I ducked past a child sized fist traveling at speeds and with a strength that certainly shouldn't have belonged to a child, my arm coming up to block a vicious spinning backhand. I smiled at Apara, ignoring the small stream of blood trickling through my busted bottom lip.

The training hall was as always, nearly empty. It existed as a place for people to spar if they got bored. There were no weights that challenged even the weakest of us without damaging the floor, there was no track or pool to keep us occupied, because what use would it have but to make the ship more expensive? No, most of the time Apara and I found ourselves alone but for a small audience of curious passerby and despairing slaves.

I had taught the Saiyan girl a few tricks, how to cycle her energy, how to gather energy for larger energy blasts, and some fun ways to attack more annoying opponents. That wasn't all she learned.

I was quickly discovering that her talent for violence extended particularly well to martial techniques. Not a surprise, but still unpleasant in its own way. I only had a few ideas she didn't know about as far as physical combat went, and it only took a few weeks before I was learning from her on matters of pure martial arts. That part shouldn't have surprised me but it did. I was a self taught survivor focusing on quickly and quietly handling opponents. She was an endurance warrior from a species notoriously combat oriented. She knew more than I.

Still, I kept her entertained, the difference in our power and my talent for reading intentions made it easy to keep her on the backfoot, even though I knew it wouldn't last too long. Our casualties from the last conquest had given us a gift however. We both had been given the luxury of time, even if it was now running short.

So we trained, and I watched how she jumped up a few points every time I beat her ass like she was a particularly annoying stepchild. It always inverted into itself before it stabilized. Something to look into later, and thoroughly.

Squad assignments hadn't been given out, but the way the commanders were sniffing around us and everyone else that counted as "new" made me assume that they could choose for themselves at times like these. I'd bet my life the leadership were looking for killers suited to their particular style of running thing, and I like to think I'm pretty good with bets like that nowadays.

It took months for the Diligent Frost to Recover its numbers, and by the time we were back on track to conquer worlds I soon realized the majority of people on this ship didn't know of me, hadn't spent the past few years with the understanding that I was beneath them. Veterans and commanders might still treat me somewhat the same, but even that was changing thanks to Jell's eagerness to see our group split apart.

Little by little, I was outliving those on this ship who had been so ready to kill me over the idea I was weaker than them. Not that wasn't true. In their own, simple minded way they were right. I was weaker than them. Yet, in a universe where the rule was strength above all, the one who survived became the strongest by default. I had survived this long, and now I was strong enough to live on this ship.

Of course being a warrior hadn't stopped me from still taking up the position of cook. Apara insisted I fed her at least one meal every day, and the rest of the crew were awfully quick to follow when they found out the alternative was a bland white paste of varying consistency and almost non-existent taste.

What can I say? They shoulda brought snacks.

The difference this time around was usually a good meal came at the cost of a favor, and/or anything of value worth the trade, against what was once simply being allowed to live. Credits had been steadily streaming into my fresh, new Freeza Force sponsored bank account, even without my having touched down on a new planet yet. More than a few trophies from fallen civilizations now littered my personal quarters. I even had a pile of furs and pillows resembling an actual bed now.

In spite of that, they didn't seem too interested in us fighting with them, for whatever reason that might be. Jell had made it clear to everyone he didn't want me or Apara on his squad.

I was treated with geniality by most, and something close to respect from those who knew me from before this fresh new wave of recruits had arrived. In alot of ways this time had been a vacation, a chance to enjoy life to its fullest.

Hell, the new bodies on this vessel hadn't even had the chance to realize the exact nature of our task, our careers in a meritocracy built on a foundation of slaughter. They knew we subjugated worlds, certainly, but with how clean half the energy signatures on this vessel were I could guess they thought it was more threats and bluster than actual genocide.

They had been born into the empire the Cold clan had forged, and that meant they had some understanding of the power we wielded, and zero understanding that the uninformed would not easily give up their independence.

Some of them were actually kind people.

It made me uneasy. Every day I waited for the other shoe to drop. Every day I was left almost disappointed. Not that I didn't make the most of it.

A fist flashed in front of my face, and my moment of introspection was cut short with a burst of pain and an indignant growl from the girl in front of me.

"I don't like being ignored."

She was getting stronger. I sighed, wrenching my now very broken nose back into place. Blood gushed through my fingers. I already needed to visit Medical soon, but it was still going to be a pain dealing with her jumping around my pod, waiting for me to leave.

Ever since Herridan she's been an annoying tick at my side, if that hadn't been the plan it might have been insufferable.

"And I don't like being bitched at, but here we are-" I blocked another punch, this one aimed lower than I liked. "Besides, we were wrapping up anyway. Didn't you want the last of that Gromp steak we have?"

In small brown eyes I witnessed as a battle was fought between hunger for fighting, and hunger for food. At the end of the "day", as it always did, food won. It also won in the beginning for that matter. Sometimes also in the middle.

