## Act I: The Quiet After the Blast
For a long, agonizing moment, nobody in the wasteland made a single sound.
The earth was completely ruined around them.
The ground was split into deep, jagged trenches, the red clay smoking from the heat of the explosions.
Huge chunks of the surrounding cliffs had tumbled down into the basin, leaving jagged teeth of stone cutting into the morning sky.
The air was thick with the choking stench of sulfur, burned rock, and blood hanging heavy under the bright sun.
It didn’t look like a valley on Earth anymore.
It looked like a graveyard left behind by a world that had already died.
Yamcha lay completely still at the bottom of a jagged crater, his breathing so shallow the dust barely moved around his mouth.
Tien knelt near the edge, his right arm hanging loose and completely broken, his face caked in dirt and blood.
His teeth were gritted so hard his jaw muscles shook, his eyes fixed on the empty space where his smallest friend had just thrown his life away.
Krillin stood a few paces back, his hands trembling as he kept a tight grip on Gohan’s shoulders.
The boy was staring at the center of the field, his eyes wide and pooling with heavy, hot tears that left clean tracks through the soot on his cheeks.
Piccolo stood between the survivors and the danger, his massive purple uniform torn to shreds, his green skin covered in deep bruises and smoking plasma burns.
His yellow eyes were locked onto the prince with an absolute, unyielding hatred that looked deep enough to burn through stone.
Chiaotzu was gone.
There wasn’t even a scrap of his vest left in the wind.
Nappa was gone too, erased from existence by the very man he had called his prince, turned into nothing but a scorched black circle of ash because he had failed to win cleanly.
And now, right in the middle of the wreckage, Goku stood alive again.
His orange training uniform was clean, completely untouched by the soot of the battle, but his face carried none of his usual easygoing warmth.
His eyes were hard, fixed on the damage caked into the dirt around his friends.
Kallard could feel the incredible weight shifting through the air around him.
King Kai’s training hadn’t just made Goku stronger; it had sharpened him into something precise.
His baseline power was hovering right around the nine-thousand mark, but there was an intense, coiled heat sitting beneath his ribs, something controlled and dangerous.
The Kaioken.
It was a technique that pushed a body exactly the way Primal Instinct did, but it didn’t rely on the old Saiyan beast lurking in the blood.
It was a clean, focused edge.
Goku looked slowly at the fallen fighters behind his heels.
His eyes stayed on Yamcha’s broken ribs, then moved to the blood dripping from Tien’s jaw, and finally settled on the empty patch of clay where Chiaotzu had made his final stand.
His jaw tightened until the bone showed through his cheek.
“I could feel pieces of it while I was coming down the path,” Goku said, his voice dropping into a low, quiet whisper that carried a terrifying weight through the valley.
Krillin’s throat hitched, his voice cracking completely as he reached out a hand.
“Goku…
you’re really here…”
Goku didn’t turn his head back to face them yet.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply.
There was no big, dramatic speech.
There was no promise that everything would turn out fine, and no comforting lie dropped into the dirt to make them feel better.
Just a simple, honest apology from a man who had run as fast as his boots could carry him and still missed the opening bell.
Kallard respected the hell out of that.
Vegeta didn’t.
The prince stood across the basin, his pristine white gloves resting flat against his crossed arms, his white boots planted wide in the cracked yellow earth.
He looked thoroughly amused.
There was a flicker of annoyance hiding behind his eyes, but mostly he looked like a man who had finally found something on this backwater planet worth looking at.
“Well,” Vegeta sneered, his aristocratic voice cutting through the wind like a razor blade.
“Kakarot finally crawls out of the dirt, and the little runaway survivor stops hiding behind the local insects.”
Kallard’s thick brown tail lashed once against his leg armor.
Goku cut his dark eyes sideways, looking at the bandana wrapped around Kallard’s head.
“Kakarot?
Is that what he keeps calling me?”
Kallard managed a dry, gravelly rasp through his throat.
“It’s a long story, brother.
Focus on the guy in front of you.”
“Is that my real name?
My Saiyan one?”
“Yeah.
It’s yours.”
Goku blinked his eyes, his short hair spikes shifting in the wind.
“Huh.
Sounds kind of strange, but I guess it’s not too bad.”
Vegeta’s right eye let let out a sharp, angry twitch at the casual chatter.
Kallard let let out a long sigh, adjusting his white gloves.
“I completely forgot how you are.”
Goku looked over, genuine confusion on his face.
“How I am?”
“You’ve been back in the living timeline for less than five minutes, and your mouth is already annoying the single most dangerous piece of royalty left in the galaxy,” Kallard grunted.
Goku managed a tiny, serious line of a smile.
“Guess I just have a habit of doing that.”
Vegeta’s face turned completely dark, his arms uncoiling from his chest as his posture shifted into something heavy.
“Do you two low-class failures honestly think this shootout is a game for your amusement?”
Goku dropped his torso low into his foundational horse stance, his hands open and steady.
“No,” he said flatly.
“It’s not.”
The very air inside the basin changed the moment his boots settled.
He wasn’t flaring his energy wildly, and he wasn’t wasting a single spark of his potential to make a show for the cameras.
He was just packing his current tight, anchoring his weight into the dirt.
Kallard mirrored his movement instantly, dropping his hips three inches lower, his bare scarred arms loose and ready, his palms open in his baseline brawler brace.
His own energy stayed folded tight inside his skin plates, not hidden enough to trigger a scouter lie, but not loose enough to leak into the wind.
The machines were out of the equation now.
Vegeta’s face computer was gone, and Nappa had crushed his own before he died.
Numbers didn’t matter anymore.
Now, they were going to feel the real mass of the text the proper way.
## Act II: Red and Green
Vegeta uncrossed his arms, his white gloves dropping down to his side sashes.
“You both carry the blood.
You both know exactly how a conversation with royalty closes.”
Kallard kept his green visor locked onto the prince’s pupils.
“With you leaving this rock inside a rusty metal pod, maybe?”
Goku cut a quick, highly amused glance toward his flank.
“Man, that was a remarkably specific guess, Kallard.”
“Call it an optimistic business projection,” the hybrid muttered.
Vegeta split his mouth into a sharp, freezing line of a smile under the sun.
“I am going to take an immense amount of personal pleasure in caving that arrogant mouth straight through your skull, runaway.”
He vanished from the slot.
The solid yellow clay exploded into a cloud of pulverized dust where his boots had been standing a fraction of a millisecond earlier.
Vegeta materialized directly in front of Goku first, because his royal pride demanded he immediately test the limits of the bloodline turncoat.
His heavy white boot plate drove upward like an artillery shell aimed directly at Goku’s rib cage.
Goku anticipated the line, crossing both of his forearms in a rapid defensive block to catch the kinetic mass of the strike.
The impact let out a deafening *CRACK* that rattled the teeth of the fighters watching from the ridge.
A massive wave of red dust burst outward from their boots as Goku’s soles slid backward half a meter through the clay, his teeth gritted from the pressure.
Vegeta’s dark eyes narrowed by a fraction of an inch, a tiny spark of genuine surprise clearing his face for a split second.
Kallard closed the distance from the prince’s blind right flank.
He didn’t release a plasma shot; he went for a blunt body strike.
His heavy fist drove straight toward Vegeta’s exposed side ribs with the absolute totality of his muscle mass.
Vegeta executed a high-speed axial twist mid-air, his white glove launching out to catch Kallard’s knuckles straight inside his open palm.
The sheer raw force of the blocked punch still carried enough kinetic displacement to shove the prince ten feet sideways, his leather boots carving a jagged track through the stone grates.
Goku stepped back into the center lane instantly, striking high with a blurring left hook.
Vegeta ducked his head low beneath the punch, utilized Kallard’s trapped hand as a solid pivot platform to swing his weight, and manual-released a powerful double spinning kick that caught both full-blooded warriors straight across their chest guards, sending them sliding back.
Goku executed a clean backward flip through the dust, landing light onto the balls of his feet.
Kallard skidded ten yards through the yellow sand, his white glove scraping against the clay floorboards to break his momentum.
Vegeta dropped back down between their positions, his blue hair spikes perfectly still, his cold smile widening.
“A hell of a lot better than the local mud insects, failures.
At least your containers don’t break on the first touch.”
Goku rubbed the bare skin of his forearm, his dark pupils fixed on the enemy.
“He’s strong, Kallard.
Really strong.”
Kallard stood back up to his full vertical height, his tail lashing a slow circle behind his hips.
“Base to base, his power level is sitting significantly higher than both of our sheets combined, brother.
He’s caked in elite military specs.”
Goku managed a firm nod, his boots shifting mass.
“Then it’s a good thing we don’t have to fight him inside our base forms, is it?”
Vegeta overheard the syllable, his aristocratic laugh clearing his throat.
“Oh?
The dead clown carries a handful of hidden tricks from his travels, does he?
Show my eyes the data.”
Goku’s chest cage expanded, a massive wave of heat flaring out from his ribs.
“Kaioken!”
An absolute conflagration of solid red kinetic energy violently snapped and roared around his orange uniform like a sheet of living, crackling fire.
His raw power level numbers doubled in less than a hundredth of a millisecond of a system pass, the massive spiritual pressure slamming across the valley walls like a physical hammer.
Krillin’s dark pupils dilated into wide circles from his ridge clearing.
“What…
what is that?
