PROLOGUE
The Last Night of Planet Vegeta
Part I — The Homecoming
Location: Planet Vegeta | Year ???
The ship cut through the void like a blade through still water.
Through the reinforced viewport, the familiar rust-and-crimson sphere of Planet Vegeta grew larger with each passing moment — a world of warriors, of conquerors, of blood and iron. Most of the saiyans aboard had stopped looking at it years ago. Home was just a place you returned to between wars. Nothing more.
But Rhubar was watching it very closely.
He sat in silence beside his commanding officer, arms crossed over his chest, his dark skin absorbing the pale blue light filtering through the viewport. His black tail curled loosely around his left forearm — a habit he'd had since childhood. Around them, the hum of the ship's engines filled the quiet like white noise, punctuated by the occasional creak of metal and the distant chatter of other soldiers in the rear compartment.
It was his crewmate who finally broke the silence.
"Ah, there she is." The other saiyan exhaled through his nose, a kind of tired satisfaction in his voice. "Home sweet home, eh, Captain?"
The man beside Rhubar said nothing for a long moment.
Captain Bardock was not a sentimental man. He did not smile at homecomings, did not soften at the sight of his planet the way lesser soldiers sometimes did. What he did — what made him dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with his power level — was think. And right now, the lines between his brows told Rhubar he was thinking very hard.
"Not so sure about that," Bardock said quietly.
Rhubar turned to look at him. "What do you mean, Captain?"
Bardock shifted in his seat, jaw working as though he were chewing on the words before releasing them. "Doesn't it seem strange to you? All of us — every unit, every squad — recalled to the home planet on short notice. No explanation. No mission brief. Just come home." He paused. "And the order came from Freeza himself."
The silence that followed was a different kind than before.
Rhubar's eyes drifted back to the viewport. He thought about it — genuinely thought about it, which was something saiyans didn't always bother to do — and found that the more he turned it over in his mind, the more unsettled he became.
"You think it's some kind of reward? New equipment, maybe?" He offered the theory without much conviction, and from the slight tightening around Bardock's eyes, he could tell his captain had already considered and dismissed it.
"If it were equipment, he'd have radioed each unit individually. There'd be no reason to assemble everyone." Bardock shook his head slowly. "I have a bad feeling about this."
Those words settled in Rhubar's chest like stones dropping into deep water.
A bad feeling. Bardock wasn't the type to say something like that without cause. The man operated on instinct sharpened by years of battle, and his instincts, however inconvenient, had never yet been wrong.
Rhubar uncrossed his arms. "Are you saying..." He let the thought take shape carefully. "That Freeza doesn't need us anymore?"
"Think about it." Bardock's voice was low, measured. "The Freeza Force has expanded enormously these past few years. New species. New soldiers. New worlds brought into the fold." He turned to look at Rhubar directly, and there was something in his dark eyes — not fear, saiyans didn't do fear — but a cold and serious certainty. "Can you name a single moment in all our years of service where we and Freeza's people were ever truly at ease with one another? Where either side would have shed a tear if the other simply... ceased to exist?"
Rhubar considered it. Genuinely considered it.
"No," he said at last. "I can't think of a single saiyan who likes Freeza."
"And I'd wager he feels the same about us." Bardock leaned back. "A sleeping beast is manageable. A growing one is not. He knows what saiyans are. He knows what we're capable of."
The ship shuddered as it broke through the upper atmosphere, and the brown-red terrain of their home world filled the viewport completely.
They were almost home.
The docking platform was loud with the sound of returning ships and shouting soldiers. Engines cooling. Armor clanking. The bark of squad leaders trying to organize chaos into something resembling order.
Bardock hopped down from the ramp with a bag slung over one shoulder, and Rhubar followed close behind. It was there, in the shadow of the landing dock, that another saiyan — a ground crew officer with the look of someone who'd been sitting on an uncomfortable piece of gossip — fell into step beside them.
