Kakarot alone moved through the miles of rubble, vaporized livelihoods, and mounds of smoke. The mountains of destruction stretched for as far as the flaming hazy horizon would let the young saiyan see.

Trying to remember what had happened before he was put back in his normal form was impossible, just like it had always been, but he had a pretty good guess as to what happened to put him in this situation.

He must've been shooting a beam from his mouth when someone destroyed his tail. He could still feel the tingles on his tongue from spewing ki out of his mouth, making it just as good a theory as any other.

With that puzzle solved enough, any thought of what he had done in his time as an oozaru was tucked away from his thoughts and shoved down to a place where he would never try to think of it again.

For now he would wonder about what clever fighter had thought to destroy his tail. He would have to remember to thank them.

It wasn't exactly common knowledge that a saiyan's tail was their weakness, if it was then many planets wouldn't have had their entire society wiped away. What was common knowledge was that when you got a chance to kill a saiyan, you did it.

Somebody had found a way to destroy his tail, rendering him completely vulnerable until he came to his senses, but chose not to kill him in that window of time.

He felt himself getting giddy with excitement to find out just what type of person wouldn't slay him when they had the chance. With any luck the person was actually strong and not just overconfident.

He sensed the enemy's ki in an instant. They were as powerful as he was, hiding underneath a pile of rubble approximately a hundred meters away, and watching him like a hawk. If they knew how to suppress their ki, maybe their hiding would be worth something, but they would soon learn that it was pointless.

His enemy still needed to think that they had the upper hand, that they were setting the stage for the fight. That was when things got the most interesting.

Kakarot made a show of scrounging and fumbling through the debris underneath him until he found his scouter. It was snapped clean in half, but he still mashed at the buttons as he did his best Raditz impression. "Oh no!" Kakarot said as he spun in circles, "I'm so scared and lost, I can't find anyone from my squad! What should I do?"

His enemy stayed still.

Kakarot threw himself on his hands and knees and pounded at the ground as he said, "It's so scary being alone, I sure hope somebody big and strong doesn't come and fight me … sob… choke." He wasn't sure if actually saying "sob" and "choke" out loud would help, but it was his first time having to ever do something like this.

His enemy stayed still.

Now Kakarot had to wonder if his acting skills were bad, his enemy was stupid, or if they knew more than he had expected. He had been acting on some level for every waking moment of his life for years, so that left nothing but confusing options.

He'd been so good at covering his tracks, it was impossible that somebody could find him out.

Kakarot had to resist cursing once the revelation hit him, the enemy knew exactly how powerful he was. Even though he was keeping his ki low now, at the level that his squad thought was his real strength, the enemy had seen him as an oozaru. They knew that their power levels were equal, they knew that he was faking right now, and they were definitely going to try and catch him off guard. The question was how.

"Hello?" A voice shouted from off in the distance, "Hello, is there somebody out there? You have to help us!"

Kakarot had sensed their energy as clear as day when he was looking for the enemy. Two low power levels, one seemed young and the other was middle aged. The older one was injured and not moving, but the younger one was unharmed and running back and forth.

They were weak, just like the animals and roots underneath him. He didn't need to waste his time with two pathetic power levels like that. Unless.

The idea latched onto Kakarot's mind, and suddenly two people looking for help could make themselves quite useful to him.

Kakarot walked to the sound of the screaming voice, swinging his arms as carefree as could be as he neared the two. He dodged past broken glass, exposed rods of steel, the burning remains of the world he'd already forgotten he was destroying, then stopped when he made his way to the pair.

Even at a glance it was easy to tell the two were related, a mother and her son; Same auburn skin, same curved horn in the middle of their head, and the same expression of terror across their faces.

The mother was trapped, pinned underneath steel and concrete from the waist down as she tried to tear at the ground to pull herself forward. Her son now stood motionless, holding a scouter in his hands.

They were at the mercy of a house of cards made from the shreds of their old world. One wrong move and the desk the mom used to work at a few floors above her would crush her head, if the child bumped something wrong the support beam that used to hold up everyone he loved would be the last thing he ever saw. A home one moment away from becoming a death trap, Kakarot grinned at the sight.

The child was too stunned to speak, but the mother reached out to Kakarot as she said, "Please don't hurt him! We'll do whatever you want, just don't kill us!"

