Title: Strength, Wit and Beauty
Fandom: Dragonball Z
Pairing/Characters: Frieza
Warning(s): None
Genre: Gen
If you opened an interplanetary dictionary, you would likely find the Nijiim listed as 'once-proud'. Descended from a particular species of lizard, they shed their bulky tails, pushed themselves up onto two legs, and learned to regress backwards or slip forwards at will. They prided themselves on three things: sharp wit, fighting power, and piercing beauty; no Nijii exemplified these traits more than their prince. His name, in native tongue, was Tzarba. He was intelligent, strong, and incredibly handsome, but (most importantly) knew how to make good use of his gifts.
The Nijiim lived on a rather large planet they called Talim, lit by a bright day sun and a dimmer night sun, mostly covered by one gigantic sea and the rest by dense jungle. They were star-worshippers, as the stars came out perhaps once every thirty days when the day and night suns were farthest apart in the sky, allowing true night to fall; they were faithful but not peaceful, and may have killed themselves off through war had the Royal Family not forced them to lay down arms and focus on projects of colonization and civilization.
It didn't matter, in the end, for their doom was rushing towards them from space in the form of a large ship containing a little tyrant. There came a day when Frieza turned his eye towards the green-and-blue Talim and realized what a pretty sum it would go for. But the Nijiim were tall and proud and would not go down without a fight, so when the Saiyan force found themselves at the mercy of two suns and no moon, Frieza came himself.
Most of the Nijiim begged for death and Frieza was in a good mood, so he gave them their wish. But Tzarba was a well-educated Nijii and knew intelligence and strength and handsomeness when he saw it; Frieza appreciated those qualities in others as well, plus loyalty and a veiled hatred for Saiyans. Tzarba could give him all of those things. Frieza's forked tongue was not good for speaking Nijii and thus changed Tzarba's name to Zarbon, taking him under his wing; the ship lifted from the dead planet Talim and disappeared into the black clutch of space.