"Hey, Bardock." The officer kept his voice low, conspiratorial. "Freeza's people have been asking around lately. About the Super Saiyan. You know anything about that?"
Bardock stopped walking.
Rhubar watched his captain's expression go very still in the way that things go still before a storm. Then something shifted behind his eyes — a piece clicking into place.
"The Super Saiyan," Bardock repeated softly, almost to himself. "The legend..." He exhaled slowly through his nose. "That's it."
He didn't wait for a response. He was already moving.
Rhubar watched him go for a moment, then called after him. "Captain."
Bardock glanced back.
"I should go check on my family." A beat. "If what you're saying is true."
The two men regarded each other. An entire conversation happened in that silence — one that didn't need words.
Bardock nodded once. Then he turned and kept walking.
"Good luck, Captain," Rhubar said quietly.
He wasn't sure either of them would need it. He wasn't sure luck was something that applied to what was coming.
Part II — The Tyrant's Calculus
Location: Freeza's Flagship | Low Orbit Above Planet Vegeta
Far above the planet's surface, beyond atmosphere and cloud, the great mechanical eye of Freeza's flagship hung in orbit like a dark moon.
Inside, in the cold and precisely ordered command chamber, Kikono stood with a datapad clutched between three-fingered hands and read the summary of his findings to his lord.
"Regarding the Legend of the Super Saiyan and the so-called Super Saiyan God..." The yellow-skinned officer cleared his throat. "After exhaustive research, I have found no conclusive evidence to support either claim. Both appear to be precisely what they've always seemed — myths. Fairy tales. Stories told by a primitive warrior culture to make themselves feel significant."
Lord Freeza listened to this with the expression of a man who had been told something he already knew but found vaguely amusing nonetheless. A soft laugh escaped him, curling at the edges like smoke.
"Ha. I suspected as much."
Kikono relaxed slightly. Then, choosing his words with the practiced care of a man who had learned that all words around Lord Freeza required care, he ventured the obvious question.
"Then... shall we cancel the operation, my lord?"
The laugh that followed was considerably less soft.
"Ha — hahaha!" Freeza turned from the viewport, his tail sweeping lazily behind him, his expression one of genuine delight. "You really are priceless, Kikono. Cancel it?" He tilted his head. "After I've gone to all the trouble of assembling every last one of these monkeys in one convenient location?"
He turned back to the viewport. Down below, Planet Vegeta hung in the black, oblivious.
"This," he said pleasantly, "is the perfect plan."
Part III — What a Father Does
Location: The Residential District, Planet Vegeta
Sala was cooking when Rhubar came home.
She stood with her back to the door, dark hair loose around her shoulders, tail swaying idly as she worked. She'd kept pieces of her old uniform — the boots, the shoulder guards — but had folded them into something softer, layered with a blue and red dress that moved when she did. Her black tail, darker than most, curled upward at the tip as she stirred something that smelled considerably better than anything you'd find in a military ration pack.
Rhubar leaned in the doorframe for a moment before he spoke.
"You know," he said, "a welcome home wouldn't have killed you."
Sala spun on her heel, and for one fraction of a second her expression was pure startled irritation — and then she was already moving, crossing the room in three strides to fold her arms around him. She hit him once, squarely in the chest, with the flat of her palm.
Then she hugged him again.
"You absolute menace," she said into his shoulder, and he could hear the smile in it. "You couldn't just walk in?"
"Where's the fun in that?"
She pulled back to look at him, amber eyes warm despite her best efforts to look annoyed. "Nova and Turuk are in the back room. Come on — they're almost ready to come out of the pods."
He followed her down the hall, and when she pushed open the door to the back room, he stood quietly in the threshold for a long moment.
Two nursing pods sat side by side. Through the curved glass, he could see them — his sons. Small even by the standards of saiyan infants, which wasn't nothing. Dark hair on one, lighter on the other. Both utterly, peacefully unaware of the universe and everything in it.
Small, he thought. Still so small.
