- (Knox) -
As Knox sat on the floor of Elec's ship, a thought drifted through his mind.
'The power of sloth is truly formidable.'
Even though this level up was the biggest power increase to date, Knox was so tired after his battle with Gas that he simply yawned the malicious thoughts away.
With the fight being over, Knox quickly found and reacquired his Combat Visor, confirmed his kills for credits, and forced the Heeter to pilot them back to Planet Cereal.
Ah, he also blew up the Heeter's base on the way out.
While smiling at that thought, Knox idly opened up his status screen.
[Knox Creed]
Age: 18
[Earthling Lv.7/10]
Power Level: 329,280
BODY — 7 (x16) = 112
MIND — 7 (x12) = 84
SOUL — 7 (x5) = 35
Skills: [Thermal Resistance (E)] [Dodging (D)] [Striking (E)] [Blocking (D)] [Impact Resistance (E)] [Electricity Resistance (F)] [Lifting (D)] [Meditation (D)] [Pain Suppression (D)] [Thought Acceleration (E)] [Psychokinesis (D)] [Image Training (F)] [Ki Projection (D)] [Ki Flight (E)]
Traits: [Wishbane] [Evil Aura] [Ki Control] [Dou]
With this, and the boost from [Dou], he'd reached a power level just shy of 500,000.
It wasn't nearly enough, but it was a start.
With a little bit of training, he could probably assassinate Frieza before he transformed. But as he'd just learned with Gas, that was... inefficient. Gas, if he'd awakened his inner nature, definitely would've been above 781,250 power level, and yet he hadn't given Knox a second level up.
So, either one person could only give a single level at a time, or the person had to actually be in their final form for it to count.
He grumbled inwardly, 'Load of bullshit, if you ask me,' and closed the screen.
Knox leaned his head back against the cool metal wall of the ship's cabin, the steady hum of the engines a dull thrum in his bones.
His gaze drifted across the cabin to where Marzette stood, silently watching over Elec to make sure he wasn't doing anything shady.
A flicker of curiosity cut through Knox's fatigue.
The fight with Gas had been a brutal, drawn-out slugfest that had pushed him to his absolute limit and beyond. He'd been so tired after it that he hadn't even asked her about her side of things.
By all accounts, her fight should've been more of a power gap than his. Yet she only looked mildly scuffed up.
'And she must've pulled it off fast,' His tired mind realized. 'Otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to catch up to Elec so quickly, right?'
"Hey Marz," Her antennae twitched slightly, but she didn't look away from Elec. "How'd you deal with Macki so quickly? I figured she'd be a pain in the ass for you to fight, even with your Ki Blade."
"Quickly? Maybe in general terms, but that fight was far longer than it needed to be." She replied.
"Huh?" He tilted his head. "But you caught up and captured Elec before he could run away. I'd say that was pretty fast."
"Ah, that." She clicked her mandibles. "Actually, this one thought it would be a great idea to try and ambush me..."
~
PZZZAT!
Marzette's antennae twitched a microsecond before the plasma beam seared through the air where her head had been. Her mind, honed by countless battles and sharpened by the recent chaos, simply reacted.
A flicker of Ki, unstable and raw, sparked around her outstretched claw.
Psychokinesis.
She couldn't stop the beam, not with her clumsy, nascent control over the mental energy. But she could interfere with it.
A faint, invisible field of mental force rippled into existence a millimeter from her cracking carapace.
For a critical moment, the beam's velocity dropped. It was the slightest hesitation, but it was enough.
Marzette flitted to the side, the superheated energy grazing her carapace with a sizzle instead of piercing through it.
She floated, compound eyes locking onto Elec. He stood frozen, the heavy ray gun still smoking in his hand, his calculated demeanor shattered into pure, unvarnished shock. He'd bet everything on a single, despicable shot, and he had lost.
"Impossible..." he breathed.
He fumbled with his ray gun, bringing it up again with trembling hands.
"S-Stay back!" he stammered, firing wildly.
PZZZAT! PZZZAT! PZZZAT!
