Vegeta

That night, the wind on Mount Paozu was cool.

Ji Ming sat on the stone steps outside the house, holding a bowl of hot porridge Chi-Chi had pressed into his hands. It was no longer steaming, but he had barely taken a few sips. His eyes rested on the distant ridgeline, where the sky was shifting from inky blue to deep gray. In a few hours, dawn would come.

The door creaked open behind him.

Son Goku came out and sat beside him. Father and son sat shoulder to shoulder on the steps, one in an orange gi, the other in one as well. The moonlight stretched their shadows to the same length.

After about three minutes of silence, Son Goku spoke. His tone was unlike usual—no goofy grin, no scratching his head. He sounded calm and plain, as if he were talking about something he had pondered for a long time.

"When you turned into a Super Saiyan today, Chi-Chi was beside me. She didn't say a word, but her hands kept shaking."

Ji Ming lowered his gaze to the porridge. The moon's reflection trembled on its surface.

"I know."

"She wasn't afraid you'd get hurt. She was afraid you wouldn't be her son anymore."

Ji Ming's fingers tightened slightly, feeling the smooth, cold ceramic rim beneath them. Those words weighed more heavily than any punch, hurt more than the agony of recovering from the brink of death. He had always known that he was not Son Gohan. Chi-Chi did not. Yet through this body, he had felt all her worry, every hug, every time she got up in the middle of the night to tuck him in. No one had ever done those things for him before he crossed over. Afterward, they had flooded over him like a tide. He had kept accepting them, but he did not know whether he had the right to.

"Dad."

"Yeah?"

"If one day I turn into someone none of you recognize—not a change like becoming a Super Saiyan, but another kind of change—would you still accept me?"

Son Goku did not answer right away. He crossed his legs, tapped his fingers twice against his knee, then tipped his head back to look at the moon. A man who never needed to hesitate on the battlefield thought for a long time now.

"The first thing you said to me when you were four years and five months old was, 'Hit me. Now.'" His voice was soft, like he was recalling something from long ago. "Back then, I knew there was something different about you, my son. But your mom said something to me, and I think she was right. She said—no matter what he becomes, he's still my son."

Ji Ming's eyes suddenly grew hot. He lowered his head and drank the porridge one mouthful at a time. It had gone completely cold, but warmth spread through his chest as he drank it.

In the distance, a muffled explosion came from the direction of Kame House. Then someone roared, "Damn Gravity Chamber!" Another explosion followed.

Ji Ming set down his bowl and rose to his feet. Son Goku stood too, scratching his head. "That Vegeta guy just blew up the Gravity Chamber for the second time."

"Let him blow it up." Ji Ming dusted off his pants, a faint smile touching his lips. "The more frustrated he gets, the faster he improves."

Son Goku thought about it, then burst out laughing. It was the kind of meaningless goofy laugh he usually gave, but beneath the moonlight, it sounded warm. He reached out and ruffled his son's hair again, harder than last time, turning it into a messy bird's nest.

"Go get some sleep. We still have training tomorrow."

"You're his dad. Why aren't you going to sleep?"

"I'm a Saiyan. Saiyans don't sleep."

"Piccolo kicked you once when you nodded off during training yesterday. I saw it."

"That was meditation."

Ji Ming said nothing more and went inside. Before closing the door, he looked back at Son Goku. Son Goku was still sitting on the stone steps with his back to him, gazing up at the moon. His broad back looked as solid as a mountain.

He would protect that mountain.

The next day.

When Ji Ming pushed open the door to the Gravity Chamber, black smoke was billowing inside.

Vegeta stood before the control console, slamming a fist into the panel. The wires, already shorted out and spraying sparks, erupted with another flash of electricity. He had taken off the upper half of his battle armor, exposing lean muscles and a body covered in old scars. One scar on his back was especially deep, slashing diagonally from his shoulder blade to his lower spine—it had been left by one of Frieza's men using a laser whip, then repeatedly torn open after scabbing over, eventually forming a dark purple scar shaped like a centipede.

"That stupid woman Bulma said this Gravity Chamber could go up to one hundred times gravity. I only raised it to thirty and it burned out." Vegeta turned around, and his expression soured further when he saw Ji Ming. "What are you looking at?"

"The scar on your back."

Vegeta's body stiffened for an instant. Then he grabbed the battle armor beside him and threw it over his shoulders, covering the scar. His movements were rough, but beneath that roughness was the irritation of having something private exposed.

Ji Ming walked into the Gravity Chamber, casually shut off the smoking control panel, pulled out a spare voltage-regulating wire from the toolbox in the corner, and took out a roll of heat-resistant insulating tape. Bulma had left those parts behind the last time she came. She had said, "Vegeta will definitely blow this up at least three times, so I'm leaving the spare parts here." Bulma's intelligence had never failed her when it came to predicting Vegeta's destructive tendencies.