Bardock's words hadn't stopped circling in the back of his mind since the landing pad.
"Turuk definitely inherited his father's hair," Sala said, a warmth in her voice that she didn't bother to guard. "For better or worse."
"And Nova takes after you, I think."
She smiled. Then the smile faded.
Saiyans were not, as a rule, expressive creatures. But she had spent enough years at Rhubar's side to know the precise weight of his silences. This one sat heavier than most.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
He was quiet for a moment. Then he turned to her, and his voice was calm — the way it got when he'd already made a decision and was simply communicating it rather than deliberating.
"After dark," he said, "we're taking a pair of pods. We're going to put the boys inside one and send them ahead of us to another world."
The room went very still.
"What?" The word came out soft, which meant she was fighting hard to keep it that way. "Rhubar, they're infants. They're too young, they—" She stopped. Breathed. Started again. "Why? Why would you even think—"
"Because of Freeza."
"Freeza." She repeated the name flatly.
"Bardock suspects something. And I've known Bardock long enough to know he doesn't say things he doesn't mean." Rhubar looked at his sons through the glass. "He thinks Freeza is afraid. Not of us specifically — of what we could become. Of the legend."
Sala stared at him. "The Super Saiyan is a children's story, Rhubar."
"I know." He turned to face her fully. "But I think Freeza believes it enough to act on it. And if even a fraction of what Bardock suspects is true—" He paused. "Sala. I think something is coming for this planet. For all of us."
She said nothing for a long time. Her eyes moved to the pods. To her sons.
When she finally looked back at him, her expression had shifted into something harder to read — not agreement, exactly, but the particular look of someone who has decided that fighting a thing is less important than surviving it.
"And us?" she asked quietly. "We follow behind them?"
"Separate pods. Harder to track two signals than one." He held her gaze. "We find them after. On whatever world they land on."
Sala pressed her lips together. When she spoke again, her voice was steady, even if it cost her something to make it so.
"Alright," she said. "After dark."
Part IV — Departure
Location: A Rocky Plain Beyond the City's Edge | Planet Vegeta, After Dark
The plain was empty and quiet beneath a sky full of stars.
Rhubar set down the two pods in the dry earth — one small, built for infants; one larger, designed for two adults. The wind moved through the rocks and grass around them, carrying the distant sounds of the city behind them, alive and unsuspecting.
Sala stood beside him with her arms wrapped around herself, not from the cold.
"We could just leave together," she said, though her voice suggested she already knew the answer.
"They'd track us. One signal is easier to follow than two." He checked the coordinates on the smaller pod — Earth, a world he'd heard mentioned only in passing, a backwater planet orbiting an unremarkable yellow star. Small. Quiet. Exactly what the boys needed. "This way they won't know which one to follow."
"I'm scared," she said simply.
It was not a thing saiyans said. He turned to look at her, and because it was only the two of them and the empty plain, he answered honestly.
"So am I."
She blinked. He continued.
"I spend my life destroying things, Sala. I always have. Every mission is something taken apart. Something ended." He looked at the small pod. "I think... I'd like to save something, for once."
The lid of the smaller pod opened with a soft hiss. Inside, both boys were sleeping — but at the disturbance, one of them stirred. Tiny dark eyes blinked open, unfocused, then slowly found their parents' faces.
Nova.
He stared up at them with the complete, trusting attention of a child who has not yet learned to distrust anything.
Sala crouched beside the pod. Her composure held, mostly. "Listen to me," she said softly. "Your father and I are going to find you. Both of you. We'll be right behind you, alright? No matter what, we will come and find you."
Rhubar placed a hand on the edge of the pod. "You and your brother survive," he said. "Whatever it takes."
Nova regarded his father with those unreadable infant eyes, and then the lid closed, and the thrusters ignited, and the small vessel lifted — slowly at first, then faster, then faster still, until it was a point of light climbing through the atmosphere.
Then it was gone.
Sala stood. Her shoulders were shaking. She made no sound.
