Cooler

My father's fleet left the dock a few hours ago from Planet Cold 7DS-X1.

I knew the exact moment it happened, because I'd been waiting for it, I'd had eyes on his command ship since the recording started spreading. And the recording started spreading because I made it spread.

I had started this fire with the sole purpose of reaching my father.

I'd been the first one to get the footage of my little brother’s death, I could have buried it, I could have controlled it. For a while I considered doing exactly that—being the one to tell my father when the moment was right.

Then I realized this entire situation wasn't a problem to be hidden or one to be used politically.

It was a weapon to be aimed.

So I let it go, a copy here, a copy there, in exactly the places that guaranteed it would reach the one man I wanted to see it. I made sure my father would learn his favorite son was dead, and I made sure he'd learn it the worst possible way—from a screen, surrounded by underlings, watching the whole universe watch it with him.

I knew what he'd do.

As smart as he thinks he is, father is rather predictable when it comes to Frieza. He always was. The golden child, the heir, the only one of us he ever looked at with anything but calculation. Show that man his precious son was cut down by a monkey, and well, reason goes out the window.

And as expected, he is on his way to the Saiyan homeworld. Coming to avenge his baby.

Good.

I tapped my fingers against the armrest.

I have three problems in my life. Frieza. My father. And now recently, Escarot.

Frieza is handled. Escarot saw to that—did it better and cleaner than I ever could have, which was the entire point of the alliance. I needed a blade sharp enough to kill my brother and disposable enough to throw away afterward. 

Escarot was supposed to be that blade.

The trouble is that he outgrew his use, after all, there's such a thing as a blade that's too sharp.

I watched the footage as many times as my father did, probably more. I watched that child stand over Frieza without a single drop of effort. The boy I'd recruited as a tool had become something I could no longer guarantee I'd be able to put down. The original plan—use him, then discard him—stopped being a plan and became a hope. 

And I don't build around hope, only the foolish do that.

So that left two problems, both inconvenient, both standing between me and an empire that should already be mine.

My father, who I cannot easily kill for, he’s still stronger than me. And Escarot, who I may soon be unable to kill at all.

The old me would have tried to pick one. Pour everything into removing my father, and gamble on the Saiyan honoring our deal afterward. Or break the deal, side with my father, and gamble we could put the boy down together before he grew past us both, hoping that father made me his heir.

But I hated gambling.

So, I’ve changed my plans ever so slightly.

My father is going to land on that planet full of grief and pride and certainty, and he's going to find a Super Saiyan waiting for him. And one of two things will happen.

Either my father kills Escarot.

Or Escarot kills my father.

I have spent a long time deciding which outcome I prefer, and I've landed somewhere that surprised me: I don't care. Both are acceptable. Both are, in their own way, perfect.

If my father wins, he won't walk away clean. If my estimates of Escarot’s power were anything close to the real thing, my father would end up that fight drained… at the weakest he'll ever be. And I'll be there, waiting for when the great King Cold is breathing hard and bleeding and thinking the worst is behind him.

That's when I… take the empire. Killing him.

And if Escarot wins?

Then my father is dead and I didn't have to lift a finger to do it. The one obstacle I genuinely feared, removed by someone else's hand. And the Saiyan will be in exactly the same state—exhausted, hollowed out, having just survived the fight of his life against my father, he'll think he's won and that the danger's passed.

That's when I take him too.

Either way, the board clears itself. Either way, I arrive last, fresh, untouched, while the two strongest threats in my way grind each other down to nothing.

I stopped tapping my fingers.

There's a version of this that fails, of course. There's always a version that fails. If one of them wins too easily—if my father crushes the boy without a scratch, or if Escarot has grown so far past everyone that my father is no fight at all—then I'm left facing a winner who isn't tired enough. 

I've thought about that.

It's why I'm not moving yet.

I'll watch. That's the whole art of it. Let them meet. Let them fight. Read the outcome before I commit to anything. If the winner is weak enough, I strike. If the winner is too strong, well, I never did anything wrong to begin with, for I have a playing hand on each side of this war.

All I had to do, was wait…

Patience has never cost me anything, it's recklessness that kills people in this family. Frieza was reckless. Look where it got him—a worm under a child's boot, broadcast to the stars, his legacy forever tainted at the hands of that child.

My father is being reckless right now, flying toward a fight he's too angry to think clearly about.