"At thirty times gravity, your current body can indeed withstand it. But the Gravity Chamber itself has a design limit due to its power supply module. You cranked it straight to the top, overloading the voltage regulator. Of course it burned out." Ji Ming crouched down and removed the scorched wiring with the practiced motions of an electrician who had repaired appliances for ten years. "Next time you increase it, stop for thirty seconds every five times gravity and let the power system stabilize."

Vegeta watched this four-year-old crouch on the floor and repair the machine, his fingers flying as he neatly connected the regulating wire. The expression on his face cycled between anger and confusion several times.

"You little brat..." Vegeta forced out through clenched teeth. "How do you even know how to fix machines?"

"Because I studied it for twenty years in another world."

Vegeta's eye twitched. He did not ask any more questions. Their time together over the past few days had taught him one thing—never try to use normal logic to understand anything happening to this child. The more he asked, the faster his worldview crumbled. He chose silence. Silence was the last line of defense for his pride.

Ji Ming replaced the voltage-regulating component, rose to his feet, and dusted off his hands. "It's fixed. But if you blow it up again, there won't be any parts left. You'll have to go to West City and ask Bulma for more yourself. She won't be happy to see you."

He turned to leave, but Vegeta spoke behind him. His voice was low, so low that it was almost drowned out by the lingering hum of the Gravity Chamber.

"When Frieza destroyed Planet Vegeta," Vegeta's voice seemed to rise from the bottom of a deep, endless well, "I was only five. My father put me into a spacecraft and said I was being sent on a mission. But really, he was sending me away—he stayed on the planet and fought to the very end with all the warriors. Through the ship's viewport, I watched Planet Vegeta explode into fragments. Orange, like a smashed egg yolk. My father's voice came through the communicator. He said, 'Live, Vegeta. Live, and surpass everyone.'"

Vegeta clenched his fists.

"And for more than twenty years after that, there hasn't been a single day when I didn't think about how to surpass Frieza. Tomorrow, next year, every moment. But he was always above me, like an immovable mountain."

He turned around. For the first time, that sharp-featured face showed not the ferocity of battle, but something deeper, quieter, almost fragile.

"You said yesterday that Kakarot could become a Super Saiyan too. The legendary form I waited twenty years for, you two low-class warriors obtained so easily. You're four, and Kakarot's an idiot—why?"

That "why" was not an accusation, nor was it anger. It was the bewilderment that slipped through clenched teeth after fate had slapped him in the face over and over again.

Ji Ming looked into his eyes. After a brief silence, he spoke calmly.

"Because within Saiyan blood, the Super Saiyan gene has never distinguished between classes. Your father, Frieza, everyone told you that you were the prince, so you were the strongest—that was a lie. Son Goku was born among the lowest-class warriors. His bloodline was not even qualified to enter the royal court. But he can transform. Because the condition for becoming a Super Saiyan was never bloodline. It was something else."

"What something else?"

"Ki." Son Gohan's voice was calm as iron. "No one ever told you the answer when things were quiet—your ki's core structure has always been disrupted by anger and fear. Only in the moment when you completely let go of anger and leave behind only 'the things you need to protect' will the Super Saiyan threshold truly open."

Vegeta froze in place. His pupils widened slightly, and his lips moved a few times, but in the end, he chose silence. Then he turned around, his back to Ji Ming, his voice hoarse as though scraped by sandpaper.

"Something to protect?... You're protecting that Earth woman, right? Your mother."

It was very direct, without mockery or hostility.

Ji Ming did not answer immediately. He thought of Chi-Chi holding him last night, of those hands that had kept trembling, and of Son Goku sitting on the stone steps, his back turned as he looked up at the moon.

"Yes. And that idiot sitting on the steps looking at the moon, and everyone on this planet who can't fight but still live their lives well." His voice was very soft, yet it was perfectly clear in the sealed space of the Gravity Chamber. "What are you protecting, Vegeta? That's a question you need to answer yourself."

Vegeta said nothing more. The Gravity Chamber door opened and closed, and the small footsteps gradually faded away.

Sunlight spilled in through the doorway, cutting a long diagonal strip across the floor. Fine dust drifted slowly within the light, and a few specks settled on Vegeta's open palm. He lowered his head to look at his hand. That hand had killed countless people and crushed innumerable planetary cores. It had never trembled before. But now it was shaking. The words of that four-year-old child were like an impossibly fine needle, piercing precisely into a corner of his chest that had been sealed shut for a very long time.

Something to protect.

