### Act I: The Logistics of Justice
Jaco called it a personal favor.
Brakka called it a high-risk liability.
Kallard just called it the official beginning of a massive amount of trouble.
The coordinate lines hovered over the *Wayfarer’s* primary display deck in a clean, soft blue light, the numbers rotating slowly above the iron control console like a small star map constructed entirely out of ancient history and bad timing.
The digital slate caked into the casing displayed a few short rows of basic planetary metadata that the Galactic Patrol had pulled from their lower registry files:
Planetary Designation: Earth
Sector Classification: Remote Radial Body
Official Asset Value: Low
Galactic Registry Activity: Minimal
Imperial Presence: Zero Known Frieza Force Occupation
Technological Baseline: Primitive / Localized Industrial
Special Notation: Unusual historical anomaly logs attached to subterranean quadrants.
Kallard stood perfectly vertical in the absolute center of the cockpit floorboards, his broad arms crossed tightly over his green-trimmed chest armor, his dark pupils fixed on the blinking blue dot as if the whole world might slip out of the grid if he turned his face away for a single second.
He was twenty-eight standard cycles old now.
It had been ten full years since he had first taken the name Ronin inside the lawless port ports of the outer rim.
It had been nearly half a lifetime since the red sky of Planet Vegeta had caught fire and turned into a cloud of burning space gravel behind his extraction capsule.
He had spent a decade running through the dirt, fixing broken fuel valves, trading plasma fire with border raiders, and learning how to keep his mouth shut when the universe turned mean.
And now, after all the miles, there it was.
Earth.
The blue marble.
The single coordinate point where every major thread of his hidden memories was anchored.
The world where an infant named Kakarot had dropped out of the sky to become a man named Goku.
Brakka leaned his massive gray-blue frame back into the worn leather of the pilot’s seat, his white hair mane catching the amber glow of the navigation monitors as all four of his unblinking eyes shifted slowly between the kid’s rigid jawline and the rotating hologram.
He let out a low, gravelly rasp through his yellow teeth, his mechanical right arm making a quiet whirring sound as he adjusted his harness straps.
“You’ve been standing on those grates without drawing a single breath of cabin oxygen for almost two full minutes, Ronin,” the old mechanic growled, his voice low.
“Should I start running a diagnostic pass on your primary systems, or is this just another one of those dramatic warrior pauses you practice when you think I’m busy with the oil gauges?”
Kallard didn’t crack a smirk.
His face remained flat, caked in the shadow of the cockpit rafters.
“You should probably start worrying about the ledger, old man.”
“Wonderful,” Brakka spat, his organic left hand tapping a rapid rhythm against the throttle housing.
“My absolute favorite category of bad news.
The kind that comes with an expensive invoice attached to the hull.”
Directly above the star map, Jaco’s purple-masked face hovered inside a secondary communication window, the video feed caked in a thin layer of static from the long-range sector relay.
The elite Galactic Patrolman had his white-gloved hand planted firmly against his hip joint, his chin tilted upward at a sharp, theatrical angle that suggested he had personally manufactured the planet using nothing but his own brilliance, rather than pulling the files from a dusty basement drawer because a hunter had paid his bar tab.
“You are completely, profoundly welcome for the assistance, independent asset,” Jaco declared through the speaker mesh, his synthetic voice sounding remarkably smug.
“An elite officer always knows how to deliver the data lines when the civilian sectors turn sloppy.”
Kallard looked straight through the purple lens on the screen.
“I don’t remember any syllables resembling a thank you clearing my throat yet, Patrolman.”
“But the internal mechanics of your brain were obviously preparing the expression, custom scrapper,” Jaco sniffed, crossing his arms over his white chest piece.
“It is a natural biological reaction to my presence.”
“He should focus on verifying the integrity of the navigation keys before he starts collecting compliments, white bug,” Brakka grunted, his lower pair of eyes narrowing as he checked the relay drift.
“The last time you sold us a sector coordinate set, we dropped straight into the middle of an active mining strike on Morrow Rock.”
Jaco looked deeply, structurally offended on his screen, his silver ear ridges twitching with irritation.
“Those coordinates were extracted straight from the high-security archives of the central judicial division!
It is a mathematically flawless piece of tracking data!”
“Did you actually clear the passport protocols with the director’s office this time, or did you just pull the drive out of a broken sorting machine while the night watch was clearing the trash bins?” Brakka asked dryly.
Jaco paused on the monitor, his mask freezing for a fraction of a second before he let out a loud, dramatic cough into his glove.
“The specific storage cabinet I utilized for the search pass belonged entirely to the service of galactic justice, elderly mechanic!
The paperwork details are completely irrelevant to the current shift!
The planet is exactly where the green lines say it is.
It’s an isolated backwater world caked in water and grass.
There are a few old, incomplete logs from our division regarding an unidentified alien pod that cleared their atmosphere many cycles ago, but the file was classified as boring and abandoned by the senior inspectors.”
Kallard’s chest plates tightened up, a cold, heavy pulse hitting his heartbeat.
*Kakarot.*
He kept his facial muscles perfectly still, his tail curling slowly around the base of his stool to maintain his balance against the ship’s gravity.
“Did your monitoring net register any active energy displacements in that sector over the last rotation, Jaco?”
The Patrolman shifted his weight on the screen, his fingers tapping a side terminal that he clearly didn’t want them to think he needed to read from.
“Nothing that would require an official deployment from our division fleet, Ronin.
However…
an old regional tracking antenna on the border lane did record an unusual, high-frequency scouter signal bounce about six hours ago.
The encryption format was distinctly Saiyan military code.”
The entire bridge of the *Wayfarer* went completely dead silent all at once, the only sound being the slow, rhythmic hum of the primary cooling fans down in the bilge.
Brakka’s multi-jointed fingers froze flat against his tool keys, his white mane dropping low against his leather collar as he looked across the console at the kid.
Jaco noticed the sudden change in the cabin’s atmospheric weight, his yellow eyes narrowing as he leaned his purple mask closer to his camera lens.
“Is…
is that specific frequency marker important for your current ledger, hunter?
You look like your primary fuel line just split open.”
Kallard kept his voice flat, low, and completely caked in iron.
“Maybe.
What happened to the signal after the bounce?”
“I knew it was important,” Jaco boasted, trying to recover his theatrical posture with a quick shake of his cape.
“I asked the question explicitly as a technical evaluation of your awareness.
The signal burst was incredibly short, but it possessed a massive amount of upload density.
It bypassed our relay towers entirely, routing outward through an old, unregistered imperial scouter satellite that hasn’t been serviced since the Cold Force expansion.
It could have been received by anyone currently utilizing old-spec Frieza Force communication gear in the eastern quadrants.”
*Raditz.*
The name materialized inside Kallard’s head like an artillery shell caking a concrete trench.
The clock hadn’t just started running down—the primary fuse had already been lit hours ago while his ship was clearing the nebula lane.
The first act of the Saiyan saga was currently executing its final line on the dirt below his boots.
Kallard’s right hand contracted into a heavy fist against his utility loop, his fingernails digging straight into his leather glove fabric until the seams groaned.
Brakka watched the rigid locking of the kid’s broad shoulders, his voice dropping its sarcastic mechanic edge as he leaned forward.
“Kid.
Hold your breath.
Your core heat is rising.”
“I’m fine, old man,” Kallard muttered, his eyes fixed on the blue dot.
“No, you’re doing that specific thing with your mouth where you tell my ears you’re fine while your brain cells are actively drafting three separate multi-fleet wars in the dark,” the mechanic growled, his four eyes wide with a serious, un-vetted concern.