"Goodbye, Nova. Turuk," Rhubar said quietly.
"Wait for us," Sala whispered to the sky. "Don't forget us."
He put his hand on her shoulder. She reached up and covered it with her own.
After a moment, she exhaled.
"Alright," she said, voice rough at the edges. "Let's go find our sons."
They climbed into the second pod together. The hatch sealed behind them. The thrusters fired. And a moment later, they were rising — following the invisible trail their children had left, cutting up through the atmosphere and out into the black, toward a planet neither of them had ever seen.
Part V — The Beast Awakens
Location: Freeza's Flagship | High Orbit
"My lord," Kikono said carefully, "eliminating the saiyan race will reduce our effective fighting force by nearly half."
Lord Freeza descended through the open hatch of his ship, levitating easily above the void, and considered the planet below with the placid expression of someone choosing between options on a menu.
"My warriors will manage," he said pleasantly. "They are, after all, professionals. And it is always better to put a sleeping beast down before it has the chance to wake up." He extended one finger upward, almost lazily. "Don't you think?"
The sphere of energy that gathered at his fingertip was small at first. Then it wasn't. It grew until it blazed like a second sun against the black — a tiny star, cupped in the hand of its maker, aimed at a world of millions.
Far below, a lone saiyan stood in the planet's upper atmosphere with his fists raised and his power blazing around him like a war cry. He was too small against it. He always had been. But he stood anyway, because saiyans didn't know how to do anything else.
The impact was everything and nothing at once.
Shockwaves raced across the planet's surface. Fissures tore through continents. The power levels on every scanner in the system flickered and collapsed, one by one, like candles going out.
Then the planet itself came apart.
The debris field spread wide and silent in the void.
Freeza watched it with mild satisfaction.
"I do feel so much better now," he remarked.
Part VI — The Redirect
Location: The Debris Field | Former Orbit of Planet Vegeta
In the expanding cloud of dust and rock and silence, a small metallic pod tumbled through the darkness.
A woman emerged from the shadows between stars as though they had never been empty.
She was tall and blue-skinned, with white hair that floated around a face of precise and calculating beauty. A long red cloak billowed around her despite the absence of any wind. In one hand she carried a staff, its head ornate and pulsing with something that was not quite light — something darker at its edges, as if it absorbed the space around it rather than illuminating it.
This was Towa, of the Demon Realm.
She observed the small pod with the expression of someone reviewing a completed task.
"There it is," she said softly.
She extended the staff. Dark energy flowed from its head in a slow, deliberate arc, striking the pod's navigation systems with surgical precision. Inside the machinery, coordinates rewrote themselves. A destination disappeared. Another took its shape.
A portal opened in the void — rimmed in that same dark energy, leading somewhere else entirely, somewhere far from this dead solar system.
The pod spun toward it, drawn as though by a current.
Moments later, a second pod emerged from the debris field, larger, tumbling in pursuit of the first. Towa watched it pass through the portal as well, and a small, satisfied smile crossed her lips.
"That simplifies things considerably." She tilted her head slightly. "We can't have too many loose variables interfering with our work. Can we, Mira?"
The figure beside her was silent. He was tall and broad-shouldered, blue-skinned like her, dressed in the same red-and-black that she wore. His red eyes tracked the closing portal with an expression that was, in its way, almost eager.
"Oh, patience," Towa said lightly. "You'll get your chance with them eventually. You'll simply need to wait until they've grown."
Mira's expression shifted into something that might, on another face, have been called a smirk.
The portal sealed itself behind the two small ships, and the void returned to its ordinary quiet.
Then they were gone.
Part VII — Menagerie
Location: The Island of Menagerie | Remnant
Kali Belladonna had learned to trust her instincts years ago.
They were the instincts of a woman who had watched her people navigate a world that was not always glad to have them in it — sharp and quiet and always a little ahead of the obvious. So when she felt, on an otherwise ordinary afternoon in the market, the faint and sourceless certainty that something was about to change, she paid attention to it, even if she couldn't name it.
