Before you read this chapter, I would like to thank you for the support you have shown me, I acted tough but it still weighed on my mind. So Thank you.
I'll try my best to not let ai bleed in my work and as you said, I'll keep cooking.
Enjoy.
--
There was no logic. There was no plan.
The mind of Cress, His ego didn't just crumble; it dissolved.
Imagine a man treading water in the middle of a calm ocean. That was my consciousness. Then, imagine the ocean turning into blood, the sky turning into fire, a tidal wave the size of a planet crashing down, forcing the man deep into the abyss.
I was drowning in red.
Kill.
The command wasn't a voice. It was a vibration in the marrow of my bones.
Break.
It was a drumbeat, syncing with a heart that had grown three times its size in a matter of seconds.
Burn.
The human soul, the part of me that remembered Earth, that remembered fear... it was sealed away. I was asleep. The thing driving wasn't me. It was the Oozaru.
There was no strategy. There was no "aim for the weak point." There was only the overwhelming, intoxicating urge to reduce everything to dust.
I didn't want to survive anymore.
I wanted to end everything that moved.
---
The transformation of a Saiyan into a Great Ape is a cataclysmic biological event. It is not magic; it is a violent, rapid restructuring of mass.
Nappa, Zuto, and Toma had transformed with practiced ease. They were Elites and veteran warriors.
They accepted the change, riding the wave of the Oozaru's power. Their armor stretched or snapped, their bodies swelled to fifty feet of fur and muscle, but their eyes remained sharp.
They were tanks with brains. They moved with purpose, coordinating their attacks, stepping on Meatan platoons with deliberate cruelty.
But the fourth Ape was different.
Cress transformed like a goddamn reactor meltdown.
His roar was a shriek of agony that shattered the sound barrier. The Model-Z armor, the flexible wonder of engineering he had, groaned under the strain. The white material stretched to its absolute molecular limit, turning translucent across his heaving chest, but it held.
He thrashed through the enemy lines like they were ants.
He slammed his fists into the ground, not to hit a target, but simply to punish the earth for existing.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The impact of his fists created shockwaves that registered on the Richter scale. The mud of Planet Meat, wet and deep, didn't just splash; it vaporized. The sheer heat radiating from his body turned the moisture into superheated steam instantly.
Beneath his massive feet, the volcanic rock surrendered its solidity, turning instantly to magma.
The ground turned to glass, slick and glowing orange, fusing under the pressure of his aura.
A Meatan tank platoon, seeing the new threat, swiveled their turrets toward the thrashing beast. They fired a volley of blasts.
The shots struck Cress in the shoulder.
A normal Oozaru might flinch. A normal Oozaru might roar in annoyance.
Cress didn't even feel it. His aura, a jagged, uncontrolled storm of red and black electricity, disintegrated the plasma before it even touched his fur.
He stopped thrashing.
He turned his head slowly toward the tanks. His eyes weren't the standard crimson of the Oozaru. They were glowing white, devoid of pupils, leaking energy like a broken dam.
He opened his mouth.
There was no charge-up time. There was no gathering of light.
A beam of pure, concentrated ruin erupted from his maw.
It swept across the horizon. The tanks vanished. The mountain behind them was bisected. The clouds above were parted, revealing the uncaring stars.
--
To the scouters of the Force, and to Nappa watching from the battlefield, the readings made no sense.
A Saiyan's Oozaru form is a mathematical constant. It is a ten-fold multiplier. A warrior with a power level of 500 becomes 5,000. A warrior of 4,000 becomes 40,000. It is absolute.
Cress had entered the battle with a suppressed power level of 210. Even at his peak desperation, fighting the Meatan Lieutenant, he had barely scraped 1,500.
By all laws of Saiyan physics, the beast thrashing in the mud should have been a threat level of 15,000. Dangerous, yes, but well below Nappa's own transformed power of 40,000.
But the scouters were screaming.
Error. Anomaly Detected.
The number flickering on Ruca's scouter wasn't 12,000.
It was climbing.
15,000... 18,000... 21,000...
It settled, vibrating with instability, at 25,000. It felt like it could climb more.
Why?
Because Ki is not just muscle. Ki is spirit. It is mind. It is emotion.
For seven years, Cress had lived a life of compression.
Every time Karr looked at him with disappointment, Cress compressed his pride. Every time he had to play the fool for Bok at the depot, dragging crates that weighed more than he did, he compressed his anger. Every time he bowed to Zarbon, pouring wine for the monster who viewed him as furniture, forcing his heart rate to slow, forcing his face to be blank, he compressed his terror. Every time he sensed the King's malice, the knowledge that his own leader wanted him dead, he compressed his survival instinct into a tiny, hard diamond.
He was a nuclear bomb wrapped in duct tape, trembling like a spring ready to snap.
