Chapter 1: Flight and Where Am I?
Memory is a strange, stubborn thing. Decades can pass, entire worlds can turn to dust, yet certain nights remain burnt into the back of your eyelids. You close your eyes and you're back there—tasting the copper in the air, feeling the heavy pull of the gravity, hearing the low, ominous hum of a sky about to tear open.
I remember that night like a wound that never quite closed.
The night my world ended, and my family both shrank and grew in the breath of a few terrifying hours.
My name is Teilanne. I am a Saiyan.
I know—it isn't a name that sounds like something pulled out of an autumn harvest. Neither was my husband's. Among a race of warriors named after roots and leafy greens, the two of us were always oddities. Quiet anomalies in a empire built on noise and blood.
This isn't just my story, though. It's the story of how three broken children—torn from the ruins of a dying world—learned to lean on one another. How we carried grief across the stars until it turned into something else: resilience, laughter, and a life none of us could have envisioned on the rust-colored plains of Planet Vegeta.
Planet Vegeta was a hard place to grow up. The air was thick, the gravity was an unforgiving fist on your shoulders, and the violet sky always seemed to press down like a warning. Power was the only currency that mattered. For years, I lived by that rule. I fought, I bled, and I accepted the violent order of things.
Then I had Kizuna.
Holding my son for the first time shattered something rigid inside me. Suddenly, strength wasn't about how much broken glass you could walk over; it was about what you were willing to shield with your own body.
The day the world fell began like any other. I was working the late shift at the central meat distribution depot alongside Ginè.
Ginè was a rarity among our kind. She was small, her power level was modest, and she possessed a soft, unhurried warmth that felt entirely alien to a Saiyan. Yet, she was my dearest friend. We worked in comfortable silence, stripping and hanging heavy carcasses under the dim lights, exchanging short glances that carried the weight of long years.
My fighting days are done, I remember thinking as we wiped down our gear. I'm a mother now. The bloodletting belongs to someone else.
It's heartbreaking how naive I was. A Saiyan's fight never ends; it just changes terms.
When we finished, we walked together toward the nursery wards. Inside, the incubators lined the dim hall like glass eggs. I found Kizuna fast asleep in his pod, his brow furrowed in that furious little scowl he'd had since the day he was born. A few pods down, Ginè cooed softly at her own boy, Kakarot, who was blissfully kicking his tiny legs, completely ignorant of the universe around him.
My eyes drifted back to Kizuna's pod, and my heart sank.
Curled up as close to my son's glass tube as they could get were two other children. Tora and Faasha's kids.
The boy, Uruk, was pressed flat against the casing, one tiny fist balled against his chest even in his sleep, as if guarding his little sister. She was nestled right beside him—a baby girl so new she hadn't even been named yet.
Faasha had been dead less than forty-eight hours. She hadn't gone down in a glorious blaze of triumph. She'd died broken and bleeding on a muddy rock in the outer rim, clutching my arm with a strength that scared me.
"Take care of them," she had whispered, blood bubbling on her lips. "Please, Teilanne. They need a mother... and I'm out of time."
I had made a promise. Looking at those tiny shapes in the dim nursery light, I swore I'd keep it.
Then, the air changed.
It wasn't a sound or a light. It was a sudden, sickening drop in atmospheric pressure—a cold, oily dread that settled at the base of my skull. My tail stiffened. Every instinct I had suppressed for years screamed at once.
Something horrific was sitting in the dark above our heads.
High above the clouds, far from the quiet of the nurseries, the sky was already burning.
Bardock cut through the upper atmosphere like a falling star. Blood dried in dark crusts across his cracked armor; his body was broken, but his mind was an inferno. The Kanassan curse—the vision—was playing on a loop behind his eyes: Frieza's cold, golden ship, the mocking laughter, the terrifying crimson sun consuming the horizon.
He had tried to warn the others. He had staggered into the barracks, drenched in his own blood, screaming the truth.
They had laughed in his face.
Fine. Let them burn. He was done begging for help. If he had to tear down Frieza's fleet with his bare hands, he would do it alone.
