A tall and muscular humanoid of orange skin and spiky, brown hair that very nearly reached the back of his knees walked into the room, halting briefly so that the round, bone-texture door could open and let him in. The burly alien approached the lone, bored figure seated on a throne of bones supporting his heavy head with an all-covering helmet on one of his fists as he stared on to a blank point in space.
"Lord Slug, we've tracked the planet where the Saiyan landed. It's on an advanced, faraway planet on the very northern edge of the North Galaxy," the athletic brute reported to the concealed man who appeared intrigued enough to straighten his back and lift his head off of the resting place of his fist.
"Excellent, find a decently occupied city, and send out troops to try and take it over. Let's see what sort of military power this planet has. I want you and the rest of the clan to scout the planet for a sign of Dragon Balls or the Saiyan," a cybernetically modified voice came from Lord Slug's helmet. There was heavy wheezing coming from the seated ruler suggesting that he had difficulty breathing even in the sated artificial conditions of his own spaceship.
"At once, Lord Slug!" Commander Zeeun pressed his feet together and straightened his back before leaving his lord's side. A cyan-skinned humanoid of relatively attractive facial features and antique clothing style and a pair of bony horns decorating his forehead met the burly alien in the hallway.
"We're landing. Lord Slug wants us to send a squad of scouts to try and take a decently sized city, see how much this planet resists. With some luck, we'll draw the female Saiyan out and crush her for what she did to us," Commander Zeeun smirked while addressing his fellow clansman.
"Why on Earth does Lord Slug even want this planet? There's nothing on it that there's not on one of the nearby uninhabited planets or satellites. If it's the Saiyan's torment he wants – one of us would be more than enough. Didn't she lose to Medamatcha?" Angila shrugged with a smug-looking face.
"Your vanity is blinding your judgment. The Saiyan knew all about the Ultimate Dragon Balls, how could she have known what the Dragon Balls are?" Commander Zeeun replied.
"I see… So, Lord Slug believes that this planet might have another set? Interesting…" Angila turned his head toward the porthole to gaze at the cerulean and juniper orb shrouded with clear white layers of clouds from the outside.
"You're in luck then, we get the esteemed task of scouting this planet for any treasured artifacts, its set of the Dragon Balls or the Saiyan," Commander Zeeun smirked, finding the enthusiasm of his fellow space demon rather infectious.
"Let the others know then, Commander Zeeun…" Angila showed his teeth with a malicious grin, emphasizing the honorable title of his fellow-clansman as if it granted him a responsibility that didn't plague Angila himself.
Commander Zeeun let out a mean snarl while his handsome, demonic comrade ran off to scout the planet the moment that Lord Slug's spaceship lands. While the artificial planetoid floated in space within a visible distance from Earth for a while after breaking its space-traveling speed, it began picking up speed for its inevitable descent and invasion.
"Bulma-san!" Dr. Puri burst outside of the Capsule Corp laboratory having worked up quite the sweat and rushed into the indoors garden all worked up, throwing her gaze madly across the heavenly decorum in search for her employer who was resting before a lamp in her bikini and shades while tinkering with some handheld gadget, surrounded by lush green and serene tranquility.
"Huh? Did you scratch a promethium core again? I told you, just stick it inside of the capsule and it'll contain the blast, in theory, anyway…" Bulma raised her shades after Dr. Puri called out to her again.
"No, I've set the energy radar to observe the outer space for when Chayote comes back from her trip to Planet Namek and we've picked something up," Dr. Puri reported. "Though it doesn't look like Chayote's spaceship, it looks like the whole of Planet Namek came back with her!"
"You mean like… She brought all of the Namekians back?" Bulma blinked a couple of times, trying to internalize a reason as to why the Saiyan would have had to do something like that.
"No! Both the energy reading and the object closing in are massive. It's almost like a minor planet's homing into our atmosphere with frightening precision. It'll be hitting South City in ten minutes if it continues on the same trajectory!" Dr. Puri reported with an expression that was equally as baffled as it was petrified in fright.
