Stratagemini
Totally a Fire Ferret.
- Location
- Central Park
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
Did Kara just learn that Tomar Re tripped and lost all the Stellarite and thus doomed Krypton?
Gone Native: Earth Saga (DBZ/DC Comics)
- Thread starter Ideas-Guy
- Start date
Stratagemini
Totally a Fire Ferret.
- Location
- Central Park
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
Fellow Human
Verified Roado Rolla
Just finished the prequel, it's great but I wanna write the incosistencies here before I forget.
Cooler killed captain Ginyu, yet you mentioned him as alive a couple times after that.
I don't know why you beefed up Ginyu and Berter to over 10 000 000, it served no purpose.
Tarble said he wouldn't wear Wrath's ring coz he didn't respect him, now he does in the first chapter of the sequel. I assumed it was some other red ring previously and it wasn't clarified, just the implication of war and him fighting all kinds of lanters so he collected them off screen.
Nth metal bullet is a nice touch, so even the mightiest can be assasinated. Though if Vegeta wasn't so emotional and distracted he would've sensed it on the wind.
Tarble was already at wrath state stage 10 when he went super saiyan, you even specifically said so, then in the fight with Frieza you said he powered up to wrath state stage 10 on top of super saiyan.
He's certainly a competent commander, it is just implied he is brilliant in his strategic duel with Koter, yet never shown so it's a bit hard to believe. Sure he pulled of some missions we've actually seen, but you didn't show us a Lelouche vi Brittania or Yang Wen-li.
If he got memories of DBZ from his past self then how could've respected a cowardly psychopath Frieza?
It doesn't make sense to dual wield short and long spear. Unless you're throwing one, spears are two hand weapons...and he's not always throwing one.
Edit as I read new chapters :
You wrote that he opened the Guardian's ship with Galick Gun and kindness...what kindness was there in that moment?
Then you called them Guardians of The Galaxy instead of Universe. Before that you kept mixing the words, sometimes you would mention strongest in the universe or universe is a big place, without anyone even leaving a single galaxy out of trillions to infinity.
Why did king Vegeta recall all Saiyans to the planet, especially when he knew Frieza would be coming? You know the one who wants to exterminate them all in once place? Previously you showed that the king was as dumb as in canon...
I haven't read it yet, but since Tarble ordered everyone to evacuate to the Warworld, which then crashed and exploded to the planet Vegeta, I can assume everyone died, or some left on smaller ships.
Tarble's plan for Vega system? He heard the Guardians avoided it and said whatever, this is a good spot for my plan.
He knew Guardians wouldn't avoid common criminals, he had half remembered comic and anime knowledge which should tell him something big was there, something better left alone.
I suppose you balanced power levels somewhat, it wasn't until Mongul that Tarble was able to destroy a planet. Whilst in canon I think even Nappa could do it, and evil Piccolo Jr was throwing city destroying blasts willy nilly, having a power level of less than 300.
Destructo discs don't seem to be invicible weapons anymore, I think it was Krillin who cut off Frieza's tail, Frieza being I dunno 10 000 times stronger than him. I don't think destructo discs should be briding that kind of gap.
It loved it when Teen Titans watched shows about Tarble. Characters reacting to a double fictional story, ah that is soul soothing.
This thread should be active, how come no one is debating anything with me?
Instead of 501st, after some point in the story it just became st, repeatedly?
Tarble used a planet buster on Elongated Man when short on energy?
Wouldn't Kid Flash die in 1s of 100g?
Finally up the latest chapter. I don't mind but technically you said no DBS or Namekians, though gigantic dragon balls are better than small ones that can be gathered yearly.
Why doesn't Broly and others get anti magic tattoos and jewelry? With villains out there, mind controlled saiyans isn't gonna be good.
Tarble jumped ahead to SSJ2 and now to SSG, Cooler is not gonna be a match like in the movie, unless he trains like Frieza did...but that's not canon, that's crap(not the idea but the whole old cow milking franchise that is dbs).
I'm guessing Superman will also become a god to fight Trigon, it probably happens in some comic.
I know you said what the problem is with having royal children but he could use someone like little demon Gohan in a decade already. The romance is slow going so there'd have to be a lot of time dillation unless he starts making babies now.
Cooler killed captain Ginyu, yet you mentioned him as alive a couple times after that.
I don't know why you beefed up Ginyu and Berter to over 10 000 000, it served no purpose.
Tarble said he wouldn't wear Wrath's ring coz he didn't respect him, now he does in the first chapter of the sequel. I assumed it was some other red ring previously and it wasn't clarified, just the implication of war and him fighting all kinds of lanters so he collected them off screen.
Nth metal bullet is a nice touch, so even the mightiest can be assasinated. Though if Vegeta wasn't so emotional and distracted he would've sensed it on the wind.
Tarble was already at wrath state stage 10 when he went super saiyan, you even specifically said so, then in the fight with Frieza you said he powered up to wrath state stage 10 on top of super saiyan.
He's certainly a competent commander, it is just implied he is brilliant in his strategic duel with Koter, yet never shown so it's a bit hard to believe. Sure he pulled of some missions we've actually seen, but you didn't show us a Lelouche vi Brittania or Yang Wen-li.
If he got memories of DBZ from his past self then how could've respected a cowardly psychopath Frieza?
It doesn't make sense to dual wield short and long spear. Unless you're throwing one, spears are two hand weapons...and he's not always throwing one.
Edit as I read new chapters :
You wrote that he opened the Guardian's ship with Galick Gun and kindness...what kindness was there in that moment?
Then you called them Guardians of The Galaxy instead of Universe. Before that you kept mixing the words, sometimes you would mention strongest in the universe or universe is a big place, without anyone even leaving a single galaxy out of trillions to infinity.
Why did king Vegeta recall all Saiyans to the planet, especially when he knew Frieza would be coming? You know the one who wants to exterminate them all in once place? Previously you showed that the king was as dumb as in canon...
I haven't read it yet, but since Tarble ordered everyone to evacuate to the Warworld, which then crashed and exploded to the planet Vegeta, I can assume everyone died, or some left on smaller ships.
Tarble's plan for Vega system? He heard the Guardians avoided it and said whatever, this is a good spot for my plan.
He knew Guardians wouldn't avoid common criminals, he had half remembered comic and anime knowledge which should tell him something big was there, something better left alone.
I suppose you balanced power levels somewhat, it wasn't until Mongul that Tarble was able to destroy a planet. Whilst in canon I think even Nappa could do it, and evil Piccolo Jr was throwing city destroying blasts willy nilly, having a power level of less than 300.
Destructo discs don't seem to be invicible weapons anymore, I think it was Krillin who cut off Frieza's tail, Frieza being I dunno 10 000 times stronger than him. I don't think destructo discs should be briding that kind of gap.
It loved it when Teen Titans watched shows about Tarble. Characters reacting to a double fictional story, ah that is soul soothing.
This thread should be active, how come no one is debating anything with me?
Instead of 501st, after some point in the story it just became st, repeatedly?
Tarble used a planet buster on Elongated Man when short on energy?
Wouldn't Kid Flash die in 1s of 100g?
Finally up the latest chapter. I don't mind but technically you said no DBS or Namekians, though gigantic dragon balls are better than small ones that can be gathered yearly.
Why doesn't Broly and others get anti magic tattoos and jewelry? With villains out there, mind controlled saiyans isn't gonna be good.
Tarble jumped ahead to SSJ2 and now to SSG, Cooler is not gonna be a match like in the movie, unless he trains like Frieza did...but that's not canon, that's crap(not the idea but the whole old cow milking franchise that is dbs).
I'm guessing Superman will also become a god to fight Trigon, it probably happens in some comic.
I know you said what the problem is with having royal children but he could use someone like little demon Gohan in a decade already. The romance is slow going so there'd have to be a lot of time dillation unless he starts making babies now.
Last edited:
Steps Forward
- Location
- USA
I stood in a great white expanse, a vast nothingness all around that almost hurt to look at. The only things of note were some amenities so far off in the distance that they were hardly specs in my vision, but there was a cafeteria, a private bath, and a door that would lead out of this space that seemed to stretch on for eternity. It was modeled after a memory of mine. Or, a memory of a past life. I thought it had been an exaggeration when I heard that staying in this white expanse could drive someone mad, but if I were alone, I could see how it would strain my mind….
Thankfully, I wasn't alone. Standing directly across from me were the Teen Titans, plus Kara. I'm not sure if she had officially joined the Titans, but she was found with them more often than not. All of them looked worse for wear and the same could be said about me as well. Medicine Balls took care of any injuries, but the undersuits that they all wore sustained some damage and in the three months that we've been here, we were running out because they insisted on changing out sets almost every other day.
My remarks that the undersuits could be worn for months at a time without need for changing fell on deaf ears.
Robin crouched low, his staff unfurled and in hand. Raven floated above the ground, her hands glowing with magical energy while her shadow seemed to churn like a boiling pot, threatening to rise up from the ground. Kara's eyes were glowing red, her hands clenched into tight fists. Kori floated next to her, her hands similarly glowing with green light that matched the same shade of green in her eyes. Kid Flash was in a runners position…
Beast Boy stood back and to the side, his skin was rippling like a water that just had a stone dropped into it, not revealing exactly what he was going to turn into, but based on the formation that the Titans took, I'm guessing it was going to be of the large variety. His teeth were sharper and his eyes displayed a slit pupil, small hints of what he was changing into but kept at bay.
I made my own preparations, taking in a deep slow breath, letting the air fill my lungs to the brim, before I let it out slowly. Settling in a familiar stance -- legs wide apart, one hand outstretched to the side while the other was curled inward. It was tempting to drift into one of my transformations, or even the Wrath State. Doing so would completely defeat the purpose.
There was no signal, but the Titans all moved as one with a clear plan of attack. Beast Boy changed, rapidly growing into a creature that I had only seen once before on Planet Vegeta. A large animal with bristle-like scales, massive claws, six eyes going down a long snout over a gaping gullet that was filled with thousands of razor sharp teeth, each one stronger than a diamond because that was the creature's preferred food. I never learned the name of it, but it was impossible to forget the sight of it.
It was the creature I had killed back on Planet Vegeta, and it had been the only time that Elery, Vegeta and I had shared a meal.
A mental attack? Garfield being able to turn into animals not native to Earth was old news at this point, and it seemed like he was rapidly expanding his options. Turning into the exact creature that I had some level of sentimental attachment to was one hell of a coincidence, which made me think that it wasn't one.
Garfield fired his spines at me while he lunged, making me twist into the air as I grabbed hold of the two crystalline spikes, dodging his attempt to swallow me whole. Flinging them as soon as I smashed down on Garfield's massive head, delivering a powerful axe kick that slammed his jaw into the ground, the two spines intercepted a pair of starbolts that Kori threw at me. They exploded on contact, and I darted away, narrowly avoiding the spines that Raven redirected at me.
I was too slow to avoid Kara punching me in the face hard enough that every tooth in my head felt a little bit looser afterwards. I was flung back, twisting sharply to kick out at her, but Kara threw up a forearm to catch the blow before I could kick her in the temple. Her eyes glowed red and I flipped back, narrowly avoiding her heat vision. I could feel the Wrath State and the Super Saiyan transformations itching to be sprung free but I kept them at bay.
This was training, I reminded myself, Kara throwing a high knee that I just barely caught before she followed it up with a elbow to the temple. I turned my head to lessen the impact, but it still felt like my brain was ringing in my skull like a bell. My base state wasn't good enough. It wasn't good enough even after three months of being locked in the training room with the Titans.
I was growing stronger, just not fast enough. My base power level was six and a half million -- more than doubling what I had to come to Earth with -- but it was nowhere near enough. Kara, at her weakest, was around two hundred million. It's why I needed my transformations to just keep up. And that was why I refused to use them. My transformations were only as good as my base state, and my base state was lacking.