He pushed his flight power to the limit, but before he could clear the cloud line, a grip caught his shoulder strap, yanking him backward.
"Bardock. Stop."
Bardock spun, teeth bared, energy flaring in his palm. "Get your hands off—"
He cut himself off. Standing in the thin air behind him was Yuren.
Yuren was lean, hard-faced, and possessed the calm, calculating eyes of a veteran who didn't waste movement or breath. He wasn't part of Bardock's squad, but he was one of the few men on this planet who didn't talk just to hear his own teeth clatter.
"Yuren," Bardock spat, his breath ragged. "Out of my way. I don't have time for this."
"I saw you at the barracks," Yuren said, his voice flat, unaffected by the roaring wind. "I heard what you said about Frieza. About the fleet."
He stepped closer, scanning Bardock's ruined armor and the raw, desperate fury in his eyes.
"You and I were never friends, Bardock. But you aren't a liar, and you aren't crazy. So tell me plain, soldier to soldier—is it real?"
A agonizing silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the distant hum of the planet's energy grid below.
Bardock let his energy fade. He let out a long, shuddering breath through his teeth.
"Yeah," Bardock growled softly. "It's real. He's up there right now. He brought a warband, and he's going to crack this rock like an egg." He locked eyes with Yuren. "Get your wife. Get your boy, and take Tora's kids too. Get a pod and launch them off this damned rock before the sky catches fire. I'm going to buy you whatever time I can."
"You speak like a man who expects to die here," Yuren replied, his jaw tightening. "I'm not leaving you to fight them alone."
"Don't be a fool—"
"Shut up and listen," Yuren cut in, his tone dropping an octave. Absolute. Unyielding. "I will go. I'll get Teilanne and the children out. But you..." Yuren reached out, slamming a fist against Bardock's cracked chest plate. "...you don't throw your life away cheap. Make that bastard bleed."
A terrible, bitter smirk touched Bardock's lips.
"Tch. Just get moving."
They split the sky in opposite directions—one flying down toward the family he meant to save, the other flying up toward the god he meant to kill.
---
Yuren had never run faster in his life.
He smashed through the heavy threshold of their home, chest heaving, the stench of ozone and scorched armor trailing behind him. Teilanne didn't even have time to turn around before she felt it—that sudden, staggering drop in his aura, the terrible weight in his posture.
She had been his wife long enough to read every micro-expression, every twitch of his jaw. She didn't need him to speak, but he did anyway, his voice raw and stripped of all pride.
He told her everything. Bardock's vision. The fleet in orbit. The mere minutes remaining before the sky fell down.
"Then come with us," she said instantly. Her voice didn't shake, but her hands were already moving, scooping up Kizuna and pressing him hard against her chest plate like armor. "Yuren, come with me!"
"You know I can't."
"You choose not to!"
He didn't argue. He didn't offer a warrior's grand justification. He simply looked at her, and in the dark expanse of his eyes, she saw the whole wretched truth—the quiet apology, the stubborn love, and the absolute immovability of a man who had already made his peace with death. He could not leave Bardock to face the end alone. Not after Tora. Not after their entire squad had been slaughtered in the mud.
A single, hot tear escaped her eye before she could fight it down. She didn't bother wiping it away. There wasn't time for grief.
Yuren stepped forward and pressed his forehead firmly against hers. It was an awkward, desperate tenderness—the kind Saiyans rarely permitted themselves—a silent exchange of souls in the shadow of slaughter.
And then he turned and vanished into the night.
Teilanne stood alone in the quiet center of their home for exactly three seconds.
Then her survival instincts took the wheel.
She moved with terrifying efficiency. She hauled open the storage lockers, shoving nutrient rations, medical gels, and infant-sized armor into a heavy travel pack. She strapped Kizuna to her chest, hauled Uruk up under one arm, and cradled the nameless baby girl securely against her ribs. Laden down with three children and the meager remnants of her life, she bolted out into the street.
The sky was already turning a bruised, sickening magenta. The central launch bay was absolute chaos. Word was leaking out—whispers of Frieza's shadow blocking the stars—and lower-class warriors were shouting, shoving, and clashing over flight credentials.
