A gold streak tore the blue—small at first, then a line, then a comet with a man at its heart. The cloud under him wasn't weather; it was a promise with opinions. It slowed above the crater and the man stepped off it barefoot, as if gravity had offered him a chair.
He looked ordinary the way blades look ordinary inside their sheaths—messy hair, orange gi scorched at the hem, a smile that couldn't decide if it wanted to forgive or warn. His eyes found the bodies first—Yamcha, Tien, the empty place where Chiaotzu had been, Piccolo cooling in a shape that shouldn't be possible—and the smile lost its argument.
"Krillin. Gohan." His voice landed soft and urgent. "Can you stand?"
Krillin tried to say yes and coughed out gravel. Gohan pushed himself to his knees, face streaked, small and shaking.
The man reached into his belt pouch and flicked two small shapes, green as unkept promises. "Chew." He didn't wait for thanks. Krillin caught one like a drowning man catches air; Gohan fumbled, then obeyed. Relief moved through them fast—bones knitting, breath un-breaking, rage remembering it had somewhere to be. Gohan's eyes cleared and found the green corpse at his feet and forced themselves to keep looking.
Nappa snorted. "Beans? Snacks won't help you, runt." He spooled his shoulders back, all bad theater and good muscle. "You're late to your own funeral."
The new arrival didn't look at him. He looked at Vegeta.
"Are you in charge?" he asked, like the weather asking the ocean if it needed anything.
Vegeta let the silence answer for three breaths because silence does useful work if you let it. Then: "I'm always in charge," he said. "Even when I don't have to be."
The System slid into his vision with the calm of a surgeon washing hands.
[Approach Vector: Kakarot — Confirmed]Power Level (suppressed): ~5,000 → rising (volatile)Training Marker: Kaio-Ken Signature Detected (unrefined).Risk Assessment vs Nappa: Catastrophic (for Nappa).Rivalry Node: Eligible.Recommendation:— Observe Nappa engagement; sever liability afterward.— Preserve Gohan/Krillin for Zenkai/Emotional Catalyst research.
Vegeta's tail swayed, amused. Kaio-ken, is it. Bright, crude, dangerous. Perfect.
Gohan ran to the man and slammed into him with a hug that tried to become armor. "Dad!" The word cracked. "Piccolo—he— he saved me—"
The man—Kakarot—put a hand on his son's hair and let grief set his mouth for exactly one heartbeat before he filed it where he keeps useful things. "I know," he said, and the knowing sounded like a vow he had already made and would keep in public.
Nappa curled a finger at him. "Come on then, hero. Let's see what that cloud feeds you."
Kakarot nodded once to Krillin. "Take Gohan back. Far back." Krillin didn't argue. He tugged the boy away, both of them looking back the way people look at roads they know will be on fire when they return.
Kakarot stepped forward into the crater, toes digging into warm sand as if to say he had rights here. He rolled his shoulders, exhaled, and the world around him shifted like a room when its owner walks in.
"Your name?" Vegeta asked, knowing the answer and asking anyway because names make treaties.
"Goku," he said, then looked him straight in the eyes and said the only one that mattered, "Kakarot."
Vegeta's smile was a blade laid flat on a table. "Better."
Nappa was done with sentences. He charged, a boar with a stadium for a skull, fist cocked to unmake faces. The ground shook in the obvious way as he came; the air bent in the subtler one.
Kakarot didn't move until it was interesting. Then he stepped through the punch, palm rising, body soft where force wanted something hard to break. His hand met Nappa's wrist and guided it past his ear. Nappa's momentum stumbled on its own feet; the brute blinked, offended by physics.
"Hi," Kakarot said politely, and buried his other fist in Nappa's gut.
The sound wasn't a hit; it was an edit. Nappa folded over the fist like a document corrected by a cruel teacher and flew backward on an arc that made the desert look poorly drawn. He crashed and rolled and carved a story in the sand that ended at Vegeta's boots.
Vegeta didn't step aside. He let the body slide to a stop inches from his toes and raised an eyebrow at the scouter as if it might be embarrassed.
The System obliged the theater.
[Impact Analytics]Strike Efficiency: 97% (centered, minimal telegraph)Energy Surge: Red band activation (Kaio-ken — x2 probable)Note: User deliberately under-indexing to test opponent.
Nappa rose snarling, pride making a louder noise than pain. He lunged again, less theater now, more murder. Punches came heavy and quick, a drumline trying to bludgeon a melody. Kakarot met them, hands open, arms loose, head still. He let some hit air; he let some hit nothing; the few that landed landed on the places he decided bruises would teach better than avoidance.
