Tales of the Monkey Queen

by SSVCloud

The story of Son Goku is very well known... but how much would be different if Goku was a girl? More than you'd think, but less than you'd hope. Join us as we explore that change and many others.

75. Tales of the Lost Son! BONUS

Chapter Seventy-five

Tales of the Lost Son! Cooler and Goku!

I am Cooler of Arcosia. And I am burdened with glorious purpose.

I am the firstborn son of Cold, King of the Arcosian Empire, and his Queen Subsera. From the moment I came into the world, it was foretold that I might one day have the strength to surpass my father. Which I knew meant that one day I must kill him. This is not cruel nor is it treacherous. It is simply the way of our people: power belongs to the strong. My father was even accepting of this eventuality. From the moment I could walk and speak, I was trained to rule. I was taught all the courtesies and the prose, the posture and the noble airs. I was taught to fight. I have always enjoyed fighting, in truth. Not merely the visceral thrill of combat but training as well. Honing my skills, increasing my strength, learning new ways to bolster my power. Salza, my oldest and staunchest companion, has often called me "The Most Immaculate Fighter in the Universe", although I know he merely boasts on my behalf.

He's not wrong, of course.

The world was simple. Every day, I grew stronger, swifter, more cunning and more wise. My father sent me to different worlds to study under the finest minds in the universe. Before my twelfth birthday, I was already a Grandmaster of Tarcotur, a game as many times more complex than chess as I am more complex than an amoeba. The universe would one day be mine.

Then everything changed.

He was born.

I will never forget that day. I will never forget how my mother screamed as he was brought into the world. The last sound she would ever make. By that time, I had already learned how to sense energy. So great a power appearing so suddenly nearly drove me mad. I watched with confusion and dismay as my father scooped him out of the slime and the bits of his shell and held the infant proudly over his head. A small, squirming, squalling little thing. Alabaster white and so freshly born that his biogems were still jelly-like.

"My second son," King Cold had cried proudly, "Freeza!" Everyone cheered when my father stood upon the parapet and held him out for the entire universe to see. How happy we all were. How foolish. I do say "we" because I did truly try to be happy for my brother's birth. I wanted to be his friend. Then everything turned wrong. He was violent and temperamental, as all children are, but he also had incredible power as I had never seen. As had never been seen in any mortal in recorded history. It was all that father and I could do to subdue him even as a child. His power grew seemingly without effort. Special rooms were built in the palace to pacify and control him, although he was told that they were built for his comfort. He infuriated me with his every waking moment. All the work that I had done throughout my life to become as powerful as I had and he eclipsed me by simply existing. The fact that I had been bred to be a king and all of my dreams to rule the universe with a katchin bootheel on its throat… what did they matter now that we lived in a universe where Freeza existed?

To make Freeza complacent, we gave him the illusion of power. The Planet Trade Organization is merely a branch of the Arcosian Empire itself. The universe is vast beyond measure and half of it belongs to our family. You cannot grasp the size of the universe. What you believe you can understand is perhaps a tenth of a thousandth of its true size. My father held ten times that much in the palm of his hand. By keeping Freeza in the dark, we made him believe that the Planet Trade Organization was the bulk of our power, in yet another piece of our campaign against him. Ah, but I have forgotten to tell you when the campaign began. This is my foolishness.

My father was more observant of his violent behaviours than I had believed him to be, as I discovered one day when he invited me into his solar. This was not long after Freeza exterminated the Saiyans. A terrible waste. Not of life, of course; I've destroyed a few races myself. No, no, it was a waste of resources. The Saiyans had been incredibly useful and would have continued to be so for quite some time. And why did he do it? Because he feared the legends of our ancestors. Super Saiyans and Super Saiyan Gods. Honestly, what did we ever have to fear of the latter? The idea that six good-hearted Saiyans could exist… But back to my meeting with my father.

"He will kill you," my father told me, apropos of nothing.

"He will," I agreed. It was our way, after all. Power belongs to the strong. My birthright meant little so long as Freeza had power surpassing my own.

"Then he will kill me," my father added, "And bring us all to ruin." Freeza could not be taught and he could not be reasoned with. He acts a gentleman when forced to but an act is all it is. When he doesn't get his way? He destroys a planet. My father and I both knew that even if no mortal force could stand against my brother, he would gladly burn our empire to ash as long as no one tried to take away his toys. Yet we also knew that there was a higher force that could strike Freeza down and take our empire with him.

Ah, I see I have erred again. No doubt you are confused as to why I, an Arcosian, would speak of a "higher power". While it is true that our people cannot conceive of a supreme divinity above ourselves, my father has entrusted me with a sacred truth that was passed down from his father and his father before him and so on. A secret known only to the king and his heir. We know that there is a God.

