Years ago. Far away from Namek
Escallion remembered the heavy stench of ozone and scorched metal. He remembered the cruel, barking laughter of three lower-class Frieza Force mercenaries, brutes with scouters strapped to their heads and heavy combat armor, ganging up in a dimly lit barracks corridor.
At their feet was a young Raditz, spit and dark blood pooling on the cold steel floor beneath his face. Raditz's long, spiky hair was matted with grime, his tail clamped tightly around his waist as he tried to push himself up, only for a heavy combat boot to slam squarely into his ribs with a sickening crack.
"Look at the little monkey," one of the soldiers mocked, grinning wide as he drew his arm back for another strike. "Can't even clear a simple Class-D planet without begging for backup. Pathetic."
Raditz growled, his teeth crimson-stained, but his body wouldn't obey him.
Before the boot could land again, a shadow fell over them.
Escallion hadn't hesitated. He surged forward, his young face set in a sharp, ruthless scowl. He caught the soldier's descending leg mid-air, wrenching it violently to snap the joint before driving a brutal elbow straight into the alien's throat. The soldier crumpled instantly, choking on his own breath.
The other two mercenaries snapped their heads around, drawing their wrist-blasters with panicked shouts, but Escallion was already moving. He closed the distance in a heartbeat, weaving inside a blast that singed the side of his neck and buried a sweeping kick into the second guard's temple.
The fight was ugly, desperate, and fast. The third guard managed to drive a heavy, armored fist directly into Escallion's chest, cracking his ribs and sending him skidding across the steel plates. Blood bloomed hot in Escallion's mouth, but he forced himself back to his feet through pure spite, blinding the guard with a point-blank Ki palm before hurling him through the wall panel.
When the corridor finally fell silent, save for the hum of the overhead lights and the groans of the unconscious guards, Escallion stood panting, clutching his fractured side as crimson dripped from his lip onto the metal floor.
Raditz looked up from the ground, wide-eyed, wiping his mouth. "Why... why'd you do that, Escallion? Frieza's men will execute you if they find out you struck an officer..."
Escallion hadn't looked back. He just wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, his pitch-black eyes dark and unyielding. "Instead of focusing on me assisting you get strong enough so I don't have to."
The memory faded as fast as it had come.
Escallion blinked, his dark eyes refocusing on the nightmare standing right in front of them.
Down in the shattered crater, Frieza stood tall. The white-and-purple titan dusted off his chest, his brow furrowed into a sharp, lethal scowl as he cracked his neck with a sickening snap.
"I have to admit..." Frieza growled, his deep, transformed voice echoing up from the depths of the pit as his crimson eyes locked dead onto Gohan, "you actually managed to surprise me, you little pest."
Escallion shifted his stance, his jaw tight as his cracked ribs from a lifetime of fighting seemed to ache in sympathy. He glanced at Gohan, then at Vegeta, his hand hovering near his hip, ready for whatever hell the tyrant was about to unleash next.
"Let's just say your attack is rated a 2... on a scale from one to a zillion," Frieza taunted, a cruel, mocking purr running through his deep voice as he slowly floated upward out of the crater.
He cracked his knuckles, his crimson eyes gleaming with cold, sadistic finality. "Well, I believe I am ready to get this over with. It really was fun while it lasted."
Before Escallion or Vegeta could even open their mouths to scream a warning, Frieza vanished into thin air.
BOOM!
A shockwave tore across the sea. Gohan didn't even have time to turn his head before Frieza materialized directly above him. With terrifying, fluid precision, the tyrant delivered a devastating, spinning roundhouse kick straight into the boy's ribs.
Gohan let out a breathless, agonized gasp as the impact sent him cannoning out of the sky, skipping across the water like a thrown stone before crashing hard into a rock formation.
Frieza hovered in midair, his back completely turned to the others as he watched the boy settle into the rubble.
Seizing the split-second opening, Vegeta's eyes flared. "DIE!" he roared, blitzing forward with everything he had.
Vegeta closed the distance in a heartbeat, driving a full-power, double-axe handle blow straight down onto the back of Frieza's exposed neck. The force of the strike created a massive sonic crack that sent ripples through the ocean below.
The smoke cleared instantly.