Then the red band flickered around him—subtle at first, a pulse you feel more than see. His aura popped, pressure expanding, sand skittering away from his feet as if frightened of sudden weather.
He was somewhere else then. Not fast.Correct.
A twist. A step. Two knuckles to the jaw delivered with the intimacy of advice. Nappa spun, skidding on his heels. Before he reoriented, Kakarot was already by his knee, heel coming down—tap—not enough to break, enough to convince bone it was no longer the only authority on the subject.
"Get up," Kakarot said, and the request was almost kind. "You can do better than that."
"Can he?" Vegeta murmured to no one.
Nappa heard none of it. Rage chewed his syntax. He spat ki in sheets, wild, bright, childish. Kakarot cut through them without drama, hands flicking, aura tightening around his skin until the beams broke and went looking for less offensive targets.
He vanished then—no puff of smoke, no sound—just there, then there again. His foot caught Nappa at the base of the skull. The big man went face-first into sand as if the ground had opened a door and asked him in.
The System dinged like a scoreboard finally allowed to be smug.
[Nappa Condition]Musculoskeletal: Compromised (cervical strain, micro-fractures)Nerve Signaling: DisruptedCombat Efficacy: 28% and droppingRecommendation:— Terminate asset; unlock Rivalry Node fully.
Vegeta watched, expression politely bored, mind alive and counting. Kaio-ken x2, easily. He has more. He hasn't shown it. Good. The surprise belongs to me later.
Nappa roared from the floor. He levered himself up, dragged breath into his chest, and flung a blast at the sky out of spite. The shockwave knocked Krillin and Gohan to their knees in the distance. Kakarot frowned, as if displeased by the choice of target.
"No," he said, and the air around him thickened. Red deepened. Veins stood on his forearms; his hair seemed to lean forward with him. He appeared in front of Nappa again, righteous and fast, spine aligned with intention.
"Kaio—" he whispered to himself, the second word a private contract, and light bit his skin.
He hit Nappa once in the chest. Just once.
Armor split. Sound detonated. The shock traveled through Nappa's ribcage and told his organs bad news at the speed of pain. The brute skidded a quarter mile and crumpled against a dune that decided it would be a wall if this man insisted.
Silence fell the way heavy things fall—completely.
Kakarot lowered his hands, breathing hard but steady. The red fell off him in threads. He looked at Vegeta and did not smile.
Nappa staggered to his feet—through will, through muscle memory, through rage, through stupidity. "I'm not—" He coughed up something red and unconvincing. "—done."
"You are," Vegeta said.
Nappa turned, face breaking into the open, petulant anger of a man who has misunderstood his own rank for a lifetime. "Prince, I—"
"Stand down." Vegeta's voice didn't rise. It narrowed. "You lost. You embarrass me."
Nappa's mouth worked. He took one step—toward Vegeta, not away—the way beaten dogs sometimes test old chains.
Kakarot watched, unreadable. Krillin watched, suddenly very readable—horror, fascination, a hard lesson learned again.
Vegeta lifted two fingers. "You had your fun," he said, and meant the opposite. "Now be useful."
For an instant, Nappa thought useful meant alive. He lunged at Kakarot with a scream gathered from the bottom of years, a last, stupid hero move in a story that had no room for him.
Kakarot didn't flinch. He set his stance to catch a man like a falling tree.
Vegeta exhaled, bored with the shape of this lesson. He raised his palm, turned it sideways, and clicked his ki in a thin, precise line. It tore through Nappa's midsection at the speed of irony. Nappa froze around the discovery of absence. For a second he looked down as if the solution might be written there.
He fell in two.
The halves hit sand with different sounds.
The System washed its hands.
[Liability Severed — Nappa: Deceased]Rivalry Node: Locked (Kakarot vs Vegeta)Ascension Path Synergy: +1Public Signal: Dominance established (Earth & Offworld channels).
Kakarot's jaw clenched. "He was your teammate."
"He was my tool," Vegeta said. "It broke. I don't keep broken tools."
Gohan stared, a new kind of fear naming itself in him, the kind that doesn't come with teeth but with calendars.
Krillin swallowed. "Goku…" He didn't finish the sentence. There were too many ways to end it badly.
Kakarot stepped once to the side, a small motion that turned the crater into a ring, the sky into a dome, the day into a curtain. He faced Vegeta fully.
"I won't let you hurt anyone else," he said. It didn't sound like a threat. It sounded like a discovery.
Vegeta's scouter chirped, petty, wanting to matter. He took it off and let it fall into the sand because pettiness shouldn't be encouraged.
"You'll try," he said. "You'll fail. And in that failure you'll make me better."
The System intruded like the voice of a god with taste.