His energy just threw a whole new gear!”
Piccolo grunted low through his teeth, his arms crossing tighter over his torn cape.
“It’s a multiplier technique, you idiot.
He’s compressing his cell output.”
Kallard felt the real density of the red flame clearing the field.
Goku at a clean Kaioken times two was rising straight up to the **18,000** unit marker on the spreadsheet.
He was officially matching Vegeta’s baseline strength line-for-line.
The very air surrounding Goku’s hair spikes was vibrating with a high-frequency distortion haze.
His muscle fibers tightened into hard iron grids, his speed parameters shifting completely out of the human brackets.
Vegeta’s cold smirk shifted into a hard, serious line of an evaluation pass.
“Kaioken,” the prince murmured, testing the foreign word behind his teeth.
“A foreign kinetic manipulation structure.
Let’s see how much pressure the skin can hold.”
Goku vanished from the dirt.
## Act III: The Prince in the Rubble
This time, the aristocratic prince was forced to manage his guard lanes with an absolute, white-knuckle tactical seriousness.
Goku materialized directly beneath his chin guard in less than a breath, his heavy fist rising in a blinding, vertical uppercut form.
Vegeta managed to throw his forearms out to catch the blow, but the massive kinetic mass of the strike violently lifted his entire four-hundred-pound frame completely off the yellow clay floorboards.
Goku followed the trajectory straight into the upper air layers, his orange body executing a fluid axial turn to drive a heavy leather boot plate straight into the center of Vegeta’s pristine green chest armor.
*BOOM.*
The prince shot horizontally straight across the length of the wasteland basin like a high-velocity artillery shell, smashing point-blank straight through a colossal, fifty-foot sandstone rock formation.
The entire ancient stone needle completely, profoundly collapsed inward with a deafening roar of falling granite and white dust clouds.
For one short, breathtaking second of the morning watch, a massive wave of pure down-to-earth human hope cleared the hearts of the surviving fighters watching from the sandstone ridges.
They thought the crown had hit the dirt.
Then, the prince Vegeta violently burst straight out from the center of the granite rubble pile, his blue hair spikes covered in white rock dust, his aristocratic face twisted into a terrifying mask of pure royal fury.
Goku met his charge mid-air.
Their fists transformed into an absolute blur of high-velocity kinetic geometry, each individual collision cracking through the quiet canyon walls like a heavy line of thunder clearing a ridge.
Red ancestral aura clashed violently against the white-blue spark of the prince’s imperial ki current.
Goku’s movements were beautifully fluid, clean, and grounded—King Kai’s ten-G gravity training had turned every single defensive slip into a high-speed springboard for his muscles, converting every strike into a line of perfectly controlled momentum.
But Vegeta fought like a soldier who had spent his entire childhood biography raised in the middle of a multi-faction planetary liquidation war.
There was absolutely zero wasted motion caked behind his white gloves, and zero fear of physical impact caked inside his marrow.
He would consciously, intentionally accept a heavy punch to his mouth plates if the transaction allowed his elbow to drive a harder counter-strike straight into Goku’s ribs.
He utilized knees, shoulders, blunt headbutts, high-speed feints, and dirty spaceport brawler tactics.
He flatly didn’t fight with a beautiful martial arts style; he fought with a brutal, high-efficiency mechanical precision that wrapped twenty cycles of raw cosmic arrogance straight around a veteran infantry experience.
Kallard track the aerial exchange for three heavy seconds of the clock.
Then his boots cleared the slot.
The Flash Trigger velocity burst under his heels with a sharp concussive pop.
He materialized directly above Vegeta’s blind head crown the exact microsecond the prince manual-driven Goku backward with a heavy double palm strike.
Kallard’s heavy leather boot heel descended like a falling guillotine aimed straight at the prince’s shoulder joint casing.
Vegeta’s veteran combat senses collected the distortion wave along his flank on the fly.
He spun his torso forty-five degrees mid-air, throwing his left forearm guard up to catch the descending heel plate with a loud metallic *thud*.
Kallard utilized the prince’s rigid block explicitly as a solid physical launching platform, violently pushing his toes off the white glove armor to clear the airspace while simultaneously manual-engaging his open palms downward.
“Starfall…
Cannon!”
Six high-density, superheated green ki bolts violently erupted downward from his fingers at point-blank range.
Vegeta managed to slip his body past two of the shots, slapped the third bolt aside with a backhand glove strike, took the fourth round straight across his right shoulder armor plating, and was forced to cross both of his forearms in a tight defensive brace to absorb the direct kinetic impact of the final two rounds.
The continuous concussive mass of the green explosions violently drove his vertical frame straight back down toward the yellow clay dirt.
Goku was already waiting caked inside the bottom slot.
He cupped his open palms tightly together near his right hip sash, his valves opening wide.
“Kamehameha!”
An absolute, colossal column of blinding blue kinetic fire violently erupted upward from his fingers, lighting up the entire basin.
Vegeta let out a savage military snarl, his body executing a frantic twist to clear the centerline rail—but the massive blue beam still caught the entire left side of his torso guard, carrying his physical frame three hundred feet straight up into the upper cloud decks before detonating against a high granite cliff face in a massive blue-white conflagration of pulverized stone and fire cells.
Goku dropped his boots back down onto the yellow clay right alongside Kallard’s flank, his chest plates rising and falling in deep, ragged plummets as the red aura flickered around his sashes.
“Man…
your…
your combat timing is absolutely incredible, bandana guy.
You clear the slots perfectly.”
Kallard didn’t remove his green visor lens from the rising black smoke cloud for a single millisecond of the watch.
“It’s a hell of a lot easier to run a synchronized combat plan with a martial arts genius like you than the generic squad trash I had to manage out in the rim ports, Kakarot.
Your footwork doesn’t block my lanes.”
Goku split his face into a wide, cheerful brawler grin through his sweat smudges.
“Thanks for the validation, brother.”
“That flatly was *not* intended to be an entirely clean piece of a personal compliment across your desk, you crazy orange idiot,” Kallard growled out low.
“Still entering the digits onto my sheet anyway,” Goku laughed out brightly.
“Of course you are,” the hybrid sighed.
## Act IV: The True Column
Then the prince Vegeta’s active power level numbers let out a sudden, monstrous spike that caused the very stones beneath their feet to crack.
The thick black charcoal smoke cloud along the upper cliff face was violently torn apart into loose threads.
Vegeta stood vertical right inside the shattered granite niche, his pristine imperial combat armor plating completely fractured and split open across his left shoulder guard, a steady stream of dark red blood cells marking the corner of his aristocratic mouth.
His expression was no longer amused, and his pupils carried none of his old royal derision.
The mask had dropped.
Good.
They officially held his absolute, unblinked tactical attention now.
“You,” Vegeta whispered out low, his voice a freezing sheet of iron that cleared the frequency, his dark pupils tracking Kallard’s visor first before switching his lock onto Goku’s face.
“You two low-class failures…
are consciously, intentionally executing your combat forms as a synchronized paired unit.”
Goku frowned his brow ridges, his hands remaining in his horse stance.
“Yeah?
That’s how a real crew holds a lane down here, prince.
What about the layout?”
The prince’s aristocratic lower lip curled into a deep, venomous line of pure systemic malice.
“An ancestral Saiyan infantry warrior flatly, non-negotiably *never* coordinates his knuckles with a partner to clear a brawler invoice, Kakarot.
The lineage demands a solo execution.
Your forms are running a fraudulent code.”
Kallard took a slow step forward into the sand lane, his bare scarred arms loose.
“Maybe that specific category of an arrogant, solo military manual…
is precisely the reason why our entire home planet turned into a cloud of space rubble forty cycles ago, prince.
Maybe your old royal books are out of print.
There aren’t exactly many columns left standing to enforce the rules.”
The entire ruined wasteland basin went completely, profoundly dead cold in less than a breath of the gale.
Vegeta’s imperial aura violently erupted out from his skin plates.
It flatly wasn’t a wild, unrefined theatrical flare like the brute Nappa had unleashed to terrify the local humans—it was a concentrated, razor-sharp column of solid white-blue current that rose five hundred feet straight into the upper sky layers, fracturing the yellow clay bedrock beneath his white boots in a perfect, geometric ten-foot circle.
Massive three-ton sandstone boulders were lifted completely off the ground by the sheer raw atmospheric displacement of his presence.
The outward kinetic pressure wave slammed so violently across the sand lane that Krillin was forced to drop his entire human frame flat over the boy Gohan’s body to keep his container from being hurled into the cliffs.
Bulma Briefs’ strained, high-pressure voice cleared the wireless headset Net from her buried command outpost, her fingers flying over her diagnostic screens.
“Kallard…
his…
his active output indicators are completely clearing the columns on my terminal face…
he’re rising significantly past the eighteen-thousand peak marker right now, Greenbean…
the software can’t find the top ceiling…”
Kallard’s dark green eyes narrowed into two tight points of focus behind his visor.
The prince had been holding back his real military spec sheet during the initial exchange.
Of course he had.
A royal crown doesn’t show its full inventory to a third-tier trainee asset on the opening round.
The prince vanished from the cliff niche.
Kallard barely managed to throw his bare scarred forearms up into a high defensive cross brace before the blow cleared his slot.
The sheer, world-shattering kinetic impact of the punch smashed straight into his arm plates with the weight of a falling mountain, violently launching his entire six-foot framework horizontally backward through the air.