As if to agree with my thoughts, Kara punched me in the face hard enough that I flew away, skidding across the floor like a skipping stone before I managed to right myself. There was a slight grin on Kara's face, "It never gets old," she decided, cracking her knuckles. I wasn't the only one that improved. Kara probably saw the most progress.
Annoyingly enough, she started fighting like me. The prior issues she had with combat, and her over reliance on her durability were being smoothed out. She still took hits when she didn't need to, but I figured that was more Kara's personal choice than an outright flaw in her approach. She was a Kryptonian. Kara and Clark weren't wrong in thinking that they wouldn't often find those that could hit them hard enough to hurt.
"I'd prefer it if you take your anger out on the Guardians rather than me," I remarked, spitting blood on the floor. The rest of the Titans were fanning out, going to surround me. They were getting used to fighting me, I noticed with some annoyance but there was a note of pride there as well.
Kara just smirked, "Would if I could, but since I can't, you get to be King Whipping Boy," she shot back. I hadn't been privy to the details, but through Raven, I heard the story. Kara had just about destroyed the planet in her reckless desire to crush the last three Guardians. Atrocitus joined in to help her. It had been a whole… thing. The point being was that Kara had learned a harsh truth about her race.
The Guardians had tampered with them. Early Kryptonians had proven too aggressive, and with their powers, they were nearly unbreakable to most of the galaxy. They meddled with the Kryptonians' homing instincts -- just like how a pigeon knew where to fly to get home, the Guardians changed the Kryptonians' instincts. So, instead of expanding outward, they would hone in on their home. Planet Krypton.
The story on what destroyed the planet itself was getting murky. Kara had been adamant that it was caused by them hollowing out their planet and it collapsed in on itself, but Ganthet said it was because of the sun exploding. It wasn't really an issue since the result remained the same. That result was that because of the Guardian's tampering, there were only two Kryptonians left. Kara took that hard. Very hard. Clark was more ambivalent about it, unhappy certainly, but I don't think it changed anything for him.
Training every day for about three months helped vent how she felt -- sometimes we fought at full power, far away, and kept going at it until she was utterly exhausted. The knowledge came with a price to it -- Kara was angry. There was a pot of simmering anger in her chest at all times and it boiled over almost at random. She had good days and bad days, and given that I wasn't picking up my teeth when her control over her strength slipped, today was one of her better days.
"What an honor," I replied, the net closing in around me and the Titans fought as one. Wally blurred forward, tenderizing my ribs with a thousand punches before I realized that I had even been hit. A Gravity Ball formed in my hands, catching Kid Flash when he suddenly slammed into the ground, then through it when Raven teleported him out of the range of my Gravity Ball. Wally started to run, circling the edge of the Gravity, and kicking up a cyclone, trying to obstruct my vision.
I responded by flicking a ki blast from my palm, slamming it into the ground to disrupt his rhythm before looking up to see Garfield above me, turning into a creature that I didn't recognize. It was large though. Large with segmented armored plates as natural armor and a mouth filled with teeth that were too large to properly fit. Flipping back, Garfield landed on the ground and sank right through it before being launched from behind me. I continued my flip, using Garfield as a springboard and sending him at Kara while Kori flew forward, a fist glowing with green light that she slammed into a waiting forearm.
All of the Titans were finding ways to utilize their powers in new ways -- Kori started holding the starbolts in her hands to increase her striking power when her attempts to shape the UV light didn't see much success. It made her hit a lot harder, that was for certain, because I felt the bones in my arm rattle at the impact.
Responding with a kick to her side, I never felt it connect before a hand grabbed me from behind. A glance down told me that it was Raven grabbing hold of me with a black magic hand that was highlighted with white, making me grab hold of it. The magic didn't budge underneath my grip, irrefutable proof that Raven had gotten far stronger. Her magic was potent and innately powerful to start with, but after she stopped fearing her own abilities, Raven became a foe to be reckoned with.
She flung me back, sending me through the air and I sensed the trap that she was putting me in. Robin fell into a support roll. His limits were defined. He was something called a Peak Human, but that was a limitation of his species. Physically, Robin was already the strongest he would ever be. Meaning that he had to make up for that shortcoming with ingenuity. Technology and skill. In this case, Robin utilized his team almost as an extension of himself, creating plans within plans.
When I touched down, I realized what that plan was. I had landed in a square that was marked with four disks that crackled with blue energy. What they were exactly, I wasn't entirely certain. They were developed by Robin over the past three months, so I had no clue if the disks I was looking at right now were something completely new or a rendition of a previous gadget that he was developing. As if to answer me, the four squares lifted up and projected a hard light forcefield, boxing me in.
"That's a capture!" I heard Garfield call out while Kara flew over, a confident smirk on her face.
"We so would have beat you when you first showed up on Earth with these babies," Kara remarked when I pressed a hand against the hard light barrier. It was rather powerful, I found, when the hard light refused to bend with a hard push. The confidence wasn't completely misplaced.
"If I only possessed my base state," I reminded, slipping into Stage Two of the Wrath State and trying again. The barrier held. Stage three as well. And Stage Four. It was only when I reached Stage Ten that the hard light began to crack under my fingers, shattering like glass and allowing me to easily escape. I saw that Robin was visibly disappointed with the result, but he shouldn't be. He was developing a portable containment system for higher end villains and it took me pushing past fifty million pl to break out.
If I had encountered that containment field during the war, for most of it, I wouldn't have been able to escape. People that were past that point were outliers for good reason. Just because it failed on me didn't mean that it was a failure.
Golden energy started to emerge from my body as my hair shifted to a golden hue. "My turn," I remarked, letting them know that it was time to test how they dealt with a me that was stronger than them. The Titans braced themselves, some awaiting the coming fight more eagerly than others. Only for a sharp beeping to interrupt us before I could move.
"It's been a day already?" Kori questioned, her tone mournful as I let the Super Saiyan transformations drop. I looked at the entrance to see that the doors were swinging open. Letting out an annoyed breath, I started to leave the training room with the Titans in tow.
"Feels like it's been months," Garfield remarked, nudging Robin in the ribs, who just groaned as we stepped out of the training room to get a view of Earth from the very edge of its atmosphere. My space elevators were complete, granting a decent view of the planet.
A robot, with a metallic hand, offered the Titans an arrangement of syringes that were filled with a purple fluid. The only ones that didn't take a gun syringe was Raven and Kara, the latter on account that her skin was too tough for one. They injected it into themselves with little difficulty, though Garfield did whimper at the prospect of needles. The drug, in essence, reactivated their aging process that had been on hold during the past three months in the training room while it had been a day in real time.
I didn't take it in the first place on account that it didn't matter. I was likely closing in on my final growth spurt, and after that, I would remain in my prime for, in all likelihood, several million years. Perhaps longer. Robin and the other humans didn't have that luxury.
"It is time for what was promised, Tarble!" Kori decided, grabbing hold of me and dragging me closer to the Titans. I allowed it and noticed the faintest hint of a smile on Raven's lips before she opened up a portal below us that we all sank through. It was a blind jump for me -- I knew that the rest of the Titans had been conspiring with each other on where we would go after the training session.
What I didn't expect was to materialize in front of a pizza parlor. One that was vaguely familiar. Overhead, a flying car zoomed above the roads -- one of Lex Luthor's designs. There was someone programming a hologram projector on one of the buildings across the street to display some advertisements for human companies, as well as companies that existed within my empire. Earth was still primarily human, but I did sense a Saiyan flying above the city and various species hidden amongst the population.
"Marlo's Pizza will never change," Garfield sighed, sounding happy about it. There were signs of change everywhere in Jump City. Across the entire world.
We had spent three months in the training room, but before it, it had been three months since our visit with the Guardians and New Lanterns. Earth was getting used to the idea that they were now part of a massive empire. On a neon sign, I saw that Marlo's had made the official transition into credits instead of using dollar bills. As I understood it, on Earth, American dollars had become something of a black market currency, but there were no official exchange rates for dollars and credits.
I think they were trying to make a point to me, as we entered the pizza parlor and I saw that, indeed, it hadn't changed much since we were last here. Back then, the Titans had been trying to reach out but the attempts were clumsy, awkward, and overall painful. The patrons of the establishment gaped as we all entered, eyeing me up and down. Some dropped to a knee in a bow, but I quickly gestured for them to stand up.
"I'll grab a table," I decided, seeing that we came at a poor hour since most of them were full to varying degrees. A problem that soon rectified itself when I began to approach -- I didn't need to be an empath to feel the sense of unease for some of the patrons. For the most part, the humans of Earth had started to ease out of their knee-jerk reaction of fear. Now, they seemed to just not know what to make of me or how to act in my presence, but I didn't think that was unique to me.
Taking advantage of it, I claimed a table when a few people cleared out of the pizzeria entirely. My eyes lingered on the arcade game that I had played some months ago, nearly half a year ago already. There were times when it felt like it had been so much longer. The games there still seemed the same to my memory. Drifting over while the rest of the Titans ordered our food, I approached one that displayed the high score.
My eyes narrowed into slits when I saw that I had been knocked into third place. "Unacceptable," I decided, pressing a button to boot up the machine. Retro games were a dying breed to my knowledge that mostly stemmed from Garfield's complaining. Coins were effectively worthless on Earth, but the arcade games typically weren't worth the expense to retrofit them to accept digital credits. As a result, they became free to play with a purchase of some kind.
"I figured that this would happen," Raven remarked as she approached, pushing back her hood. "They're going to find a way to beat the high score as soon as you leave. You do know that?" She remarked, completely missing the point.
"It's a matter of pride," I decided, grabbing the joystick and getting ready to smash the buttons. I would have to inspect my high score for the basketball game as well.
"Then it all makes sense," Raven decided, her tone dry but she lingered. Sparing a glance at the others, she saw Kara posing for a picture with some fans while Garfield and Wally were carrying stacks of pizza boxes. We had a number of big eaters to provide for. "These past few months have been peaceful."
I continued to rack up points, my superior Saiyan reflexes allowing me to effortlessly dodge between blasts from the alien invaders that fired down from above. "They have been," I agreed.
"That won't last," Raven told me, a note of sadness in her voice.
"It won't," I agreed, "but that just means we need to enjoy the moments of peace that we do get." I responded, hearing a clatter behind me as the Titans began digging into the pizza with gusto.
Six months ago, I never would have imagined that it was possible -- to be on Earth and to be having fun. The Titans couldn't ever replace my team, but they weren't trying and they didn't need to. For all of the hiccups and setbacks, it felt like I was making tangible progress towards all of my goals -- both securing my empire as well as more personal goals.
However, there was a storm coming on the horizon. Everyone felt it.
But, I was right. Even with the storm that was coming, as much as we had to prepare…
We had to take the moments of peace while we could. Which is why I threw the run in favor of taking a seat at the table and grabbing an entire box of pizza for myself with Raven seated right next to me. They wouldn't last, so we had to make the most of them.
...
The next chapter is currently available on my Patreon and Subscribe Star, so if you want to read it a week early, all it takes is a single dollar in the tip jar. Or, for five dollars, you can read the chapter after that two weeks before its public release! I hope you enjoyed!
Thankfully, I wasn't alone. Standing directly across from me were the Teen Titans, plus Kara. I'm not sure if she had officially joined the Titans, but she was found with them more often than not. All of them looked worse for wear and the same could be said about me as well. Medicine Balls took care of any injuries, but the undersuits that they all wore sustained some damage and in the three months that we've been here, we were running out because they insisted on changing out sets almost every other day.
My remarks that the undersuits could be worn for months at a time without need for changing fell on deaf ears.