[Duel Parameters Suggested]Opponent: KakarotConstraints (optional for style/reward):— One-on-one, no interference (Reward: +1% Royal Pressure)— No weapons, ki only (Reward: Micro-Vectoring +1)— Permit Kaio-ken escalation x3; survive (Reward: Super Saiyan Progress +3%)— Brink flirt (2x within duel), recovery denied (Reward: Zenkai Efficiency +5%)
Vegeta laughed once, bright and mean. "You hear that, Kakarot? Even my fate thinks you're a workout."
"Then let's train together," Kakarot said, and smiled in a way that made the words sound like a prayer and a threat.
"Gladly," Vegeta said, and the word carried years of hunger in four letters.
They moved at the same time.
The ground collapsed under the first exchange. Not from weight—from refusal. Fists met and the air buckled, a ring of sand whipping out from them in a perfect circle. The shock hit Krillin and Gohan a second later and knocked them on their heels like a scolding.
Vegeta's knuckles sang. Kakarot's cheekbone answered. They broke apart and came back faster, elbows, knees, palms, every strike an argument with physics that physics lost by negotiation.
Vegeta's aura flared cold, tight, efficient. He folded inside Kakarot's guard and drove a short hook into the ribs that counted. Kakarot grunted—honest, appreciative—and returned with a cross that would have forgone tomorrow if it had landed on anyone else. Vegeta turned his skull just enough. The punch shaved hair, stole air, took nothing that mattered.
They laughed, low and terrible, not because violence is funny but because it finally had a worthy seat at their table.
Kakarot slipped red again—Kaio-ken x2, then let it fall, testing, tasting. Vegeta felt the pressure wave on his teeth, measured it, filed it, smiled. We can go higher, both of us. He pushed ki to his skin until it crackled—royal armor without metal—and stepped into the next three hits as if he owned them, because he did.
Blows blurred. The sky took on the look of a ceiling accidentally too low for what was happening. The desert crawled away in every direction, sand trying hard to be ocean and failing majestically.
Krillin watched with the expression of a man listening to a story where his survival had been written by someone drunk. Gohan watched with the expression of a boy who had just discovered what hope costs at retail.
Vegeta felt the brink call to him and ignored it, then flirted with it, then kissed it on the mouth and pushed it away. Pain spiked in his ribs; he catalogued it, converted it, smiled because it was currency he knew how to spend. The System ticked in the corner of his eye like a delighted accountant.
[Brink Skim: 1/2]Micro-damage banked for Zenkai.Advisory: Permit opponent escalation soon; collect data.
Kakarot stepped back a pace, breathing a touch heavier, eyes bright, sweat drawing constellations on his temples. He set his feet wider, left hand open, right hand chambered near his hip, aura drawing in like tide before storm.
"Kaio-ken," he whispered, louder, the second word a spike.
The red came hard this time—x3 at least—muscles striating, veins ghosting blue, hair lifting in the electric weather of his own making. The air burned an inch off his skin in a corona of heat.
Vegeta's grin was all teeth. "Yes. Show me the shape of your ceiling."
Kakarot vanished, reappeared mid-swing, and the punch landed.
It drove Vegeta back a dozen paces, boots plowing furrows, shoulder hitching against the impact. He slid to a stop, chest rising, laughter edged and pure.
The System wrote in clean lines across his vision.
[Data Captured: Kaio-ken x3]Strike Pressure: 140% of base x2Sustainability: Low (self-damage escalates)Counter Options (preview): Royal Pressure feint → Micro-vector parry → Riposte (liver/brachial).Reward on Survival: +3% Super Saiyan Progress.
Vegeta rolled his neck and raised an open palm in invitation. "Again."
Kakarot obliged, and the world remembered the last time two gods decided a desert was a church.
They met in the middle—power against power, choice against choice—and everything else got very quiet so it could listen.
Sand leapt, sky leaned, time held its coat.
Vegeta slipped inside a red-lit punch and threaded his knuckles three times into the same rib without telegraph, then rode the recoil into a knee that kissed Kakarot's thigh hard enough to make muscle reconsider its loyalties. Kakarot took all of it like a man who refuses to learn anything except forward; he pivoted, dropped low, swept a leg, and Vegeta jumped, turned, and came down with a heel that would have ended most biographies. Kakarot caught that heel with two hands and pushed it away like clutter. Their eyes met over the denial, and both of them grinned like criminals about to commit religion.
Red burned brighter. Blue sky held its breath. Krillin said "oh" in a voice too small to hold that much awe. Gohan forgot to be afraid long enough to become something else.
The next exchange started—
—and the chapter ends here, not because the fight does, but because fights like this deserve to be turned like a page by a hand that knows it's about to be burned.