Before his boots could even calculate a recovery glide, Vegeta materialized directly above his descending shoulders, his white-gloved fists locking together to drive a brutal double axe-handle strike straight into the center of his stomach guards.
*BAROOM.*
The absolute totality of the oxygen cells was violently blasted straight out of Kallard’s lungs all at once, his body hitting the hard yellow clay bedrock with a concussive force that caused his frame to bounce three feet off the ground before rolling through the dust clover.
Vegeta immediately manual-engaged his open palm downward to release a terminal plasma execution blast to close his file—
Goku intercepted the trajectory.
The brilliant red fire of his Kaioken times two carried his orange uniform straight between Kallard’s smoking armor and the descending energy shell in less than a fraction of a millisecond of a system pass.
He violently slapped the superheated plasma bolt aside with both of his open gloves, redirecting the line of fire straight down into a distant ridge where it exploded into a massive hundred-foot crater.
Vegeta materialized directly behind Goku’s blind spine sash in less than a breath.
“Drive your left elbow straight back into the slot, Kakarot!” Kallard shrieked out through his blood from the clay grates.
Goku reacted straight from his pure martial arts reflex without spending a single millisecond running a thought loop through his brain cells.
His left elbow shot violently backward along the centerline rail.
Vegeta’s heavy white-gloved fist crashed point-blank straight into the bone of the elbow instead of caving the young hero’s spinal column inward.
The resulting concussive shockwave violently blasted both full-blooded warriors fifty feet apart through the air lines.
## Act V: The Price of the Fire
Kallard rolled his broad shoulders back up onto his leather boots, a sharp burning line of deep-tissue pain cells flaring wide straight through his side ribs as he wiped a smear of dark red blood from his chin bandana.
He shot his frame forward low to the clay turf.
The prince was expecting another high-altitude defensive recovery pass.
That single tactical miscalculation bought his knuckles one clean, un-shielded line of an entry lane.
Kallard’s heavy fist smashed point-blank straight into the center of Vegeta’s pristine green abdomen plate, manual-releasing a tightly compressed, non-profit burst of his baseline ki current at the exact microsecond of physical contact.
*BOOM.*
The prince’s royal torso folded inward by two inches all at once, his dark pupils dilating wide as his breath hitched.
Goku cleared the opposite flank lane from the eastern ridge in less than a breath, launching his heavy leather boot plate straight across Vegeta’s square jaw line with a flying kick.
The prince spun violently through the air lines, caught his balance loop with a fast flare of his ki current, and manual-released a rapid, high-velocity military volley pass through both of his gloves.
Dozens of high-caliber purple-white plasma blasts completely filled the sky layers above their helmets.
“Execute a split evasive maneuver loop right now, brother!” Kallard snapped across the net.
He and Goku violently divided their trajectories through the sand dust.
The purple-white energy shells chased their footprints like a pack of trained hunting birds, Vegeta controlling the trajectory lines through both of his open white gloves with a high-speed mechanical finger tracing sequence.
One massive blast detonated within inches of Goku’s heels, the concussive displacement throwing his frame sideways into a rock pile.
A secondary plasma shell cut straight across Kallard’s left shoulder guard, vaporizing the remaining leather plate lining and caking his bare skin in a deep purple burn mark.
Kallard brought both of his hands together tightly in front of his visor, opening his valves wide.
“Static…
Buster!”
The massive green-white kinetic pulse violently erupted out from his fingers, slamming straight into the center of a dense cluster of incoming purple blasts mid-flight.
The energy wave completely disrupted their internal stability arrays on the fly, forcing three separate plasma shells to detonate early inside a massive cloud of green fire cells.
Goku tracked the visual opening through the smoke, converting the premature explosion into a perfect piece of tactical concealment for his footwork.
He burst straight through the green fire veil completely un-announced and drove his heavy right glove straight into the center of Vegeta’s face plates.
*SMACK.*
The prince’s aristocratic head violently snapped back by four inches, a fresh spray of red blood clearing his teeth.
Kallard cleared the bottom slot a fraction of a breath later, executing a rising, vertical leg sweep aimed straight at the prince’s chin guard.
Vegeta managed to cross both of his white-gloved forearms to catch the boot plate, but the combined concussive pressure of the dual assault violently drove his vertical framework higher into the upper sky layers.
Goku materialized directly above his black flame hair crown, his face turning dark as his internal valves opened to their absolute terminal limits.
“Kaioken…
times three!”
The brilliant red ancestral fire surrounding his orange uniform deepened violently into a dark, blood-crimson conflagration that caused the very air lines of the upper stratosphere to let out a series of sharp electrical pops.
His raw power level numbers surged up toward the **27,000** unit marker on the spreadsheet.
His living biological container immediately let let out a visible system scream under the immense load of the extraction.
Kallard could feel the terrifying structural stress caked into the hero’s muscle fibers from his position forty yards down—the cell walls were stretching to their absolute breaking thresholds.
It was entirely too much potential current, thrown too early into the shootout, and carrying a catastrophic line of systemic liability for his skin.
But it was remarkably, incredibly effective for the contract.
Goku hammered both of his locked gloved fists straight down onto Vegeta’s skull with a bone-shattering double-axe handle strike.
The prince crashed vertically straight back down into the yellow clay dirt of the basin with a force so completely, monstrously massive that the entire valley jumped three inches on the tracking grids.
A colossal mountain of yellow clay sand and dust completely swallowed his framework from the view.
Goku dropped his boots back down onto the turf right alongside Kallard’s flank, his teeth bared in a sharp grimace of intense physical pain as his right glove gripped his own left shoulder joint, his muscles shaking violently under the Kaioken cooldown.
“That specific multiplier loop carries an offensive amount of a biological system cost, Kakarot.
Your fibers are smoking.”
Goku managed a short, highly strained line of a brawler laugh through his teeth.
“Yep.
The old body feels like it’s full of melting lead fluid right now, brother.”
“Don’t you go overusing that trick past the three-times marker on this watch,” the hybrid commanded low.
“The machine can snap.”
“Wasn’t exactly planning on writing that entry onto the sheet, Kallard,” Goku wheezed out.
Kallard stared straight through his green tint.
“You’re lying to my receivers.”
Goku cut his dark pupils away toward the mountain.
“I was…
maybe planning to write that specific entry onto the sheet if the prince’s guard lane held out, yeah.”
“Of course you were, you crazy orange suicide asset,” the hybrid growled.
## Act VI: The Choice of the Visor
The ground right in the middle of the basin exploded outward into a fresh cloud of clay grates.
The prince Vegeta slowly, thoroughly rose his vertical frame back out from the depths of the crater clearing.
His pristine white uniform pants were completely torn to shreds, his green chest plates were fractured down to the bare metal seams, and dark red blood cells were running down across his left lip line and temple hair.
His dark pupils were exceptionally wide now—not caked in a single drop of a primitive human fear, but flaring with a royal, un-vetted system fury that had turned so completely dense it looked almost calm from the outside.
“You,” the prince breathed out low, his voice a freezing whisper that cut through their transponders.
“Both of youfailures…”
His gaze settled dead flat straight onto Goku’s orange uniform.
“A low-class, third-tier backyard clown…
utilizing some garbage category of a borrowed kinetic multiplier trick he harvested from an afterlife garbage master.”
Then his dark pupils cut sideways to lock straight into Kallard’s green visor.
“And…
and a wretched palace runaway scrapper…
pretending that his uncultured rim port knuckles have earned a permanent place above the legal authority of his prince’s crown.”
Kallard took a slow, deliberate step forward into the front slot, his thick brown tail lashing a steady wave behind his heels, his face bare.
“I manual-earned every single micro-inch of the power sitting behind my chest guards today, Vegeta.
The invoice was fully paid in the dirt.”
Vegeta’s aristocratic eye ridges burned white.
“You successfully survived the vacuum drift explicitly by running your wings away from our flag lines, failure!”
“Yes, sir, I flatly did,” Kallard said, his voice dropping into a low primal rumble caked in iron.
“I survived by running.
By hiding my tail beneath a cheap spaceport cloak for ten cycles.
By taking low-end bounty jobs that caked my throat in disgust, and violently refusing the ones that crossed my personal lines.
By trading punches with warriors who were ten times stronger than my base forms only when the contract left zero exit tracks on the map.
And…
and by consciously, intentionally choosing to learn my forms from aliens, human martial artists, corporate mechanics, old master researchers, children, cowards, heroes, and genetic monsters.”
An instantaneous, sharp line of deep emerald-green light flickered bright behind his pupils.
“I earned every single digit of the current running through my marrow today, prince.
I don’t require your royal signature to validate the spec sheet.”
Vegeta’s royal face twisted into an absolute mask of pure venomous malice.
“Pathetic low-class filth.”
Goku frowned his brow ridges.
“Hey.
Watch the vocabulary line, prince.”
Vegeta disappeared from the slot.
This time, the royal executioner targeted his trajectory straight toward Kallard’s front flank.
Not the orange hero.
The hybrid warrior had fully anticipated the selection pass.
He still barely managed to throw his bare forearms up in time to catch the opening strike of the sequence.
Vegeta’s heavy glove smashed point-blank straight into his defensive guard lane, his right elbow immediately executing a high-speed follow-up that cracked straight across Kallard’s jaw bandana, his knee driving a fraction of a millisecond later straight into his cracked rib plates.
