"Administering stimulants."
I awoke with flashes of pain and fire still burning across my nerves in flashes of phantom pain. My heart ramped up to full speed and I yanked on my energy in a panic, feeling the life energy surge faster and larger than I had ever felt it before.
"Maybe a bit too much stimulant." A voice observed from my side, "Peace saiyan. You're safe in a medical center."
The images of the Zentradi's burning capital city faded and sure enough, my eyes refocused on the surroundings of an advanced if not barren hospital room. My Ki powered back down and I let out a sigh of relief. I was safe.
For now.
My eyes did a sweep of the room and I could honestly say that I wasn't a fan of the plain white and gray tones that gave off an ultra-utilitarian feel. One that was further enhanced by the cold metal table I was laying on.
Damn. Couldn't even spare me a bed?
"Figured I would have just been thrown in a healing pod." I muttered as I turned to the side and caught a reptilian alien staring back at me.
"It is the preferred method of treatment." The reptilian xeno agreed, "But you were brought it with shrapnel and other bits of materials perforating your entire body. While I'm sure the unique biology you saiyans have would have metabolized them in the long term. Throwing you in the healing pods would have simply sealed the foreign objects inside of you short term, which even for a saiyan would be incredibly uncomfortable I imagine. As such, we operated on you instead to pull them out. You're lucky, a 4-inch shard of metal was centimeters away from your heart."
I let out a low whistle and a shiver ran down my spine. I'd been closer to death than I had thought.
"Oh." I hummed back in response, "Thank you very much then."
The alien, which was a bit shorter than an adult human and for the most part had just been tapping away at a tablet while talking to me, paused and looked at me with a surprised expression.
"Your… welcome saiyan?" It said cautiously, "Your new armor and scouter are on the chair next to you. Normally I'd advise you to rest, but I doubt you or any saiyan would listen to that advice. At the very least please take a dip in a healing pod at your earliest convenience, as even with our nanos and injectable med gel we used during surgery, you probably won't feel fully healed until you do so."
Without another word to me, the reptile turned and walked away. Muttering something about head injuries.
I watched him go with a frown. If I was in a hospital, that meant I was in friendly territory. Saiyan territory. That meant that the alien doctor I had just met was one of the species of the saiyans of client/slave races.
Entire species subjected to slavery…
I hadn't really interacted with or seen many of them during my time in the orphanage, but that wasn't surprising considering the world I lived on was considered backwater at best.
There were many things that my saiyan biology no longer let me feel disgusted about. Killing seemingly being one of them if my actions on Varme were anything to go by. But the thought of so many being under the yolk of others still sent a shiver down my spine.
Swinging my small body off the table, I hit the floor and grunted from the deep ache that resonated from the action. Doc was right about one thing, I wasn't fully healed yet and a dip in a healing pod was sounding mighty fine just about now. A sentiment that grew once I grabbed a new and non-banged-up scouter off the top of my fresh armor and read the active messages.
"Meet at our squad's bay as soon as you're up." I read off a message from Mayze that was sitting at the top of my notifications. The message was listed from a couple days ago, which when not counting the FTL travel, means I hadn't been knocked out for too long. Which meant I probably had a good while longer before I was expected.
"Eh, what's another hour or two?" I shrugged and walked through the room's doorway. Intent on finding the closest healing pod.
"It's about time brat." Mayze grumbled with a sour face from where she sat as I made my way into the squad bay, "I was beginning to think you were brain dead from how long you were out for."
I was about to make a point that one didn't recover from massive trauma, blood loss, and intense shrapnel damage overnight. Then I remembered I'd be bringing that point up against a saiyan and I choose to kill that line of thought.
"Yeah, and the anticipation has been killing us!" Negi cut in from over Mayze's shoulder, "C'mon and tell us how much you've grown little guy! I've extra gambling money riding on this."
My eyes met Mayze's and I tilted my head to show confusion. She looked thoroughly exasperated by their antics and just sighed, "They've got bets riding how strong you've gotten with your recovery. Negi here is betting that you got a large increase of about 200ish."
Negi nodded happily, "And since your scouter data last clocked you in at a little over 800, that would mean you probably broke the 1k barrier. You'd be closing in on what the average for your age should be."
Confusion once again wrapped itself around my brain. 200 was considered a big jump? Pushing those thoughts to the side I arched an eyebrow, "You all bet money on what kind of zenkai I would get from my near-death experience?"
