Cooler

I… was alive?

I forced my eyes open, trying to get my bearings. Everything was blurred by a thick, green haze, from what I could see… sub-dermal needles poked at my arms, and a respirator mask pressed hard against my face. My chest felt tight, and my body hurt… a lot… I couldn't move at all. 

The sheer exhaustion pinning me to the floor of the tank was infuriating. But not as infuriating as… that little girl.

Okara.

The name snapped my mind into focus with rage, instantly burning away the lingering fog of the sedatives. That worm had bested me… she hadn't beaten me with superior strength; no… she had outsmarted me. She used my own arrogance against me, baiting me into a calculated blind spot before deploying her… strategy, catching me completely off guard. As much as I hated that monkey, I had to admit, it was a flawless tactical maneuver. 

She had won, of that… there was no doubt, and yet… I was alive. That didn’t make sense. Saiyans weren’t merciful, that was a trait we shared, so I knew for a fact that Okara wouldn’t have spared me out of pity; or mercy, she wasn't that foolish. If I was breathing, it meant she either thought her last attack had finished the job, or after it, she couldn’t confirm it had…

I blinked against the stinging fluid, forcing my eyes to adjust to the light outside the glass. Despite my condition hurting my eyesight, I could recognize the area… The layout of the primary diagnostic monitors. It was the high-tier rejuvenation chamber of my own command dreadnought.

So they didn’t kill my crew after they defeated me? How… utterly stupid of them.

If my ship was still intact and sitting in orbit, then my forces hadn't scattered like cowards the moment I was defeated. More importantly, someone had actually gone back, risked crossing paths with the Saiyans, and dragged my broken body out of the danger.

…

 All of this… had been a miscalculation. A massive, uncharacteristic tactical error from my part.

I had played the long game for as long as I could remember. I had bided my time, maintaining my borders, building my forces, and watching from the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to… kill my father and little brother to take what was mine.

And when the chance came, when my dreams were finally here, and they were eliminated by Escarot’s hand, like a fool I had let it get the best of me.

The sudden realization of my dreams… triggered an stupid impulse, a stupid need to assert my dominance, to prove definitively that I was the superior heir to the empire, like a fool… like my father and brother, I had allowed my emotions to dictate my moves. I rushed into the Saiyan territory, blinded by the desire to crush them before they could solidify their power, before they could strike me, completely forsaking the meticulous patience that had kept me alive while the rest of my bloodline fell.

In a twisted way, I owed those Saiyans a debt of gratitude. They had handed me a humiliating defeat, yes, but they had also shattered the dangerous illusion of my own absolute superiority. They had exposed the foolishness I thought I was immune to; the very same arrogant flaw that had doomed my father and brother.

Dr. Gero

These aliens… were fascinating and terrifying in equal measure.

The alien woman…. who I was pretty certain was the weakest amongst the group, was leagues above what should be humanly possible. 

For years, my benchmarks for the absolute peak of human power were based on Muten Roshi. A great part of my research to eventually create the perfect android was based on him, and his many achievements, and for years, I have meticulously analyzed the "God of Martial Arts" and the theoretical maximum power output he could have… I built my calculations around the belief that Roshi represented the absolute ceiling of what a living organism could ever achieve. 

I was clearly wrong. 

This woman... was performing far, far beyond my calculations for Roshi. And she did so without an ounce of strain.

And then there was her partner… the man eating beside her at the gala.

The scan data retrieved by the army painted an even more alarming picture. His structural composition defied conventional biology by a massive margin. The cellular density of his muscle tissue was beyond staggering; revealing an exponentially tightly packed structure similar to humans but built for combat, allowing for absurd kinetic energy transfer without internal rupture.

Such anatomical efficiency implied two terrifying realities, one… these aliens, despite being so similar to us at a first glance, came from a hellish environment, and two they possessed an innate biological threshold that made standard human physiology look utterly trivial and obsolete.

My future android models could not merely aim to surpass human biology, not with them in the picture … no… they needed to be more, they synthetic tissue matrixes capable of mimicking this extreme cellular density, paired with better energy reactors to surpass these alien anomalies.

“Well… so much for field testing the prototype within the next year,” Vomi sighed, snapping me out of my train of thought.

