Four thousand feet above the cloud layer, the air was cold enough to frost the rim of the ancient sanctuary's marble pillars, but the old Guardian standing at the precipice barely seemed to feel it.
Kami leaned on his wooden staff, his knuckles pale green where his weathered fingers gripped the worn grain. His long white cloak snapped crisply in the gales, his black eyes fixed on the tranquil blue ocean of clouds below.
Beside him, standing like an unyielding shadow against the pale sky, Mr. Popo kept his hands folded neatly within his sleeves.
"The world is still turning, Popo," Kami spoke softly, his rasping voice nearly swallowed by the wind. "The mountains are undisturbed. The oceans flow as they always have. When I look down upon the mortal realm today, there is no ash, no burning forests, no weeping crowds."
"Goku kept his promise," Popo replied, his deep, gentle voice steady and slow. "He came up here last night to tell us himself. The battle ended without much being destroyed."
"Yes," Kami murmured, closing his eyes as the memory of Goku's late-night arrival drifted through his mind.
Goku had landed on the Lookout near midnight, his orange gi scuffed and stained with dirt, but his eyes bright with that irrepressible, easygoing warmth. He had sat right on the edge of the temple steps, happily scarfing down a mound of rice Popo brought him while laying out the entire unbelievable story: how the family had handled the Saiyan elites without resorting to slaughter; how Yuzu had taken the fight all the way into the low stratosphere in her Oozaru form; and how, when confronted with the fact that an evil galactic tyrant had threatened the Earth and thus, how they ultimately brought Vegeta and Nappa into a truce alongside Piccolo.
Kami recalled an ancient quote that day: "The king who is situated anywhere immediately on the circumference of the conqueror's territory is termed the enemy. The king who is likewise situated close to the enemy, but separated from the conqueror only by the enemy, is termed the friend (of the conqueror)."
Otherwise known as: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Yet to ally with the butchers of worlds simply because a greater butcher was marching down upon them was a gamble that smelled of desperation. However, Goku had turned that terrifying strategy into their reality.
Goku had sat right here, laughing off the terror of an off-world invasion between mouthfuls of meat, carrots and onions, explaining how Vegeta was currently convalescing on their spare bedding. Giving away what he knew of Frieza and the rumours and how Piccolo had grumpily accepted a seat at the same table. It sounded like madness. It sounded like the kind of reckless innocence that usually brought civilizations down.
And yet, as Kami looked down upon the tranquil blue globe, the catastrophic energy spikes that had threatened to shatter the planet's magnetic balance yesterday had completely vanished. The sky was clear. The earth was silent.
"Kami. Can you hear me?"
The voice echoed directly inside the old Guardian's skull. It was deep, sharp, and possessed an authority that Kami had not heard in centuries. There was no theatrical booming, no playful inflection, and certainly no attempt at lighthearted banter.
Kami's spine straightened instantly. He planted the heel of his staff firmly against the marble tile. "King Kai... I hear you clearly. Has something happened in the upper realms?"
"I've been monitoring the northern quadrant," King Kai's psychic voice rang out, devoid of any humor. "More specifically, I was tracking the long-range sub-space communication array attached to the space pods that landed in your southern continent yesterday. I listened to the entire transmission before the unit was destroyed."
Mr. Popo shifted his weight by a fraction of an inch, his dark eyes widening slightly as he felt the sheer gravity radiating from King Kai's telepathic link.
"The warlord who spoke through that comm-link..." King Kai continued, his tone dropping into a dark, suffocating register. "His name is Frieza. And I need you to understand the absolute catastrophe that is currently heading toward your world."
Kami gripped his staff tighter, his green brow furrowing into deep, weathered lines. "Goku explained the situation to me last night. He mentioned an emperor who holds the Saiyans on a leash—"
"Goku knows nothing of the real galaxy!" King Kai interrupted sharply, the mental pressure vibrating against Kami's temples. "He fought a broken prince and a vanguard commander. He thinks in terms of martial arts, local power levels, and clean duels. Frieza is not a martial artist, Kami. He is a force of nature. An absolute, unchecked blight upon the cosmos."
King Kai took a long, heavy breath across the psychic ether, letting the silence stretch before delivering the unvarnished truth.
"I do not know the full extent of Frieza's power when he unleashes his suppressed states," King Kai stated plainly. "He hides his true form behind layers of evolutionary shells to control his terrifying power. But I can tell you this with absolute, horrifying certainty: even in his baseline, suppressed state, Frieza's power level effortlessly surpasses one million."
The word hung in the air like a plummeting anvil.
"O-One million..." Kami rasped, his voice trembling despite his centuries of wisdom. "That is... it is beyond comprehension. How can any living creature cultivate such atrocity?"
"He didn't cultivate it," King Kai replied grimly. "He was born a mutant freak of nature. He has never trained a day in his life because no one in the universe has ever forced him to. And now, because of that intercepted comm-link, his full fleet is redirecting its course toward Earth. They will arrive in precisely one year."
Kami looked back down at the serene clouds covering the earth. The peaceful quiet of the morning now felt like a fleeting, fragile illusion. "If what you say is true, King Kai... then twelve months of physical training on Earth will not be enough. Even with Vegeta and Piccolo working alongside Goku's family, the gap is a chasm that cannot be bridged by ordinary means."
"Which is why I am stepping in," King Kai declared firmly. "I spent the last few minutes pulling every political favor, every ancient protocol and every ounce of leverage I possess with King Yamma in the Check-In Station. It took immense convincing, but Yamma has granted an unprecedented exception."
Kami raised his head, his interest piqued. "An exception?"
"He has granted temporary passage down Snake Way for two living martial artists," King Kai revealed. "They will be allowed to cross into the Other World with their physical bodies intact. I will personally train them on my planet, teaching them techniques that bypass standard biological limits—methods specifically designed to bridge impossible gaps in strength."
King Kai's voice hardened into a final, uncompromising directive.
"However, King Yamma will only allow two living souls across the border. No more, no less. You must go down to Mount Paozu immediately, Kami. Pick the two strongest, most capable fighters on that mountain, and bring them to the Lookout. We do not have a single second to waste."
The psychic connection snapped shut, leaving the mountain wind to howl through the quiet sanctuary once more.
Kami stood frozen for a long moment, the silence of the Lookout pressing heavily against his chest. He looked at Mr. Popo, who gave a solemn, understanding nod.
"I'll be going to Goku's house. Alone."
And with that a golden energy enveloped his body before like a blazing golden meteor he flew off the tower, transporting himself to his location.
—Mount Paozu: Goku's House—
Down on Mount Paozu, the morning sun bathed the clearing in front of the Son household in a crisp, amber glow. Smoke drifted lazily from the chimney, mingling with the scent of pine needles and damp earth. On paper, it was a peaceful morning, but the energy humming through the clearing told a vastly different story.
Near the woodpile at the edge of the yard, Vegeta sat leaning his back against a massive oak trunk. His chest was heavily bandaged, his upper body wrapped tightly in clean white linen that Chi-Chi had unceremoniously forced him into the night before. His dark eyes were bloodshot, staring down at his bruised, calloused hands with a quiet, burning fury.
A few yards away, Nappa lay propped up against a pile of split logs, his shattered arm bound in a rigid wooden splint. He looked thoroughly miserable, flinching every time the front door of the house creaked open.
They can't start training till they have healed, and that was going to take a while. Thus both of them were seething watching as Goku stretched his shoulders, performing light, fluid warm-up rotations.
Inside the kitchen, Chi-Chi was wrapping leftover rice cakes in cloth, her brow furrowed in concentration, while Yuzu stood by the open window. She wore a simple, casual orange tunic over dark leggings—her tailored gi having been utterly shredded during her high-altitude Oozaru bout the previous morning. She was leaning against the wooden frame, her eyes cool, calm, and thoughtful as she watched the clouds drift over the northern peaks.
A sudden, sharp ripple of Ki cut through the quiet air.
A golden beam of light carved through the morning mist, touching down in the center of the dirt yard before vanishing as quickly as it came revealing Kami, his wooden staff planted firmly in the soil, his long cloak settling around his ankles.
"Kami!" Goku called out, hopping off the porch steps with a bright, welcoming wave. "You came down in person? Is everything alright up on the Lookout?"