I really wanted to be mad at them, both for this and the "hazing" they did to me on Varme, but in the end, I knew that anger would be useless. To them, it really was just a harmless prank without any actually intended malice. One that most saiyan's would have probably enjoyed. Getting to prove yourself on your first mission and getting to take on the bulk of the targets? Any saiyan's dream.
"Yep." Negi nodded before pausing, "What's a zenkai?"
Oh right, that was a misnomer the west used to describe it if the memories I could dredge up were correct.
"What the power boost I got from my recovery is called." I shrugged, "Picked it up from some book I read."
Negi made a face of understanding, "Oh, didn't take you for the nerdy type Arlic. But I do like the name. Zenkai. Yeah, that has a nice ring to it."
Rolling my eyes I turned to the rest of the team, "What about all of you."
"I went a bit- conservative with a 100- point increase." Falfa said in between bites while wolfing down the rest of the food on her plate, "The other two lowballed you at around 75- and 80."
Again, was it normal for zenkai's to be that low around here? From what they were insinuating, a ¼ jump in your battle power from one was considered large. For my frame of reference that wasn't that big, but then again maybe my perception was just warped from the show. Goku, Vegeta, and their bloodlines were freaks of nature in terms of potential after all.
I looked at our team captain, "What about you?"
"I don't tend to throw my money around like them." Mayze shrugged, "But I'll highball you and say a 250 to 300-point jump. You had been fighting all day and were pretty fucked up when I found you. Plus you have a decent amount of growing to do until you hit average. Weak saiyans always grow a bit faster in terms of catching up with their initial gains. That being said, what did it go up by brat? I assume you already checked after you woke up."
Well, I did right after I got out of the healing pod to see what the true number would be, but she didn't need to know about that little detour.
"Use your scouters. You wouldn't believe me if I told you." I informed them with the new knowledge they had given me. Beforehand I hadn't really thought my jump was a big deal at all.
Negi popped on his scouter and enabled the power scanner mode, "Oh?! I guess that means you're probably around Mayze's expectations. Guess that means I win by defa- what the hell?"
I saw Negi's face twist in surprise at the P.L number that reflected back and a smile came to my face. As he had just found out, the zenkai I had just received seemed to be above what this saiyan race considered normal.
Which was weird considering all the zenkai Mayze gave me from her "training" weren't nearly on this scale either. Nor the small ones I received from scrapes in the orphanage.
"What?" Mayze asked.
The male saiyan wordlessly took his scouter off and handed it over.
Our team leader took one look at it and her eyes snapped up toward me as she activated her own scouter. Presumably to make sure Negi's wasn't malfunctioning. The others followed suit out of curiosity with their own and the same number must've shown up on all of them.
"1750?!" Selera choked out in surprise, breaking the brief moment of silence that had settled over the room, "How the hell did your power over double from a single recovery?!"
Again, I thought that was pretty standard. The DBZ saiyans always got pretty ridiculous power boosts from getting their shit rocked. Hell, Goku's went from just under 100k to 3 million in a single instance.
"No idea, but I take it that's not normal?" I asked.
"No, it's not." Mayze huffed with a sharp look, "An average recovery boost will usually net you a quarter or sometimes even half increase of what your normal power is on the high end. While a doubling isn't technically unheard of, I haven't heard of such gains from anyone other than the likes of Bardock blood or the Royale Family."
"So I'm either genetically blessed or it's just a one-time thing?" I asked.
"I'd guess the latter if I were to take a stab at it." Ruco spoke up, "Mayze beat your ass bloody for like a month straight didn't she? And you weren't even close to cracking a thousand when you got here. I know you were really fucked up from all the fighting on Varme, but it's not like she probably didn't almost kill you a couple of times either."
He had a point. It probably just was a lucky freak zenkai and I wouldn't be able to replicate it on my own anytime soon to test it. Somehow saiyan genes knew if you were intentionally injuring yourself or weren't going full out when fighting. The adaptability power our bodies had just wouldn't work if you tried to truly cheat it.
A fact I had very sadly been reminded of years ago when testing out my new and young saiyan body. There was some pain I probably could have saved myself if I had just remembered animated Vegeta mentioning it or if any of the information I had learned about saiyans bothered to mention it.
Most information on saiyan genes as I mentioned before was held pretty close to the chest of the empire, so even if I had been able to access a computer instead of just using books the tech personnel had left lying around, there probably wouldn't be anything for me to really look up on the galactic web.
