The silence that followed my declaration was heavy enough to sink a continent. Even Vados, usually the queen of unflappable poise, shifted her staff by a fraction of an inch.
"A 'Super' Saiyan?" Vados murmured, her eyes shimmering with celestial calculation. "The legend of the golden-haired warrior is a bedtime story for these primitives, My Lord. Even in their most aggressive state, their biological threshold is capped. They are... efficient, but linear."
"Then we're going to make them non-linear," I snapped, folding my arms over my chest.
I looked down at Commander Renso. He was shaking, not out of cowardice, but because the air around me was literally ionizing. To him, I wasn't just a king; I was a walking natural disaster.
"Renso," I barked. "Your 'Defense Force' is impressive for police work. But I'm looking for the outliers. The ones you lock up because they're too volatile. The ones who don't fit into your neat little formations."
Renso looked up, his brow furrowed. "My Lord... we have the 'Dormant Sector.' It's where we send those whose ki is... unstable. They cannot control the output. They burn out their own nervous systems before they reach adulthood."
"Lead the way," I said. "And Vados? Keep the buffet on standby. I have a feeling I'm going to work up an appetite watching this."
The Dormant Sector
The sector was a jagged crater on the outskirts of the capital, shielded by thick lead-alloy walls. It wasn't a prison so much as a hospice for the "broken."
As we descended, the air changed. It wasn't the polished, disciplined ki of the military. It was raw. Jagged. It felt like static electricity rubbing against my fur.
"There," I pointed.
In the center of a dusty courtyard, a young girl—no older than twelve—was screaming. Not in pain, but in frustration. Her hair was a messy thicket of black spikes, and her aura wasn't the white mist of a standard Saiyan. It was flickering red and yellow, like a dying candle trying to become a bonfire.
She was punching a monolith of katchin-dense rock. Her knuckles were bleeding, but every time she hit it, the ground beneath her cracked.
"Her name is Cala," Renso whispered. "Her power level spikes to ten thousand, then drops to zero. Her body can't contain the pressure. The doctors say she has less than a year to live."
The God's Intervention
I stepped forward. The girl didn't stop. She swung a desperate haymaker that whistled through the air. I caught her fist with a single finger.
The impact sent a shockwave that shattered the windows of the nearby observation deck. Cala gasped, her eyes wide and bloodshot, looking up at the purple giant who had just halted her momentum like it was nothing.
"You're trying to push the energy out," I said, my voice dropping to a low rumble. "That's your mistake. You're treated like a leaky pipe, so you try to empty the tank."
"It... it burns," she wheezed, her small frame trembling.
"Of course it burns. You're a Saiyan. You're built to be a furnace, not a teapot." I looked at Vados. "Is she the one?"
Vados hovered closer, her staff glowing as she scanned the girl's DNA. "Her S-Cell count is abnormally high for this era, Lord Champa. Though, without proper emotional catalysts or biological stabilization, she will indeed... explode."
"Not on my watch," I said. I reached out and tapped her forehead with a claw.
I didn't use Hakai. I used a tiny, microscopic sliver of Godly Ki—just enough to act as a "container." The red-yellow flickering stopped instantly. The girl's eyes cleared, and for the first time in what looked like years, she took a deep, painless breath.
"I've given you a leash," I told her. "But if you want to be strong, you have to learn to break it without breaking yourself."
I turned back to Renso, who was looking at me like I'd just performed a miracle.
"I'm taking her," I announced. "And find me four more like her. If Universe 7 thinks they have the monopoly on golden hair and screaming, they've got another thing coming."
A Change in Plans
"Lord Champa," Vados said as we prepared to depart, the girl huddling nervously behind us. "Training a mortal personally is... unconventional for a Destroyer. It usually falls to the Attendant."
"I know," I said, looking up at the red sun of Sadala. "But I'm not just training a warrior, Vados. I'm building a deterrent. If I can get a Super Saiyan into the ranks a century early, the power scaling of this universe shifts. Maybe then, when the time comes, we won't be the ones begging for mercy."
I looked at my hand. The purple glow of the Hakai was still there, but it felt different. For the first time, I wasn't just thinking about what I could destroy. I was thinking about what I could forge.
"Vados, back to the palace. We need a training gravity room. Set it to 500 times Sadala's gravity."
"500?" Vados teased. "Are we training her, or making Saiyan pancakes?"
"Just do it," I grinned, feeling a surge of genuine excitement. "And Vados? Order some pizza. The good kind from the Crustacean Nebula. We're going to need the carbs."