Chi-Chi stepped onto the porch, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, her eyes narrowing slightly at the ancient Guardian. Yuzu followed quietly behind her mother, her arms crossed over her chest, her dark gaze assessing Kami's stern, uncharacteristically heavy expression. Even Piccolo, who had been meditating silently atop a high rock face two hundred yards away, opened one black eye and drifted down into the perimeter of the yard, his arms folded tightly over his chest.
"Goku," Kami began, his voice rasping with a gravity that instantly silenced the easygoing atmosphere of the yard. "I come bearing news from a divine being whose authority ranks higher than my own. King Kai has made direct telepathic contact delivering a warning of this Frieza. Information that is vital."
"A warning?" Chi-Chi asked, her voice dropping into a protective, cautious register as she moved half a step closer to her children.
"Frieza is not merely a Tyrannical Emperor who has a lot of power that eclipses Vegeta," Kami stated, his tone flat and uncompromising. "He is an anomaly of cosmic nature. King Kai has confirmed that even when suppressed Frieza's power level effortlessly exceeds one million."
A suffocating silence crashed over the yard like a falling mountain.
Nappa let out a sharp, pathetic gasp, his face draining of all color as he slumped back against the logs. "O-One... one million?! That's... that's impossible! Advanced Scouters read his power at 530,000."
"He confirmed that Frieza can transform. Though his transformations are suppressed states of his base power."
Vegeta didn't speak, but his jaw clenched so tightly a thin bead of blood trickled from his lower lip. He stared at the dirt, his body trembling with a mixture of deeply ingrained horror and bitter, poisonous rage. He had known Frieza was a monster, but hearing the cold, unvarnished number spoken aloud by a deity laid bare the sheer, hopeless absurdity of his lifelong dream of rebellion.
Piccolo gritted his fangs, his green brow furrowing into deep, sharp ridges. "One million... That's more than sixty times our highest baseline."
"Precisely," Kami said grimly. "Which is why standard physical training on Earth will not suffice. King Kai has pulled immense favors with King Yamma in the Check-In Station. He has granted an unprecedented exception for two living martial artists to travel down Snake Way with their physical bodies intact. King Kai will personally train them on his planet in techniques designed to bridge this impossible gap. Whilst King Kai himself is weaker than anyone here, his techniques and skill in teaching is not to be understated."
Kami paused, sweeping his eyes over the family before making his formal recommendation.
"The journey down Snake Way is grueling, and the gravity on King Kai's planet is ten times that of Earth," Kami explained. "King Yamma has strictly limited this passage to two living souls. Therefore, we must send our absolute strongest assets. I recommend Yuzu and Gohan."
'So that's his decision? Choosing the two highest powers on the planet to go? Not a good idea.' Yuzu fundamentally disagreed with the idea as she had plans revolving around this. Still, she had been quite taken off guard when she could actually rely on this training.
"They possess the highest raw baseline power levels among us," Kami reasoned, pointing his wooden staff toward the two five-year-olds. "Yuzu and Gohan's latent potential must also be taken into account, under King Kai's direct tutelage, their growth could be the key to saving this world."
"Have you completely lost your mind, old man?" Chi-Chi spoke, her voice dropping into an icy, razor-sharp register. "You walk into my yard, tell me some cosmic nightmare is coming to destroy our home, and your brilliant plan is to ship my five-year-old children off to the land of the dead?"
"Chi-Chi, please listen to reason," Kami pleaded, raising a weathered hand. "Yuzu and Gohan possess the highest raw baseline power on this entire planet. Their growth rate is unprecedented. If they learn King Kai's techniques—"
"I don't care if they can lift Mount Paozu with their pinky fingers!" Chi-Chi cut him off, her voice ringing across the clearing like a struck bell. "They are five years old! Sending two little kids across some million-kilometer bridge in the afterlife, all alone with a deity they've never met, is a terrible idea. Power levels don't replace emotional maturity, Kami. They need guidance, stability, and a proper foundation—not to be treated like disposable soldiers just because their numbers look high on a scouter!"
"Mom is right, Kami," Yuzu said softly, her voice cool, grounded, and entirely devoid of panic. "Sending Gohan and me together isn't the right decision."
Goku stepped forward, resting a hand gently on Chi-Chi's shoulder before looking Kami straight in the eye. "Chi-Chi's right, Kami, sending both kids away is a mistake. But sending Gohan with me? That makes complete sense."
Chi-Chi looked up at her husband, her sharp expression softening just a fraction, though her brows remained furrowed.
"Think about it," Goku explained, gesturing toward the group gathered in the yard. "I've got the most experience out of everyone here in Martial Arts, enough to understand whatever King Kai is going to teach us. I can break down his methods, adapt them, and make sure Gohan doesn't overexert himself or lose his way. Plus, Gohan's got incredible potential, but he needs a steady hand to help him channel it. This isn't just about getting stronger for a fight—it's about father-son time."
Goku looked back at Chi-Chi, a warm smile breaking across his face. "And while we're away, you and Yuzu get mother-daughter time here. Yuzu can keep refining her style, help you keep an eye on Vegeta and Nappa, and make sure the farm stays running smoothly. When Gohan and I get back, we'll bring King Kai's techniques with us and teach everyone.
"I see," Kami murmured softly, the harsh tension in his shoulders finally easing as he bowed his head in deep respect. "I spent so much time staring at the threat on the horizon that I failed to see the wisdom standing right in front of me. Forgive me, Chi-Chi. You are entirely correct. Raw strength without the guidance of a father and the foundation of a home is merely a hazard."
Chi-Chi let out a long, slow breath, her posture softening as she offered the ancient Guardian a respectful, if slightly firm, nod. "Thank you for understanding, Kami. I know you're only trying to save the world, but we're going to do this the right way. My family isn't going to break itself apart out of fear."
"What do you say, Gohan?" Goku asked, kneeling down to match his son's eye level. He rested a broad, calloused hand on Gohan's shoulder, his thumb gently rubbing the fabric of his orange mini-gi. "Just you and me taking a really long walk down a snake's back, learning some ancient martial arts from a master in the afterlife. Sound like an adventure?"
Gohan swallowed hard, his small hands clenching into determined fists at his sides. "Yeah! I want to go with you, Dad! I'll work as hard as I can!"
"That's my boy," Goku beamed, standing back up and ruffling Gohan's messy black hair before looking over at Yuzu. "You hold down the fort while we're gone, Yuzu. Make sure Vegeta doesn't break any more of your mom's good dishes, alright?"
Yuzu allowed a genuine, faint smile to touch her lips. "Don't worry about us, Dad. I'll make sure Vegeta and Nappa stay in line. They need time for their bones to mend anyway, and once they're mobile, I'll start teaching them the fundamentals of energy suppression so they stop leaking their power like broken buckets."
At the edge of the clearing, Vegeta let out a low, bitter grumble, turning his face away toward the pine trees. Yet, beneath his scowl, his dark eyes burned with an intense, calculating fire. He was being left behind to heal on a farm, forced to learn from a five-year-old girl—and yet, the pragmatism in his mind recognized that this quiet mountain was currently the safest, most concentrated forge in the universe.
"Don't take too long down that bridge, Kakarot," Vegeta rasped out, his voice rough from fractured ribs. "If you come back weaker than when you left, I'll take it as a personal insult."
Goku chuckled, turning back to Kami. "Alright, Kami. We're ready whenever you are."
Chi-Chi stepped up to Goku, reaching out to straighten his dark blue undershirt. Her hands lingered against his chest for a quiet second, her eyes soft as she looked up at him. "Take care of our boy, Goku. And make sure you both eat properly down there."
"I always do, Chi-Chi," Goku said warmly, leaning down to give her a quick, fond kiss on the cheek before turning to give Yuzu a firm nod. "See you soon, kiddo."
Kami raised his staff, planting the base firmly into the soft earth of Mount Paozu. A brilliant, warm sphere of golden light erupted around Goku, Gohan, and the Guardian, enveloping them in a shimmering, crackling aura that lifted the fallen pine needles into the air.
Gohan offered a final, energetic wave to his mother and sister. "Bye, Mom! Bye, Yuzu!"
"Train hard, Gohan!" Yuzu called out, her stoic demeanor breaking into a broad, encouraging smile.
With a sharp, atmospheric crack that echoed across the valley like a single clap of thunder, the golden light shot straight up into the morning sky, tearing through the cloud layer and vanishing toward the heavens.
Silence settled over the clearing once more. The mountain wind whistled softly through the high branches of the pines, carrying the crisp, clean scent of autumn earth.