Frieza hadn't even flinched. He remained perfectly suspended in the air, his neck completely unbent, as if a mere feather had drifted onto his shoulder.
Vegeta's eyes widened in sheer, paralyzing horror, his trembling arms still locked in place above the giant tyrant. Slowly, Frieza tilted his head back over his shoulder, a sickening, amused smirk spreading across his face as he looked at the prince.
"Was that supposed to hurt, Vegeta?" Frieza purred.
Before Frieza could even finish his sentence, a blur of motion cut through the air behind him. Fueled by the cold, lethal instinct forged through years of survival, Escallion closed the distance instantly, slipping right past Vegeta's frozen frame. He landed a right hook on Frieza's face.
CLACK!
The force of the blow rattled through the air like a gunshot. Frieza's head snapped back a fraction of an inch, his jaw clicking shut hard.
A tiny, thin thread of crimson seeped from the corner of Frieza's lip, trickling down his pale chin.
Vegeta gasped, his eyes nearly bulging out of his skull. For a fleeting, heart-stopping second, it looked like the blow had actually registered.
But Frieza didn't fall. He didn't reel back. He didn't even stumble.
The tyrant simply stood motionless in midair, his neck slowly straightening back out. His crimson eyes rolled toward Escallion, fixed in a cold, deadly stare that made the air itself feel like ice. Slowly, Frieza lifted a single thumb, casually wiping the small trace of blood from his lip, staring at the stain on his skin with mild disgust before looking back at the Saiyan.
"You know of the four, you were always my favourite. A pity." The tyrant coos, his voice dangerously smooth. Escallion's jaw set tight, his knuckles white, but he didn't retreat an inch, standing his ground right in front of the monster.
Without a word, Escallion unleashed a relentless combination. He threw rapid, heavy punches and sharp, spinning kicks, every blow backed by decades of raw, brutal combat experience. His fists cracked against Frieza's chest, face, and guard with sickening force, actually forcing the titan to tilt his head back and slide a few inches through the air. The strikes were leaving faint, light bruises across Frieza's pale skin, but it was negligible, like throwaways against an iron wall. Frieza wasn't even attempting to dodge, simply taking the barrage with an amused, cruel glint in his eyes.
"Is that all?" Frieza purred.
Before Escallion could draw back for another strike, Frieza's massive, thick tail whipped out like a cracked leather whip.
WHAM!
The heavy tail slammed squarely into Escallion's ribs with the force of a falling meteor. The impact shattered the air, turning Escallion's breath into a spray of crimson as he was launched across the sea like a cannonball, tumbling out of control toward a towering stone formation.
The wind howled in Escallion's ears, the terrain rushing up to swallow him, but the collision never came.
Frieza materialized behind him in a blur of sheer speed, catching up effortlessly before Escallion could even hit the rock.
"Going somewhere?" Frieza chuckled.
With terrifying force, Frieza drove a brutal, sledgehammer fist straight into Escallion's spine, sending the Saiyan crashing down into the solid earth below with a deafening explosion of dust, rock, and shattered terrain.
Dust swirled in the massive crater, settled only by the wet spray of water from the ocean around the crater. At the center of the shattered stone, Escallion coughed up a splatter of blood, his hands clawing into the gravel as he forced his battered body back up. Every breath felt like jagged glass scraping against his lungs. His armor was cracked, but his dark, unyielding eyes remained locked on the sky above. He spat a mouthful of crimson onto the rocks, gritting his teeth until his jaw throbbed, refusing to collapse.
High above the crater, Vegeta hovered in dead silence.
The Prince of all Saiyans was shaking. It wasn't a minor tremor; his entire frame quivered, his gloved hands trembling so violently he could barely hold them in fists. Sweat poured down his temples, trickling past wide, dilated eyes that stared down at the tyrant in absolute, paralyzed dread.
Vegeta had seen power before. He had trained his whole life to surpass the scum of the universe. But watching Escallion, a warrior who had actually managed to draw blood, get tossed around like a ragged cloth doll made the brutal reality set in.
Frieza slowly descended, hovering a few feet above the rim of Escallion's crater. He crossed his massive arms over his chest, his thick tail lazily swaying behind him, casting a long, ominous shadow over the battered Saiyan below.