The plasma bolts lanced through the air... and through the fading afterimage of where Marzette had been standing. They punched harmlessly into the far wall, leaving smoldering craters.
Elec panted, the ray gun clicking uselessly in his hand, its power cell depleted. He looked left and right, frantically searching the room for her.
Then he looked up.
Marzette's shadow loomed over him. He slowly tilted his head back.
She hovered behind him, towering over him with her immense height. Her gaze was utterly devoid of mercy.
Elec's face paled. "Shit..." he whispered a defeated curse.
Marzette's mandibles clicked harshly.
"'Shit', indeed."
~
"...So I just dealt with him." She finished lamely. "Honestly, I have no idea what he was thinking."
"Yeah, that sounds about right." Knox snorted, then looked at Elec. "You're not too bright, are ya?"
Unsurprisingly, Elec didn't respond. He hadn't spoken much since Gas had died in front of him, a weird look in his eye.
But the Heeter did scowl, making Knox chuckle as he closed his eyes for a moment.
Whatever rest he tried to get was quickly interrupted by Elec's voice.
"We're here."
Knox's eyes snapped open, his eyes landing on the world outside. The ship cut through Cereal's atmosphere, touching down near the same place they'd first found Granolah.
"Great," Knox turned to Marzette. "You mind retrieving our green-eyed friend? This shouldn't take too long."
Marzette nodded firmly, opening the door and vanishing off the ship in a blur.
While they waited, Knox turned to Elec. "Alright, Elec, I have a proposition for you."
Elec's gaze sharpened, and he turned to Knox to give him his full attention. "I'm listening."
"When Granolah gets here, you're going to tell him the truth. The whole ugly story about how you set up his people and sold them to the highest bidder. You do that honestly without any bullshit, and I'll let you leave the planet without a scratch."
Emotions quickly flashed across Elec's face one after another. First confusion, then surprise, then rage, before finally settling back into cool acceptance.
It seemed he'd only just figured out why Knox had done all of this.
"And you expect me to blindly believe you'll let me go?" He asked with a single, skeptical eyebrow raise.
"Doesn't matter what you believe," Knox shrugged. "You either stay honest and maybe you survive, or you lie, and I instantly kill you for wasting my time. Granolah isn't strong enough to beat me, so trying to trick him against me is pointless."
Elec thought about it for a few seconds. "And if Granolah himself attacks?"
"I'll stop him." Knox said simply.
With his lips pursed, Elec took a solid ten seconds to think about it, his finger idly tapping the armrest of the chair he was in.
"Very well," He said finally, with a curt nod. "A temporary ceasefire, for the sake of expediency."
Soon enough, Marzette returned, Granolah floating beside her. Knox and Elec stood up and walked outside the ship to greet him. The Cerealian's single eye narrowed as he took in the scene.
His gaze swept past them, searching.
"What happened?" He demanded, his voice tight. "Where are the others? Why is Elec the only one here?"
"Don't worry about them," Knox said dismissively. He gave Elec a sharp kick in the back, pushing him forward. "Go on. Start from the beginning."
Elec glared back at him for a moment, before he turned to look at Elec. There was a look of reluctance on his face for all of one second, before it morphed into a taunting smirk.
Then he began to speak. He laid it all out with a chilling, clinical detachment. The Heeter's deal with Frieza, their role in orchestrating the Saiyan attack on Cereal, their manipulation of Granolah's life, profiting from the genocide of his people.
He spoke of reducing a planet's destruction to a simple business transaction.
As the story unfolded, the temperature around Granolah seemed to drop. His expression, initially concerned, hardened into a blank mask. When Elec finished, there was no outburst, nor a roar of rage.
Only a terrible, silent stillness.
Then, without a word, Granolah raised his hand. Energy flared at his fingertips, aimed directly at Elec's heart.
Knox's hand shot out, a psychokinetic shove deflecting the blast into the sky where it dissipated harmlessly.
"What are you doing?!" Granolah snarled, whirling on Knox, his eye blazing with fury. "After all that, you protect him?!"
"He's not worth it," Knox said, his voice casual. "Plus, we made a deal. He stays honest, and I let him leave the planet unharmed."
