The space pods sliced through Planet Namek's emerald atmosphere like two burning meteors, their white hulls glowing incandescent against the alien sky before slamming hard into a lush, blue-grass clearing.
The ground shook violently as the pods dug deep furrows into the earth, finally grinding to a halt in two steaming impact craters.
The hatch on Escallion's pod hissed, unsealing with a burst of pressurized air. He stepped out onto the pristine, teal grass, taking a slow breath of the heavy, oxygen-rich atmosphere. Three suns hung overhead, casting a strange, perpetual daylight across the jagged rock formations and endless stretches of green-blue water.
'A three-star solar system,' Escallion calculated silently, his dark eyes scanning the serene horizon. No nightfall. 'That means no natural breaks in visibility for stealth. Everything we do here will be under absolute light.'
The space pods sliced through Planet Namek's emerald atmosphere like two burning meteors, their white hulls glowing incandescent against the alien sky before slamming hard into a lush, blue-grass clearing.
Beside him, the glass dome of Vegeta's pod shattered outward as the Prince kicked his way free. Vegeta didn't bother checking his equipment; he stepped out onto the rim of the crater, his cloak whipping in the warm breeze as a dark, dangerous smile spread across his face.
"So this is Namek," Vegeta growled, flexing his gloved hands. The power radiating off him was immense, a heavy, suffocating pressure compared to his defeat on Earth. "It feels... empty. But I know they're here."
Escallion turned his head, staring at Vegeta with a sharp, skeptical glare.
"Feels?" Escallion questioned, his tone clipped and analytical. "What are you talking about? You destroyed your scouter on Base 79, and neither of us learned whatever trick Kakarot used on Earth to track targets without tech. How can you possibly 'feel' anything?"
"Imbecile," Vegeta scoffed, a dark smirk touching his lips. "It isn't magic. After watching Kakarot and his insect friends manipulate their energy, I pieced it together on the ride here. You just have to stop relying on a machine to do your thinking for you."
Vegeta closed his eyes, taking a slow, controlled breath. Within seconds, a vein pulsed on his temple as his focus narrowed.
"I can feel them," Vegeta growled, his eyes snapping open, blazing with wild satisfaction. "To the north... a cluster of weak signatures. Native Namekians. And to the east..."
Vegeta's jaw tightened, his teeth grinding together as his aura flared in a momentary, volatile burst.
"Frieza," Vegeta snarled. "His pressure is suffocating. Dodoria and Zarbon are right beside him, along with a whole squad of foot soldiers."
Escallion watched the Prince in silent astonishment.
"They already have a head start," Escallion said aloud, adapting quickly to the new parameters. "If Frieza is already moving, he's likely hitting those native villages to collect the Dragon Balls one by one."
"Let him gather them," Vegeta sneered, his dark eyes burning with psychotic ambition. "It saves us the trouble of hunting them down. We let Frieza do the heavy lifting, track his movements from the shadows, and snatch the dragon right out from under his nose."
"Then you'd better teach me how to read energy signatures immediately," Escallion replied coldly, a pale purple haze flickering faintly around his boots. "Because if Frieza catches wind of us before we secure the balls, blind navigation will get us killed."
"Don't demand things from me, Escallion!" Vegeta snapped, though he consciously clamped down on his Ki, locking it tight inside his body to avoid drawing attention.
Suddenly, a high-pitched sonic boom ripped through the atmosphere above them. A single white space pod shot through the sky.
Vegeta scoffed, recognizing the trajectory immediately. "Well, well. It seems Cui couldn't resist following us after all. He must have picked up our flight path from Base 79."
Escallion looked toward the descending pod, his cold, calculating smirk returning.
"A sycophant chasing a ghost," Escallion said softly. "Let's go greet him. While you deal with him, you can explain how to lock onto his signal."
"He's heading right for us," Escallion noted, his eyes fixed on the fast-approaching streak of fire. "He thinks he's found an isolated target."
"Then listen carefully, because I'm only explaining this once," Vegeta growled, stepping up beside him. The Prince's voice was sharp, but devoid of its usual screaming impatience, focused purely on the mechanics.
Vegeta closed his fists, his breathing dropping into a slow, deliberate rhythm.