The "Human" intellect had been the inhibitor. The logic, the pragmatism, the fear of death, these were the chains keeping the beast in the cage. He survived by being small. He survived by being nothing.
The Oozaru stripped the humanity away.
The chains shattered.
The bottle broke.
All that repression, all that humiliation, all that silent, screaming rage that he had swallowed for years... it all rushed out at once.
This wasn't just a physical transformation.
The extra strength weren't from training. They were from hate. Pure, unadulterated hate.
He wasn't fighting the Meatans anymore.
--
The Meatan army was gone.
Between Nappa's initial assault and the chaotic, omnidirectional blasts from the berserker Ape, the legion had been reduced to ash and memories. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the crackle of fires and the heavy, wet breathing of giant monsters.
Nappa, standing atop a ruined fortress, crossed his massive hairy arms. He looked satisfied. His tail flicked behind him, crushing a stone tower.
"Good work, fellas!" Nappa's voice, deepened to a bass rumble that shook the ground, echoed over the valley. "Sector cleared! Now we move to the..."
He trailed off.
He looked down at the valley floor.
Cress was still moving.
The battle was over, but the rage wasn't. The red ocean in his mind was still churning. The enemy was gone, but the instinct to destroy remained active, searching for a target. A heat signature.
His white, pupil-less eyes scanned the smoke.
He locked onto the nearest high-energy source.
Zuto.
Zuto was standing two hundred meters away. In his Oozaru form, Zuto was a lanky, ragged beast. He retained his consciousness, and with it, his arrogance. He saw Cress staring at him.
Zuto laughed. It was a barking, hyena-like sound that shook the trees.
"Hey, Runt!" Zuto shouted, his voice slurred by the massive fangs. "Calm down! The bugs are dead! You're making a mess of the landing zone!"
Cress didn't respond. He lowered his head, his shoulders hunching forward like a bull preparing to charge. A low growl, sounding like grinding tectonic plates, emanated from his chest.
"What's the matter?" Zuto taunted, taking a step forward. He wasn't afraid. Why would he be? In his mind, Cress was still the mechanic. The pet. Zuto, fully powered and transformed, was sitting comfortably at 22,000.
"Did the little baby lose his mind?" Zuto mocked, extending a massive hand as if to pat Cress on the head. "Sit down before I put you down."
It was the same tone he used in the barracks. The same sneer. The same dismissal.
It was the trigger.
Cress vanished.
For a creature that stood fifty feet tall and weighed hundreds of tons, he moved with the speed of a vanishing phantom. The ground where he had been standing simply exploded, creating a crater fifty feet deep.
Zuto blinked.
Before his brain could process the movement, Cress was inside his guard.
Cress didn't slap the hand away. He caught it.
His grip clamped around Zuto's left wrist. The claws dug in, puncturing the thick Elite armor, piercing the hide, grinding against the bone.
Zuto's eyes widened in genuine shock. "Hey—"
SNAP.
The sound was louder than a cannon shot.
Cress twisted it three hundred and sixty degrees. Bone splintered. Muscle tore.
"RRAAAAGH!" Zuto screamed, the sound shifting from mockery to pure, high-pitched agony.
He tried to pull away, but Cress held fast. With a savage yank, Cress pulled Zuto off balance, dragging the massive Elite Ape forward.
Cress didn't use a beam, only brutality.
He drove his knee into Zuto's stomach. The impact folded Zuto in half, winding him, shattering ribs the size of tree trunks.
Zuto collapsed into the mud, gasping, his eyes rolling back.
"Zuto!" Toma screamed from the flank, starting to run toward them. "Commander! The Runt has gone feral!"
"Hold!" Nappa roared, his eyes gleaming with dark curiosity. "Let them fight. It's the Saiyan way."
Zuto tried to scramble backward, clutching his ruined wrist. The arrogance was gone. He looked up at the beast looming over him, and for the first time, he saw what Ruca had seen in the Blind Spot. He saw the anomaly.
"Stop!" Zuto pleaded, raising his good hand. "Cress! It's me! Squad mate! We—"
Cress didn't hear him. Cress didn't know him. Zuto wasn't a squad mate. Zuto was just another wall. Another thing trying to keep him small.
Cress lunged.
He tackled Zuto into the molten glass of the valley floor. He straddled the Elite's chest, pinning him down with sheer, overwhelming weight.
Then, the pummeling began.
Right. Left. Right. Left.
Fists the size of boulders rained down on Zuto's face.
There was no technique. No martial arts. Just primal, piston-like violence.
CRACK. The snout broke. SPLAT. One of Zuto's teeth, large as a tombstone, flew out and landed in the mud. THUD. Zuto's consciousness flickered and died.
Zuto went limp, his arms splayed out in surrender.
But Cress didn't stop.
He hit the unconscious face again. And again. And again.
The mud around them turned purple with Saiyan blood.