"Oh, look at that," Frieza cooed, his deep voice carrying over the roaring wind with sickening ease. "You can still push yourself up. Truly, the resilience of you wild monkeys never fails to amuse me. But tell me, Escallion... how many more broken bones do you think that stubborn pride of yours can sustain?"
Below, Escallion finally pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly before locking his stance. He wiped his bloody chin with the back of his forearm, his voice raspy but steady.
"To hell with you, Frieza."
Frieza's eyes narrowed into slits, a dark chuckle echoing from his broad chest. "Language, monkey. Is that any way to address your emperor?"
Escallion ignored the tyrant, his dark gaze cutting sharply over his shoulder toward the sky where Vegeta hovered, paralyzed by terror.
"Vegeta!" Escallion barked, his raspy voice cutting through the wind like a blade. "Stop shaking and make a choice! Either get the hell out of here or fight! Standing there like a coward won't save you!"
Vegeta flinched, his teeth grinding together in a mixture of shame and rage, but he remained frozen, incapable of moving a muscle.
Escallion turned his focus back to Frieza. Deep in his chest, a heavy, rhythmic thud echoed, the violent, ancient beat of his Saiyan bloodline pounding against his ribs like a war drum. He had sworn to control it, to keep the wild, destructive instinct locked away. But standing before the monster who had enslaved their race, the man who killed his father, treated him like a pet for years, he let the dam break. He let the pure, unadulterated rage take total control.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
The ground beneath his boots began to tremor. Loose rocks floated upward, caught in an invisible, crushing gravitational pull.
"ROAAAGHHHHHHHHHHH!"
With a deafening roar that split the Namekian sky, Escallion exploded.
A brilliant, blinding golden aura ignited around his body, tearing through the crater floor and blasting the surrounding terrain into fine dust. But the golden light didn't stay. Within seconds, violent surges of emerald lightning snapped across his frame, and the aura mutated, shifting into a vibrant, swirling, sparking green color that radiated terrifying heat.
Frieza's smirk vanished instantly, his crimson eyes widening as the scouter in his mind and the sheer pressure in the air blew completely off the scale.
Escallion's body began to warp and swell. His bones popped and reconstructed as his muscle mass expanded exponentially, his shoulders broadening until he towered over the landscape. His black hair surged upward, spiking into rigid, jagged spires that flickered with greenish-gold light. His irises melted away, replaced by glowing, fierce yellow eyes that burned with absolute primal fury.
The sheer amount of ki emitted alone kicked up a hurricane, creating a massive forcefield of roaring green energy that pushed Frieza back a full ten feet through the air.
Standing at his full, terrifying height, his breathing deep and monstrous, Escallion glared down at the Emperor of the Universe through a shroud of emerald aura.
With a primal roar that shattered the surrounding rock formations, Escallion lunged forward, the air imploding behind him in a violent sonic boom.
Frieza raised his guards just in time as Escallion was instantly in his face, delivering a brutal, heavy right hook.
BOOM!
The force of the strike echoed across the ocean, the raw shockwave rippling the water for miles around. Frieza's eyes widened in genuine shock as his head snapped violently to the side, not just a light bruise or a scratch this time, but a blow that sent a sharp, jarring pain straight through his jaw.
"W-What?!" Frieza hissed, barely recovering before Escallion unleashed a relentless, furious hail of attacks.
Left hooks, driving knees, spinning backfists, and crushing overhead hammers rained down on the tyrant like an unrelenting meteor shower. Escallion drove Frieza back by striking him repeatedly in the gut.
The relentless flurry ended not with a punch, but with a blind, predatory grab.
Driven by his escalating, feral instinct, Escallion caught Frieza's thick ankle right out of a desperate defensive kick. The tyrant's crimson eyes dilated in a sudden spike of sheer horror as Escallion's massive, vein-popping fingers clamped down around his leg like a hydraulic vice, crushing the bio-armor until it cracked.
"W-Wait—!" Frieza gasped, his composure completely shattering.
Escallion didn't let him finish.
With a guttural roar that shook the very foundation of the island, the towering, green-haloed Saiyan heaved his arm back and whipped Frieza downward with terrifying, fluid momentum.
BOOM!
The Emperor of the Universe slammed face-first into the solid bedrock, the impact detonating the stone into a spray of jagged boulders and throwing up a massive shockwave that split the ocean below.