"Right," Chi-Chi said, her voice dropping right back into its sharp, pragmatic household rhythm. "They have a long walk ahead of them. In the meantime, we have a farm to manage, two injured off-worlders to feed, and some custom battle-gis to design—ones that won't shred to ribbons the moment you turn into a giant ape."
"I'd like that, Mom. Though I suspect we should check our rations first. Supporting two extra Saiyan appetites during recovery is going to stretch our storage."
Near the woodpile, Nappa let out a low, miserable groan, shifting his splinted arm. Vegeta remained silent, staring intently at his bandaged hands. The Prince's pride was deeply bruised, yet his tactical mind was already analyzing his surroundings. He was marooned on a remote mountain, surrounded by individuals whose control over their energy defied every standard scouter metric he had ever trusted.
Before Chi-Chi could step inside the house, the morning light flickered.
The amber glow of the early sun did not fade gradually behind a passing cloud. It was snuffed out instantly.
Across the entire northern horizon, the sky turned a deep, ink-black midnight. The sudden darkness swallowed the valley, casting long, eerie shadows across the yard. High above the cloud line, a brilliant, golden aura flared, illuminating the swirling storm clouds with a rhythmic, pulsating light that vibrated through the bedrock of the mountain.
"What in the world...?" Chi-Chi murmured, stepping to the edge of the porch, her dark eyes narrowing at the unnatural pitch-black sky. "It's barely past nine in the morning. Did Emperor Pilaf manage to gather those magic spheres again?"
Vegeta's head snapped up, his bloodshot eyes widening as he felt the planetary atmosphere shift. "The sky... the ambient energy across the hemisphere just plummeted. Is this another localized optical trick?"
"No," Yuzu said softly, stepping down into the dirt yard. Her stoic expression remained calm, but her mind moved with rapid, analytical precision.
Someone just summoned Shenron.
The sky began to clear as the wish had been granted meanwhile, Yuzu dived into her thoughts. 'The World's Strongest takes place this early?'
Back when she was Hotaru, she remembered these events. Even if timelines didn't match up fully. If the Dragon Balls were being used in the extreme northern sector right now, it meant Dr. Kochin had completed his decades-long search. He was using the wish to melt the eternal ice sheets of the Tsurumai-Tsuburi Mountains, releasing the fortress of Dr. Wheelo from its cryo-stasis.
However she couldn't act yet. Not until Oolong had arrived. After all, some random person using the Dragon Balls every once in a blue moon was expected it wasn't likely but the wish likely wouldn't be evil.
Unfortunately, she had to let the plot play out for now,
—At Kame House—
The sea breeze blowing over Kame House was usually mild and inviting, but today it carried a faint, unnatural metallic tang.
On the wooden porch overlooking the bright blue water, Oolong was sweating profusely, frantically chopping vegetables over a steaming pot of stew. His short hands moved in a blur, his mind consumed with sheer panic. He had accidentally dropped and shattered Bulma's freshly calibrated Dragon Radar earlier that morning, and he knew that if he didn't present her with an absolute masterpiece of a meal to appease her, he would be subjected to a level of violence that no pig should ever have to endure.
Inside the living room, Bulma was lounging on the sofa, flipping through a magazine while Master Roshi sat nearby on his turtle shell, sipping tea and quietly watching television.
"Oolong!" Bulma called out, her voice dripping with impatience. "Is that food ready yet? You've been hovering over that stove for an hour!"
"A-Almost ready, Bulma!" Oolong squeaked back from the porch, chopping faster. "Just adding the final seasonings! A gourmet dish takes precision!"
A thick, artificial fog rolled across the water, blanketing the sandy shore in a chilling grey mist.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Heavy, inhuman footfalls echoed from the beach.
Oolong peeked over the wooden railing, his eyes widening in sheer horror. Emerging from the mist were five grotesque creatures. They heavily resembled dark grey and blue Saibamen, but their features were distinctly altered—possessing beady, glowing red eyes, sharp birdlike faces, and long, jet-black claws and talons. They moved with a jerky, bio-mechanical rhythm, their chests emitting low, wet clicks.
"Eeeek! Monsters!" Oolong shrieked, dropping his wooden spoon and diving behind a deck chair.
The front door of Kame House flew open. Master Roshi stepped onto the porch, his wooden staff in hand, with Bulma following closely behind him.
"What are those things?" Bulma gasped, recoiling from the sight of the bio-men. "They look like mutated Saibamen!"
One of the bio-men stepped forward, its birdlike beak clicking open as a harsh, synthesized voice rasped from its throat. "Master Roshi... The master of martial arts. The strongest man in the world. You will come with us."
Roshi raised an eyebrow beneath his sunglasses. "Strongest in the world? Son, you're about ten years behind on your news. I retired from the top spot a long time ago."
"Target identified: Master Roshi," the bio-man reiterated, ignoring Roshi's words entirely. "Execute capture protocol."
The five bio-men lunged forward simultaneously, their black talons gleaming in the dim light. They moved with surprising speed, kicking up sprays of sand as they swarmed the porch.
"Hmph! Outdated or not, don't think you can just march onto my island and make demands!" Roshi growled.
With a swift, practiced motion, the old master spun his staff, sweeping the legs out from under the lead bio-man. He pivoted on his heel, driving a heavy elbow straight into the chest of a second creature, sending it flying back into the surf with a loud splash. Though Roshi's raw power was far below the galactic threats that had landed on Earth recently, against these bio-mechanical constructs, his decades of martial arts mastery were more than enough to handle them in close quarters.
He struck down a third bio-man with a sharp palm strike to its avian snout, clearing the porch. "Is that all you've got?"
"Impressive. Truly impressive for a relic of the past."
A cold, mechanical voice echoed from the mist. An old man stepped onto the sand, his body heavily modified with cybernetic enhancements. He wore a long dark robe, held a golden staff topped with a glowing red orb, and his pale, wrinkled face was framed by sharp, metallic plating around his skull.
Dr. Kochin looked upon Roshi with a cruel, smug satisfaction. "You still possess remarkable reflexes, Master Roshi. Dr. Wheelo will be most pleased with his new host body."
"Dr. Wheelo?" Roshi repeated, his brow furrowing. "I've never heard of him."
"You don't need to," Kochin sneered. He raised his golden staff, signaling the remaining bio-men.
Before Roshi could react, two bio-men burst from the sand beneath Bulma's feet, pinning her arms behind her back and pressing their razor-sharp black talons directly against her throat.
"Ah! Let go of me, you ugly freaks!" Bulma screamed, thrashing against their grip.
"Bulma!" Roshi yelled, taking a step forward.
"I wouldn't take another step, Master Roshi," Dr. Kochin warned, his gloved hand resting on his staff's orb. "One command from me, and my creations will slice her head clean off. If you wish to keep this young woman alive, you will come with us quietly to the Tsurumai-Tsuburi Mountains. Dr. Wheelo is eager to meet the strongest warrior on Earth."
Roshi gritted his teeth, his knuckles turning white over his staff. He looked at Bulma's terrified expression, then at the sharp talons pressed against her neck. He let out a long, heavy sigh, lowering his weapon.
"Fine," Roshi said grumpily. "You win, metal-head. Leave the girl alone, and I'll go with you."
"A wise choice," Kochin smirked. "However... she comes as extra insurance."
Before Roshi could protest, a bio-man struck him across the back of the neck with a paralyzing shock, knocking the old master unconscious. The bio-men seized both Roshi and Bulma, leaping high into the grey fog toward a waiting bio-mechanical transport ship. Within seconds, the ship ignited its silent thrusters, vanishing into the northern sky.
Oolong, who had been cowering under the deck chair the entire time, slowly poked his head out. He looked at the empty beach, the shattered stew pot, and the tire tracks left in the mist.
"Oh no... Oh no no no!" Oolong panicked, running around in circles on the porch. "They took Bulma! They took Master Roshi! I have to get help! Goku! I need Goku!"
Transforming himself into a sleek, high-speed rocket, Oolong shot across the ocean at maximum speed, heading straight for the southern continent and Mount Paozu.
Back at the Son household, the atmosphere had settled into a quiet routine.
Vegeta was sitting on a flat stone near the woodpile, meditating with his eyes closed as he attempted to focus on his internal energy pathways. With his ribs still bandaged, he couldn't engage in physical sparring, but Yuzu's brief explanation of energy suppression had stuck in his mind like a splinter. Beside him, Nappa was fast asleep against the logs, snoring loudly.