Kakarot ignored the mother and pointed at the scouter. "Where'd you get that?"

She threw a ring at him and he caught it while keeping his eyes trained on the boy. He ran his finger around the inside of it and felt over two dozen slashes on the inside of it.

Kakarot flicked the ring back at the woman, drilling a hole in a piece of concrete that was pinning her down.

"I'm not going to ask again kid, where'd you get that scouter? There's only two things that can get your mom out of there. Either you telling me where you got that and fighting me, or we fight and I take it away from you."

The boy failed to fight back his tears. "B-but you told us to hold onto this until you came back! I'll play the message for you just like you said, please just save my mommy!"

The clue fell on deaf ears.

Kakarot lifted a finger and the scouter was pried from the boy's grip and he placed it on the ground behind himself. The saiyan didn't enjoy the process of learning telekinesis from his master, but it was convenient for matters that required a more delicate touch.

"So you've chosen the second option. We can listen to recordings afterwards. Right now there's a valuable lesson you need to be taught."

The kid's power level was low, but so was his when he was that age. There could be serious potential in the kid, he just needed to drag it out.

The real enemy was probably waiting for him to get distracted doing something like this. Worst case scenario he wasted a few minutes, best case he would have a new rival.

"You want me to free your mommy, huh?" Kakarot said. "Then fight me for it, or you may as well have killed her yourself."

He stood with one foot ahead of the other, held his arms out wide and low, and leaned towards him. "I'll even give you the first hit. C'mon, I promise not to move."

"Run," the mother said, "Tovak you need to run. Mommy will be okay but you need to run." She looked to Kakort and tried to pull herself forward, but still couldn't move a single inch. "Fight me you prick, leave my son alone or I'll kill you!"

The saiyan's face held no anger, no malice towards the child, only a cool anticipation for his foe to strike.

"Careful, Tovak." Kakarot paid the mother no mind. "One wrong step backwards and you can collapse what remains of the building on both of you. The only way forward is fighting. Now come."

Tovak ran forward, his small legs carrying him as fast as he could as he charged at him.

Kakarot saw that his small shin got cut on rubble as he ran towards him, but smirked when the boy didn't slow down for even a moment, and landed a leaping punch square on his jaw.

It hurt as much as a fly landing on it, but it was a start.

The floor above the mother's head snapped like a spine, in a fraction of a second she'd be a smear on the concrete.

Kakarot shot a beam of pink energy from his finger with a hissing buzz. Before either the mother or the son could realize what was even happening, everything above the mother's head had been disintegrated by the saiyan in a thunderous and blinding bang.

"You fight to live." Kakarot pointed his smoking finger to the child's head. "Fight!"

Tovak moved away from Kakarot's hand, and the saiyan held it in place as the child rushed to his leg and punched him in the shin with a trembling fist.

Kakarot held his palm up and the rubble trapping his mother floated into the air. "Fight!"

Tovak jumped as high as he could and slapped at his armor while kicking him in the knee.

"Fight!" Kakarot tossed the rubble trapping Tovak's mother aside, and then lifted her in the air.

Tovak hit Kakarot harder and faster as his mother screamed out his name. "Tovak, I love you!"

Tovak's mother shut her eyes and prepared for her death, but Tovak couldn't stop attacking Kakarot.

Kakarot saw the look on Tovak's face and knew that he couldn't handle being the reason his mother died.

Kakarot's smile was wide with satisfaction. He put the woman down on the ground next to Tovak and the boy's attack stopped as he threw himself between his mother and Kakarot

"Can you walk?" Kakarot asked.

The two stared at him. "Most people help people who just saved their lives. Can you walk or no?"

"What are you doing? Why are you doing this?" The mother asked as she remained on the ground.

Kakarot sighed, he didn't need to sense ki to know how much damage was done to her, he'd seen it thousands of times. She'd be lucky if she ever walked again without prosthetics.

"The same reason I do anything, and that ain't really any of your concern." He turned his attention to Tovak. "Today you got to live because you fought. That is all your life will ever be in this galaxy. Get strong or die. The next time we meet or you see another Frieza soldier, you may not be as lucky. You got that?"

Tovak sheepishly nodded his head as he wiped his sleeve at the tears on his face.

