With no other alternatives, Zaiko made a decision.
With a slight push that barely required any effort, he plummeted toward the surface of Planet Vampa.
He pierced through the dense atmosphere with ease and, in a matter of seconds, broke into the sky dyed in that suffocating yellowish hue, stopping dead in his tracks several hundred meters above the ground, floating in silence.
His reason for descending to such an inhospitable place? He didn't know the coordinates of Earth or any other planet that might be familiar to him, like Namek or Yardrat.
Simply put, he had no other option.
Even if Broly and his father, Paragus, were already hiding in some corner of this hostile planet... What else could he do? Fly aimlessly through the vacuum of space, wasting his time with the naive hope of accidentally stumbling upon a habitable planet with intelligent life?
That would be absolute stupidity.
Suspended in the air, Zaiko observed his surroundings and immediately noticed that the planet's terrain was extremely rugged.
His gaze scrutinized the numerous and sharp rock formations that rose around him, intertwined with vast valleys full of steep mountains.
Scattered across the desolate landscape, he managed to make out gigantic craters and stagnant lakes of murky water, of an unpleasant greenish color, many flanked by deep caves.
But it wasn't just his eyesight that was working.
He closed his eyes for a moment and let his senses sweep over the entire planet, extending far beyond what his vision could reach.
Just as he remembered, he could feel and confirm that Vampa's population was concentrated mainly in the small lakes, inside the dark caves, and at the bottom of the craters.
Countless and repulsive insectoid-like creatures that made up the base of the food chain on this planet.
A deep grimace of disgust twisted his face, wrinkling his nose at the smell of sulfur and staleness that permeated the wind.
For someone who, up until the day of his death, had lived on Earth, surrounded by cities, people, and relative tranquility, facing Planet Vampa was a harsh change; the contrast was simply too great.
But finally, the answer to one of the many questions swirling in his mind had solved itself.
As his senses expanded across Vampa, among all the wild and primitive presences he had felt on the planet, two of them had stood out overwhelmingly from the rest.
Both energy signatures emitted a peculiar resonance that felt strangely familiar. They were very similar to his own, an undeniable connection that was likely due to the Saiyan heritage now coursing through his veins.
Remembering that, in part, he was now a Saiyan, his gaze dropped to his own waist.
He observed for a few moments the long, thick brown tail, moving slightly almost with a will of its own.
"I'll still have to get used to this..." he muttered to himself, letting out a soft sigh before forcing his attention back to both presences.
Focusing on the first one, he noticed that it felt worn out, old, but undoubtedly belonging to a Saiyan, with a power level of approximately 7,000 units.
He instantly deduced that it was Colonel Paragus.
However, it struck him as somewhat strange.
If his memory didn't fail him, he clearly remembered that Paragus's official power level in the guidebooks was 4,200 units.
After thinking about it for a second, he assumed that Paragus, despite his advanced age and the fact that he was clearly no longer the proud elite warrior he was in his youth, had been forced to grow stronger due to the harsh years of extreme survival in that hellhole.
The need to stay alive against the planet's beasts had surely caused an increase in his base power, however minimal it might be.
But it was the second presence that truly caught his attention.
An immensely more powerful, monstrous, and savage force, with 5,000,000 units.
A base power of five million... he instantly knew it was the Legendary Super Saiyan, Broly.
Then, shifting his attention away from Broly, Zaiko focused on himself.
He closed his eyes, probed within himself, and couldn't help but smile, genuinely amused by the absurdity of the situation.
He really wanted to burst out laughing.
In his Base Form, actively holding back and suppressing his ki so as not to cause havoc with his mere existence, he possessed a power level of 450,000,000,000,000,000 units (four hundred and fifty quadrillion).
And what was even more terrifying, he felt that, if he let go of the reins and unleashed the maximum of his base power, the figure skyrocketed to 1,800,000,000,000,000,000 (1.8 quintillion).
And that was without transforming!
He could still transform into the mythical Super Saiyan 5!
What kind of monster had Toyotaro created in his youth?
We are talking about his base form! BASE FORM!!
He remembered that Frieza at 100% of his capacity on Namek possessed a power level of 120 million.
Doing the math, that meant that he, simply by existing and without transforming, was approximately six hundred billion times stronger than the Son Goku who had defeated Frieza on Namek.
It was a power scale so ridiculous that it defied all logic.
However, the smile on his face softened a bit, giving way to a more thoughtful expression.
"Even with all this power..." he muttered to himself, lightly clenching his fists. "If I run into Beerus right now, I probably still wouldn't even be able to defeat him."
That thought brought him crashing back to reality.
Having so much power was madness, but facing the Destruction Energy of a God of Destruction was a completely different story.
In the grand scheme of the Dragon Ball Super universe, the true insurmountable monster was still him.
Of course, not counting the Guide Angels of all the universes, the Grand Minister, and the Omni-King, Zeno-Sama.