“The numbers are flaring.”
Kallard let out a long, slow breath through his teeth, forcing his energy pool to compress back down behind his wall of discipline.
He couldn’t explain the reality to the old man—not the full, massive weight of the script he carried inside his soul.
Brakka knew parts of the record, sure; he knew Kallard was a Saiyan who had survived the execution of his planet, and he knew the kid carried a weird, prophetic terror regarding certain names in the dark.
But the exact details?
The specific chain of slaughter that was waiting down the line?
Goku’s execution, the arrival of Vegeta and Nappa, the green fields of Namek, the mechanical monsters from the corporate laboratories, the pink demon cased in the stone?
No.
It wasn’t safe to treat the future like a dry textbook anymore.
He had altered the alignment of this galaxy simply by surviving his seventeenth cycle—by destroying Turles, by saving the old lavender chef, and by helping the blue-skinned child in the forest clearing.
The timeline was wide open now, and the best his knuckles could do was nudge the steering handles without letting anyone know he had read the road map beforehand.
Kallard looked back up at the communication window.
“You did a good piece of tracking labor today, Jaco.
The data is clean.”
Jaco blinked his yellow eyes twice through his mask, looking genuinely struck by the sudden absence of a sarcastic remark from the hunter.
He cleared his throat quickly, lifting his chin back into his cape collar.
“Naturally, independent asset!
An elite officer always delivers the premium results for the logs!
You are now officially registered as owing my account a substantial amount of professional gratitude.”
“Put the fee on my tab, white bug,” Kallard said quietly, clipping his green visor to his belt loop.
“We’re dropping into the lane.”
“If anyone from the central office asks about your flight plan, Ronin…
I gave you absolutely zero data lines,” Jaco warned, his tone turning surprisingly serious for a second.
“I was never active in this sector, these blue coordinates do not exist on my slate, and I am entirely un-involved in whatever brawler mess you’re about to manufacture with that tail.
Clear the line.”
The video screen clicked flat into black static, leaving the cockpit quiet once more.
Brakka turned his broad face around slowly to look at the star map, his mechanical hand hovering above the primary hyperdrive controllers.
“So,” the old man growled, his white mane twitching.
“The blue world.
The single rock you’ve been grinding your bones toward for a decade.”
Kallard nodded his head once.
“The blue world, Brakka.”
“Are you entirely, professionally certain you want my boots on the ramp for this shift, kid?” the mechanic asked, his lower pair of eyes fixed on the floorboards as he wiped his titanium knuckle with a grease rag.
“This looks like a deeply personal piece of lineage business.
Saiyans.
Old family ghosts.
Dead world baggage.
The kind of dramatic nonsense that usually requires a solo brawler to go scream at a mountain.
I can easily keep the *Wayfarer* tucked behind the moon on a low standby cycle if my four eyes are going to confuse the presentation.”
Kallard stepped up to the co-pilot’s seat, his hand dropping flat against the old man’s leather shoulder harness with a heavy, unyielding warmth.
“No, old man.
You’re not staying out in the cold.
You’re clearing the pavement right alongside my boots.”
Brakka lifted an eyebrow clip, his mouth twisting.
“Bossy little scrapper, aren’t you?”
“You’re my primary senior crew, Brakka,” Kallard said, his voice dropping into a low, serious rumble.
“You’re my family.
We don’t drop people off the ledger when the path turns rough.”
The old technician turned his broad face back toward the viewscreen quickly, his fingers flying across the ignition switches with a rapid, erratic speed to hide the sudden softening of his gray ears.
“That specific piece of emotional vocabulary is going to cost your account an extra three thousand credits before the next port shift, boy!
I am a certified senior mechanic, not an object of affection!
Strap your boots into the harness before I change my mind and adopt a significantly quieter son from the next trade hub!”
Kallard sat back in his chair, his long tail wrapping securely around the iron base bolts as the *Wayfarer’s* primary hyperdrive capacitors began to hum with a deep, bone-shattering power cycle that shook the deck plates.
The blue coordinates locked into the primary navigation computer.
Earth was waiting down the track.
Brakka’s organic hand tightened around the master drive handle, his eyes wide.
“Are you ready for the deployment, kid?”
Kallard stared at the tiny blue marble spinning in the center of the blue light.
He knew the honest answer behind his teeth, and it tasted like dry sand.
No.
He wasn’t ready.
He wasn’t ready to see Goku lying dead in the dirt with a hole through his ribs.
He wasn’t ready to stand in front of Piccolo’s demonic pride while the Namekian’s hands were still dripping with a brother’s blood.
He wasn’t ready to look at a brilliant young woman named Bulma and pretend he didn’t already know how much her mind would alter the geometry of the future, or look at a sobbing four-year-old child named Gohan and track the terrible, crushing cosmic weight the universe was about to drop onto his small shoulders.
He wasn’t ready to face the prince, or the lizard, or any of the monsters waiting behind the next horizon.
But the tracks of this galaxy had never cared about a warrior’s readiness parameters.
The only requirement the ledger had ever enforced was movement.
Kallard nodded his head once through the dark.
“Engage the sticks, Dad.
Let’s go.”
Brakka slammed the primary handles forward.
The viewscreen exploded into a long, iridescent corridor of white star lines, and the *Wayfarer* vanished from the rim lanes at terminal speed.
### Act II: The Descent into the Wasteland
The transition out of the hyperspace tunnel occurred with a sudden, sharp mechanical jolt that made the ship’s primary hull stabilizers emit a loud pneumatic screech.
The white star streaks snapped instantly back into fixed, cold points of light across the panoramic viewscreen, and there it was—floating directly beyond their nose cone against the gray, lifeless craters of the moon—Planet Earth.
Kallard stood up from his harness, his callused palms pressing flat against the reinforced glass of the viewport as he took in the scene.
The planet was small—significantly smaller than his human memories had prepared him for during his long nights in the cargo bay.
But the visual contrast between this world and every other system he had cleared across the rim was absolutely, profoundly monumental.
Planet Vegeta had been a harsh, severe, and thoroughly predatory marble from space—dominated by violent crimson rock structures, burning red oceans, and an atmosphere that looked like it had been born with its teeth clenched.
It looked like a fortress caked in iron.
Earth looked soft.
Not weak—never weak, his soul knew the raw, un-exploded power currently hiding beneath those cloud layers—but soft.
Lazy blankets of white vapor curled gently over vast, deep blue oceans that had zero imperial tax markers caked into their coastlines.
Brilliant green continents spread across the northern hemisphere, their rivers shining like veins of polished silver under the clean glare of the yellow sun.
There were no Frieza Force communication relay towers piercing the atmosphere, no slave-lane cargo drones clearing the lower orbits, no automated orbital weapons platforms aiming their lenses at the population centers, and no massive military destroyer fleets hanging above the cities to enforce a governor’s budget.
It was just a planet.
A real, clean, and completely un-shielded living world.
Brakka kept his multi-jointed arms steady on the steering column, his four eyes wide as he took in the lack of an imperial grid.
“An absolute anomaly of a workspace, Ronin.
The whole sector looks completely unprotected.
It’s an open invitation for a raiding fleet.”
Suddenly, the *Wayfarer’s* primary tactical sensor deck let out a series of high-pitched, terrifying electronic screams that shattered the quiet of the bridge completely.
A row of bright red indicator lights flared into life across the control panel, their cycles flashing with an immediate operational urgency.
Kallard’s head snapped toward the screen lines, his internal sensing needle automatically expanding past the hull plates as his body mass went perfectly rigid.
