Pride Rekindled: Chapter 2
In the ruins of what was once the most populated city on the planet, an apex predator was fleeing.
Its breath came out in short pants as its massive paws beat against ruined pavement that had been overcome with vegetation. Blood pumped through thick veins, supplying oxygen to powerful muscles that strained with the immense effort they had been extruding for what felt like hours.
Well-honed instincts screamed out, and its heart clenched in horror. Its back legs propelled it forward faster than ever before, and a whimper akin to a child’s emerged from its throat as an orb of deep purple energy passed it by mere inches, slamming into the foundation of one of the only standing buildings for miles.
Slitted eyes closed as the orb expanded, turning bright white as it grew to consume the entire lower half of the structure it had landed against with its destructive power. The ground shook under its paws but it didn’t stop moving. It needed to get away!
And when the light cleared, the only thing left of the once proud building was smoldering earth and molten stone.
The beast didn’t understand what had changed, it was supposed to be the strongest! It was the largest of its kind for hundreds of miles, its claws were the sharpest, its mates were the most fertile and its den was the biggest! Nothing could contest its power.
And yet, it knew it stood no chance against the creature pursuing it. Any attempt to fight would end in death so much like that which surrounded it as it rushed through the once populated city. It had seen what happened to those who attempted to fight back. The scaly two-legs with the glowing sticks had tried.
It hadn’t seen one of their kind in years.
Its dark mane fluttered in the wind as it leapt dozens of feet into the air, heart clenching as its sensitive ears heard the sound of fluttering fabric. A death sentence. Slitted eyes darted back and forth, searching for any type of sanctuary from the certain death behind it.
It darted inside, huddling as far into the darkness as its massive body would allow. It attempted to control its breathing, doing its best to remain unheard as the smell of dirt and blood grew ever closer.
And passed it by.
The Krakir heaved a silent sigh of relief, its heart pounding heavily in its chest as it slowly calmed down from its state of panic. It had survived, now it only needed to wait until the demon had moved on and maybe it could esca-
“Finally! I found you, you fucker!”
The beast's last thoughts were spent wondering how such a young creature could be responsible for such destruction, moments before its thoughts ceased altogether in a wave of burning violet.
~~
Papri sighed in relief as the head of her prey disintegrated beneath her ki wave. As her attack dissipated, the beast fell to the ground, legs twitching as its body tried to come to terms with the lack of signals from the brain.
As much as she enjoyed hunting these things in the past few years on this planet, this one had been particularly slippery, evading her for a few months at least. It had been getting tiring and extremely annoying, and she was glad the thing was finally dead.
“You better taste fucking delicious.” The teenager threatened the corpse as she floated down towards it, cloak and hair fluttering in the wind. She wrinkled her nose at the acrid smell of burnt hair and flesh as she reached the body. She managed to ignore it as she always had, hefting the animal at least thrice her size onto her shoulders and taking off once more.
This Krakir had been the largest she had killed so far and definitely the most intelligent given the way it hid from her instead of trying to fight. Unfortunately, the larger they got, the more they tasted like bile, not appetizing in anything but an overly seasoned stew. She wasn’t going to let a prize like this go to waste though. Not after she had spent so long trying to get it.
The Saiyan flew high above the destroyed buildings around her, turning her eyes this way and that as she looked for something specific.
“Now where is it…” She muttered to herself, “I really shouldn’t have chased the thing so far-ah! There it is.” There, on the far edge of the city was a large crater and a relatively small house nearby. Her home.
With a small grunt, a corona of energy flared to life around her. She adjusted the animal on her shoulders momentarily, before shooting off like a rocket, a trail of burning ki left in her wake like a comet’s tail. Considering she was the only intelligent life on the planet, Papri decided there was no reason to rush in getting home. She beat a steady but leisurely pace just taking in the familiar sights as she flew.
Ten years. It had been ten years since she landed on the planet she now called home. Ten years of scavenging for food and building her home up as much as she could. Some would dream of a simple life like that. Not a Saiyan. Not Papri.
Papri hadn’t chosen to make this rock her home. No, instead she was stranded, stranded on this now desolate ball of mud and jungle that she had been sent to depopulate as a child.
Papri sighed, banking left in her flight to avoid one of the few still-standing buildings as she thought of her mission. The timing of her landing on this planet had been fortunate, smack dab in the middle of the full moon. When that idiot had pulled her out of her pod, it had been a simple thing to locate the source of blutz waves and after that, nothing was able to stop her.
Planet Grinn was a planet of mostly jungle and was sparsely populated in the first place. Likely owing to lacking fertility rates, the dominant species only had a population in the tens of thousands and as such, had only colonized around a fourth of the planet at best.
They had also been the type to put all of their eggs in one basket as it were, with the majority of the population inhabiting only two major cities. By the time she had come out of her Oozaru state, neither of said cities were left standing. Nor was a good portion of the jungle around them.