The prince moved through the air like a sheet of pure ancestral violence caked in geometry.
Every individual blow forced Kallard’s leather boots backward through the sand clover, every block sent a wave of burning pain cells straight through his bone marrow, and every single evasive slip left his container less than a breath away from being completely broken open down the center rail.
Goku rushed his boots back into the center lane to break the combination—
Vegeta manual-released a high-velocity plasma shot straight toward his face without bothered to remove his dark pupils from Kallard’s eyes.
Goku managed to slap the blast aside with his glove, but the transaction cost his muscles half a second of a system drop.
That single half-second of a divided perimeter…
was more than enough room for the prince Vegeta to violently lock his white-gloved fingers straight around Kallard’s bare muscular throat.
“You…
you honestly believe that your pathetic human compassion makes your container different from the rest of our soldier lineage, runaway?” Vegeta hissed out low through his white teeth, his face close.
Kallard’s white-gloved fingers locked tightly around the prince’s royal wrist pins, his breath freezing.
“No, sir,” the hybrid whispered out through his teeth.
“The blood runs the same color.”
Vegeta violently driven his broad shoulders downward, smashing Kallard’s vertical frame straight back down into the hard yellow clay bedrock with a concussive force that formed a fresh five-yard crater beneath their sashes.
“What specific parameter makes your knuckles different from a slave then, palace fool?” the prince roared out.
Kallard’s dark green pupils completely, profoundly flashed into a vibrant emerald conflagration fire behind his visor lens.
“Choice, prince.
The legal right to sign my own contracts.”
The ancestral Primal Instinct well opened its iron gates deep behind his rib cage.
## Act VII: The Power Ball
He flatly didn’t release the chain to its full terminal capacity—he held the safety valves greased—but he allowed enough of the green fire to flood his cell structures to override his baseline limits.
Kallard’s active power level numbers surged past his standard 9,500 threshold, his muscle fibers expanding with a sudden influx of pure raw physical mass, his ancestral aura erupting outward in a series of jagged, high-frequency emerald waves.
An intense line of burning pain cells ripped straight down the center rail of his spinal column, but he held the green current close, compressed, and thoroughly insulated within two inches of his skin plates.
The solid yellow clay floorboards beneath his shoulder guards completely cracked outward in a perfect geometric grid.
Vegeta’s aristocratic eye lenses violently widened into wide circles of an immediate tactical surprise.
“What…
what specific category of a transformation pass is running through your cell walls?
This isn’t registered inside the royal military archives!”
Kallard answered the question explicitly by driving his heavy right fist straight into the center of Vegeta’s cracked rib plates with a tight concussive pop.
The punch violently launched the prince off his chest guards, sending his vertical frame flying forty yards back across the basin dirt clover.
Vegeta skidded his white boots heavily through the sand, crossed his arms in a frantic defensive brace, and still slid fifteen feet through solid granite stone before his weight came to a halt.
Goku dropped his boots down onto the edge of the crater clearing, his dark pupils wide with an absolute brawler marvel as he track the green light.
“Whoa…
man…
that…
that green lightning current sitting around your gloves is absolutely incredible, Kallard!
The density is completely out of bounds!”
Kallard slowly, thoroughly rose his vertical frame back up onto his leather boots, the green ancestral *Primal Instinct* fire crawling around his bare scarred arms like a network of controlled lightning wires.
“It’s called the Primal Instinct state, Kakarot.
Keep your handles closed.”
Goku looked completely excited despite the blood dripping from his shoulder sash.
“You’ve got to promise to teach my knuckles that exact script the second this shootout closes, brother!”
“No,” the hybrid said flatly.
“The architecture is entirely too dangerous for your easygoing brain cells.”
“Fair piece of data entry,” Goku grinned.
Vegeta stared straight across the width of the ruined basin clearing, his white gloves shaking with a sudden wave of an unmapped tactical uncertainty.
It flatly wasn’t a single drop of a primitive human fear caked into his lenses—not yet—but the absolute, well-vetted rules of the cosmic warrior reality he had understood since his childhood cycles had just fractured down the center rail.
Saiyan military power level architecture possessed strict, logical boundaries caked into the manual: lineage class, royal birthright, standard combat experience, Zenkai recovery boosts, the Great Ape multiplier, and elite palace training protocols.
This high-frequency emerald green fire…
was flatly, non-negotiably not registered on a single page of his books.
Kallard moved his boots.
With the controlled burst of *Primal Instinct* active along his skin plates, his physical velocity parameters were a hell of a lot faster than Vegeta’s baseline tracking droids could comfortably map through the dust.
He materialized directly in front of the prince’s nose clip in less than a breath, driving a heavy leather boot plate straight into his damaged flank.
Vegeta threw his glove out to catch the kick, but the sheer raw kinetic mass of the green fire bent his defensive guard lane inward by three inches.
Kallard immediately followed the trajectory with a sharp centerline palm strike, a heavy left elbow drive caked into his collarbone, and a brutal shoulder check that hurled the prince thirty feet backward through the stone grates.
Goku joined the offensive line at a clean Kaioken times two, his red ancestral flame blazing bright through the smoke.
Now, the aristocratic prince Vegeta was forced to manually trade strikes against two separate cosmic storms simultaneously.
Goku’s punches came clean, flowing, and caked in an absolute martial arts genius under the red pressure lines; Kallard’s strikes came heavy, jagged, and caked in pure raw deep-space survival instinct under the green fury waves.
Vegeta blocked Goku’s straight punch, ducked beneath Kallard’s left hook, manual-released a quick knee strike to send the orange hero back two paces, and successfully locked his white glove straight around Kallard’s right wrist before a follow-up strike could clear the rail.
Kallard twisted his torso violently to break the grip, but Vegeta yanked his broad shoulder guards close and delivered a brutal, blunt headbutt straight against his brow clips.
Kallard staggered back three steps, his visor flashing.
Vegeta manual-released a point-blank plasma blast straight into his chest plates.
The superheated explosion hit Kallard’s green armor guards with a loud thud, throwing his vertical frame fifty feet backward through the air lines.
Goku appeared directly behind his blind flank, caught his broad shoulders in his glove loops, and executed a rapid spinning pivot to redirect both of their landing trajectories safely back down to the yellow clay ground.
“Are your internal pulse indicators holding green, brother?
Give my ears a report.”
Kallard coughed a short plume of gray charcoal smoke from beneath his chin bandana, his teeth bared.
“No.
Every single bone behind my ribs is currently registering a level-nine failure rating, Kakarot.”
Goku split his face into a wide childhood grin.
“But your boots are still vertical onto the grass, right?”
“Yeah.
The struts are locked.”
“Then the layout is perfectly fine for a shootout,” the hero laughed.
Kallard cut his dark green eyes sideways to deliver a sharp look.
“I’m finally beginning to understand exactly why every single researcher active inside Bulma’s house runs a continuous panic loop whenever your name clears the frequency.”
Before Goku’s throat could drop a cheerful response onto the logbook, the prince Vegeta’s furious royal voice roared across the length of the wasteland basin like an artillery detonation.
“Enough!
The conversation is permanently closed!”
He shot his vertical frame straight up into the upper sky layers at terminal velocity.
High.
Completely out of bounds.
Entirely too high for a standard aerial brawler engagement.
Kallard’s stomach walls violently tightened up into a hard knot of pure tactical dread as his visor track the ascent.
*No.
Not the moon satellite.
There is zero moon body active on the orbital tracking maps today—the old master Roshi had structurally destroyed the original sat body parsecs ago.* Kallard had specifically map his long-range business models to manage the lunar risk factors; they had checked the sky lines every hour of the shift.
The moon was flatly not visible above the cloud deck.
But the prince Vegeta was an elite-tier palace officer.
Vegeta possessed the precise technical data codes to manual-generate the artificial moonlight field.
Kallard had written the warning text onto their sheets months ago across the desert campfires—but delivering a warning memo on a paper slate, and physically stopping an elite executioner from throwing the power switch…
were two completely separate categories of a business strain.
Vegeta raised his right white glove high into the upper stratosphere, opening his energy valves wide as a massive sheet of pulsing white current gathered above his fingers.
A brilliant, marble-sized sphere of pure raw artificial white light formed in his palm.
“Burst open…
and mix with the local oxygen cells, satellite!” the prince screamed out into the gale.
## Act VIII: The Great Beast Opens His Eyes
Kallard’s dark green pupils violently widened into wide circles behind his green visor tint, his throat clearing a desperate military command across the transponder net.
“Kakarot!
Launch your speeders right now!
Stop his glove before the ball ignites!”
Goku launched his vertical frame straight up into the sky lanes with a massive *Flash Trigger* surge.
Kallard mirrored his trajectory a fraction of a breath later, the green fire of his *Primal Instinct* state blazing bright around his leather boots as they sliced through the clouds.
Vegeta hurled the glowing artificial white power ball five hundred feet higher into the upper atmosphere layers.
Goku cupped his open gloves tightly together from below, his valves opening wide.
“Kamehameha!”
Kallard extended both of his bare scarred arms forward along his flank, his palms locked into the crosshairs alignment.
“Starfall…
Cannon!”
The colossal blue kinetic energy beam and six high-density green plasma shots violently tore straight upward through the air lines simultaneously, their trajectories locking onto the glowing white sphere.