"Cress!" Ruca's voice cut through the air. She was running toward them, her Oozaru form sleek and agile compared to the boys. "Stop! He's beaten! You'll kill him!"
Cress froze.
His fist hovered in the air, dripping with violet gore.
He slowly turned his head to look at Ruca. His white eyes were blank voids. He didn't recognize her.
He looked back down at Zuto's ruined face.
It wasn't enough. The rage wasn't satisfied. It demanded a sacrifice.
Cress stood up. He planted one massive foot directly onto Zuto's throat, pinning the unconscious Saiyan to the ground.
He leaned back, his chest expanding as he inhaled a hurricane's worth of air.
His mouth opened wide.
A spark ignited deep in his throat.
It was a sphere, a dense, crackling ball of red energy began to form between his jaws. It grew rapidly, screaming with power, distorting the air around his head.
He wasn't aiming at the sky. He wasn't aiming at a city.
He looked down.
He aimed the point-blank execution blast directly at Zuto's face.
"NO!" Ruca screamed, launching herself into the air to intercept.
But the energy was already critical. The red light illuminated the entire valley, casting long, terrifying shadows against the mountains.
The bottle was broken. And the monster inside was about to paint the world red.
--------------
The red sphere hovering between my jaws hummed with the sound of a dying star. It was heavy, volatile, and hungry. It wanted to be released. It wanted to consume the broken thing beneath my foot.
I couldn't hear Ruca screaming. I couldn't remember why the thing beneath me shouldn't die. There was only the Target.
I tensed my neck muscles, preparing to fire.
BOOM.
A massive weight slammed into my side.
It felt like being hit by a meteor. The impact knocked the wind out of me and threw my aim wild.
The sphere of energy discharged prematurely.
The beam, a column of red annihilation, missed Zuto's head by inches. It screamed past his ear, carving a trench through the valley floor, and collided with a mountain range five miles away.
The mountains vanished in a blinding flash of white light, followed seconds later by a mushroom cloud that reached the stratosphere.
I roared in frustration, thrashing as I hit the ground.
A heavy hand clamped onto my throat, pinning me to the melted rock.
"Enough!"
Nappa.
The Elite Oozaru loomed over me, his face twisted in a snarl. He was immense, easily taller than me, radiating a power level of nearly 45,000. He wasn't playing anymore.
"You've made your point, Runt!" Nappa bellowed, pressing down with enough force to crack the bedrock beneath my spine. "Stand down! The fight is over!"
I didn't stand down.
I bucked.
I drove my knees into Nappa's chest, using the leverage to break his hold. The sheer ferocity of the movement caught him off guard. I rolled out from under him, snarling, and swiped at his face.
My claws raked across his cheek, drawing a line of thick blood.
Nappa roared, stumbling back. He touched the wound, staring at the blood on his fur.
"You dare?" Nappa hissed, his eyes narrowing. "Fine."
He charged.
But he wasn't alone.
"Pin him!" Nappa ordered.
Toma and two other Saiyan survivors, transformed and hulking, lunged from the sides.
Toma grabbed my left arm. The other two grabbed my right arm and my tail.
I screamed, a sound of pure, unbridled fury.
I pulled.
Muscles I didn't know I had strained against the bone. My aura exploded outward, a jagged storm of red electricity.
Toma, a veteran Mid-Class warrior, grunted, her feet sliding backward in the mud. "By the King... how strong is he?"
I was dragging them. Three Oozarus were trying to hold me, and I was dragging them toward Nappa, gnashing my teeth, desperate to tear out his throat. The power wasn't coming from reserves; it was coming from the break.
Nappa stepped in. He didn't punch. He grabbed my muzzle with both hands, forcing my jaws shut, wrestling my head to the side.
"Sleep, damn you!" Nappa growled, trying to choke me out.
I couldn't breathe. The world was spinning.
But the rage... the rage wouldn't let me sleep.
Then, through the red haze, a sound cut through.
"CRESS!"
It wasn't a roar. It was a voice.
A smaller Oozaru, sleek and agile, stepped into my field of vision. She didn't attack. She didn't grab. She stood five feet from my face, ignoring the danger.
Ruca.
She looked into my glowing white eyes. She didn't look afraid. She looked... angry.
"Don't you lose yourself!" she roared, slamming her fists against her own chest.
She pointed at the distant fortress, the obsidian citadel of the Meatans that still stood on the horizon.
"The enemy is there!" she screamed, pointing again. "Use it! Aim it!"
The words echoed in the abyss of my mind.
Aim.
The red ocean paused. The drowning man surfaced for a fraction of a second, gasping for air.
The logic returned. It was faint, a whisper in a hurricane, but it was there.
If I kill Nappa, I die. If I kill Zuto, I die.
Waste. Inefficient.
I stopped thrashing.
Nappa, sensing the resistance fade, loosened his grip slightly, confused.