"That's odd… There weren't meant to be any astronomical objects of that size in our galaxy that we weren't aware of, especially if they're headed to Earth," Bulma pondered, jumping off of her beach chair and rushing to the lab after her assistant, picking up a white coat so that the other employees don't see her prancing around the workspace in a swimsuit.
"See? At this distance, it should be already visible with a naked eye. Look at the temperature!" Dr. Puri pointed at a specific line of the energy readings.
"No way! How can it be this cold? It's supposed to be traveling at faster than light speeds or using wormholes to be traveling this fast, not to mention the natural heat of entry into our atmosphere," Bulma went pale, wondering if it was a malfunction in her devices recording the energy readings or if what they were dealing with was completely outside the realms of science that they knew of.
"It's no malfunction, I've helped fine-tune the Capsule Corps drones and satellites – there are no errors. It must be using a type of cold fusion," Dr. Puri pondered, becoming more and more enthralled by the almost supernatural object closing in on Earth. The scientist's eyes went from being terrified by it to almost allured by its intricacies. It was that drive and passion that led to Bulma insisting that Dr. Puri was hired and kept at such an important position though it sometimes creeped the scientific prodigy herself out.
"Cold fusion is meant to occur at room temperature, those temperatures are colder than the Northern Region…" Bulma muttered.
"That's how potent it is. Theoretically, of course, it's almost like… Super cold fusion," Dr. Puri moved in closer to Bulma, pressing against her superior as the scientist's cheeks flushed with red from excitement. "We simply must pick this thing apart!"
"We must make sure that it doesn't destroy South City or the whole Earth first. I'll call Goku…" Bulma sighed, dragging her hand across her face as she shuffled through her own messy worktable, pushing various blueprints and tools off of it to make her browsing simpler.
"Goku and his family are in South City already, they are on their shopping trip, I believe. Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu are training in the mountains north-west to East City. I've no idea where Krillin is, meaning that he is likely training in God's Temple and Yamcha is…" Dr. Puri started listing potential superior options for Bulma to call seeing how Goku's family weren't known for their tech-savvy nature and responsiveness on the phone.
"How do you know all that? Were you keeping tabs on everybody?" Bulma raised an eyebrow, looking equal part as strict as she was impressed. So impressed and freaked out, in fact, that it was enough for her to hide the fact that she actively wanted to avoid knowing where Yamcha was.
"Naturally," Dr. Puri replied with a calm expression as if it was no big deal whatsoever to have drones follow people around for a whole week keeping watch on them and a constant record of their location and choice of activity. "In case a need such as this for their brawny services ever rose…"
"This feels itchy…" Gohan whined, scratching at his square-shaped blue suit capped off with an oversized bowtie. "Do I really have to wear it?"
"Only when you're studying. The clerk said that this is what most boys your age wear to school," Chi-Chi replied, pulling and adjusting the suit according to her preferences and little Gohan's size while Goku sneered from the side, seated across on a small armchair meant for customers to measure boots on.
"What does it matter what I wear when I'm studying?" Gohan wondered, stretching his limbs out in the uncomfortable suit and trying to bend his knees in the awfully tight shorts. They clearly were never meant to host a tail inside.
"You won't be studying alone anymore, you know. Most kids start school at your age and while we live too far away from school, we can always invite a private tutor to come to us. You can start high school once you get older and can ride Kinto all by yourself," Chi-Chi replied.
Goku grunted, shooting his gaze high up while Chi-Chi and Gohan followed not too long after with the mother and child being too engaged in their lukewarm discussion of their future plans to notice the sky-splitting Ki signature right over their heads. The lights began flickering not too long later and just a few blinks after all of the visitors of the mall felt the ground shift from under their feet.
