The warmth of summer clung to the asphalt like a memory that refused to fade. The hum of tires on the open highway mixed with the steady beat of a soft rock playlist playing from the car's speakers. It was the kind of day that felt eternal—bright skies stretched without end, windows rolled down just enough to let in the breeze, and nothing but time ahead. It felt like the world had taken a breath and decided to rest.
Selza leaned back in the passenger seat of the minivan, arms folded behind his head, gaze lazily following the clouds drifting above. His father's sunglasses sat slightly tilted on the bridge of his nose, stolen earlier as a joke, but now comfortably in place. At seventeen, he looked older than most his age—tall, lean, with a thoughtful stillness in his eyes that set him apart. He was quiet, reserved, always half a beat behind in conversations as if carefully choosing whether it was worth speaking at all. But he wasn't cold. Just…distant.
In the backseat, a voice pierced the calm like a firecracker.
"Selzaaa! We're going on the 'Nitro' ride first, right? You promised!"
It was Mira, his twelve-year-old sister, small and stubborn with a lion's heart packed into a middle-schooler's body. Her black hair was tied up in two puffed buns, and she leaned forward over the seat, cheeks puffed out in mock fury.
Selza didn't turn. "We didn't promise anything. I said 'maybe,' and 'maybe' isn't yes."
"You're so annoying," Mira groaned, flopping back into her seat with an exaggerated sigh. "Dad! Tell him he said yes!"
Their father glanced at them through the rearview mirror, a grin tugging at the corners of his lips. "Don't drag me into it. I'm just the chauffeur."
"And I'm just here for the funnel cake," their mom added from the passenger-side back seat, sipping from her travel mug like it was sacred. "Ride whatever you want, but if we don't stop for food first, I'm mutinying."
"You hear that?" Selza smirked. "Mom's going to overthrow the government of Six Flags."
Mira scowled. "Fine! Then we're riding Nitro AND getting funnel cake. But if we don't get on the ride first, you're sitting next to Mom on every roller coaster."
Their mother raised an eyebrow. "Hey."
Selza chuckled under his breath—rare and low, almost too quiet to be caught. Mira caught it, though, and grinned.
For all the teasing, there was an unspoken closeness between the siblings, like gravity pulling two stars into the same orbit. Mira was the only person who could consistently draw Selza out of his quiet. At home, they played video games, watched anime, and got into constant debates over which characters could beat who in a fight. (Mira insisted Goku would lose to Sailor Moon on sheer versatility. Selza argued otherwise, of course.)
And that day, just like every day before it, felt like it would stretch on forever.
But forever has a way of breaking.
The laughter hadn't even faded from Mira's voice when the world cracked apart.
A blare of a horn—deep, guttural—cut through the easy silence like a blade. Their father's hand jerked the wheel, eyes flashing in alarm, and the minivan veered hard to the left. Tires screamed against pavement. Time seemed to slow, stretching seconds into endless moments.
Selza barely caught a glimpse of the truck—a massive eighteen-wheeler barreling through the intersection, far too close and moving too fast. There was no stopping it. No swerving out of the way.
There was only impact.
CRASH.
Metal folded. Glass exploded like a rain of razors. The entire vehicle twisted unnaturally as momentum threw them like dolls inside a tin can. Selza's world spun into chaos—shouting, Mira's scream, the sound of bones breaking, something wet and warm splashing across his chest. The seatbelt cut into him, but held. Everything else didn't.
It all went dark.
Beep.
A slow, steady rhythm. Mechanical. Cold.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Selza's eyelids fluttered open to a harsh white light above. His body was heavy—his limbs refused to respond. The sensation of lying flat was absent. He felt… upright? Suspended? His arms and legs were stretched out and bound. He couldn't move his head more than a fraction.
The sterile scent of antiseptic clung to the air, mixing with something… off. Something metallic. Something wrong.
His lips parted. "Mira…?"
The door to the room slid open with a hydraulic hiss.
A man stepped in, tall and thin, clad in a white lab coat. He wore a surgical mask over a gaunt face, with sunken eyes that didn't blink nearly enough. He held a clipboard like a priest would a bible.
"You're awake," he said plainly, scribbling something down. "Earlier than projected. Interesting."
Selza tried to move, to struggle, but his limbs refused to cooperate. "Where—where am I? Where's my sister?"
"She's being monitored," the doctor replied, not even looking at him. "Rest assured, she is receiving treatment."
"I want to see her!"
The doctor stopped writing, finally looking up. His eyes were glassy, empty, like he'd long since detached from human emotions. "You are not in a position to make requests, Subject 43."
"Subject—?"
Before he could finish the thought, the man turned and inserted a syringe into a port on the IV line feeding into Selza's arm. A strange green fluid drained into the line.
"What is that?" Selza's voice cracked, panic blooming.
"Preparation," the doctor answered.
Everything went black again.
Later—how much later, he didn't know—Selza awoke again.
This time, he wasn't lying down.
He was upright, arms spread and shackled to a cold steel slab behind him. A single, blinding spotlight burned down from the ceiling, leaving the rest of the room cloaked in shadow. His throat was dry. His wrists ached.
