Cooler

The report came to me a few days after it had happened, carried by an officer too frightened to tell me what had happened, he knelt at the threshold of my chair and would not raise his eyes to meet mine.

"Speak."

The officer swallowed, his body trembling in fear. "K-king C-cold i-is dead, my lord. He was killed by the Saiyan king, Escarot."

So it has finally happened… My father was dead, killed by the Monkey King, how fortuitous.

The officer told me what our intelligence had managed to gather, and I listened to every word.

My father had arrived in his true form, which was something I already knew, the vain old fool… tore a valuable planet apart to transform, losing us millions in minerals and other materials that are always in demand. He had fought Escarot for the better part of an hour, holding nothing back. And at the end of it, King Cold, patriarch of our line, had been reduced to ash on his knees.

As the Saiyan King dropped to the floor, almost dead from his injuries.

Giving nothing away, I dismissed the officer, and when he had gone I permitted myself, alone, the small honesty of admitting that I had been wrong.

Not about the outcome… I had always known one of them would die in that fight; that was the entire purpose of leaking the recording, of aiming my grieving egotistical stupid father at the only other being in the galaxy that could threaten my hold over it. Point the two problems at each other, and let the solution kill itself out of the way, that much had worked exactly as designed.

What I had gotten wrong was… the boy, once more.

I had assumed… reasonably, I still think, that my father would win. That was the sensible expectation, Cold was stronger than Frieza and me, and even a rapidly-growing Saiyan should not have closed that gap in the handful of months between one fight and the next… I had assumed my father would win, but not without its costs… and be left spent and wounded and alone on a ruined planet, at which point I would arrive, and remove him.

I was clearly wrong, though I suppose the order of the factors does not alter the product… 

That said, Escarot growth… has been a rather concerning development, one that has changed a few opinions and perspectives of mine, forcing me to agree that my little brother might have been right on his desires to wipe the Saiyans.

Escarot had grown past the point where his existence was something acceptable, and if this wasn’t the exception to the rule, then… 

I tapped one finger against the armrest, and made myself sit with the discomfort of it.

Escarot had become stronger than my father in a matter of months.

Which, if the chain held, meant Escarot was stronger than me.

I did not enjoy that thought… But I did not flinch from it either, and that distinction is the only reason I am still alive when the rest of my family is not.

This might be my one and only chance to deal with this threat. The strongest being in the universe… weakened to the ground, and for the first time since he burned his way onto the top, surpassing every expectation, he was entirely defenseless.

I leaned back, and smiled.

Two problems had stood between me and everything that should have been mine. My brother. My father. Both of them had been handed to me, killed, cleared away, tidied off the board, by the very Saiyan I'd recruited as a disposable asset. He had done my work for me… All of it… He had murdered his way through every obstacle in my path, and now, exhausted by the effort of it, he had laid himself down in exactly the position I needed him in.

That said… I had to admit I owe him a great deal.

This is not a sentiment I extend often… I genuinely owe him. He unknotted my entire life for me and left the throne of the universe, the entire legacy my family had been building, sitting empty with no one but me to take the reins.

So I will do him a kindness in return.

I will make his death painless.

He has earned that much… a quiet death, in his sleep, before he ever wakes to feel it. No fear, no pain, no fight, no struggle. No drawn-out humiliation of the kind Frieza would have inflicted for the sheer pleasure of it… no. Escarot… no, The Saiyan King did me a great service, and the debt will be settled cleanly.

As for the Saiyans…

There can be no half-measures there. If Escarot’s words about his transformation were correct, then they couldn’t be allowed to exist. After all, a race that produced him is a race that can produce another, and I did not spend a lifetime of playing this game of succession to inherit a universe with a seed of gold-haired death already planted in it.

This brings up the questions though… what to do about my little souvenir.

“Prince Vegeta…” I muttered.

One of my contingency plans, a proud stupid old soldier and a former royal infant, hidden on a worthless rock, kept alive and loyal and grateful on the strength of a vendetta I had no intention of ever truly serving. 

I had told myself, at the time, that I kept them as a tool. A puppet-heir to hold over the Saiyans if I ever needed to control them rather than kill them.

That need was about to become irrelevant in a few months, as there would be no Saiyans left to control.

But…

I found I did not want to simply discard the two of them along with the rest. Call it sentimental stupidity. Call it curiosity. Call it the collector's instinct, at the end of the day, it is the very same impulse that makes a conqueror keep one perfect artifact from every world he conquers. 

When someone burns something worthwhile to the ground, he is permitted to keep a single souvenir from the ashes.

There was risk in it, of course. The same risk that made me resolve to kill every other Saiyan in the universe. What if the prince, given time, grew into another Escarot? What if I was preserving the very thing I was destroying the rest of them to prevent?

But that risk, unlike the others, was one I could hold in my hand. Two Saiyans, isolated, watched, dependent on me for everything, I would know the moment either of them began to climb too high. And if the day ever came that the prince's power started to become remarkable, I would kill him. 