Robin crouched low, his staff unfurled and in hand. Raven floated above the ground, her hands glowing with magical energy while her shadow seemed to churn like a boiling pot, threatening to rise up from the ground. Kara's eyes were glowing red, her hands clenched into tight fists. Kori floated next to her, her hands similarly glowing with green light that matched the same shade of green in her eyes. Kid Flash was in a runners position…
Beast Boy stood back and to the side, his skin was rippling like a water that just had a stone dropped into it, not revealing exactly what he was going to turn into, but based on the formation that the Titans took, I'm guessing it was going to be of the large variety. His teeth were sharper and his eyes displayed a slit pupil, small hints of what he was changing into but kept at bay.
I made my own preparations, taking in a deep slow breath, letting the air fill my lungs to the brim, before I let it out slowly. Settling in a familiar stance -- legs wide apart, one hand outstretched to the side while the other was curled inward. It was tempting to drift into one of my transformations, or even the Wrath State. Doing so would completely defeat the purpose.
There was no signal, but the Titans all moved as one with a clear plan of attack. Beast Boy changed, rapidly growing into a creature that I had only seen once before on Planet Vegeta. A large animal with bristle-like scales, massive claws, six eyes going down a long snout over a gaping gullet that was filled with thousands of razor sharp teeth, each one stronger than a diamond because that was the creature's preferred food. I never learned the name of it, but it was impossible to forget the sight of it.
It was the creature I had killed back on Planet Vegeta, and it had been the only time that Elery, Vegeta and I had shared a meal.
A mental attack? Garfield being able to turn into animals not native to Earth was old news at this point, and it seemed like he was rapidly expanding his options. Turning into the exact creature that I had some level of sentimental attachment to was one hell of a coincidence, which made me think that it wasn't one.
Garfield fired his spines at me while he lunged, making me twist into the air as I grabbed hold of the two crystalline spikes, dodging his attempt to swallow me whole. Flinging them as soon as I smashed down on Garfield's massive head, delivering a powerful axe kick that slammed his jaw into the ground, the two spines intercepted a pair of starbolts that Kori threw at me. They exploded on contact, and I darted away, narrowly avoiding the spines that Raven redirected at me.
I was too slow to avoid Kara punching me in the face hard enough that every tooth in my head felt a little bit looser afterwards. I was flung back, twisting sharply to kick out at her, but Kara threw up a forearm to catch the blow before I could kick her in the temple. Her eyes glowed red and I flipped back, narrowly avoiding her heat vision. I could feel the Wrath State and the Super Saiyan transformations itching to be sprung free but I kept them at bay.
This was training, I reminded myself, Kara throwing a high knee that I just barely caught before she followed it up with a elbow to the temple. I turned my head to lessen the impact, but it still felt like my brain was ringing in my skull like a bell. My base state wasn't good enough. It wasn't good enough even after three months of being locked in the training room with the Titans.
I was growing stronger, just not fast enough. My base power level was six and a half million -- more than doubling what I had to come to Earth with -- but it was nowhere near enough. Kara, at her weakest, was around two hundred million. It's why I needed my transformations to just keep up. And that was why I refused to use them. My transformations were only as good as my base state, and my base state was lacking.
As if to agree with my thoughts, Kara punched me in the face hard enough that I flew away, skidding across the floor like a skipping stone before I managed to right myself. There was a slight grin on Kara's face, "It never gets old," she decided, cracking her knuckles. I wasn't the only one that improved. Kara probably saw the most progress.
Annoyingly enough, she started fighting like me. The prior issues she had with combat, and her over reliance on her durability were being smoothed out. She still took hits when she didn't need to, but I figured that was more Kara's personal choice than an outright flaw in her approach. She was a Kryptonian. Kara and Clark weren't wrong in thinking that they wouldn't often find those that could hit them hard enough to hurt.
"I'd prefer it if you take your anger out on the Guardians rather than me," I remarked, spitting blood on the floor. The rest of the Titans were fanning out, going to surround me. They were getting used to fighting me, I noticed with some annoyance but there was a note of pride there as well.
Kara just smirked, "Would if I could, but since I can't, you get to be King Whipping Boy," she shot back. I hadn't been privy to the details, but through Raven, I heard the story. Kara had just about destroyed the planet in her reckless desire to crush the last three Guardians. Atrocitus joined in to help her. It had been a whole… thing. The point being was that Kara had learned a harsh truth about her race.
The Guardians had tampered with them. Early Kryptonians had proven too aggressive, and with their powers, they were nearly unbreakable to most of the galaxy. They meddled with the Kryptonians' homing instincts -- just like how a pigeon knew where to fly to get home, the Guardians changed the Kryptonians' instincts. So, instead of expanding outward, they would hone in on their home. Planet Krypton.
The story on what destroyed the planet itself was getting murky. Kara had been adamant that it was caused by them hollowing out their planet and it collapsed in on itself, but Ganthet said it was because of the sun exploding. It wasn't really an issue since the result remained the same. That result was that because of the Guardian's tampering, there were only two Kryptonians left. Kara took that hard. Very hard. Clark was more ambivalent about it, unhappy certainly, but I don't think it changed anything for him.
Training every day for about three months helped vent how she felt -- sometimes we fought at full power, far away, and kept going at it until she was utterly exhausted. The knowledge came with a price to it -- Kara was angry. There was a pot of simmering anger in her chest at all times and it boiled over almost at random. She had good days and bad days, and given that I wasn't picking up my teeth when her control over her strength slipped, today was one of her better days.
"What an honor," I replied, the net closing in around me and the Titans fought as one. Wally blurred forward, tenderizing my ribs with a thousand punches before I realized that I had even been hit. A Gravity Ball formed in my hands, catching Kid Flash when he suddenly slammed into the ground, then through it when Raven teleported him out of the range of my Gravity Ball. Wally started to run, circling the edge of the Gravity, and kicking up a cyclone, trying to obstruct my vision.
I responded by flicking a ki blast from my palm, slamming it into the ground to disrupt his rhythm before looking up to see Garfield above me, turning into a creature that I didn't recognize. It was large though. Large with segmented armored plates as natural armor and a mouth filled with teeth that were too large to properly fit. Flipping back, Garfield landed on the ground and sank right through it before being launched from behind me. I continued my flip, using Garfield as a springboard and sending him at Kara while Kori flew forward, a fist glowing with green light that she slammed into a waiting forearm.
All of the Titans were finding ways to utilize their powers in new ways -- Kori started holding the starbolts in her hands to increase her striking power when her attempts to shape the UV light didn't see much success. It made her hit a lot harder, that was for certain, because I felt the bones in my arm rattle at the impact.
Responding with a kick to her side, I never felt it connect before a hand grabbed me from behind. A glance down told me that it was Raven grabbing hold of me with a black magic hand that was highlighted with white, making me grab hold of it. The magic didn't budge underneath my grip, irrefutable proof that Raven had gotten far stronger. Her magic was potent and innately powerful to start with, but after she stopped fearing her own abilities, Raven became a foe to be reckoned with.
She flung me back, sending me through the air and I sensed the trap that she was putting me in. Robin fell into a support roll. His limits were defined. He was something called a Peak Human, but that was a limitation of his species. Physically, Robin was already the strongest he would ever be. Meaning that he had to make up for that shortcoming with ingenuity. Technology and skill. In this case, Robin utilized his team almost as an extension of himself, creating plans within plans.
When I touched down, I realized what that plan was. I had landed in a square that was marked with four disks that crackled with blue energy. What they were exactly, I wasn't entirely certain. They were developed by Robin over the past three months, so I had no clue if the disks I was looking at right now were something completely new or a rendition of a previous gadget that he was developing. As if to answer me, the four squares lifted up and projected a hard light forcefield, boxing me in.
"That's a capture!" I heard Garfield call out while Kara flew over, a confident smirk on her face.
"We so would have beat you when you first showed up on Earth with these babies," Kara remarked when I pressed a hand against the hard light barrier. It was rather powerful, I found, when the hard light refused to bend with a hard push. The confidence wasn't completely misplaced.
"If I only possessed my base state," I reminded, slipping into Stage Two of the Wrath State and trying again. The barrier held. Stage three as well. And Stage Four. It was only when I reached Stage Ten that the hard light began to crack under my fingers, shattering like glass and allowing me to easily escape. I saw that Robin was visibly disappointed with the result, but he shouldn't be. He was developing a portable containment system for higher end villains and it took me pushing past fifty million pl to break out.
If I had encountered that containment field during the war, for most of it, I wouldn't have been able to escape. People that were past that point were outliers for good reason. Just because it failed on me didn't mean that it was a failure.
Golden energy started to emerge from my body as my hair shifted to a golden hue. "My turn," I remarked, letting them know that it was time to test how they dealt with a me that was stronger than them. The Titans braced themselves, some awaiting the coming fight more eagerly than others. Only for a sharp beeping to interrupt us before I could move.
"It's been a day already?" Kori questioned, her tone mournful as I let the Super Saiyan transformations drop. I looked at the entrance to see that the doors were swinging open. Letting out an annoyed breath, I started to leave the training room with the Titans in tow.
"Feels like it's been months," Garfield remarked, nudging Robin in the ribs, who just groaned as we stepped out of the training room to get a view of Earth from the very edge of its atmosphere. My space elevators were complete, granting a decent view of the planet.
A robot, with a metallic hand, offered the Titans an arrangement of syringes that were filled with a purple fluid. The only ones that didn't take a gun syringe was Raven and Kara, the latter on account that her skin was too tough for one. They injected it into themselves with little difficulty, though Garfield did whimper at the prospect of needles. The drug, in essence, reactivated their aging process that had been on hold during the past three months in the training room while it had been a day in real time.
I didn't take it in the first place on account that it didn't matter. I was likely closing in on my final growth spurt, and after that, I would remain in my prime for, in all likelihood, several million years. Perhaps longer. Robin and the other humans didn't have that luxury.
"It is time for what was promised, Tarble!" Kori decided, grabbing hold of me and dragging me closer to the Titans. I allowed it and noticed the faintest hint of a smile on Raven's lips before she opened up a portal below us that we all sank through. It was a blind jump for me -- I knew that the rest of the Titans had been conspiring with each other on where we would go after the training session.
What I didn't expect was to materialize in front of a pizza parlor. One that was vaguely familiar. Overhead, a flying car zoomed above the roads -- one of Lex Luthor's designs. There was someone programming a hologram projector on one of the buildings across the street to display some advertisements for human companies, as well as companies that existed within my empire. Earth was still primarily human, but I did sense a Saiyan flying above the city and various species hidden amongst the population.
"Marlo's Pizza will never change," Garfield sighed, sounding happy about it. There were signs of change everywhere in Jump City. Across the entire world.
We had spent three months in the training room, but before it, it had been three months since our visit with the Guardians and New Lanterns. Earth was getting used to the idea that they were now part of a massive empire. On a neon sign, I saw that Marlo's had made the official transition into credits instead of using dollar bills. As I understood it, on Earth, American dollars had become something of a black market currency, but there were no official exchange rates for dollars and credits.
I think they were trying to make a point to me, as we entered the pizza parlor and I saw that, indeed, it hadn't changed much since we were last here. Back then, the Titans had been trying to reach out but the attempts were clumsy, awkward, and overall painful. The patrons of the establishment gaped as we all entered, eyeing me up and down. Some dropped to a knee in a bow, but I quickly gestured for them to stand up.
"I'll grab a table," I decided, seeing that we came at a poor hour since most of them were full to varying degrees. A problem that soon rectified itself when I began to approach -- I didn't need to be an empath to feel the sense of unease for some of the patrons. For the most part, the humans of Earth had started to ease out of their knee-jerk reaction of fear. Now, they seemed to just not know what to make of me or how to act in my presence, but I didn't think that was unique to me.
Taking advantage of it, I claimed a table when a few people cleared out of the pizzeria entirely. My eyes lingered on the arcade game that I had played some months ago, nearly half a year ago already. There were times when it felt like it had been so much longer. The games there still seemed the same to my memory. Drifting over while the rest of the Titans ordered our food, I approached one that displayed the high score.