I was only a boy the first time my father took me to stand in His presence. It was during the beautiful time, the time Before Freeza. We came to a neutral world, the two of us, a flock of servants, and the finest chefs in my father's empire. That was a strange company although I soon understood why.

First I saw His Attendant, the Angel. The one called "Whis." I had not yet learned how to sense energy, so all I knew about him was that he was strange. With his blue skin and his tall white hair and his strange clothes, all I could think of him was that he was… off.

"King Cold," Whis declared as the servants prepared a table and chairs, "Prince Cooler–" I wondered how he knew my name, "I invite you to behold the presence of The God of Destruction: Beerus the Destroyer." One moment there was nothing.

Then He was sat before us.

Even though I could not sense energy, I knew that I was beholden to immeasurable power. His half-lidded, yellow eyes looked into my soul. The air seemed to shimmer around Him, as if reality itself trembled before His presence. I could not imagine the power of a being so great. The power over life and death that He held in His hands, to destroy worlds with a word. He was like nothing I had ever seen. He is a light and all else is dark. As beautiful and terrible as the dawn. This first meeting was exactly when I understood what the lessons in courtesy and civility and manners were for. We Arcosians may be the most powerful mortals in the universe and a King may stand above even them but there are those to whom even a King must kneel.

I have only met Beerus twice- He tends to spend quite a lot of time either sleeping or destroying- yet even in those few meetings I had an almost instant and powerful feeling for him. It was not love but something else, something… higher. A reverence or an awe that I have never felt for any mortal being.

"Where is this other son of yours," Beerus asked my father on the second meeting, "This Freeza? I hear he's the most powerful mortal ever born and I must say that I'm rather intrigued." I still remember how my father broke into a terrified sweet at the very mention of my mercurial brother.

"You must forgive me, Lord Beerus," he replied with bowed head. "Young Freeza is not yet prepared to stand before you." Beerus only chuckled.

"Well, you had better get to teaching him," he teased. "I'd like to meet him the next time I wake up."

My father and I both knew that if Freeza were to kill us both and come to power that he would never be able to understand the superiority of Beerus's power, especially with his insane thoughts of godhood. He would challenge Beerus and be slaughtered and, as punishment, Beerus would destroy our worlds, if not the entirety of the Empire.

"You cannot allow him to take the throne," my father told me bluntly.

"Of course," I agreed, "But what can I do?"

"You must train," he told me, "And you must kill him." So our play began. I left the Empire in a self-imposed exile, taking only my Armored Squadron, my own ship, and a hundred of my own foot soldiers. I travelled the uncharted corners of the cosmos, exposing myself to gravities and climates so severe that it put even my Arcosian durability to its limits. Apparently during my absence, Freeza took a bride and got her with child, a repugnant brat named Kuriza who is every inch his father.

I had to kill him as well.

For five years I pushed myself beyond my limits and every day I could feel my power climbing. But there was something holding me back, some mental block in my way.

Then, to my horror, I discovered that Freeza was attempting to make himself immortal. I immediately mobilized my forces and returned to civilized space, although "civilized" was a stretched term. Some filthy backwater planet in the Western Quadrant called "Namek." That was where a planet was supposed to be. Instead, we found, to our surprise, a field of ash and my brother's mutilated corpse among the ruins. I brought him onboard the ship and delivered him home.

Would it have been easier to kill him there? Of course.

Should I have killed him on the operating table when my father was restoring him? Possibly.

But I would not do this. Not out of "love" or "honor", which are the foolish moralities of lesser beings, but because when he died it had to matter. I would not be able to secure my throne if it was not indisputable that mine was the ultimate power in the universe. If Freeza were to die "mysteriously" or "tragically" then, even if I sat the throne until the end of days, there would always be the whispers.

"Oh, if Freeza were alive, Cooler would not hold this power." "If Freeza were alive, he'd show Cooler what for." "If Freeza were alive…"

So I immediately left Arcosia and returned to my training. Yet always I hit a wall. Always I reached my limit. And since I knew Freeza's power against my own, I knew that it was never enough. In a final act of desperation, I found a planet that orbited a neutron star. I threw myself into the star. You cannot imagine the gravity of a neutron star. How it crushes you. How it pulls you down. I thought I was going to die. I was sure that I was doomed. I raged and despaired. I cursed my pride and my vanity and stupidity even as the weight pulled me down into the star's surface and I could feel the heat consume me.

There, at the moment of death, at the absolute depths of my self-loathing, I finally broke through. I transformed. I broke free of the star's grip like ripping through a cloud. I was larger, stronger, and my bone armor had grown more fierce and imposing. I could break the speed of light under my own power and nearly flew home without my ship. Of course, I went back and collected the ship because, well, it's mine. I wasn't going to leave it in the ass-end of the universe.

