The desert held its breath. One sun burned in the Oozaru's lifted hands—silver-violet, ravenous, bright enough to erase shadows. Another built itself between the palms of a broken man—blue-white, stubborn, crackling with a promise older than fear.
Goku's stance wavered, then set. His arms shook as if the bones inside them were arguing with the muscles, but his eyes were steady. Blue fire swirled, thickening into weight, into shape, into a thing that remembered oceans and refused to drown.
"Ka… me…"
Vegeta's colossal silhouette blotted the false moon. Fur shivered in the hot wind; claws flexed around the sphere he had conjured simply because he could. His one good eye gleamed. The other, swollen and leaking, stung like a debt he intended to collect with interest.
"Die knowing your cub watched you fail," he said, voice rolling across the wasteland like iron poured down a mountain.
"…ha… me…"
A lattice of light scrolled through his skull, calm as breath inside a storm.
[Engagement: Beam Clash Imminent]Host Output (Oozaru): 180,000 PL — stableExecution Sphere Integrity: 94% and risingOpponent Output (Kakarot): ~20,000 base → ~30,000 (Kaio-ken ×4, unstable)Projected Outcome: Host advantage; opponent collapse in 90–120 secondsOptimization: Micro-vector shelling; stagger pulses to disrupt breathing cadence
Vegeta's grin widened. "Savor it," he murmured, tasting the word. "Savor despair."
"HA!"
Goku thrust his palms forward. The Kamehameha roared out, a river turned weapon. Vegeta answered by hurling his own sun downward. The lights met in the center of the broken desert, and the world forgot how to do anything except scream.
The collision blew the dunes into knives. Ridges shuddered, then folded like tired animals. A ring of pressure raced outward from the meeting point, scooped up stones and glass and yesterday, and threw them at the horizon.
On the ridge, Krillin dropped to a knee and dragged Gohan with him, both shielding their faces as heat tore at their skin. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, Krillin could see the light through blood and grit.
"Hold on, Goku," he muttered, because prayer sounded less foolish when it wore a familiar name.
Gohan's fingers dug into his sleeve. "He will," the boy said, voice trembling and sure at once. "He has to."
In the crater, two suns pushed at each other and refused to be reasonable. Vegeta curled his fingers and felt the resistance like a living creature. The Oozaru's shoulders rolled; muscles bunched; his spine sang with power. He leaned into it. The sphere answered with a deeper tone, the pitch of something that had decided it preferred being a star.
[Clash Telemetry]Pressure Differential: +22% (host)Opponent Stability: Shaking—micro-fractures in forearms and shouldersDirective: Increase pressure in pulses (three-count) to break cadence
He obeyed. Three surges hit like stacked slabs of weather. The Kamehameha buckled, blue light ripping against its own spine. Goku's stance slid three inches; boots carved grooves into glass that hissed under his feet.
"Still standing?" Vegeta called, almost polite.
Goku's jaw set. Blood trickled from one nostril and turned to steam before it could drip. "Get used to it."
He widened his footing, exhaled on purpose, and let the next pulse roll past while he shifted weight. The beam bulged, then narrowed; for a heartbeat the blue line laced up the silver-violet like wire through cloth.
Vegeta felt it—a needle inside the shove. He laughed, delighted. "There you are. Show me the part of you that refuses arithmetic."
Ethan's mind, buried beneath fur and fury, marked the data. He times exhalations to pressure spikes. He gives ground to take a step. Change the music; break the map.
The rhythm changed—two quick, one long. The clash shifted pitch. On the ridge, Krillin heard it without knowing why and felt sick because of it.
Goku's arms shook. The beam slid toward him, yard by stubborn yard. He sank another inch; the ground remembered it had been sand once and tried to learn the trick again.
"Breathe," he told himself, because anger was heat, but breath was fire kept. He drew in air through his teeth, counted without numbers, and tilted his wrists half a finger's width. The Kamehameha curled at the edge—not to push harder, but to divert. The blue wave licked the floor to his left. Glass exploded into bright shards, lifted by the gale into a glittering storm, then rained upward—tiny meteors striking the underside of Vegeta's descending sun.
It didn't hurt. But cadence broke.
The clash hiccuped. Goku stepped into the hiccup and poured everything he wasn't done being into the push. For three excellent heartbeats, the blue-white advanced. The crater lip behind Vegeta shattered and went looking for new geography.
