The speaker went dead.
For a moment, no one moved.
Slowly, a few of the other slaves started to shift about. Some stood up preparing themselves while others seemed to take this time as one final moment of rest.
Knox stayed put.
His expression was blank. The dry smile from earlier was gone, replaced with a look of intense focus.
Rather than panic about his circumstances, his thoughts were filled with various choices he could make in the moment. He thought about the various social routes he could take to his freedom, the weapons the Frieza Force had that might help him, and more.
There was probably some way to scheme his way out of the situation. An intelligent ruse crafted of acting skills, meta-knowledge, and hope.
But no matter how much his simple mind raced, he could only come to one conclusion.
"Power," he muttered under breath. "I need more power. And the only way I can get more power quickly is through leveling up."
Heavy footsteps echoed outside.
A loud clang echoed as the door to the cell hissed open.
Two soldiers in standard-issue Frieza Force armor marched in. They didn't even look at them as they motioned with their heads.
"Get moving."
Surprisingly, there were no threats. Just two words, as if anything else would be a waste of air.
Unsurprisingly, the group obeyed.
Knox silently filed out with the others. He noticed that they, without even being instructed to, left the cell in a single file line.
The march through the steel corridors was short. Every clang on metal rang louder with how silently the slaves walked. Knox took it all in, making a mental map of the ship in his head.
Rows of pipes overhead, camera lenses watching from corners, the occasional flicker of red lighting on machines he couldn't parse.
He looked around and saw even more cells being emptied. More prisoners with sunken eyes and defeated faces, all being herded into formation.
Refocusing, his eyes drifted back to the room they were walking into.
They were led into a massive bay where those iconic ball shaped space pods lined the walls. One officer wearing a tattered cloak over his armor stepped forward with a blaster attached to his arm.
"Listen up," he said, voice crackling through throat amp. "I'm only going to say this once."
A tap of his scouter, and a holographic map blinked into existence in the middle of the room.
"This is Planet R-476," he continued. "The local population has no interstellar defense, and their military is pathetic. The scanner says the average native battle power sits at nearly one hundred, with outliers ranging at most to twelve hundred."
He zoomed the map in.
"Your job is to drop in here at one of the outer ridges near a minor settlement. Kill whoever approaches. Try not to die anywhere inconvenient for us to retrieve our gear."
Someone raised a hand in the crowd.
The officer's gaze landed on the man, and he stood there silently for nearly half a minute.
The slave's hand did not go down.
"I swear," the officer muttered. "Every damn batch. There's always one."
Raising his arm blaster, Knox watched as a single red beam fired from the device and pierced the slave right between his eyes.
The beam kept going though, hitting someone else in the chest and causing them to scream in agony.
Nobody else moved or reacted.
"Does anyone else have any other questions?" The officer waited for a moment, then continued. "Fantastic. Now, as I was saying..."
But Knox had stopped paying attention to the briefing and dramatic murder already. Yes, it was a terrible thing, but what was he supposed to do about it? If he protested, he'd just get killed too.
His eyes were more focused on the blaster itself rather than who had been shot.
'I saw it,' He realized with a grin. 'I managed to track the movement of the beam.'
He hadn't just seen it flash by his vision. He tracked it just as easily as he would a soaring football. It probably wasn't light speed, but the fact that he could do that at all just proved that his Mind training was worth it.
Now that the foundation was officially laid, all he had to do was level up to become stronger.
________
Eventually, the officer's briefing ended.
One by one, names were called. Or rather, numbers.
Since Knox was pretty sure he hadn't been assigned a number, he just waited in place until someone decided to roughly shove him toward one of the grimy pods lined along the far wall.
The inside was barely large enough to fit his whole body. And from what he could tell, there was no harness or big screen to look at. Just a seat with a bunch of buttons on the door.
Shrugging, Knox ducked his head and sat down inside. The door slammed shut with a hiss. And for a second, everything went dark.
He was so glad he wasn't claustrophobic.
Then a red light flared to life and a rough, computerized voice crackled from a speaker he couldn't see.
"Lifeform confirmed. Pressure stabilized. Atmosphere set. Equipment standardization… complete."
A panel to Knox's right clicked open. A narrow compartment slid out from the wall.
Knox blinked.
Inside was a ray gun and a scouter. A sleek, compact white gun with a glowing energy chamber pulsing dimly on its underside. It looked different from the soldier's wrist-mounted arm cannon.
Attached to it by a cord was a scouter.
He flipped it over and spotted a serial number scratched into the casing, along with something that looked like a tally mark... and a stain he didn't want to think too hard about.
He huffed. "Thanks, I guess."
Considering how weak he was, he should be able to get some use out of it.
The moment he was able to utilize Ki in the way the Z-Fighters did, he was throwing it away though.
"Standard issue for expendable-class deployments," the pod voice droned. "Usage limited. One charge cell. Twelve bolts."
Knox raised the weapon to eye level and turned it in his hands.
'Twelve shots and a shoddy scouter… Not even any armor…'
They really weren't expecting much out of them, huh?
The pod rumbled beneath him. A low white started to build, rising in pitch like a scream.
Knox slouched in his seat, letting the blaster rest on his lap as he attached the scouter to his ear.
He had a weapon now. A weak one, sure, but still. If the Frieza Force was stupid enough to arm the cannon fodder they planned to throw away…
Then he'd take full advantage.
"Initiating launch," the pod's voice intoned. "Trajectory locked. Impact shield online."
The pod shook violently.
After a few more seconds of shaking, it felt as though the ground fell open before him. The pod fired from the ship like a bullet, hurtling him through space toward the desolate planet below.
Knox's breath caught in his throat before the artificial gravity kicked in, softening the transition.
Through the window, he watched the hangar slowly fade away, replaced by the void of space. Replaced by the distant stars and nearby moons. By the asteroids and cosmic dust.
It was an unbelievably beautiful sight.
And yet, despite how much he anticipated this, Knox didn't feel any awe. It was beautiful, yes, but the grand expanse of space also looked…
Lonely.
Shaking that thought away, he focused on the bland brownish planet he was quickly approaching.
He caught glimpses of other pods flaring as they entered the atmosphere alongside him. Some kept formation. Others veered wildly. One spiraled off in the distance, losing control.
Eventually, flames began to lick the edge of the viewport as he hit the atmosphere.
The clouds broke.
Red canyons and scattered outposts came into view.
"Surface contact in 12… 11… 10…"
Knox gripped the blaster loosely in one hand, eyes focused on the terrain ahead. The anticipation of battle was more enticing than the stars above.
"Impact imminent."
With a heavy jolt, the pod slammed into the ground.
The outer casing hissed from the friction burn, but the systems held. Dust exploded outward. The capsule stayed upright.
After a second, the hatch hissed open with a faint puff of pressure.
Without wasting any time, Knox stepped out of the pod.
If there was one word he could use to describe this planet it would be… dry.
Fine orange dust drifted on the breeze, kicked up by the pod's landing crater. The terrain actually reminded him of the same canyons that Goku and Vegeta had in their first fight. Nothing but open rock, dry air, and scorching heat.
'Ah… Man, it would be really fun to have a fight here,' he thought with a smirk, picturing the energy blasts tearing through the sky in that old episode-
Bweep. Beep-Beep.
The scouter on his ear let out a sharp chirp, then clicked softly. Still in his daydream, it took Knox a half of a second too long to react to the sudden power reading.
A sudden flash of yellow appeared in the corner of his vision.