Her armor had been damaged, a sign that the lizard-like race had tried to fight back, but even a team of normal Oozaru would have trouble taking her down when she was transformed thanks to her heritage. Such a primitive species stood less than zero chance.
Whatever resistance they had put up had been futile, and they had been eradicated. When the moon disappeared and she returned to normal, It was a simple task to root out what was left of them and kill them as well. Within a month or so, her mission was complete.
Normally, when an eradication mission was complete, the Saiyan in charge of the squad would send a transmission back to Planet Vegeta or the nearest PTO post to indicate the planet was ready for cleanup and eventual sale. If it was an Infant Eradication, where a low-class Saiyan was sent to a weaker planet to devastate it once a full moon emerged, the infant’s pod would simply send the signal itself when a certain amount of time had passed and another Saiyan would be sent to retrieve the child. Or the corpse.
Though she had technically been a child at the time, Papri wasn’t an infant. Saiyans grew in intelligence rather quickly compared to other races and her family did so even faster, so even by age four she had a good grasp on the required protocols.
Only, when she had attempted to send out the signal to indicate a mission complete, nothing happened. Nothing was received, nothing was sent. Complete silence. Her pod’s communicator was completely nonfunctional.
In fact, upon closer inspection, a good portion of her pod was completely nonfunctional. Engines, grav core, shields, hell even the life support was offline so even if she did make it into orbit (which was very unlikely) she wouldn’t make it very far. It was a horrifying realization, to find out that she was trapped on a planet in the middle of nowhere space.
She’d admit she threw a bit of a tantrum. Ok, a lot of a tantrum. She reduced several of the forests near her into smoking cinders, blew up buildings and then blew up the rubble as well, and even then she wasn’t satisfied. Her rampage lasted well into the night and left the planet itself with scars that would likely never heal by the time she finally calmed down, and even now her memories of the event were a little foggy from her anger.
Luckily, it seemed even in her rage she had the presence of mine to not turn her anger on the pod itself and it had been left completely untouched.
Papri knew there was no way she was going to be able to repair it. Even disregarding the fact that she had been a literal child, she was a Saiyan, not an astro-engineer, she wouldn't even know where to start.
She decided to just leave it alone, retrieving her scouter and ration packs and resolving to survive until help arrived, or she couldn't anymore. Like all Saiyan's, she had basic survival knowledge implanted into her head when she was a baby, she would be fine.
Slowing her speed as she approached her destination, Papri touched down outside of her home, adjusting the weight of the animal on her shoulder as she made her way towards the door.
As she walked, she cast a glance to what was left of her pod sitting on her proverbial front lawn. What was left of it anyway. It had sat in the same crater it landed in for a little over six years before she finally decided that she might as well use it for something else. Namely, building up her home.
She was pretty sure the place she now called home once belonged to the man who had pulled her out of the pod. It was the closest dwelling with another a little over a mile away, and was clearly furnished for a large family.
Of course, by the time she had claimed the home, said family was long dead and the house was empty so Papri had no difficulties claiming it for her own use.
Over the years, using the salvaged tech from her pod, as well as what little she could find in the city, she was able to construct a somewhat stable dwelling, complete with electricity and heating. Eventually, over the years, Papri had actually built up somewhat of a respectable dwelling somewhat akin to her old home on Planet Vegeta.
Though the only reason she was able to do things like this was because her pod, for some reason, possessed a variable library’s worth of useful information in its data-bank.
Texts on engineering, survival, even ki control and attack instructioms, all of it was stored in the main data-bank, like someone had simply downloaded every useful thing they could get their hands on, directly into her personal Attack Pod.
It was almost like someone expected this to happen to her. Or caused it.
She had always found it more than just a little strange that she had managed to get to Planet Grinn in one piece with the state she found her pod in. Considering that the planet was several months worth of travel from Planet Vegeta, it should have broken down long before she even reached the sector of space that her destination was in. It was suspicious.
Unfortunately, for all her suspicions she had next to zero answers and wasn’t likely to get them any time soon. She decided not to dwell on things she couldn’t change and focus on survival. If and when she got off the planet, she could seek out all the answers she wanted.
“Welcome back Papri. Did your quarry once again evade you?” A robotic voice sounded from the speakers on the walls as she entered her home, closing the door loudly behind her.
Papri grunted, throwing the Krakir from her shoulder onto the relatively clean floor of what she had deemed her prepping area. Relatively clean in the sense that the blood that was engrained into the wood was in no way fresh, “Go fuck yourself Bot. I got him this time. Little bastard tried to hide from me, but I got him.”
“I am afraid I am incapable of such an action, Papri. I am in fact embedded into the wall. Nor do I have genitalia” The AI pointed out helpfully, and she cast an annoyed glance toward the box containing his personality..
Bot was the result of her fooling around with her pod's onboard AI. She had been slowly going crazy with only herself to talk to, and, with the help of her pod’s data-center, had managed to somewhat reactivate it after the systems shut down by integrating it into the city’s power grid, slotting the chip into a device that she had created using her pod’s power modulator as well as a few other bits and bobs.