Teilanne kept her head down, dodging the frantic crowd until she found an older, heavy-cargo transport pod tucked into a secondary berth. It was battered and meant for long-haul supply runs, but it was wide enough. Barely.
She threw the hatch open, placing the children inside the cushioned recessed seating first, then squeezed her own frame into the pilot seat. Her fingers flew across the standard interface, overriding safety protocols and querying the navigation array for the nearest, most isolated habitable rock in the quadrant.
The screen flickered, text scrolling in bright green: TARGET ACQUIRED: EARTH. ESTIMATED TRAVEL TIME: 382 DAYS.
It would have to do.
She slammed the override key. The heavy steel hatch hissed shut, locking out the roaring noise of the spaceport. Thrusters violently ignited beneath the hull, shaking the pod to its core before launching it upward in a violent burst of g-force.
As the vessel shot through the atmosphere, Teilanne leaned forward, pressing her hand and face against the thick glass of the viewport.
Down on the launch pad, standing amidst the panic and dust, was a single small figure looking directly up at the ascending pod.
Ginè.
She wasn't running. She wasn't fighting. She stood there under the burning sky, wearing a smile that was the most heartbreaking, beautiful thing Teilanne had ever seen. A gentle, quiet smile that said everything words never could: I know. I love you. Protect them. Go.
Teilanne slammed her palm flat against the glass, a sob catching in her throat.
Then the pod broke the cloud line, space swallowed the view, and Ginè was gone.
High above the planet's upper fringe, the blackness of space was illuminated by thousands of burning blue energy blasts.
Bardock and Yuren fought back-to-back, a terrifying storm of blood and ki. They were surrounded by hundreds of Frieza's soldiers—a sea of scaly skin, purple armor, and firing scouters. But the two Saiyans tore through them like rabid beasts, leaving a trail of dismembered bodies and shattered helmets floating in zero gravity.
They fought their way upward, foot by stubborn foot. They had always been too angry to die easily.
Then, the ocean of soldiers parted.
Hovering casually in his white-and-purple pod sat Frieza. His black horns gleamed in the starlight, his hands resting lightly on the rim of his vehicle. His face bore a terrible, serene calm—a smile devoid of a single drop of human warmth.
Bardock drifted to a halt in the vacuum, his chest heaving, fresh blood boiling off his ruined battle jacket. He raised his eyes, crackling blue energy igniting around his right fist.
"Frieza!" Bardock's voice rang out through the void, forced through sheer ki projection. "We quit! The planets, the slaughter, every filthy, bloody errand you ever sent us on—you can take it all back! We don't work for you. We never should have worked for you!"
Yuren fell into step directly beside him, his jaw set, his left palm flaring with a bright, violent golden sphere.
"Consider this," Bardock growled, drawing his arm back, "our resignation!"
They threw everything they had left.
It was a terrifying display of power—a roaring, combined column of blue-white destruction that ripped through the void, howling directly toward Frieza's smiling face.
Frieza didn't even flinch. He simply giggled.
It wasn't a nervous sound, or an angry sound. It was the delighted, tinkling laugh of a child watching an insect try to fight a boot. The tyrant lifted a single, black-clawed finger.
At his fingertip, a pinprick of crimson light flared—and then instantly expanded. It didn't just grow; it bloated into a roaring, miniature sun that swallowed the Saiyans' combined energy beam as if it were nothing more than a spark falling into an ocean. The superheated sphere kept swelling, casting a blood-red light across the hulls of Frieza's own ships.
With a gentle flick of Frieza's wrist, the ball of annihilation dropped.
The inescapable wall of heat hit Bardock and Yuren first. Their armor vaporized instantly; the sheer gravitational pressure pinned them against the falling sun.
Yet, in that final fraction of a second—surrounded by blinding, agonizing light—neither warrior screamed.
They both smiled.
With the absolute last bit of air in their lungs, two voices echoed out together against the end of the world:
"Kakarot!"
"Kizuna!"
The crimson sphere struck Planet Vegeta.
