Okara

They put my idiot in a tube.

That's what it looked like to me, a big glass tube full of green water, with a mask strapped over his face and wires stuck to his chest, floating there like some sort of experiment. Naked as the day he was born, too, which would've been funnier and prime blackmail material if he hadn't looked like he was on the verge of death.

Because he did… Look like that, I mean…

“Fucking moron…” I sighed.

I'd seen Escarot beat up before, he gets hit all the time; mainly because he fights the strongest enemies, but he's a Saiyan, that's our whole thing. But I'd never seen him look like this, it was… disturbing, his whole body was one continuous bruise, purple and black and yellow, all the fucking colors to find. Both legs were splinted under the water. His ribs were wrapped. His right hand was in some kind of cage of pins and wire, for reasons I honestly couldn’t understand because these doctors might as well talk in another language for me.

And then there was the arm, the one the moron allowed himself to lose by lowering his guard.

They'd reattached it, or they were reattaching it, the whole left shoulder was sealed under a black cage, tubes running in and out of it, machines beeping about even more shit I didn't understand. Bardock's men had found the arm on the battlefield, half-buried in the rubble, still wearing his glove. They'd brought it back in a cooling case.

I keep thinking about that… Somebody had to carry Escarot’s arm across a battlefield in a box, I don’t know why, but the thought made me feel… weird.

I stood in front of the tank with my arms crossed and I did not cry, because Saiyans don't cry, and even if they did, I didn’t, and  well, because if he woke up and I was crying I would have to kill him and then kill myself, in that order.

"How long?” I asked, turning to see the ones treating him.

The head physician had been hovering near the console for ten minutes, working up the nerve to talk to me. I know I’m fucking awesome, and scary, I don't think anyone had told him I wasn't going to eat him.

"Months, my lady."

“WHAT!?!”

"M-months." He held up his hands. "Three, at minimum. Possibly four. I know that isn't what you want to hear—"

"Three MONTHS?" I growled, clenching my fists. "He's a Saiyan! Saiyans heal fast from this kind of shit! Hell, I've seen him take beatings that would've killed me and be back on the training field the next morning! You have him in the magic green water! What do you mean MONTHS?"

The physician gulped, but did not run away, which honestly earned him some respect from me. He just took a breath, put his hands behind his back, and did the thing where a smart person explains something to an angry idiot without making the angry idiot feel like an idiot.

"May I show you something, my lady?"

"...Fine."

He tapped at the console and the display lit up with a picture of the inside of Escarot. 

"Do you see this?" He pointed at a section, and it looked like someone had taken a fistful of rope and pulled it apart until it had frayed. "This is his shoulder. And this—" another section, worse "—is his back. And this is his chest, and his thighs, and his forearm, and I could go on. The King's muscles didn't tear in the way a warrior's muscles tear when they train too hard, or take a beating as you said, they tore in the way a rope tears when the load exceeds the maximum capacity."

"...Okay."

"A great deal of… all of this, is not damage from the fight," he said. "But the damage he did to himself."

…

I swear to God, I will kill Escarot as soon as he wakes up.

"Explain."

"Whatever he did at the end of that fight, the state he entered, the one that made him swell," he gestured vaguely at the screen showing where Escarot had overpowered Cold’s attack, "—Our theories suggest that he might have forced more power through every tissue that he could carry, while he was already heavily injured, and the tissue gave way. Everywhere. All at once. Frankly, my lady, under normal circumstances… he should’ve died."

So he used… that shit.

I still remember finding his ass, face down in a crater, out cold, and me laughing my ass off because he looked so stupid lying there.

He'd told me it worked. He'd been so pleased with himself. It worked, Okara.

Yeah. It worked…. Pssf, worked my ass.

"Now," the physician went on, "We could speed the tank up, all and all, we have that capability, if I put the fluid to maximum saturation and made some adjustments here and there, I could have him conscious and walking in three weeks."