When I returned to the civilized universe, my worst fears had come true. Someone else had killed my father and brother. Some "Super Saiyan." So they were real. And my extended family had taken to squabbling over the throne and the empire and who had the best claim to serve as regent until Kuriza came of age. While they were squabbling, the Federation was tearing our empire, my empire apart. In three years after Freeza's death, the Empire shrank to a third of its former glory. This could not stand. It would not.

I can still remember their faces as I walked into the throne room. Nearly a hundred squawking, rambling fools fell silent as they felt my presence. I remember Kuriza sitting high upon the throne of my ancestors, nearly identical to his father. Only his gems were red where Freeza's had been purple and his skull gem came to a point. He was also, if possible, even smaller than Freeza. His mother Eis stood beside him. It was the first time I had ever met her and she was unusual for our people. Her horns were curved, her skin was a mottled green, her gems were white, and her armor was gray. There was nothing of her in the son at all. Very confusing.

"I am here," I declared with my voice echoing off the chamber walls, "To take my throne."

They fought me, of course.

They died.

I am not ashamed to admit that I killed my family. Power belongs, after all, to the strong. Although I do have to admit that Kuriza forced me to transform. It seems he had been an even greater prodigy than his father. He could have been a powerful warrior if I had died in that neutron star.

So here now I sit, with the golden circlet upon my brow and the cape across my shoulders. The circlet is made from gold harvested in the vacuum of space and the cape is made of fabrics woven from the most valuable gems of every planet in the empire. Although many of the fabrics are "free" now. I must reclaim all that which was lost.

Then I must have more. I will expand the Arcosian Empire until every star in the sky belongs to me.

I cannot stop training. I must master this new form. I will not be a fool like my brother, who let his power burn out and bleed because he was arrogant and stupid. I will become more powerful than any Arcosian ever.

Then I must have more. If other beings could defeat Freeza then he cannot be as all-powerful as we believed. If Super Saiyans, are real I must surpass them. First, I will kill the one that killed my brother and father, for the principle of the thing. Then I must push myself ever further. For if Freeza can be surpassed, even He may be surpassed. The universe will be mine to command. To control.

I am Cooler of Arcosia. And I am burdened with glorious purpose.

OoOoOoO

Hey everyone, Goku here! Man, it has been a crazy few months since I landed on Yardrat. That's where I wound up after I left Namek. Everything was kinda, y'know, exploding, so I just started pushing buttons until the Ginyu pod I stole took off. I just kinda crashed into Yardrat, which honestly hurt me more than the whole fight with Freeza did after I turned Super Saiyan (but don't tell him that, I think he's kinda sensitive about being strong). Between that and the damage I'd taken before turning Super Saiyan, I was pretty messed up. But the people of Yardrat took me in and patched me up. The Yardrat...ians (they never actually told me what they were called) are a bunch of bug-eyed, pink-skinned people with big wrinkly, pink heads and blue spots where hair should be. I know they sound weird but they were actually really nice! I especially liked their outfits.

They took me to Tsukemen, who was their greatest healer, and she covered me in some kind of weird purple goo that made my whole body tingle. Then she used some kind of magic to heal all my wounds. At least I'm pretty sure it was magic. Then they gave me clean clothes once I was washed and healed. They all wear these puffy white shirt with frilly collars and red pants, plus armor pieces that cover their chests, waists, and one shoulder. Though I don't really know why they had armor considering that they're not really big fighters. I'll get to that later, though.

Once I was healed and clothed, it was time to eat! And man, the Yardrat really like to eat. Almost as much as me! I mean, their food looked kinda weird, like a lot of melons with tentacles and purple meat, but it still tasted really good. Besides, it was their planet, who was I to judge? And all of this was before they even asked who I was or why I was there. The people of Yardrat are super friendly!

Finally, though, they took me to Soumen, the leader of the Yardrat people. Soumen had a tall white hat with a blue gem on the top that basically said he was in charge. He was like the chief of Suno's village but, y'know, for the whole planet. I figured out their language (I've always been pretty good at learning languages for some reason) and told him my whole story. Soumen told me that it would take a while for them to fix my ship but that I could stay on Yardrat as an honored guest until I was ready to leave. Which was fine with me because I still had to learn how to control my power as a Super Saiyan. I explained that to them, too, and for some reason the words "Super Saiyan" made them really nervous.

"If you love fighting as much as you say," Soumen told me, "And if it is help you seek, then I shall send you to Soba, our greatest warrior." I was really excited at the idea of meeting another planet's greatest fighter and immediately agreed. Soumen took me to the mountaintop Soba lived on and I was surprised how different he looked from everyone else. His skin was green and he was muscular and tall and he wore black pants and a white cape. With his pointy ears and bald head, he looked a little bit like Piccolo!

