The first thing I knew was the cold. Then, the sound.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
It was a rhythmic, electronic chirping that pulled me from the darkness. I tried to open my eyes, but a thick, red liquid blurred my vision. I was floating. Weightless.
"Read it again," a gruff voice rumbled from outside the glass. The language was harsh, guttural, yet somehow... I understood it.
"I'm telling you, Karr. It's stabilized," a female voice replied. She sounded bored. Indifferent. "The fluctuations have stopped."
"What is it?" the man demanded, his voice tightening with expectation.
"Two."
A heavy silence filled the room, thick enough to choke on. I drifted in the suspension fluid, my tiny heart beating against my ribs.
"Two?" The man's voice rose to a shout, and I saw a blurry shadow slam a fist against the glass of my tank. The vibration rattled my bones. "Trash! A combat power of two? A cultivated Saibaman has more promise than this!"
"He is small," the woman observed, her tone clinical, as if discussing a piece of defective machinery. "His vitals are weak. He likely won't survive the weaning process."
"Then let him die," the man, Karr, spat out. "I won't waste a pod on a failure. If he dies in the tank, we flush him. If he lives... he can clean the floors."
Well, I thought, forcing my heavy eyelids apart just enough to catch flashes of alien hands floating in the red fluid. That's unfortunate.
I closed my eyes, listening to the heavy footsteps of my possible father storming out of the room.
The footsteps faded into the distance. The heavy door hissed shut, leaving me alone in the humming silence of the incubation room.
My mind drifted, grasping for a memory that felt like it belonged to someone else.
It wasn't supposed to end like this. I was just walking home from the convenience store, a plastic bag swinging in my hand. I remembered the slick pavement, the glare of headlights cutting through the downpour, and the screech of tires that came too late. There was no pain, just a blinding flash of white, and then nothing.
I expected a lot of things, but not to wake up in a jar of red pickle juice.
I replayed the conversation I had just heard. The words echoed in my mind, terrifyingly familiar.
Combat power. Saibaman. Pod.
My heart skipped a beat.
I knew those words. I knew this world.
"Dragon Ball," I thought, the realization hitting me harder than the car that had killed me. "And on Planet Vegeta, too."
I'm doomed, man...
In my previous life, this was fiction. A story about monkey-tailed warriors who shattered limits and screamed until their hair turned gold. I had watched the shows, read the manga, argued about power levels on forums. The legendary line "Goku solos" irked more than one person.
But this wasn't fiction anymore. The fluid burning my eyes was real. The malice in that man's voice Karr was real.
I was a Saiyan, the strongest warrior race in the universe.
Well, maybe not, I thought, correcting myself. Thinking about it, only Vegeta and Goku were OP.
I recalled the number the woman had read out. Two.
This was as bad of a start as Goku. Maybe worse, since I wasn't on Earth.
And if my memory of the lore was correct, this planet had an expiration date.
I tried to curl my fingers into a fist, feeling the weak resistance of the liquid. I was alive. I was here. And I was at the bottom of the food chain.
"Okay," I thought, the panic slowly hardening into resolve. "Step one: Don't get flushed."
The fluid drained away with a sickening gurgle.
The glass rose, and for the first time, the air of Planet Vegeta hit my skin. It was cold, dry. But that wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was the weight.
It hit me like a physical blow, crushing me against the metal floor of the tank. My adult mind knew this was coming, ten times Earth's gravity, but my infant body screamed in protest. My lungs felt like they were made of lead; every breath was a battle.
Two giants loomed over me.
"He's breathing," the woman said, wiping her hands on a rag stained with purple blood. This was Sela, my mother. She was a tall woman with sharp eyes and short, messy hair that looked like it had been cut with a knife rather than scissors. She wore the standard armor, but it was scuffed, lacking the polish of a soldier. She smelled of iron and raw meat, the scent of the processing plant.