I am the only one in my bloodline who has ever understood that the last man standing doesn't have to be the strongest.

He just has to be the last one still standing.

I leaned back.

"Enjoy your meal, Escarot," I said to the empty room. “You're going to need your strength.”

Escarot

The feast was barely over when Beerus stood up, stretched, and with a big yawn said:

"Fight me."

I paused with a dessert halfway to my mouth.

"...What?"

"You heard me." He cracked his neck, tail swaying lazily behind him. "You killed Frieza, I want to see it. That gold form of yours. Right now." He smiled, and it was not a kind smile. "Consider it the price of the meal."

"And I have to pay you to eat them?"

"Yes, and I'm only going to hit you a little."

That didn’t feel reassuring.

I knew there was no talking him out of it. You don't negotiate with a god who's bored and full. The most powerful being I will probably ever meet was asking me to spar, and the only thing worse than fighting Beerus would be refusing to fight Beerus.

Also—some small, stupid part of me wanted to see if being a Super Saiyan would help even a little bit against him.

I walked out into the open field behind the castle. Beerus followed, hands clasped behind his back. Bardock and his team watched from a safe distance, while Okara sat on a boulder with a plate she'd smuggled out, eating like she was at a show.

"This is gonna be so good," she said.

“I agree,” Nail nodded, who had skipped the feast because and I quote. ‘I don’t eat, I will meditate while you eat.’ And was now enjoying the prospect of Beerus beating me up.

"You're enjoying this too much."

"I'm enjoying it the correct amount,” Nail replied, crossing his arms.

Fair enough…

I turned to face Beerus and rolled my shoulders, and without wasting any time I clenched my fists and pushed, I felt the power down in my gut, that bottomless well, and I reached for it—and it didn't come, it was a struggle where I had to drag it as I gritted my teeth and pulled, and the energy started to rise, slow and heavy, like forcing water uphill.

My muscles tightened and bulged. The ground under my feet started to crack as gold flickered at the edges of my aura—

"Come on," I growled.

Beerus just watched, eyebrow raised.

Growling, I planted my feet and roared and threw everything I had at that wall  inside of me, and I felt it crack, then crack more, then— it broke.

The gold tore through me all at once. My hair stood up, blazing. The aura exploded outward and kicked up a ring of dust, debris and wind as the pressure I'd been straining against snapped into place and suddenly the power of the Super Saiyan roared through every cell in my body.

"There it is," Beerus said. He sounded genuinely pleased. "Took you a while, but there it is."

"Yeah, yeah, it’s a work in progress."

"Now." He smiled again. "Show me."

And so I did.

I crossed the distance between us in an instant and threw a punch with everything I had, but by the time I reached Beerus, he tilted his head maybe two inches, letting my fist sail past his face, wasting no time I followed with a flurry of strikes faster than anything I'd ever thrown, and he slipped through all of it. Hands still behind his back, playfully strolling backward through my offense like a man avoiding puddles.

"Oh, this is better," he said, ducking under a hook without looking. "Much better than last time. Your power's grown a frightening amount, you know that?"

He was complimenting me while humiliating me.

"Last time you trained with me you couldn't have laid a finger on Frieza." He leaned, and my elbow passed through the space his ribs had just left. "Now? You'd flatten him. I can feel it. You've climbed an enormous distance in a very short time."

I suppose this was to be expected, I mean… I knew where I stood. This is Beerus, the God of Destruction of our Universe, who in the show fought Goku at Super Saiyan God and called it a warmup, the fact he’s complimenting me is… well, basically all I’m gonna get from this fight.

Then he sighed, like the game had run its course.

"You really have grown. I'm impressed. Genuinely." He unclasped his hands from behind his back. "But let's not get carried away."

I saw his hand move.

I did not see it arrive.

The slap caught me across the side of the head with the force of a falling moon, and the world went sideways, as the gold ripped out of me before I'd even finished registering the hit—the transformation just gone, snuffed like a candle—and I hit the dirt and skidded a good thirty feet on my back.

Okara's voice drifted over from her boulder.

"TEN OUTTA TEN."

"Kill her."

Beerus walked over and looked down at me, hands back behind his back, perfectly satisfied.

"Don't sulk," he said. "You did well." He turned to go. "Keep cooking like that and I might even teach you something real one day."

This is probably the closest thing to a gold star I was ever going to get from him.

I'd take it.