POV. EASTERN EUROPE, 1943 NIGHT
The forest did not sound natural anymore.
No birds.
No insects.
Even the wind moved carefully.
A Hydra patrol advanced through the trees, boots crunching frost and bone alike. Their commander, a mutant with skin like granite and veins glowing faintly blue, raised a fist.
"He was seen here," the commander growled. "The dark-skinned one. The ghost."
One soldier laughed nervously.
"A man doesn't do what the reports say."
Something moved.
Not fast.
Heavy.
Branches bent. Trunks creaked.
Then a scream.
The last man in the formation vanished backward into the dark, dragged screaming until the sound cut off like a switch had been flipped.
Gunfire erupted wild, panicked.
Bullets struck nothing.
Then Dura stepped into view.
No aura.
No glow.
Just a tall figure with dead, unreadable eyes and shadows clinging unnaturally to his frame.
The granite-skinned mutant charged, roaring, his fists capable of stopping tanks.
Dura met him halfway.
He didn't dodge.
He grabbed the mutant's head with one hand and squeezed.
Bone shattered with a sound like snapping ice.
Dura leaned in, voice calm, almost curious.
"You should have run away ."
He threw the corpse aside and vanished.
What followed wasn't a fight.
It was a slaughter.
Men were pulled into the dark and returned in pieces. Mutants with enhanced reflexes screamed as invisible pressure crushed their spines. One telekinetic tried to scream and choked as his own power turned inward, ki flooding his nervous system until his eyes burst.
By dawn, the forest was quiet again.
The survivors were shaking and bleeding ran until their hearts failed.
By the next week, Hydra whispered a new codename:
The Emerald Devil.
POV, SAFEHOUSE, ALLIED TERRITORY
Not all mutants were monsters.
A small group watched the treeline nervously, men and women hiding abilities they barely understood. One woman with luminous eyes whispered:
"He saved us."
Another shook his head.
"No… he chose not to kill us for whatever reason ."
They would argue for years over what he was.
An angel.
A demon.
A weapon without a master.
None of them ever saw him clearly again.
POV, DRAGON BALL EARTH, REMOTE MOUNTAINS , YEARS EARLIER
FLASHBACK.
A pod screamed through the sky.
It struck the mountainside like a falling star.
The impact crater smoked.
Inside the wreckage, a child cried.
A strong cry.
Power Level: 30
Much higher than it should have been.
An old man approached cautiously, staff in hand, beard fluttering in the wind.
"Well now," Grandpa Gohan murmured. "That's a strange meteor…"
The pod hissed open.
A baby boy stared up at him with wild black hair and sharp, intelligent eyes.
For a moment, Gohan felt something ancient stir in his chest.
"…You're no demon," he said softly. "Just a lost kid."
The child grabbed his finger.
Gohan smiled.
"Guess I'll call you… Kakarot."
Far above, fate shifted, just slightly.
POV EUROPE, 1944 DAY
Dura lived quietly.
Too quietly and he kept moving around.
A farmhand here.
A dock worker there.
A man who never aged, never drank, never spoke more than necessary.
People noticed things.
He never flinched at explosions.
Never reacted to racist insults.
Never seemed afraid.
Children felt safe near him.
Dogs avoided him.
At night, Dura trained.
Controlled ki flow .
Measured breathing.
He practiced compressing ki until it was silent, shaping it into thin, scalpel-like blasts that left no scorch marks, only absence.
He learned this world's limits.
Its monsters.
Its heroes.
And its arrogance.
One evening, he stood on a hill overlooking a battlefield littered with wreckage and bodies.
He turned away from the carnage, disappearing into the smoke.
POV — UNKNOWN LOCATION, NIGHT
Dura stood alone in the ruins of a bombed-out village.
The war had moved on weeks ago, but the place still remembered. Burned stone. Twisted metal. Shadows that never quite lined up with the moonlight.
He closed his eyes.
And let go.
The suppression he wore like a second skin peeled away.
The air thickened.
Dust froze mid-fall.
Shattered glass began to vibrate then liquefy.
The ground beneath his boots cracked outward in perfect concentric circles.
DURA — CURRENT STATUS
Chronological Age: 9 years
Biological Age: 14–15
(Saiyan accelerated growth)
Time Since Planet Vegeta's Destruction: ~1 year
Base Power Level (Suppressed): ~4,000
Base Power Level (Unsuppressed): 48,000
Rage-Threshold Spike (Controlled):90,000+
Legendary Instinct Surge (Uncontrolled): Unknown / Unmeasurable
His eyes opened.