Three massive, unprecedented spikes of raw biological energy had just flared into life simultaneously within a narrow mountain sector on the continent below.
One signature was savage, unrefined, and completely caked in a murderous, primitive hostility—the clear frequency of an imperial grunt who had spent too many cycles executing civilians.
*Raditz.*
The second was sharp, dense, and freezing cold, vibrating with the rigid, unyielding pride of an ancient demon warrior who had spent years sharpening his knuckles inside a dark cave.
*Piccolo.*
And the third signature…
the moment that specific current hit Kallard’s bone marrow, a sharp, white-hot line of physical pain shot straight through his chest plates, his lungs freezing completely.
It was a bright, clean, and thoroughly innocent wave of energy that threw off a familiar warmth—a power that felt exactly like a summer sky back home.
It was the presence of Kakarot.
Goku himself, fighting for the survival of his son.
Then, before Brakka could even hit the key to stabilize the radar pass…
the bright sky-blue signature of Goku let let out a sudden, violent flicker.
And clicked flat.
The energy line collapsed inward like a star collapsing into a void, the potential current dropping straight down past the zero mark in less than a millisecond, completely crushed between the Namekian’s hands.
A fraction of a breath later, the savage, primitive signature of Raditz also let out a ragged, dying shudder before its frequency flat-lined into the dark dirt.
The cockpit of the cutter went completely, terrifyingly frozen, the red indicator lights casting a blood-like glare across Kallard’s bearded jawline.
“What…
what the hell just cleared the gates down there, Ronin?” Brakka growled, his white mane bristling as his fingers typed a frantic diagnostic pass across his keys.
“Two of those massive biological signatures just completely vanished from my tracking grid!
The thermal drop in that sector is monumental!
It looks like a double execution sequence!”
Kallard didn’t waste a single syllable on an explanation.
He reached down to his belt utility loop, his knuckles turning white as he manual-engaged his green visor over his jaw.
“Throw the primary throttles forward, old man!
Take us down into that mountain quadrant right now!
Hit the atmospheric entry vents!”
“Kallard!
The hull temperature indicators are still running on a high cycle from the jump—”
“Now, Brakka!” Kallard roared out, his voice a low primal bark that made the cockpit rafters rattle against their mounting pins.
“Engage the sticks!”
The old mechanic didn’t argue for a single second after that.
He slammed his organic left hand down onto the master propulsion levers, committing the *Wayfarer’s* nose cone straight into a vertical dive toward the green continent below.
The cutter hit the upper atmosphere layers in a controlled, screaming burn that made the heavy titanium hull plates groan and rattle from the structural friction.
Blinding streaks of white-orange heat raced across the panoramic glass viewscreen, the white clouds of Earth whipping past their cockpit windows like sheets of torn silk as the ship plummeted through the troposphere.
Brakka was cursing loudly at the top of his lungs, his multi-jointed arms wrestling with the vibrating steering sticks as he fought the planet’s natural gravity loops.
“I absolutely, deep-seatedly hate primitive border planets that don’t bother to label their landing zones or install a proper automated atmospheric beacon system, boy!
This entire descent vector is a complete guess for my navigation logs!”
Kallard didn’t hear a single word of the old man’s rant.
He stood perfectly vertical behind the pilot’s chair, his callused fingers digging straight into the iron frame padding with enough physical density to leave two permanent dents caked into the metal support bar.
His internal sensing needle was running wide open now, the air lines of the planet rushing into his mind as the ship cleared the cloud deck.
He could feel them clearly now—the remaining survivors of the shootout standing in the dirt sixty parsecs below his boots.
He felt Piccolo’s cold, bleeding spark—battered, exhausted, but still vibrating with a dangerous, defensive demon pride. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
He felt a tiny, frantic four-year-old spark that was shivering with an absolute, bone-shattering psychological trauma, its potential current flickering in wild, unstable waves of green fire that threatened to break the bottle.
*Gohan.*
And he felt the cold, lifeless husks of the two brother Saiyans lying flat in the dust.
The battlefield materialized through the cockpit viewscreen all at once—a brutal, jagged wasteland of broken red stone cliffs, deep dirt canyons, and smoking craters that looked like an open grave caked in dust.
The ground was heavily scarred by dozens of high-caliber energy blasts, the loose soil still glowing with the dull orange heat of Piccolo’s *Special Beam Cannon*.
At the absolute center of the main crater lay the two bodies.
Raditz was lying flat on his back, his massive six-foot frame wrapped in his scuffed imperial armor plating, his long, wild black hair caked in mud and purple fluid, his dead eyes staring blankly up at the sky he had failed to conquer.
And lying directly beneath his shoulder plates…
was Goku.
The orange martial arts gi was torn to ribbons across his chest, a single, clean, three-inch-wide smoking hole punched straight through his ribs where the Namekian’s drill energy had cleared his heart marrow.
His bare face was pale, peaceful, and completely still, his life force already clearing the gates to enter the next world.
Piccolo was standing five yards away from the bodies, his heavy purple turban torn, his green demon arms bleeding a dark purple fluid caked in dirt as his chest heaved violently to extract oxygen from the smoke.
His right hand was still raised slightly into a combat brace, his fingers glowing with a weak, residual spark of orange static as he watched the sky.
The small child, Gohan, was frozen on his knees in the dirt twenty paces behind the Namekian’s boots, his small hands clutching his yellow tunic as he sobbed hysterically, his small body caked in dust.
The *Wayfarer* dropped through the final cloud of gold smoke, her secondary stabilization thrusters emitting a massive, thunderous roar of white fire that blew a wide, fifty-yard ring of red dust clean out of the canyon grates.
The black-and-green hull settled onto the dirt floorboards with a heavy structural *clank*, her landing clamps locking into the stone right along the edge of the battlefield.
The hatch lines split open with a sharp pneumatic *hiss*.
### Act III: The Welcome of the Dead
Kallard stepped out through the airlock threshold onto the soil of Earth, his heavy combat boots sinking an inch into the red mountain dirt with a soft *crunch*.
The first physical parameter that hit his nervous system was the air.
It was rich.
Heavy.
Immensely full of a thick biological density that he hadn’t experienced after a decade of surviving on recycled ship filtration systems, frozen mining stations, and toxic border moons.
The atmosphere of Earth felt almost excessive to his lungs—it smelled clearly of wet grass, damp soil, hot plasma smoke, fresh copper blood, and a distant rain storm that was moving across the western plains.
The second parameter was the gravity loop.
It was light—so incredibly, loose and light compared to the high-gravity crust of Vegeta or the heavy industrial decks of Malkor’s Shelf that he had to consciously contract his leg muscles by a fraction of an inch just to keep his steps steady across the pavement.
The third parameter…
was the fact that every single living entity on the battlefield had just turned their face around to look at his boots as if he were the next multi-faction disaster clearing their gate.
Piccolo moved first with a blinding, predatory fluidness that defied his physical exhaustion.
He stepped his tall green frame directly between Kallard’s line of sight and the crying child, his dark pupils narrowing into two sharp slits of pure, unadulterated demonic hostility as his fingers curled back into claws.
“Another one,” the Namekian hissed out through his teeth, his purple cape snapping in the wind.
“The…
the air lines are caked in the same greasy smell.”
A small, bald martial artist wearing an orange gi—Krillin—flew into the canyon clearing from the western ridge a fraction of a second later, his boots hitting the dirt with a loose stumble as his face completely drained of any natural color.
He looked at the scuffed green trim on Kallard’s matte-black armor plates, his eyes widening into circles of pure panic.
“Another what, Piccolo?
Tell me that isn’t…
tell me we’re not running another alignment pass with one of those space monsters today.”
