ESCAROT

After a few months of training, the wait was over.

Frieza had finally arrived.

I felt him days before he reched the planet. A massive signature dropping into my range, cutting through the atmosphere, giving nothing but evil intentions.

I was standing at the main port of Planet Vegeta. Open ground, flat terrain, nothing around for miles except the landing pads and the sparse infrastructure the Saiyans used for off-world arrivals.

My heart was beating hard. Not from fear — I'd gotten past fear of Frieza a long time ago, even if my victory wasn’t certain, I wasn’t afraid of him. This was something else. Battle lust. That Saiyan instinct that crawled up your spine when you knew you were about to fight something strong. It was intoxicating and annoying in equal measure. I wanted to stay calm, stay focused, keep my head straight, after all a level head was the best approach to this, but my body was screaming at me to skip the preamble and start throwing them hands.

I took a breath, and smiled like a sadistic bastard.

The ship descended through the clouds and I got my first real look at it. It was very similar to the one I had seen him use in the anime during the namek saga, just a tad bigger.

It touched down on the largest landing pad with a thud that I felt in my feet as it made the earth tremble for a few moments before engines wound down with a low whine that faded into nothing.

Then the ramp extended, and out came the entourage.

Zarbon was the first one to come out, and shit… the bastard could be a model, he really picked the wrong career. He moved like someone who thought he was important, shoulders back, chin up, looking at everything around him with nothing but disgust. Dodoria was right behind him — big, pink, and fucking ugly, the kind of ugly that looked like it had been designed on purpose, that was a face only a blind mother could love. Behind them came a block of soldiers, maybe thirty or forty, all in standard issue armor, all looking like they'd rather be anywhere else.

And then Frieza.

He was small. Around my height. His frame was slender, almost delicate, and he moved with a leisurely grace that made him look like he was floating rather than walking. His tail swished behind him in slow, lazy arcs.

And then there was Kayle. The former queen. Walking behind Frieza like a pet that had been brought along for the ride. She saw me immediately. Her eyes went wide for just a second before her expression change into something smug. She thought she'd won. She thought her little message had done its job and now Frieza was here to put her in charge.

Cute.

Frieza stopped at the bottom of the ramp. His eyes found me, and he tilted his head, that familiar smile creeping across his face. The one that looked friendly if you didn't know better and looked like a death sentence if you did.

"Well, well," he said, his voice carrying that high, cultured tone that I'd heard a thousand times in my head. "And here I was told I'd find something interesting on this little mudball. I must say, I'm underwhelmed so far."

"Just one Saiyan," I said. "That's all you came for, right?"

"Oh, I came for much more than that. But let's start with you, shall we?" He clasped his hands together, still smiling. "Tell me your name, monkey. I do like to know what I'm about to erase."

He knew my name… we already met, was he trying to humiliate me?

I suppose I don’t lose anything by just going with it.

"Escarot."

"Escarot." He repeated it slowly, tasting the word like it was something stuck to his non-existent shoe. "How charming. And tell me, little monkey king, do you know why I'm here?"

"I have an idea."

"An idea. How wonderfully vague." His smile widened. "Let me be more specific, then. I've been told that you and your people have been keeping secrets from me. That there's power on this planet that I haven't been made aware of. And I don't appreciate secrets, Escarot. They make me feel... unappreciated."

From behind him, Kayle stepped forward. "My Lord, don't bother with pleasantries. This one has been hiding his strength from you since the beginning. He's a traitor to your authority, and—"

"Shut up."

I didn't yell it. I didn't even raise my voice. I just said it, flat and clean, and Kayle's mouth snapped shut so fast I heard her teeth click.

Then I started laughing. Because honestly, this was fucking hilarious on some level, at least to me.

The absurdity of the whole situation. Here was the former queen, riding Frieza's dick, trying to fan the flames one last time, and she had no idea that the fire she was poking was about to swallow her whole.

Even if Frieza killed me like she wanted, she would get nothing.

"You know what's funny?" I said, looking at Kayle directly. "You should've run. When you had the chance, you should've taken your last scrapes of dignity and disappeared. But instead you came here, standing behind the emperor like that's going to save you, and you're still lying." I paused, letting the smile spread across my face. "Except here's the thing. The lies are actually true. I have been hiding my power. I have been keeping secrets. Everything you told him? Spot on."

Frieza stared at me. Zarbon stared at me. Dodoria stared at me. The soldiers stared at me. Kayle stared at me.

"Ohohohoho! Oh, that's rich! That's truly rich!" He wiped a tear from his eye with one dainty finger. "You're admitting it! You're actually standing there, admitting to my face that you've been deceiving me! Do you know what happens to people who deceive me, little monkey?"

"I can guess."

"Then guess well, because you won't have long to think about it after."

I snorted. "You're not going to have as easy a time killing me as you think, Frieza."

His smile didn't waver. "Oh?"

"Right now, in that suppressed form of yours, you're not even worth a warm-up."

The laughter stopped.

Frieza's expression didn't change — not exactly — but something behind his eyes shifted. The amusement was still there, but it had thinned out, stretched tight over something harder. Like paint over rust.

"I see," he said quietly. "Delusions of grandeur. How very Saiyan."

"Let me prove it."

I moved.

No warning. No power-up. No dramatic anime scream moment. I just closed the distance between us in a single step and drove my fist into his stomach.

My arm went in up to the forearm.

I felt it — the resistance of his body, the shockwave that rippled through his frame, the way his armor cracked and gave way under the force. On the other side, I saw his back bulge outward, the shape of my fist clearly visible through his flesh, and then blood erupted from his mouth in a spray that painted the ground between us.