Before the dust could even spread, Escallion yanked Frieza back into the air by his leg like a ragdoll and whipped him over to the opposite side, slamming him into the earth with twice the violence.
BOOM!
"STOP THIS, YOU FILTHY—!" Frieza shrieked, his voice choked off as Escallion yanked him up again, completely overriding the tyrant's flight and momentum through sheer brute force.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
It was a sickening, repetitive rhythmic pulverization. Left, right, left, right, Escallion whipped the universe's most feared conqueror back and forth into the Namekian crust like a child's throwaway toy. With every bone-shattering impact, the ground gave way deeper, cracking open massive trenches and kicking up towering columns of dirt and shattered granite. Frieza's body bled, his massive horns gouged deep trenches through the rock, and his strangled screams were repeatedly crushed back into his throat by the sheer kinetic weight of the slams.
High above, Vegeta stared down at the carnage, completely unmoving. His mouth hung open, his pupils shrunk to pinpricks in a face pale as a ghost. The legendary tyrant who had destroyed Planet Vegeta, the monster who held the entire galaxy in an iron grip of terror... was currently being thrashed into the dirt like a discarded doll by a wild, howling Saiyan.
"Could I have been mistaken is Escallion the Super Saiyan..?"
A few yards away, Gohan painfully pushed himself up out of the rubble, clutching his bruised ribs and panting for air. He wiped the dirt from his eyes and looked up, only for his jaw to drop in absolute, stunned disbelief.
Frieza, the terrifying monster who had nearly killed them all, was being slammed into the earth back and forth like a discarded ragdoll.
"E-Escallion...?" Gohan whispered, his wide eyes reflecting the wild, blinding green flashes detonating across the battered terrain.
Pushed beyond the absolute brink of humiliation, Frieza's crimson eyes burned with frantic, murderous desperation. "GET OFF ME, YOU MONKEY!" Frieza shrieked.
Stuck upside down mid-swing, the tyrant whipped his hand up and fired a blinding, red Death Beam point-blank. The needle-thin laser grazed Escallion's cheek, cutting a bloody line across his cheekbone and searing his skin.
The pain didn't stop Escallion. It only made him angrier.
Escallion's grip slipped from Frieza's ankle, but his surging power exploded into a blinding, hurricane-force wall of emerald light. His yellow eyes flared with pure, feral rage as he let out a roar that shook the entire island. Before Frieza could even reorient himself in mid-air, Escallion blitzed forward in a blur of green light.
CLACK!
A brutal, heavy clothesline caught Frieza directly under his throat with the force of a collapsing mountain. Frieza choked on a spray of blood as the momentum flipped him horizontally, but Escallion wasn't done.
In one fluid, terrifying motion, Escallion reached out with a massive, vein-popping hand and clamped his palm squarely over Frieza's entire face.
Driving the tyrant downward, Escallion slammed Frieza into the wall of a towering granite cliffside and rocketed forward, dragging the Emperor of the Universe along the rock face at blinding speed. The stone shattered, sparks and debris showering the coastline as Frieza's back and head gouged a massive, hundred-foot trench straight through the solid mountain.
Reaching the edge of the ridge, Escallion shoved Frieza off the rock face and thrust his open hand directly into the tyrant's chest.
A sphere of unstable, sparking green Ki condensed in his palm in a split second.
"DIE!" Escallion bellowed.
BOOM!
The green blast erupted at point-blank range, a massive column of destruction that tore through the cliff, vaporized the surrounding ocean water, and sent Frieza flying miles across the sky like a comet before detonating in a colossal emerald explosion on the horizon.
Escallion hovered above the burning shoreline, his massive chest heaving as green lightning crackled across his skin. His yellow pupils remained furious, locked onto the horizon where the tyrant had crashed. He was holding onto his sanity by a thread, directing his wild power with lethal intention.
He didn't hesitate. He held out his right arm, extending his palm toward the distant cloud of dust.
The roaring emerald aura surrounding his massive frame violently converged, pulling inward as light from around his body bled toward his raised hand. Energy hissed and condensed, gathering into a dense, blinding sphere of bright-green Ki at the center of his palm. The sheer gravitational pressure of the attack hummed violently, cracking the rocks beneath him and causing the sea below to sink.