It drove straight into the rust-colored crust, burning through the mantle in a heart-beat. Oceans evaporated instantly. Continents buckled, split, and turned to liquid slag. And then, with a silent, blinding shockwave that rippled out across the galaxy, the planet folded in on itself and shattered into a billion glittering pieces.
In a single, terrifying flash of light, the Saiyan race was reduced to stardust.
---
Almost.
A handful of survivors remained scattered across the endless dark, each flung into the void for reasons they would not understand for years to come. Prince Vegeta and his stoic handlers, far off on a conqueror's mission. Raditz. Nappa. The disgraced, exiled Prince Tarble. The infant Kakarot, hurtling toward a tranquil blue world in his own metal shell. Far across the stars, Paragus and his terrifying child, Broly, escaping the purge through means no one could yet explain.
And then there was me—racing through the blackness with three tiny lives in my arms and a grief so vast I hadn't even begun to give it a name.
I had just managed to soothe Kizuna and Uruk into a fitful, exhausted sleep when the pod violently shuddered.
It wasn't cosmic dust. It wasn't atmospheric drag.
It was something alive.
A thick, suffocating darkness crept over the viewport—not the clean, passive void of space, but something conscious. Smothering. Intentional. It coiled around the hull like smoke with a mind of its own. I felt a cold, sharp spike of malicious energy press directly against Kizuna's spirit. My son gasped, his tiny face twisting in sudden pain and confusion, before a piercing scream tore from his throat.
The panic spread instantly. Uruk woke up wailing, and the nameless baby girl joined them a second later. All three cried with that raw, wordless terror only infants can express—a sound that cuts straight to a mother's core.
Far beyond the burning wreckage of Planet Vegeta, suspended in the silent void, two figures watched the pod's erratic path.
One was a woman with twilight-blue skin, blood-red eyes, and a long black staff held casually in her slender hand. She observed the ship's frantic tumbling with the cold satisfaction of an architect watching a trap spring. Beside her stood a towering, white-haired warrior with matching crimson eyes, utterly motionless.
"Well," the blue-skinned sorceress purred softly, her voice laced with sharp delight. "That should be sufficient."
Whatever dark corruption she had planted in Kizuna's energy—a cursed splinter buried deep within the child's spirit—had already done its work. Reality itself began to buckle around the small pod. A hairline fracture, glowing with violent purple energy, tore open in the fabric of space directly in front of the vessel's path.
Inside, the navigation console shrieked frantically, displaying corrupted symbols I couldn't read. The stars outside stretched, distorted, and snapped.
With a violent spatial heave, the pod phased out of known space entirely—dragged sideways through dimensional barriers toward a destination light-years and realities removed from Earth.
The blue-skinned woman watched the spatial tear fold back up, a dark smile lingering on her lips.
"Another Saiyan won't be interfering in this timeline."
Inside the vessel, the violent shift subsided, leaving the pod drifting through a strange, quiet current. The children were still screaming.
I hauled all three of them into my arms at once. It was clumsy, ungainly, and under normal circumstances would have looked absurd, but I didn't care. I held them tight against my armor, swaying gently in the cramped cockpit, humming useless, nonsensical sounds into the dark to give them something to anchor to.
"I'm here," I whispered, my voice thick. "Mama's here. I've got you."
Kizuna settled first—my fierce little boy, recognizing my voice through the fog of his pain. His frantic gasps slowed, his brow unclenching as he buried his face into my shoulder.
Uruk was next. Exhausted and hiccuping, his tiny fists uncurled from my chest strap as sleep dragged him under once more.
Only the baby girl—Faasha's daughter—kept crying. It was a soft, lost sound, weeping for a mother she would never know and a world she would never see.
I cradled her up against my neck, looking down at her tiny face. At the soft curve of her cheeks, her dark wisps of hair, and the way her little hands reached outward, searching for something solid to hold onto.
"They left that up to me," Faasha's dying voice echoed in my memory.
I had thought of a name days ago—a strong, beautiful name from my own lineage: Sala. But as I stared down at this fragile child, the memory of Ginè standing alone under the burning sky, smiling up at us with selfless love, filled my chest until I thought it would break.
I brought the baby closer, pressing my lips to her warm forehead.