She walked home along the familiar path, basket on her arm, cat ears tilting slightly toward the sounds of the island around her: gulls, wind off the water, the distant rhythm of village life. Her black tail swayed at her ankles, a lazy pendulum.
Then she heard something new.
A whistling. High-pitched and growing. The sound of something moving very fast through thin air, getting closer.
She looked at the sky.
The object was small at first — a glinting point of light descending at an angle that suggested it had not chosen to be here but had been aimed at somewhere nearby. As she watched, it grew: metallic, rounded, trailing a thin contrail of heat. It passed over the village with a sound like tearing fabric and disappeared beyond the tree line.
The impact shook the ground through the soles of her feet. Dishes rattled in nearby homes. The harbor water sloshed against its stones.
By the time Kali reached her family's home, her husband had already stepped out onto the deck with their three-year-old daughter balanced on his hip.
Ghiron, chief of Menagerie, was a patient and careful man. He was watching the direction of the impact with the measured expression of someone who knows that rushing toward unknown things is a privilege best left to those without responsibilities. Still, his eyes were curious.
Blake was pointing.
"Momma," she said, her small finger aimed at the faint column of smoke rising above the distant trees. "What's that?"
"I'm not entirely sure, sweetheart," Kali said, which was honest. She looked at her husband.
He shifted Blake to his shoulders and offered Kali his arm.
"Shall we?"
The clearing had gathered a crowd by the time they arrived.
The object sat in a shallow crater it had dug for itself on impact — smooth and round and seamless, the color of gunmetal, with a single tinted viewport set in its forward face like a closed eye. Steam rose from it in soft plumes. The surrounding faunus watched it with the mixed expression of people who are deeply curious and also very aware that they do not know what this thing is.
A murmur moved through the crowd as Ghiron and Kali approached and the circle parted to let them through.
Then, with a sound of released pressure, the hatch opened.
Everyone went still.
Steam obscured the interior for a moment. When it cleared, the crowd let out a collective breath — not in relief, exactly, but in the particular exhale of people confronted with something they hadn't prepared themselves for.
Two children lay sleeping inside, curled loosely against each other. They were small, dressed in armor that looked designed for someone much older, and both of them had tails.
Tails.
Kali didn't stop to deliberate about it. She stepped forward and reached into the pod, gathering one child and then the other into her arms. The moment she did, something warm and strange happened — both tails, without any direction from their sleeping owners, reached out and wound themselves around her forearms, one to each, as naturally as breathing.
She stood there holding two sleeping strangers' children with their tails wrapped around her arms, and felt something settle in her chest that she didn't entirely have words for.
"Faunus children?" someone in the crowd ventured. "But — who would put faunus infants inside... that?"
"And why?"
Ghiron turned to address them, his voice carrying the calm authority that had made him chief.
"We don't know yet," he said. "But until we do — and until whoever belongs to these children comes to claim them — my wife and I will care for them as our own." He let that settle over the crowd, clear and unambiguous. "They are guests of Menagerie."
The murmuring shifted. Women pressed forward to look, voices softening into the particular tone that small, sleeping children tend to produce in almost everyone.
Blake peered down from her father's shoulders with solemn, interested eyes. Then, gradually, she smiled.
She had always wanted siblings.
The two saiyan children slept on, unaware that they had landed.
Their parents were still traveling — somewhere in the dark between stars, following coordinates aimed at the same blue-and-green world, a world neither of them had ever seen. Whether they would arrive, and what would greet them when they did, was a story still in the making.
For now, there was only a quiet island at the edge of a sea, and a home that had just grown a little larger, and two small strangers who had fallen out of the sky and landed, somehow, exactly where they needed to be.
What saiyans on the world of Remnant would come to mean — that was a tale for another day.
★ END OF PROLOGUE ★
Next: Chapter One — "Alien Strangers from Another World?"