The headache started in round six.
Anthony "Flux" Jarrett felt it behind his eyes, a pressure he'd ignored for years. Twenty-three years old. Undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. Thirty professional fights, zero losses, and a brain that rattled inside his skull like a loose rock in a tin can.
The crowd roared. Some Japanese kid with fast hands danced around him, landing jabs that shouldn't have hurt.
Then the lights went out.
Not the arena lights. His lights.
Anthony hit the canvas face-first. No ten-count. No comeback. Just darkness and the distant sound of a bell that never stopped ringing.
Void.
No ground. No sky. No breath.
Anthony floated in gray nothing, still wearing his boxing trunks, still tasting copper from his busted lip. He tried to move his hands. Nothing. He tried to scream. No sound came out.
"Disappointing."
The voice didn't come from anywhere. It just was, pressing against his brain like a thumb against a bruise.
Anthony strained to turn. A figure stood in the emptiness. Not Yujiro. Not anyone he recognized. Just a man in a simple white gi, young-looking but with eyes that held too many years. He smiled like he knew a joke Anthony hadn't heard yet.
"You fought well," the man said. "But the body betrays everyone eventually. Even champions."
Anthony's mouth worked. "Who—"
"Doesn't matter. What matters is what you want." The man stepped closer. The void rippled. "I see inside you, Anthony. You don't fear death. You fear ending before becoming what you could be. Before standing at the top and looking down at every creature that ever lived."
Anthony couldn't deny it. That hunger had driven him since he was twelve, since he first wrapped his hands and punched a heavy bag until his knuckles bled.
"I can send you somewhere that hunger matters," the man said. "A world where the strong don't die in hospitals. Where power isn't measured by belts and pay-per-view numbers. But there's a price."
"Name it."
"You'll carry a name. A bloodline. Potential that will make gods tremble and demons weep." The man's grin turned sharp. "You'll be a child again. Weak at first. Fragile. But inside you, something ancient will sleep. Something that wakes up when you bleed, when you break, when you want it badly enough."
Anthony didn't hesitate. "Do it."
"You'll enjoy your new life," the man said.
He reached out and touched Anthony's forehead.
White.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Cold water hit his face. Ryo's eyes snapped open.
Darkness. Stone walls. The smell of bat shit and wet earth.
He sat up. Small hands pressed against cold rock. Small. He looked down at himself. A child's body, maybe five or six years old, wrapped in some kind of torn cloth. Olive skin. Wild black hair that stuck up in every direction. Muscles that didn't belong on a kid—defined shoulders, visible abs, forearms like small steel cables.
He threw a jab at the air.
Whish.
The sound surprised him. The speed surprised him more. His arm moved like a whip, faster than his old heavyweight frame ever could. He threw another. Then a hook. Then a combination, his hands blurring in the dark, each punch cleaner than the last.
His brain felt different too. Sharp. Like someone had wiped fog off a window.
"I know this," he whispered. His voice was higher, younger, but the tone was the same. "Hanma. This is Hanma blood."
He didn't know how he knew. He just did. The name sat in his chest like a second heartbeat.
Ryo stood up. The cave stretched around him. He could see perfectly. Every rock, every bat hanging from the ceiling, every crack in the stone floor. Night vision. Another gift.
He ran.
Bare feet slapped stone. He sprinted faster than any Olympic sprinter, faster than his old body could manage, and he wasn't even winded. The cave narrowed. He squeezed through a gap, scraped his shoulder, didn't slow down.
Light appeared ahead. White. Blinding.
He burst out of the cave mouth and—
Air.
No ground.
Just sky and a drop that made his stomach lurch.
"Shit!"
He fell. Tumbling. The wind screamed. Below him, blue water rushed up fast.
SPLASH.
The impact knocked the air from his small lungs. Salt water filled his mouth. He sank, disoriented, then kicked hard. His legs drove him upward with power that shocked him. He broke the surface, gasping, and swam toward a rocky shore.