"Barely," the man grunted. Karr. My father. He was massive, with a jagged scar running from his jaw to his ear, a souvenir from a battle he likely didn't win gloriously. He looked at me not with hate, but with the annoyance one might feel for a broken appliance. "What do we call it?"
He didn't say him. He said it. 'Fucking monkey bastard.'
Sela shrugged, tossing the rag into a bin. "Something simple. Something that stays on the ground."
Karr looked at me, shivering on the metal grate, unable to even lift my head. "Cress," he decided. "Like the weed that grows in the mud. Hard to kill, but not good for much else."
Cress.
I wanted to sigh, but the gravity wouldn't let me. Could be worse, I thought.
The next four years were a lesson in humility.
My parents were ghosts in my life. Karr was a Low-Class warrior who spent weeks away on "purge missions", cleaning up planets that the Elites had already conquered. When he was home, he drank cheap ale and stared at the wall, bitter about his stagnant power level.
Sela worked double shifts at the Central Meat Distribution Center. She kept me alive, throwing nutrient bars at me and ensuring I didn't die of exposure, but there were no hugs. No "good job." Just an unspoken agreement: I feed you, you don't annoy me.
Left to my own devices, I realized that if I wanted to survive past sixteen, I had to work.
While other Saiyan toddlers were already flying or breaking furniture, I was fighting just to stand up. The gravity was a constant oppressor.
My days were spent in the small, cramped living quarters of our unit in the Iron District. I started with crawling. It felt like dragging a suit of armor. By the time I was eighteen months old, I managed to take my first steps. I fell immediately, bruising my face, but I got back up.
One step. Breathe. Two steps. Breathe.
I treated walking like a workout. By the time I turned two, I could run, clumsily, and with my heart hammering against my ribs, but I could move.
Once I mastered movement, I tried to access the cheat code: Ki.
I knew the theory. I had watched Dragon Ball. It was supposed to be a pool of energy in the stomach, a warmth you could pull out.
I sat cross-legged on my thin mattress for hours, squeezing my eyes shut, trying to feel something.
"Come on," I whispered, straining until my face turned red. "Just a spark. A flicker. Anything."
Nothing.
It was infuriating. My body was a dormant battery. I tried meditation. I tried screaming quietly, so Karr wouldn't wake up, this monkey would probably beat me. I tried doing push-ups until my arms gave out, hoping exhaustion would trigger a response.
Physically, I was getting stronger. My muscles were dense, hardened by the gravity. But my energy? It was a stagnant pond. I had no idea how to tap into it. The glorious golden aura of the anime felt like a lie.
The reality check came on the morning of my fourth birthday.
There was no cake. Just Karr standing in the doorway, blocking the harsh red light of the twin suns.
"You're four," he stated, looking me up and down. I was small for my age, lean and wiry rather than bulky.
"Yes, Father," I replied. My voice was quiet, polite. Another thing they found weird about me. Well I wasn't about to act up when I could barely breathe, not that I would either way.
"You eat too much," he grumbled. "And you have no combat power to justify the expense. I'm not feeding a freeloader anymore."
He threw a bundle of grey clothes at me. Not armor, just a worker's jumpsuit.
"Get dressed," he ordered. "I found a place that takes runts. The Supply Depot in Sector 7 needs runners. You start today."
I looked at the rough fabric in my hands. A runner. An errand boy.
It wasn't the Turtle School. It wasn't King Kai's planet. But as I pulled the jumpsuit on, I clenched my fists.
It's a start.
Stepping outside was like walking into a blast furnace.
If the gravity inside the apartment was oppressive, the atmosphere of the Iron District was suffocating.
Karr didn't wait for me. He walked with long, purposeful strides, his tail swaying lazily behind him like a pendulum. I had to jog to keep up, my small boots clapping frantically against the metal grate that served as a street.