Inside the kitchen, Chi-Chi was measuring out fabric for new gis, while Yuzu sat at the wooden table, smoothly polishing a small set of iron training weights.
Suddenly, a loud, panicked screaming echoed from the sky above the yard.
"GOKU! CHI-CHI! HELP!"
Oolong tumbled out of the sky, dropping his rocket transformation mid-air and crashing face-first into Chi-Chi's vegetable patch. He scrambled out of the dirt, covered in tomato vines and tears, sprinting toward the porch.
Chi-Chi stepped outside, a pair of tailoring shears still in her hand, her brow furrowed. "Oolong? What in the world is wrong with you? Look at my tomatoes!"
"Chi-Chi! Yuzu!" Oolong panted, leaning heavily against the porch railing, his chest heaving. "It's terrible! Monsters... monsters from the north landed on Kame House! They kidnapped Bulma and Roshi."
Yuzu set down the iron weight she was polishing, the metallic clink cutting sharply through Oolong's frantic breathing. She exchanged a quick, calm glance with her mother before stepping out onto the porch.
"Calm down, Oolong," Chi-Chi said, setting the tailoring shears on the porch table, though her posture remained rigid with sudden tension. "Take a breath and tell us exactly what happened. Who kidnapped them?"
"I don't know!" Oolong wailed, wiping dirt and smashed tomato pulp from his snout. "These ugly, bird-faced grey creatures burst out of the fog! They looked like bio-mechanical freaks! An old guy with metal parts on his head called himself Dr. Kochin and said something about a 'Dr. Wheelo' wanting the strongest man in the world. They knocked out Master Roshi, grabbed Bulma, and took off in a giant flying ship toward the north!"
From his spot near the woodpile, Vegeta opened one dark eye. His brow twitched in annoyance at the pig's screeching, but the details caught his interest. Beside him, Nappa stirred awake, rubbing his bald head with his good arm and scowling.
"Bio-mechanical freaks?" Chi-Chi repeated, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. "And they took Bulma and Roshi right off the island?"
"Yes! They dragged them onto a ship and flew off toward the Tsurumai-Tsuburi Mountains!" Oolong squeaked, trembling so hard his ears flapped. "Where's Goku? If Goku isn't here, we're doomed!"
"Goku and Gohan just left for the afterlife to train with King Kai," Chi-Chi said flatly, crossing her arms over her chest. "They're going to be gone for months. So stop screaming and pull yourself together."
Oolong's jaw dropped so low it nearly hit the porch floorboards. "The afterlife?! You're telling me the strongest guy on the planet just left Earth on a day-trip to Heaven?!"
"Right, you don't know… Yuzu here is stronger than Goku." Chi-Chi said with a hint of pride.
Oolong stared at Yuzu, his eyes bugging out so far they looked ready to pop right out of his head. "Wait... Yuzu is stronger than Goku? The five-year-old?!"
"She's five and a half," Chi-Chi corrected sharply, her arms folded tightly over her chest. "And yes. She handles herself just fine, thank you very much."
Near the woodpile, Vegeta let out a low, mocking scoff that turned into a sharp hiss of pain as his cracked ribs protested. He adjusted his stance on the flat stone, his dark eyes fixed on Oolong with cold disdain. "Listen to yourself, swine. Screaming like a slaughtered pig because a few metal-headed Earthlings snatched your friends. Is this the pathetic baseline of life on this miserable rock?"
Nappa grunted, leaning back against the logs while gingerly resting his splinted arm. "Hey, Vegeta... what was that deal with the sky turning pitch black earlier anyway? That wasn't normal weather. The ambient power in the atmosphere plummeted, then the whole sky went dark like night for two minutes before flipping right back."
Vegeta's gaze drifted upward toward the clear blue sky, his brow furrowed in quiet suspicion. "It wasn't a atmospheric anomaly. Some kind of targeted energy distortion... or an optical illusion generated by local technology. Whatever it was, it vanished as quickly as it appeared."
"Oh, that!" Oolong interjected, still trembling as he wiped his snout. "That was the Dragon Balls! Someone gathered all seven and summoned Shenron to grant a wish! That's why the sky turned black!"
Silence instantly fell over the yard.
Vegeta froze. His posture went entirely rigid, his dark eyes snapping directly onto the pig with a sudden, suffocating intensity. "What did you just say?"
"The... the Dragon Balls?" Oolong stammered, flinching back from the sheer malice radiating off the injured Saiyan Prince. "You know, the magic spheres? You collect all seven, a giant dragon appears, and it grants you literally any wish you want."
Nappa's jaw dropped. "Any wish? Like... any wish?"
"Yeah!" Oolong squeaked. "Immortality, wealth, a million tons of pork, anything!"
Vegeta stood up slowly, ignoring the sharp spike of pain in his chest as his breathing turned shallow and rapid. A dark, terrifying realization washed over him. The legends he had heard whispered in the Galaxy, rumours he had taken as myth—the rumors of mystical Namekian Wish Orbs were real.
"Immortality..." Vegeta whispered, his voice dangerously low, his knuckles whitening as he clenched his fists. "An absolute, indestructible life... right under our noses."
"Don't get your hopes up, Prince," Chi-Chi interrupted coldly, tossing a dry look over her shoulder at the two Saiyans. "Whoever just used them emptied their power. Once a wish is granted, the Dragon Balls turn into useless ordinary stones for a full year. You couldn't use them right now even if you spent the next six months hunting them down."
Nappa let out a long, disappointed groan, slumping back against the woodpile. "A whole year? Great. Just in time for Frieza to land and turn us all into space dust."
Vegeta gritted his teeth, his jaw working in bitter fury. A full year. The exact amount of time remaining before Frieza's arrival. The timing was a cruel, mocking joke. He cast a sharp glare toward Yuzu, searching her calm, stoic expression for any sign of panic or deceit, but found nothing except cool, unbothered composure.
"So the Dragon Balls are out of commission," Yuzu said smoothly, breaking the tension in the yard. "That doesn't change the immediate problem. Bulma and Master Roshi have been taken to the Tsurumai-Tsuburi Mountains."
A soft rustle of wind stirred the high branches of the pine trees as Piccolo descended from his perch on the nearby cliffside. He landed silently at the edge of the clearing, his white cape billowing gently around his broad shoulders. His arms remained folded across his chest, his black eyes cold and sharp.
"I heard the commotion," Piccolo said, his deep voice carrying over the quiet yard. "A group of mechanical constructs taking Roshi because they think he's the strongest man on Earth?"
"They're completely out of date," Chi-Chi grumbled, dusting off her apron. "Roshi hasn't been the strongest on this planet in years. But Bulma is in danger, and I won't let some rusted old scientist treat our friends like test subjects."
Piccolo let out a low, dark chuckle. "A fortress full of artificial biological freaks playing emperor in the frozen north... Sounds like a pathetic waste of time. But if Roshi and the girl are captive, it's an annoyance that needs to be cleared quickly before it interferes with our preparation for the Saiyan invasion."
"Then it's settled," Yuzu said, adjusting the fit of her lightweight training tunic. "Piccolo, Mom, and I will head north to the Tsurumai-Tsuburi range. We extract Bulma and Roshi, eliminate the threat, and return before dinner."
Vegeta glared at the trio, a bitter scowl twisting his face. "You're leaving two wounded Saiyan warriors behind on a farm while you go play hero against a bunch of metal toys?"
"You can barely stand without cracking a rib, Vegeta," Chi-Chi fired back without missing a beat, pointing a finger at him. "You stay right there, rest up, and don't you dare touch my crop fields while we're gone. If I come back and find a single pine tree scorched, you'll be fixing the fence yourself."
Vegeta grumbled an insult under his breath, turning his back on her, though he didn't argue further. He knew his body was nowhere near combat-ready.
Yuzu looked over at Piccolo and Chi-Chi, her small frame radiating a steady, quiet confidence. "We fly at full speed to the northern sector. Keep energy signatures tight so we don't draw unnecessary attention until we're right over their stronghold."
Piccolo gave a brief, sharp nod. "Lead the way."
With three swift bursts of displacement, Yuzu, Chi-Chi, and Piccolo launched themselves into the sky, carving three parallel white vapor trails high above Mount Paozu as they shot north toward the frozen Tsurumai-Tsuburi peaks.