Or what I assumed was the galactic web. Saiyans didn't exactly have libraries with free access and most didn't care for such things anyway. And the saiyan scientists that did weren't exactly generous when it came to orphans wanting to use their equipment.
And I'll be the first to admit, my human sensibilities had been driven somewhat insane the first couple of years of existence without access to the wealth of knowledge that was the internet.
But despite the lack of information, I came up with a theory that it was because saiyan cells actively used Ki that we couldn't trick our zenkai ability.
Ki was the manifestation and weaponization of the soul. Most Earth texts held that Ki was a blend of the mind, body, and soul. So if all 3 were linked together, they all must be talking to each other in some way.
Which meant saiyan cells knew that when hurting yourself on purpose or fighting when holding back, there wasn't actually a "threat" to adapt to. It also implied that saiyan cells were "smart" in some way and that was where my theory ended. My rudimentary knowledge of biology could only take me so far after all.
Honestly, if this whole warrior thing didn't work out, maybe I could apply for the few science academies the saiyan empire had. They were only open to fully matured saiyans and slave species that were held in higher regard though. Plus you needed a degree.
Imagine my shock when I learned that some saiyans actually could sit down long enough to earn a damn college degree. Or that we had something equivalent to colleges.
I know the Broly movie canonized the fact that not all saiyans were warriors and many could be scientists and laborers, but still. Fucking weird.
"Well, we could always see if it does it again." Falfa said with a giggle that was so innocent yet sinister, it broke me out of my thoughts.
Oh no.
"Or we could not for now." I gulped. I might not have minded the pain and getting the shit beat out of me when my adrenaline was running high and I was in full battle mode. But that didn't mean I liked the feeling once all that wore off.
"No, no. She has a point." Mayze agreed, "As team captain, it's my duty to make sure you are up to par and with such a large increase in power you've suddenly gotten, you'll need to learn how to use it properly."
That's bullshit and she knew it judging by that bloodthirsty smile she was sending me.
I couldn't help but feel like I had done something to piss her off.
'I definitely did something to piss her off.' I decided as my face smashed into the training room floor.
It didn't quite hurt as it had over a month ago, but Mayze made up for that by just doing it more often. Apparently, me being stronger just meant that she could just beat the shit out of me for longer.
A hand reached down and grabbed a fist full of my short and spiky hair and I felt myself be lifted up from the ground. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I lashed out with a foot that struck her in the abdomen.
She didn't grunt, huff, or give any sort of indication that she actually felt me attack as she probably fully expected it. But I swore I could feel those tightly corded and rippling abb muscles move ever so slightly at the strike.
But hey, I'd take the improvement.
Mayze retaliated by throwing a weak jab that nearly dislocated my jaw.
"This will be your fourth time in the healing pod." Mayze said plainly and she put another fist into my now fractured sternum, "And yet you've only gone up about 45. I think it's safe to say you just had a freak power bump."
"Does that mean we can stop?" I asked with a tinge of hope.
I received a smirk in return and I felt a sense of weightlessness when she released her grip on me. It didn't last, her leg lashing out not even a second later and sending me into the training room's wall at mach speed.
My vision went fuzzy on impact and I slid down to the floor with a pained grunt. Something warm and wet was now leaking down the back of my neck from what I could tell.
Alright, let's try a new tactic then.
"Question?" I groaned out from my slumped position.
"What is it brat?" She sighed from her position in the middle of the room.
"Why are you hiding your power level?" I asked with a bluntness that was shared by most of the saiyan race.
Mayze's eyes widened ever so slightly and her muscles tensed, "Excuse me?"
"Your strength. Why are you hiding it?" I asked again, "You show off a level of about 18k, but on Varme you powered up to over 50k."
Mayze scoffed, "Your scouter gave you a faulty reading. It was just as fucked up as you were when I found you after all."
I gave her a dull look, "You're telling me you nuked a large city with just a power level of 18k?"
Ki I had idly noted wasn't anywhere near as strong as it was in Dragon Ball proper. Someone under 1k wasn't nuking any kind of moons from what I'd seen.
Hell even with 50k I don't think she'd be able to wipe out a city with just a single blast as she did. I must've caught a glimpse of her when she was powering down.
Which meant my captain was hiding a serious fucking power level.
The question was why?
"Alright let me rephrase that in a much less nice way. Since you're way too smart for a 5-year-old. " She glared and stalked over to me, "None of your business."
A blunt answer to a blunt question. Fair enough.
