COOLER

I had been working on this for weeks.

Not the conversation itself — that was easy. Frieza was many things, but complicated to talk to wasn't one of them. You just had to know which buttons to push and which ones to leave alone. The trick was making it look like you weren't pushing any of them, it was a delicate balance, one I had mastered over the years.

The hard part  of it all was the timing. Every word out of my mouth right now had to serve a very specific purpose, and if I misjudged the dosage by even a fraction, the whole thing would collapse. Frieza wasn't stupid, not entirely at least. Paranoid, yes. Vain, absolutely. But stupid? No. If he sensed I was steering him, he'd dig his heels in just to spite me, that’s how infuriating my pathetic little brother was.

So, in an effort to buy more time for Escarot to prepare, I had to steer without looking like I was steering. Guide without gripping. Suggest without implying that the suggestion mattered.

"You're still thinking about it," I said, swirling my drink.

We were in one of the observation rooms on Cold Planet 81 — Father's waystations that dotted the empire like rest stops on a very long highway.

Frieza was standing by the viewport, arms crossed, staring out at nothing. He did that a lot, I believe he thought that it made him look deep and mysterious, it did not. It made him look stupid.

"I'm not thinking about anything," Frieza said without turning around. "I'm considering."

"Same thing."

"No, it isn't. Thinking implies effort. Considering implies evaluation. I am evaluating whether the former queen's little stories are worth the fuel it would take to reach Planet Vegeta and confirm them in person."

It had taken me a while, but I had managed to steer him in the right direction.

"And?"

"And I haven't decided."

That was exactly where I needed him to be. Undecided. Sitting in the gray zone where no action was being taken and no action was being ruled out. Every day he spent in this room was a day he wasn't on a ship heading toward that planet. Every day was a day for my little Saiyan wildcard to keep getting stronger.

"You know," I said, leaning against the wall with my arms folded, "there's something to be said for not acting on rumors."

Frieza's tail twitched. "Is there?"

"There really is. Consider the optics. You receive a message from a deposed queen — a woman with every reason to lie, every reason to exaggerate, and absolutely nothing left to lose — and your immediate response is to drop everything and investigate personally. That doesn't look like strength, Frieza. In fact, it paints you in a weak image, little brother."

I let that sit for a moment. 

Frieza still hadn't turned around, but his tail had stopped twitching. That meant he was listening. I knew my little brother well, and when Frieza went still like that, it meant you'd gotten past the surface and touched something he actually cared about.

"The Saiyans are your subjects," I continued, keeping my voice even. "They answer to you. If there's a problem with them, you handle it through the chain of command. Send an inspector. Send a squad. Send someone expendable. You don't go yourself. That's what underlings are for."

"You're telling me how to manage my own people."

"I'm telling you how it looks from the outside. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"There is. One implies you need help. The other implies you have a perspective that others lack. I'm offering perspective, brother. Take it or leave it."

Frieza's reflection in the viewport glass was perfectly still. I could see his expression — flat, unreadable, the mask he wore when he was doing math in his head.

Then he turned around, and the mask slipped just enough for me to see what was underneath.

Boredom.

"I don't care about the Saiyans, Cooler," he said. "I want you to understand that. Truly, genuinely understand it. I do not care about them. They are loud, they are inefficient, they cause more collateral damage on a single mission than most of my other races cause in a year. If I could replace them tomorrow with a species that could follow basic instructions without destroying the terrain, I would do it in a heartbeat and sleep soundly that night."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I was told they might be hiding something from me, and I wanted father to witness their demise." His eyes narrowed. Just slightly. "I do not enjoy being lied to, Cooler. I don't care about the monkeys themselves, but I care about the principle. If my subjects are keeping secrets, that's a problem with my authority, not with them. And problems with my authority get solved. One way or another."

So there it was. It wasn't about the Saiyans. It was never about the Saiyans. It was about the insult. The idea that someone — anyone — had looked Lord Frieza in the face and deceived him. That was what kept him up at night. Not the threat, not the rebellion, not the power hiding in the ranks. 

The disrespect.

How utterly pathetic you are, little brother. I can’t wait for Escarot to kill you, and if he fails… Well, I can always finish the job myself.