Oolong watched them vanish over the horizon in a fraction of a second, blinking in disbelief. He slowly turned to look at Vegeta and Nappa, who were both sitting in absolute silence near the woodpile.
"...So," Oolong squeaked nervously, taking a step back. "Anybody want some vegetable stew?"
Vegeta clicked his teeth, "Tch, fine. Make it worth our while Pig."
—Tsurumai-Tsuburi Mountain—
The high-altitude thermal currents over the northern hemisphere turned razor-sharp as the trio breached the arctic circle. Below them, the vast, emerald canopy of the central continent withered away, replaced by jagged spires of ancient blue ice and sheer granite cliffs carved out by centuries of sub-zero gales.
Chi-Chi flew on Yuzu's left flank, her white cape snapping violently in the slipstream. Her face was set in a firm, unrelenting line. Beside her, Piccolo cut through the freezing air with effortless precision, his white turban and weighted mantle barely shifting despite the acoustic boom trailing behind their displacement envelopes.
Yuzu rode the center position, her small body cocooned in a thin, microscopic layer of suppressed Ki that redirected the freezing air around her like oil off water. Her dark eyes scanned the expanse below.
The Tsurumai-Tsuburi mountain range was an unforgiving graveyard of ice. Decades ago, a global geological shift had encased this entire northern sector in an eternal deep-freeze, burying research outposts, military installations, and forgotten history under hundreds of feet of solid permafrost. But today, the pristine white horizon was ruined.
A colossal fissure had been ripped straight through the glacier bed. Plumes of superheated steam hissed into the icy atmosphere, creating a thick, sulfurous haze that caught the low afternoon sun in sickening shades of copper and yellow.
"There," Piccolo said, his deep voice carrying over the roaring wind without him having to raise it. He pointed a long, green finger down toward the center of the steaming chasm. "The ice didn't melt from geothermal activity. It was flash-boiled from the inside out."
"The Dragon Balls," Chi-Chi observed, her eyes narrowing as they began their descent. "Whoever used them wished for this entire glacier to thaw."
As they broke through the thermal fog, the absolute scale of the structure beneath revealed itself.
It was not a mere laboratory or underground bunker. It was a staggering, towering monolith of dark, polished alloy and biological architecture—a monstrosity that looked as though a gigantic, mechanical brain had grown metallic roots straight into the earth. Heavy copper pipes thick enough to walk through crisscrossed the perimeter, pumping glowing green bio-fluid into the main body of the fortress. Massive heat vents spewed scolding exhaust into the sub-zero air, melting the surrounding ice walls into rushing rivers of slush.
The design was grotesque. Sections of the main spire bulged outward with rounded, dome-like mechanical hulls that looked horrifyingly similar to a giant, armored exoskeleton.
"What a repulsive piece of engineering," Piccolo muttered, landing silently on a ledge of frosted alloy overlooking the main courtyard. "It smells of burning oil and rotting flesh."
Chi-Chi landed beside him, her boots crunching softly on a thin layer of frost. "It's huge. Finding Bulma and Roshi in this place is going to take too long if we go door by door."
Yuzu touched down between them, her small feet settling onto the metal floor with absolute silence.
"The main entrance is right down there," Chi-Chi noted, pointing toward a set of colossal, reinforced steel double doors set into the base of the central spire. "Looks like fifty inches of solid alloy."
"A minor obstacle," Piccolo snorted, raising his right hand, two fingers extended.
"Wait, Piccolo," Chi-Chi cautioned, placing a hand on her hip. "We don't know where Bulma and Roshi are being held. If you blow the front gate off its hinges, you might collapse the ceiling right onto their heads. Let's do this clean."
Piccolo grumbled under his breath, lowering his hand. "Fine. But if anything gets in my way, I'm vaporizing it."
The three of them dropped down from the ledge, landing directly in front of the giant double doors. Up close, the entrance was imposing, stamped with a strange, stylized emblem depicting a bio-mechanical gear holding a human brain.
Chi-Chi stepped up to the center seam of the heavy steel doors. She didn't draw back her fist or gather a flashy aura. Instead, she simply placed both palms flat against the ice-cold alloy, shifted her stance, and drove her hips forward in a clean, textbook display of internal kinetic projection.
BANG!
A localized, deafening shockwave shattered the silence of the canyon. The massive steel doors didn't just swing open—the heavy hydraulic deadbolts locking them into the mountain bedrock sheared completely through. The two multi-ton steel slabs buckled inward, groaning under violent pressure before blowing off their tracks and crashing into the dark interior hallway with a thunderous metallic screech.
"Clear," Chi-Chi said smoothly, wiping a speck of dust off her sleeve.
Piccolo smirked faintly beneath his turban. "Not bad."
They stepped through the ruined threshold, entering the first floor of the fortress.
The interior was vast, dark, and drenched in a dim, sickly green light emitted from bioluminescent tubes lining the high, vaulted ceiling. The air was thick, heavy, and smelled strongly of formaldehyde and ozone.
Before they could take ten paces, from the shadowy recesses of the wide corridor, massive, spiked steel spheres—each easily twelve feet in diameter—came rolling out of hidden wall chutes. They moved at terrifying speeds, their heavy iron spikes tearing deep grooves into the metal flooring as they crisscrossed the hallway, blocking all forward progress.
"Traps?" Piccolo scoffed. "Pathetic."
Before Piccolo could step forward to obliterate the rolling hazards, the spiked spheres suddenly split open down their center seams with a loud pneumatic hiss.
Out from the interior of the rolling metal shells poured a writhing, screeching hoard of bio-men.
They were identical to the ones that had attacked Kame House—dark grey and blue skin, avian beaks, glowing red eyes, and long, razor-sharp black talons. Dozens of them poured into the corridor, their avian clicks echoing off the metallic walls as they caught sight of the intruders.
"Target acquisition! Intruders detected!" the lead bio-man screeched, its voice synthetic and grating. "Eliminate! Exterminate!"
The hoard surged forward like a wave of mutated locusts, their sharp claws glistening with paralytic toxins as they leapt off the walls and ceiling, converging on the three figures.
Piccolo didn't even bother to raise his hands. He simply unleashed a sudden, microscopic pulse of broad-spectrum Ki from his body—an invisible ring of atmospheric pressure that expanded outward for twenty yards.
The moment the wave hit the bio-men, their bio-mechanical frames froze mid-air. The extreme kinetic pressure crushed their internal nerve networks instantly and the entire hoard of thirty-plus bio-men dropped to the iron floor like heavy sacks of wet sand, dead.
The spiked steel spheres continued rolling harmlessly past them, crashing into the far walls and grinding to a halt.
"Cheap, mass-produced junk," Piccolo muttered, stepping right over a slumped bio-man without giving it a second glance. "If this is the best this 'Dr. Wheelo' has to offer, this rescue will take less than five minutes."
Yuzu walked quietly behind them, her hands tucked casually into her tunic pockets. She glanced down at one of the downed bio-men, her sharp eyes analyzing the structural welds on its neck joint. 'Synthetic muscle fiber and an engine that allows them to shoot Ki? Such sloppy work. Dr. Gero's infinite-energy models make these look like wooden toys.'
They ascended the wide metal staircase leading to the second level. The air grew progressively colder, carrying a sharp, chemical sting that made the back of the throat burn.
Unlike the dark, cramped corridors below, the second floor opened into a vast, circular arena. The high, vaulted ceiling was lined with massive industrial spotlights that flooded the space with a harsh, blinding white light. Long, copper conduits snaked up the walls, humming with immense electrical currents that caused the surrounding air to ripple with static heat.
Directly across the arena, three figures stood waiting on an elevated observation platform, silhouettes cast long against the polished steel floor.
Piccolo brought his group to a smooth halt near the center of the ring, his black eyes narrowing as he swept his gaze across the trio. "It seems we've arrived at the welcoming committee."
The figure in the center stepped forward into the spotlight. It was Dr. Kochin, his golden staff clacking loudly against the metal grating. Beside him stood three tall, heavily muscular bio-warriors, each possessing uniquely grotesque physical mutations.
"Welcome, intruders, to the research facility of the world's greatest mind," Kochin announced, his cruel, mechanical voice reverberating off the high walls. He peered down at the small group, his brow furrowing slightly beneath his cybernetic skull plating. "I expected Master Roshi's comrades to come seeking his return, but to see a woman, a child, and a green-skinned freak... You are remarkably foolish to step into Dr. Wheelo's domain."