My eyes narrowed into slits when I saw that I had been knocked into third place. "Unacceptable," I decided, pressing a button to boot up the machine. Retro games were a dying breed to my knowledge that mostly stemmed from Garfield's complaining. Coins were effectively worthless on Earth, but the arcade games typically weren't worth the expense to retrofit them to accept digital credits. As a result, they became free to play with a purchase of some kind.
"I figured that this would happen," Raven remarked as she approached, pushing back her hood. "They're going to find a way to beat the high score as soon as you leave. You do know that?" She remarked, completely missing the point.
"It's a matter of pride," I decided, grabbing the joystick and getting ready to smash the buttons. I would have to inspect my high score for the basketball game as well.
"Then it all makes sense," Raven decided, her tone dry but she lingered. Sparing a glance at the others, she saw Kara posing for a picture with some fans while Garfield and Wally were carrying stacks of pizza boxes. We had a number of big eaters to provide for. "These past few months have been peaceful."
I continued to rack up points, my superior Saiyan reflexes allowing me to effortlessly dodge between blasts from the alien invaders that fired down from above. "They have been," I agreed.
"That won't last," Raven told me, a note of sadness in her voice.
"It won't," I agreed, "but that just means we need to enjoy the moments of peace that we do get." I responded, hearing a clatter behind me as the Titans began digging into the pizza with gusto.
Six months ago, I never would have imagined that it was possible -- to be on Earth and to be having fun. The Titans couldn't ever replace my team, but they weren't trying and they didn't need to. For all of the hiccups and setbacks, it felt like I was making tangible progress towards all of my goals -- both securing my empire as well as more personal goals.
However, there was a storm coming on the horizon. Everyone felt it.
But, I was right. Even with the storm that was coming, as much as we had to prepare…
We had to take the moments of peace while we could. Which is why I threw the run in favor of taking a seat at the table and grabbing an entire box of pizza for myself with Raven seated right next to me. They wouldn't last, so we had to make the most of them.
...
The next chapter is currently available on my Patreon and Subscribe Star, so if you want to read it a week early, all it takes is a single dollar in the tip jar. Or, for five dollars, you can read the chapter after that two weeks before its public release! I hope you enjoyed!
Fellow Human
Verified Roado Rolla
In response to SB guys, nerfed zenkai is a good thing. Akira isn't good with numbers, as I said even Nappa was able to destroy planets which is bs.
btw notice me author
btw notice me author
Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
The character stuff here is good, but I continue to be really offput by the way Tarble's competency and power level seems to massively drop as soon as he approaches anyone in a superhero costume. This last part emphasized that out even more—like, come on, how is Robin even a factor here? Why is "put a square on a ground and get the super-fast guy to land in it" even a possible plan when the team is mostly made up of normal-speed people?
Fellow Human
Verified Roado Rolla
It's a bit frustrating, I guess he's holding back same as he did in the fight on Earth. He must've intentionally stood in one spot so normies can shoot him, otherwise they wouldn't be able to seem him with how fast he moves. It's DC...
Same comic logic for those power suits, not only they don't turn to mush inside, but somehow they are limber enough for martial arts as well as get reflexes for that kind of speed.
- Location
- Germany
sounds exactly what a Saiyan wants: a challenge that keeps getting better, a bar set higher and higher every time.
Gaming might become an addiction for the race.
Extreme Measures
- Location
- USA
Earth was still adapting, but it had done a lot of it over the past three months. To the point that it was honestly shocking.
Letting Lex Luthor remain in charge had been a gamble -- a dangerous one. I had no doubt in my mind that he was taking a mile with every inch that I gave him, building his powerbase on Earth to become a major figure in my empire. But I allowed it because, ultimately, he was doing what I wanted -- leading Earth to develop this portion of my empire and integrate into it.
What Lex had difficulty imagining was how easily he could be removed. How his influence only existed because I allowed it to. He was too used to playing by human rules, navigating Earth's waters. In the past months, I would go as far as to say that he did an excellent job of adapting to the new political landscape. Harvest was already up and running, the entire planet dedicated to food production, and already it was producing enough to support all of Earth's needs several times over. The asteroid belt was also being liberally mined for valuable materials.
Luthor was creating connections at the developing companies that grew in my empire. A number of them were government sponsored, thus owned by me in practice. As a result, Earth was rapidly gaining familiarity with FTL travel. To several companies that still existed on Earth, such as Wayne Enterprises and Queen Industries, mining the asteroid belt was in practice the same as going to… Utah, or somewhere else on Earth to pull up ore from the crust.
"I thought it would take longer to get to this point," I remarked, choosing not to say anything until the person I was speaking to arrived. "Earth has a habit of exceeding my expectations," I continued when Broly landed, an industrial amount of popcorn held in a cardboard box under one arm as I stood at the edge of Jump City. There were a handful of flying cars darting between the buildings. Luthor's brand, primarily. As far as I could tell, he had been sitting on the designs for a while and only chose to bring them out when demand for them was already there and at its height.
"Humans are pretty weird," Broly agreed, taking a seat at the ledge before placing the box of popcorn between us. "They do some things super slow, even if they know it's better for them, but when it's something they want they just go towards it full speed. Popcorn?"
"Thanks," I said, taking a handful of popcorn, finding that it had been liberally coated in butter and salt, before tossing it into my mouth. Chewing thoughtfully, I thought over the estimates that Luthor sent had me. Progress reports. All well ahead of schedule. The problems of the rapid development were also being seen to. A significant portion of Earth was covered in farmland, but with Harvest, that was completely unnecessary. A significant portion of humanity's farmers went to Harvest -- millions of them, which meant that their farms needed to be sold.
To me, as it turned out. I was effectively immortal. I would be king for a very, very, very long time. Ada'la's warning about the lack of gratitude from my citizen's offspring was the guiding force behind the decision. It seemed wrong to me now, but I could see all to easily how it could become difficult a thousand years down the line. To future proof the corruption, I decided that formally, all property within my empire belonged to me. Directly. As a result, all occupied land was leased out to the inhabitants.
I had to trust myself that I wouldn't change so much that I would abuse that position for my own benefit in a far off future.
"More of them are leaving," Broly said, sounding almost mournful of the fact. I felt what he was talking about. My range expanded until it completely enveloped the Earth. I could feel every living being on the face of the planet, and I felt the rather sharp decrease in the number of humans thanks to how many of them had left Earth in the past half year. I would say mostly in the past three months, really. The fear of my empire had lessened, and many humans were venturing beyond the only planet that they had ever known. They were making a bit of a splash, from my understanding.
The rest of my citizens were curious about Earth itself, but overall felt it unwelcoming. The humans that stayed were the ones that were either on the fence or were fully against joining my empire while the ones that embraced it were exploring it. The few visitors that came to Earth were often in disguise.
"It'll fill back up eventually," I voiced. The population was pretty heavily linked with how the latest generation felt about their future and the idea of bringing up children in it. For a long time, Earth had been sliding to a tipping point -- the economy was bad, climate change was happening and nothing was being done, and so on. Social issues exacerbated it, but at the core of it, no one wanted to raise a child in a world that could be ending within that child's lifetime. "Or maybe it won't. That won't be a bad thing in itself."
Broly was silent for a moment, chewing a mouthful of popcorn. "Have you decided on what you're going to do? About us?" He asked me directly, and by us he meant everyone. All of the Saiyans. "The Guardians helped a bit, didn't they?"
"Only a bit," I answered, an edge of bitterness in my tone. The Guardians had followed through on their end and gave me the data on my race. All of which had been on the ship that had transported us to Planet Vegeta after we destroyed Planet Sadala. There was billions of years' worth of data, and I had learned exactly how many renditions of the Saiyan race there were. One million, three hundred and twenty-six thousand, one hundred and three. Each one taking place across the universe, as the Guardians experimented to learn what worked and what didn't.
Calm biomes didn't work well with Saiyans, the Guardians had quickly learned. Saiyans thrived off of adversity and without it, we quickly devolved into infighting. That killed a number of the past renditions of my species. Others did as Yamoshi had implied -- they got the ball rolling, and managed to coexist with powerful but kind leaders guiding the Saiyan race, but then they collapsed in on themselves when the Saiyan race as a whole became powerful enough to tap into the Super Saiyan transformation.
Only three renditions of the Saiyan race had managed to reach a point that the Guardians had labeled them successes. My own. Yamoshi's version. And a version that existed roughly fifteen million years ago in another galaxy. It had imploded for a similar reason to what Yamoshi had said about his rendition -- things were going great until, suddenly, they weren't and the Saiyan race destroyed itself.
"A bit?" Broly echoed, glancing up at me as I stood on the ledge.
"Some of the records were missing. They're still hiding something from me," I told him, which was firmly annoying. Those records were gone before I had asked the Guardians about them. As far as I could tell, it was an attempt to deliberately hide something from whoever stumbled across the ship, and learned what I now knew.
"Any idea what they could be?" Broly asked me, tossing another handful of popcorn in his mouth.
I frowned at Jump City, then at the sky above. "The last Super Saiyan that destroyed Planet Sadala was trying to combine the Oozaru transformation with the Super Saiyan form, but they lost control." I told Broly, making him nod because he already knew as much. "Every single time I've discovered a transformation or stacked them, it was because I was fighting someone I couldn't defeat otherwise."
Broly saw where I was going with this train of thought. "You think it was Sadala?"
"Possibly," I voiced, my lips thinning. The only information I had on Sadala was what the Guardians told me -- she was the progenitor of my race, and she was somewhere out in the universe, waiting for the Saiyan race to rise to what she desired. "But, I don't think so. According to the Guardians, Sadala is asleep and has been for billions of years. No. I think it was someone else. Because the files that were missing were about what happened to the Saiyans that were left over from the disasters."
I glanced down at Broly. "Some of them were space-faring by the time they were destroyed," I told him. He instantly understood what I was hinting at, his eyebrows drawing together as his expression became thoughtful.
"Do you really think another race of Saiyans is out there? And that they attacked Planet Sadala?" He asked, and I could hear his doubt. "We would have heard about them by now, right? Or they would have come to us?" He voiced reasonable doubts, but I felt it in my gut. My instincts were telling me that the two were connected in some way. I had three million PL before I could tap into the Super Saiyan transformation, and because of it, I was in the upper percentile of the galaxy.
Stacking the Oozaru transformation on top of that would push the last Super Saiyan even higher because I had no idea how strong they had been when they died. All the same, they had died. Simply put, there weren't a lot of figures in the galaxy, or the universe to my knowledge, that could manage to push a Saiyan that far, then overcome them anyway. Perhaps it was my pride talking, but the only kind of enemy that I knew of that could accomplish that was another Saiyan.
"Maybe," I agreed, not fully buying the idea that I was mistaken. "It's too early to tell one way or the other, but I do believe that there is at least a handful of the previous renditions of the Saiyan race out there. If they maintained their training, then they could survive until now." Matillo survived for a thousand years while being, as far as I could tell, one of the weakest versions of our race to date. "I'll find them if I can."
"Yamoshi could help," Broly pointed out.
"If I could find him," I responded, my tone testy. Yamoshi was in the wind, as far as I could tell. He seemed to be deliberately avoiding me now for some reason. Which struck me as odd given how whimsical he seemed. There was likely a good reason for it, but it did mean that I was left in the dark and stumbling to find answers. "I know Yamoshi's generation was thousands of years ago, but the last Super Saiyan existed a thousand years ago. He's also the only one that managed to attain the Saiyan God form before me, so he is the only Saiyan god. The Guardians took note of him and his influence, so he may be able to give me answers."
Yamoshi had been the Guardians' greatest hope for the Saiyan race. They had thought he was the key. The notes I read were as dry as sand, but when they were about Yamoshi, there was hope there. Excitement. Eagerness to find the answer after billions of years of trying. Then bitter disappointment when his generation collapsed. Since then, Yamoshi did what he's been doing to me -- popping in on the occasion to give advice and help. I'm betting that the last Super Saiyan had been similar to me. A Saiyan that had the same hopes for the Saiyan race, or at least the desire to take it down a different path.