Piccolo didn’t look away from Kallard’s eyes.
“A Saiyan, you idiot.
Look at the hip vest.”
Kallard let his long brown furry tail uncoil slowly from his utility belt, the extra limb dropping down into the red grass behind his boots with a slow, restless lash that cleared the dust grates.
Krillin took two frantic steps backward through the dirt, his hands flying up to cover his bald head as his voice cracked with a high-pitched shriek.
“Oh, come on!
You’ve got to be kidding me!
Goku’s body isn’t even cold yet, and the universe just drops a secondary tail out of the sky?
The ledger is completely broken!”
An older martial artist wearing a bright yellow hawaiian shirt and a heavy purple turtle shell on his back—Master Roshi—dropped down from a secondary transport craft alongside a young, brilliant blue-haired woman who was piloting a small hover-scooter.
Bulma Briefs.
The moment Kallard’s dark pupils tracked her profile through his green visor lens, a sudden, dangerous wave of recognition hit his human soul, his pulse thudding hard against his jaw.
She looked remarkably young—younger, fiercer, and a hell of a lot more vulnerable than the hardened woman who would eventually coordinate the logistics lines on Namek.
Her blue hair was tied back in a messy ponytail, her face caked in grease marks and road dust, but her brilliant blue eyes possessed that exact same fearless, unyielding fire that refused to back down from an alien conqueror even when her limbs were shaking with terror.
Chi-Chi cleared the hatch of the transport craft a fraction of a breath later, her long black hair flying wild as she sprinted across the broken red rocks, her voice letting out a sharp, bone-shattering scream of pure maternal agony that cut through the canyon smoke like a blade.
“Goku!
Gohan!
Where…
where is my boy?”
She dropped straight onto her knees in the dirt beside Goku’s pale, lifeless chest, her hands clutching his torn orange fabric as she sobbed hysterically, her grief completely filling the workspace with an intensity that made Krillin look down at his own boots in shame.
Kallard forced his chest plates to remain steady, his eyes locking onto Piccolo’s raised fingers.
He had consciously chosen to stay out in the rim until this specific afternoon—he had told himself that Goku *needed* this exact execution path to clear the gates, to learn the *Kaioken* and the *Spirit Bomb* from King Kai, to build the foundational strength that would eventually keep the entire universe from clicking flat.
But standing here in the real, tangible dirt, listening to a human mother weep over a heart marrow hole…
the choice felt a hell of a lot heavier than a line of dialogue in a chronicle book.
It caked his mouth in a bitter taste.
Piccolo lifted his index and middle fingers slightly, a faint, dangerous orange spark of ki energy forming at the tips with a sharp mechanical crackle.
“Give me one single, logical reason why I shouldn’t put a drill beam straight through your neck guards before you can even cross your path lane, space traveler.”
Brakka stepped down from the primary boarding ramp behind Kallard’s shoulder, his heavy tool harness rattling against his leather coat as all four of his eyes blinked in unison.
“An exceptionally warm, hospitable regional greeting system you’ve got caked into this mountain sector, green lady,” the old mechanic growled, his pistol hand resting flat against his hip.
“The polite terms are truly outstanding.”
Kallard kept his white-gloved hands open and resting loosely at his side guards.
“Because if my ledger required a brawler match with your squad, demon…
I wouldn’t have landed my cutter with my primary power level suppressed down to eight hundred units.”
Piccolo’s yellow brow clips sharpened, his focus tracking the absolute stability of the kid’s chest plates.
Krillin blinked his eyes, his voice trembling as he looked between them.
“Wait…
you’re…
you’re telling my ears that you’re actively suppressing that number?
You’re holding the current back?”
Kallard let out a short breath, allowing his internal mind to release the stone door of his energy pool by a microscopic millimeter.
*FLASH.*
A sudden, immense ring of dense green ki energy snapped alive around his combat boots for a single microsecond, the sheer physical pressure of his seven thousand four hundred baseline hitting the canyon floorboards like a physical hammer blow.
The loose red soil and the white rock shards around his feet were instantly launched five feet into the air, the atmospheric air lines tightening up so hard that Krillin’s breath escaped his throat in a short gasp.
Master Roshi went perfectly rigid against his staff, his old eyes wide behind his sunglasses as his muscles locked up in a defensive reflex.
Piccolo’s cold expression underwent an immediate, calculated shift from raw hostility to a sharp, tactical calculation, his boots sliding back two inches through the dirt to anchor his weight against the pressure wave.
Even the crying child, Gohan, whimpered softly, pulling his small blue shoulders closer to the Namekian’s purple fabric as the green light reflected across his cheeks.
Kallard instantly slammed the valve shut, his energy signature dropping straight back down to its suppressed eight hundred spark, leaving the air quiet once more.
“I didn’t clear the atmospheric gates of this planet to shed a single drop of human blood today, martial artists.
The transaction is completely clean.”
Piccolo’s voice remained cold as an iron anvil.
“That is the exact same line of syllables the last long-haired Saiyan delivered to my ears before he used his knuckles to kidnap the boy from the island.
Your race doesn’t possess a reliable specification sheet for trust.”
Kallard looked down at Raditz’s armored corpse lying in the mud, his face neutral.
“No.
Knowing my brother’s particular layout…
he probably delivered a hell of a lot worse than that before he broke your ribs.”
Krillin blinked.
Bulma stared through the smoke, her blue eyes wide with curiosity.
Brakka let out a slow, tired sigh through his gray nose.
“An absolute masterpiece of a diplomatic introduction sequence, Ronin.
Your vocabulary is truly comforting to a grieving population.”
Kallard ignored the mechanic’s remark, his dark pupils locking straight back onto the Namekian’s face.
“My name is Kallard.
Out in the spaceports of the rim, the outlaws call my armor Ronin.
I am a Saiyan warrior—a real survivor who cleared the gates of Planet Vegeta before the fire turned it to ash.
I have zero operational relationship with Raditz’s pirate squad, and I have even less connection to the two high-tier executioners who are currently moving along the tracking lanes to finish his deployment.”
Piccolo’s green ears dropped low against his skull, his teeth grinding together with a sharp mechanical click.
“Two?
You’re telling me there are two more of those monsters caked into the grid?”
Kallard chose his words with an extreme, professional caution.
He couldn’t play the part of a mystical prophet—he had to use the real, logical parameters of the technology on the field to explain his data lines.
He reached down to his utility belt, pointing his finger straight toward the broken green plastic frame of the scouter caked into Raditz’s dead temple.
“The communication dregs caked into those imperial scouter models are hard-wired straight into a long-range sector satellite net, Namekian,” Kallard said, his voice level.
“They don’t just measure power levels; they transmit active audio logs, live combat readings, and precise location coordinates straight back to the primary terminal hubs if the user’s partners are monitoring the channel.
The moment you triggered that drill beam through Raditz’s heart marrow…
his scouter uploaded every single syllable of your conversation regarding the Dragon Balls straight to his division partners.
Someone heard the whole shift.”
Bulma snapped her head around violently to glare at the broken green plastic on the corpse, her brilliant mind instantly resolving the technical parameters of the warning.
“The…
the electronic device on his face?
It’s a wireless transmitter main line?”
“Yes,” Kallard said plainly.
Krillin looked like he was about to experience an immediate biological system collapse, his hands shaking against his gi.
“Wait…
wait, you’re telling my ears that there are more of those giant armored guys out there in space, and they just listened to a full recording of our entire planetary defense plan?
The ledger is completely caked in red grease!”
Master Roshi closed his eyes, his old face settling into a grim, weary line that had zero humor left hidden inside its contours.