For all his power, he would never get rid of his biggest weakness because it was the one he'd never acknowledge. His ego was a loaded gun that anyone could fire if they knew where to point it. The former queen knew. I knew. Everyone did, which made him easy to manipulate.

"And if there's nothing there?" I asked. "If you go all the way to Planet Vegeta and find out the queen was just spinning fairy tales to stay relevant? You've wasted a trip, you've shown your hand, and every other species in your empire has just learned that a bitter ex-ruler can send you on a wild goose chase with a few well-placed lies."

Frieza's jaw tightened.

"I have already wasted a month, talking with you…" he said, and there was venom in it now. "A full month sitting on this miserable rock waiting. A month of rumors and whispers and 'did you hear what Frieza's monkeys are doing.' Do you have any idea how tedious that is?"

"I can imagine."

"No, you can't. Because you don't have subjects who forget their place. You have subjects who are too scared to open their mouths. Mine have apparently forgotten what fear tastes like, and I am—"

"Son."

Father's voice cut through the room like a blade through silk. Frieza stopped mid-sentence. I straightened off the wall.

Father stepped into the observation room, smiling.

Just who I was trying to avoid… This might complicate things. Oh well, I am not one to shy away from a challenge.

"There is no rush," he said, his void calm and measured. 

"Father," Frieza said, and his tone shifted, now with an undercurrent of something I rarely heard from him. Respect. Genuine, bone-deep respect that he reserved for exactly one person in the universe. "I was just explaining to Cooler that—"

"You were explaining nothing. You were venting. There is a difference." Father moved to the viewport, standing where Frieza had been standing moments before, and looked out at the same nothing. "Your brother is right, you know."

Well, this is new… father taking my side on something?

Frieza's eye twitched. I kept my expression neutral, which took effort.

"A rumor is a rumor," Father continued, not turning around. "It comes from nowhere, it goes nowhere, and it only has the power you give it. Right now, you are giving it quite a lot of power."

"It's not just a rumor, Father. The former queen—"

"Is a scorned little ant who lost her throne and is trying to stay relevant by whispering poison in the dark." Father said it without inflection. A statement of fact, nothing more. "I've seen a thousand like her. They're all the same. Strip away the title, strip away the power, and what's left is a small, bitter creature that would rather burn everything down than accept that nobody is looking at them anymore."

"She was credible enough to—"

"To what? To make you sit on my planet for a month? To make you have this conversation with your brother for the fourth time?" Father finally turned, smiling. "She's already won, son. Not by actually doing anything, but by making you react. Every day you spend here, stewing over what the monkeys might or might not be doing, is a day she's still in your head. That's her revenge. That's all she has left."

The room was quiet. Frieza stood perfectly still, and I could see the gears turning behind his eyes. He didn't like being told he'd been played. He especially didn't like being told he'd been played by someone he'd already dismissed as beneath him.

"So what do you suggest?" Frieza asked, and the fact that he was asking said everything. He wouldn't ask me. He'd argue with me. But he'd ask Father.

To think Father would play into my own hand, how amusing.

"Go to Planet Vegeta," Father said simply. "Visit your subjects. Look them in the eye. If you find them lacking — if you find even a whisper of the things the former queen has been spreading — then you are free to do with them as you please. They are yours, after all. Your property. Your responsibility. Your judgment to make."

Or maybe not...

"And if I find nothing?"

"Then you've wasted a short trip, and you come back, and the former queen is tortured for the rest of her life." Father shrugged — a gesture so casual it looked almost alien on a being of his stature. "Either way, the problem solves itself."

Frieza said nothing for a long moment. Then he turned to me.

"You heard him," he said flatly. "Looks like you got your way, Cooler."

"I didn't get anything," I said. "I offered perspective."

"How convenient for you."

"Isn't it?"

Frieza stared at me. I stared back. Father watched us both with the mild, detached interest of someone who has watched us clash for years, though this time he wasn’t supporting his favorite child, that was new.

"I'll leave tomorrow," Frieza said finally. "If the monkeys are hiding something, I'll find it. And if they're not..."

"Safe travels, brother."

I just bought Escarot one extra month, hopefully he will make it worthwhile.

BARDOCK

I was on the ground.