"That answers what happened a long time ago, but… have you decided what we're doing in the future?" Broly asked, taking the conversation in the direction that I had been trying to avoid. It had been three months since I learned what I now knew about my race. Six months counting the three months spent in training. I had millions of examples of failure staring me in the face, and more than a few of them eerily echoed my original plans.
It was the final nail in the coffin to convince me that I needed to do something different. An extreme measure. Because I needed my race to change. For good. To become-
Almost as if to agree with me, as I looked out at the city, I felt a presence surging towards the city. I thought nothing of it until that presence slammed through a building, punching through it like it wasn't even there. I responded instantly, flying up an inch to avoid using the Titan Tower as a launch platform, and flew forward towards the presence. Ki gathered around my palm before it was flung forward.
Small ki blasts destroyed the debris that was going to fall upon the street, vaporizing it into nothing, while another went into the building itself to support it. I'm not sure if it needed it, but I really didn't want to risk it. A split second later, I saw exactly who it was. Olaive. Elery's teammate. She was looking over her shoulder -- not at me, but as if she was just realizing that she had hit something, and started to look away uncaringly before her gaze landed on me.
Her face was flushed, I noticed and clutched in her hand was a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. She slowed, floating in mid air while Broly went into the building itself to make sure no one needed help. I didn't sense that they did -- no one's ki signature was weakening in a way that hinted at a major injury. "King Tarble! Uh… what brings you here?" She asked, blinking oddly at me before a wide smile appeared on her face, thrusting the masked bottle in my direction. "I found some really awesome stuff! Humans call it booze! It's great!"
I wanted to look to the sky and yell in frustration when I heard that. Olaive, like many of the current generation of Saiyans, had her third growth spurt. No longer was she a child in appearance, but a young woman. A teenager. I knew it was going to happen eventually, but I still didn't like it. Because the very last thing I ever needed was members of the Saiyan race developing substance abuse problems.
The power to destroy a city with a stray blast and alcohol did not go together. Period.
"It's called, uh, absinthe, I think. We have to keep it in paper bags for some reason, but its awesome!" To punctuate her point, Olaive brought her lips to the bottle and gulped it down like it was water. It was unfortunate, I thought. Most of the alcohol or drugs that did exist within my empire could only be consumed by the species that created them -- after all, the reason drugs were drugs was that they caused a reaction in that species' biology. Just because one race started hallucinating when eating a mushroom didn't mean that another species would when they ate that same mushroom.
With Saiyans, I had hoped that our natural metabolism would mean that human substances would be too weak to have the effect they had on humans. That hope was misplaced, it seemed.
Raising a finger, I blasted the bottle, dunking half the contents on her face, making Olaive sputter. "H-hey! What'd you go and do that for?!" She protested, glaring at me for the briefest of moments before she wiped the expression from her face when she saw mine.
"You nearly leveled that building, Olaive," I told her, gesturing to it, my lips in a thin line. I knew exactly what reaction that I was going to get. I could see it rising in her chest. It was also one that I was learning to expect to some degree.
"Then humans shouldn't make their buildings so fragile! I barely dinged it!" Olaive argued, gesturing wildly at me and the building.
"You could have killed everyone in it," I continued, ignoring her protests about the matter. And I saw it in her gaze this time. The complete and utter lack of empathy or care. The only reason she didn't shrug her shoulders at the idea that she could have killed potentially hundreds of people was because I was in front of her. There was no accountability or empathy.
"I'm sorry," Olaive told me, offering a bow before wiping the rest of the alcohol off of her face with a forearm. She didn't mean it. I could see it. She was like a child that was apologizing simply because she wanted to avoid getting in trouble.
And I understood. I did. More than words could ever hope to convey. There had been millions of Saiyan races that all drove themselves into extinction, and they did it with their own power. Their own choices and upbringing. My generation of Saiyans was raised to fight in the most brutal war that this galaxy had ever known. The only peace they had known was during the first five years of their lives before they were shipped off to the harshest front lines, and even during that time, their days were filled with conflict.
What was the death of a few extra humans on their hands? When they had already seen millions die and killed more?
It always weighed heavily on me because I understood that would be a huge hurdle to overcome, but now it was weighed down further by the fact that my race didn't need any help destroying itself such as being raised soldiers first and foremost.
"Are you?" I asked myself as much as her, catching Olaive flatfooted. Perhaps she expected some degree of special treatment from me since she was my sister's teammate. I couldn't tell. "Are you that bored?" I asked her, knowing exactly what the root of the problem was.
My people grew up at war and they had no idea what to do with peace. Most of the Saiyan race was on Tamaran at the moment, which seemed to be enduring them well enough, but there were a handful of Saiyans that were lingering on Earth or elsewhere. They were trouble but they kept it in check for the most part, and this was the closest call that I knew about so far. Those Saiyans were bored.
Olaive confirmed as much, "Kinda. I thought Earth was supposed to have a whole bunch of things and people to fight but there's nothing! So I asked around what humans do for fun and found out that they drink a lot."
Then did what amounted to driving drunk for humans, only far more destructive. I closed my eyes for a brief moment, and in my heart, I knew that I made a decision then and there. However, when I opened them, I pinned a sharp look on Olaive as we floated above the city. "Go find Elery, and she'll deal with you." I told her, earning a curt nod from Olaive before she all but fled from the scene of the crime.
A hand went up to my necklace, at the complete collection of Lantern Rings upon it…
And I held the Indigo Ring of Compassion.
...
The next chapter is currently available on my Patreon and Subscribe Star, so if you want to read it a week early, all it takes is a single dollar in the tip jar. Or, for five dollars, you can read the chapter after that two weeks before its public release! I hope you enjoyed!
Letting Lex Luthor remain in charge had been a gamble -- a dangerous one. I had no doubt in my mind that he was taking a mile with every inch that I gave him, building his powerbase on Earth to become a major figure in my empire. But I allowed it because, ultimately, he was doing what I wanted -- leading Earth to develop this portion of my empire and integrate into it.
What Lex had difficulty imagining was how easily he could be removed. How his influence only existed because I allowed it to. He was too used to playing by human rules, navigating Earth's waters. In the past months, I would go as far as to say that he did an excellent job of adapting to the new political landscape. Harvest was already up and running, the entire planet dedicated to food production, and already it was producing enough to support all of Earth's needs several times over. The asteroid belt was also being liberally mined for valuable materials.
Luthor was creating connections at the developing companies that grew in my empire. A number of them were government sponsored, thus owned by me in practice. As a result, Earth was rapidly gaining familiarity with FTL travel. To several companies that still existed on Earth, such as Wayne Enterprises and Queen Industries, mining the asteroid belt was in practice the same as going to… Utah, or somewhere else on Earth to pull up ore from the crust.
"I thought it would take longer to get to this point," I remarked, choosing not to say anything until the person I was speaking to arrived. "Earth has a habit of exceeding my expectations," I continued when Broly landed, an industrial amount of popcorn held in a cardboard box under one arm as I stood at the edge of Jump City. There were a handful of flying cars darting between the buildings. Luthor's brand, primarily. As far as I could tell, he had been sitting on the designs for a while and only chose to bring them out when demand for them was already there and at its height.
"Humans are pretty weird," Broly agreed, taking a seat at the ledge before placing the box of popcorn between us. "They do some things super slow, even if they know it's better for them, but when it's something they want they just go towards it full speed. Popcorn?"
"Thanks," I said, taking a handful of popcorn, finding that it had been liberally coated in butter and salt, before tossing it into my mouth. Chewing thoughtfully, I thought over the estimates that Luthor sent had me. Progress reports. All well ahead of schedule. The problems of the rapid development were also being seen to. A significant portion of Earth was covered in farmland, but with Harvest, that was completely unnecessary. A significant portion of humanity's farmers went to Harvest -- millions of them, which meant that their farms needed to be sold.
To me, as it turned out. I was effectively immortal. I would be king for a very, very, very long time. Ada'la's warning about the lack of gratitude from my citizen's offspring was the guiding force behind the decision. It seemed wrong to me now, but I could see all to easily how it could become difficult a thousand years down the line. To future proof the corruption, I decided that formally, all property within my empire belonged to me. Directly. As a result, all occupied land was leased out to the inhabitants.
I had to trust myself that I wouldn't change so much that I would abuse that position for my own benefit in a far off future.
"More of them are leaving," Broly said, sounding almost mournful of the fact. I felt what he was talking about. My range expanded until it completely enveloped the Earth. I could feel every living being on the face of the planet, and I felt the rather sharp decrease in the number of humans thanks to how many of them had left Earth in the past half year. I would say mostly in the past three months, really. The fear of my empire had lessened, and many humans were venturing beyond the only planet that they had ever known. They were making a bit of a splash, from my understanding.
The rest of my citizens were curious about Earth itself, but overall felt it unwelcoming. The humans that stayed were the ones that were either on the fence or were fully against joining my empire while the ones that embraced it were exploring it. The few visitors that came to Earth were often in disguise.
"It'll fill back up eventually," I voiced. The population was pretty heavily linked with how the latest generation felt about their future and the idea of bringing up children in it. For a long time, Earth had been sliding to a tipping point -- the economy was bad, climate change was happening and nothing was being done, and so on. Social issues exacerbated it, but at the core of it, no one wanted to raise a child in a world that could be ending within that child's lifetime. "Or maybe it won't. That won't be a bad thing in itself."
Broly was silent for a moment, chewing a mouthful of popcorn. "Have you decided on what you're going to do? About us?" He asked me directly, and by us he meant everyone. All of the Saiyans. "The Guardians helped a bit, didn't they?"
"Only a bit," I answered, an edge of bitterness in my tone. The Guardians had followed through on their end and gave me the data on my race. All of which had been on the ship that had transported us to Planet Vegeta after we destroyed Planet Sadala. There was billions of years' worth of data, and I had learned exactly how many renditions of the Saiyan race there were. One million, three hundred and twenty-six thousand, one hundred and three. Each one taking place across the universe, as the Guardians experimented to learn what worked and what didn't.
Calm biomes didn't work well with Saiyans, the Guardians had quickly learned. Saiyans thrived off of adversity and without it, we quickly devolved into infighting. That killed a number of the past renditions of my species. Others did as Yamoshi had implied -- they got the ball rolling, and managed to coexist with powerful but kind leaders guiding the Saiyan race, but then they collapsed in on themselves when the Saiyan race as a whole became powerful enough to tap into the Super Saiyan transformation.
Only three renditions of the Saiyan race had managed to reach a point that the Guardians had labeled them successes. My own. Yamoshi's version. And a version that existed roughly fifteen million years ago in another galaxy. It had imploded for a similar reason to what Yamoshi had said about his rendition -- things were going great until, suddenly, they weren't and the Saiyan race destroyed itself.
"A bit?" Broly echoed, glancing up at me as I stood on the ledge.
"Some of the records were missing. They're still hiding something from me," I told him, which was firmly annoying. Those records were gone before I had asked the Guardians about them. As far as I could tell, it was an attempt to deliberately hide something from whoever stumbled across the ship, and learned what I now knew.
"Any idea what they could be?" Broly asked me, tossing another handful of popcorn in his mouth.
I frowned at Jump City, then at the sky above. "The last Super Saiyan that destroyed Planet Sadala was trying to combine the Oozaru transformation with the Super Saiyan form, but they lost control." I told Broly, making him nod because he already knew as much. "Every single time I've discovered a transformation or stacked them, it was because I was fighting someone I couldn't defeat otherwise."
Broly saw where I was going with this train of thought. "You think it was Sadala?"