"To lower it, simply stop pushing it outward. You're constantly letting your energy leak out around you. Draw it back in. Force it down into your core. Compress it until it's nothing more than a spark."
Escallion closed his eyes, taking a deep, measured breath. He turned his focus inward, tracking the flow of energy surging through his pathways. He felt the cold, sharp pool of his Ki vibrating beneath his skin.
Consciously, he squeezed his core muscles, drawing the radiating aura inward, packing the energy down tighter and tighter, suppressing the bleed.
His presence on the landscape shrank from a towering threat to a faint, barely noticeable whisper.
"Good," Vegeta grunted, a rare, reluctant nod of approval touching his chin. "Now, to sense it, stop looking with your eyes. Expand your perception outward, like opening your ears to a distant sound. Every living thing leaves a wake in the atmosphere. The stronger they are, the heavier the disturbance."
Escallion kept his eyes shut, letting the physical world fade. He focused on the space around him. At first, there was only the quiet hum of Namek's wind. Then, he felt it, a sharp, heavy spike of raw, unrefined energy cutting through the air above at violent speed.
It was loud, arrogant, and reckless.
Cui.
"I feel it," Escallion murmured, his eyes snapping open, revealing a sharp, icy clarity.
"Hmph." Vegeta sneered, a dark, murderous grin spreading across his face as he flexed his hands. "He thinks he's hot shit because he matches my power from Earth. The fool has no idea how far behind he's fallen."
Vegeta stepped forward, his own Ki remaining completely hidden, buried deep within his chest until he looked like nothing more than an unpowered civilian on a scouter screen.
The pod slammed into the rocky ridge above with a bone-rattling crash, kicking up a tall column of red dust and teal soil.
Before the dust could even settle, the pod's hatch exploded outward, blown off its hinges by a sharp burst of energy. Cui shot out of the cockpit, landing heavy on his feet in the center of the clearing with his arms crossed and his head held high.
"Well, well, well!" Cui cackled, his purple skin glinting under Namek's three suns. He tapped his scouter with a gloved finger, a cruel, mocking sneer twisting his face. "Looks like my lucky day! Lord Frieza said if I tracked down the traitors, I could handle the execution myself!"
He strutted forward, his scouter chirping as he locked onto Escallion, who stood calm and still at the edge of the crater.
"Escallion... I see your power level is right where it always is," Cui sneered, stepping down the rocky slope. "Unimpressive as ever. But where is that arrogant Prince of yours? Hiding behind a rock, bleeding out from his pathetic little defeat on Earth?"
From the shadows of a jagged rock pillar right beside him, Vegeta stepped into the light.
Cui flinched, jumping back a foot and quickly pressing his scouter button. The display beeped once, reading Vegeta's suppressed energy as a pathetic, negligible number.
Cui let out a booming laugh, his initial shock instantly vanishing into arrogant contempt. "Hahaha! Look at you, Vegeta! You're practically broken! My scouter says your power level is barely enough to squash an insect! Did that blow to your head on Earth completely destroy your brain?"
Escallion stood with his arms crossed, his pale purple aura suppressed so tightly it didn't even flicker, his dark eyes watching Cui with cold, analytical pity.
"You rely too much on that toy on your face, Cui," Escallion said flatly, his voice echoing softly across the quiet basin. "You came all this way chasing a number you don't even understand."
"Shut your mouth, Escallion!" Cui barked, raising his hand, a crackling reddish-purple sphere of Ki igniting in his palm as he aimed it straight at Vegeta's chest. "I'm going to blow you both to dust and take the credit for Namek myself! Any last words, 'Prince'?"
Vegeta didn't even raise his arms. He simply tilted his head up, a dark, terrifying smirk spreading across his face as his eyes locked onto Cui.
"Just one," Vegeta growled softly, his voice dripping with murderous malice. "Readings can be deceiving."
Before Cui could react, Vegeta took a single, deliberate breath and unleashed the total sum of his power.
BOOM!
A blinding, white pillar of explosive Ki erupted from Vegeta's body, tearing through the bedrock beneath his boots and shattering the surrounding canyon walls into dust. The shockwave slammed into Cui, driving him backward as the sheer force of the atmospheric pressure almost knocked him off his feet.