Then what the fuck?! DO THAT!

"Then DO that!"

"But… if we did that, then his muscles would knit wrong." He said it flatly, and I shut my mouth holding the urge to kill him, why the fuck even mention he could do that if he can’t?! 

"Fast healing on damage this severe means severe complications down the line. If we did that, well, he would be slower, and weaker, and considerably stiffer than he was before, for the rest of his life… that said, you have the final word in this matter." He looked at me. "Would you like me to do that to the King, my lady?"

Even if I wanted to… I couldn’t do that to him.

"...No."

"Understood,” He nodded. "Then there is the matter of the arm."

The arm, as if I could forget about that shit.

"This type of reattachment is the single most delicate thing I have ever attempted," he said, and he sounded almost apologetic about it. "Normally, this would be easy, but whatever kind of attack; cut his arm… Well, did a number on him, by destroying the nerves and other connections entirely, thousands of them gone and fried so to speak, so now… we have to recreate every single one of them, while at the same time knitting them back together exactly where they should be, or we risk him losing his feeling on that arm, or worse, fine control… after all, the King was pretty vocal about this."

“What did the moron tell you?" I asked, glaring at the doctor.

The physician gulped once more. "He was very specific, my lady. Before we sedated him, the only thing he asked about was whether the hand would still be able to do fine work. He said, and I am quoting him, 'I don't care what it takes, I need to be able to hold a knife properly.'"

I closed my eyes.

Of course he did… Of course that's what he asked! He tore his own body apart, killing the strongest bastard we have met so far, and the first thing out of his mouth is a request to make sure he can continue COOKING.

I hate him. I love him. I'm going to kill him.

"Do what it has to be done, and do it right," I said.

"My lady."

I put my hand on the glass.

"You absolute moron," I told him.

He didn't answer… He just floated there, bruised to an inch of his life, with the faintest, dumbest ghost of a grin still on his stupid unconscious face.

I turned around and walked out before I did something embarrassing.

I found Nail on the eastern terrace. He was always somewhere quiet and high up, standing with his eyes closed, doing nothing. Namekians are so weird, almost as weird as the people of Yadrat, maybe they would understand each other.

"Green guy."

"Okara."

"I need something from you."

He opened his eyes. "You've been at the medical wing since sunrise."

"Yeah, well, my favorite idiot is almost dead, and someone has to make sure he lives so that I can kill him," I dropped into a crouch on the terrace wall next to him. "Anyways, here's what I want… you remember your friend? You know? The little one that healed Escarot on his fight with Frieza, where he almost died and we had to fight together to buy time?" I gestured broadly at the whole medical wing, the whole planet, the whole situation. "Can you have him… you know… Fix him."

"No," he said without missing a beat.

"'No?" I stood up on the wall. "Why?"

"For many reasons, the main one being that if you want him to keep the arm," Nail said, letting out a sigh

...Oh.

I sat back down.

"Why?"

"Our healing doesn't… really repair things," he said. "Not the way your machines do or doctors do. My people use magic to accelerate things basically. It takes the body's own process and pours energy into it until it happens all at once, in seconds instead of weeks. Which is a miracle, when the body knows what it's supposed to do." He looked out at the ruined plain where the fight had happened. You can see the crater from here. You can see it from orbit, actually. "A severed limb, freshly reattached, well… it might make things messy. Based on the anatomy book I read about your kind, I can see the biological differences between our peoples… and based on that, I can tell the nerves of his arm haven't found each other yet and that your doctors are in the process of doing just that. If I had my friend heal him now, I would be telling his body to finish something that is incomplete, and it would finish. It would seal everything exactly where it currently is. Nerves that haven't connected would seal disconnected, muscle that hasn't aligned would seal misaligned."

"So he'd have the arm..."

"He would have an arm," Nail nodded. "It would hang there. He would feel almost nothing through it, and control less. It would be a weight bolted to his shoulder, and it would be permanent, and no amount of healing afterward would undo it, because as far as his body was concerned it would already be finished."