"Good," Kakarot said. "Now why are you the only people I've seen on this planet so far?" He took a moment to look around, just to double check that he hadn't missed any on the first go around. "There should be more corpses here."

The young boy started to cry again as his mother put a hand on his back.

"The Tuffles got most of us off planet with the teleporter," the mother said. "We were waiting here to see if his father would come back, said he had some business to take up with Doctor Lychee, but we haven't seen him since. That was weeks ago and we were waiting for him to come home, but …"

The mother's bottom lip quivered, and whatever words she was looking for couldn't find the way out of her mouth.

"My name's Kakarot, remember it." Their eyes said they would never forget it for the rest of their lives.

Kakarot crouched down to the woman's level. "If I got you to your husband, do you think we'd find strong people on the way?"

The woman's eyes flooded with tears as her lip stopped quivering. The question had turned her fear and grief into an uncontainable righteous fury. "I bet you'd find plenty of strong people, you murderous, blood thirsty son of a bitch."

"Blood thirsty?" Kakarot used telekinesis, lifting the woman into the air with a flick of his wrist. "Would I be helping you like this if I was bloodthirsty?"

"Mom!"

The woman tried to move but Kakarot closed his hand half way. Her limbs became stiff as a board at his will. "You'll only hurt yourself if you move. You're pretty beat up and the damage could be permanent if you move something the wrong way.

"You're going to show me where the actual fighters on this planet are. Lychee, right? He probably has some security or henchmen or something. After that you'll get in that teleporter and at least one of you is going to remember to get strong enough to not waste my time the next time we meet. I'm not trying to beat everyone on the planet in two minutes, hop in my ship, and go back home. It's boring."

"Please stop, you're hurting her!" Tovak shouted as he tugged at the fabric on Kakarot's leg. "I'll get strong, I promise. I'll be the best fighter in the world someday. I even know how to get to the doctor, there's a subway station not too far from here. Please, just stop hurting my mom!"

He was holding his mother stationary so that she couldn't add any new injuries onto what she already had happened to her. But telling the kid that wasn't going to motivate him to be a challenge someday.

The woman's eyes were frantic as she looked at Kakarot. "But all of the people underground, you can't-"

"Relax," Kakarot said, "They'll only die if they're strong enough to fight but too weak to live, pretty small window."

Kakarot motioned with his free hand for Tovak to start walking, then smacked himself on the forehead. "Almost forgot the scouter, may as well have something to listen to while we walk. Grab it and let's go."

With the adrenaline subsiding, Tovak could barely muster the will to get past Kakarot and grab the scouter. He walked like a newborn deer, his awkward stumbling carrying him until he landed at the scouter and pressed the play button.

The audio on the scouter was loud enough for all of them to hear Nappa's voice, "Eo …. Eo caschti moret. Eo eoy noet slabil. Eltem slabil debhen moret tasí eltem sil'te podno vivoy. Eo eoy sil'te! Eo eoy sil'te!" Then out came a monotonous feminine voice that translated Nappa's words, "I … I almost died. I am not weak. The weak must die so the strong can live. I am strong! I am strong!"

Kakarot stopped dead in his tracks and turned around to Tovak.

The recording was from when they were on Roug, the planet of the mutated Namekians. The planet where Nappa had almost died.

Kakarot jerked his head down and sensed past the roots. They weren't a problem to him the last time he saw them, so he didn't put much thought to them now, but his opinion changed when he sensed them. The Namekian was here.

The dots were connecting as quickly as they were forming. Nappa being attacked by the tree, Jerem missing and now being deep underground at the heart of the roots with the weakest ki signature he'd ever seen, somebody having a recording of Nappa's struggles. They had an enemy with patience and a plan.

Kakarot's own voice came out of the scouter, "Eo eoy esu amigog, guerrern." Then the automated voice again "I am your friend. Comrade."

"Death Beam!"

The blast was fast, but Kakarot was quicker.

It would have pierced through Tovak's heart, but Kakarot dashed in front of the child and knelt to catch the needle shaped line of energy with his index finger.

The attack was fierce, Kakarot felt it trying to bore its way through his skin before he drew the energy for a Death Beam to his own finger. The opposing blasts detonated each other, creating a black cloud of smoke around the three of them.