Cui panicked, slamming his palm frantically against his scouter button as the digital numbers spiraled out of control.
18,000... 20,000... 22,000... 24,000!
CRACK!
The scouter couldn't process the sudden, massive spike. The lens fractured under the overload, sparking violently before exploding directly off Cui's face.
"N-No! It's broken! It's gotta be broken!" Cui shrieked, his purple skin draining of color as he scrambled back, terror seizing his entire frame. "T-Twenty-four thousand?! That's impossible! You were at eighteen before!"
Vegeta stepped out of the swirling dust, his aura roaring around him like a blazing inferno. The sheer, suffocating weight of his power made the very air heavy to breathe.
"It's not a broken toy, Cui," Vegeta sneered, taking a slow, menacing step forward. "It's your death sentence."
Driven by pure, blind terror, Cui's face suddenly brightened with a fake, desperate look of surprise as he pointed behind Vegeta. "L-Lord Frieza! You came!"
Vegeta didn't even flinch. He didn't turn his head an inch, his dark eyes locked onto Cui with deadpan contempt.
Realizing the trick had failed, Cui screamed, threw both hands forward, and unleashed a desperate, frantic barrage of red energy blasts.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The ridge exploded into a series of massive fireballs, engulfing Vegeta in a violent wall of flame and smoke. Cui dropped his hands, gasping for air, a hysterical, nervous laugh breaking out of his throat. "HA! Hahaha! I got him! I blew him to pieces!"
"Who are you talking to?"
Cui's heart stopped. He spun around and found Vegeta standing directly behind him, completely unharmed, casually wiping a speck of dust from his white shoulder armor.
"GAAAH!"
Cui took off into the air, flying at absolute maximum speed toward the clouds in a desperate attempt to escape.
Vegeta didn't even give chase. He merely raised two fingers, pointing them straight at Cui's retreating back. A blinding flash of yellow light ignited at his fingertips.
ZIP—
Vegeta appeared mid-air, intercepting Cui instantly. Before the alien could react, Vegeta drove his two fingers deep into Cui's sternum, piercing through his armor and torso like a hot knife through butter.
"AAGH!" Cui gasped, choking on his own blood.
Vegeta smirked, his eyes flashing with cruel, murderous satisfaction. "Dirty fireworks."
With a flick of his wrist, Vegeta launched Cui high into the sky. Channeling his energy, he detonated the Ki he had injected straight into Cui's body.
KABOOM!
Cui exploded into a massive, glittering burst of red and orange fire, raining harmless ash down over Namek's teal waters.
Vegeta floated down, landing softly beside Escallion as his aura settled back into his body. He brushed his gloves off with a scoff.
"Pathetic," Vegeta grunted. "A warm-up at best."
"We need to move," Escallion said, his voice cutting cleanly through the settling dust. "Cui's pod descent and that blast weren't subtle. Even if nobody heard the explosion, Frieza's scouts will notice Cui's scouter signal cutting out abruptly."
Vegeta scoffed, though he quickly pulled his Ki back down into his core, suppressing his roaring power until it was nothing more than a ghost of a trace on the landscape. "Let them look. By the time they figure out where Cui died, we'll already have what we came for."
Escallion turned his head slightly, his dark eyes focusing on a point miles to the north.
Keeping his own presence tightly suppressed, his pale purple aura completely locked inside his sternum, he locked onto the group of faint, steady energy signatures he had sensed earlier.
"There's a cluster of weak signatures just beyond the cliff ridge," Escallion noted, his tone flat and calculated. "A Namekian settlement. If Frieza hasn't reached that specific quadrant yet, there's a high probability they have one of the spheres."
"Then we make sure we get to it first," Vegeta growled, a sharp, sinister edge in his voice.
Without another word, both Saiyans launched themselves off the crater's edge. Staying low to the terrain to avoid visual detection from the sky, they skimmed across Namek's teal waters and jagged blue rock formations, heading straight toward the unsuspecting village.
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A/N: If Caulifa is a prodigy, then Escallion is a monster. Being able to replicate something just from hearing about it.