A Desolate Outburst

His chest felt as if a boulder were crushing it, leaving him unable to breathe.

That helplessness, mixed with the fury of one failure after another, churned and burned in his chest.

Broly almost wanted to scream at the lifeless land, to hurl all his frustration out into the open.

He stood on the surface of this desolate planet. Beneath his feet, black rocks were cracked like a spiderweb. Above him stretched the same dark purple sky, forever trapping him here like a lid.

In the distance, three moons of different sizes hung on the horizon. Their overlapping silhouettes looked strange, as if they were there just to mock him.

The wind showed no mercy. It roared toward him, carrying red sand that battered his sturdy frame.

But the wind and sand couldn't move him in the slightest.

He cursed under his breath. "Am I really going to spend another few years in this godforsaken place? Or even decades?!" The wind tore his voice apart, each word sounding as if he had forced it through clenched teeth.

His fists clenched unconsciously, his knuckles giving a muffled crack as veins bulged like earthworms.

Forty-one years.

He had been alone, waiting for forty-one whole years.

Those days had become a mountain growing heavier by the moment, pressing down on his back.

He tilted his head toward the indifferent stars and roared without a sound.

Dark green energy flared uncontrollably from his body, only for him to force it back down.

Again and again, like the endless struggle within him.

"The Frieza Force... how much longer will it take them to find me?! Or have they already forgotten me in some corner of the universe?!" The fury he had built up over decades was like magma beneath the earth, always waiting for a chance to erupt.

His breathing grew heavier. With every breath in, the air around him surged; with every breath out, scorching white mist spilled from his lips.

His emotions were like an ocean in a storm, impossible to calm.

Broly abruptly closed his eyes, his chest heaving.

He forced himself to breathe deeply—drawing in as if to suck the cold from the entire sky into his lungs, then breathing out as if he could expel the fire in his chest and all his resentment along with it.

The rhythm of his breathing stirred the turbulent energy around him, making it swell and contract as it gave off a low hum.

Forty-one years! How many people got to live through forty-one years more than once? He had spent the best, strongest years of his life—the years when he should have been at his peak—on this death planet, abandoned by civilization and forgotten by all life.

All that remained now was the endless desolation before him: jagged rocks, poisonous purple moss, and ugly monsters that killed by instinct alone.

He didn't want to stay in this godforsaken place for another second!

But what could he do? Release his full energy, shining like a beacon to draw in any powerful beings that might be out there in the universe? He had tried that countless times already, and been disappointed just as often.

Before, whenever his power broke through a bottleneck and a flicker of hope ignited within him, he would soar into the sky without hesitation and release his Saiyan energy to its limit.

At those times, a pillar of green energy shot into the clouds, stirring up storms and even briefly dispelling the eternal gloom above the planet.

Like an ancient beast trapped in a cage, he let out his loudest cry of defiance at the cold universe.

But all that answered him was an even deeper silence.

One year, two years... ten years, twenty years... his cries were like stones thrown into the ocean, never to echo back.

The universe was too vast, vast enough to make anyone despair.

Even if his power was enough to destroy galaxies, in this boundless sea of stars he was no more than a pebble dropped into a lake, making the faintest ripple before the void swallowed it whole.

Son Goku, powerful warriors following his energy to find him... It was all bullshit! All of it was a fantasy he'd made up to deceive himself in his despair!

"Phew—!" At last, he let out a long sigh. The sound was heavy with exhaustion and helplessness as he forced the fury threatening to explode back down into his heart.

But he still couldn't control his energy. The ground around him trembled slightly, and loose stones began to float, as if held up by some invisible force.

He turned and headed for "home"—though it was really just a crude cave he had blasted into the side of a sheer cliff with an energy wave.

Every step weighed heavily. Clear cracks appeared in the hard stone beneath his feet.

As he walked, something in the distance caught the corner of his eye, and he suddenly stopped.

The area where he had lived for decades had completely changed.

The already barren land had been violently churned up by some force. Deep trenches and scorched earth stretched everywhere, and the air reeked of pungent sulfur and burnt protein.

At the center of the ruins stood the culprit.

The thing defied any normal description.

It looked like a centipede and some kind of carapace monster had been enlarged a thousandfold and fused together. Thick armor like obsidian covered its body, glimmering with a dim light.

Rows of densely packed, razor-sharp limbs lined both sides of its body, each one like a spear, easily capable of piercing and tearing through the ground with a single movement.

It had no eyes on its head, only a mouth full of spiral-shaped fangs, from which highly corrosive, dark green slime dripped now and then.

It had clearly been riled by the energy Broly had just let slip, and now it was furiously ramming his cave with its massive body and countless sharp legs.

Rocks kept breaking apart, and large sections of the mountainside collapsed beneath the monster's brute force.

Broly's brows lifted slightly. The composure he had barely maintained shattered like ice tossed into a fire.

The monster wasn't just attacking a cave that sheltered him from the wind. It was attacking the only place on this planet that still made him feel he belonged.

Bloodlust and fury spread through his emerald eyes like ink dropped into clear water.

In that instant, the twisted monster, its entire body covered in dark purple scales, seemed to have its nerves pierced by invisible needles of ice. Its movements stopped dead.

Its pair of crimson compound eyes spun wildly, then fixed on what stood behind it—Broly, standing silently on the broken rock, his silver-white hair fluttering in the dust, his icy gaze fixed on it like an abyss.

The air seemed to freeze solid.

The beast's instincts exploded within it. Every scale on its body trembled, and its muscles tensed like iron. It wasn't fear, but something more primal and savage—a warning: Run! Run now! As far away as possible!

Its powerful hind legs kicked off the ground. The earth cracked beneath it as its massive body began to turn and flee—

"Since you've come," Broly said, his voice low but cold as iron scraping across the wilderness, "you're not leaving."

Before the words had even left his mouth, he casually raised his right hand and loosely curled his fingers. A ball of emerald light flared in his palm, spinning and swelling until it became a restless energy sphere.

The light wasn't blinding, yet it seemed capable of devouring everything. Even the light around it was sucked in as it emitted a low hum.

The monster let out a shrill screech and desperately tried to leap away—Broly merely flicked his hand, as if brushing dust from his shoulder.

The emerald energy sphere flew silently through the air, leaving behind a distorted trail of searing heat, and struck the monster squarely in its thick chest.

Time seemed to slow.

The next second, immense force erupted.

The monster's body, dozens of meters tall, was struck head-on by an invisible giant hammer. It had no chance to fight back and was blasted into the sky, like a dead leaf swept up by a gale, shooting straight toward the gray heavens.

It flailed its remaining limbs wildly, but its howls were soon swallowed by the energy storm.

Then—

"BOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!"

The explosion shook the heavens.