I stared out at the crater, and sighed.

"...Okay," I admitted. "That would be worse."

"Considerably."

"He'd never shut up about it, either."

"Okara."

"I'm agreeing with you!" I threw my hand up. "No magic healing. Machines it is. Months of my life sitting around watching a naked idiot float in a jar."

Nail let me finish being angry. 

Then he said, "There's another reason, that… might have more weight than the arm."

Then why mention the arm? Seriously, do people enjoy giving me headaches?

"Even if the arm weren't an issue," he said slowly, "I don't believe my people could heal him. Not anymore."

"...What do you mean, 'not anymore'? Your friend healed him from his fight with Frieza."

"He did." He held up a hand. "But the stronger the… well, let’s say patient the more energy the healing takes, Escarot was strong before, but manageable..."

He lowered his hand.

"As he is now, no Namekian can heal him."

Since he became a Super Saiyan.

"Since Frieza," Nail said, "and now since this, he's grown so far past what he was that my people don’t have the capacity to encompass him anymore. It would be like trying to fill a lake with a cup. They could heal some injuries, but nothing extreme..." He shook his head. "Not even the Grand Elder himself, in his prime could…”

Well… fuck. There goes my plan B to speed this up.

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, okay."

I sat there on the wall with my legs hanging over the edge and I looked out at the crater where Cold had died, and I let myself actually think about the situation, and what could I do about what was inevitably to come.

King Cold is dead, Frieza is dead… That's the good news, and it's very good, and every Saiyan on this planet is still drunk on this, on our new glory.

Now the bad news.

Escarot is in a tube for the next three to four months. Our one and only line of defense against the monsters of the universe is down, doing nothing but float in a tank, as his body recovered. For the entire span of those months, there’s nothing between the universe and us.

And there is exactly one being left in the universe with a reason to come here, and the power to do something about it.

Cooler.

I'd only met him once, and once was more than enough to say I didn’t like him at all. I remember sitting there while Escarot and him talked, and I remember watching his face, and thinking: this bastard is dangerous.

Frieza was an entitled piece of shit.

His father… was similar.

But Cooler felt different, like… he was playing everyone around him, like there were other ways to fight and beat someone, and in his head, he had already beaten us.

And in a way… he had.

His brother was dead. 

His father is dead. 

Escarot killed both, which means Cooler's entire family problem has been solved for him by Escarot. And now the man who did it is floating in a healing tank for the next four months, unconscious, defenseless, with nothing between him and the door but a Namekian and me.

If Cooler has half a brain, which I believe he has, he will come here as soon as possible to kill Escarot before wiping out every Saiyan so there's no one left to avenge it, without Escarot… Well, he inherits an empire with no rivals, no brother, no father, and no obstacles in his future.

There is no version of this where a smart fucking monster does not come.

And when he does?

I looked down at my hands.

I'm the second strongest Saiyan alive, and that would mean nothing.

I knew that… I was painfully aware of my limitations as I was now, I fucking stood on a ridge and watched as Cold and Escarot broke a planet between them, feeling what those two were putting out, and here is the honest truth of it:

I could not have survived thirty seconds in that fight. And I was being fucking generous with that number.

Cold would have looked at me and I would have stopped existing. And Escarot… my Escarot, the warrior I met on a mountain trying to spy on his training, was trading punches with that thing for an hour and grinning about it.

That's the gap. 

That's the actual size of it. 

And Cooler is somewhere out there in that same weight class, or close enough that it doesn't matter.

Second strongest Saiyan alive.

It means nothing… It's a nice thing people say. It's a title for a girl standing on a ridge watching monsters fight, too far away to even be relevant.

I hated that thought so much I nearly punched a hole in the terrace.

"Okara."

"WHAT?!"

."May I ask you something," he said. "Something that has been bothering me for a while."

"...Sure… Whatever."