"And Arlic." She said, "Don't tell anyone else about what you saw, and yes, that means no one on our team either. Because if you do… "
Stopping right in front of me and trailing off, she must've really wanted to get her point across. Because soon after she raised her foot and brought it down on one of my hands.
She didn't hold back like she normally did and I let out a throat-tearing scream as the bones in the appendage disinterested and my hand became nothing but red mist and mush
"I'll kill you. I'm I understood?"
Ragged breaths rocked my body from the white-hot pain that lanced through my arm. It was only when the shock started to set in that I was able to form any words.
"Crystal." I gritted out.
I had thought that maybe this was just a flippant secret she wanted to keep. Maybe she was just being devious so that people would underestimate her.
Obviously, I was wrong. Even her team wasn't allowed to know.
"Hn, good." She grunted, "Now get to a healing pod and get that mess regenerated. Afterward, I have a new mission brief to give about our next assignment. Plus I guess I'll show you how to access the accounts where our money is sent after a successful mission."
I nodded, but at the moment only one thought echoed throughout my mind.
'I can't wait to one day be strong enough to break this bitch's face.'
"And this," Mayze informed while pointing at a holo projection, "Are the main objectives of the mission. None of the space elevators are to be significantly damaged during the fight. Command has designated Strahl to be our newest logistics world for the expansion into the eastern galactic sectors because of the massive industry and infrastructure that already exists. In fact, they'd like it if we kept the destruction to a minimum for this one."
"Boring." Falfa muttered idly, "What if they take up defensive positions in and around the elevators? You're saying we can't blow them up even then?"
"No Falfa, you can't. That's what not being significantly damaged entails. If they're close or in the elevator you get up close and personal with your fists." Mayze answered dryly, "And that's not up for debate. Once we take the planet the atmospheric scrubbers will move in. After that, we have a small military detachment of about 25 thousand enroute with a few million slaves and laborer's following to get the planet up to par. There is no screwing this up."
I let out a low whistle. 25,000 saiyans was a small detachment? I knew that 80% of them where low class, but still. That's a scary thing for neighboring nations to have on their border.
Groans echoed throughout the table and the female saiyan rolled her eyes in response.
"You can divide up amongst yourselves what hemispheres you want to clear." Mayze said loudly to draw their attention back, "Their military presence is pretty equal across the planet save for the space elevators, where they seem to be the most concentrated. Scans put the planet's average combat strength at about 1,200 but considering there are no sources that say this species is anything special, it's probably due to just weaponry and armor. Basically another easy mission."
The majority of the saiyan squad groaned in annoyance once again.
Ruco in particular seemed quite irritated and voiced his discontent, "Another one?" C'mon Mayze, can't we take a planet that's at least 9k on average? At least that way we could have a challenge and as long as the kid stays close to us he'd be fine. Especially if we have him go Oozaru and let him loose with his new power level."
"Next mission." Mayze promised, "But much like the last one, this isn't one of our choosing. This once again is straight from the quadrant commander."
"Let me guess. You'll be disappearing to take care of your extra objective again." Negi sighed, "Why is it that every time we get bossed around from the higher levels you get some extra objective you can't tell us about?"
For the first time during the meeting, I perked up. I knew Mayze had an extra objective she took off to handle personally last time, but I hadn't known this was a repeating occurrence.
Secret solo missions and hiding a high power level? That kind of info painted a very scary picture for me. Was my team leader a black ops saiyan? Did such saiyans even exist? If so, being embedded in a low-level team to be out of prying eyes did make a lot of sense.
The galaxy was a big place. Hundreds of billions of stars, millions of habitable worlds, and an untold amount of interstellar empires. Many of whom the saiyans had probably pissed off in some form or two. Even saiyans were smart enough to know that some things needed to be done in the dark at higher levels.
Yet I had to admit that the thought put the fear of god into me. Objectives that saiyans considered to be secret instead of being brash and open about it had to be pretty heavy and important.
And I had almost stumbled in on it and asked Mayze why she was hiding stuff.
Her threatening to kill me suddenly made a lot of sense…
Well, if I was right anyway.
"Because I'm just that much more important." Mayze snarked, "Now enough complaining, and start getting ready. Arlic, come here and pull your scouter out, I'm going to show you how to access your money should you need it."
I slapped my scouter on and made my way over to the woman. It booted up in an instant and I had to resist activating the power reading function even though I knew it would just tell me that she was currently hovering at her normal power level.
