I watch from the ground as Vegeta, Broly and Raditz are going at it in an all out free-for-all as they're flying up in the air. Curiously enough, I didn't actually see Raditz reenter the fray for a while. I lost track of him ever since he got blasted by Broly a few minutes ago.
I knew he wasn't dead, Broly has been doing very well with his Ki control over these past couple of months. It's honestly impressive how much control he actually has.
But it does beg the question of where Raditz actually ended up after the blast...
"Don't forget about me!"
Almost as if it was on queue, Raditz blitzed right towards Vegeta with a cocked back arm.
I facepalm at the idiocy of my little brother and let out a load groan. I've told him a countless amount of times to stop announcing himself whenever he joins back into a fight.
"Don't be presumptuous, you low-class wretch!" Vegeta yelled back before dodging under the punch and planting an uppercut right into Raditz's gut.
"Ooh..."
Even I cringed a bit at the sound that punch made...
Back when Raditz first joined, Vegeta was not exactly happy about it considering that Raditz was a low-class Saiyan. That unhappiness quickly turned into just blatant hostility once he realized that this "Low-Class Saiyan" almost had a power level equal to his own.
And to make matters worse, Raditz wasn't exactly happy with his new team member either.
He hated Vegeta.
Basically for all the reasons you're thinking of why someone would hate Vegeta.
Apparently, even though I beat some of the arrogance out of him when we first met, Vegeta still held a bit of his prejudices towards the Low-Class Saiyans.
Which I sort of do as well, to be honest with you...
He sees them as weak, which ninety-seven percent of them are. He also sees them as dumb, which, again, ninety-percent of them are. The only difference between his hate and mine was that I hated all of the classes instead of just the lower class.
Once a Saiyan is deemed a low-class Saiyan, they do one of two things.
One, they accept it and never train, thinking they're born to be weak.
Like a goddamn child.
Or two, they train to reach High or Elite class and then they never train again.
Like an arrogant goddamn child.
You have a warrior race with the potential to rival gods, and most of them can die by the hands of Appule.
Fucking. Appule.
Safe to say, I know Vegeta's frustration when it comes to weak Saiyans, it's the same frustration I have for them, but I can't have infighting withing my ranks. So to deal with it, I did what any responsible person would do.
I took them out into the wasteland and let them pummel each other until they got it out of their systems.
The right way. The Saiyan way.
It's not like they're my children, so it's fine.
And besides, it worked.
Mostly...
Once they had their good old fashioned Saiyan debate, the two just seemed to be your basic run-of-the-mill rivals, which actually made my time table progress faster than I originally anticipated.
Once all three had matching power levels, they fight each other almost daily to prove who was the strongest among them.
Even Broly was getting into the spirit of things, surprisingly.
Seems that even though he's a more reserved Saiyan, he's still a Saiyan., still got that deep primal drive to get stronger even though there's not really much of a reason.
I'm proud of him.
Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of all three of them. Their progress in these past few weeks can't be denied. Hell, they're all about to break into the three thousands. They give it their all in their training and it shows.
But I'm especially proud of Broly.
The kid has gone a long way in terms of controlling his Great Ape form. He did it in just half the time it took me to gain control.
Sure, It was probably due to my Ancient Saiyan heritage that made it so much more difficult, but that doesn't matter, it's still impressive that he managed to do it.
He's also learned to meditate on his own, without my help, even going on to do so when I'm not around.
The same could not be said about the other two.
One day, Raditz and Vegeta had both saw him meditating and got curious, wanting to do it themselves. I showed them, obviously, thinking that I could grow them even more, but that thought was immediately thrown out when they tried it out and said that it was stupid.
I tried explaining to them why it was so important, but they just brushed me off and said that it was a waste of time.
The strength it took for me not to strangle them...
I thought back to my own past, remembering the times I had disrespected my own teachers. My school days weren't exactly my finest moments. I wondered if they all felt the same level rage I felt in that moment with my own students.
I apologized profusely to the ghosts of my old teachers that day...
"Alright, that's enough!" I yelled at them from the ground, causing them to immediately stop their fight and fly back down to ground level, "Raditz, how many times do I have to tell you to stop televising your damn attacks?! Just attack! Vegeta would've never gotten the chance to counter you if you didn't yell out your intentions from half a mile away!"
"It wasn't half a mile..." Raditz pouted, grumbling under his breath.
"You're right, it was clearly a mile." Vegeta goaded.
"You wanna go again?!" Raditz yelled at him.
"Any day of the year!" Vegeta retorts.
Sparing myself the incoming headache, I slapped the both of them in the back of their heads, hard enough to send them face first first into the ground before turning to address Broly.