Emerald light bled into the whites not glowing yet, not flaring but present.
Watching. Waiting.
The wind screamed outward as his ki fully expanded.
Miles away, animals fled.
Sensitive mutants dropped to their knees, vomiting, clutching their skulls.
A Hydra psychic collapsed instantly, brain hemorrhaging as his mind brushed something it was never meant to touch.
Dura exhaled slowly.
He pulled it back in.
The world snapped back into place like a corpse rearranging itself to look alive.
Silence returned.
POV HYDRA LISTENING POST, SAME NIGHT
Alarms blared.
Instruments shattered.
A technician screamed.
"Energy surge, no, not radiation.... this isn't any known spectrum!"
Another man sobbed.
"It felt like something terrifying looked at me."
The commander went pale.
"Mark the location," he whispered.
"And never send another psychic near it."
POV DURA
Dura crouched, fingers brushing the cracked earth.
"Still not perfect at ki control ," he muttered.
Legendary blood wasn't just power, it was pressure. A constant demand to dominate, to escalate, to overwhelm.
Controlled rage worked.
Instinctive rage was… very tempting.
He straightened and looked toward the night sky.
"Not yet," he said quietly.
"I need more control… more context."
He stepped into the shadows.
By morning, the village would be empty.
By history's accounting, nothing had happened.
But the universe had just measured him
And decided to be afraid.....
POV HYDRA BLACK SITE, DEEP UNDERGROUND
The bunker was older than the Reich.
Older than Hydra.
Carved stone walls bore symbols that predated language, spirals, broken crowns, figures kneeling before something too tall to be human.
The air itself felt stale, heavy with reverence rather than dust.
The Hydra directors stood in silence as the last report finished playing.
Forests erased.
Mutants torn apart meaty paper .
Psychics collapsing before they could even scream.
"The Emerald Devil cannot be controlled," one officer said, voice trembling despite himself.
"Our weapons are ineffective. Our enhanced units are being hunted and destroyed."
A tall man in a crimson uniform stood at the far end of the chamber, hands clasped behind his back.
He did not turn.
"You misunderstand," he said calmly.
"He is not hunting you."
The officers exchanged uneasy glances.
"Then what is he doing?" someone asked
.
The man finally turned.
His face was wrong.
It looked very Ancient.
Skin the color of burnished stone. Eyes glowing faintly blue, filled with an intelligence so vast it crushed hope by its mere presence.
"He is testing himself," the being said.
"And you are simply… available for him to act apon."
Several men fell to their knees without realizing why.
One whispered in horror:
"En… Sabah… Nur…"
Apocalypse.
The first mutant.
The eternal one.
Hydra's true patron in this world.
"I have watched civilizations rise and rot," Apocalypse continued, pacing slowly.
"Mutants. Gods. Kings. All claiming dominion."
He stopped before the projection of Dura—grainy, distorted, yet unmistakably inhuman.
"But this one…" Apocalypse murmured.
"He does not belong to this evolutionary tree."
His lips curled—not in fear.
In fascination.
"Prepare the world," he commanded.
"If he chooses conquest, I will test him."
A beat.
"If he chooses annihilation…"
"…then this era deserves what comes next."
The bunker lights flickered.
POV FRIEZA'S FLAGSHIP, YEARS LATER
The chamber was silent except for the soft hum of newly installed machinery.
Advanced reconnaissance arrays scanners capable of piercing stellar interference, dimensional distortions, even suppressed battle signatures.
Frieza floated lazily in the center of the room, tail swaying.
"And you're certain?" he asked pleasantly.
A technician swallowed.
"Yes, Lord Frieza. The anomaly was detected beyond known imperial space… on a dead world designated Vampa."
The hologram shifted.
Readouts spiked violently.
Energy curves warped.
"This signature… it matches theoretical projections of a Legendary-class Saiyan,"
Zarbon said carefully.
"But the magnitude exceeds previous estimates."
Frieza's eyes narrowed.
"Show me."
The image then sharpened.
A child, powerful, training beneath a blackened sky. Each movement distorted the air. Each roar caused the planet itself to shudder.
Power Level (Fluctuating): ???
The numbers refused to stabilize.
Frieza's smile returned slow, sharp, dangerous.
"So another survived," he purred.
"How inefficient of me."
Dodoria snorted.
"Shall we eliminate him, Lord Frieza?"
Frieza raised a finger.
"No."
The room froze.
"This one," Frieza said softly,
"will tell me whether my paranoia was wisdom… or prophecy."
He turned away from the display.
"Continue observation. Do not engage. Not yet."
Behind his composed expression, something churned.