"The techies made this pretty easy. Just go to your personnel tab and go to the money symbol icon in it. From there you can see how many credits you have and how much is paid to you for every mission we complete." Mayze instructed, "You're probably never going to use any of it, most of us never do outside of those in the government, laborers, and scientists. But should you want to, it's there."
While I did what she said I couldn't help but question that last bit she said, "Why don't most saiyans their money?"
Mayze shrugged, "Most of us are in the military and the military provides pretty much all a saiyan needs. Food and battle. What else would we really need?"
She had a fair point, but still.
"Then why even have an actual money system?" I asked. Surely an interstellar empire that had dozens if not hundreds of worlds and a ruling population that is pretty light on its needs would be post-scarcity?
"You are a curious little bastard aren't you? Should've sent you to the science academies instead." Mayze scoffed before deciding to actually answer my question, "It's because, even though saiyans don't really need such things like economies or products, we have entire and multiple species of slaves, indentured servants, and client races. They and especially the ones we allow to work in the more technical fields need things that must be manufactured, produced, and bought. Plus, we need military products such as ships. Get it brat?"
She calls me a curios brat yet she's one of the more knowledgeable and well-articulated saiyans I'd ever met. Pot meet kettle.
"Yeah. I guess that makes sense." I muttered as she confirmed yet another theory I had thought of on how the saiyan empire worked, "Another question. How much is 20,000 credits worth?"
My team leader looked like she was about to smack me with a heavily sarcastic response, but it died out last second with a spark of realization, "Ah right. Orphan who's never had money before. I don't really know since I don't use the stuff, but I think it's enough to basically buy whatever you want."
Not exactly the information I wanted, but I'd just have to go see for myself how generous the empire compensated us for clearing planets.
"That's all for now, brat. Go and get ready. We leave in two hours."
Mayze wasn't quite on the money. 20,000 credits could buy you a decent amount, but it wasn't truly anything you wanted. As the small tablet I now held in my hand as my pod was doing FTL calculations showed. It had cost about 1,500 credits in total.
Not bad for a single job's pay from a weak world, but it wasn't life-changing amounts either.
Though considering what Mayze had said, it made sense that she thought it was a good amount of money. After all, she and everyone else in the military probably just used it to buy exotic food that the military didn't have.
I'd just have to wait and see what harder missions would pay out or if it was more along the line of a flat rate. Either way, as long as I wasn't using the money, it should be enough to support and pay for Olve.
I hadn't forgotten about the adorable little saiyan and I had made a promise to get her out of that orphanage. Being in the military I was now considered an adult despite being five, so I should be able to adopt her as a guardian. After that… well I had somewhat of a plan on what to do with her, but I still needed to wait until I actually adopted her to execute it.
"FTL travel will initiate in 5 minutes. FTL sleep will initiate 10 seconds before then." My pod's AI beeped out.
Still fucking around with the first true piece of technology with browsing capability I had been able to use in half a decade, I connected to whatever passed for the galactic version of the internet and decided to pull up a galactic map. If the trade federation didn't exist and wasn't ruling the galaxy, then I wondered what other empires had spawned in its wake besides the saiyans?
Immediately a map pulled up and I noted the Saiyan Empire held a little under 4% of galactic territory. Now I know that didn't sound too terribly impressive, but the space itself was incomprehensibly big. There were probably at least hundreds of thousands if not millions of stars in our territory alone.
That 4% did make us a medium-sized nation in the scale of things though. A lot of the other nations were smaller or about the same size it seemed. Seeing as the Saiyan Empire was a relatively new thing, that was actually decently impressive.
Of course, the bigger nations seemed to be impressively large. Such as the Thangarians who according to the map, seemed to control well over 15%-
I stopped myself mid-thought t as what I had just read from the map replayed in my head.
"Thangar!?" I choked out.
Those were the kinda bird people from…
D.C.
Oh no.
In an act of pure dread, I zoomed the map out and studied in horror the larger nations with familiar names that stared back at me.
"FTL travel will initiate in 20 seconds. FTL sleep in 10 seconds."
The Thanagarian Empire, The Reach, Kherubims, something called The Citidel, and…
"That doesn't even make sense!? Why the fuck are the Viltru-"
"FTL sleep initiating. FTL drives fully charged."
My last thought before I was put to sleep, besides the utter anger and curses I was throwing out at whatever deity had thrown me into this terrible amalgamation of a universe, was the fact that I really needed to become a Super Saiyan.
Some have noted the current lack of Frieza and the frost demons. As such and something I'm sure many of you caught, I decided to throw in a curve ball to compensate that.