"You took something that doesn't belong to you. Hand over Roshi and the woman, and maybe I'll leave enough of your mechanical head intact for you to crawl away."
Kochin let out a rasping, metallic laugh. "Arrogant fools. You have no understanding of the power you face. Kishime! Misokatsun! Ebifurya! Dispose of them!"
On Kochin's command, the three bio-warriors dropped from the platform, landing in the arena with a heavy, metallic thud that cracked the steel floorboards.
The three fighters moved into a triangular formation, their suppressed energy flaring outward in a sudden, sharp surge.
Piccolo's eyes twitched slightly. He felt the rapid rise in their internal signatures—distinct, artificial pools of kinetic force that locked onto their positions. The sheer scale of their energy was leagues beyond the bio-men below, yet to Piccolo, who had spent the last two days observing the terrifying heights of the Son family's refined control, these energy signatures felt rigid, unstable, and hopelessly unrefined.
"I'll handle the tall one," Piccolo stated, stepping forward as his white cape billowed out behind him. "Chi-Chi, take the other two."
"Right," Chi-Chi replied smoothly, taking a single step forward and lowering her center of gravity into a pristine, balanced stance. Her dark hair was tied back tightly, her eyes calm and utterly devoid of fear.
The bio-warrior known as Kishime—a tall, slender creature covered in pale green scales with long, flexible tendrils extending from his wrists—let out a sharp, clicking hiss. With a sudden burst of speed, he blurred across the metallic floor, his form disappearing into a rapid zig-zag.
As he closed the distance, the tendrils on his arms ignited with crackling, high-voltage electrical energy. He snapped his wrists forward, sending two thick, glowing whips of blue electricity snaking through the air straight toward Chi-Chi's neck.
The whips cut through the atmosphere with a deafening CRACK, leaving trails of ionized ozone in their wake.
The moment the electrified whips were inches from her throat, her upper body swayed backward by a fraction of an inch—a microscopic, fluid adjustment that allowed the glowing tendrils to slice harmlessly through the empty air above her collarbone.
Kishime's eyes widened in shock. Before he could retract his weapons, Chi-Chi stepped directly inside his guard, threading her body through the arc of his strike with effortless grace.
She planted her lead foot into the steel floor and drove a short, brutal palm strike directly into Kishime's solar plexus. A localized shockwave rippled through Kishime's chest, shattering his reinforced bio-armor and immediately he lost consciousness.
From the elevated platform, Dr. Kochin's jaw dropped. "W-What?! Kishime was defeated in a single blow?!"
Without giving the old scientist time to process the sight, the second bio-warrior, Misokatsun bellowed in rage and charged forward. His heavy footsteps shook the entire arena as he raised a fist the size of a boulder, intending to flatten Chi-Chi where she stood.
Misokatsun brought his giant fist down with world-crushing force.
Chi-Chi simply raised her left hand, catching the massive, rubbery fist in the palm of her small hand.
The impact generated a sharp gust of air that blew her hair back, but her arm remained perfectly rigid, her feet firmly anchored to the floor. Misokatsun's eyes bulged in utter disbelief as he felt his full momentum instantly halted by a human woman half his size. His shock-absorbing skin rippled violently, attempting to disperse the force, but Chi-Chi didn't give his biological mechanics the chance to adapt.
She simply punched full force.
And thus, in less than ten seconds, two of Dr. Wheelo's ultimate bio-warriors had been rendered completely irrelevant.
The final warrior, Ebifurya—a tall, imposing creature covered in dark red bio-plating with long, sharp talons—backed away a step, his breath hitching as he felt the sheer, terrifying gap in their capabilities. He looked from the two fallen warriors to Chi-Chi, then over to Piccolo, who was watching him with a look of supreme boredom.
Ebifurya gritted his fangs, his red bio-armor flaring as he gathered all his internal power into his throat. He opened his maw, preparing to unleash a torrent of sub-zero freezing mist to coat the entire arena in solid ice. "Die, green freak!"
Before the frozen mist could even escape Ebifurya's mouth, Piccolo flicked his wrist. A large wave of golden energy erupted from Piccolo's hand, cutting through the air at blinding speed towards the Brutal Warrior.
The attack detonated against his chest plating, sending him flying backward across the arena. He slammed violently into the reinforced steel wall beneath the observation deck, embedding deep into the metal before collapsing into a ruined, smoking heap.
The arena fell into a deafening, absolute silence. The Bio-Warriors were dead.
Dr. Kochin stood frozen on the observation platform, his golden staff trembling in his cybernetic grip. Cold sweat beaded on his pale, wrinkled forehead as he stared down at the three intruders. "T-This can't be happening... The bio-warriors were engineered to be perfection! They were designed to conquer the world!"
Piccolo slowly lowered his arm, his cape settling back around his shoulders. He turned his head slightly, glancing over at Yuzu.
Yuzu met his gaze with a subtle nod. "Let's continue."
Dr. Kochin backed away from the observation deck railing, his cybernetic joints emitting a high-pitched whine as he retreated toward the heavy lift at the rear of the chamber.
"Enjoy your petty victory over my servants!" Kochin shouted, his raspy voice echoing through the intercom system as a reinforced barrier slammed down to cover his escape. "You have merely qualified yourselves to witness true perfection! Come, then! Ascend to the pinnacle of science!"
Without waiting, Piccolo led the way up the central spiral staircase, with Chi-Chi and Yuzu close behind.
They broke through the heavy archway onto the third floor, stepping into a massive, cavernous hall dominated by a towering bank of glowing monitors and two shimmering, hemispherical forcefields.
Inside the smaller, blue-tinted forcefield on the right stood Bulma, banging her fists fruitlessly against the humming energy barrier. Master Roshi lay unconscious inside the second, larger green barrier to the left, suspended in a state of stasis.
"Yuzu! Chi-Chi! Piccolo!" Bulma yelled, her voice muffled through the field. "Watch out! This whole place is a giant trap!"
Above them, mounted on an elevated catwalk behind a second layer of reinforced glass, stood Dr. Kochin. He leaned heavily on his golden staff, a dark, triumphant smirk stretching across his pale, metallic face.
"Welcome to the threshold of the future," Dr. Kochin sneered, gesturing to the giant screens behind him, which flickered to life showing real-time diagnostic readings of the entire facility. "I must congratulate you on navigating my security measures and defeating my bio-warriors. But your journey ends here."
"Hand over Bulma and Roshi, Kochin," Chi-Chi demanded, her voice ringing sharp and clear through the hall. "You've already lost your guards. Don't make this harder on yourself."
"Lost?" Kochin cackled, a dry, grating sound. "They were mere prototype biological shells! Disposable assets designed to test your combat metrics! Dr. Wheelo has no interest in frail, unrefined flesh. He requires the ultimate host—the strongest body on Earth!"
Kochin pressed a control rune on his staff. The green barrier surrounding Master Roshi dissolved, dropping the old master onto the cold steel floor. Roshi groaned, slowly pushing himself up as he rubbed the back of his neck.
"Roshi's power was a disappointment," Kochin spat, his sensors scanning the old master. "An outdated peak from a bygone era. His baseline output is far too low to contain the vast, brilliant intellect of my master. But you..."
Kochin's cybernetic eye flared crimson as its optical lens zoomed in on Yuzu and Chi-Chi, cycling rapidly through data streams.
"Fascinating..." Kochin murmured, his voice trembling as the internal readouts spiked violently. "These numbers... incredible energy density stored within such compact frames! Dr. Wheelo! Look at these metrics!"
From the dark, vaulted ceiling high above, a heavy pneumatic hiss echoed through the chamber. The floor beneath them shuddered violently as massive hydraulic lifts groaned under immense weight.
"Very impressive..." A deep, booming electronic voice resonated directly from the facility's central speakers, vibrating through the metal floorboards. "To think that such monumental power existed right beneath our feet, hidden away on a remote mountain..."
The central ceiling panels retracted, revealing a darkened shaft. Slowly, descending on thick, grease-glistening steel cables, a colossal bio-mechanical chassis lowered into the room.
The Brain of Dr. Wheelo
The machine was gargantuan—a towering, four-legged biomechanical titan constructed from heavy, dark-grey alloy plating and reinforced titanium struts. At the center of its massive torso sat a dome of thick, bulletproof glass, filled with a glowing, amber fluid. Suspended inside that fluid, pulsating with rhythmic, electrical pulses, was a giant, living human brain.