“The day…
it appears to have a permanent habit of getting worse with every single hour that clears the clock, my friends.”
Piccolo glanced down at Raditz’s dead grin, his internal demonic pride wrestling with the raw tactical calculation Kallard had dropped into his clearing.
He had already heard the dying Saiyan speak of his two superior partners—the elite prince who would turn this world to glass without a single drop of hesitation.
“So…
you’re confirming the transmission line, space traveler.
You’re telling my eyes that a secondary vanguard detail is actively moving toward our atmospheric gates.”
“I am telling you that if you want your population to see the turn of the next cycle, Namekian…
you should assume their pods are already locked onto your coordinates,” Kallard said, his voice flat as an iron plate.
Bulma stepped her boots forward through the red rock shards, her fiery anger completely burning through her survival fear as she pointed a finger straight at his visor.
“And why the hell should any single person standing on this battlefield believe a word clearing your lips, space monkey?
You drop out of the clouds right after one of your kind puts my best friend in a grave, carrying another alien warship, another long tail, and an elderly gray-blue goblin with a bunch of mechanical joints—”
“Elderly?” Brakka barked out from the ramp, deeply, structurally insulted by the vocabulary.
“Listen to the tongue on this primitive blue-haired research assistant!
I am a certified senior engineering inspector, lady!
My parts are pristine!”
“—and we’re supposed to just trust your ledger because you’ve got green paint on your chest armor?” Bulma yelled, ignoring the mechanic completely as she glared into Kallard’s eyes.
Kallard looked down at her face, his dark pupils steady beneath his visor line.
For a single, dangerous microsecond, the entire world narrowed down to the visual image of Bulma Briefs—the woman who would eventually build the time machine, the dragon radar, and half the survival tools for the future timeline.
*Greenbean,* some distant, old memory from his past life whispered into his skull—a scrap of a fictional nickname from a story that hadn’t even had the chance to materialize yet.
He shoved the memory down into the dark wells of his brain with a white-knuckle grip of pure discipline.
He didn’t know her yet.
She didn’t know his face.
He refused to treat her like a written script or a piece of destiny; he had to let her be a real, living person standing in the dirt before his gloves.
“You flatly shouldn’t trust a single digit on my slate, Bulma,” Kallard said softly, his voice dropping its harsh brawler edge.
“Not today.
Trust is a high-priced commodity that has to be earned through honest field labor.
You just lost your best friend because a Saiyan cleared your gate.
I know exactly what my uniform looks like to your eyes.”
Krillin blinked his eyes, his brow furrowing as he looked at the hunter’s open hands.
“Then…
why the hell did you bother to land your ship in our canyon, Ronin?
What’s your angle?”
Kallard looked across the cratered wasteland—tracking the pale face of Goku, the sobbing frame of Gohan, the broken white suits of the dead, and the smoke rising from the red rock faces.
“Because the planet Earth is officially exposed to the wider tracking grids of the empire now, martial artists,” Kallard said, his voice absolute.
“And the machine doesn’t leave an open ledger un-cleared.”
### Act IV: The Tactical Reality Check
Piccolo kept his arms crossed over his chest, his dark pupils fixed on the kid’s bearded jawline with a cold, unyielding analytical glare.
“Raditz was an elite warrior by our metrics, space traveler.
It took the combined current of my best technique and Goku’s life force just to break his guard lane.”
Kallard let out a short, hollow rasp through his teeth, his tail lashing out against the red dirt with a sharp *thud*.
“Raditz was nothing but a low-tier logistics grunt by the empire’s specification sheets, Namekian.
He was a weak, un-uniformed discard who spent his cycles clearing un-shielded agricultural colonies because he didn’t possess the physical mass to stand in an elite deployment lane.
His power level rating barely cleared the twelve hundred mark.”
Krillin looked like he was about to experience an immediate biological system failure, his knees shaking so violently against his orange gi that he had to brace his hands against his thighs just to maintain his vertical posture.
“Twelve…
twelve hundred?
And he was the *weak* one of the group?
Oh, my stomach is completely turning into liquid grease right now.
We are so incredibly dead.”
Master Roshi slowly closed his old eyes behind his dark lenses, his hand tightening around his wooden staff until the grain creaked under his grip.
“The…
the scale of the wider universe…
it appears to have left our traditional martial arts understandings completely out of date, my young friends.”
Piccolo didn’t let a single drop of panic clear his green face, but his cold aura tightened up significantly, a small line of purple fluid trickling from his arm wound down into his sleeve.
“So you’re telling my eyes that the two partners currently tracking our coordinates are carrying a much larger potential current inside their muscles.”
“The prince of our race, Vegeta, carries a base power level rating that sits comfortably at eighteen thousand units of raw output, Piccolo,” Kallard said plainly, dropping the tactical bomb straight into the middle of the clearing without a single piece of soft phrasing to cushion the impact.
“His partner, Nappa, is a veteran military enforcer who registers well over four thousand.
If those two pods touch down in your cities twelve months from now and your squad attempts to run the exact same brawler strategy you utilized against my brother…
this entire planet will be turned into a cloud of dead gray space gravel before the turn of the afternoon shift.
They won’t even need to draw their blasters to clear your ledger.”
Gohan let out a fresh, hysterical shriek of pure terror from behind the Namekian’s boots, his small four-year-old hands flying up to cover his wet eyes as he wept for his father.
Kallard regretted the bluntness of the technical delivery the microsecond the syllables cleared his teeth, his brow furrowing beneath his bandana line.
He looked at the child’s trembling blue shoulders, and his human soul felt a deep, caked disgust at his own brawler mouth.
Chi-Chi snapped her head up from Goku’s pale shoulder all at once, her yellow eyes wide with a wild, feral rage that didn’t care a single damn about alien power ratings or imperial destroyer fleets.
She pointed a shaking finger straight at Kallard’s green armor plates, her voice rising into a sharp, bone-shattering maternal shriek that cut through the canyon wind.
“Who the hell are you to come dropping out of the sky to tell my ears how my boy is going to die?
You’re just another one of those long-tailed space freaks who brought this murder to my husband’s doorstep!
Get your ugly black ship out of our country before I break your face shield with a shovel!”
Kallard slowly dropped his knees down into a low, respectful crouch in the dirt, bringing his visor line down to match the level of her tear-stained face, his voice dropping into a quiet, grounded rumble.
“I am someone who spent his own childhood watching his entire race be turned into a cloud of white dust because our generals were entirely too arrogant to check the empire’s spreadsheets, ma’am.
I know exactly what a slaughter looks like when people underestimate Frieza’s soldiers.
I came to this quadrant specifically to ensure your son doesn’t have to carry that same grave in his thoughts.”
The name *Frieza* meant absolutely nothing to most of the martial artists standing in the canyon—it was a completely un-vetted piece of spaceport vocabulary for their primitive ears.
But Piccolo’s analytical mind caught the specific weight caked into the syllables immediately, his yellow ears twitching.
“Frieza?” the Namekian hissed out, his dark eyes narrowing.
“Is that the manager who runs your brother’s division?”
Kallard stood back up to his full height, his fingers hooking into his utility loops as his face turned back to the stars.
“Not today, Piccolo.
We’re not opening that specific database file until your knuckles can handle the current.
I’m flatly not dumping the entire layout of a galactic slave empire onto a group of grieving people who are still standing over their brother’s corpse.
Let’s finish the first shift before we contract the second.”
The Namekian’s green lips curled back over his teeth in a sharp, mocking grin that had zero trust left hidden inside its contours.
“That specific piece of phrasing sounds remarkably like an evasion strategy, space traveler.”