He thought of the last words his father's voice had sent through the communicator—"Live." He thought of Planet Vegeta shattering into fragments, of the flash that lit up the entire star system. He had thought it was the brightest light he had ever seen. Only over the following twenty-odd years had he learned that light was called "death." He thought of the recurring dream he had on sleepless nights: himself kneeling before Frieza with his head lowered, Frieza's foot planted atop his head, grinding a Saiyan's pride into the mud.

He had never thought about protecting anything.

He had only wanted to become stronger, to surpass everyone else, to use power and slaughter to prove that the Saiyan Prince was still alive. But what was becoming stronger for? And after surpassing everyone, then what?

Vegeta slowly closed his eyes. For the first time, an expression almost like weariness appeared on that face which had known only arrogance and cruelty.

When he opened his eyes again, he stood before the gravity control console. The numbers on the panel were still flashing, and the new insulating tape on the voltage regulator reflected the light. He stared at the thirty-times button, his finger hovering above it for a long while. Then he pressed the start button.

The Gravity Chamber started up again. Thirty times gravity pressed down on him like a mountain. His knees buckled for an instant, but he did not kneel. His muscles trembled, his bones groaned, and veins bulged across his forehead, but he remained standing.

This time, he did not roar, curse, or smash the console. He simply walked quietly into the training area, one step at a time, and began doing push-ups.

One. Two. Three.

Under thirty times gravity, sweat struck the floor like shattered beads.

He was still thinking about what Son Goku and that child had said.

That afternoon, in the yard of Kame House.

Krillin sat cross-legged atop a turtle shell, a blade of grass dangling from his mouth as he watched the vague figure inside the distant Gravity Chamber. Its walls were made of translucent reinforced glass, and Vegeta could be seen repeating basic exercises inside, his movements so steady that he did not look like the alien warrior who had gone berserk just yesterday.

"Don't you think Vegeta seems kind of different today?" Krillin took the grass from his mouth and turned toward Master Roshi, who was wiping down the turtle shell beside him. "Yesterday, he blew up two machines in the Gravity Chamber. Today, he's quiet as a block of wood."

Master Roshi adjusted his sunglasses, glanced toward the Gravity Chamber, then continued wiping the shell. He did it slowly and carefully, polishing every stroke until it gleamed. He was practically rubbing the paint off that shell.

He was smiling—the kind of smile only someone who had lived for more than three hundred years could wear.

"Krillin, you know, I've taught many disciples in my life. Ox-King, Goku, Tien Shinhan." He draped the rag over his shoulder and spoke slowly. "But some people don't need to be taught. They only need to be given a reason they'd never considered before."

"What reason?" Krillin tilted his head.

Master Roshi did not answer. He merely looked up at the sky in the direction of Mount Paozu, where clouds drifted lazily over the ridgeline. In the distance, the orange glow of the setting sun filled the sky, dyeing the Gravity Chamber's glass a warm gold. Inside, Vegeta bent down, rose, bent down, rose—his form becoming more precise with every repetition.

That night, Bulma landed a small aircraft in front of Kame House. She jumped down carrying a metal case, sweat covering her head. Chi-Chi ran out from the house, and the two women nearly collided.

"Miss Bulma? Why are you—"

"The Gravity Chamber's remote monitor went off again. This time it isn't overload—it's sustained output at fifty times gravity." Bulma pushed up her glasses, her face full of disbelief. "Fifty times gravity for an hour and a half straight—if this guy isn't superhuman, then he's insane."

She pushed open the Gravity Chamber door and found Vegeta lying on the training mat, his chest heaving violently. Sweat and saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth, and he looked like he had just been dragged out of water. He could not even lift a finger.

"Hey, are you dead?"

"Get lost." Vegeta's voice was hoarse, but still strong.

"Good. You're not dead." Bulma set down the metal case and took out a portable medical scanner. She swept it over Vegeta, then watched the data appear on the screen as her eyebrows rose higher and higher. "Twelve percent of your muscle fibers are torn, and your bone density is three percent higher than it was two days ago. Do all Saiyans have this freakish physique?"

"Where's that brat?" Vegeta did not answer her question.

"You mean Gohan?" Bulma pointed outside. "He went back to Mount Paozu with his parents. Said he was having dinner with his mom today. Chi-Chi stewed three huge pots of food, and Krillin and the others all went."

Vegeta was silent for several seconds, then turned his head away and closed his eyes. His face showed no expression, but his Adam's apple bobbed once.

"Can he come tomorrow? I need a sparring partner."

Ji Ming arrived the next morning.

He pushed open the Gravity Chamber door. Vegeta was already standing in the middle of the training mat. The gravity was set to thirty times, and a handwritten note was taped to the control panel—"Voltage regulator upgraded. Maximum support: 150 times gravity. Don't thank me. —Bulma."