Two glowing red optical sensors flared on the front of the chassis, locking directly onto Yuzu.
"I am Dr. Wheelo," the booming voice reverberated from the machine. "For decades, my intellect has been trapped in this frozen tomb, forced to reside within this primitive mechanical husk. But today, science triumphs over fate!"
The giant machine shifted its weight, the heavy alloy feet smashing into the metal floor with enough force to send structural dust raining down from the ceiling.
"Master Roshi was a false lead," Wheelo continued, his mechanical arms flexing as hydraulic fluid hissed through heavy conduits. "A ghost of the past. But you, little girl... your body possesses an extraordinary density of energy. It is the perfect vessel to carry my genius into the new era!"
"I'm nobody's vessel," Yuzu said flatly, her dark eyes narrowing as she assessed the colossal machine. "And you're not taking another step out of this mountain."
"You have no choice!" Dr. Wheelo roared.
The machine's power core ignited. A blinding, golden aura erupted around Dr. Wheelo's giant chassis, cracking the metal floor for thirty yards in every direction. The sheer atmospheric pressure generated by his power flaring hit the room like a physical wall, sending a howling gale through the chamber.
Piccolo immediately shifted into a low, rooted stance, his white cape billowing violently backward against the roaring gale of raw force radiating from the chassis. Chi-Chi stepped diagonally in front of Bulma's forcefield, her arms crossed before her face to shield against the kinetic backdraft, her dark eyes locking onto the colossal shadow towering over them.
Without a single word of warning, Dr. Wheelo moved.
For a machine of such astronomical proportions, its acceleration defied physical logic. The four heavy alloy limbs slammed into the metallic flooring, shattering the iron plates like dry glass, and the gargantuan chassis blurred forward in a direct, straight-line charge.
Yuzu didn't hesitate. Kōga-jutsu.
In an instant, a dense, shimmering shell of condensed, invisible Ki wrapped around Yuzu's small frame like a second skin, doubling her structural durability. She planted her lead foot, intending to catch the machine's central push, redirect its downward momentum, and slip past its heavy guard.
She miscalculated the sheer weight of the force gap.
Before her hands could complete the arc to parry, Dr. Wheelo's colossal metallic forearm swung out in a wide, sweeping strike. It was not a refined martial arts movement; it was a wall of pure, crushing kinetic mass moving at a speed her eyes could barely register.
BANG!
The impact sounded like a heavy artillery shell detonating against an anvil. Yuzu's defensive Ki-armor held, preventing her bones from instantly splintering under the mountain-crushing blow, but the law of conservation of momentum could not be ignored. Her light body was launched sideways like a pebble shot from a sling.
She slammed straight through two multi-ton steel support pillars, shearing them completely off their bases, before crashing deep into the far alloy wall. The violent collision rattled the entire third floor, sending a cascade of heavy metal debris and frozen concrete tumbling down over her small form.
"Yuzu!" Chi-Chi cried out, her composure instantly fracturing.
"Stay back, woman!" Piccolo barked, his teeth grit as he leapt into the air, his hands flashing forward to rain a rapid barrage of golden Ki blasts down onto Dr. Wheelo's back.
The explosive projectiles detonated across the giant machine's dark-grey plating, filling the hall with blinding flashes and thick, acrid smoke. But as the smoke cleared, Dr. Wheelo remained entirely unmoved, the golden energy barriers surrounding his central chassis absorbing the barrage without leaving so much as a scorch mark on his armor.
"Insignificant gnats!" Wheelo's electronic voice boomed through the chamber.
One of the giant machine's heavy, jointed legs whipped upward with sickening speed, catching Piccolo mid-air in the ribs. The sharp, mechanical thrust hit with enough force to breach Piccolo's guard entirely, driving the air from his lungs and sending him crashing headfirst into the ceiling vault before he dropped heavily to the floor, coughing up purple blood.
Dr. Wheelo turned his primary optical sensors back toward the wall where Yuzu had been buried.
With a loud metallic clatter, the pile of smashed steel plates shifted. Yuzu stepped out from the crater, her training tunic torn at the shoulder, her breathing slightly fast, but her body intact thanks to the dense Kōga-jutsu shell.
Her mind was racing, cold and analytical, even as her heart hammered against her ribs.
He's too fast, she realized instantly, wiping a smear of dust from her cheek. The gap in raw power is astronomical. My defensive shell is stopping the kinetic force from crushing my organs, but my speed hasn't changed. I can't match his displacement velocity. Skill alone isn't going to bridge a gap this wide when his raw momentum simply pushes through my parries.
She dropped back into a defensive stance, lowering her center of gravity, her eyes watching the mechanical joints of the giant chassis.
Think, she ordered herself. What are the options? Oozaru? No—there's no artificial moon, no tail, and transforming in an enclosed space like this buries everyone under a mountain. Kamehameha? A concentrated blast at full output has more than enough destruction density to vaporize that titanium chassis, but I need time to gather the charge. He won't give me four seconds of free movement.
Dr. Wheelo didn't give her four seconds to breathe, let alone charge an attack.
The titan surged forward again, its four jointed legs blurring across the floor. Yuzu used every ounce of her refined martial arts training to read the wind currents and the mechanical shifts in his joints. As a massive, spiked alloy fist came descending down upon her like a falling meteor, she executed a perfect micro-displacement, slipping beneath the strike by a millimeter.
The fist pulverized the steel floor where she had stood a microsecond prior, cratering the ground ten feet deep.
Yuzu flipped upward, using the momentum of the falling fist to launch herself off Wheelo's forearm, aiming a sharp, Ki-reinforced heel drop directly at the amber glass dome containing his brain.
CLANG!
Her foot connected cleanly with the glass. A shockwave rippled out, shattering the immediate air, but the reinforced glass didn't even crack. The barrier surrounding the dome flared bright gold, completely neutralizing her kinetic output.
"A valiant attempt, child!" Dr. Wheelo mocked.
Before she could push off to disengage, the machine's secondary mechanical arm snapped upward. The giant alloy hand caught Yuzu mid-air, wrapping its massive, hydraulic fingers around her small torso in a vice-like grip.
The hydraulic presses inside the hand engaged with a terrifying, mechanical whine, applying thousands of tons of crushing force directly to her body.
Yuzu grit her teeth, her breath catching in her throat as her Kōga-jutsu shell flared violently, fighting against the immense compression. The ambient Ki-armor groaned under the sheer stress, holding the metal fingers back, but the mechanical grip was unrelenting. She was trapped, suspended thirty feet in the air, unable to gather the spatial leverage needed to break free.
"YUZU!"
Chi-Chi couldn't stand by any longer. Disregarding all caution, she burst into a full-velocity sprint across the ruined hall. Her body blurred, her feet kicking off the falling debris as she launched herself high into the air, drawing back her fist with every ounce of raw, unrefined power she possessed.
"Get your filthy mechanical hands off my daughter!" Chi-Chi screamed, her voice echoing with pure, primal maternal fury.
She drove a straight right punch directly into the joint of the mechanical arm holding Yuzu. The impact produced a deafening crack, denting the outer alloy plating slightly, but Dr. Wheelo didn't even flinch.
The giant machine simply tilted its central sensors toward her. "An annoyance."
With a sudden, brutal backhand from its free limb, Dr. Wheelo struck Chi-Chi squarely in the torso.
The sound of the impact was horrifying. The heavy metal forearm swatted Chi-Chi out of the air like a fly. She was hurled across the massive chamber at terrifying speed, crashing violently into the heavy reinforced glass of the observation deck where Dr. Kochin stood.
The thick, bulletproof glass shattered into a million glittering shards. Chi-Chi hit the iron wall behind the deck, her body rebounding limply before she collapsed onto the shattered glass, motionless, a thin pool of blood spreading beneath her dark hair.
"Mom...?" Yuzu's voice was small, barely audible over the roaring mechanical hum of the facility.
Time seemed to slow down to a crawling, agonizing freeze. Chi-Chi wasn't dead, but her Ki felt far too faint.
Yuzu's dark eyes remained fixed on her mother's still form lying in the wreckage of the observation deck. The sight and feel tore through her cold, calculated, analytical mindset like a red-hot blade.
Her meticulous planning, her changes, everything she had done. All of it slammed into a wall of cold, brutal reality.