“It is an evasion strategy,” Kallard said flatly, meeting the demon king’s gaze through his visor lens without a single drop of hesitation.
“It’s a tactical layout restriction.
I’ll answer whatever data lines help your squad survive the next twelve months of training.
The rest of the galaxy can stay behind the fence until the pavement is clean.”
That earned a long, heavy silence across the canyon, even Piccolo holding his tongue as he evaluated the unyielding wall of conviction caked into the hybrid’s posture.
Brakka stepped forward then, his heavy maintenance boots clicking slowly against the red rock shards to break the tension lines.
He adjusted his industrial goggles with his titanium thumb, his voice a low, practical rasp.
“My name is Brakka, townspeople.
I am the primary senior technician of the cutter docked behind your fence line.
This broad-shouldered brawler boy standing next to my harness is exceptionally bad at managing his public relations vocabulary, but he knows exactly how to stay alive inside a ditch.
We didn’t clear the hyperspace lanes to execute a conquest phase against your town.
We came down to check the wire terminals.”
Bulma Briefs shifted her blue eyes over to track the clean, custom welding seams caked into the *Wayfarer’s* matte-black forward stabilization wings, her brilliant research eye resolving the unique layout variations with a sudden, involuntary spike of pure technological interest.
“You…
you built the primary hull frame on that ship yourself, old man?
The design configuration is completely weird. Get faster updates on g.com.
The exterior lines look compact enough to navigate a common atmospheric storm, but the mass distribution sensors on my scooter are saying there’s ten times more internal workspace hidden inside the bilge than the physics models should allow.”
Brakka’s gray ears instantly stood straight up against his white hair mane, his four eyes wide with an immediate, deep-seated professional delight that completely broke through his hardened mechanic mask.
“Oh, I absolutely, deep-seatedly like the technical processing parameters of this blue-haired lady already, Ronin!
She’s running the high-grade analytical gauges!
She resolved the spatial compression loop wiring on the very first pass!”
He straightened his leather coat proudly, pointing a thick titanium knuckle toward the nose cone.
“Rebuilt, rewired, and thoroughly rescued from a dozen poor life choices made by this muscle-brained kid, ma’am!
The layout utilizes a series of modified pre-imperial logic boards I stole from a scrap yard on Kessik to compress the internal bulkheads!
It’s an absolute masterpiece of local custom engineering!”
Kallard let out a short rasp through his nose.
“He means the ship’s a junk pile that screams at his ears whenever the sub-light coils turn hot, Bulma.”
“The coils only scream because your heavy boots keep dropping onto the primary current leads during your training drills, you uncultured little brawler!” the old man growled back, his white mane shaking.
“My maintenance hours are pristine!”
Despite the crushing weight of her grief and the dark smoke caking her clothes, Bulma managed to look at the old technician for half a second with a tiny spark of genuine, professional curiosity hidden behind her wet eyelashes.
Then, the grim physical reality of the wasteland returned to her eyes, her gaze dropping back down to the smoking hole caked into Goku’s orange gi, her voice dropping into a low whisper.
“Later, mechanic.
We’ll check the engine terminals later.”
Kallard nodded his head once through the dark.
“Later, Bulma.
The ledger can wait for the dawn.”
Something about the use of that single word *later* felt incredibly dangerous to his thoughts.
It carried a tiny, un-exploded spark of a future hope that he couldn’t afford to play with yet.
He turned his face away first to maintain his alignment.
### Act V: The Terms of the Ceasefire
Master Roshi and Krillin moved slowly across the red rock shards, their hands shaking as they carefully reached down to lift Goku’s pale, lifeless frame off the dirt grates, preparing to carry his body back to the transport craft.
Chi-Chi walked alongside his shoulder, her head dropped flat against his arm as she wept in a low, exhausted cadence that had zero rage left hidden inside its lines.
Piccolo stood perfectly vertical near the dazed child, his heavy purple cape trailing through the dust, his dark pupils unreadable as he watched the retrieval detail clear the crater.
Bulma reached down with her thin fingers, her hand carefully picking up the green plastic frame of Raditz’s broken scouter from the temple cinders, her brilliant mind already forcing her thoughts through the grief because that was the only way she knew how to manage a disaster—turn the trauma into an engineering question, turn the question into a physical tool, and use the tool to buy her friends another rotation of survival.
Kallard watched her fingers trace the alien copper pins for half a second too long.
Brakka elbowed him lightly against his green rib guard, his mechanical joint letting out a soft hydraulic whir.
“Careful with the line of sight, bandana boy.
Your energy is leaking through the seals.”
Kallard cut his dark pupils sideways to glare at the old man.
“What are you talking about, grease goblin?”
The old mechanic’s voice dropped into a low, serious whisper that didn’t travel an inch past their chest plates.
“You…
you know the exact biological specification sheets for every single individual standing on this dirt, don’t you, kid?
Not personally—you’ve spent your life running the outer rim lanes with my tools—but your human soul recognizes their frequencies clearly.
You look at that blue-haired research lady like she’s a permanent piece of history caked into your own bones.”
Kallard didn’t answer a single syllable.
He just looked back out at the broken stone cliffs of the wasteland, his hand tracing the edge of the jade stone charm inside his tunic loop.
“And you look at that dead orange warrior like he’s a brother you failed to save from an open furnace, boy,” Brakka muttered softly, his lower eyes wide.
“That is an exceptionally dangerous category of psychological baggage to carry into a brawler match.
It’s going to turn your choices messy if the prince starts cutting the lines.”
“I know exactly how to manage my own container, old man,” Kallard whispered back, his voice flat as iron.
“I’m keeping the valves closed.”
“Good.
See that you do, kid.
My insurance provider doesn’t cover emotional structural failures.”
Piccolo stepped his long green legs across the gravel path, his dark pupils locking straight onto Kallard’s bearded face as he lowered his raised hand completely, signaling a temporary, highly volatile tactical ceasefire for the afternoon shift.
“The…
the orange hero’s body is cleared from the pavement, space traveler.
Now let’s speak plain about the management of the boy.”
He reached out his green arm, his long fingers catching Gohan by the back of his torn yellow tunic to drag his small four-year-old frame forward into the light.
The child was still sniffing hysterically, his small face caked in red dust and dry tears, his yellow eyes wide with a profound terror as he looked up at the giant green demon who had helped execute his father.
Trauma had turned his choices into a series of strange, erratic shelters.
Kallard dropped his knees back into a low crouch in front of the kid, keeping a safe four yards of open space between his chest plates and the boy’s boots to avoid spooking his internal sensing grid any further.
“He carries an immense, un-exploded current of raw biological potential hidden behind his ribs, Piccolo.
I felt the frequency of his blast from orbit when he caved Raditz’s chest armor inward.”
“The…
the brat possesses a massive amount of unrefined mass inside his cells,” Piccolo growled, his mouth twisting into a hard line of warrior pride.
“But he’s completely soft, undisciplined, and thoroughly caked in a peaceful domestic lifestyle that turns his coordination into garbage.
I am personally going to take his boots straight into the deep wilderness of the northern mountain ranges for the next twelve months.
I will spend every single rotation grinding his bones, stripping the domestic softness out of his muscles, and turning his frame into a dangerous, cold-blooded combat weapon that can help me break the prince’s guard when the pods touch down.”
Chi-Chi let out a sharp, furious shriek from the edge of the transport craft, her fingers locking around the metal door frame.
“No!
I refuse to let a green monster drag my four-year-old baby into a mountain ditch to play soldier!
He has to finish his primary reading manifests!