"Gohan-chan, switch out to something more comfortable!" Chi-Chi yelled out trying to overpower the rumbling and howling with her voice as the lights went completely out and noises of the whole city being reduced to rubble outside made it difficult for the family to hear each other even if they were safely sheltered inside of the mall and couldn't see the chaos transpiring outdoors.
"C-Could this be this Chayote person coming back?" Gohan wondered as he handed his mother the folded up suit and shorts for her to gently place on the nearby armchair only for the whole store to shake again and throw clothes flying all over the place.
"No way, this ain't Chayote's Ki at all!" Goku exclaimed with a troubled tone as he slipped out from a pile of rubble and began throwing aside all of the bras hanging on his spiky hair and slipping out from the child-sized t-shirts hanging on his arms. "This is something really bad…"
"There's a number of them, we're fighting too!" Chi-Chi declared, turning to Gohan by her side.
"Are you sure? They feel like some crazy powerful guys, stronger than even the Saiyans," Goku wondered, stretching out with an excited expression as he's been longing for some action this whole past week spent accompanying Chi-Chi and Gohan on their family trip.
"I don't like the idea of Gohan-chan fighting but the safest place for him is still by our side," Chi-Chi admitted. "Goku-sa is immensely powerful but you still get reckless with the King Kai's Fist all the time. Someone needs to make sure that Gohan-chan doesn't grow up without his father."
Both the parents and their child took off and levitated through the shaky grounds, taking a few seconds to examine the rubble in the malls. Gohan flew over to assist a few poor, shaken civilians hanging off of the torn-up steel railings just a few inches away from plummeting down and breaking something more than what was already broken.
"Those Ki, they're splitting up…" Goku noted, staring off into a blank point as if he could gaze through the caving in the roof of the mall. Once Gohan assisted everyone in his sight, the three took off through the jarring hole in the roof to gaze at the curiosities transpiring outdoors.
Every tall building in East City was broken off like a twig taking too much pressure. The fallen buildings smoldered with weak flames that raised trailing pillars of black smoke while mountains of solid ice loomed in between the regions of wreckage as a challenge to one's sanity in the context of the fire and cinders swarming in the air.
"That thing must've smashed into the city…" Goku pointed at the minor planet made out of antiquated machinery and standing on the solid ground covering the entire central district of the city as it towered over the horizon standing on four, feeble mechanical legs.
"No, it didn't smash, it landed but the gravitational force of such a massive object must have crushed and pushed everything around it aside. I'm not sure where all of this ice came from, I didn't hear any weaponry being used…" Gohan added making Chi-Chi turn to her son with a proud look on her face. She didn't quite get a thing of what he said but it sounded like something that Bulma would say and Bulma was pretty smart, meaning her little boy was too.
Mothers were meant to be proud of their smart boys, it said so in the magazines…
"Where are those guys flying off to?" Goku looked around in various directions where the massive Ki signatures took off to. "One's homing in on Kame House, someone needs to warn the old-timer…"
"We've got flyers!" a muzzled, cybernetic voice came from down below as a squad of soldiers in black bodysuits and ivory-colored, spiky body armor raised their weapons, aiming it at the airborne family. "Engaging the threat!"
As the fusillade of laser bolts erupted from the army, brightening up the sky certainly enough to light a normal, Earthling family up thousand times over, Gohan moved out in front of his father and mother and threw his arms to the sides, erupting in a vociferous battle cry as a gleaming bubble of golden Kiai dome surrounded his parents and himself, protecting them from all harm.
"We've got hostiles, release the drones and battle-bots!" the muzzled voices of the soldiers down below filled the air as the large, mechanical ship lowered a few of its compartments, shooting out cascades of spherical objects that unraveled into vaguely insectoid bodies with oval heads and landed in between Slug's spaceship and the defending family.
"I think these might be aliens invading our planet," Gohan proclaimed, pointing at the highly advanced military technology that seemed alien even compared to the scientific breakthroughs that Capsule Corp had to offer.