"Possibly," I voiced, my lips thinning. The only information I had on Sadala was what the Guardians told me -- she was the progenitor of my race, and she was somewhere out in the universe, waiting for the Saiyan race to rise to what she desired. "But, I don't think so. According to the Guardians, Sadala is asleep and has been for billions of years. No. I think it was someone else. Because the files that were missing were about what happened to the Saiyans that were left over from the disasters."
I glanced down at Broly. "Some of them were space-faring by the time they were destroyed," I told him. He instantly understood what I was hinting at, his eyebrows drawing together as his expression became thoughtful.
"Do you really think another race of Saiyans is out there? And that they attacked Planet Sadala?" He asked, and I could hear his doubt. "We would have heard about them by now, right? Or they would have come to us?" He voiced reasonable doubts, but I felt it in my gut. My instincts were telling me that the two were connected in some way. I had three million PL before I could tap into the Super Saiyan transformation, and because of it, I was in the upper percentile of the galaxy.
Stacking the Oozaru transformation on top of that would push the last Super Saiyan even higher because I had no idea how strong they had been when they died. All the same, they had died. Simply put, there weren't a lot of figures in the galaxy, or the universe to my knowledge, that could manage to push a Saiyan that far, then overcome them anyway. Perhaps it was my pride talking, but the only kind of enemy that I knew of that could accomplish that was another Saiyan.
"Maybe," I agreed, not fully buying the idea that I was mistaken. "It's too early to tell one way or the other, but I do believe that there is at least a handful of the previous renditions of the Saiyan race out there. If they maintained their training, then they could survive until now." Matillo survived for a thousand years while being, as far as I could tell, one of the weakest versions of our race to date. "I'll find them if I can."
"Yamoshi could help," Broly pointed out.
"If I could find him," I responded, my tone testy. Yamoshi was in the wind, as far as I could tell. He seemed to be deliberately avoiding me now for some reason. Which struck me as odd given how whimsical he seemed. There was likely a good reason for it, but it did mean that I was left in the dark and stumbling to find answers. "I know Yamoshi's generation was thousands of years ago, but the last Super Saiyan existed a thousand years ago. He's also the only one that managed to attain the Saiyan God form before me, so he is the only Saiyan god. The Guardians took note of him and his influence, so he may be able to give me answers."
Yamoshi had been the Guardians' greatest hope for the Saiyan race. They had thought he was the key. The notes I read were as dry as sand, but when they were about Yamoshi, there was hope there. Excitement. Eagerness to find the answer after billions of years of trying. Then bitter disappointment when his generation collapsed. Since then, Yamoshi did what he's been doing to me -- popping in on the occasion to give advice and help. I'm betting that the last Super Saiyan had been similar to me. A Saiyan that had the same hopes for the Saiyan race, or at least the desire to take it down a different path.
"That answers what happened a long time ago, but… have you decided what we're doing in the future?" Broly asked, taking the conversation in the direction that I had been trying to avoid. It had been three months since I learned what I now knew about my race. Six months counting the three months spent in training. I had millions of examples of failure staring me in the face, and more than a few of them eerily echoed my original plans.
It was the final nail in the coffin to convince me that I needed to do something different. An extreme measure. Because I needed my race to change. For good. To become-
Almost as if to agree with me, as I looked out at the city, I felt a presence surging towards the city. I thought nothing of it until that presence slammed through a building, punching through it like it wasn't even there. I responded instantly, flying up an inch to avoid using the Titan Tower as a launch platform, and flew forward towards the presence. Ki gathered around my palm before it was flung forward.
Small ki blasts destroyed the debris that was going to fall upon the street, vaporizing it into nothing, while another went into the building itself to support it. I'm not sure if it needed it, but I really didn't want to risk it. A split second later, I saw exactly who it was. Olaive. Elery's teammate. She was looking over her shoulder -- not at me, but as if she was just realizing that she had hit something, and started to look away uncaringly before her gaze landed on me.
Her face was flushed, I noticed and clutched in her hand was a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. She slowed, floating in mid air while Broly went into the building itself to make sure no one needed help. I didn't sense that they did -- no one's ki signature was weakening in a way that hinted at a major injury. "King Tarble! Uh… what brings you here?" She asked, blinking oddly at me before a wide smile appeared on her face, thrusting the masked bottle in my direction. "I found some really awesome stuff! Humans call it booze! It's great!"
I wanted to look to the sky and yell in frustration when I heard that. Olaive, like many of the current generation of Saiyans, had her third growth spurt. No longer was she a child in appearance, but a young woman. A teenager. I knew it was going to happen eventually, but I still didn't like it. Because the very last thing I ever needed was members of the Saiyan race developing substance abuse problems.
The power to destroy a city with a stray blast and alcohol did not go together. Period.
"It's called, uh, absinthe, I think. We have to keep it in paper bags for some reason, but its awesome!" To punctuate her point, Olaive brought her lips to the bottle and gulped it down like it was water. It was unfortunate, I thought. Most of the alcohol or drugs that did exist within my empire could only be consumed by the species that created them -- after all, the reason drugs were drugs was that they caused a reaction in that species' biology. Just because one race started hallucinating when eating a mushroom didn't mean that another species would when they ate that same mushroom.
With Saiyans, I had hoped that our natural metabolism would mean that human substances would be too weak to have the effect they had on humans. That hope was misplaced, it seemed.
Raising a finger, I blasted the bottle, dunking half the contents on her face, making Olaive sputter. "H-hey! What'd you go and do that for?!" She protested, glaring at me for the briefest of moments before she wiped the expression from her face when she saw mine.
"You nearly leveled that building, Olaive," I told her, gesturing to it, my lips in a thin line. I knew exactly what reaction that I was going to get. I could see it rising in her chest. It was also one that I was learning to expect to some degree.
"Then humans shouldn't make their buildings so fragile! I barely dinged it!" Olaive argued, gesturing wildly at me and the building.
"You could have killed everyone in it," I continued, ignoring her protests about the matter. And I saw it in her gaze this time. The complete and utter lack of empathy or care. The only reason she didn't shrug her shoulders at the idea that she could have killed potentially hundreds of people was because I was in front of her. There was no accountability or empathy.
"I'm sorry," Olaive told me, offering a bow before wiping the rest of the alcohol off of her face with a forearm. She didn't mean it. I could see it. She was like a child that was apologizing simply because she wanted to avoid getting in trouble.
And I understood. I did. More than words could ever hope to convey. There had been millions of Saiyan races that all drove themselves into extinction, and they did it with their own power. Their own choices and upbringing. My generation of Saiyans was raised to fight in the most brutal war that this galaxy had ever known. The only peace they had known was during the first five years of their lives before they were shipped off to the harshest front lines, and even during that time, their days were filled with conflict.
What was the death of a few extra humans on their hands? When they had already seen millions die and killed more?
It always weighed heavily on me because I understood that would be a huge hurdle to overcome, but now it was weighed down further by the fact that my race didn't need any help destroying itself such as being raised soldiers first and foremost.
"Are you?" I asked myself as much as her, catching Olaive flatfooted. Perhaps she expected some degree of special treatment from me since she was my sister's teammate. I couldn't tell. "Are you that bored?" I asked her, knowing exactly what the root of the problem was.
My people grew up at war and they had no idea what to do with peace. Most of the Saiyan race was on Tamaran at the moment, which seemed to be enduring them well enough, but there were a handful of Saiyans that were lingering on Earth or elsewhere. They were trouble but they kept it in check for the most part, and this was the closest call that I knew about so far. Those Saiyans were bored.
Olaive confirmed as much, "Kinda. I thought Earth was supposed to have a whole bunch of things and people to fight but there's nothing! So I asked around what humans do for fun and found out that they drink a lot."
Then did what amounted to driving drunk for humans, only far more destructive. I closed my eyes for a brief moment, and in my heart, I knew that I made a decision then and there. However, when I opened them, I pinned a sharp look on Olaive as we floated above the city. "Go find Elery, and she'll deal with you." I told her, earning a curt nod from Olaive before she all but fled from the scene of the crime.
A hand went up to my necklace, at the complete collection of Lantern Rings upon it…
And I held the Indigo Ring of Compassion.
...
The next chapter is currently available on my Patreon and Subscribe Star, so if you want to read it a week early, all it takes is a single dollar in the tip jar. Or, for five dollars, you can read the chapter after that two weeks before its public release! I hope you enjoyed!
Lagoon12002
How far have I fell down into this deep deep sea
Oh.
That's... an extreme measure. But if Tarble manages to insert even the smallest fraction of empathy into war-hardened child-soldiers, I'd consider it a success.
The possibility of Saiyan civilizations out there present some interesting opportunities, both in story and from a writer's perspective. I look forward to what you accomplish next.
That's... an extreme measure. But if Tarble manages to insert even the smallest fraction of empathy into war-hardened child-soldiers, I'd consider it a success.
The possibility of Saiyan civilizations out there present some interesting opportunities, both in story and from a writer's perspective. I look forward to what you accomplish next.
- Location
- Brazil
Maybe he can justify it by saying this is super-sayian trainning with the intel of the guardians. Learn to be nice guys to get stronger.
Small Moments
- Location
- USA
"Brainwashing seems like a jump," Raven remarked as we stood in my throne room, surrounded on all sides by holograms that fed me information about my empire. As well as a number of projects that I had -- such as the Warworlds and the shield wall around my empire, to name a few. The one that I was focused on at the moment was harnessing the power of compassion so I could use it on my race to drive the concept of compassion into their heads. "I know you're grasping at straws with this, but it seems like you're going for a hammer when you don't need to."
"I'm not certain that I don't need to," I returned, frowning at a hologram. Komand'r was hiding reports from me again according to Kori -- the Saiyans on Tamaran were becoming restless, and the damage on the recently repaired planet was mounting. It was becoming a problem. Enough so that I was spending dedicated resources to monitor every Saiyan within my borders to make sure that they weren't secretly destroying cities when I wasn't looking. "The Guardians have tried doing this the delicate way since the beginning of the universe. But the Saiyan race doesn't do delicate."
Raven stood next to me, looking up at the outline I had drawn up. "You experienced it before, and it didn't exactly work on you." She made a point, earning a small nod from me.
"I'm not someone that should be used as a baseline. I already felt compassion. The ring just amped it up to eleven," I pointed out.
"Did it work?" She asked, sending a glance at me with a cocked eyebrow.
"I killed about a dozen Indigo Lanterns immediately afterward. I did feel bad about it, though," I answered with a small shrug. Raven's gaze became incredibly flat at that -- she got used to the mentions of killing whenever the war was brought up. I think it always bothered her less than others, but she had stood with them. Now, it washed over her back with ease and without a reaction.
"A ringing endorsement," came Raven's dry reply.
"I did say that I shouldn't be used as a baseline," I reminded. "I'm not certain the effect it would have on the rest of my race. The vast majority of them have never experienced compassion or empathy in the first place. The closest I came was in fostering a sense of teamwork between them, but that's not the same thing. I'm hoping that being exposed to the Indigo Light would allow them to develop it on their own…"
Raven gestured for me to continue while I gazed at Indigo, the current leader of the Indigo Lanterns. I did after a moment of thought, nodding at her, "The Indigo Power Rings foster remorse and compassion for other beings. Indigo herself was a renowned pirate and a murderer who completely changed after putting one on. Would she simply go back to who she was if she took off the ring?"
There were a lot of questions around the decision that I was making. Not to mention the most obvious danger of brainwashing my race to feel empathy.
The Super Saiyan transformation required a strong emotional trigger. If I wasn't careful with how I did this, I could accidentally create a generation of Super Saiyans and that would mean my empire imploded, because I couldn't handle millions of Super Saiyans on my own. The damage from their initial transformation alone would be incalculable, and it would only hasten the destruction of the Saiyan race. When I came to Earth, I had been reeling from the death of Vegeta and my team.
I had come to Earth looking for a fight, in hindsight. And I had certainly found one.