He’s going to be a certified academic doctor!”
Kallard slowly stood back up to his full height, his broad shoulders blocking the Namekian’s advance lane as his voice dropped into a low, serious rumble that cut through the wind.
“Hold your sticks, Piccolo.
Let’s look at the engineering blueprints for a child’s nervous system before you go tearing the wires out of his frame.”
Piccolo’s yellow brow clips flared bright with an immediate, dangerous spike of demonic rage.
“I don’t recall requesting a single drop of parenting advice from a space monkey who wears black scrap armor, Kallard!
The boy belongs entirely to the defense metrics of this planet now!”
“I’m not delivering a piece of soft moral parenting philosophy to your ears, demon king,” Kallard said, his dark eyes locking straight into the Namekian’s pupils with a completely unyielding density.
“I am delivering a piece of hard, textbook tactical advice from a veteran hunter who knows exactly what happens to a child’s mind when an adult teaches him nothing but pain and isolation inside a ditch.
If you drag that kid into the snow ridges and spend twelve months treating his frame like a common imperial grunt you found in a slave pen…
you won’t build a reliable warrior for the ledger.
You’ll just crack his internal container, short-circuit his potential current, and turn his coordination into a broken, terrified mess that will panic the second Nappa draws his blade.”
Piccolo went completely, structurally frozen on the stone path, his long green fingers loosening their grip on Gohan’s tunic by a fraction of an inch as the sheer, logical mass of the argument struck his analytical brain like an artillery shell.
He had never once considered the concept of a child’s psychological container—he had been born straight out of an old demon’s mouth caked in a full set of teeth and a single, hard-wired military mission to destroy the world.
He didn’t possess a specification sheet for youth.
“The…
the brat has to become harder than iron if he’s going to clear the pavement next cycle, Saiyan,” Piccolo muttered, his voice losing a fraction of its razor-sharp edge.
“He will become harder than iron, Piccolo,” Kallard said quietly, looking down at Gohan’s wet face with a genuine, unshielded warmth.
“But he needs to know exactly what his muscles are protecting before you force him to carry the weight.
If you strip everything soft out of his life…
he won’t have a single drop of purpose left to balance his stance when the real fire starts.”
He crouched down one final time, his glove reaching into his utility pouch to pull out a single, small sweet ration bar caked in silver foil—a common independent spaceport snack he had taken from the *Wayfarer’s* galley bins.
He set the bar flat against a clean stone block near the boy’s boots, his voice turning quiet and gentle.
“What’s the official name registered on your tracking keys, kid?”
The boy sniffed hard, his small finger wiping his nose as he looked at the shiny silver foil through his tears.
“G…
Gohan.
That’s my name.”
Kallard managed a tiny, genuine smirk beneath his visor line.
“Gohan.
A fine, honorable name for a fighter.
My name is Kallard.
I am deeply, professionally sorry about the loss of your father today.
He was a great warrior who cleared his gates with a massive amount of honor.”
The child’s face crumpled completely at the mention of Goku, a fresh wave of quiet tears trickling down his dusty cheeks.
“But if this big green lady with the turban is going to drag your boots into the mountain ridges to practice your kicks…
and if my black ship is active in the sector…
I am personally going to write a strict set of guidelines into the logbook,” Kallard said softly, his dark eyes locking onto the kid’s yellow pupils.
“I’ll make sure you get a hot plate of real food every single night.
I’ll make sure your system gets the proper hours of sleep cells to repair the muscles, and I will personally put my knuckles through anyone’s face shield who forgets that you’re still a fifteen-cycle child under that hair crown.
You have my absolute operational guarantee on that parameter, Gohan.”
The boy stopped his sobbing for a single, quiet breath, his wide yellow eyes looking up at the broad, scarred Saiyan warrior with a sudden, primitive wave of recognition that sat deep inside his mixed bloodline.
He didn’t reach out to grab the ration bar, and he didn’t say a thank you syllable—but his small blue shoulders slowly relaxed their defensive posture, his weight settling back onto his boots as he stepped away from the Namekian’s shadow.
Piccolo let out a short, unrefined grunt through his nose, turning his face away toward the northern ridges to hide the sudden, irritating wave of confusion that was clearing his thoughts.
“Your…
your methods sound remarkably inefficient and thoroughly soft for a Saiyan, space traveler.
It’s an absolute layout miracle that your race managed to conquer a single port with that kind of philosophy caked into your training logs.”
Kallard stood back up to his full, broad-shouldered height, bucking his green chest guards tight against his harness as his voice returned to its cold iron rasp.
“My methods are the only reason my skin is still attached to my bones after a decade of running the rim lanes without an empire to back my play, Piccolo.
It’s called long-range maintenance scheduling.
Now let’s go clear the rest of the contract before the sun dips flat.”
### Act VI: The Assembly of the Vanguard
The red sun of Earth slowly tilted down toward the western mountain ridges, casting a long, deep crimson shadow across the broken stone cliffs and the smoking craters of the wasteland.
The transport craft bearing Goku’s pale body and his weeping wife finally engaged its repulsor units, the silver machine clearing the canyon gates with a low, quiet drone that left the battlefield deserted except for the core members of the planetary defense detail.
Krillin sat flat on a broken boulder near the center of the main crater, his hands holding his head as his dark pupils tracked the green navigation lines flashing across Bulma’s diagnostic scooter terminal.
“So…
twelve months, Ronin.
That’s the entire size of our window before those two giant space guys drop their pods into our city ports?”
Kallard stood on the edge of the ridge, his long brown tail moving slowly through the cool mountain breeze, his face bare as he looked out at the wide green plains visible beyond the canyon walls.
“Twelve months is the maximum technical limit your ledger can afford to assume, Krillin.
If their propulsion systems utilize the newer imperial Frieza Force capacitors…
they could easily clear the hyperspace lanes three weeks early.
We don’t waste a single rotation on a rest cycle.”
Bulma Briefs looked up from the green frame of Raditz’s scouter, her thin fingers using a small copper screwdriver from her pouch to carefully pull the secondary silicon logic boards out of the plastic casing.
Her blue eyes were burning with that intense, focused analytical light that Kallard remembered from his oldest memories of her genius.
“The…
the digital processing language caked into this device is completely alien, Kallard, but the underlying arithmetic architecture is remarkably clean.
It utilizes a three-phase data stream to calculate energy displacements in the local atmosphere lines.
If I can run a proper reverse-engineering pass through these wire terminals…
I can easily build a portable radar unit that can track those space pods long before they clear our upper atmosphere layers.”
Brakka walked over to her scooter frame, his mechanical right hand holding a small diagnostic pin tool that he extended toward her fingers with a wide, gear-toothed smirk.
“You’re going to want to bypass that third copper lead line along the western rail joint, blue-haired lady.
The imperial tech specialists always install a bootleg wireless tracking trap inside that specific circuit gateway to blow the processor chip if a civilian technician attempts to modify the registry keys.
It’s a completely garbage piece of corporate design intended to protect their copyright margins.”
Bulma snapped her head up, her blue eyes tracking the grease stains on his multi-jointed titanium elbow with a sharp, immediate spike of technical evaluation.
“A wireless tracking trap?
Hard-wired straight into the primary current lead?”
“Exactly, ma’am!” the old mechanic cackled, his four eyes wide with pure professional joy.
“They call it the execution loop!
If you pull that silicon plate without shorting out the secondary capacitor first…
*BOOM*…
your whole workshop table turns into a cloud of melting silver solder before you can even clear your safety goggles!
Here…
let my pin tool balance the ground line for your fingers.”