He was quiet for a second, choosing his words. "Have you noticed a change in him?"

I frowned. "In who? Escarot?"

"Yes."

"He's got one arm, Nail, I'd say that's a fairly noticeable…"

"That isn't what I mean." He turned to face me properly. "I mean since Frieza. Since the transformation."

And just like that, my stomach went cold, because I knew exactly what he was about to say.

"Go on," I said.

"He has changed," Nail said carefully. "Not in the ways one would expect. He's still... him. He jokes. He cooks. He's kind to the child, he's patient with his people. But underneath that." He paused. "His temper is shorter, much short, he is more aggressive than he was,  quicker to reach for a fight, slower to strategize. And he's reckless in a way he never used to be."

"He's always been reckless—"

"He has… but not like this,” Nail said flatly, "And you know it."

He had a point there…

"He destroyed King Cold's ship the moment it entered the atmosphere," Nail went on, "The Escarot I knew would’ve offered the people inside a chance to… escape, to avoid being killed unnecessarily."

That’s true, between the two of us… I’m the one without much mercy for the enemy.

"He does not fight like a man protecting his people," Nail said quietly. "He fights like a man who is enjoying the bloodshed itself, and remembers halfway through that other things are at stake. And I feel it’s getting worse, Okara, and I don't think he can see it happening to him... So I am asking you, because you know him better than anyone else, have you noticed it?"

Way to add more shit to my already full bucket of shit…

"Yeah," I said. "I've noticed."

Nail waited.

"I asked him about it," I said. 

"And?"

"And he told me it's the transformation."

I looked out at the crater.

"He said the Super Saiyan isn't just power," I said. "He said it's built out of rage. That the whole thing is powered by it, and you can't turn it on without opening the door to it, and when you're in it, everything's louder. Everything's angrier. Every fight feels like the best thing that's ever happened to you and every enemy is a gift and you want more, and more, and you have to hold yourself back with both hands the whole time or it takes over." I shrugged. "He said the anger comes with it, a package deal or some shit. And that mastering the form doesn't just mean holding it longer — it means learning to temper the rage, too. He said that's one of the hurdles. Maybe the biggest one."

"He knew this," Nail said slowly. "He knew it, and he chose to keep using it."

"He's the only one who CAN use it, Nail! What's he supposed to do, not fight Frieza? Not fight Cold?" I threw my hand out at the crater. "That thing came here to kill every single one of us and he got in front of it! He tore his own body apart doing it! You want to stand there and tell me he's got an anger problem?"

"Yes," Nail said. "That's precisely what I'm telling you. Both things are true. He saved us all, and something in him is changing, and if nobody is watching it, one day it will be big enough that we don't recognize what's left."

I didn't have an answer for that, so I decided to change the subject.

"So what's your plan?" I asked him, after a while.

"My plan?"

"For Cooler."

"Ah," he said. "So you've been thinking about it too."

"Green guy, if that thing lands on this planet in the next four months, you and I ARE the plan. That's it. That's the whole defense of the Saiyan race, a Namekian and a me..." I laughed. "We're it."

"I know."

"And we can't beat him."

"...No," Nail said. "We can't."

“We couldn’t even hurt Frieza, which according to Escarot is weaker than his brother…”

“I am aware… I was there,” Nail nodded.

“So… any ideas to handle that?” I asked.

“No… how about you?”

I sat with that for a minute. Then something occurred to me and I sat up straight.

"Huh… What about your magic orbs."

"...My what."

"The orbs! The wishing ones! The big dragon that grants wishes, don't play stupid with me, green guy, the Namekian wish balls—"

"The Dragon Balls," Nail said, and he sounded a bit insulted for some reason.

"YES! Those!" I was on my feet now, grinning, because this was BRILLIANT and I was very proud of myself. "So we get them, we summon the dragon, and we wish Cooler dead. Boom. Done. Problem solved, sure… I will hate myself for taking the coward’s way out, butttt I'll survive."

