current through a frozen, un-calibrated framework at a **four-times multiplier** had systematically scorched his primary cell walls, the *Galaxy Breaker’s* massive recoil blast carving through his arm muscles like an industrial wedge driven through a soft leather sleeve.

He had completely emptied his container to break the core logic.

Brakka needed a professional regeneration healing chamber—a real, high-tech tank lined with high-density protein serum and oxygen scrubbers—and he needed it before the turn of the shift if he didn’t want the kid’s organs to turn into paste.

He punch the primary thruster overrides into the white-hot tunnel of hyperspace, flying the cutter through three separate manual corridor jumps to reach an outlaw medical black-market station hidden deep within a lawless quadrant three systems away.

He spent two uninterrupted hours threatening two separate syndicate suppliers with his heavy plasma torch, overpaid a third corporate broker by four thousand credits in solid platinum, systematically stole a fresh batch of oxygen filtration nozzles from the first two anyway while their guards were clearing the platform, and installed a full-scale standard military regeneration tank in the center of the *Wayfarer’s* lower med bay with zero sleep and a level of raw, terrifying rage that made the station cutthroats avoid establishing eye contact with his wings.

It wasn’t the highest-grade, luxury model the Frieza Force tech specialists used for the elite generals—the glass hull was scratched, and the secondary gravity core made a loud, wet clicking sound with every cycle—but the logic was functional enough to manage the fluid.

They dropped Kallard’s broad frame straight into the dark green healing liquid, clamping the primary breathing mask over his jaw line before the pressurized seals locked into place with a sharp pneumatic *hiss*.

Kallard floated inside the green twilight of the tank for months.

Sometimes, his thin fingers would let out a small, involuntary twitch against the glass pane, his callused knuckles catching the reflection of the amber lights.

Sometimes, his dark pupils would shift rapidly behind his closed eyelids, his brain running through old logs of dead planets, television screens, and the roaring faces of orange-haired monsters.

The deep, branching white scars covering his forearms from the wrists straight up to his shoulders remained caked into his skin—even the high-density protein serum inside the chamber couldn’t erase those structural score marks from his framework.

They were permanent lines carved into his biography.

Brakka checked the vital gauges on the tank console every single morning before checking his fuel line manifolds, his mechanical hand moving with a slow, deliberate care to wipe the condensation off the glass.

And every single morning, the old mechanic would look through the green liquid at the kid’s scarred shoulders, his gravelly voice delivering the exact same un-uniformed lecture to the empty room: “That…

that is an official system reminder caked into your flesh, kid.

Look at those lines.

Those aren’t a decoration piece for a port bar wanted poster, and they certainly aren’t a sign of warrior glory for your lineage.

That is a permanent reminder of the exact price your budget account pays whenever you let your pride do the steering down in a ditch.

Remember the cost.”

## Act IX: The Growth of the Warhound

The long green months slowly transformed into cycles, and the cycles gradually accumulated into six full years of deep-space travel along the absolute perimeter of the outer rim trade lanes.

The *Wayfarer* moved through the dark sectors with a slow, relaxed grace, her matte-black hull caked in a fresh layer of asteroid grit, her green-trimmed wings clearing the border gates under a dozen different false registry codes that Brakka fabricated on the fly.

And the warrior walking through her lower corridors underwent a complete, structural transformation sequence that had absolutely nothing to do with the numbers displayed on a scouter lens.

He stopped wearing the dark canvas bandana across his forehead.

The uneven, short spikes of his black hair caked behind his ears grew out naturally into their original, flame-shaped Saiyan crown silhouette, the thick black strands moving free in the ventilation draft of the bridge without a single cloth cage to break the lines.

His thick brown furry tail remained completely uncoiled from his waist plating, hanging free behind his heavy combat boots with the casual, restless agility of an apex limb that had fully integrated into his center of gravity.

He only wrapped it beneath his belt utility belt whenever an extreme security parameter required a stealth ingress flight through an imperial spaceport gate.

A thick, coarse black beard and a neatly trimmed mustache came in gradually along his sharp jawline over the cycles—a physical trait that didn’t follow the traditional martial grooming codes of Planet Vegeta, and didn’t match the human habits of his past life exactly either.

It was his own personal, conscious design choice.

It was a physical marker that made his silhouette stand completely apart from any low-tier grunt or elite royal prodigy in the quadrant, while still ensuring he looked exactly like what he truly was:

A Saiyan warrior.

Not one of Frieza’s house pets, not one of the prince’s executioners, and certainly not a pirate raider like Turles.

A warhound who ran on his own ledger line.

He took significantly fewer contracts from the guild terminals over the years—bypassing the dry, five-hundred-credit missing-worker files to focus his boots exclusively on the higher-tier, more dangerous contracts listed on the border slates.

He spent his workspace hours hunting down slave-trading convoys, dismantling pirate-controlled logistics lines, and tracking down corrupt Frieza Force supply officers who had crossed the line into private extortion syndicates.

The wider sectors had started to whisper about his black cutter with an absolute undercurrent of legal dread; they called him the Warden of the Rim.

He trained significantly smarter now, his discipline caked in the lessons he had pulled from the Yardrat focus stone.

Every morning after clearing his breakfast bowl, he would sit flat on the cargo bay floorboards for three hours, forcing his base energy signature to compress down into a single, perfectly insulated anchor inside his center of mind until the last drop of static disappeared from the cabin walls.