With a small smile, he realized that the Saiyan instincts dominating this body might be starting to take over him.
Shaking his head, he stopped thinking about it and decided to get moving.
He took flight in the direction of the two energy signatures he had detected.
Since he didn't know the coordinates of Earth or any other planet with intelligent life, his only real hope was to approach Paragus.
His plan consisted of interrogating the old man about the attack pod in which baby Broly had arrived on Planet Vampa to try and extract the coordinates from its navigation computer.
If the attack pod was destroyed, there was still the option of looking for the ship that Paragus had arrived in some time later alongside Beets, a low-class Saiyan who worked as a spaceship pilot.
One of those pieces of junk had to still hold the stellar data he needed to get out of there.
As he soared through the air at a moderate speed, flying over the disgusting greenish lakes and the steep mountains, Zaiko's mind began to wander about his own existence and, more specifically, about his mother, the Western Supreme Kai, Lila.
He knew perfectly well the two sides of the coin regarding this character.
In the original story written by Akira Toriyama, the Western Supreme Kai was a pure, benevolent deity dedicated entirely to the care and balance of the universe.
She was remembered as someone cheerful, playful, and very jovial. Despite her immense divine status, she was not distant; she deeply loved mortals and the intrinsic beauty of the universe, always showing herself to be optimistic.
Unfortunately, that version met a tragic end.
She died during the devastating crusade of the evil wizard Bibidi and his fearsome "creation", Majin Buu.
When both managed to invade the Sacred World of the Supreme Kais itself, she was the first to step forward to face the monster directly.
Despite fighting with great bravery, Majin Buu's overwhelming and illogical power was too much for her. She was mercilessly killed after receiving a lethal, point-blank energy attack to the back, marking the beginning of the massacre of the creator gods that would leave Shin, the Eastern Supreme Kai, as the sole survivor.
But then there was the Lila from Dragon Ball AF, created by Toyotaro... a completely dark and twisted reinterpretation.
The main point of divergence in the plot of AF was that Lila had not died at the hands of Majin Buu.
She had barely survived the attack, left horribly wounded and on the brink of death, floating adrift in space.
Seeing herself in such a pathetic state and feeling that the other gods had abandoned her to her fate—especially developing a deep hatred and resentment toward the Eastern Supreme Kai for surviving unscathed—her mind simply broke.
She lost all her faith in the natural goodness of the universe and rejected the passive and peaceful role dictated by the rules of the Supreme Kais.
In her madness, she came to the conclusion that the universe was chaotic, weak, and flawed, and that it urgently needed to be ruled and subjugated with an iron fist by a supreme and relentless deity.
That madness drove her to commit unthinkable acts.
A fascinating, yet completely unhinged detail of the AF lore was that, in her sickly quest to conceive the ultimate warrior to rule the cosmos, Lila first approached King Cold.
In Dragon Ball AF, she was the true biological mother of Frieza and Cooler!
However, her experiment failed in her eyes. She considered them useless disappointments the very instant Frieza was humiliated and defeated by the Super Saiyan Son Goku on Planet Namek.
Seeing that a simple mortal like Goku had surpassed her greatest creation, Lila understood her mistake...
The DNA of the Frost Demons wasn't enough; the DNA of a Saiyan pushed to the limit was the true master key to creating the Ultimate Warrior.
Thus, she traveled in secret to Planet Yardrat while Goku recovered there after escaping the explosion of Namek, stole his genetic material while he slept, and combined it with her own divine blood.
From this profane genetic union, she gave birth to Zaiko, the first and only Saiyan-God hybrid.
In total contrast to her canon version, the Lila from AF was cold, sadistic, manipulative, vengeful, and supremely arrogant.
She saw Zaiko not as a son, but as her ultimate tool, the pinnacle of evolution created solely to carry out her revenge against the gods and her universal conquest.
Although she did feel a twisted and toxic "maternal love" toward him, this was strictly conditioned on Zaiko obeying her will without question.
As the wind of Vampa struck his face, Zaiko frowned, deep in thought.
Taking all of this into account... What version of Lila existed right now?
Canon Lila or AF Lila?
Considering he had been sent to the canon world, to Dragon Ball Super, he harbored the deep hope that the kind-hearted Western Supreme Kai existed, the one who loved the beauty of the universe and always wore a smile on her face.
He wanted to believe that she had simply died millions of years ago, resting in peace all this time.
But if the universe had decided to play a cruel trick on him and it was the second option lurking in the shadows...
Zaiko's red eyes suddenly sharpened.
If it was Toyotaro's twisted version, perhaps he would be forced to get rid of her with his own hands?
-----------------
Well, here ends the introduction of Zaiko, the Ultimate Warrior, and his origin story.
Not all Dragon Ball fans are familiar with Toyotaro's DB AF, which is why I decided to explain Zaiko's background in depth in these first two chapters.
I hope you enjoyed it~