Frieza's eyes went wide. The look of someone who had just been hit so hard that their brain was struggling to process the fact that it had been hit at all.

I pulled my fist out, smiled and proceeded to hit him again. A backhanded slap this time, the kind of swing you'd use to swat a fly.

Frieza left the ground. He went backward like a missile, a straight line from where I was standing to the horizon, trailing blood and shock behind him.

The silence that followed was so complete that I could hear the wind.

I turned around. Kayle was standing there, frozen, her face white. Zarbon and Dodoria looked like someone had just told them the sun was going to explode in five minutes. The soldiers hadn't moved. None of them had moved.

I looked at Kayle.

"You should've just run, I would’nt had chased you… you know?"

I raised my hand and fired. The blast hit her dead center. No explosion, no resistance of any kind — just a flash of light and then nothing. Not even ash. She was just gone.

Then I turned to the rest of them. Zarbon. Dodoria. The block of soldiers who were very quickly realizing they were standing next to someone who had just punched their boss into the next zip code.

…

Does my planet have zipcodes? Questions for later.

"Here's the deal," I said. "My problem is with Frieza. Not you. I'm going to give you all the chance to walk away. Get back on that ship, fly somewhere else, and forget today happened. That's a genuine offer."

Dodoria took a step back. Then another. His face was cycling through emotions too fast to track — fear, anger, denial, back to fear. I could see it happening in real-time. The part of his brain that handled self-preservation was screaming at him to take the deal. The part of his brain that handled pride was screaming louder.

Pride won.

"Don't you DARE talk down to me, you—"

He charged. Big, lumbering, telegraphed. I just extended my hand and let a ki blade form along my palm.

Dodoria ran into it.

He didn't even slow down. The blade caught him mid-torso and split him cleanly in two, both halves hitting the ground on either side of my arm with wet, heavy thuds. The look on his face hadn't even had time to change.

I let the blade dissipate and looked at Zarbon.

Zarbon, to his credit, did not charge. Zarbon looked at Dodoria's halves on the ground, looked at me, and made the only smart decision he'd ever made in his life, probably.

"I accept your offer," he said. His voice was steady, but I could see his hands trembling at his sides.

"Ship's right there."

He turned and walked. The soldiers followed. Every single one of them. Not a word, not a glance back. They just left.

Good. I honestly had no intention of killing people that might very well be under the same situation as my people are, forced to do the bidding of a fucking monster.

“I wonder how long will that keep Frieza dow—”

I guess not long…

From the direction I'd sent Frieza — miles away, beyond the mountain range that bordered the port — a power erupted. The pressure hit me like a wave, dense and heavy and absolutely massive, climbing higher and higher with no sign of stopping.

Frieza was transforming.

And based on what I was feeling, he was going straight into his Final Form.

I smiled.

“Alright! Time to start this party!”

FRIEZA

Pain.

A deep, grinding pain in my gut that didn't make sense because nothing had ever caused me pain before, not in a long time. Not like this. Not since father or Cooler!

The ground below me was a blur of brown and red, and I couldn't stop.

I hit the mountain, going through several layers of rock before coming to a stop.

I stayed there for a moment. Stuck in the rock like an insect in amber. My vision was blurred. My breathing was wet and ragged. Blood was dripping down my chin, pooling in the small space around me.

A Saiyan had hit me.

A filthy monkey had actually hurt me! A disgusting monkey had put his fist through my body and sent me flying like a discarded toy!

The pain was nothing. I'd felt pain before. What I was feeling now was something else entirely. Something that started in my chest and spread outward like a virus, infecting every thought, every sense, every corner of my mind.

Humiliation.

I had been struck in front of my soldiers!

I spat blood. It hit the rock in front of me and ran down in a dark streak.

He'd said I wasn't worth a warm-up.

A warm-up.

A Saiyan — a low-class, filthy, tail-wagging monkey — had looked me in the eye and told me that my first form, the form I had worn while conquering entire civilizations, the form that had made kings drop to their knees and beg for their lives, wasn't worth warming up for.

My hands clenched. The rock around my fingers cracked and turned to powder.

I pulled myself out of the mountainside. Every movement was agony, but I didn't care. Pain was temporary, it would fade after I transformed. This pain could be ignored. What could not be ignored was the fact that I was standing on a planet full of monkeys, and one of them had just made me look like a fool in front of my own subordinates.

They'd watched their emperor — their unquestioned, supreme emperor — get punched and slapped across the sky like a ragdoll. They'd seen my blood. They'd seen me, Lord Frieza, ruler of the universe, eat dirt.

That image would be in their heads forever. No matter what happened next, no matter how thoroughly I destroyed Escarot, no matter how spectacularly I made him suffer, the memory of this moment would remain. Frieza, on his back, bleeding, hurt!

I woud NOT forgive this transgression! I would make that monkey suffer!

"Keh... heh..."

The laugh came out broken. Wet. Half-choked on blood, but real.

He thought he'd won. He thought that one punch meant something. He thought that because he'd caught me off guard — because I'd been standing still, relaxed, in a form I used to interact with lesser beings — that he was somehow my equal.

I was going to show him what a mistake that was.

I was going to show all of them! The meaning of true fear and desperation before I destroyed them!

My tail whipped behind me, smashing a boulder into gravel as the ground under my feet cracked responding to my increasing power.

The first form cracked and fell away. Then the second. The third didn't even get a chance to fully exist before it dissolved. Each one a mask, a face I put on for the universe because the real one was too much for them to handle.

The mountain crumbled. Stone turned to powder in a sphere around me, expanding outward in a silent wave that flattened everything it touched for a mile in every direction. 

“Time to make these monkeys extinct.”