"Come." Ji Ming stood before Vegeta. His voice had regained its usual certainty, but the ki around him was unusually restrained, like a blacksmith who had pressed every flame deep into the bottom of the furnace. "Starting today, we'll begin high-intensity sparring. You attack; I'll defend and break down your moves. There's only one goal—to raise our base battle power another level."

Vegeta did not respond. He simply threw a punch.

His punch was much faster than yesterday, and its force was more concentrated. The training under thirty times gravity had indeed settled him down. His punches and kicks no longer relied solely on brute strength; they had begun to show rhythm and angles.

During the gaps between dodges, Ji Ming watched Vegeta's eyes. There was still pride there, still killing intent, but there was something else now that had not been there yesterday. Something faint, something Vegeta himself might not even have noticed.

Longing.

Not the longing to grow stronger—that had always been there. It was a longing to find an answer. To find the answer to the question of "what to protect."

And so the days passed one after another.

Bulma posted Vegeta's Gravity Chamber usage records on Kame House's refrigerator like a medical chart: fifty times, fifty times, sixty times, sixty times, seventy times, seventy times, eighty times. Every time it jumped another level, there was an added handwritten note—"The Gravity Chamber didn't explode. Commendable. —Bulma."

Son Goku's training advanced in tandem. He traveled back and forth between King Kai's Planet and Earth, completing the advanced training for Kaio-ken under ten times gravity. When he returned, he brought back a whole bag of King Kai's Planet specialty snacks. Chi-Chi scolded him, saying snacks could not count as a meal. He scratched his head and laughed, then brought more again the next day anyway.

Piccolo occasionally came down from the Lookout. Each time, he only stood outside the Gravity Chamber for a few minutes, watching the two people spar inside without saying a word. Once, during a break in training, Ji Ming looked out and saw Piccolo's silhouette standing in the sunset. He suddenly felt that the green Namekian looked very lonely. But he did not call out to him, because he knew Piccolo did not like people discovering that he cared about others.

Krillin took over the job of teaching Nappa basic Earth knowledge, as well as helping him get used to the everyday rule of "not being killed." After Nappa woke up, he had briefly wanted to kill himself, feeling that there was no point in living after being knocked out by a four-year-old. Krillin spent three days telling him about the Androids saga—according to the information Ji Ming had shared in advance, even Cell was nothing worth mentioning—and Nappa fell silent for an entire day after hearing it. Then he voluntarily asked to train in the Gravity Chamber.

"I want to live to see the day Frieza is defeated." Nappa's expression was extremely serious when he said this, and Krillin had a hard time holding back his laughter beside him.

One evening a month later, Ji Ming sat on the huge boulder atop Mount Paozu, his legs dangling over the cliff's edge. The setting sun warmed his face, while a light breeze flipped up one corner of his collar. His power level in his normal state had already neared four thousand. Without transforming, he was approaching the threshold of a Super Saiyan's state before awakening. His Super Saiyan form had extended from the initial three minutes to over ten, and his power index was nearing the boundary of the Super Saiyan second stage.

Son Goku's voice came from behind him.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Frieza." Ji Ming did not turn around. "Based on the star sector map Nappa provided, Frieza's main force should be approaching Namek right now. If we don't leave soon, the Namekians will be slaughtered to the last one."

Son Goku sat down beside him and stretched his legs out over the cliff as well.

"Bulma said the spaceship has already been modified. The Gravity Chamber has been loaded in too."

"I know."

The two Saiyans sat in silence atop the mountain. The setting sun stretched their shadows long—one large, one small—side by side across the rock like two connected mountain ranges.

"A year ago, I was still thinking about how to defeat Piccolo," Son Goku suddenly said.

Ji Ming tilted his head and glanced at him.

"A year ago, I was still thinking about how to feed you." Son Goku turned to look at him too. "And now you've brought back a Saiyan army."

Ji Ming could not help letting out a laugh. Son Goku laughed too. Their laughter was scattered by the wind high in the sky, drifting into every corner of Mount Paozu.

After a while, Ji Ming's smile faded.

"We're going to Namek."

"Let's go."

"Frieza is strong."

"Then we'll become stronger."

There was not a trace of impurity in Son Goku's eyes when he said those four words. Ji Ming looked into those eyes and swallowed all the tactical analysis and risk assessments he had been about to voice. It was enough. Those four words were enough.

The sun finally sank below the ridge, and the sky gradually shifted from orange to purple, then deep blue. The first star appeared, then the second, then the hundredth. The Milky Way stretched directly above Mount Paozu, gleaming like crushed diamonds scattered across black satin.

Ji Ming stood and rolled his wrists.

Tomorrow, the spaceship would launch.

He cast one last look toward the Gravity Chamber—Vegeta was still inside. A muffled roar came from that small silver building, like a beast sharpening its final fangs.

Namek. Frieza. He was coming.