Then he heard it—a noise that tore at his nerves.
A saw, whirring in the darkness.
Selza froze. "What… what the hell was that?"
The room buzzed with mechanical life. Then, in front of him, a screen lowered. It flickered on—static for a moment—before the image stabilized.
It was Mira.
Strapped down like him. Her mouth was moving, but there was no sound. The feed was muted.
Selza's heart lurched. "No… no no no—MIRA!!"
Suddenly, three figures entered the camera's view. All wore lab coats. Each held a different object—one with a flamethrower, one with a vat of glowing liquid, and the last with a surgical saw.
Selza screamed. "STOP!! What are you doing!?"
The first doctor stepped forward and activated the flamethrower. A gout of fire engulfed Mira's arm. Her body convulsed. Her mouth opened wide in a scream Selza couldn't hear. The second doctor poured the acid over her side, and the skin sizzled away. The third lowered the saw to her thigh.
Selza thrashed in his restraints. "PLEASE!! SHE'S ONLY TWELVE!! PLEASE!!"
They didn't stop.
They took turns.
Burning. Dissolving. Cutting.
Until there was barely anything left of her limbs. Until she stopped screaming.
Then—something impossible. Her wounds started to close, slowly, twitching as if trying to rebuild. Tissue reknitting itself at a glacial pace. Not fast enough.
A cold voice crackled over the intercom.
"Subject 44 has failed to adapt in time. Time of death: 15:27."
Selza's mind shattered in real time.
No rage. Not yet. Just hollow.
Then the voice returned, clinical as ever.
"She didn't adapt quickly enough. It's unfortunate, but valuable data. Subject 43—you—you are different. You've already survived dozens of these experiments. We've tested everything—acid, fire, blunt trauma, radiation, sonic vibration. Nothing works. Your cells recover too quickly. You are the single success in over 5,000 trials."
Selza said nothing. Couldn't breathe.
"You are the future. A perfected organism. A weapon."
Then came the final straw.
"You should be proud. Your sister was necessary. A failed iteration. Trash. But you—you're the culmination of Operation Mahoraga."
The world collapsed around him.
Something in Selza broke that couldn't be repaired.
His eyes, once full of disbelief and grief, became empty. The pain didn't vanish—it became something else. Something ancient. Something savage.
Then he roared.
A guttural, monstrous sound tore from his chest, shaking the very foundation of the chamber. Lights flickered. The screen went black. A cold silence followed.
And then—alarms.
Red warning lights spun to life. Sirens blared across the facility. The intercom screeched again.
"Security breach. Unknown force detected on sublevel five. All personnel evacuate immediately."
In the lab, the head scientist slammed his hands on the console. "What's happening!?"
"We—we don't know, sir! Something—something's loose!"
The power cut. Emergency lights switched on.
One of the assistants looked up at the screen showing Selza's chamber.
The restraints were empty.
The door was torn off its hinges.
Then came the sound—heavy, slow footsteps.
Down the hallway, dragging something metallic behind.
Screams echoed. Gunfire. Then silence.
Selza emerged from the smoke, covered in blood, eyes devoid of mercy. His voice came like thunder.
"I will kill you. All of you."
The guards fired everything—bullets, gas, grenades. Nothing worked. Selza didn't stop. Every blow, every blast, every attempt to put him down only made him faster, stronger. His body healed instantly. His mind didn't flinch.
He ripped them apart with his bare hands.
One by one.
Until only the head doctor remained, locked inside the control room, watching in horror.
"Activate Contingency Z!" he screamed.
"But sir—it'll destroy the entire compound! We'll die too!"
"I don't care! That monster can't be allowed to leave!"
Selza crashed through the final door like a force of nature. His breath steamed in the cold room. His muscles rippled with impossible power. Blood soaked his hands.
The doctor backed away, stumbling over a chair.
"You—you want to know why we did it?" he rasped, trembling.
Selza said nothing, just stepped forward and grabbed the man by the throat.
"We wanted to creat a realJujutsu Kaisen Irvine general mahoraga ," the man whispered. "And we… succeeded."
"You did this… for some anime?!!" Selza snarled.
A grin twitched on the doctor's lip.
Selza crushed his windpipe and hurled the corpse against the wall.
Then, from behind him, a trembling assistant pressed a red button.
A deep, low rumble shook the building.
Outside, a nuclear-level failsafe detonated—five megatons of pure force, incinerating everything.
Selza didn't run.
He stood at the heart of the explosion, unafraid. In that final moment before obliteration, as the fire consumed everything, he thought only of her.
Mira.
And then—darkness.
And yet—consciousness returned.
Selza floated in a void so vast and formless it could not be called space. No up, no down, no sensation beyond his own lingering awareness. His arms didn't exist. His body was gone—or felt gone. The weight of flesh and bone had evaporated with the blast, and yet he felt the pain. Not physical—emotional. A wound far deeper than marrow.