"No."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN NO?"

"It doesn't work like that," Nail said, crossing his arms. "The dragon cannot kill anyone stronger than its creator."

I stopped mid-gloat.

"...WHAT?!"

"Porunga's power comes from the one who created him. The Grand Elder. That is the ceiling, the dragon can only do what its maker's power allows. He cannot kill a being whose strength far exceeds that of his creator." Nail's voice was flat and final. "Cooler is far, far, far, far, farrrrr, beyond the Grand Elder. Even at his strongest, the Elder was not a warrior, if we summoned Porunga and asked him to kill Cooler..."

"Nothing happens."

"Nothing happens," Nail confirmed. "And… well, seeing we have never used the Dragon Balls for that, I have no idea what would happen… maybe Cooler learns that we tried, which would be considerably worse than nothing."

I sat back down on the wall.

"That's the STUPIDEST rule I've ever heard," I said. "What's the point of a wish dragon that can't kill anybody worth killing?"

"It was not designed as a weapon."

"Well, it SHOULD have been!"

"Yes," Nail said dryly. "I'll pass that along to the Grand Elder."

I groaned and let myself fall backward off the wall onto the terrace, flat on my back, staring up at the sky. So much for that. So much for the one clever idea I've ever had in my entire life! I don't get many! That one felt SO good for about eight seconds.

"Okara."

"What."

Nail's shadow moved into my view, upside down above me.

"We'll figure it out," he said.

"How?" I snorted, “Can you turn into a Super Namekian, if so… please tell me.”

"No, I can’t…" He crouched down beside me. "But we’ll figure something out." He tilted his head. "And if Cooler comes, well… you won't be facing him alone, I want you to understand that. Whatever happens, whatever we manage, you will not be standing there by yourself, even if we die trying."

I lay on the cold stone and stared up at a green man I'd been annoying for months, who had just quietly promised to die next to me.

"...You're such a weirdo," I said, laughing.

"So I'm told."

"No, I won’t accept that!" I said.

Nail blinked, confused. "Me being weird?"

"What?... No, I mean I'm done just waiting Escarot to solve everything, fuck him," I planted my feet on that terrace and powered up. "I'm done being a fucking spectator, I'm done watching my idiot tear his own body apart because he's the ONLY ONE WHO CAN, because everybody else is TOO WEAK, and I'm the strongest one out of everybody else, so what does that make me?!"

My aura increased and the terrace stones cracked under my boots.

"The strongest of the useless!" I shouted, clenching my fists so hard blood was dripping into the ground. "That's what! That's my title! That's what I've been so proud of?!"

"Okara—"

"I won’t accept that!" I growled, my ki roaring around me, my hair whipping in its wake. "Escarot told me that the Super Saiyan isn't a legend, that it isn't a gift, that it's a WALL, and anyone who hits it hard enough and long enough breaks through!"

I turned to Nail, and I must have looked completely insane, because Nail, who is scared of nothing, actually leaned back. "You want to become a Super Saiyan… in four months."

"HELL FUCKING YES! I want to become a Super Saiyan by the time that lizard's shadow touches this planet!" I declared, gritting my teeth. "Because I'm done waiting for HIM to save us, I will be the one to save his ass this time!"

Every time a threat came for us, it was him that dealt with it, it was him that put his life on the line, all while I laid back and… did nothing!

"It's MY turn now," I said. "I've spent my whole life being the sidekick in somebody else's story, standing behind the guy who gets to do the impossible thing, and I am DONE."

Nail stared up at me.

"It's time for me," I roared, "to be the fucking protagonist."

There was a long silence on that terrace, then, after a moment or two, Nail sighed, stood up, rolled his shoulders, and cracked his knuckles.

"Then we'd better start today," he said. "You're going to need someone to hit."

And I laughed, the first real laugh I'd had since Escarot almost killed himself.

"Green guy," I said, "you have NO idea what you just volunteered for."