He dragged himself onto the beach and collapsed. Sand stuck to his wet skin. Waves crashed nearby. He looked up at a sky that held two suns.
Two. Suns.
"Okay," he panted. "Not Earth."
He checked his new face in a tidal pool. Sharp angles. Dark eyes that looked too intense for a child's face. A jawline that promised violence. He looked like a statue some ancient warrior culture would carve to frighten enemies.
"Definitely a Hanma," he muttered.
A shadow passed overhead.
Ryo looked up. A pterodactyl the size of a small plane circled above, yellow scales gleaming in the twin suns. Its eyes locked onto him. It folded its wings and dove.
Ryo didn't run. His new body didn't know how to run from a fight.
The beak opened wide. Rows of teeth. A throat like a dark tunnel.
Ryo stepped forward and uppercutted the inside of that mouth.
CRACK.
His fist connected with the soft flesh of the upper palate. The impact traveled up his arm, but the pterodactyl's momentum died instantly. Its eyes rolled back. It crashed into the sand, skidding, unconscious, with Ryo standing in the wreckage of its open jaws.
He looked at his knuckles. Not even bruised.
"Not bad," he said.
"Wait!"
The voice came from behind him. Old. Crackly. Familiar in a way that made Ryo turn slowly.
A skinny old man stood on the beach. Sunglasses. Hawaiian shirt. A turtle shell strapped to his hunched back. A wooden cane that probably wasn't just for walking.
Ryo recognized him immediately. Master Roshi. The Turtle Hermit. Dragon Ball.
His heart hammered. Not from fear. From excitement.
The old man squinted at the unconscious pterodactyl, then at the small boy standing in its mouth. "Kid. You just knocked out a Pteranodon with one punch."
"Wasn't that hard," Ryo said. He stepped out of the beak and wiped sand from his hands. "You looking for something?"
Roshi adjusted his sunglasses. "My friend. Turtle. He wanders off sometimes. I followed his presence and it lead me to this place."
Ryo looked at the pterodactyl's bulging throat. He walked over and kicked the creature hard in the gut.
HURK.
A large sea turtle flew out, landing in the sand with a wet thump.
"There," Ryo said.
Roshi stared. Then he laughed, a dry, wheezing sound. He scooped up the turtle and placed it on his back. "Well. That settles that." He turned to leave, then paused. "You out here alone, kid?"
"Looks like it."
"Whats your name kid?"
Ryo thought for a second. The old name didn't fit anymore. It belonged to a dead man on a canvas mat.
"Ryo," he said. "Ryo Hanma."
Roshi nodded slowly. He studied Ryo with eyes that suddenly didn't look old at all. "That punch. The way you stood. You've got training."
"Some."
"Interested in more?"
Ryo felt the question in his bones. This world ran on something his old world didn't have. Something beyond muscles and technique. He could feel it humming in the air, in the old man's relaxed posture, in the way the two suns seemed to shine brighter here.
"Show me," Ryo said.
Roshi smiled. He extended one palm. Energy gathered. A blue-white ball formed, spinning, crackling with light that made Ryo's shadow stretch long across the sand.
"This," Roshi said, "is ki."
He flicked his wrist. The ball shot into the sky and vanished with a thunderclap that shook the beach.
Ryo watched the afterimage burn in his vision. He saw it. The path the energy took. The way it gathered from the gut, circulated through the body, focused into a single point. His brain recorded it like a camera.
He raised his hand.
His palm itched. Power answered. A ball formed—not blue, but something darker, shot through with red and black lightning that ate at the air around it. It felt hungry. It felt right.
Roshi's sunglasses slipped down his nose.
Ryo crushed the energy in his fist. It dissipated with a sound like breaking glass.
"That," Ryo said, "will be fun."
He looked at the old man, at the two suns, at the endless sky that promised monsters and warriors and gods.
He wasn't dead.
He was just getting started.
—-
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