That wasn't unusual. At least not like this, I'd been on the ground plenty of times in my life. Training, combat, missions — you spent a lot of time on the ground when your job involved conquering others. It came with the territory.

This was different.

I was on the ground because a child had put me there. A cub.

Not just put me there. Folded me there. One second I was mid-charge, fist cocked, ready to test the kid's guard, and the next I was staring at the sky with my ribs screaming and my lungs full of something that might have been air but felt more like broken glass.

I tried to breathe. It didn't work well. Every inhale felt like someone was standing on my chest, and every exhale came out as a wet, ugly sound that I was grateful nobody was close enough to hear.

A shadow fell over me.

Okara stood above me, arms crossed, looking down at me with an expression that was equal parts boredom and contempt. The late afternoon sun was behind her, which should have made it hard to read her face, but there was nothing subtle about her expressions.

I knew the King’s future mate was strong… but this was ridiculous.

"You done?" she asked.

I didn't answer. I was busy trying to remember how lungs worked. They are used for breathing, right? Or is that what the heart is for?

"I said, are you done?" 

"Give me... a second," I managed.

"You've had three. That's more than enough."

She wasn't wrong. Three seconds was generous by Saiyan standards. In a real fight, I'd have been dead before the first one ended. And that was the problem. That was the thing I couldn't wrap my head around as I lay on this training ground with my vision swimming and my pride in pieces on the ground next to me.

She was a cub.

A kid. A child who, by any normal measure of Saiyan development, shouldn't have been able to touch me. I'd been fighting since before she was born. I'd killed more enemies than she'd probably seen. I had combat experience, battlefield instincts, and a power level that put me comfortably in the elite tier.

And she'd swatted me like a fly. 

She'd caught my charge, and hit me with a single strike that had turned my ribs into a bag of broken bones.

I was expecting to lose, but at least I thought I could give her a fight… or at the very least take more than one hit.

Just… What kind of training has this child endured to be this strong?

"Hey." Okara's foot nudged my side. Not hard. Just enough to be annoying. "Hey old man. You dying or what?"

"Not yet," I said.

"Shame. Would've saved time."

I coughed, sat up, and immediately wished I hadn't. The world tilted sideways for a second, then sorted itself out. 

Okara was still standing over me, tail swishing behind her. 

My ribs disagreed with basically everything about my current situation.

I got to my feet. Slowly. Carefully. Letting my body tell me what was still working and what wasn't. Left arm — fine. Right arm — fine, but the shoulder was stiff. Legs — okay. Ribs — screaming. Pride — nonexistent, I would never let Gine know I had my ass handed to me by a cub.

My team was watching from the edge of the training ground. Tora, Borgos, Shugesh, Fasha. All of them very pointedly not making eye contact with me. Smart. If any of them had so much as smirked, I'd have made them run laps around the planet until their legs fell off.

"You hit hard," I said, because it was the only thing I could think of that didn't sound like complaining.

"That was a love tap, you weakling. You're just soft."

"I'm not soft."

"Could've fooled me." Okara rolled her shoulders, popped her neck, and looked past me at the rest of the squad. "What about the rest of you? Are you done being a bunch of babies watching from afar, or are we actually going to continue? Because I've got time to kill, so what?"

Tora opened his mouth, closed it, and then looked at me. Waiting for the call.

I looked at Okara. Was she as strong as the King?

"Okara," I said.

"What."

"Are you as strong as him?"

She snorted. Actually snorted, like I'd just said something funny. Not a laugh — a sharp, dismissive exhale through her nose that carried about as much respect as a slap to the face.

"Don't be stupid," she said. "I'm the closest one to him in strength here. That's it. Closest. The gap between me and the next strongest Saiyan on this planet is a canyon. But the gap between me and that bastard?" She shook her head slowly. "That's something else entirely. He's not just ahead of me. He's in a different place. A place I can see but can't reach yet, but I will… eventually."

She said it matter-of-factly. No jealousy. No self-pity. Just a blunt assessment of the distance between where she was and where he was.

It was, somehow, more humbling than getting hit.

"Alright," I said, rolling my shoulders and ignoring the protest from my ribs. "Let's continue, and this time my team will join us."

"Good," she said. "Because I was just getting warmed up."