"There's never going to be a button that you can push to make someone a better person. That's not how people work," Raven pointed out, still warning me away from the course of action. "Experiencing it once won't radically change who they are. What you would have to do is brainwash them for an extended period of time until it's ingrained in who they are. Do you really want to do something like that?"
"No," came my swift answer. "But I also don't want my race to drive itself into extinction." With a thought, the holograms changed, becoming the information that had been given to me by the Guardians. There was too much really -- I had an AI flag what was important, and naturally, that was moments when my race tipped past the point of no return and collapsed.
"You're treating it like its an imminent issue," Raven pointed out, making a fair point. "These examples… they took place over the course of thousands of years. You have time to push them in the right direction before you commit to something like this."
I frowned at the holograms, feeling the weight on my shoulders. The greatest threat to my empire was undoutably my own species. That stung, truth be told. I fought throughout the war to protect them, to give Frieza an indisputable reason why he should never try to wipe us out like he did in my human memories. But now that the war had ended, I saw exactly how dangerous the Saiyan race was. The weakest of us was a city buster and those were the Saiyans that I was trying to encourage -- the ones completely disinterested in conflict.
"You're completely against the idea," I voiced my opinion, seeing how she was digging her heels in while retaining her indifferent tone.
Raven considered it for a moment before offering a slight nod of her head, "I think its an overreaction to a problem you don't have yet." She told me, watching me carefully for my reaction and likely how I felt about the rebuke. She did have a point. I could admit that much, but I could feel things moving in the wrong direction and I could see how many times that path ended in disaster. "There are other less extreme options you could consider."
That was true, I supposed. "It sounds like you have a suggestion," I remarked, hoping that she did. I didn't want to do it. I was just out of ideas and eager to avert the ending I could rapidly see approaching.
"I do. You aren't going to like it," Raven informed, making my eyes narrow in response. I was considering mind control at this point. I already didn't like it.
"What is it?" I pressed, my mind racing with possibilities of what it could be. Likely magic based. Raven had gotten stronger with her powers. Perhaps it was some kind of ward? A preventative measure to stop a Saiyan from accidentally killing someone simply because they couldn't be bothered to avoid their death?
"You could try not treating this as a battle that needs to be won," Raven spoke, giving a less than helpful answer. My face expressed my annoyance, so there was no need for her to read my emotions. A lesser being would have cowered in fear of it, but Raven matched my annoyed look with a thoroughly indifferent one that was borderline exasperated. "You're acting as if you're working against the clock and you're expecting perfection from your race. There isn't a species in the universe that doesn't accidently hurt one another."
"Mine can hurt a lot more than just a pedestrian on the street," I argued.
Raven nodded, "I know. But no one has died. The worst of the damage comes from pride and property value. There are no destroyed cities that you need to lament. You're jumping to take action but that's not what you need to be doing. This isn't an enemy that you can defeat." Raven stressed and in the back of my mind, I knew she had a point. However, I felt the pressure weighing me down -- a familiar weight, only this one was so much worse. It was the weight of lives.
In war, I could bear it with no difficulty. It was war. People killed and died. In peace? It was harder because any death -- any potentially destroyed cities, possibly even planets, and all the lives that were snuffed out because of a Saiyan's recklessness or anguish… that was much harder to bear.
Raven took my silence as a sign to continue, "This isn't the time for a decisive action like you're used to. It's time for smaller actions over the course of years to guide them down a better path instead of dragging them to the end." My first reaction was to reject the idea out of hand entirely. The second was much the same. The third reaction was to consider what she said and compare it to what I knew -- that path ended in disaster. "Because you have options available, Tarble. Ones that every other version of your race didn't -- good influences. Stability. And you know what has been tried before and what hasn't."
A knot of tension that had been between my shoulder blades slowly began to ease away and I hadn't realized I was toying with the bone on my necklace until I let go of it. Nor did I realize how deeply I was frowning until Raven lightly touched my shoulder and I turned to her. I thought she was being naive about it, but I couldn't deny at the core of her statement was a point.
"Mind control is something that can't be undone," I admitted to her, making her hand flinch away as if the words had been directed at her. An expression of shame flickered across her face while I continued. "I'll use it as a last resort. But I will need to take a more active roll in guiding my race."
"You don't have to do it alone," Raven pointed out. "You don't have to do everything yourself," she added, and it sounded like she was about to bring something up that she had felt for some time. Her gaze went to the holograms around us for a brief moment, as if she were debating on following through. "The Trade Organization, Sadala, the Olympian Gods, and… my father. You're making a lot of enemies, Tarble. And picking a lot of fights."
I crossed my arms, "I'm not the one that started most of them. Cooler was my enemy by default. Him and his father." The Trade Organization had consolidated and restructured in the past half year with Cooler at the helm. The shadow battles we've waged were slowly starting to escalate in the wrong direction, but things slowed down when I formalized a contract with the New Lanterns.
The Olympian Gods were quiet. I hadn't heard from them since I ate parts of Ares, but the promise of their response was looming. As for Trigon and Sadala… the former didn't know I was aiming for him while the latter was a complete mystery. I didn't know when or if Sadala would show up if my race ever met her standards for whatever reason she decided.
"You're being pulled in a lot of directions and a lot is looking over the horizon. I can feel your tension, Tarble," she interjected when I started to deny it. "Even when you are enjoying yourself, you're ready for something to start -- a conflict or a fight, or just something going terribly wrong."
"For good reason," I defended. There was a lot going on.
Raven did acknowledge that with a nod of her head, "for good reason. But it's not necessary," she insisted with a gentle tone and I wasn't exactly sure how I felt about the conversation turning on me. I was regretting bringing the subject up with her. I only did because I learned to trust Raven's opinions and wanted her view before I committed to a course of action. "You may be a god, but that doesn't make you all knowing or all-powerful. You aren't in this alone. You can ask for help."
My lips thinned, "I am."
"You're asking for opinions on your solutions. Not for solutions from others. Stubbornness is an emotion," Raven reminded me, giving a stern look. Meaning she felt me dig in when she suggested my original plan for the Saiyans. Slowly, Raven reached out to me, untucking an arm so she could cup one of my hands in hers. A preventative measure, I learned when she continued, "We aren't your team. We aren't Bardock, or Fasha, or the others. What happened with them won't happen with us. Not if you learn why it happened -- that you look at the forest instead of the trees."
I went deadly still at the mention of my team. To this day, only she and Broly knew the truth. The truth and the circumstances that lead to what happened. My jaw clenched and I started to withdraw my hand, only for Raven to hold it tighter. "I learned that lesson well enough," I bit out, anger bubbling in my chest.
"Perhaps," Raven allowed, "but you've also learned the wrong lessons from it, I think. You haven't taken that final step to actually trusting us. Or others. Broly still is the only person in the world you have any faith in." She told me outright, her tone factual. I couldn't say that I particularly enjoyed being told what I felt, but I could say that I liked it less that she was right. Her empathic abilities were proving troublesome. Especially when she was learning to leverage them because they were stronger with her growing power.
I wanted to refute the words, but I knew it would be a lie, and I knew that Raven would know it too. I had plans to break off parts of my power to others. I planned to have faith in other people. However, it couldn't be denied that I hadn't followed through on those plans, because I hadn't. My thoughts and ideas of empowering the Justice League had yet to materialize. Even with the smaller things, I still struggled to put faith in the Teen Titans. Not because we were enemies any longer, and not because there was still lingering tension between us. I was fond of them. I was fond of and respected them as I had any member of the 501st.
But I hadn't taken that final step. I hadn't followed through. And now Raven was calling me out on it in a way that I couldn't really argue the result.
"I'm their king. The Saiyan race is my responsibility," I dug my heels in, and I found myself annoyed when Raven nodded.
"They are," she agreed. "But they aren't just your responsibility. Just as finding the Dragonballs isn't just your responsibility, nor fighting whoever searches for them. You're dealing with a lot, Tarble. I appreciate everything you're trying to do, but-" she cut herself off and it suddenly struck me why the conversation felt off to me. If I took a step back and looked at it from her point of view… how much of what she was saying was applicable to her? How much of what I said could be about her?
Raven noticed my revelation even before a soft sigh escaped me, "I want to help." She told me outright, her lips thinning into a line as she pinned me with a sharp gaze. "In a way that's more than just a sounding board. Because you're… you've…" she fumbled her words, a rarity for her as she seemed to struggle to put them out. However, I had an idea what she was trying to say.
She hadn't forgotten what had happened in the ruins of Azarath. And I could see that had an impact on her. In the months since, not only had her powers grown in strength, but she was… feeling her emotions more. I wouldn't go as far as to say that she had embraced them yet, but she was letting some slack in the leash.
The promise between us almost became tangible in that moment. A promise to kill her father and to bring back her mother.
"Fine," I agreed, not exactly knowing what I was agreeing to, but I knew the core of it. Raven was putting herself out there, outside of her comfort zone, and… I've known for some time that I could trust Raven. I did trust Raven, but there was always a wall up, leaving me ready to be betrayed or let down in some way. A distance. I think it was time that I started having trust in her.
"Fine?" Raven echoed, seemingly caught off guard by my agreement.
"Fine," I repeated, offering her a small nod. "If you think you can help with… anything, then I would… appreciate it," I told her, seeing a slight smile tugging at the edges of Raven's lips when she felt that I meant it. I had to take that final step to really start trusting others. I don't think I would ever have it in me to relinquish the lion share of power, but it was time that I started empowering others that I trusted to tell me what I needed to hear. Whether I wanted to hear it or not.
A small breath escaped Raven that sounded a lot like a sigh of relief, "Good." She decided before her gaze started to lower, going to her hands that enveloped mine. She went still for a moment- "Oh," she uttered, as if just realizing that she had grabbed my hand. I think her emotions got the better of her with the action. And now, because she let go of my hand as if it had burned her. "I'm… going to go. And find a hole. To die in," she muttered to herself, her shadow expanding underneath her.
She was embarrassed. "I'll see you later, Raven. And… thank you," I told her, making her pause as she sunk through the floor. She offered the barest hints of a nod before she vanished from sight. I watched where she vanished for a long moment before a sigh heaved out of me as I replayed the conversation in my head once again, processing everything that had been said between us.
Slowly, I looked up at the ceiling, my mind going blank for a moment, forcing myself to confront a truth.
"I really am hopeless, aren't I?"
As if to agree with me, I got an alert from an outpost within the Empire. An alert that I had been expecting and dreading for some time now.
One of Earth's villains had been spotted. Poison Ivy…
And she had a planet full of hostages.
...
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"I'm not certain that I don't need to," I returned, frowning at a hologram. Komand'r was hiding reports from me again according to Kori -- the Saiyans on Tamaran were becoming restless, and the damage on the recently repaired planet was mounting. It was becoming a problem. Enough so that I was spending dedicated resources to monitor every Saiyan within my borders to make sure that they weren't secretly destroying cities when I wasn't looking. "The Guardians have tried doing this the delicate way since the beginning of the universe. But the Saiyan race doesn't do delicate."
Raven stood next to me, looking up at the outline I had drawn up. "You experienced it before, and it didn't exactly work on you." She made a point, earning a small nod from me.
"I'm not someone that should be used as a baseline. I already felt compassion. The ring just amped it up to eleven," I pointed out.
"Did it work?" She asked, sending a glance at me with a cocked eyebrow.
"I killed about a dozen Indigo Lanterns immediately afterward. I did feel bad about it, though," I answered with a small shrug. Raven's gaze became incredibly flat at that -- she got used to the mentions of killing whenever the war was brought up. I think it always bothered her less than others, but she had stood with them. Now, it washed over her back with ease and without a reaction.
"A ringing endorsement," came Raven's dry reply.