"Gromp steak?"

Depends on what I gave her.

The liquid of the healing pod was quickly becoming a second home to me. I found it gave me a better awareness of the incremental boosts in power I received with every training session. It made cycling my energy and reaffirming my control over it simpler, even if only by a little bit.

Perfect for meditation.

Oft times in this pod I was trying to find a fair balance between hiding my rate of growth, and making it clear I was growing stronger. I'm healthier now than I had ever been, and that gave me some wiggle room to work with.

I figure I could gain around fifty or so points on my "Official" rating over the next few months without being questioned too heavily about it. From there I just had to keep things quiet for a while longer. Smooth that transition from slave to warrior over a little better.

I may have given the information to Apara relatively freely, but she was drawing her own interpretations about where this sudden increase in ability came from. The last thing I needed was word to get out that I knew how to increase power level better than any active member of Freeza force, and likely even the Planet Trade in its entirety.

Most sentients had marginal increases in power at best from training. That lack of connection to their ki meant they could never travel far beyond the bounds of what their race is naturally capable of.

Unless what your race was capable of far exceeded the norm of what could be reasonably expected of. Lord Freeza and his family came to mind, but the Saiyans were a very distant second if you didn't count the more "unnatural" kind of beings. Without my help they'd likely remain in that second place spot for what had to be in excess of twenty years, before Goku sees that particular mutation wiped out. Kind of anyway.

If I wasn't tortured for the information I'd almost certainly be killed by someone interested in keeping certain status-quos firmly intact.

For now my "active" power level was within a few points of 280, but I had seen respectable advancement without being able to really stretch my abilities, especially since I had forgone training with the blade this early into our partnership. Like Apara, though for different reasons I'd advance at my best through leave on the anonymity of a planet, or the chaos of battle. The latter was already how most sentients managed to increase their ratings anyway. Easier to cover up as well.

So here I was, balancing notice and anonymity. Funny how I've been doing that for as long as I can bring myself to remember. I wonder if it's a survival mechanism. Two years as a slave had conditioned me to make my skills known, but to keep out of sight. That felt right.

It explained why I was feeling annoyed lately.

Keeping out of sight let me listen, let me watch and allowed the chance to learn from a thousand shitty teachers as they tried to survive. That felt like safety, it felt like winning.

It felt like survival.

The new meat didn't feel like survival, they felt like the people we killed every time we landed on a new world. Around Twelve-Hundred souls and only a few dozen left that I actually enjoyed watching. Whenever I had the chance I'd spend hours dead to the world as I familiarized myself with every stray emotion, ever scattered intention of every soul aboard this ship. Two months. I smiled.

In two months I was rapidly approaching the familiarity I had with a crew I had campaigned with for two years. There were gaps of course, and I could have focused harder on them, but as the wheat was separated from the chaff I'd gain valuable insight into what attitudes and behaviors succeeded the most.

Attitudes and behaviors that would be added to my new notebook, freshly bought from a world of feathered bipeds. They'd do very nicely alongside the rest of my findings, all hidden inside a compendium of recipes. Most considered it a primitive method of storing data, but I had done it in a language no one understands on this ship, and one that can't be used against me.

It was high school level Spanish, and the shit grammar and spelling mistakes that could be expected of it, but it was also something no one had seen written before.

So, I was annoyed, but also content.

Not quite content enough however, to miss when something was wrong.

My eyes opened, and I pressed the button made to release me from the healing pod, focusing somewhere to the left just as Apara was noticing my metaphorical hackles rise. Outside the ship, hundreds of miles off I sensed life. Easy to pick up on when the void of space was entirely without ki.

They were getting closer.

Either a large ship or several smaller ones clustered together, a difficult crew size to sort through on short notice, but of a number approaching our own. The sweet taste of malice followed them. They were hunters. There was a hate there I didn't need time to recognize. Xenophobia.

There was something else too. Lust? No, greed. It was greed. They want something we have. Or maybe they just wanted whatever we had.

Pirates then.

Average power level was… Two hundred? Several outliers breached five, with the strongest settling at seven hundred. The strongest one, possibly the leader, had something to prove. She was female. Young. Arrogant.

Interesting. They didn't know us.

"-you sense something? Is someone coming?" My eyes flickered to the Saiyan at my side, a feral grin already slowly sliding onto her face. Something in my gaze must have told her the truth, because I didn't need to answer. Her eyes lit up with something resembling fire. A passion for bloodshed.

"Good." She drawled.

Above us the lighting changed, the relatively calm blue of our overhead lights switching to a flaring yellow. Hundreds of bootsteps echoed throughout the halls as Jernus' voice sounded from every angle, warning of an imminent attack. Many people shouted out in warning, some with concern, some with excitement.

I breathed in, and for a moment I could almost smell our attackers.

Wheat from chaff.