Bulma watched the old alien’s mechanical fingers move with a fast, micro-inch precision across the alien circuit board, a small, genuine line of a smile touching her lips through her dirt marks.
“You…
you genuinely know how to handle your parameters, old man.
I guess you’re not just an expensive piece of space accessory after all.”
“I am the primary certified senior engineering director of this entire star lane, lady!” Brakka barked out proudly, his gray ears flaring.
“My invoices are legendary across seven systems!
Now let’s see if your little workshop has a decent set of metric hex wrenches to clear the rest of these bolts!”
Kallard watched the two mechanical minds completely lock into their shared spreadsheet jargon, a sudden, heavy wave of peace settling behind his ribs.
It was an absolute layout miracle to watch—the brilliant heiress of Capsule Corp and an old four-eyed scrapper from the rim, working together in the red dirt of a fresh grave to build the tools that would keep the future from clicking flat into the dark.
Piccolo stood twenty paces away near Gohan’s shoulder, his tall green frame cast in a solid purple shadow against the rock face, his yellow eyes tracking the hybrid’s profile with an unyielding, un-vetted calculation.
“You…
you speak with a substantial amount of authority regarding the prince’s tactical habits, Kallard.
You talk like a warrior who has already watched a dozen planets be caved inward by his deployment details.”
Kallard turned his face back to face the demon king, his green visor sliding back down over his jaw with a sharp mechanical click.
“I talk like a survivor who knows exactly what happens when a group of proud, stubborn fighters attempt to rely entirely on their raw, unrefined muscle mass to win a multi-faction war, Piccolo.
Power level numbers are nothing more than a baseline entry on a balance sheet—they don’t mean a damn thing if your coordination lines turn sloppy or if your squad doesn’t know how to sense a target through a cloud of smoke.”
He stepped his boots closer to the Namekian’s path, his voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly calm brawler rasp.
“You are the strongest living fighter remaining on this pavement today, Piccolo.
That specific power metric makes you structurally responsible for the survival of this population whether your demonic ego likes the configuration or not.
If you spend the next twelve months sitting inside a dark cave practicing your solo energy drills while Krillin and the rest of the human martial artists are training in separate corners…
the prince will systematically pick your squad apart one single parsec at a time.
You have to train *together*.
You have to learn how to suppress your energy signatures down to absolute flat zero potential to execute a stealth ambush loop, you have to learn how to coordinate your kinetic strikes to break a superior guard lane, and you have to learn how to keep fighting with a full set of broken ribs without letting your discipline drop.”
Krillin winced hard from his boulder, his hand rubbing his back plates as if he could already feel the muscle trauma caked into the upcoming training shifts.
“He’s…
he’s kind of got us locked into a corner with that logic pass, Piccolo.
We did almost get turned into paste today by a low-ranking space grunt who didn’t even bother to take his armor vest off before the shooting started.
If the next two guys are twenty times denser…
we flatly need every piece of help we can drag onto the field.”
Piccolo stared straight through the green tint of the kid’s visor for three long, silent seconds, the red wind of the canyon moving his torn white turban fabric with a lonely whistling sound.
Then, the demon king let out a low, humorless bark of a laugh that had zero surrender left hidden inside its lines.
“You’re a remarkably arrogant piece of space garbage, hybrid warrior.
But your technical numbers are too dense for my ledger to ignore today.
I will accept a temporary training ceasefire loop with your cutter crew…
provided your knuckles can actually hold the lane when my best technique clears the gate.”
Kallard managed a small, cold line of a smile beneath his beard trim, his combat boots planting wide against the red dirt grates of Earth.
“My knuckles have been holding the lane against the most expensive special operations units in Frieza’s empire for a decade, demon king.
I’m exceptionally well-calibrated for the workload.
Let’s go clear the baseline parameters.”
### Act VII: The Promise of the Horizon
The last remaining sparks of the red sun finally dipped completely behind the western mountain chains, plunging the canyon wasteland into a deep, cool indigo night caked in thousands of brilliant white stars that had zero imperial tax tags caked into their constellations.
The *Wayfarer* sat quiet on the dark dirt floorboards, her green navigation indicators throwing a soft, rhythmic glow across the silver-barked trees of the lower ridges.
Kallard walked a short fifty-yard distance away from the primary maintenance clearing, his boots stepping over the broken rock shards until he reached the absolute peak of a high, vertical stone cliff that looked straight out over the endless green plains of Earth.
The cool, clean night air moved past his bare face, lifting the black spikes of his hair hair crown with a soft whistling sound that felt remarkably, layout-luxurious to his skin after a decade of ship filtration.
He unhitched his private data logbook from his belt utility loop, his thumb print clearing the manual print scanner to open the electronic vault lines of his soul.
The blue light flared bright against his dark cheek skin, displaying the scrawled columns of cosmic targets he had recorded over the cycles.
He didn’t add a fresh name to the balance sheet tonight.
He didn’t write a new power level number, and he certainly didn’t write a canonical prophecy regarding the future arrival of the pods.
He simply stared down at the small, pale green jade stone wind charm caked into his leather utility pouch—the tiny token the blue-skinned forest child had delivered to his glove parsecs ago.
The stone charm was still throwing off a weak, comforting pulse of internal warmth against his fingers, a silent, absolute marker that his individual choices had already rewritten the alignment of at least one small sector of this galaxy.
He wasn’t a legendary prince born with a planet-shattering power rating, and he didn’t carry a clean, predictable path laid out for his boots by a master’s script.
He was Ronin—an independent rim bounty warrior, a weathered hybrid scrapper caked in the white scars of a hundred desperate brawls, whose primary family was a four-eyed junk mechanic and an old transport cutter that ran on bad oil and stubbornness.
But as he looked out at the massive, unprotected horizon of the blue world spinning beneath the quiet stars, Kallard realized that the timeline didn’t terrify his soul anymore.
Canon wasn’t a rigid iron cage caked into the floorboards of the universe; it was nothing more than a stark, historical warning sheet designed to show a brawler exactly where the tracks turned messy.
He had altered the parameters of the future simply by standing vertical in his trenches, and he would continue to push, nudge, and grind his knuckles through every single rotation shift until this fragile blue world was caked in enough structural density to break the empire’s teeth.
Brakka walked out from the primary airlock hatch behind his back, his heavy leather coat pulled tight against the mountain draft as all four of his unblinking eyes shifted upward to look at the star field clearing the sky.
He let out a slow, gravelly rasp through his teeth, his titanium right hand coming down to rest flat against the kid’s broad green shoulder guard with a familiar, un-vetted mechanical clank.
“So,” the old mechanic growled quietly, his gray ears dropping low against the wind.
“This…
this is the planet Earth, boy.
The blue marble caked in grass and water.
What’s your official senior engineering assessment of the workspace after clearing the first shift?”
Kallard slowly closed the blue light lines of his logbook casing, sliding the box securely back into his utility loop before he reached up to lock his fingers around the old technician’s metal knuckle joint, his dark eyes burning with an absolute, unyielding promise that sat behind his teeth.
“The primary alignment is caked in a substantial amount of structural rust, Dad,” Kallard whispered out into the night wind.
“The lines are completely messy, the main characters are currently standing over a fresh grave, and the planetary defense grids are flatly non-existent for the ledger.”
He paused, a tiny, genuine smirk of absolute readiness splitting his bearded face under the starlight as his thick brown furry tail lashed out in a wide, free circle across the canyon dirt.
“It needs a massive, multi-cycle piece of heavy custom maintenance labor to clear the pavement,” the young Saiyan warhound growled softly.
“Let’s go get our tools out of the bilge.
The shift is officially open.”