"I am Soba," he introduced himself, "And I am Yardrat's greatest warrior."

"I'm Son Goku," I introduced back, "And I'm pretty strong, too!" So he challenged me to a spar. That didn't go so great for him.

It turns out that Yardrat's greatest warrior… iiiiiisn't so strong. I mean, he put up a pretty good fight but I'm pretty sure if I'd used Kaiouken I would have killed him. Even so, he asked me to turn Super Saiyan.

"I really don't know how," I admitted, "It just sort of happened. And even if I knew how, I don't think I want to yet. I'm… afraid of what I might do."

"You will always be afraid," Soba replied, "Until you try." Soba always made a lot of sense. Talking to him was kind of like those three years I spent training with Kami. So I put myself back in the spot I'd been when I transformed the first time. I remembered Krillin's death and Freeza's laugh. Most of all, I remembered what he said.

'I think one of your brood should go next.' It all came back to me then, the fury and the hatred and the power. I tried to control it, tried to hold it down, but I could feel myself slipping almost immediately. Then Soba grabbed me and the next thing I knew we were on another planet. I was so startled and confused that I lost my anger and dropped out of Super Saiyan.

"Where are we?" I asked as I looked around the different stars in the dark pink sky. "How did you do that? What was that?"

"We are on Minasirith," Soba told me, "A planet in the Eastern Galactic Quadrant. And this," he grabbed me again and we were back on Yardrat, "Is Instant Transmission. My people's greatest technique. I am its greatest master."

Well, you know me. As soon as I heard the word "technique", I just had to learn it. The way Soba explained it to me was that Instant Transmission could take you anywhere, instantly, as long as you could sense someone's ki. I mean, he used the word "essence" but what he described was ki. I know there may not seem like many battlefield applications for that kind of teleportation but I think I can figure something out.

Every day we sat and we meditated. It's kinda funny, I always thought meditating was boring when I trained with Kami but when we started doing it I realized that I had missed it. Especially since I had to turn Super Saiyan before I meditated so that brought an extra challenge to it and I love a challenge. I wondered when Soba was going to teach me about Instant Transmission but one day I realized that meditating was teaching me. I opened myself back up to the ki channels of all living things and expanded my consciousness so that I could sense things across huge distances, even whole galaxies away. After that, it was just about focusing on one spot in particular and focusing my energies to project them across that distance. I think that's what the fingers are for but I never really asked. Yardrats have two less fingers than we do so they only put one finger to their heads but I used two. Again, I'm not really sure why, it just kinda felt right.

A few months have passed and I've finally gotten control of my Super Saiyan powers and I've mastered the Instant Transmission technique. Although, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure if I have it totally down. I haven't practiced with it across huge distances so I think I'll just take the Ginyu pod so I don't die in the vacuum of space or anything.

I say my goodbyes to the people of Yardrat and hop into the space pod. It's kind of funny that the ship has Earth in its computer, although it's called "Terra" for some reason. I dunno. I just push a few buttons and it blasts me off into space. Man, I can't wait to get home! I wonder what everyone's been up to.

---

Namek Saga:

Kiwi – 9,000

Vegeta – 12,000

Vegeta (Post Zarbon Zenkai) – 14,000

Vegeta (Post Burter Zenkai) – 40,000

Vegeta (Post Krillin Zenkai) – 100,000

Dodoria – 10,000

Zarbon – 11,000

Zarbon (Transformed) – 13,000

Krillin – 1,800

Krillin (VS Recoome) – 13,000

Krillin (VS Freeza) – 20,000

Gohan – 1,700

Gohan (VS Recoome) – 13,500

Gohan (Post Jeice Zenkai) – 20,000

Gohan (VS Freeza) – 25,000

Gohan (Post 2nd Form Freeza Zenkai) – 70,000

Gohan (Rage) – 90,000

Suno – 2,000

Suno (VS Guldo) – 13,200

Suno (VS Freeza) – 21,000

Nail – 20,000

Guldo – 9,000

Recoome – 15,000

Burter – 14,000

Jeice – 16,000

Ginyu – 27,000

Ginyu (Goku's Body) – 10,000

Goku – 20,000

Goku (Kaiouken x2) – 40,000

Goku (Post Ginyu Zenkai) – 100,000

Goku (Kaiouken x10) – 1,000,000

Goku (Kaiouken x20) – 2,000,000

Goku (Super Saiyan) – 5,000,000

Piccolo – 4,000

Piccolo (Post Fusion w/ Nail) – 80,000

Freeza – 55,000

Freeza (2nd Form) – 80,000

Freeza (3rd Form) – 100,000

Freeza (50% Final Form) – 2,000,000

Freeza (100% Final Form) – 4,000,000