"I did say that I shouldn't be used as a baseline," I reminded. "I'm not certain the effect it would have on the rest of my race. The vast majority of them have never experienced compassion or empathy in the first place. The closest I came was in fostering a sense of teamwork between them, but that's not the same thing. I'm hoping that being exposed to the Indigo Light would allow them to develop it on their own…"
Raven gestured for me to continue while I gazed at Indigo, the current leader of the Indigo Lanterns. I did after a moment of thought, nodding at her, "The Indigo Power Rings foster remorse and compassion for other beings. Indigo herself was a renowned pirate and a murderer who completely changed after putting one on. Would she simply go back to who she was if she took off the ring?"
There were a lot of questions around the decision that I was making. Not to mention the most obvious danger of brainwashing my race to feel empathy.
The Super Saiyan transformation required a strong emotional trigger. If I wasn't careful with how I did this, I could accidentally create a generation of Super Saiyans and that would mean my empire imploded, because I couldn't handle millions of Super Saiyans on my own. The damage from their initial transformation alone would be incalculable, and it would only hasten the destruction of the Saiyan race. When I came to Earth, I had been reeling from the death of Vegeta and my team.
I had come to Earth looking for a fight, in hindsight. And I had certainly found one.
"There's never going to be a button that you can push to make someone a better person. That's not how people work," Raven pointed out, still warning me away from the course of action. "Experiencing it once won't radically change who they are. What you would have to do is brainwash them for an extended period of time until it's ingrained in who they are. Do you really want to do something like that?"
"No," came my swift answer. "But I also don't want my race to drive itself into extinction." With a thought, the holograms changed, becoming the information that had been given to me by the Guardians. There was too much really -- I had an AI flag what was important, and naturally, that was moments when my race tipped past the point of no return and collapsed.
"You're treating it like its an imminent issue," Raven pointed out, making a fair point. "These examples… they took place over the course of thousands of years. You have time to push them in the right direction before you commit to something like this."
I frowned at the holograms, feeling the weight on my shoulders. The greatest threat to my empire was undoutably my own species. That stung, truth be told. I fought throughout the war to protect them, to give Frieza an indisputable reason why he should never try to wipe us out like he did in my human memories. But now that the war had ended, I saw exactly how dangerous the Saiyan race was. The weakest of us was a city buster and those were the Saiyans that I was trying to encourage -- the ones completely disinterested in conflict.
"You're completely against the idea," I voiced my opinion, seeing how she was digging her heels in while retaining her indifferent tone.
Raven considered it for a moment before offering a slight nod of her head, "I think its an overreaction to a problem you don't have yet." She told me, watching me carefully for my reaction and likely how I felt about the rebuke. She did have a point. I could admit that much, but I could feel things moving in the wrong direction and I could see how many times that path ended in disaster. "There are other less extreme options you could consider."
That was true, I supposed. "It sounds like you have a suggestion," I remarked, hoping that she did. I didn't want to do it. I was just out of ideas and eager to avert the ending I could rapidly see approaching.
"I do. You aren't going to like it," Raven informed, making my eyes narrow in response. I was considering mind control at this point. I already didn't like it.
"What is it?" I pressed, my mind racing with possibilities of what it could be. Likely magic based. Raven had gotten stronger with her powers. Perhaps it was some kind of ward? A preventative measure to stop a Saiyan from accidentally killing someone simply because they couldn't be bothered to avoid their death?
"You could try not treating this as a battle that needs to be won," Raven spoke, giving a less than helpful answer. My face expressed my annoyance, so there was no need for her to read my emotions. A lesser being would have cowered in fear of it, but Raven matched my annoyed look with a thoroughly indifferent one that was borderline exasperated. "You're acting as if you're working against the clock and you're expecting perfection from your race. There isn't a species in the universe that doesn't accidently hurt one another."
"Mine can hurt a lot more than just a pedestrian on the street," I argued.
Raven nodded, "I know. But no one has died. The worst of the damage comes from pride and property value. There are no destroyed cities that you need to lament. You're jumping to take action but that's not what you need to be doing. This isn't an enemy that you can defeat." Raven stressed and in the back of my mind, I knew she had a point. However, I felt the pressure weighing me down -- a familiar weight, only this one was so much worse. It was the weight of lives.
In war, I could bear it with no difficulty. It was war. People killed and died. In peace? It was harder because any death -- any potentially destroyed cities, possibly even planets, and all the lives that were snuffed out because of a Saiyan's recklessness or anguish… that was much harder to bear.
Raven took my silence as a sign to continue, "This isn't the time for a decisive action like you're used to. It's time for smaller actions over the course of years to guide them down a better path instead of dragging them to the end." My first reaction was to reject the idea out of hand entirely. The second was much the same. The third reaction was to consider what she said and compare it to what I knew -- that path ended in disaster. "Because you have options available, Tarble. Ones that every other version of your race didn't -- good influences. Stability. And you know what has been tried before and what hasn't."
A knot of tension that had been between my shoulder blades slowly began to ease away and I hadn't realized I was toying with the bone on my necklace until I let go of it. Nor did I realize how deeply I was frowning until Raven lightly touched my shoulder and I turned to her. I thought she was being naive about it, but I couldn't deny at the core of her statement was a point.
"Mind control is something that can't be undone," I admitted to her, making her hand flinch away as if the words had been directed at her. An expression of shame flickered across her face while I continued. "I'll use it as a last resort. But I will need to take a more active roll in guiding my race."
"You don't have to do it alone," Raven pointed out. "You don't have to do everything yourself," she added, and it sounded like she was about to bring something up that she had felt for some time. Her gaze went to the holograms around us for a brief moment, as if she were debating on following through. "The Trade Organization, Sadala, the Olympian Gods, and… my father. You're making a lot of enemies, Tarble. And picking a lot of fights."
I crossed my arms, "I'm not the one that started most of them. Cooler was my enemy by default. Him and his father." The Trade Organization had consolidated and restructured in the past half year with Cooler at the helm. The shadow battles we've waged were slowly starting to escalate in the wrong direction, but things slowed down when I formalized a contract with the New Lanterns.
The Olympian Gods were quiet. I hadn't heard from them since I ate parts of Ares, but the promise of their response was looming. As for Trigon and Sadala… the former didn't know I was aiming for him while the latter was a complete mystery. I didn't know when or if Sadala would show up if my race ever met her standards for whatever reason she decided.
"You're being pulled in a lot of directions and a lot is looking over the horizon. I can feel your tension, Tarble," she interjected when I started to deny it. "Even when you are enjoying yourself, you're ready for something to start -- a conflict or a fight, or just something going terribly wrong."
"For good reason," I defended. There was a lot going on.
Raven did acknowledge that with a nod of her head, "for good reason. But it's not necessary," she insisted with a gentle tone and I wasn't exactly sure how I felt about the conversation turning on me. I was regretting bringing the subject up with her. I only did because I learned to trust Raven's opinions and wanted her view before I committed to a course of action. "You may be a god, but that doesn't make you all knowing or all-powerful. You aren't in this alone. You can ask for help."
My lips thinned, "I am."
"You're asking for opinions on your solutions. Not for solutions from others. Stubbornness is an emotion," Raven reminded me, giving a stern look. Meaning she felt me dig in when she suggested my original plan for the Saiyans. Slowly, Raven reached out to me, untucking an arm so she could cup one of my hands in hers. A preventative measure, I learned when she continued, "We aren't your team. We aren't Bardock, or Fasha, or the others. What happened with them won't happen with us. Not if you learn why it happened -- that you look at the forest instead of the trees."
I went deadly still at the mention of my team. To this day, only she and Broly knew the truth. The truth and the circumstances that lead to what happened. My jaw clenched and I started to withdraw my hand, only for Raven to hold it tighter. "I learned that lesson well enough," I bit out, anger bubbling in my chest.
"Perhaps," Raven allowed, "but you've also learned the wrong lessons from it, I think. You haven't taken that final step to actually trusting us. Or others. Broly still is the only person in the world you have any faith in." She told me outright, her tone factual. I couldn't say that I particularly enjoyed being told what I felt, but I could say that I liked it less that she was right. Her empathic abilities were proving troublesome. Especially when she was learning to leverage them because they were stronger with her growing power.
I wanted to refute the words, but I knew it would be a lie, and I knew that Raven would know it too. I had plans to break off parts of my power to others. I planned to have faith in other people. However, it couldn't be denied that I hadn't followed through on those plans, because I hadn't. My thoughts and ideas of empowering the Justice League had yet to materialize. Even with the smaller things, I still struggled to put faith in the Teen Titans. Not because we were enemies any longer, and not because there was still lingering tension between us. I was fond of them. I was fond of and respected them as I had any member of the 501st.
But I hadn't taken that final step. I hadn't followed through. And now Raven was calling me out on it in a way that I couldn't really argue the result.
"I'm their king. The Saiyan race is my responsibility," I dug my heels in, and I found myself annoyed when Raven nodded.
"They are," she agreed. "But they aren't just your responsibility. Just as finding the Dragonballs isn't just your responsibility, nor fighting whoever searches for them. You're dealing with a lot, Tarble. I appreciate everything you're trying to do, but-" she cut herself off and it suddenly struck me why the conversation felt off to me. If I took a step back and looked at it from her point of view… how much of what she was saying was applicable to her? How much of what I said could be about her?
Raven noticed my revelation even before a soft sigh escaped me, "I want to help." She told me outright, her lips thinning into a line as she pinned me with a sharp gaze. "In a way that's more than just a sounding board. Because you're… you've…" she fumbled her words, a rarity for her as she seemed to struggle to put them out. However, I had an idea what she was trying to say.
She hadn't forgotten what had happened in the ruins of Azarath. And I could see that had an impact on her. In the months since, not only had her powers grown in strength, but she was… feeling her emotions more. I wouldn't go as far as to say that she had embraced them yet, but she was letting some slack in the leash.
The promise between us almost became tangible in that moment. A promise to kill her father and to bring back her mother.
"Fine," I agreed, not exactly knowing what I was agreeing to, but I knew the core of it. Raven was putting herself out there, outside of her comfort zone, and… I've known for some time that I could trust Raven. I did trust Raven, but there was always a wall up, leaving me ready to be betrayed or let down in some way. A distance. I think it was time that I started having trust in her.
"Fine?" Raven echoed, seemingly caught off guard by my agreement.
"Fine," I repeated, offering her a small nod. "If you think you can help with… anything, then I would… appreciate it," I told her, seeing a slight smile tugging at the edges of Raven's lips when she felt that I meant it. I had to take that final step to really start trusting others. I don't think I would ever have it in me to relinquish the lion share of power, but it was time that I started empowering others that I trusted to tell me what I needed to hear. Whether I wanted to hear it or not.
A small breath escaped Raven that sounded a lot like a sigh of relief, "Good." She decided before her gaze started to lower, going to her hands that enveloped mine. She went still for a moment- "Oh," she uttered, as if just realizing that she had grabbed my hand. I think her emotions got the better of her with the action. And now, because she let go of my hand as if it had burned her. "I'm… going to go. And find a hole. To die in," she muttered to herself, her shadow expanding underneath her.
She was embarrassed. "I'll see you later, Raven. And… thank you," I told her, making her pause as she sunk through the floor. She offered the barest hints of a nod before she vanished from sight. I watched where she vanished for a long moment before a sigh heaved out of me as I replayed the conversation in my head once again, processing everything that had been said between us.
Slowly, I looked up at the ceiling, my mind going blank for a moment, forcing myself to confront a truth.
"I really am hopeless, aren't I?"
As if to agree with me, I got an alert from an outpost within the Empire. An alert that I had been expecting and dreading for some time now.
One of Earth's villains had been spotted. Poison Ivy…
And she had a planet full of hostages.
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The next chapter is currently available on my Patreon and Subscribe Star, so if you want to read it a week early, all it takes is a single dollar in the tip jar. Or, for five dollars, you can read the chapter after that two weeks before its public release! I hope you enjoyed!
- Location
- Minnesota
I'm loving the direction he and Raven are going in, and I'm glad he has someone to pull him away from the "escalate harder than they can" button.