The prince Vegeta materialized directly between their incoming attacks and his artificial satellite body in less than a breath, his broad arms spread wide as a monstrous, roaring line of royal cackle cleared his teeth clips.
“Do you two failures honestly believe my own hand would allow your uncultured knuckles to touch my development project today?”
He manual-released a massive, three-hundred-foot wide-area plasma blast straight downward along the centerline rail.
Goku crossed both of his forearms in a tight defensive brace as the massive energy wave slammed point-blank straight into his chest vest, his orange uniform smoking as the concussive pressure violently hurled his body back down toward the yellow clay dirt.
Kallard executed a frantic high-speed roll to the left flank lane, but the outer edge of the prince’s wide-area blast still caught his leg guards, spinning his physical frame out of control through the upper atmosphere lines.
He manual-engaged his internal brakes with a white-knuckle pull of his focus, his teeth bared as he aimed his palms back toward the glowing sphere.
It was entirely too late for the project logs.
The artificial white power ball violently bloomed wide across the upper sky layers, releasing a massive, seventeen-million zeno-unit flood of solid white blutz wave illumination that completely washed across every square millimeter of the wasteland basin.
Vegeta stared straight into the center of the white light with his dark pupils wide, his breath slowing down to a dead halt.
His thick brown furry tail uncoiled from his waist sash, lashing free into the wind.
Kallard violently turned his face shields straight away from the light source the exact microsecond the white wave hit his visor.
“Everyone active on the field!
Drop your eye lenses straight down to the dirt right now!
Do not track the satellite body!”
Piccolo violently grabbed the small child Gohan by his collar fabric, shoving the boy’s face straight down into the thick wool of his purple chest vest.
“Keep your eyelids clamped flat against my coat, brat!” the demon lord snarled out low.
“If your pupils open a single millimeter, I’ll flatten your ears myself!”
“My eyes are closed, master!
I’m not looking!” the child shrieked through his tears.
Krillin threw his entire right forearm guard up over his brow clips, dropping his knees into the sand clover.
Tien turned his chiseled stone face straight back into the shadow of a granite ridge.
Yajirobe ducked his massive physical frame completely behind the deepest corner of his sandstone boulder casing, his hands clenching his katana hilt as his teeth chattered from pure raw primal survival panic.
Goku hit the hard yellow clay dirt bedrock below, rolling through three rough cartwheels before coming to a halt, his eyes tracking the sky just long enough to understand the structural transformation opening above his head.
“Oh…
oh no.
The…
the scale is completely out of bounds.”
The prince Vegeta’s biological container began to execute its ancestral transformation loop.
His physical body mass swelled and expanded with a terrifying, monstrous velocity.
His green combat armor plates stretched and warped to handle the sudden influx of hundreds of pounds of raw muscle tissue, his bone structures cracking and snapping loudly as his skeletal framework expanded ten times its original volume.
A thick, coarse layer of dark brown animal fur violently erupted out across every square inch of his skin plates.
His aristocratic jaw line pushed forward into a long, predatory snout, his white teeth growing into a row of razor-sharp fangs.
A colossal, world-shattering roar violently exploded out from his expanding lungs, a sound so completely, monstrously loud that the very rock needles of the canyon range rattled and shook as if a local earthquake had hit the sector tracking grids.
The hundred-foot-tall Great Ape beast towered vertical above the yellow clay basin.
Massive.
Caked in coarse brown fur.
Two massive, glowing ruby-red eye lenses burning like plasma cannons through the smoke clouds.
The prince Vegeta’s smooth aristocratic voice cleared the animal’s massive jaw grates, his tone dropping into a deep, booming monstrous register that rattled their eardrums.
“Now, you low-class rim port failures,” the Great Ape growled out low, the sound vibrating through their heels.
“Kneel down before the absolute face of your royal master.”
## Act IX: The Battle of the Tail
Kallard stood vertical right at the absolute base of the giant monster’s boots, his breath coming in short, ragged rattles, the green ancestral *Primal Instinct* fire flickering weakly around his white gloves.
His own thick brown furry tail let out a sudden, violent muscular twitch beneath his waist sash as the white light of the artificial moon hit his spine.
An intense, agonizing line of pure primitive biological pressure shot straight up the center rail of his spinal column, his internal cell structures flaring with a sudden, monstrous urge to answer the ancestral call.
*Transform.*
*Answer the power ball.*
*Open the valves and become a giant beast.*
*Shatter the local container.*
“No,” his human soul whispered straight down into his teeth clips, his dark green eyes clenching shut with a white-knuckle contraction of his cerebral discipline.
*Not me.
Not inside this yard.
And flatly, non-negotiably not like a brainless genetic slave to an old empire manual.*
He violently forced his entire energy pool inward, clamping down on his internal valves with a hell of a lot more raw, unyielding discipline than he had ever been forced to execute over the entire length of the preparation year.
He was locking the furnace door from the inside.
Bulma Briefs’ frantic, terrified voice shrieked violently straight inside his ear transponder from her buried command hill.
“Kallard…
your…
your biometric graph needles are running a catastrophic spike loop on my desk…
your cell walls are expanding…
turn it off, Greenbean!”
“I’re managing the safety valves, Bulma!
The cage is holding its ground!” the hybrid growled out low through his gritted jaw.
Senior technician Brakka manual-engaged his secondary microphone line from the upper cloud deck, his titanium joints whirring.
“Kid!
Listen to my throat clips!
Your tail marrow is throwing a heat wave across my diagnostic sensors!
Drop your mass low to the turf!”
“I know exactly where my limb is sitting, old man!
Keep your fingers locked onto the rail guns!” Kallard spat out through his teeth.
The Great Ape Vegeta’s massive white boot plate descended from the sky layers like a falling house block.
Kallard violently shoved Goku’s orange body thirty feet sideways through the sand lane before leaping his own broad framework clear of the landing zone, the colossal stomp completely caving the yellow clay bedrock inward into a cloud of loose gravel where their boots had been sitting less than a breath earlier.
The massive concussive shockwave of the foot strike violently hurled both full-blooded warriors backward through the dust clover.
Goku landed badly against a granite slab, his arm muscles still trembling and strained from the recent Kaioken cooldown loops.
Kallard hit the hard yellow clay, rolled through a fast side break, and rose back up onto his leather boots, his left white glove tightly, thoroughly clenching the very base of his own brown furry tail near his lower spine to force the genetic transformation impulse back down into the slot, his forehead covered in thick drops of salt sweat.
The giant Great Ape beast let let out a deep, mocking roar of animal amusement from his snout, his ruby eye lenses looking down.
“Look at your tattered vertical posture, runaway failure.
You stand there completely, profoundly terrified of the very genetic blood cells pumping behind your own ribs.
You’re a slave to your own fear.”
Kallard slowly, thoroughly opened his dark green pupils behind his mask, his gaze flat as an iron plate as his fingers slowly released their lock on his tail, allowing the brown limb to rest loose in the sand dust.
“I flatly, non-negotiably don’t carry a single digit of a survival fear regarding my own ancestral lineage blood today, prince,” the hybrid whispered out low, his voice caked in an absolute down-to-earth permanence.
“I’m simply the exclusive command manager responsible for signing the work orders inside this container today.
The beast doesn’t take the steering handles on my shift.”
The Great Ape Vegeta roared out an aggressive military curse through his snout and swung his colossal, fifty-foot left arm across the basin floorboards.
The massive backhand strike swept through the sand lane like a moving concrete wall.
Goku executed a high-speed vertical jump to clear the trajectory rail.
Kallard dropped his hips low, executing a sliding dash straight beneath the coarse hair of the giant leather glove arc.
Piccolo manual-released a fast pair of yellow plasma shots aimed straight at the giant’s ruby eye lenses from his ridge clearing.
Krillin followed the offensive line a fraction of a breath later, launching an independent pair of blasts from his flank.
The small energy shells struck point-blank straight against the giant’s hairy face plates, but the superheated explosions flatly did nothing more than force the hundred-foot-tall executioner to blink his eyelashes once through the smoke.
The boy Gohan remained trembled violently inside Piccolo’s left arm guard, his childhood eyes shut tightly against the wool fabric.
“Don’t you dare go opening your lenses to track the sky lines, brat!” the demon lord snarled out low.
“Keep your center anchored!”
“My eyes are closed, master!
I track the line!” the boy whimpered.
Goku dropped his boots back down onto the yellow clay right alongside Kallard’s flank, his breath ragged.
“The…
the tail limb, brother?
Is that the primary target specification for our knuckles?”
“Yeah, Kakarot,” Kallard said flatly, his green visor lens flashing.
“The tail marrow is the single absolute source of his asset multiplier.
If we clear the limb, the container snaps back to normal.”
Goku managed a short, tired line of a martial arts smile.
“The exact same biological layout my own body carried when I was a little kid running through the mountain wilderness tracks with Bulma, then.
Got the data.”
“Exactly.
Keep his eyes locked onto your uniform.”
“Opening the valve,” the hero grinned.
## Act X: The Shadow and the Blade
The colossal Great Ape Vegeta slowly, thoroughly opened his massive snout jaws wide, a terrifying, thousand-degree white-yellow current of raw kinetic energy violently gathering between his sharp fangs with a deafening industrial hum.