We passed rows of identikit housing blocks, rusted and stained with grime. There were no flying warriors here. No glorious ascensions or energy auras lighting up the sky. Just tired, battered Saiyans with low power levels probably in the hundreds trudging to their shifts. They looked like factory workers on Earth, just with more muscle, scar tissue, and tails.
I saw a group of older Saiyans sitting on a crate, drinking a dark, viscous liquid from metal flasks. They didn't even look up as we passed. This was the reality of the "Warrior Race". For every Vegeta destroying a planet, there were a thousand nobodies rotting in the slums.
"Keep up," Karr barked without looking back. "If you're late, they dock your pay. If they dock your pay, you don't eat."
"Understood," I wheezed, my lungs burning from the thin, polluted air.
We reached Sector 7's Supply Depot fifteen minutes later. It was a massive, cavernous hangar, the size of three football stadiums put together. The noise hit me first, a physical wall of sound. The screech of anti-gravity lifts failing, the clang of raw durasteel slamming onto concrete, and the constant, aggressive shouting of supervisors.
Mountains of crates reached up to the ceiling. I spotted some familiar tech, but it looked wrong. Ancient. There were Attack Balls, but they were pitted and scarred, clearly salvaged. There were piles of chest armor that looked heavy and unrefined.
Karr stopped in front of a Saiyan holding a bulky, rectangular datapad that looked more like a brick than a computer. The man was wide, with a bald head and a thick neck that seemed to merge directly with his shoulders. He was chewing on something that looked like a dried root, spitting purple juice onto the floor.
"This the runt?" the man asked, looking down at me.
"This is it," Karr confirmed, his voice devoid of any paternal warmth. "Name's Cress. He's weak, but he has hands."
The foreman, his nametag read Bok, snorted. He leaned down, his face uncomfortably close to mine. He smelled of old grease and stale alcohol. "Combat power?"
"Two," Karr said. He didn't even sound ashamed anymore; just bored.
Bok laughed. It was a wet, hacking sound that rattled in his chest. "Two? I've seen bacteria with more fight. Alright, Karr. I'll take him. But he stays on the ground. I catch him trying to climb the shelving, I break his legs."
"Do what you want," Karr said, turning around. He didn't say goodbye. He didn't wish me luck. He just walked away, vanishing into the smog.
Bok spat a glob of root near my boot. "Alright, Two. You see that pile of crates over there? Those are Type-4 Rangefinders. Bulky pieces of junk, but the front-line troops need them for long-distance scouting. They need to go to Loading Bay 4. Move them."
I looked at the crate. It wasn't the sleek, lightweight tech I expected. These weren't the glass eye-pieces I remembered from the show. These "Rangefinders" were massive, shoulder-mounted cameras that looked like they belonged in a 1980s newsroom, only made of dense alien alloy.
"Get moving," Bok shouted, turning his back to yell at another worker.
I walked over to the first crate, feeling the vibration of the metal floor under my feet. I was four years old. In my past life, I would be learning the alphabet. Here, I was a stevedore.
I grabbed the handles and pulled.
It didn't budge.
What?
I gritted my teeth and pulled harder. It slid an inch. The density of materials on this planet was insane. Combined with the 10x gravity, this small box weighed as much as a washing machine.
"Problem?" Bok shouted from across the bay, grinning. He was waiting for me to fail. Waiting for me to cry so he could kick me out.
"No, sir," I squeaked.
I couldn't lift it with raw strength. My back would snap like a twig. I needed an edge.
I closed my eyes for a second, tuning out the industrial roar. Think. You know martial arts theory. You can't use Ki yet. But you can use the principles. Leverage. Breath.
I widened my stance, digging my heels into the grate. I focused on my breathing.
It wasn't magic. It was biomechanics I had learned from YouTube videos in my past life, combined with the breathing techniques I'd seen in every shonen manga, and maybe some of my imagination. I synchronized my breath with the exertion.
Hup!