With a grunt, Escallion waved his hand forward.
The sphere unleashed, transforming into a massive, thick pillar of searing green destruction that tore straight through the general direction Frieza had been sent flying. The beam vaporized everything in its path, parting the sea down to the ocean floor and lighting up the Namekian sky in a blinding wave of viridian light.
The blinding emerald beam faded into the horizon, leaving a wide, scorched path carved through the Namekian landscape and parting the sea down to the seabed.
The terrifying power didn't just recede—it violently collapsed inward. The sheer strain of forcing his body past its limits tore through his muscles all at once, sending a wave of white-hot agony straight down his spine.
His massive frame shrank, his spiky hair collapsed back into its jet-black style, and the yellow light in his eyes vanished.
Escallion didn't even have the energy to hover. His legs gave out instantly, and he plummeted from the sky like a stone, crashing heavily into a fresh crater near the shoreline.
He lay flat on his back in the smoking dirt, his armor cracked to pieces
The terrifying power didn't just recede—it violently collapsed inward. The sheer strain of forcing his body past its limits tore through his muscles all at once, sending a wave of white-hot agony straight down his spine.
His massive frame shrank, his spiky hair collapsed back into its jet-black style, and the yellow light in his eyes vanished.
Escallion didn't even have the energy to hover. His legs gave out instantly, and he plummeted from the sky like a stone, crashing heavily into a fresh crater near the shoreline.
He lay flat on his back in the smoking dirt, his armor cracked to pieces. His body was completely paralyzed and felt like it was on fire from the catastrophic backlash of the transformation.
High above, silence settled over the wrecked landscape, broken only by the sound of Gohan and Vegeta's ragged breathing and the distant, ominous rumbling of rock from where the green blast had detonated.
The smoke hanging over the horizon was blown violently outward by an overwhelming, monstrous shockwave.
From the center of the scorched trench, the ground split open. A silhouette rose slowly into the air, cast in a deep, menacing purple glow.
Frieza had changed.
The white-and-purple titan was gone, replaced by a grotesque, nightmare-inducing beast. His skull had elongated back into a massive, heavy dome, his back hunching over as jagged white horns sprouted from his shoulders. His face was flattened into a vicious, demonic snout, his crimson eyes glowing with absolute, psychotic hatred.
He was far from untouched. Deep, jagged cracks fractured the white bio-armor along his chest and shoulders, seeping dark purple blood that dripped onto the stone below. Scorch marks blackened his lengthened skull, and his massive tail thrashed dangerously behind him, stripped of its outer skin in several raw spots from Escallion's point-blank blast.
He was battered, wounded, and bleeding, but the raw, monstrous pressure radiating off his third form was terrifyingly higher than anything they had felt so far.
Frieza floated higher, his gaze sweeping over the wreckage until his crimson eyes locked onto the crater where Escallion lay.
His chest heaved as he let out a wet, raspy breath, his voice now a raspy, guttural hiss that echoed like grinding metal across the dead sea.
"Look at you..." Frieza hissed, purple Ki crackling wildly around his elongated head. "Lying in the dirt like the dying dog you are. You actually forced me into this form... You insolent, filthy monkey!"
High above, Vegeta fell to his knees in the sky, his hands clutching his head as his spirit completely broke. "It's over..." he whispered, his voice cracking in sheer despair. "He... he transformed again..."
Before Frieza could lift a finger to finish the helpless Escallion, a sharp, familiar energy signature pierced the oppressive air like a lightning bolt.
A shadow cut across the sky at terrifying speed, landing squarely between Frieza and the crater where Escallion lay.
The dust settled to reveal Piccolo, his white cape snapping in the hot wind and his arms crossed tight over his chest. His aura hummed with a deep, incredible power, far beyond anything the Namekian had ever possessed before. Having assimilated Nail's warrior spirit and strength, his eyes burned with absolute, unflinching confidence.
"You've had your fun, Frieza," Piccolo said, his voice echoing with a subtle, resonant dual-tone. He slowly reached up and unclipped his heavy white turban and weighted cape, letting them drop to the earth, where they shattered the stone beneath them with a heavy thud.
Piccolo cracked his neck, stepping forward as he locked eyes with the grotesque, elongated tyrant. "Now it's my turn."