Kallard’s biological blood dropped ten degrees in temperature beneath his armor plates.
“Clear the slot right now, Kakarot!
The mouth rail is live!”
The giant mouth blast fired.
An absolute, hundred-foot column of solid white-yellow destruction violently carved its way straight through the center of the wasteland basin, vaporizing three-ton sandstone rock pillars into loose gray sand and instantly turning the western mountain horizon range into a sheet of smoking orange fire cells.
Goku and Kallard violently divided their trajectories through the sand dust, the colossal energy beam passing straight between their sashes with a superheated thermal wake so entirely hot it scorched the green trim clear off Kallard’s chest guards and whipped Goku’s orange gi tunic like a storm flag caught inside a tornado gale.
The massive beam struck a distant five-hundred-foot mountain range three miles back along the sector lines.
The entire ancient granite range completely, profoundly vanished into a blinding flash of white light.
Every single martial artist active inside the red sand basin frozen their boots in their slots for half a second of a system pass.
That specific category of a planetary disaster…
was the exact parameter their bare knuckles were currently forced to operate against down in the dirt.
This was flatly no longer a conversation with a martial arts brawler; it was a walking cosmic cataclysm that retained a sharp, tactical officer’s mind.
Goku clenched his gloved fists tight against his orange sash, his teeth bared.
“I’ll…
I’ll manual-engage my speeders to run a high-velocity distraction run straight in front of his snout rails, Kallard.
Keep your crosshairs active.”
Kallard cut his dark green eyes over to check his specs.
“Your biological container is already caked in deep-tissue muscle strain from the three-times multiplier loop, brother.
The fibers can’t handle another heavy blow.”
“Your own arm plates aren’t exactly running a pristine corporate profile today either, bandana guy,” Goku laughed out softly, his eyes flashing.
Let’s go pick the scrapper with the heavy sword.”
Kallard followed the exact line of his dark pupils through the sand smoke clouds.
*Yajirobe.* Still established flat against his sandstone boulder casing.
Still alive inside the slot.
Still clenching the hilt of his iron katana blade with an absolute white-knuckle grip of pure terrified discipline.
Kallard managed a tiny line of a genuine smile breaking through his lips beneath his mask.
*Of course.
The canonical shadow supervisor was sitting in the exact right coordinate slot on the map.*
He manual-opened his wireless transponder net straight onto the swordsman’s frequency.
“Yajirobe.
Clear your receivers right now.”
The heavy human fighter let out an immediate, terrified system jolt behind his stone, his voice a frantic whimper.
“Nope!
Absolutely, non-negotiably count my registration card clear off your spreadsheet today, space teacher!
I’re the official clean-up supervisor for the backyard!
I don’t sign the front-line paperwork!”
“The giant’s tail marrow, Yajirobe,” Kallard commanded flatly across the net.
“The limb is resting loose behind his heels.”
“Nope!
I refuse the task!
That thick brown furry rope is significantly broader than the entire structural roof of my mountain retreat cabin, you crazy bandana freak!
My blade doesn’t clear that spec!”
Senior staff technician Brakka violently cut straight through the secondary channel from his cloaked bridge deck, his titanium gears whirring.
“My automated plasma rail-gun lines can manual-generate a massive cloud of high-density thermal smoke grates straight around his left boot plate to cover your footprints, local fat guy!
Move your leather soles into the slot right now before my tools run an audit pass against your courage!”
Yajirobe violently pointed his katana straight up toward the empty cloud layers with an absolute professional outrage.
“You too, you four-eyed grease alien freak?
Is every single technical manager active in this company running a continuous conspiracy loop to clear my name from the living ledger today?”
Kallard said softly, his voice a low gravelly rasp caked in human heart.
“Your own mouth clips explicitly delivered a formal request to my ears three hours ago stating that your knuckles required a low-risk, high-profit contract specification to clear, supervisor.
The guard lane is wide open behind his heel.
Slide out of the shadow and sign your name to the file.”
The heavy human swordsman bared his teeth through his dirt marks, a long, ragged breath clearing his chest cage.
“I…
I deep-seatedly, absolutely hate the management layout inside this firm!
I’m filing a massive union complaint the second my boots clear this ditch!”
The giant Great Ape Vegeta lunged his hundred-foot frame straight toward Goku’s position with a massive concussive roar.
Goku manual-engaged his internal valves to find a clean Kaioken times two, his red ancestral aura flickering weakly around his sashes as he launched his vertical torso thirty feet sideways to clear the giant fist stomp.
He shot his boots straight up the coarse hair lines of Vegeta’s extended forearm rail, his high-speed velocity parameters clearing the slot in less than a breath, and drove his heavy right glove point-blank straight into the center of the giant’s left ruby eye lens.
*SMACK.*
The Great Ape beast let let out a furious, blood-chilling roar of animal agony, his massive snout swiveling around.
Kallard shot his vertical frame straight up from the opposite flank lane at terminal *Primal Instinct* speed, his green ancestral aura blazing into a bright emerald conflagration through the smoke, and released a full-power *Static Buster* pulse aimed dead flat straight into the center of the giant Saiyan’s open ear cartilage port.
The superdense green-white kinetic wave cracked sharply against the sensitive internal structure of the ear canals, causing the hundred-foot-tall monster to stagger three paces backward through the clay tiles, his balance loop breaking.
“Execute the demolition pass right now, Yajirobe!” Kallard shouted out through the white noise.
The cloaked silhouette of the *Wayfarer* decloaked for a single fraction of a millisecond of a system pass directly above the ridge, its primary lower plasma rail-gun manual-releasing a high-caliber concussive shell straight into the clay dirt within two yards of Vegeta’s left heel plate.
*BOOM.*
A colossal, hundred-foot cloud of thick yellow sand dust and superheated air violently exploded upward, completely obscuring the giant’s lower limbs and forcing his ruby eyes to track downward to calculate the spatial adjustment.
Yajirobe moved his boots.
For a heavy human brawler who spent ninety percent of his daytime cycles delivering a continuous stream of frantic domestic complaints to the wind…
his leather soles could move with an absolute, terrifying fluidness whenever pure raw prime survival terror took the steering handles behind his ribs.
He shot straight out from behind his sandstone boulder casing like an arrow clearing a bow, his iron katana blade drawn wide, his short legs running a low, high-velocity sprint straight across the broken clay grates.
The thick yellow sand smoke caked his footprints from view, and the gray exhaust noise hidden his trajectory completely.
The prince Vegeta’s thick brown furry tail was lashing a slow horizontal wave directly behind his giant heels through the dust clover—broad as an ancient oak tree trunk, its coarse brown fur bristling bright under the white light of the artificial satellite.
Yajirobe executed a desperate, high-altitude tactical jump.
For one single heartbeat of the clock, his short round human silhouette looked remarkably, incredibly small against the colossal mass of the ancestral beast.
Then his iron blade flashed under the sun glare.
*SLICER.*
The honed iron edge cleanly, systematically sliced its way straight through the center of the thick tail marrow with a sharp, fluid cracking sound.
The giant Great Ape Vegeta let let out a sudden, agonizing scream through his snout that was five times more terrifying than his combat roars—and his entire hundred-foot biological framework violently, catastrophically began to collapse inward down the center rail.
The coarse brown fur receded rapidly back down into his skin ports, his massive skeletal bone structures contracted and snapped loudly as they returned to human proportions, and his giant expanding muscle mass vanished from the spreadsheet.
The prince’s vertical body crashed heavily down into the yellow clay dirt of the basin inside a twisting, chaotic storm of falling stone debris and pulverized clay dust.
The artificial white power ball still glowed bright in the upper sky layers, but the prince Vegeta flatly no longer possessed the biological limb required to harvest the blutz waves.
The transformation pass was permanently closed.
## Act XI: The Last Invoices
Kallard landed his heavy leather combat boots hard against the stone grates, his breath coming in short, agonizing rattles as his *Primal Instinct* aura faded straight back down into his baseline spark, his bare scarred arms smoking from the friction.
Goku dropped his boots flat right alongside his flank lane, his left knee hitting the hard clay dirt with a heavy thud as his orange uniform soaked through with sweat.
Yajirobe landed his boots five yards away near a rock, his dark pupils wide as saucers, his hands shaking violently as he stared down at the smoking iron edge of his katana blade.
“I…
I manual-cleared the invoice,” the heavy swordsman whispered out small into the quiet basin.
“The…
the demolition pass was pristine.”
Kallard cut his eyes over, a genuine smirk clearing his beard.
“The registration file is verified, shadow supervisor.
Your contract labor was outstanding.”
Yajirobe instantly pointed his iron blade straight toward the hybrid’s visor lens, his throat clearing a frantic domestic roar.
“Absolutely, non-negotiably nobody active in this company has the legal right to call my account a coward across a kitchen table ever again, space teacher!
Enter that notation onto the master logs right now!”
Goku managed a weak, cheerful line of a smile through his sweat smudges.
“The…
the transaction is fully approved, brother.
Nice piece of footwork.”
The thick yellow sand smoke slowly cleared its parameters from the center of the crater basin.
The prince Vegeta slowly, thoroughly rose his tattered vertical frame back out from the depths of the clay wreckage in his ordinary human form.
Barely.
His blue hair spikes were caked in gray ash, his green chest armor guards were completely shattered clear down to his sashes, and his brown furry tail limb was entirely gone from his lower spine.