Krillin whooped, surprised to hear the sound coming out of himself. "He's got him! He's—"
Vegeta closed his bleeding eye—not in pain, in focus—and spread his fingers like a musician remembering a better riff.
[Micro-Vector Shelling: Enabled]Sub-streams: 32Shear Angle: 7° inwardEffect: Needle opponent's beam core; force overcorrection; reclaim initiative
The Oozaru's sun developed a skin of filaments—too fine to see, impossible to ignore. They drilled into the Kamehameha the way rain needles a river. The river spent itself dealing with needles instead of the ocean.
Goku grunted. His beam thickened defensively. The three heartbeats he had purchased with cleverness vanished into the noise. The clash shoved him back again, grinding rather than sliding. His forearms screamed; something inside his elbows spoke in a language made of sparks.
Kaio's laugh echoed across a memory. You like hitting walls, huh? Good. Walls push back. Teaches you what you're made of, Goku.
"What I'm made of," he muttered, "is the people behind me."
He saw a small boy in a big shadow. A green man with a scarred chest who had smiled once and spent it on someone else. A short monk with a stupidly big heart. A grim friend who wore discipline like a third eye. A prince above him who was everything he could become if he ever stopped laughing.
"Not today."
Red bloomed around blue. He didn't climb the number; he cleaned it. The Kaio-ken drew tight to his skin like a jacket instead of a wildfire. The beam brightened without widening; it became a spear instead of a club.
Vegeta's good eye flared. "Better."
The beams argued in a new dialect—quieter, more dangerous, all placement and no mercy. The center moved inches at a time. Glass dust fell as glitter.
[Choice Window]Overclock Sphere (Risk: tail fatigue 12%; Reward: instant overwhelm)Graviton Stomp while clashing (Reward: footing collapse)Permit opponent advance to brink; accept counter-strike; bank Zenkai (Projected Gain: +24,000 PL)
Keep the tail fresh. Never waste footing. Bank pain you buy. Ethan's soldier cut clean through the appetite. Vegeta bled a sliver of pressure out of the sphere—just enough to let the blue advance a half-step. He watched Goku's shoulders change when hope tasted like water. He waited. He let the push steal a breath. He listened to the betrayed rhythm in the man's chest.
Then he shoved. Hard.
Silver-violet ate a yard in a gulp. Goku's heels screeched in the glass. He shouted—a sound that said so what to gravity.
On the ridge, Gohan clutched Krillin's sleeve hard enough to bruise. "He won't let go," the boy whispered, furious at tears that refused to stay in his skull. "He won't."
Krillin swallowed. "He's buying us seconds. We make those seconds smart."
He looked at his hand. It trembled. The shape he knew better than almost anything hummed in memory over his palm. Cut the world. Be useful. His eyes slid to the Oozaru's tail, swaying behind arrogance like punctuation. He remembered a giant's grip around Chiaotzu. He remembered an old story told in a voice like a knife: Our tails are not decoration.
"Okay," he breathed. "Okay."
"Krillin?" Gohan's voice was small and immense.
"If I can get behind him…"
"You'll die," Gohan said, honest the way only children and soldiers are.
"Maybe," Krillin said. "Maybe he loses his balance first."
They slid along the ridge, hunched, using the stutter of light as cover. The heat put a headache behind their eyes. The roar shook dust loose and hammered it into their teeth.
In the crater, Goku felt his fingernails lift inside his gloves. Pain arrived in bright little parcels with the wrong names written on them. He accepted them and wrapped them in other paper—training, stubbornness, breath.
"Ka… me… ha… me…"
He'd already fired, but the words steadied his hands.
Above him, Vegeta's teeth showed. He rolled his massive shoulders and drove more weight into light. The blue line skittered backward.
[Opponent Condition]Forearm Micro-fractures: confirmedCardiac stress: elevatedKaio-ken feedback tearing fascia; collapse risk: highTime to failure (pressure sustained): <60 seconds
Vegeta tasted victory like copper on night air. He raised his head and let a roar out—not because he needed it, but because joy weaponized is still joy.
"Break," he told the man below, almost fond.
"No," Goku said, not to him. He set his feet a hair wider, let his hips do what his shoulders could not, shifted the line from muscle to ground. For an instant the beam didn't so much push as belong.
The clash steadied. Not enough. Too late. But somewhere a teacher would have nodded, if teachers lived through nights like this.
Behind the Oozaru, two small shapes moved through heat that wanted them dead.