"Shh," I murmured softly. "Shh, sweet girl... it's alright, Sala."
My voice broke, a heavy knot forming in my throat as I whispered the rest. "Sala Ginè. My little Sala..."
The crying stopped.
It stopped instantly, like a flame extinguished by a gentle breath. The baby girl blinked, opening her dark, bright eyes for the very first time. She stared directly up at me with that startling clarity newborns sometimes possess—as if taking stock of the woman holding her, and deciding I was worthy.
Then, a tiny, gurgling sound bubbled past her lips.
She smiled. And then she laughed—a light, musical sound that shattered the heavy silence of the pod.
It was such a ridiculously small sound, but in that vast, empty dark, it felt like the birth of a world.
I pressed my face into her hair, breathing her in, and held her close.
"Sala Ginè," I whispered softly into the dark. "We're going to survive this. I promise you."
---
A year inside a metal sphere barely wide enough to stretch your arms in sounds like a special kind of hell.
And yet, I would later realize it was a strange sort of grace. Absolute confinement strips away everything non-essential. There was no military high command in that pod, no scouters measuring power levels, no looming threat of extermination—just the four of us, floating through the silent dark.
Time measured itself in tiny, impossible miracles. Kizuna learned to pull his weight up by clutching my knee, wobbling triumphantly on sturdy little legs. Uruk found his voice, grunting low, stubborn syllables that sounded fiercely, heartbreakingly like Tora. And little Sala Ginè? She laughed at everything: the hum of the sub-light drive, the pale light of distant nebulae sweeping across the glass, the ridiculous faces her brothers made when they fought over nutrient packs.
We weren't a family yet in the traditional sense—not the kind built over years of shared meals and lazy afternoons. But in that cramped dark, we were forged into something unbreakable.
Then came the day the dark gave way.
The dim red glow of the instrument panel was suddenly swallowed by a wave of pale, brilliant light. I sat up sharply, my heart hammering against my ribs, and pressed my face to the cool glass.
A vast, beautiful world filled the viewport. It was far larger than Vegeta, swathed in thick swirls of cloud, deep blue oceans, and massive expanses of vibrant green. The dimensional tear had scrambled our navigation array into a mess of garbled code, leaving me without coordinates. I couldn't verify where we were.
But staring down at that world, something tight and cold in my chest finally surrendered—a quiet, instinctive yes that echoed through my soul.
That must be Earth, I thought.
I was wrong, of course. I would find that out soon enough. But I wasn't wrong about the warmth radiating off that world.
The entry was brutal. The pod slammed into the upper atmosphere, friction roaring around the hull in a blanket of blinding fire. Metal groaned and shuddered, screaming as if the ship were trying to shake itself apart. I wrapped my body over all three children, locking them beneath my chest plate, my eyes fixed on the burning glass.
Hold on, I told myself, repeating the same mantra that had kept us alive for three hundred and sixty-five days. Just hold on.
The canopy came up fast—a sea of dense, towering green. Branches shattered against the hull like gunfire, stripping away heat shields. The pod plowed through undergrowth, tore into the earth, and slammed to a violent halt at the bottom of a smoking crater.
For two seconds, there was absolute, ringing silence.
Then, right on cue, three infants simultaneously decided to register their utter outrage at the landing.
I coughed through the haze, wiping soil and sweat from my cheek, a faint smile breaking through the exhaustion. "Alright," I rasped, giving them a quick squeeze. "We're down. We made it."
Reaching up with a bruised arm, I slammed my palm into the emergency release and forced the jammed hatch open into the sweet, wild air of a new world.
---
Gildarts Clive had been ambling through the dense treeline for about twenty minutes before the sharp stench of ozone and scorched earth pointed him in the right direction.
The village back at the crossroad had been buzzing with nervous chatter—farmers swearing up and down that a falling star had struck the deep woods, bringing some terrible monster along with it. In Gildarts' experience, when rural folk shouted "monster," it usually turned out to be an overgrown boar or an exceptionally angry bear. But he liked to check anyway. It was good practice, if nothing else.