"You mean like in one of those movies!?" Chi-Chi smacked her own cheeks horrified. "There's no way a normal family can prosper in a post-apocalyptic environment or under the tyrannical rule of alien invaders!"
"Yeah, we'll have to send them all flying!" Goku punched his open palms, smirking in excitement as while he couldn't quite sense or measure up the strength of his mechanical enemies, he didn't see himself losing to some fancy tin-can the likes of which he fought as a child when taking down the Rainbow Brigade.
A swarm of drones filled the skies from the same openings that released the colossal battle-bots. They didn't take long to close in on the airborne family and suppress them to the ground with a bright outburst of a laser bolt barrage. Gohan extended his arms to the side to shield his family again but something large and mechanical enclosed over him when one of the battle-bots fired off his entire arm and grabbed Gohan as it transformed into a holding unit.
A wrathful shriek filled the air as Goku peeled the holding unit apart like a cardboard box and burst out from it. The freed family danced around the laser bolts, evading the focused fire from down below, eluding the terraforming waves of supercharged heat energy that the battle-bots fired off from their eyes, chests, and hands as well as fired a barrage of Ki blast at the incoming drones.
"This is too much. We better move to the lower level and mingle in between the ruined buildings. It'll be easier channeling the drones that way!" Gohan suggested, diving down first only for his parents to follow right after as his safety was still their number one priority. This turned out to be a great plan as it focused the seemingly endless stream of armored and well-armed footmen as well as the drones while the battle-bots had a far tougher time finding the family.
It didn't take long for Goku, Chi-Chi, and Gohan to get their act together and regroup. Signifying his might with a battle cry, Goku punched through one of the supersized battle-bots and turned around to decimate it with a Kamehameha wave while Chi-Chi continued to pummel another one by the head until it separated from its body, at which point the infuriated mother kicked it like a football back toward the body that hosted it, detonating both parts of the mechanical colossus. Gohan cried out as well as he released a focused, full-power energy wave toward a third battle-bot, blasting a hole through it. It dealt enough structural damage to blow the bot up.
"Stand down…" a sharp, low-pitched, and masculine voice with great authority rung from down below. The raging family barely noticed it until all of the attackers seemingly lowered their weapons while the drones began patrolling the city instead of trying to swarm and blast them to pieces. The voice came from a cloaked figure that was twice the size of its soldiers and approached to where the family was floating over, prompting them to land to meet and greet this figure that halted the assault on them by these alien invaders.
"Are you the one who did all this?" Goku extended his clenched fist, asking with an outraged tone as if threatening to explode in wrath and use that fist on this enigmatic figure soon enough.
"What you are dealing with here, soldiers, is a Saiyan. One of the important things we sought to find on this planet though this Saiyan doesn't seem like he is the one we're looking for. Curiously enough, it's a child. Which one of you two are the adult Saiyan that produced this halfling, I wonder?" the man asked in a mechanical voice while proceeding to ignore Goku's question.
"Saiyan? Are you talking about me? I don't care about Saiyans unless they're threatening my family! Go talk to my father if you're so interested in them and leave Earth out of it!" Goku demanded as if his threats were of any interest to the cloaked leader of the invaders.
"I think he was talking about me," Gohan turned back and looked down at his waggling tail.
"Ah, I see, so it is the father who is a Saiyan. It would be easier to make a child talk though I am afraid that he might not know as much as the father. He has a sharper mind though… Kill the mother and the child, I'll capture the father myself," the cloaked, three-meter tall alien removed his hood, revealing a colorful space helmet of white sides, violet center with a gleaming, blue orb in the center. There was little of flesh visible on this alien though what little did see the light of day was like of a shade of swampy, dying out green.
"What was that!?" Goku entered his fighting stance, preparing to engage this spacefaring demon while the soldiers aimed their weapons at Chi-Chi and Gohan again, preparing to try and overwhelm them with superior numbers and relentless pressure.