Krillin's mouth was chalk-dry. He slid down a slope that had been a hill at dawn and a bowl at noon and was glass at dusk. He bit his lip until he tasted rust, then shaped the disc his master had mocked until it cut a mountain.
"Keep him looking forward," he whispered to a god who couldn't hear and a boy who would try anyway.
Gohan nodded, eyes hard. He cupped his hands and gathered a ball of ki that was more sincerity than strength. He didn't need it to hurt; he needed it to matter. He leapt and flung it at the Oozaru's cheek with a scream that sounded like the beginning of a life.
The pop against fur didn't move a ledger. It moved a heart. Vegeta's good eye flicked sideways for a blink—the length of a raised hand in memory. The blue beam advanced two feet in that blink. Goku stepped into the gift, not surprised or grateful—busy.
Vegeta chuckled, pleased by audacity he'd punish later.
Something glittered low behind him. Not ki. Not sand. Metal. A curve of edge. A coward's courage.
The warning knifed across his mind.
[Tail Threat Detected]Vector: rear-lowObject: honed steel (non-ki)Risk: Tail severance → form collapse → catastrophic output dropCounter: Tail pivot; Graviton Stomp; Roar of Command (stagger)
Protect the tail. Now. Ethan's soldier snapped the choice in place.
Vegeta shifted his weight, a subtle swivel that arced the tail higher out of reach. He spread his stance to free a foot. Every ounce stolen from the beam to move would be paid in blue inches.
He paid anyway. Better a foot of ground than a lost limb.
The clash trembled. Goku felt pressure ease for a fraction and took a yard with the kind of humility that wins wars.
Behind Vegeta's heel, something in the shadow swore in a voice that sounded like hunger with a bad haircut. Metal withdrew. The shadow scuttled, impatient.
Krillin froze mid-throw. The disc humming over his palm promised bad decisions. He hadn't seen the glint; he had seen the tail rise out of his intended line. He slid again, hunting a new angle because angles keep men alive.
Vegeta laughed—not because he had almost been fooled, but because he hadn't. "Little insects," he said, almost fond, and shoved a new pulse through the sphere to underline the affection. The beams screamed. The floor bowed. Goku's arms tried to become someone else's problem and failed. He kept them anyway.
He couldn't make more power. He could make what he had correct. He narrowed the beam a hair, found the line where blue stopped being light and started being intent, set his breathing to the beat of his heart instead of the Oozaru's push. Red clung close as armor.
The Kamehameha stopped losing ground.
Vegeta's grin dimmed by a tooth's width. He respected good lines and hated them when they weren't his. He dipped his shoulder; in a smaller body it would have been a shrug. He lifted his left foot.
[Technique Switch]Graviton Stomp synchronized with pulseEffect: crater footing; force knee collapse; overrun in 15 seconds
The heel hit the earth. The desert went concave. The shockwave punched the bottom of Goku's stance and invited his knees to a funeral.
He took one step back because life likes to be literal. His left leg wobbled. The blue fluttered. Silver-violet surged like a victorious laugh.
On the ridge, Krillin shouted something that wasn't a word. Gohan hurled another honest little sun, because sons buy seconds when fathers need them more than miracles.
Vegeta's good eye flicked again—barely. Goku planted his foot, screamed once to make the air move, and barred the door.
Light bled. The desert smoked.
And the glitter returned—closer now, lower, bolder. The warning burned hotter.
[Rear Threat Escalation]Distance: <6 metersAngle: ascendingPrediction: Tail severance in 0.9–1.2 seconds if uncountered
Vegeta pivoted hard. The tail snapped high like a banner refusing surrender. He threw a Roar of Command over his shoulder, a sound tuned by evolution to freeze prey. Something in the shadow actually froze—not everything, not for long.
Goku saw none of it. He felt time tilt the way it does at cliff edges. The Kamehameha became what it always wanted to be in his hands—not a blast, a promise. He pushed.
The line between blue and silver went white, then disappeared. For one long second there was no boundary, only after. The desert took that second and used it to regret existing.
Color returned. The center of the clash had moved—not yards, not feet, but enough for hope to sit down and take off its shoes.
Vegeta snarled, because hope has terrible manners. He fed another surge, prepared to stomp again—
—and a voice he had not invited drifted up from very near his ankle, lazy and unimpressed.
"Man, you monkeys need better barbers."
Metal flashed toward the swaying tail.