A steady stream of dark red blood cells was running a clean track down across his nose bridge and temple.
His active power level numbers had dropped flat right back down to his lowest baseline brackets—but the sheer, world-shattering humiliation caked inside his aristocratic spirit held his skeletal framework upright like a second iron skeleton behind his ribs.
His dark pupils locked dead flat straight onto Kallard’s green visor tint.
Then they switched their lock onto Goku’s orange uniform.
Then they ran a freezing pass across the remaining martial artists standing along the ridges.
Humiliation.
That specific parameter was precisely what made the prince a hell of a lot more dangerous, volatile, and thoroughly terrifying at this hour than a full-scale infantry division.
“You failures,” Vegeta whispered out low, his voice a ragged sheet of steel that shook with a monstrous royal fury.
Kallard stepped his heavy combat boots two paces forward through the red sand dust, though every single cell behind his chest guards was violently screaming for his muscles to execute a total system shutdown pass.
Goku manual-forced his own weight back up into a standing posture right alongside his elbow sash.
Vegeta’s imperial military aura violently ignited into a final, chaotic white conflagration fire around his gloves—not stable, not measured, and flatly clear of an officer’s tactical discipline.
It was the raw fury of a dying crown.
“I…
I will flatly, non-negotiably *never* allow my family’s royal name to be mocked across a backwater mud ball by a pair of third-tier, low-class infantry discard pieces of palace trash!” the prince shrieked out, his hair crown catching the sun.
Kallard’s green ancestral current let out a final, weak flicker around his bare forearms.
Goku’s red Kaioken aura sparked erratically near his sashes.
Both full-blooded warriors were deeply caked in physical trauma, and both were running near the zero marker on their oxygen tanks.
But both stood vertical in the slot.
Vegeta slowly, thoroughly raised both of his white gloves high into the air lines, a colossal, superheated purple sphere of raw kinetic energy violently gathering between his open palms.
It wasn’t the refined geometry of his standard *Galick Gun* beam yet—it was a pure, unrefined rage blast barrage, scaled wide enough to completely vaporize every single broken human fighter standing along the rear ridge lanes if the shot hit the turf.
Kallard and Goku moved their boots simultaneously along the centerline rail.
Goku cupped his open gloves tightly together near his right hip sash, his valves opening wide for the final extraction loop.
“Kame…
hame…
ha!”
Kallard extended both of his bare scarred arms forward straight in front of his visor lens, his white-gloved fingers locking into the crosshairs alignment as the ancient *Galaxy Breaker* spiral current began to rotate and screech violently between his palms.
An intense, agonizing line of pure deep-tissue pain cells violently lit up the old white branching networks of his Veyruna scars from wrist to shoulder joint.
Bulma Briefs’ tear-choked, frantic voice cracked violently straight inside his ear transponder from her console desk.
“Kallard…
stop the current…
your arm structures are going to fracture clean down the center rail…
don’t pull the switch, Greenbean!”
“The promise is already signed onto the sheet, Bulma!
Hold the handles closed!” the hybrid whispered out low into his mic, his voice caked in heart.
Vegeta let let out a monstrous, soul-shattering royal roar and hurled his purple energy ball downward along the rail.
The massive purple conflagration wave tore through the air lines like a falling star.
Goku’s colossal blue kinetic fire beam launched upward from his fingers at terminal speed.
Kallard’s green-white *Galaxy Breaker* spiral current joined the trajectory right alongside his flank lane—thinner in its volume, but a hell of a lot denser in its piercing matrix, coiling and rotating violently around the outer edges of the blue beam like an industrial drill bit wrapping around a tidal wave.
The twin colossal energy paths collided point-blank right in the middle of the basin airspace.
*FLASH.*
The entire ruined wasteland basin completely, profoundly transformed into a single blinding sheet of solid white illumination cells that burned the shadows clear off the sector maps.
Goku screamed out with the absolute maximum output threshold of his remaining human lungs, the red ancestral fire of his Kaioken flaring bright straight around his blue attack.
Kallard gritted his white teeth until his gums tasted like copper fluid, his *Primal Instinct* focus manual-forcing his output digits higher up the spreadsheet columns than his cell structures had ever recorded, his white scars burning like raw plasma wires as his bare arms shook and trembled so violently he could barely hold the beam crosshairs stable.
Together, as a single paired vanguard unit…
their knuckles pushed the column forward.
Vegeta’s purple rage blast violently buckled inward by three feet all at once.
For one single, silent breath of the midnight watch, the prince held his ground through pure raw aristocratic stubbornness and royal pride—
Then his energy arrays completely broke down the middle rail.
The combined, synchronized column of the *Kamehameha* and the *Galaxy Breaker* violently ripped straight through the center of his purple sphere, completely dissolving his fire cells, and struck his bare chest plates point-blank with the weight of a capital ship rail-gun detonation.
*BAROOM.*
The superheated explosion completely swallowed his character file from the view, a massive mountain of gray charcoal smoke rising three hundred feet straight into the upper atmosphere.
## Act XII: The Last Princes
When the blinding white light lines finally faded back down into the afternoon grayness, the prince Vegeta lay completely broken flat on his back inside the deep smoking clay crater clearing, a thin plume of black grease smoke rising lazily from his shattered armor lining.
He was alive inside his container.
Barely.
His heart rate was throwing off a microscopic flicker near the zero marker.
Kallard dropped heavily down onto a single white knee plate in the sand clover, his breath coming in shallow rattles.
Goku collapsed flat onto his back right alongside his boot sashes, a loud, ragged line of a weak brawler laugh clearing his chest guards as he stared up at the sky.
“Man…
that…
that final exchange was absolutely, incredibly good conditioning labor, bandana guy.
The muscles are completely warm.”
Kallard managed a tired, gravelly rasp through his throat bandana.
“You are a completely, profoundly insane piece of a martial arts asset, Kakarot.
The logic boards are broken.”
“Yep,” the hero laughed weakly.
Across the far western end of the ruined basin clearing, Krillin slowly, thoroughly rose his small tattered frame back up onto his leather boots from behind his sandstone rock.
His dark pupils were exceptionally hard, focused, and caked in an absolute line of an unyielding human grief as his white gloves reached down to pick up Yajirobe’s dropped iron katana blade from the grass dust.
Piccolo watched the transaction in a dead, frozen silence from his slot near the ridge.
Tien, barely standing vertical right alongside Yamcha’s smoking crater clearing, didn’t utter a single syllable of a brawler objection across the frequency today.
Gohan clutched his small fingers tightly against the demon king’s cape hem, crying quiet childhood tears into the wool.
Krillin slowly, thoroughly manual-marched his leather boots straight across the red sand basin toward the lip of the prince’s crater clearing, the iron edge of the sword dragging a thin crooked track through the dirt clover.
Goku’s short hair spikes lifted by an inch from the clay tiles, his dark pupils tracking the bald hero’s steps.
“Krillin…
hold your steering handles for a second…
let his white gloves clear the slot…”
Kallard flatly did not drop a single syllable of a brawler speech onto the logbook.
Not yet.
Because his transmigrated human soul fully registered the absolute numerical reality that this specific transaction was a hell of a lot separate from a standard grammar match across a mat.
The prince Vegeta deserved the summary biological liquidation pass.
By every single valid piece of a wartime survival law written onto the star charts, by every single down-to-earth measure of human justice, and by every accounting of the living soul cells he had systematically wiped off the asset registry logs before breakfast…
his container deserved to hit the grave today.
Kallard knew exactly what category of an imperial monster Vegeta was caked as inside the history archives.
He knew the body count caked behind his white boots.
He knew exactly what category of a cosmic disaster he might still unleash across the timeline tracks if his launch capsule cleared the atmosphere.
Krillin violently raised the iron katana blade high above his bald head crown with both of his shaking hands, his face caked in bitter tears.
Vegeta cut his dark pupils slowly up through his swollen eyelids to track the steel edge, too completely proud to drop a single syllable of a beggar’s prayer across the table grates, and too structurally broken to shift his boots an inch to clear the slot.
He signed the invoice with his eyes.
Kallard slowly, thoroughly manual-forced his tattered six-foot framework back up into a vertical standing posture on the yellow clay tiles, every single nerve cell behind his green armor plates letting out a sharp scream of deep-tissue pain as his tail dragged heavy through the sand dust.
“Krillin,” the hybrid called out softly, his voice a low gravelly brawler rasp that filled the quiet basin walls.
The small temple student violently cut his dark pupils back across his shoulder flank, his teeth bared in an absolute mask of pure human agony and grief.
“He…
he systematically manual-executed the giant Nappa right in front of our eyelashes, Kallard!
He cleared his pod coordinates down to this planet explicitly to turn our entire hometown country into a smoking black graveyard!
Chiaotzu is dead!
Yamcha is running flat zero near the grave!
Tien’s arm is split down the middle rail!”
“I know the numbers on the spreadsheet, brother,” Kallard said softly, his dark green eyes steady behind his visor.
“The data is entered.”
“Then why exactly are your mouth clips delivering my name across this ditch like a corporate warning memo, space teacher?” the bald hero shrieked out through his tears.
“Give my blade the clearance!”
Kallard looked down slowly into the depths of the smoking crater, his green visor tracking the shattered, blood-stained profile of the last prince of a dead world.
Cruel.
Arrogant as a capital ship rail gun.