Unfortunately, it seemed that her inexperienced hands had caused something to happen to the chip itself, resulting in the AI gaining a bit of a personality of its own; one that happened to grate on her nerves like nothing else. She had been hoping for something to help her stay sane all on her lonesome, and while she had somewhat succeeded, she spent just as much time annoyed as she would have spent as a raving lunatic so it somewhat evened out.
Still, it was better than having literally nobody to talk to, and Papru would lie if she said she wasn’t at least slightly endeared to the damn thing.
She grunted as she set about skinning the beast she had slain. Her armor was becoming ragged, the elastic materials wearing down after ten years of constant use. This Krakir’s hide would more than suffice for a new piece of clothing, “If you want out, you know I can just put you in my scouter, don’t act like you’re stuck there. And you don’t need genitalia. That would be weird.”
She did not plan to make a gynoid any time soon, thank you very much. Although, what would be the male equivalent of a gynoid? An android? Eh, who cares, it wasn’t like she could build one even if she wanted to or had the materials for it.
With careful movements, Papri cut off the Krakir’s front legs, moving to the back and making deliberate cuts along its hind legs where the joints met one another. She really didn’t feel like gutting the thing right now, so she was going to do her best to skin it in one go.
As she cut into it, she debated on what to do with the rest of the carcass. The larger Krakit tasted awful unless cooked in a shit-ton of spices, and she was running low on those. Maybe she could slow roast it?
As she made the last cut, swiping her knife under the portions needed, Papri heaved the beast upwards, hanging it from its back legs on a pair of hooks dangling from the ceiling. She stepped back with a huff, flexing her fingers and bringing them to the seam of skin near the top, preparing to tear it downward when she was interrupted by Bot’s semi-urgent voice.
“Papri, I am detecting several space-faring vehicles heading towards the planet. Identification codes indicate they are members of the Planet Trade Organization. Your long-awaited rescue might have finally arrived.”
The Saiyan froze, fingers embedded under the skin of her future clothing as she took in her AI’s words, “What?”
“Several space-faring vehicles are heading towards the planet.” Bot repeated, “They have just breached the outer layer of the exosphere and are beginning their descent to the planet’s surface. My limited scanning ability suggests that they are likely to make landfall several kilometers to the north.”
The Krakir fell from her grip as she stood suddenly, eyes wide as she took in what her AI had said. Someone had finally come to rescue her!? After ten long years, she would finally get off this rock!?
She threw her knife to the side as she left her kill half-skinned, this was much more important! “What branch are they with? Are you able to tell?” She asked as she hastily gathered her things, grabbing her scouter and placing it on her face, powering it on with a beep. She cast her gaze about, searching for power levels as she waited for Bot’s answer.
“Identification codes suggest that they are members of Lord Cooler’s army, though I am unable to discern the exact branch. My apologies.”
Cooler. That was Frieza’s brother wasn't it? From what she recalled, he ruled over the Northern Quadrant of the galaxy, which the planet she was currently on bordered. Still, though Grinn technically bordered the North Quadrant, it was still technically in the West one, under Frieza’s rule. While Frieza may have been more hands off when it came to ruling his portion of the Empire, there was no doubt that he was in charge at the end of the day.
So that begged the question, why were Cooler’s forces here? Some sort of power play by the older brother? All the information she had was at least ten years out of date, so it was possible something had happened between them in the time she had been stranded…
Actually, who gave a shit! All that mattered was that people were landing on the planet! People with working ships! She was saved!
The Sayian couldn’t keep the giddy smile off of her face as her scouter caught the approaching power levels. They were much too far away to be readable, but at the very least she knew they were actually coming and it wasn’t just Bot’s sensor’s malfunctioning like they tended to do on occasion.
She really didn’t feel like crying when she was reminded of the hopelessness of the situation she was in.
She blurred her way around her home, grabbing the important things, namely Bot’s data-chip, there was no way she was leaving him behind. She slotted the chip into place in her scouter, eliciting a beep from the device as his data was uploaded to it.
“Let’s go Bot! I wanna get there before they land so I can get a read on their power levels!” She spoke aloud as she exited the building, taking off into the air. She cast one last glance to the place she called home before shooting off toward the likely landing place of the ships.
“I would advise caution, Papri.” Bot spoke directly into her ear, “It is extremely possible that these individuals are not friendly. You may technically be a Saiyan Elite, but there's still many who would best you with little difficulty, especially in Lord Cooler’s army.” He warned.
Papri scoffed, “Please, we both know if anything like that happens I can just create a Power Ball and crush them all. There’s no way any of them have a power level that high.”
And besides, it wasn’t like she needed the pilots alive to use their ships. If they wouldn’t let her hitch a ride, she’d just kill them and take their ships. Simple. Papri grinned sharply as she caught sight of bruning comets making their way from orbit. She was getting off this planet.
One way or another.