First Kakarot smelt fresh cooked meat, then he realized the tip of his finger had been cooked by the heat of the blast. His enemy had finally decided to attack.

He couldn't see them through the smoke cloud, but he could sense their energy. They were walking towards him, either toying with him or trying to feel out what type of fighter he was.

Kakarot drew the woman closer to him, the smoke was so thick that they couldn't see each other until he had his hand wrapped around her throat.

He held her gently as a pink wave of his ki washed over her, then dropped her to the ground.

"What did you just do to me?" She said as she bolted to her feet. Her eyes grew wide in shock when she realized she could stand.

"Healing you enough so that you won't die," Kakarot said, "What direction is the station and how far are we from it?"

She pointed north, past the figure approaching them. "About a mile, what are you plann-"

Kakart grabbed Tovak from behind him and tossed him at his mother. The moment she caught him, Kakarot held out his hand and the pair were trapped in a pink ball of ki.

"I made it weak enough that the impact won't kill you two. Try not to die walking down the stairs or anything."

Before her or the kid could respond, Kakarot scooped the sphere off the ground and shouted. "Bobe with the ten pointer!" and shot it towards the train station.

Kakarot took his turn to watch. He saw his enemy turn their head up to see what just went flying over their head.

In that moment Kakarot had no need for plans, no space in his mind for doubt, only the instinct of battle.

It was a script written and read so many times, practiced on so many planets, that its words had become etched into Kakarot's being: He would hold his hands out wide as he approached his enemy, their first reflex would be to put their hands up to try and block his, he would hold their hands tightly together in a contest of strength and push them back, he would break their hands, he would break their wrists, he would break their arms, and then he would break their wills.

But how they got to the last point was what made each trip so memorable.

Kakarot went through the smoke with his arms held wide, noted that his opponent was completely distracted, and smirked.

Until they caught his wrists.

He looked at them and realized he was looking at himself. There were a few differences, they wore their scouter on the opposite side, they still had their tail, their armor colors were an inverse of theirs, and their skin was a shade darker, but they looked exactly like him.

"Surprised?" His foe asked as he held Kakarot in place, their strengths too equally matched for him to break away. "I was at first when Cooler gave me the mission, it seemed almost too convenient to be true. But we live in a time of change, a time that we want you to join us on. Will you hear the offer willingly or are you going to make this difficult?"

"Pitching yourself and a partner up, but you don't even offer dinner first? I didn't know they were that straightforward in Cooler's army." Kakarot thought the quip may make his opponent's grip loosen, but instead Turles yanked him forward and pulled him down to knee him in the chest with full force.

At a certain power level, it didn't matter how good the armor was or who it was made by, even if it was custom made on a request from Frieza himself. The doppelganger met that threshold.

Kakarot gritted his teeth at the blow, already feeling the bruise forming on his breast.

"If I see you charging any energy I'm blowing your forearms off. Is that understood?" They said, then sighed as Kakarot smirked back at them. "I knew they should have let me deal with Raditz instead. He was always the smart one."

Kakarot's smirk vanished and he closed his eyes, trying to sense energy out further than he had before. He assumed that the rest of the squadron was doing absolutely fine, but if there was someone strong enough to give him trouble, they could have something much worse in store for his brother.

Kakarot found his brother with ease, his power signature was more recognizable and dear to him than anything that existed in all the galaxy.

"Why is my brother fighting someone that strong?" Kakarot said.

"Because they're the weakest person who we and the Tuffles would allow to fight him. His cooperation would be appreciated by myself and Lord Cooler, but it's not necessary."

Raditz was starting a fight with someone just as powerful as Nappa. If he didn't intervene soon, his brother was as good as dead.

Kakarot relaxed his muscles. "I'll hear the offer."

The doppelganger gave him a sardonic smile and released his wrists from his grasp. "That's all it took? I guess Vegeta does call you a clown for a reason then."

Kakarot massaged his wrists and began stretching them by holding his arms out and pulling his fingers back. "You gonna make that offer or not?"

They nodded. "I'm Turles, one of the strongest warriors under Lord Cooler's command and leader of the Regulatory Obliteration Operations Team, Root.