Completely alone inside the galaxy charts.
Remarkably useful for the future shootout layers.
Exceptionally dangerous for a home yard to manage.
And flatly, non-negotiably still a full-blooded Saiyan warrior asset breathing oxygen down in the dirt.
Kallard deep-seatedly hated how much that single ancestral digit still mattered to his internal focus today.
Goku pushed his orange torso up onto a single elbow guard from the clay grates, his dark eyes serious.
“Let his white gloves clear the landing zone, Krillin.
Let him step back inside his capsule hatch.
I…
I want to manual-condition my knuckles to trade punches with his forms inside a real rematch loop down the line when the sky clears.”
Krillin looked completely, profoundly outraged by the easygoing warrior vanity of the request, his hands shaking against the hilt.
Kallard took a slow step closer to the crater lip, his voice dropping into a low down-to-earth register that carried zero brawler pride left hidden behind its tones.
“That specific brawler rematch dream…
is flatly, structurally not the reason my own throat is requesting the lift today, Krillin.
Let’s keep the business parameters clean.”
Every single fighter active inside the ruined basin caked their focus straight onto his face shields.
Even the prince Vegeta’s dark pupils shifted a micro-inch beneath his blood smudges to track the hybrid’s vocabulary.
“If our bare knuckles choose to execute the summary biological liquidation pass through his skin plates today, Krillin…
we systematically close out one single high-caliber threat line on our spreadsheet.
Maybe that specific choice is called a clean piece of human justice across the local courts,” Kallard whispered out low, his white glove pointing straight toward the western horizon lanes.
“But there are a hell of a lot worse categories of a genetic monster active out in the deep hyperspace lanes of the upper galaxy charts than the prince Vegeta, brother.
Things his database has been tracking for twenty cycles.
Things that are currently preparing to clear our planetary sky gates one day down the track whether his white boots are breathing oxygen or rotting inside a local clay trench line.”
The small bald hero’s grip on the iron katana blade let let out a sharp, visible tremor through the wind.
Kallard continued his explanation pass, his voice a low primal rumble caked in heart.
“And…
and to speak plain to your receivers before the watch closes…
the independent scrapper Kallard is flatly, non-negotiably not ready to watch the entire ancestral Saiyan lineage end its history files as nothing more than a collection of brainless pirate murderers and smoking corpses caked inside a backwater ditch.
I’re backing his survival slot today.
Let the capsule clear the rail.”
Vegeta’s aristocratic face twisted into an absolute mask of pure, bone-deep humiliation beneath his hair crown, a wet rattle clearing his teeth clips as he growled out low.
“Do…
do not you dare go dropping a line of your pathetic…
lower-class rim port pity onto my account…
you runaway trash…”
Kallard cut his dark green eyes down to lock straight into his pupils, his tone absolute.
“I flatly don’t carry a single micro-inch of a warrior’s pity for your broken crown today, prince.
Don’t run a fraudulent performance pass on my frequency.”
His gravelly voice hardened into a flat sheet of iron.
“I’m simply making a calculated executive corporate decision to refuse to waste your remaining military utility on a backyard trash fire today, Vegeta.
Your database still carries an operational value for the next shift.
Clear your field.”
The simple down-to-earth business logic hit the prince Vegeta’s royal pride a hell of a lot harder, deeper, and more painfully than a line of soft human pity could ever have managed to clear his filters.
His mouth snapped shut flat against his collar bone, his jaw clenching.
Krillin stared straight into Kallard’s green visor lens for three long seconds of the midnight gale, then cut his eyes over to check Goku’s easygoing smile, and finally looked down into the prince’s blood smudges.
Then, with a long, ragged human breath clearing his chest cage, he slowly and thoroughly lowered the iron katana blade back down to his knee sash.
“I…
I deep-seatedly, absolutely hate the logistics of this multi-faction corporate layout, space teacher,” the bald hero whispered out small, dropping the sword into the sand clover.
Kallard managed a short, tired nod of his head against his green collar mesh.
“Welcome to the corporate management sector, brother.
I hate the water lines perfectly fine myself.”
## Act XIII: The Pavement is Open
A remote, low-frequency high-gain electronic signal tracking beep violently began to emanate out from the smashed interior logic boards of Vegeta’s shattered chest armor guards.
His automated imperial launch capsule pod container had successfully collected the emergency homing beacon sequence on the fly, descending down from the upper cloud decks at a safe automated landing velocity to drop its heavy silver struts flat into the red sand turf ten yards away with a loud pneumatic hiss of its hydraulic seals.
The broken, blood-caked prince slowly, thoroughly began to drag his biological framework horizontally across the hard yellow clay tiles toward the open sliding airlock hatch door, every single micro-inch of physical movement pass carrying a catastrophic line of visceral physical agony that caused his teeth to bare through his blood.
Absolutely nobody active on the field step forward to offer a hand of a brawler catering to his path lane.
And flatly, non-negotiably nobody step forward to place a boot plate onto his sashes to stop the launch.
Right at the absolute threshold of the silver airlock entrance panel, the prince Vegeta slowly, thoroughly turned his black flame hair hair crown around one final time to track the front slot of the basin.
His dark pupils found Kallard’s green visor lens.
Then they switched their lock onto Kakarot’s orange uniform.
His aristocratic voice cleared his tattered throat clips with a ragged, blood-chilled hiss of pure unyielding permanence.
“This…
this pathetic line of a backwater human mercy pass your mouths have written onto my slate today…
is going to systematically cost your local defense wall every single credit caked inside your family checkbooks when my fleet returns, failures.
The invoice is running hot.”
Kallard stood perfectly vertical to his full broad-shouldered height despite the intense burning lines of the deep-tissue pain cells flaring wide up his bare scarred arms, his tail lashing a slow horizontal wave across the sand clover.
“Maybe the figures will run an error loop when the shootout opens next year, prince,” the hybrid whispered out low.
“We’ll be waiting vertical onto our heels to check the math.”
Vegeta’s aristocratic eye ridges burned with an absolute line of pure lethal imperial fury.
“I…
I will manual-condition my baseline muscle density to surpass your green transformation multiplier loops in less than three rotations of a training deck, runaway scrapper.
Mark the notation onto your spreadsheet.”
Kallard managed a single, quiet, and thoroughly grounded nod of his head against his collar mesh.
“I know your brain cells will build the muscles, prince,” he said flatly and honestly.
“The engineering is expected.”
The prince Vegeta’s royal face violently tightened up into an absolute knot of pure unadulterated system hatred at the calm, clinical manner in which the hybrid’s throat had casually validated his military capability without a single drop of a brawler panic.
He manual-slammed his white glove flat against the primary hatch locking terminal button.
The thick silver airlock door hissed shut flat against the rubber seals, the automated navigation droids instantly throwing the primary power switches to launch the iron spherical pod straight back up into the upper sky layers with a massive, roaring column of blue rocket fire that caked the desert basin in a final cloud of yellow sand dust.
The remaining fighters of the planetary defense wall stood vertical inside the dirt, their dark pupils tracking the tiny silver dot until it completely, profoundly vanished straight off the sector tracking charts into the empty velvet dark of the cosmic star lanes.
Goku let let out a long, slow breath of the desert oxygen cells and dropped his vertical frame flat back down onto his back pads in the grass dust, his arms spread wide.
“Wow…
man…
that…
that royal prince guy carries a remarkably, incredibly intense category of an operational personality profile behind his gloves, doesn’t he, Kallard?”
Kallard stared straight up into the clear blue sky layers where the entry plumes were slowly dissolving into loose threads, his voice dropping into a low gravelly brawler rasp caked in heart.
“He’re a hell of a lot worse for our family safety logs than a basic intensity descriptor can ever map onto a page, Kakarot.
The prince is an absolute professional.”
An instantaneous, clear wireless communication channel data stream violently exploded straight through the private transponder mesh caked inside his visor lining, Bulma Briefs’ down-to-earth human voice clearing the frequency with a mixture of pure tear-choked relief, corporate anger, and raw human tenderness that filled his ear canals.
“Kallard…
talk plain to my terminal receivers right now, you crazy greenbean space monkey…
give my desk a live verification scan…”
The young hybrid warrior slowly, thoroughly turned his face shields toward the direction of the western buried hill outpost miles away, a genuine, soft line of a real smile breaking straight through his bearded jaw line beneath his bandana.
For the very first time since his launch hatch had manual-opened inside the mining moon ravine ten cycles ago…
he allowed his internal mind to consciously, intentionally release the handles of his old deep-space port survival habits, taking a deep slow breath of the clean local air.
“My receivers are completely active and running on prime metrics, Bulma,” he whispered out softly into his microphone loop, his tail resting loose and quiet across the yellow clay dirt of the planet Earth.
“The contract is officially closed out for the watch.
I’re still standing vertical onto my heels in the clearing.”
“Your mouth delivered a solemn corporate promise to my desk across the workbench table three watches ago, scrapper boy,” her soft voice came back through the static gray noise, her blue eyelashes blinking behind her terminal screen.
“The records say you cleared the slot.”
Kallard closed his dark green eyelids under the morning sun glare, his heart fully warming behind his chest guards.
“Yeah, Bulma,” he said flatly and honestly, his voice caked in heart.
“The data entry is verified.
The scrapper Ronin always clears his invoices before he goes home to the kitchen.”