Mira…
Her name barely registered in the echoing silence of his mind, a whisper drowned in sorrow. Again, he saw her face, bloodied and broken, eyes staring up at him—asking for help, begging for mercy, none of which he could give.
He hadn't been strong enough. Not then.
The void shifted.
Something ancient stirred, older than time, older than creation. It pulsed not with light but with knowledge—a wheel of grotesque beauty spinning slowly in the dark, symbols engraved deep within its form. Not a machine, not an object—something far more primal.
Selza felt his soul being torn open and re-stitched, a pain so alien it transcended agony. Each fragment of him that had been human was weighed, judged, burned—and something else began to take shape in its place. Something Saiyan.
The void cracked.
Like glass fracturing under impossible pressure, the silence splintered into light. The sensation of heat returned. Flesh wrapped around his consciousness like armor forged in hell.
A heartbeat. Then another.
Selza screamed—not from pain, but from life.
A pod sailed through the emptiness of space, a strange vessel with Saiyan insignia scorched into its metallic shell. Inside, a body lay curled, bare-chested and barely clothed, his black and crimson hair matted to his forehead. His tail was coiled tight around his waist, twitching with erratic tension. The pod's vitals displayed abnormalities, yet no alarms sounded. This one was already… beyond saving—or beyond understanding.
Selza jolted awake.
Air filled his lungs like fire, his chest heaving against gravity's pull. He shot forward in his seat, panting, sweat pouring from his temples as fragmented memories tore across his thoughts like glass.
He looked at his hands. They were shaking. Not from fear. From rage.
"No…"
His voice cracked—deeper, more primal than before. Something inside him growled. Not a thought, not a word. A presence. It throbbed like a second heartbeat beneath his skin, whispering instincts he didn't yet understand.
He was different.
Not human.
Not anymore.
The pod began its descent, pulled toward a blue and green planet—Earth.
The impact was not gentle.
The pod slammed into the earth outside of a forest, obliterating trees and throwing dirt into the air for miles. Animals scattered in fear. Somewhere not far away, another pod had landed hours earlier—Raditz's. But Selza did not know that. He didn't care.
His door hissed open.
Selza stepped out, barefoot and shirtless, steam rising off his skin. The ground beneath his feet shivered, as if it knew what stood upon it. His long Saiyan tail flicked once, then coiled tightly once more.
Birds went silent.
The wind held its breath.
He staggered.
His knees buckled, and he collapsed to the forest floor, gasping.
"What… what am I?"
His voice trembled.
He didn't recognize the trees, the sounds, the smell of the air. None of this was the lab. None of it was home. There was no scream of machines. No scent of scorched steel. Just life. Peace.
But inside him, there was no peace.
Only chaos.
The wheel hadn't appeared again, not since that void. But he could still feel its presence buried within his being. And worse—the hollowness. A spiritual scar that pulsed beneath his thoughts.
"I'm not… supposed to be here."
But he was. Alive. Breathing. Walking.
Selza looked down at his hands again. This time, they weren't shaking. They were solid, strong—inhumanly so. And his reflection in a puddle nearby only confirmed the worst of it.
Eyes black as night. Crimson irises. No glow of life. Just an abyss.
Days passed.
He wandered the forest in silence.
He didn't need food—his body seemed to sustain itself on something else. Energy? Rage? He didn't know. He kept his distance from humans, watching them from shadows. He tried to mimic them. Their expressions. Their casual laughs. Their warmth.
But no matter how long he observed… he couldn't feel it.
The emotions didn't return. Not fully. Something was missing.
Something died in that lab.
One night, he sat alone by a stream, staring into the water. His reflection rippled, monstrous, alien, tired.
"I'm just… a monster."
The words left his lips like broken glass.
Something moved behind him.
A soft step. A cane tapping against a stone.
"You don't look like a monster to me," came an old, raspy voice.
Selza didn't move. "You shouldn't be here."
The old man stepped into view, his robes simple, hair white as clouds. He held no fear in his eyes—only curiosity. "Neither should you, I imagine."
Selza glanced sideways. "You come to die?"
The old man chuckled. "Boy, I came to fish."
He sat down on a stone beside the stream, pulled out a wooden rod, and cast his line.
Silence stretched between them.
Minutes passed.
Selza stared, confused.
"Why are you not afraid of me?"
The old man didn't look at him. "I've lived long enough to know the difference between a monster and a man with pain in his eyes."
"I don't have eyes. I have voids." [A.N: cough cring ik]
The old man nodded slowly. "Void or not, you still cry inside. That's not something monsters do."
Selza clenched his fists. "I watched my sister die. Watched them tear her apart. I couldn't stop it. I was too weak."
"And now?"
Selza looked down.
"I'm too strong."
The old man smiled. "Then learn to be strong for something. Not just against something."
Selza didn't answer.
But the words stayed.
Elsewhere, the Dragon Ball timeline moved forward.
Raditz had already found Goku. Piccolo and Goku teamed up. Gohan was taken hostage. The world spun toward destiny while Selza remained in exile—hidden in a forest, talking to an old man, trying to figure out what it meant to be alive after death.
The wheel inside him remained dormant.
But not silent.