I suppose there was a certain poetry to it. The Saiyan race, reduced from a species to a keepsake. Their entire proud, savage bloodline continued at the whim of the being who exterminated them,  as the prince who should have inherited a throne, inherited a leash instead.

“Time to see you one last time, Escarot…”

Nappa

The Saibaman attacked me all at once, dodging their attacks with ease, I grabbed one of them and tore it in half before releasing a wave of energy killing them all at once.

"Well?" I turned. "You watching, boy? That's what a full-grown Saibaman rush looks like. You'll be doing this before you're much older."

The prince sat on his rock at the edge of the clearing, chin in his small hands, and gave me the flattest look a child that age has any right to own.

"They were slow and weak," Vegeta said, crossing his little arms.

He had finally learned how to talk, two months ago, after his programming was completed, and he was already being an ass most of the time.

"They were slow to you because you weren't the one fighting them."

"They were still slow, I could’ve killed them with ease."

I grunted… He wasn't wrong, that was the trouble. King Vegeta's boy through and through, and the Queen’s too, that same cold, cutting little tongue his mother had. He's growing fast.

But watching him watch me, I felt the old worry settle back onto my shoulders.

This won’t be enough.

The usurper killed Frieza.

I saw Frieza and King Cold more than once, from a great and careful distance, and it was the single most frightening thing I have ever felt in my life, a weight that made you want to lie down and never get up, their power was beyond our wildest dreams.

I don't think a scouter that goes high exists. But I can guess how powerful they were, in the millions... It has to be millions. A number so far past anything I could possibly be that it stops meaning anything, just a wall of power I will never overcome.

But that does bring up the question…

How does a child do that?

I have been a warrior my entire life! I have fought and bled and conquered since before I can properly remember, decade upon decade of it, war after war, planet after planet, and I clawed my way up to be one of the strongest Saiyans alive the only way I ever knew by fighting, and surviving, and fighting again!

And then some upstart comes along and in a handful of years leaves me and everybody else so far behind we can't even fucking see him. So… far behind, the bastard kills Frieza before he's even fully grown.

I've bled more than that boy ever has or would in his life, I've fought longer than he's been alive, so either the usurper is some kind of freak the universe coughs up once an age...or there's a better way to do this than the one I know. 

And if there is…then I have to find it, because that's the only chance the Prince has. I could train Vegeta for the next thirty years, but at the end Escarot would still swat him out of the sky without looking up from his dinner.

My way isn't good enough… There has to be a better way, I just don't have the first idea where or how to find it.

"Oh, how touching. A monkey on monkey moment. Do go on, I'm learning so much."

I turned to find a tall and lean, blue-skinned warrior.

"Who are you," I said.

"Salza, the pleasure is all yours," He smiled. "Captain of Lord Cooler's Armored Squadron. And you must be the Saiyan." His eyes flicked down to Vegeta, and his lip curled. "And this. This is the prince? This weak little baby? Oh, it's precious, I could almost squeeze him to death..." He laughed. "The great Saiyan monarchy. Truly, I am humbled to be in its presence."

Vegeta made a low sound in his throat and started forward, I caught him by the collar without looking.

"Whatever you came to say," I said, "say it, and mind how you say it. There's a child present, and I'm not as patient as I used to be."

I knew he was stronger than me, but I would not grovel like a… coward if that’s what he wanted.

Salza held up a hand, still smiling, entirely unbothered by the fist I hadn't lowered. "Peace, baldy, peace. I didn't come here to fight, though we both know how that would end, so let's not pretend otherwise." He examined a fingernail. "That said, I'm here on Lord Cooler's business. A gift, so to speak."

"What gift."

"Training," Salza said, clapping his hands together. "Real training. You've been out here doing what, exactly? Punching sentient plants? That’s… not really a good use of anyone’s time," He shook his head slowly. "How very... Saiyan of you. Brute force and prayer. It's a wonder your kind lasted as long as it did."

"Get to the point," I said, and I heard the doubt in my own voice even as I said it.

“Fine," Salza pointed at me. "Lord Cooler knows better than to let his assets go to waste. Lord Cooler invests in his soldiers, proper regimens, proper equipment, etc, etc." He spread his hands. "There is a reason his Armored Squadron is feared across the stars while lumbering brutes like you were… Well, nothing more than fetching-dogs for whoever held your leash."

I said nothing, BUT I wanted, SOOOO badly, to knock that smug blue face into next week.

"Lord Cooler," Salza went on, lazily, watching me with those knowing eyes, "likes his people well-trained. And he considers you and the tiny glaring thing behind you, his people now. Meaning you have everything you'd need to turn this child into something that might, one day, actually be worth the blood in his veins, so… do you want some help in your endeavors?" He smiled, looking at me. "That said, you are free to decline."

The prince was rigid against my leg, glaring up at the man with pure, undiluted royal hatred, and I was proud of him for that, but right now we needed these bastards.

"What do you recommend?" I said.

Salza's smile widened.