"He's stopping?" Toma gasped, her arms trembling from the strain.
I didn't attack them.
I turned my head.
I looked past Nappa. Past Ruca. Past the ruined valley.
I locked my eyes on the obsidian fortress ten miles away.
The last stronghold. The symbol of resistance.
I opened my jaws. Nappa released my muzzle, stepping back cautiously.
I didn't roar this time.
I concentrated.
All the hate. All the repression. All the violence of the last years. I pulled it up from my gut. I compressed it.
A sphere of energy formed in my mouth. It wasn't red this time. It was white. Pure. Dense.
It grew larger. And larger. The air around me began to ionize, crackling with static.
"Get back!" Nappa shouted, shielding his eyes. "Everyone back!"
"HRAAAAAAGH!"
I fired.
The recoil drove my massive body backward into the mud, burying me to my waist.
It connected instantly, like a laser.
A column of white light, a mile wide, erased the distance between me and the fortress.
It hit the obsidian citadel.
There was no explosion at first. The fortress simply dissolved. The stone, the metal, the soldiers inside... they were atomized in silence.
Then, the shockwave hit.
BOOM.
The horizon vanished. A wall of fire and dust expanded outward, flattening the forests, vaporizing the rivers. The sky turned white.
I watched the destruction.
The rage drained out of me, poured into the blast.
I felt empty.
I felt heavy.
My eyelids drooped. The adrenaline crash hit me like a physical blow.
I slumped forward, my massive head landing in the mud with a wet thud.
The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was Ruca standing over me, guarding my unconscious body from the rest of the squad.
--
The light was cruel.
It stabbed at my eyes, prying them open.
I groaned, trying to lift my arm. It felt like it was made of lead. Every joint in my body felt like it had been pulled apart and glued back together wrong.
"He's awake."
The voice was distant, muffled.
I forced my eyes open.
The sky was purple. The twin suns of Planet Meat were high overhead, burning through the thin clouds.
I was lying in a crater. It was filled with muddy water.
I was naked. My armor was gone, shredded during the transformation. My skin was raw, covered in scratches and bruises.
I sat up, shivering in the cold wind.
I looked around.
The landscape was unrecognizable. The valley was gone. The mountains were gone. The fortress was a smoking glass plain.
Standing on the ridge of the crater were a dozen Saiyans.
They were in their humanoid forms, battered and bloody, wearing tattered armor.
Nappa stood in the center. He was holding a piece of meat, eating it raw. Zuto was sitting on a rock, his arm in a sling, his face a swollen mask of purple bruises. Toma was leaning against a surviving tree, cleaning her blaster.
And Ruca.
She was sitting on the edge of the crater, looking down at me. She had thrown a heavy cloak over my legs while I slept.
Nobody was laughing. Nobody was mocking me.
The silence was heavy. It was the silence of a predator realizing that the rabbit it had been chasing was actually a wolf.
Nappa stopped chewing. He looked down at me. His expression was unreadable. It wasn't the usual disdain. It was... wariness.
"You," Nappa rumbled, pointing a bone at me. "You have a tail problem."
I touched my face. My jaw ached. I touched my lower back. My tail was limp, exhausted.
"What happened?" I rasped. My voice sounded like I had swallowed gravel.
"You went feral," Toma said quietly. "You broke Zuto's arm. You tried to execute him. You fought Nappa to a standstill."
I looked at Zuto. He flinched, looking away. The arrogance was gone. He looked terrified.
"And then," Ruca added, her voice steady. "You vaporized the fortress. Single-handedly."
I looked at the horizon. The glass plain shimmered in the sun.
"I did that?" I whispered.
"You're a mutant," Nappa stated. It wasn't an insult. It was a categorization. "Your power level jumped to 25,000. That shouldn't happen. A Low Class runt shouldn't have that kind of multiplier."
He tossed the bone away.
"Get dressed, Cress. The pickup crew is inbound."
He turned and walked away.
"And Cress?"
Nappa paused, looking back over his shoulder.
"Next time... warn me before you break the leash. I might not be so nice."
The squad dispersed, giving me space.
I pulled the cloak around my shoulders. My hands were shaking.
25,000.
I had lost control. I had almost killed my own squad. I had revealed the monster.
But as I looked at the way Zuto avoided my gaze, and the way Nappa had hesitated... I realized something.
They weren't mocking me anymore.
Fear.
It was a better shield than invisibility.
Ruca slid down into the crater. She handed me a spare jumpsuit she had scavenged.
"You aimed it," she whispered, a small smile touching her lips.
"Barely," I muttered, pulling the fabric on.
"It was enough," she said.
She offered me a hand to pull me up.
"Welcome to the heavyweights, Cress."
I took her hand.
I was sore. But I was light, lighter than I had ever been.
I was alive. And for the first time on this godforsaken universe... I was feared.