He crested the dirt ridge, his reddish-brown hair wild against his shoulders, dark eyes taking in the scene with the quiet, unbothered warmth of a man who had walked very long distances and intended to walk a great deal more. His beard was fast approaching unruly, and his worn black cloak bore the faded scars of more misadventures than most men saw in three lifetimes.
He stood at the lip of the crater and looked down at the smoking metallic object lodged in the dirt.
"Well," he muttered, scratching his chin. "Not a monster. Just a giant metal ball."
He picked his way down the steep slope with practiced, easy grace, one hand resting loosely near his hip—a habitual posture born of decades of sudden danger. He was roughly three meters from the vessel when the sphere groaned. With a sharp hiss of released pressure, the heavy hatch blew open, venting a rolling wave of scalding steam into the cool morning air.
Gildarts hopped back on pure reflex, cloak swirling around his boots.
Through the white fog came a fit of heavy coughing, followed by a low, strained voice cycling through a series of desperate shushes. And beneath that—a chorus of three very loud, very furious infants tearing through the quiet of the woods.
Gildarts blinked, tilting his head. "Well. That's a new one."
The man who walked alone into monster-infested forests wasn't the sort to stand by while a mother struggled in the wreckage of a crash. He stepped straight into the clearing and extended a broad, calloused hand into the steaming doorway.
"Here," he said, his deep voice steady and calm. "Take hold."
A brief pause hung in the steam, and then a pair of slender, bruised fingers locked around his wrist with remarkable strength. Gildarts braced himself and pulled gently, helping her step out onto the uneven gravel.
She was tall, built with the lean, wiry muscle of someone who knew how to carry her own weight in a fight. Dark hair clung to her brow, and her face carried the bone-weary exhaustion of someone who had been holding her world together on sheer force of will. Clung to her chest and waist were three babies—two boys and a tiny girl—all staring up at Gildarts with varying degrees of dark-eyed suspicion.
"You alright, miss?" he asked, offering his free hand to steady her on the loose dirt.
She accepted it, drawing herself up with a quiet, grounded dignity that caught him off guard. "I am fine now. Thanks to you." She adjusted her grip on the children, meeting his gaze squarely. "Thank you—for me, and for my children both."
"Least I could do," he replied, taking a small step back to give her space. "I'm...?"
A faint flush of color rose to her pale cheeks. It was an endearing thing to see—a woman who looked like she could break a man's jaw, suddenly embarrassed by a brief lapse in manners.
"Forgive me," she said quickly, rebalancing the bundle in her arms. "I am Teilanne. And these three... the boys are Kizuna and Uruk. And the little one is Sala Ginè."
"Teilanne," Gildarts repeated, letting the syllables settle with a slow nod.
She tensed slightly, bracing as if waiting for a comment. "I know. It is an unusual name where I come from."
"No," Gildarts said simply, his tone warm and devoid of pretense. "It's a fine name. A wonderful one, actually." He held out a hand properly this time. "Gildarts. Gildarts Clive."
The tension in her shoulders eased just a fraction. "Well then. Thank you just the same, Mister Gildarts."
Gildarts winced with a good-natured grin. "Woah, easy there—drop the 'mister.' Makes me feel like an old man. Just Gildarts."
"...Just Gildarts, then."
He looked at the three wide-eyed children, then at the smoking wreck behind her, taking in the full picture with the uncomplicated clarity that governed his life.
"I take it you don't have anywhere to be," he said.
It wasn't really a question.
Teilanne looked down at her children, her voice barely above a whisper. "No. Not anymore."
"Then come on." Gildarts turned and took the first easy strides back up the crater wall, glancing over his shoulder. "I've got to drop by my guild first to check in, but after that, my place is open until you get your footing."
She didn't hesitate or question his motives. She pulled the children close and followed him up the slope into the morning light.
Watching her step up alongside him, Gildarts couldn't help but smile. Either she was extraordinarily trusting, intensely practical, or she had simply reached the absolute end of her rope and found relief on the other side.
He had a feeling it was a bit of all three.
---
Magnolia was everything Teilanne had not prepared for.