On the sharp exhale, I lifted. The crate came up. My knees shook violently, and sweat instantly popped out on my forehead, stinging my eyes. The weight was crushing, compressing my spine, but I was holding it.
I took a step. Then another.
Don't think about the pain. Just the rhythm. In. Out. Step. Step.
I managed to carry three crates to Bay 4 within the hour. It was grueling. My arms felt like they were on fire, the lactic acid building up faster than I could clear it. My hands were raw, the rough metal handles biting into my soft skin.
I was reaching for the fourth crate when a shadow fell over me.
"Hey. Runt."
I looked up, wiping sweat from my eyes.
Standing there was a boy, maybe seven or eight years old. He was dressed in a clean, crisp cadet uniform, likely a Mid-Class legacy or a soldier-in-training on a break. He had the classic spiky hair, wild and aggressive, and a thick brown tail that flicked impatiently behind him.
I didn't answer. I just gripped the crate, trying to lift it.
"I'm talking to you," the boy sneered. He stepped forward and kicked the crate I was holding.
The impact jarred my grip. The heavy box slipped, slamming onto my toe.
"Gah!" I stifled a scream, falling to my knees. The pain was blinding, radiating up my leg like a lightning bolt.
The boy laughed. "Look at him. Can't even hold a box. My dad said they were hiring trash to clear the backlog, but I didn't think he meant literally."
He leaned in, his eyes cold. This wasn't schoolyard bullying. This was Saiyan bullying. There was a predatory look in his eyes, the look of a creature that enjoyed hurting things smaller than itself because it was nature.
"You're clogging up the aisle," he said, his voice dripping with arrogance. "What's your power level? Five? Ten?"
I didn't look at him with anger. I didn't glare. That would get me killed. A Mid-Class brat could kill a Low-Class worker and probably just get a fine.
I looked at him with zero emotion. The same look Sela gave me. Indifference.
"Two," I whispered, forcing myself to stand up despite the throbbing in my foot.
The answer seemed to offend him more than silence. "Two?" He scoffed. "You shouldn't even exist. You're a waste of air."
Without warning, his tail lashed out like a whip.
Slap!
It struck me across the face with the force of a truncheon. The impact threw me sideways. I skidded across the metal floor, tasting copper. My cheek burned, swelling instantly.
I lay there for a second, staring at the dirty, vaulted ceiling. My instinct was to cry. To call for someone. To ask why.
But then I remembered where I was.
Cry, and you die, I told myself. Show weakness, and they finish you.
I pushed myself up. My legs were shaking, and blood trickled from my split lip. I didn't wipe it away. I just walked back to the crate.
The boy, whose name I would later learn was Taro, blinked. He seemed annoyed that I hadn't started bawling. He raised a hand, and for a terrifying second, I saw a faint purple glow gather in his palm. Ki.
He was going to blast me. Right here in the depot.
"Hey! Taro!" Bok's voice boomed across the warehouse, echoing off the metal walls. "Stop playing with the equipment! If you damage the merchandise, I'm billing your father!"
Im starting to understand Frieza. Fucking monkeys.
Taro froze. He scoffed, dissipating the energy in his hand. He shot me one last disgusted look. "Lucky trash," he muttered. "Stay out of my sight."
He turned and walked away, his tail swishing with arrogance.
I watched him go. I memorized his face. I memorized the way he walked. I memorized his name.
Taro.
I adjusted the crate, my crushed toe throbbing in time with my heartbeat. The physical pain was sharp, but the mental clarity was sharper.
That's one, I thought, letting the cold rage settle into my gut, replacing the fear. Add him to the list.
I turned back to Bay 4. I had work to do, and I wasn't going to let a bruised face stop me. This was just the warm-up.
Author's note: I don't have any other chapter planned, I wrote this because of the state of dragon ball fanfics on this site. Nox, the author of db alternative has disappeared and theres nothing to eat, so if you like this, let me know so i have the motivation to write. Next chapter scheduled for tomorrow.