'I was found by Cooler after the destruction of planet Vegeta. He took me in and trained me in the ways of the Cold Army. I would have spent a pitiful life on some planet called Yarth, but Cooler saved me, taught me how to be a true warrior, and a leader."

Kakarot snickered.

"What's so funny?" Turles's tail was already showing his anger with its slow and methodical slaps at the ground.

"Story just sounds real familiar," Kakarot said, "also the planet is pronounced 'Earth' but whatever, go on."

" … Cooler trained me directly for years, preparing me for this day. We are on the eve of war, Kakarot, a Cold Family Civil War. The brothers want to prove who's the strongest, the most valuable to the empire, the one who should succeed their father, and they're going to prove it very soon ."

Kakarot squealed in delight, clenching his fists in front of his face as he hopped up and down. "A war with opponents who are actually strong? I was starting to think this day would never come! Feels like we were starting to run out of strong people in the galaxy so this is perfect timing. Where do you wanna fight? My schedule is pretty empty right now, I mean I've gotta go save my brother but after that I'm like, completely free. Oh and fighting Vegeta, but I'm sure he'll understand if a war gets in the way of that for a few minutes."

"Kakarot," Turles said with one fists on his hip and the other already pressed to his forehead, "I'm recruiting you. We want you to fight for Cooler's Army. Together with our strength and the Tree of Might, we could be an unstoppable army.

"Oh, I see it now." Kakarot looked deeply into Turles's eyes, his delight now turning to rapt curiosity. "I never noticed it, but now that I'm on the other end it's so clear. When things like that. Things like, 'Fight for Cooler's Army' come out of the mouth of somebody with my face. I guess they've been calling me a clown all these years for a pretty good reason."

"Play the next recording on the scouter," Turles said. "That scouter is solely to store the audio of your team's communications and visuals on. Things have changed since you landed."

Kakarot put on Turles's spare scouter and watched all of the recordings from the second they had landed until the moment Raditz had destroyed everyone's scouters. Their team was falling apart, and it seemed like he and his brother were now both in hot water.

"The choice is simple, you can choose for you and your brother to get hunted by Lord Cooler and Frieza's armies along with Vegeta's forces, or just the latter two. You'll be treated as honorably as any other elite in the army once you defect, no more of being a lowly monkey. You'll be just like me."

Kakarot took a moment to consider it, then tossed Turles's scouter back to him."I have one quick question for you before I go through with anything. Why did your scouter have a translator?"

Turles's smile was wry as he caught his scouter and put it on the ground next to him. "Why would I ever need to learn how to speak monkey? I'm not a saiyan. I'm an elite soldier of Cooler's Army."

"And yet you have a tail."

"I keep what parts help serve Lord Cooler. Nothing more, nothing less. "

"Well, let me tell you what I think of this whole situation," Kakarot said as he raised his ki and adopted the same fighting stance he'd used against the child, "you seem to have heard and seen a lot, but don't understand a single thing. Vegeta isn't going to kill any of us, I'm going to beat you, save my brother, join back up with my group, fight Vegeta and win, and then we'll all leave this planet as a team. You're free to join us, Vegeta may find your face annoying though."

Turles looked at Kakarot not with anger or confidence at his impetuousness, the remark could only make him scrunch his face in puzzlement. "You honestly think that? Aside from any of those other things, I've shown you that I can easily beat you. I've watched you for years and studied Frieza's fighting style extensively, I know you're his favorite, I've taken out hundreds of Frieza's battalions single handedly for practice, I have trained explicitly to beat you."

"Ooh," Kakarot said as rushed forward to attack, the pair meeting with a clashing of forearms, "all the more exciting!"

The fight was a brief slaughter.

Whereas Frieza had taught Kakarot the fun of breaking your opponent, the saiyan learned quite quickly that Cooler taught Turles a different philosophy. Fighting for Turles wasn't about the joy of dismantling someone, it was about the efficiency with which he could watch them collapse, a race against himself to see how good he was at solving a problem.

For every move Kakarot tried, Turles had a counter. Within minutes his eye was swelling, his legs were bleeding from death beams searing them, and his armor had become cracked down the middle.

"Are you ready to stop now? You could be a valuable asset." Turles didn't try to hide the boredom in his voice. He hadn't even broken a sweat.