He learned how to hold the massive green ancestral fire of the *Primal Instinct* state for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes at a time without a single blood vessel popping or a single line of tissue trauma registering on his chest armor plates.

He built the container solid before he increased the pump speed.

By the time the navigation clocks registered the turn of his twenty-eight cycle, his resting base power level had climbed through honest, back-breaking labor to a massive, unprecedented height that he had once only hoped to read on a monitor screen: seven thousand four hundred units of raw output, held tightly behind a wall of suppression discipline that kept his active signature registering as a mere eight hundred spark.

He was strong enough to matter.

He was still nowhere near strong enough to challenge the high-end deities sleeping in the core sectors, sure—but he was fully caked in readiness for the first leg of his real journey.

The primary communication console on the upper bridge deck suddenly let out a sharp, high-pitched electronic chime that filled the quiet cockpit with a pulsing blue light.

Kallard was sitting comfortably in the captain’s leather chair, his broad frame broader now, his massive chest plates lined with the deep green trim, his scarred forearms crossed over his tunic fabric.

His long tail curled slowly around the base of the steering column behind his boots, his dark eyes tracking the incoming data line with a quiet, unhurried cadence.

Brakka sat propped against his side console to his left, his four eyes looking up from an old engine valve he was tuning with a grease rag.

“We’ve got an active encrypted link clearing the high frequencies, kid.

It’s coming straight from the central division routers of the Galactic Patrol.”

The main viewscreen flickered twice, the blue static lines gradually resolving into the large yellow eyes and the bright purple mask of Patrolman Jaco.

The elite officer was standing dramatically inside his chrome-trimmed cockpit, one white-gloved hand planted firmly on his hip, his white cape catching the ventilation draft with an absolute, unmatched aura of supreme vanity.

“Greetings, questionable civilian asset Ronin!” Jaco declared proudly through the speaker mesh, his voice a grand, theatrical drone.

“I have officially decided to honor your persistent, borderline pathetic begging for navigational assistance across my communication channels this cycle!”

Kallard didn’t move an inch in his chair, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.

“I don’t remember doing a single drop of begging on your frequency, white bug.

I’re pretty sure the last text I sent your office was a list of your unpaid docking damage bills from Kessik Yard.”

Brakka instantly cut his lower pair of eyes across the console, a wide smirk splitting his face.

“Oh?

Did the elite defender of galactic order manage to beg a questionable civilian for assistance with his paperwork logs?

Please recount that entry, Patrolman.

I appreciate a good comedy script.”

Jaco’s silver ear ridges twitched violently with an immediate, defensive embarrassment, his hand frantically adjusting his collar trim.

“That…

that is an entirely fraudulent interpretation of the archive data, mechanic!

Irrelevant metrics!

After an immense, high-level tactical investigation that required absolute precision and absolutely zero secondary assistance from any other division in the sector…

I have successfully managed to locate the specific galactic coordinates you requested from my database three cycles ago!”

Kallard’s breath slowly stopped inside his chest, his dark pupils narrowing into two sharp needles of absolute, unyielding focus as his posture went perfectly rigid in the leather chair.

Jaco leaned his purple mask closer to the screen lens, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper.

“It is a remarkably small, isolated blue-and-white planet floating in a remote backwater solar system on the absolute edge of the tracking maps, Ronin.

The official registry classifies the world as having a low utility value, an unrefined native population, and a danger rating of ‘mostly harmless.’ Though…

I do carry a small set of historical notes regarding a strange, monkey-tailed child who caused a minor disturbance to our scouts in that sector several years ago, which I am entirely certain is completely unrelated to your business.”

The silver screen let out a sharp electronic chime, a long string of complex geometric navigation codes flashing across the display panel in bright green light lines.

The sector maps resolved into a single, beautiful blue-and-white marble icon rotating slowly in the dark void.

Earth.

For five long, heavy seconds, absolutely nobody on the bridge of the *Wayfarer* uttered a single sound.

The only noise inside the cabin was the steady, rhythmic *squeak-clack* of the primary ventilation scrubbers filtering the oxygen.

Kallard sat perfectly still against his leather headrest, his dark eyes fixed on the green coordinates flashing across his visor lens.

A massive, world-shattering storm of memory images was running through his thoughts—he saw the faces of Goku, Piccolo, Bulma, Raditz, Vegeta, the green fields of Namek, the metallic limbs of the Androids, and every single impossible, bloody conflict that was currently waiting for his boots across that blue horizon.

The tracks of the universe had officially cleared the gates, and the countdown was entering its final execution phase.

Brakka slowly lowered his grease rag onto the console table, all four of his unblinking eyes shifting around to lock straight into the kid’s face with an expression that was completely serious, quiet, and caked in a deep, paternal protective weight.

“This…

this is the specific coordinate lane you’ve been grinding your knuckles toward since the day the red sky caught fire, isn’t it, Kallard?” the old mechanic asked softly, his voice dropping its biting edge entirely.

Kallard slowly reached out his right hand, his callused fingers gently tracing the white branching scars caked into his skin, before his hand dropped down to wrap firmly around the primary steering handles of the column.

He looked back up at the rotating blue marble, a tiny, genuine smile of absolute readiness touching his lips beneath his beard.

“Yeah, Dad,” Kallard whispered into the quiet bridge, his voice solid as iron.

“This is the workspace.

Shove the levers forward; the shift is officially starting.”