Granolah's fists clenched, his body trembling with rage. "So I'm just supposed to stand here and watch him leave?!"
"No," Knox said calmly. He raised his hand and tapped the side of his head twice. "You're going to do something much smarter."
Granolah stared, confused for a moment, before understanding dawned. An imperceptible beam of Ki burst from his eye, connecting his mind to Knox's.
'He can't be allowed to leave,' Granolah's mental voice immediately argued. 'He'll just do this to another planet!'
'Huh. I wasn't actually expecting you to know full on telepathy. Just that weird image thing you did before...' Knox got distracted for a moment, before shaking his head. 'Anyway, just trust me.'
He then projected an image, the exact plan of what he intended to do with Elec.
Granolah's mental presence shifted from white-hot rage to cold, calculating focus. After a long moment, he gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
The telepathic link severed.
Granolah took a step back, his expression once again unreadable.
Elec, misinterpreting the silence as surrender, couldn't resist a final, smug taunt. "A wise decision. Some battles are simply not worth the cost."
Granolah didn't even look at him. He simply crossed his arms and turned away, looking as if he truly had been humbled.
Knox gestured toward their ship. "Get out of here. Now."
Without another word, Elec boarded his vessel. The engines hummed to life, and a moment later, the ship shot into the sky, becoming a distant speck before vanishing into the void.
Knox watched them go, then let out a long, weary breath.
"I'll let you leave the planet without a scratch," Knox repeated under his breath. "...Technically, I didn't lie."
He'd never said anything about killing him after he left the planet.
- (Elec) -
The hull of the Heeter ship gleamed under the distant sun as it pierced through Cereal's atmosphere, leaving the ruined world behind. Inside, the silence was brittle, charged with a venomous hum that had nothing to do with the engines.
Elec sat in the command chair, his fingers steepled, his mind a whirlwind of recalculated plans and burning hatred. "This is only a... temporary setback," he murmured to himself.
It would be difficult to cultivate a few subordinates with the same level of loyalty and strength as his late siblings. But it wasn't impossible.
All that mattered was that he lived to see another day.
If it meant his siblings had to die for that to happen, then so be it. He could reconsolidate, find new resources, and get revenge for them.
Especially since he knew what species that Knox was. It shouldn't be too hard at all to find his planet.
"An Earthling, huh?" He mused, looking over his control panel. "Now let's see where exactly this 'Earth' is located..."
Suddenly, the ship shuddered. The steady thrum of the engines didn't change. But their forward momentum ceased entirely. It was as if he had flown into a wall of invisible molasses.
"What was that?" Elec murmured. "Did I press the wrong button again?"
Absentmindedly, he went over the multitude of screens to check the ship, only to find nothing wrong. The propulsion was still at one hundred percent. The ship was active and there was no external damage.
Minutes ticked by as Elec ran diagnostics, each one coming back green. The ship was perfectly functional.
A cold dread began to creep up Elec's spine, colder than the vacuum outside. This wasn't a mechanical failure. This was something else. His mind, so adept at plotting financial and political traps, raced through the possibilities.
And then it snagged on a very recent memory.
That plasma beam had hesitated in the air for a fraction of a second. He'd written it off as a trick of the light, but...
But maybe it wasn't.
His eyes widened in dawning understanding.
"They can..." he whispered, his voice trembling with a fear he hadn't felt since he'd met Frieza himself. "They can control things with their-!"
The rest of his sentence was lost forever.
The entire ship, from nose to stern, imploded. The incredibly dense hull crumpled inward like a paper ball in an invisible fist. The compression was instantaneous, absolute, and violent beyond measure. The contained energy of the engines and power core had nowhere to go.
The resulting explosion was a brief, silent flower of light and debris blooming in the space above Cereal, quickly swallowed by the endless dark.
- (Knox) -
Down on the surface, Knox lowered his hand, a faint wisp of black-red energy dissipating from his fingertips. He watched the distant pinprick of light vanish with a satisfied smirk.
"Heh," he chuckled to himself. "Dirty fireworks."
Then he promptly passed out.