"When I'm just about to start a comeback? Man, you really don't enjoy a good show." Kakarot changed his stance, his knees bent and feet shoulder width apart with his arms a parallel mirror of them. "Do you ever wonder why my scouter breaks every mission?"

Kakarot shot his arm forward, and back rapidly enough to create an illusion that it was stretching out, then closed in and caught Turles off guard with a punch to the gut. He'd learned well from the Namekian.

"Why I go to so many planets and seem to run into so many enemies around my strength, just for the only way to watch what I'm doing to get destroyed?" He drew the stretching arm back and created three balls of ki in front of him. All three dropped, but only one fell to the ground to create a cloud of dust. One went to Turles's face and he caught it, while the other went to his knee and blew it out.

Turles screamed in pain as Kakarot put him in headlocked, jumped off the ground with his legs swinging out, and then blast a pink jet of ki from his feet. The momentum came with the force of a million cannons as Kakarot spiked Turles's head into the ground, creating a shockwave that sent rubble flying and tipped over the last remnants of the buildings around them.

"So I could … oh you wouldn't get it, you're more of a lapdog than a saiyan anyways." Kakarot saw that Turles wasn't moving, he must've been stunned from the attack.

Turles had not attacked him when he was defenseless, so Kakarot figured he may as well do the same. It would keep things interesting.

"Hey," Kakarot said as he tugged at his tail, "hey c'mon, wake up."

Turles's hands spasmed as he jolted awake. "How the hell am I supposed to get up if you're yanking my tail like that?"

"Oh gods, are you being serious right now?" Kakarot couldn't believe what he was hearing. Turles had never received tail training, which meant he probably never received great ape training either.

"Buddy, I hate to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure Cooler sees you as more of a pet than an equal or else you'd be a lot stronger than this." Kakarot said, laughing as he yanked at his foe's tail and they continued to jerk uncontrollably.

"You know nothing. You're just a liar and a cheat. Our deal is off, you disgusting monkey, I'll kill you if it's the very last thing I do!"

"Well the very last thing you're going to do today is take the same deal I give to everyone, come back as a better opponent."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"This is the part you've never seen, what happens after I break my scouter on all those missions. I need to fight strong people if I want to become stronger. If I get stronger I can do whatever I want. Pretty simple plan I've had over the years, I'm surprised you're not doing it too."

"Whatever you want? But things are good as they are now, they'll only be better once Cooler takes over. Frieza is a sadist, Cooler is tough but he's a fair man, Kakarot. You have to realize he's better for the galaxy!"

Kakarot remembered what Raditz had been drilling into his head for as long as he could remember: The scouters recorded directly to Frieza and anyone else who had access to the files. It wasn't too much of a stretch to think that Cooler was watching them right now and that somehow, someway, the recordings of everything that had happened on this planet would make it back to Frieza eventually.

Whether the rest of the squadron was against him or with him, they were all far past the point of no return.

Kakarot crouched down and took the scouter off of Turles's face, then pointed it directly at himself and said, "Who cares about the galaxy? I'm here for me."

He crushed the scouter in his hand, then looked to Turles's spare and blasted it to smithereens with a Death Beam.

"So long, Turles. When you train, remember that a clown did this to you." Kakarot kept his grip firm on Turles's tail, cleared his throat, and then fired dozens of Death Beams directly at Turles's joints as he mockingly cackled, mimicking his former master's laugh. "Ohohohoho!"

His once deadly opponent was now a splayed out smoking heap on the ground, his screams turning to quiet groans of agony. He would live, but it would be long before he could move, giving plenty of time to stew in his defeat. He'd get a zenkai boost from the near death experience, and Kakarot couldn't wait to see how strong it would make him.

"Oh, and one last thing," Kakarot said as he planted a foot on Turles's back and ripped his tail off with a quick yank. "Now you can get stronger, I've already given you a head start."

With his morning workout complete, Kakarot dusted off his hands, found the woman's ring in the rubble, put it in his pocket, and flew away. He had some friends to meet with near the subway station.

He could no longer sense his brother's ki, or anyone else's from his squad for that matter, but he knew in his gut that they were still alive. In the excitement of his own fight, he had forgotten to track their ki, but it wouldn't be an issue. It took a lot more than whatever their opponents could throw at them to beat Vegeta Squadron.