In the archives of the Saiyan military, Earth was recorded as a backwater blue-green marble—insignificant, technologically primitive, and populated by a weak, docile species with power levels barely worth measuring. A quiet, forgettable world.
She had not expected cobblestone streets polished smooth by generations of foot traffic, or warm amber light spilling from shop windows into the cool late-afternoon air. She had not expected the intoxicating scents of woodsmoke, roasting meats, and fresh river water all tangled together. And most of all, she was entirely unequipped for the sheer volume of human joy—people laughing at outdoor cafes, children chasing one another around a stone fountain, and the vibrant, unbothered atmosphere of a city that felt deeply, defiantly alive.
Then she saw the building at the end of the main thoroughfare.
It rose above the street like a cross between a medieval fortress and an overgrown tavern. Perched proudly above the double doors was a massive brass symbol—a stylized creature with a trailing tail. Gildarts walked toward it with the relaxed, heavy-footed confidence of a man returning to his own living room.
Teilanne followed, her mind quietly unraveling at the edges.
Guilds.
She knew the word from galactic trade manifests and ancient archive logs, but those were sterile corporate entities or mercenary syndicates. Standing outside this hall, hearing the roar of voices echoing through the heavy oak doors, a slow, dawning disorientation washed over her. Nothing about this town matched the cold, primitive assessment in the Saiyan databases.
Where in the universe am I?
Inside, the guildhall was a storm of noise and kinetic energy. Tables were stacked with mugs, small groups were locked in friendly arm-wrestling matches, someone was laughing uproariously in a corner, and a vague sense of cheerful, barely contained chaos hung in the air.
Instinctively, Teilanne tightened her grip on the three babies, her dark eyes scanning the room, her posture shifting into a defensive guard.
Before she could retreat, a small man stepped out from the crowd. He was short—hardly reaching Gildarts' waist—with broad shoulders, a grand white mustache, and a face lined with decades of wisdom. But it was his eyes that caught her off guard. They were sharp, piercing, and possessed the quiet authority of a seasoned veteran.
"Gildarts," the old man grunted, looking up at the giant warrior with long-suffering fond irritation. "You're back early."
"I am," Gildarts replied easily, tossing a hand back in Teilanne's direction. "Found her and her three little ones out in the forest. Ship crashed. No place to go, so I'm taking them in for a bit."
The old man turned his gaze to Teilanne. The intensity of his inspection made her tail—hidden beneath her heavy cloak—twitch in caution.
"And your name, miss?" he asked, his tone surprisingly gentle.
"Teilanne, sir," she replied, keeping her voice steady.
Something flickered in the old man's eyes—a subtle, knowing shift, like a commander recognizing an incredible force buried beneath a quiet exterior.
"Teilanne," he repeated slowly, letting the sound settle. "Well, then. I am Makarov, Guild Master of Fairy Tail." He offered a small, warm smile. "I do hope you'll consider joining us at some point. I have a feeling you are considerably stronger than you look."
Teilanne looked between Makarov and Gildarts, her mind racing to process the impossible truth staring her in the face.
Guilds. Magic. A world that was supposed to be Earth, but was undeniably something else entirely.
At her chest, baby Sala chose that exact moment to reach out a tiny hand, playfully patting Teilanne's jaw before letting out a soft, contented coo.
Teilanne let out a long, slow breath through her nose.
Wherever the dimensional tear had cast them, they were here now. Her children were alive. Their bellies were full, their skin was warm, and a mountain of a man named Gildarts had offered them shelter without asking for anything in return. Next to him stood a Guild Master who looked at a displaced, desperate mother and saw someone worth inviting in.
It wasn't Planet Vegeta. It wasn't the lonely, cold void of space. It wasn't anything she had ever planned for.
She pressed her lips gently against the top of Sala's head, feeling the solid weight of Uruk resting against her side and Kizuna's tiny hand tightly clutching her belt strap.
Perhaps, she thought, a fresh start on an unknown world wasn't such a terrible thing after all.
She would figure out where she was. She would figure out the magic, the guilds, and the strange rules of this realm. But for right now, her children were safe—and that was more than enough.
Next Time — Chapter 2: Saiyans and Cana