"Broly, you're doing great, but you're relying too much on your blast attacks." I tell him before adding, "There's nothing wrong with getting in close. You have strength, use it."
He nodded his head, his eyes holding a determined gleam.
"And you..." I said as I looked down at Vegeta, who was still face down on the ground, kneeling down beside him, "I have nothing to comment on. Your performance was excellent. You timed your strikes, conserved your energy, and kept a good sense of your surroundings. Keep it up."
He let out a "thank you", but I honestly couldn't tell as his face was buried in the ground, so he could have easily muttered, "fuck you" instead.
"Alright, training is dismissed." I said as I clapped my hands.
---
My eyebrow twitched as I look around at my surroundings.
"Since when did "dismissed" start to mean "follow me to my house"?" I asked, muttering it under my breath and towards no one in particular.
"What's the problem?" Raditz asked, his voice muffled as he was biting into a piece of meat.
"Don't talk with your mouth full." I chastised him, to which he rolled his eyes, "And for you, nothing, but why do you keep coming here?"
I turned to face Vegeta, who was sitting at the end of the table, also devouring an entire leg of meat.
"I'm here so that you won't give these two clowns any special treatment." He replied, pointing towards Raditz and Broly.
Thank God that all this was only a recent development. I never would've gotten Broly to get his Great Ape under control if he had been doing three months ago.
For some reason unknown to me, my team decided that my house was some sort of after-training recovery hub.
I don't even remember how it all started, Vegeta just showed up out of the blue one day like a stray goddamn cat and just decided, "Oh, I'm hanging out here now."
"Don't worry about it, Zyleth. It's nice having the house this lively." My mother said, sitting down on the couch with the Queen.
Don't even get me started on why she's here, I can only handle so much in a single given day. She just showed up with Vegeta one day, not even bothering to explain her reasoning.
Whole family is full of goddamn cats...
"I would think that having it be nice and quiet would make you feel more relaxed." I said, my eyes traveling down to her pregnant belly.
Yea, Gine was pregnant, has been for around four months now. Took me by surprise when she finally came out with that little tidbit.
"It's fine, Zyleth. I'm fine." She smiled reassuringly. "Promise."
"Yes, your mother is fine, boy." The Queen said with a roll of her eyes, "Quit being such a worry wart. My own husband didn't even fuss over me during my pregnancy as much as you're fussing over your mother."
"If that was meant to sound like a brag, it doesn't. I honestly feel sad for you. No wait, that's not it..." I said, taking a sip of my juice before adding, "It's pity."
The Queen's eyebrow suddenly twitched and she started to grit her teeth, "You have a lot of nerve..."
"And you have a lot of curves..." I muttered underneath my breath as I turned my head away slightly.
"What?" The Queen asked with a raised eyebrow, her anger replaced with confusion.
"What?" I asked back, acting as if I said nothing at all.
Before she could comment anything further, my scouter suddenly sounded off a loud alert. Matter of fact, all of our scouters sounded off, even the Queen's.
"The Hell?" I muttered before putting it on and reading the blinking message that it displayed.
[All Saiyan Teams report to the shipyard.]
[KV-999]
That's weird...
That line of code underneath the message suggests that it was the King that was sending out this alert.
"What's this about?" I asked the Queen.
"I don't know, but it must be something urgent." She said as she walked out the front door and flew in the direction of the shipyard without another word.
Standing up myself, I walked outside to see that the sky was filled with a number of Saiyans doing the same thing.
"What's going on? This has never happened before..." Gine said with a worried expression.
"Zyleth, we have to go now!" Vegeta exclaimed, looking up with a serious gaze.
"I know, I know..." I waved my hand at him dismissively before walking towards my mother.
I wrap my arms around her waist and she bends down to plant a small kiss atop my head.
"Be safe..." She whispered in my ear as we pulled apart.
"Always am." I told her before flying up in the sky. "Team Black, move out."
The three members of my team followed me up in the air and we flew to the shipyard as fast as we could. I slowed my speed down to a crawl to make sure I don't leave my teammates behind when I heard someone yell out my name.
"Zyleth!"
I turned my head back and found my father and his team flying beside us.
"Do you know what's going on?" He asks.
"No, I don't." I shake my head before I look on ahead and seeing what's in front of us.
I come to a sudden stop, everyone beside me doing the same. In front of us was the shipyard, and looking what's waiting for us, I could see three large ships surrounded by what looked to be an entire fleet of smaller ships.
"What the hell?" Bardock whispered, looking on at the ships with furrowed eyebrows.
"What exactly is the King planning on doing?" Tora asked with a raised eyebrow.
I glanced back at him for a split second before turning back towards the shipyard, "I don't know, but I have a feeling we're about to find out..."
[Word Count: 2,008.]