The dizziness from the warped space had barely faded when a choking stench of sulfur slammed into everyone's noses.
The distorted light settled.
Their feet touched solid ground once more.
This was no longer the lush, vibrant paradise of New Namek.
It was a gray wasteland steeped in death.
Dende stumbled forward, nearly falling.
His wide eyes, so accustomed to searching for fresh water and healing herbs, opened in horror as they took in the scene before him.
Gray.
Nothing but endless gray.
The once-glorious West City had become nothing more than the massive corpse of a concrete jungle.
Collapsed highways twisted toward the sky like the exposed spine of a fallen beast.
Skyscrapers had been sliced clean in half.
Their exposed steel beams wailed beneath the howling wind like countless restless spirits crying out in agony.
The ground lay buried beneath a thick layer of dust.
It was the pulverized remains of countless buildings, mixed with dried blood and black stains of spilled oil.
"This..."
"This is Earth?"
Dende's voice trembled as his small green fingers tightly gripped his robe.
As a Namekian, his sensitivity to life energy far surpassed that of ordinary beings.
On New Namek, he could close his eyes and hear plants stretching toward the sun.
He could feel the pulse of flowing rivers beneath the earth.
But here...
He heard only silence.
The planet itself was crying.
Its life force flickered like the last candle in a violent storm, ready to vanish at any moment.
"It's... so terrible..."
Dende whispered.
Tears welled in his eyes.
He took a single step forward.
Crunch.
Looking down, he saw that he had stepped on a dirt-covered teddy bear.
Only half of its head remained.
The other half had been burned black.
Its empty button eye seemed to stare endlessly at this hopeless world.
The sight instantly brought back memories.
He remembered what Planet Namek had looked like when Frieza's army invaded.
Their villages had burned.
His people had been slaughtered.
The air had carried this same nauseating smell of scorched flesh and ash.
The lingering scent left behind when life itself had been violently erased.
Yet somehow...
This Earth felt even more hopeless.
Frieza had massacred people to obtain the Dragon Balls.
His cruelty had a purpose.
But this world...
It had been destroyed simply for the sake of destruction.
"I can't sense any life..."
Dende's antennae drooped weakly.
His senses spread throughout the ruined city.
Nothing answered.
Nothing.
"Did..."
"Did the hundreds of thousands of people who lived here..."
"All disappear?"
Trunks quietly walked over and knelt beside him.
He gently picked up the broken teddy bear and brushed away the dust.
"Yes."
His voice was hoarse.
"This used to be an amusement park."
"Android 17 thought the screams from the roller coaster weren't exciting enough."
"So he blew up the tracks."
"They were packed with people."
Dende shuddered violently.
His stomach churned.
He slowly lifted his head toward the ruined Capsule Corporation tower in the distance.
Bathed in the dying light of sunset, the once-proud symbol of Earth's greatest technology now resembled nothing more than a gigantic gravestone.
"How..."
"How could it become like this..."
Dende covered his mouth as tears finally streamed down his cheeks.
"What about this world's Guardian?"
"Why didn't they protect everyone?"
"The Guardian died."
Piccolo's cold voice echoed across the ruins.
Standing atop a shattered boulder, his cape fluttered in the wind.
"When I died, Kami vanished with me."
"No Dragon Balls."
"No miracles."
"Only the survival of the strongest."
Dende looked at Piccolo's stern face.
His heart tightened.
At that moment...
He finally understood why the Grand Elder had sent him here.
This wasn't merely about creating new Dragon Balls.
This world itself was broken.
And so were the hearts of its people.
They needed more than the resurrection of the dead.
They needed hope.
Someone who could tell them...
"The nightmare is over."
"I'll save them."
Dende wiped away his tears.
Though his small body still trembled, his eyes became resolute.
"I'll restore this world."
"I'll bring it back to what it once was."
Krillin walked over and gently ruffled Dende's head.
"That's the spirit."
He grinned, though even his smile carried a trace of heaviness.
"But before that, we need to find you a proper place to work."
"You can't exactly rebuild the Dragon Balls in the middle of a pile of rubble."
"We should head to the shelter."
Trunks stood up.
He carefully placed the battered teddy bear atop a clean stone.
"My mom is there."
"We have equipment."
"And the remaining survivors."
The group began making their way through the ruins.
The devastation only became more horrifying as they traveled.
Abandoned tanks had long since rusted into useless scrap metal.
Storefront windows had been shattered.
Everything valuable inside had already been looted years ago.
Every now and then, bleached skeletons could be seen beneath collapsed rubble.
Frozen forever in the posture of people trying desperately to escape.
With every step Dende took...
His heart grew heavier.
He passed the ruins of an elementary school.
A cracked blackboard still clung to a crumbling wall.
An unfinished math problem remained written in faded chalk.
The chalk dust had long since disappeared.
Only shattered desks and chairs remained, broken apart by the force of explosions.
This had been a place where children learned.
Where children laughed.
Where they should have been running beneath the sunshine.
Where were those children now?
Were they hiding beneath the earth, barely surviving?
Or had they already become dust?
A responsibility unlike anything Dende had ever known ignited inside his small chest.
I am the Guardian.
Starting today...
I am this planet's Guardian.
I will never allow this hell to continue.
"Hey, Vegeta."
Krillin suddenly glanced back at Vegeta, who had remained at the very rear of the group with an unusually dark expression.
"If you really don't want to see Bulma..."
"You can still turn around."
"I've already memorized the Instant Transmission coordinates."
"I can send you back to our timeline afterward."
Vegeta snorted.
With his arms crossed, he deliberately looked away.
Tsundere.
Krillin muttered the word quietly under his breath.
"We're almost there."
Trunks pointed toward what looked like an ordinary field of ruins.
"The entrance is underneath."
He walked over to a massive slab of cracked concrete.
After knocking on it several times in a precise rhythm...
Clank...
The ground trembled softly.
The enormous slab slowly slid aside, revealing a deep metal passageway.
A stale draft rushed upward.
It carried the mixed smell of engine oil, disinfectant, damp concrete, and the mustiness of an underground bunker.
"We're here."
Trunks turned around.
For the first time since returning to Earth, a genuine smile appeared on his face.
"Welcome..."
"To humanity's last fortress."
Dende took a deep breath.
With his short legs moving determinedly, he became the first to step inside.
He knew...
Deep within this dark underground refuge...
Lay the hope that could rebuild the world.
And he would be the one to light that first spark.
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