The prototype or Android 1, as it was right now, after all, it was a tool designed to fight and defeat humans, a rudimentary proof of concept that lacked the raw output needed to overcome these monsters. It wouldn’t survive a day on the field with them in the picture.

“I am aware,” I sighed, it seems we were back to the drawing board.

Though… perhaps this little set-back was a hidden blessing. If I could successfully engineer my creations to adapt to and surpass these alien anomalies, then no force in this world, or beyond, would ever be capable of stopping them. Though... I can appreciate the fact that the presence of these aliens had forced Commander Red to adopt a far more cautious approach unlike his usual approach to things, which has inadvertently granted me the extra time needed to perfect my creations.

Tights

After my interview with Escarot wrapped up, I decided to treat him to something nice. After all, he had patiently humored all my questions, and I liked to think of myself as a rather excellent host. So… naturally, I took him on a picnic.

"I have a question?" I asked, realizing that after an hour and a half of asking him things, I forgot to ask him the most important thing. "How do you actually do all that stuff? The flying, the glowing aura... the literally blowing up mountains and stuff? What is it, exactly? Is that like an alien superpower?"

Escarot looked up from a half-eaten sandwich. "Not really, that’s just Ki. It’s the latent energy that exists within every living being as far as I’m aware."

“Ki… like chakra and stuff?” I asked, tilting my head. That sounded a lot like what some of the girls in my class talk about, but they didn't seem like the type to have powers and stuff.

He held up a hand, palm up, and I watched in absolute fascination, might I add, as a small orb of brilliant blue light materialized above his hand, humming with a faint sound that loosely reminded me of the sounds in my dad’s lab. "Most people let it leak out of them passively, or never awaken the ability to use, but with enough training, anyone can harness it."

He closed his hand, and the light vanished instantly.

"Wow," I breathed, finding myself completely captivated, before I looked down at my own hands, turning them over. "Can... anyone really do it? Could I do it?"

Escarot let out a sharp chuckle, a playful, skeptical glint returning to his eyes. "Earthlings have the capacity, sure, I know a few that already can, but it takes years of brutal training to do so. It's not exactly a weekend hobby."

"Oh, come on, Your Majesty," I teased, nudging his knee with my foot. "You're this brilliant almighty king, right? A master tactician? The strongest there is? Give me a crash course. Unless you're just a terrible teacher."

"Are you really playing at my ego?" he raised an eyebrow, his tail giving what appeared to be an amused flick in the grass.

"Maybe," I snickered.

He shook his head with a smirk, apparently deciding to humor my request me as he stood up, brushing the grass off his armor, gesturing for me to join him. Happy I had gotten my way, I stood up, smoothing down my shirt.

"Alright, pay attention," Escarot instructed, stepping right behind me to adjust my posture. 

“Ay ay captain,” I replied with a giggle.

"Now, extend your right hand," he continued, walking around me in circles. "Close your eyes. Don't try to force physical strength into your arm. Instead, find the heat in the center of your chest... Feel your pulse, and imagine pushing that warmth, that sensation down through your shoulder, past your elbow, and right into the palm of your hand."

I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath doing as I was told, and as I did, I could feel the wind rustling the high grass around us, I could feel him walking around me, and for a fleeting second, I actually felt a strange, tingling warmth building right beneath my chest.

"Good. Now, focus it into a single point at your fingertips," Escarot continued. "And... release."

I opened my eyes and sharply snapped my palm forward, mimicking the motions I’d seen the main characters in my dad’s movies do, while expecting absolutely nothing to happen. Instead, a tiny pop echoed through the quiet field, as a tiny, distinct puff of grey smoke blasted out from my palm, shooting forward about three inches before dissolving, leaving behind a tiny, leftover wisp of static electricity tickling at my fingertips.

I beamed at my accomplishment. "Oh my god... did you see that?!"

I spun around to face him, and his expression was more than priceless. The young king was staring at my hand, his dark eyes completely wide, his mouth slightly open in absolute shock. His tail was standing completely rigid behind him, completely frozen by what he had just witnessed.

"Well, well," I purred in victorious glory. "Look at that. Watch your back, Your Majesty. Give me another week, and I might beat ya."

Tight's victory pose after succesfully doing a little puff of smoke on her first try.