Kill Them All

The wind on Namek carried a somewhat cloying sulfurous smell.

Chen He and Goku floated side by side at low altitude. They kept themselves extremely low, almost skimming the tops of the giant mushroom-shaped plateaus. During this silent dash, both of them had suppressed the ki within their bodies into a stillness like dead water.

Goku tilted his head, his gaze falling on Chen He's right arm, tightly wrapped in ragged strips of cloth. Faint dark bloodstains showed through the bandages—left over from when they had clashed under 300 times gravity the day before yesterday.

"Chen He, haven't you really been scared at all along the way?" Goku asked in a low voice, so soft that the wind scattered it away.

He looked at the bizarre green sky, where three suns illuminated everything without casting a single shadow, yet somehow made his skin crawl. The instant they had landed, those cold, sinister auras radiating from the center of the planet had made him break out in a cold sweat for the first time in a long while.

Especially the most central one—it felt as though it were dragging all the life force around it inward.

That had to be Frieza.

"Scared?" Chen He kept his eyes fixed on the green dot on the Dragon Radar without even turning his head. "Will being scared give you another hundred thousand power level? Or will it bring Piccolo back to life?"

His voice was as hoarse as ever, but deep within those black eyes, a faint sense of danger was turning into the force driving him onward. Raditz had 300,000. Vegeta had 600,000. And now, the cosmic emperor sitting in that spaceship had a base power level of 530,000 in the original story. On this timeline, where power levels had gone wild because of his transmigration, who knew what kind of monster Frieza had become?

"You're right." Goku suddenly smiled, tugging at the corner of his mouth as he shook his head self-mockingly. "I've been overthinking it. Chi-Chi always says I'm an immature wild kid, but whenever I think about Gohan waiting for me back on Earth, I just feel... if I lose this time, I really will have nothing left."

He clenched his fists, and his knuckles crackled sharply.

Ahead, from behind a massive hill, came a piercing roar and screams.

Chen He and Goku exchanged a look, then dropped into the shadow of the high ground at the same time.

Peering through gaps in the jagged rocks, they saw several sleek scout ships from the Frieza Force stationed in the valley below... no, not an army. On the ground, several scaled alien soldiers wearing battle armor similar to Raditz's had their guns aimed at a tall Namekian kneeling on the ground.

In a pile of rocks not far from the camp, a bloodied figure who had once been proud was sprawled miserably in the shadows, staring fixedly at the Dragon Ball in the aliens' hands.

It was Vegeta.

The Saiyan prince who had once pushed Earth to the brink was now dressed in battle armor that was badly torn apart. A vicious bloody gash split his right eyelid, and he pressed a hand against his chest as he panted heavily. Clearly, he had arrived several days before Chen He and the others, and had already suffered terribly at the hands of Frieza's elite forces.

"King Frieza said this Dragon Ball is the last one."

A soldier with a crocodile head planted one foot on the Namekian elder's shoulder, holding a sphere several times larger than Earth's Dragon Balls, radiating a rich orange glow.

"Please... spare the children..." the elder begged weakly, green blood trickling down from his forehead and into the soil.

Vegeta gritted his teeth in the shadows, his fingers carving deep marks into the hard rock. He hated Frieza—hated the monster who had destroyed his home planet and treated him like a dog for more than a decade. He had risked his life to come here so he could use the Dragon Balls to gain immortality before Frieza did. But now, bastards like Cui and Dodoria were hunting him across the mountains like a cat toying with a mouse, nearly burning away what remained of the prince's sanity.

Kakarot... and that black-haired monkey from Earth...

Vegeta abruptly turned his head toward where Chen He and Goku were hiding. Although they had suppressed their ki perfectly, his Saiyan instincts had still caught that trace of abnormality.

A cold smile mixed with resentment and madness suddenly appeared on his blood-smeared face.

You two pieces of trash... you actually followed me all the way into hell. Vegeta spat viciously in his heart. He did not make a sound to alert Frieza's soldiers. Instead, he drew himself even deeper into the shadows.

At the center of the valley.

"Old man, you sure talk too much." The crocodile soldier snorted, slowly raising his energy gun toward the elder's head.

Boom!

An utterly unremarkable shockwave suddenly erupted in the valley.

Before the crocodile soldier could even finish turning his head, his upper body and the energy gun in his hand were violently erased in an instant, turning into charred fragments scattered across the sky.

Chen He stepped out of the billowing dust, his dark-gold gravity vest gleaming with an icy sheen beneath the pale sunlight. With a casual sweep of his right hand, he steadily caught the enormous Namekian Dragon Ball in his palm.

The immense weight and thick energy fluctuations caused the faintest flicker to pass through Chen He's black eyes.

The first one was secured.

"Who is that? Enemy attack!!"

Only then did the dozen or so Frieza soldiers around them react, and piercing alarms instantly rang throughout the valley.

Behind Chen He, Goku, dressed in his gi, slowly emerged from the shadows. He glanced at the rescued Namekian elder on the ground, then raised his head toward the aura of Dodoria rapidly approaching from the horizon, his gaze turning cold.

"Chen He, it looks like those guys noticed us." Goku tilted his neck, and the joints throughout his body cracked sharply.

"Then kill every last one of them."

Chen He slung the massive Dragon Ball over his shoulder and slowly pulled his other hand from his pocket.