'I miscalculated,' the thought burned through her brain, hot and searing. 'I knew the movies were happening, but I assumed I had time. I assumed my training, my skill, my refined energy control would always be enough to keep things under control. I thought I could calculate every variable... and because of my arrogant assumptions, my mother is lying in her own blood.'
A strange, unnatural silence fell over Yuzu's mind, replacing the panic with a dark, terrifying vacuum.
She had experienced this once before. That rage she had when Garlic JR had hurt Gohan and her mother. How she flew off in a rage, forgetting all pretenses about having to hide as a reincarnator. How she had killed the three henchmen without a thought. And how she had flung the Dragon Balls away soon after. Of course that rage boost made her rapidly lose control.
'Yeah… that's right.' Yuzu thought as she held control over her newfound power in rage. Controlling it.
The air inside the massive hall stopped moving.
Dr. Wheelo's primary optical sensors flickered violently as his internal threat scanners began emitting a high-pitched, frantic alarm beep.
"What... what is this?" Wheelo's electronic voice glitched, pitch-shifting in confusion. "Internal energy readings... rising? Impossible! They're multiplying exponentially!"
Inside the giant mechanical hand, Yuzu's head hung low, her dark hair shadowing her face. Then, her eyes snapped open, her usual onyx pupils replaced by a golden shine.
BOOM!
A green, violent aura erupted from Yuzu's body with the force of a nuclear detonation.
'I have access to Ikari?' Yuzu thought, immediately recognising the power boost. But in her fury, she didn't celebrate yet and instead rushed in.
Dr. Wheelo's optical sensors flickered violently, red warning glyphs flooding his internal HUD.
CRITICAL THREAT: TARGET POWER EXCEEDS 60,000... 70,000... CALIBRATION FAILURE.
"Impossible!" Wheelo's synthesized voice distorted into a harsh, electronic screech. "A biological entity cannot scale output at this rate without physical expansion! Kochin, what is this?!"
On the shattered observation deck, Dr. Kochin scrambled backward through the glass shards, his cybernetic eye spinning wildly in its socket. "My scanners... the energy density is tearing through the facility's structural dampers! Master, destroy her now!"
"DIE, YOU MONSTROUS BRAT!" Wheelo roared.
The giant biomechanical titan unleashed everything. Four heavy, jointed limbs slammed into the floor, generating a localized tectonic shockwave that split the third floor in half. From the central armor plating surrounding his brain dome, dozens of secondary hatches flipped open, unleashing a dense, rain-like salvo of high-yield kinetic plasma torpedos. Simultaneously, his primary optical cannons charged, firing two massive crimson beams of raw, superheated destruction straight at Yuzu's chest.
Yuzu didn't dodge. She didn't parry. She didn't even use Kōga-jutsu.
She simply stepped forward.
The crimson plasma beams struck her squarely in the chest, erupting into a blinding, thunderous fireball that vaporized the surrounding steel pillars and turned the floor into glowing, liquid slag. The barrage of kinetic torpedos detonated a microsecond later, enveloping her entire position in a churning column of fire and smoke that reached the high-vaulted ceiling.
"Hahaha! Splintered into atomic dust!" Wheelo boomed, his heavy cooling vents spewing clouds of scalding white steam. "No flesh can withstand thermal energy of that magnitude!"
Through the roaring inferno, a hand reached out.
Yuzu walked out of the white-hot flames, her orange tunic slightly singed at the hems, but her skin completely unmarked.
Wheelo's optic sensors dilated in sheer terror.
Before the titan's processors could calculate a defensive retreat, Yuzu was gone.
There was no acoustic boom, no displacement trail. She simply vanished from physical space and reappeared directly in front of Dr. Wheelo's amber brain dome.
Her motion was a single, fluid strike—a basic, unadorned straight palm, executed with perfect, frictionless mechanics, backed by the full, terrifying momentum of her rage-boosted baseline.
BANG!
The impact did not break the reinforced bulletproof glass. Instead, the kinetic force bypassed the outer barrier entirely, transferring straight through the liquid medium and violently rattling the living brain suspended inside.
Dr. Wheelo let out a high-pitched, digitized scream of agony as his neurological core suffered massive kinetic trauma. The giant, four-legged chassis staggered backward three steps, its heavy alloy feet grinding uselessly against the slagged floor as system failures cascaded through its central processing units.
"My... my brain..." Wheelo gurgled through the speakers, his audio processing breaking down into static. "The synaptic shock..."
Yuzu landed lightly on her feet as the titan reeled, her golden eyes turning toward the observation deck. In a single micro-displacement, she appeared beside her mother.
She knelt down, her glowing aura softening into a calm, protective warmth as she checked Chi-Chi's vitals. Chi-Chi was unconscious, her breathing shallow, but the internal bleeding was minor—her own high baseline and martial conditioning had absorbed the worst of the brutal backhand.
Yuzu let out a slow, cold breath, the feral rage in her chest locking into a sharp, crystalline focus. She turned her head toward Piccolo, who was slowly pushing himself up from the rubble, wiping a trail of purple blood from his chin.
"Take Mom, Roshi and Bulma," Yuzu said, her voice dropping into a low, echoing register that vibrated through the metal underfoot. "Get them out of the mountain and to Korin."
Piccolo stared at the small girl, his black eyes wide with genuine shock. He could feel the sheer, suffocating density of the energy radiating off her—it was wild, primal, and terrifyingly concentrated. "Yuzu... your power..."
"Go," she commanded softly.
Piccolo gritted his teeth, nodding sharply. He blurred across the chamber, picking up Chi-Chi's unconscious body in one arm before flying over to smash Bulma's forcefield generator with a single strike, hoisting Bulma over his shoulder. Roshi got out himself. "Don't take too long, brat."
Piccolo shot out of the shattered ceiling vault, carrying them away into the cold northern sky.
With her family secure, Yuzu turned her full attention back to the colossal machine struggling to stabilize itself in the center of the ruined hall.
Dr. Wheelo's backup power systems kicked in, emergency red lighting flooding the chamber as his primary core flared to its maximum, desperate limit. The entire mountain range groaned as the titan drew raw geothermal energy directly from the facility's melting reactors.
"I AM DR. WHEELO!" the titan shrieked, its voice vibrating with pure, mad desperation. "THE GREATEST GENIUS IN HUMAN HISTORY! I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED BY A CHILD! GIGANTIC PLANET GEYSER!"
A gargantuan sphere of blinding, golden-red destruction condensed above Wheelo's chassis, swelling until it touched the ceiling pillars. The sheer heat generated by the attack instantly flash-boiled the remaining ice walls of the mountain, threatening to collapse the entire northern range into a volcanic crater.
Yuzu didn't drawing her hands back to her right hip, cupping them together.
A sphere of brilliant, blue-white light ignited between her hands—so condensed it looked solid, radiating an icy, absolute stillness that completely swallowed the ambient noise of the dying facility.
"Ka... me..."
Dr. Wheelo hurled the massive Gigantic Planet Geyser downward, the apocalyptic orb of fire falling like a dying star to crush the small girl beneath thousands of tons of raw plasma.
"...ha... me..."
Yuzu thrust her hands forward, unleashing her concentrated technique straight into the falling sun.
"HA!"
The beam that erupted from her palms was a hyper-compressed wave of pure, blue-white energy.
The concentrated Kamehameha met the Gigantic Planet Geyser mid-air.
There was no struggle. There was no push-and-pull.
The hyper-dense blue sliced clean through the center of Wheelo's massive plasma wave like a hot needle through silk, neutralizing the attack from the inside out before the plasma could even detonate.
The beam didn't stop. It punched straight through the center of Dr. Wheelo's titan chassis, instantly shattering the amber glass dome, vaporizing the preserved brain within, and drilling straight through the heavy titanium back-plating.
The energy wave shot upward, piercing through the floors of solid metal and rock, blasting out through the apex of the Tsurumai-Tsuburi mountain peak and shooting far into the dark, upper atmosphere before dispersing harmlessly into the sky.
Yuzu raised her hand and fired a final Ki Blast and with a final, deafening implosion, the research facility, and Dr. Kochin were consumed in a silent, blinding flash of pure rage-filled power, leaving behind nothing but a smooth, glassy crater in the frozen floor of the valley.
Yuzu stood alone in the center of the clearing, the northern wind howling softly through the ruins. As her breathing evened out, the golden shine in her eyes slowly faded back to deep onyx, her green aura vanishing into her body without a sound.
She had some thinking to do.