- (Granolah) -
He could see it.
The energy enveloped the Heeter's ship, each minute detail as clear as day. Granolah watched the vessel climb higher and higher, farther away from the planet until…
It stopped.
Without warning, an immense pressure crushed the state-of-the-art ship into a perfect, compacting sphere.
In that moment, he knew; Elec's fate was sealed.
There was no loud thundering to signal his death, only a silent detonation blooming in space. His eyes tracked the pieces as they spun away, a brief flower of light and shrapnel cooling in the vacuum.
An empty feeling settled in Granolah's chest.
Despite the architect of his people's suffering being killed, he felt no satisfaction. Perhaps it was because he had only recently come to know the Heeters as those deserving of revenge.
Perhaps the situation simply hadn't settled into his mind yet.
Or perhaps…
'I won't be satisfied until the job's finished.'
The cities below were still ruins. The craters from the Saiyans' stomping feet still remained. His people were, unfortunately, still dead. The true source of this universe's rot, Frieza and his remaining Saiyans, still breathed.
Of course he wouldn't be satisfied.
Granolah flinched as a heavy thud interrupted his thoughts. His gaze lowered, locking onto Knox's prone form.
"Is he...?"
The bug, no—Marzette, glanced at him before following his gaze to Knox's body. Then she sighed before walking over to the man.
"No, he just passed out. He'll be fine after spending a bit of time in our medical machine."
Bending down, she hooked her claws under Knox's arms and casually hauled him over her shoulder.
Then she turned her gaze to Granolah.
"As soon as Knox regains consciousness, we're leaving. Get your affairs in order so we don't have to delay any longer than necessary."
Without waiting for a reply, she took to the air and shot toward their ship, a black streak across the sky.
Granolah watched her go for a moment, before taking to the air himself.
Within moments of flying, he could see the secluded home in the mountains. Monaito, his aged face tense, stood outside with worry in his eyes.
Granolah grimaced.
'...Right. I haven't explained much to him at all, have I?'
After he'd come back a little injured from his fight with Marzette and Knox, he hadn't explained much at all.
As his boots touched the ground, Granolah felt a little guilt for not being upfront about what was going on.
"Granolah! Who was that person? What mess have you gotten yourself into now?"
The Cerealian winced at Monaito's tone, but he fixed his expression before replying.
"It's... It's nothing. Whatever danger there was has been dealt with."
Monaito's expression, etched with deep lines of concern, did not soften.
"Do not give me that. I have cared for you since you were a child. I know when you are hiding something."
Granolah hesitated, his eyes studying Monaito's face. He was almost able to keep his composure, but at the last moment, his blank expression broke into a saddened frown.
"I'm leaving, Monaito."
The old Namekian blinked, his shoulders slumping slightly in what looked like relief.
"Oh. A job, then? You could've just said that that person was a client, Granolah. Well, that's- that's fine. When will you be back?"
"...Maybe never."
The air went still.
"W-what? What are you talking about, 'never'?!"
"I..."
Granolah paused, his conviction hardening his expression into a mask.
"When I came back injured earlier, it was because I got into a fight with someone strong. I lost. Badly. But this person told me that he intended to kill Frieza, and he needs my help to do it."
Monaito's face contorted in disbelief and fear.
"That's… Granolah, you can't be serious! You know as well as I do that Frieza cannot be defeated. This person, whoever he is, is clearly trying to trick you!"
"He managed to kill Gas. And…"
Granolah looked up, unable to look Monaito in the eye as he spoke.
"And he forced Elec to confess everything. After him and his partner killed the rest of the Heeters, Elec was forced to spill out the whole truth of his part in my people's death."
The dam of his control broke, and the story came pouring out.
"The Heeters, Monaito! It was them! They orchestrated it all! They made a deal with Frieza, they sold our people to the Saiyans for profit! They've been playing me for a fool my entire life, profiting from our... our genocide!"
"All this time, I thought my enemy was just the Saiyans, just Frieza... but they were the ones behind it!"
He stopped ranting for a moment and looked at Monaito. And whether it be his own familiarity with the Namekian, or the power of his ocular prowess, he saw something. A lack of shock. A lack of that glimmer in one's eyes in light of a terrible revelation.
No. The only thing he saw on his face was a weary, heartbreaking sorrow.
Granolah's rage evaporated, replaced by a cold that seeped into his very bones. His voice dropped to a whisper.
"You knew."
"Granolah..."
He grabbed Monaito by his neck, holding him so they were eye to eye. The old man winced in pain as he did so, but Granolah didn't care as he held him there, screaming in his face.
"All these years… you kept me in the dark. While I focused all my hatred on Frieza... you just let them use me like that? Why?! Why wouldn't you tell me?!"
"It was... the only way... for us... to survive..."
His eyepatch buzzed on his face, snapping him out of his rage.
"Stop, Granolah! You'll kill him if you keep holding him like that!"
Granolah's grip on Monaito's tunic loosened, his fingers trembling with a mixture of rage and dawning horror at his own actions. Oatmeel's words echoed in his mind as he released the old Namekian, taking a stumbling step back.
"Granolah... I'm sorry, but..."
Monaito coughed, rubbing his throat.
"What good would that knowledge have done you? The Heeters were too powerful and connected to Frieza. Knowing the truth would've only led you on a suicide mission against an enemy you were far from strong enough to defeat. We both lost everyone and I... I couldn't afford to lose you too."
Granolah stared.
He stared at Monaito, the man who had been the closest thing to family, his last link to a world that was gone.
And yet all he could see were the shadows of his enemies on his face. The one who had let him fester in hatred pointed in the wrong direction, making him a useful idiot for the very monsters who had orchestrated his people's tragedy.
The hollow feeling from witnessing Elec's death returned, magnified a thousandfold.
"Well... you lost me either way, Monaito."
He turned his back on the only home he had left.
"Granolah, wait!"
He didn't. He ignited his Ki, the familiar energy feeling cold around him, and shot into the sky, leaving the old Namekian behind. He didn't look back. There was nothing left for him there.
There was only the brutal, uncertain path forward.
It was the only path he had left.
- (Knox) -
"Hhhk-!"
Knox jerked upright with a violent inhale, like a man drowning desperately taking a gulp of air. His whole body shivered, soaked in sweat, and his chest heaved like he'd run a marathon.
The floor beneath him was metal. Every breath tasted like rust and ozone, tinged with something sharper.
Tinged with… deja vu.
'This… this is wrong.'
Knox squinted hard, trying to make sense of the place. It wasn't that he didn't recognize the dingy cell, but it didn't make any sense. Where was Marzette? Granolah? His ship?
Had his mind, in its desperation, fabricated an entire fantasy of freedom?
"You're awake?"
The voice came from his left. Just like that day.
But as he turned to look at the alien, it wasn't who he expected at all. There, sitting on a crate of discarded engine parts, was a small, childlike figure with a large oval head and vacant black eyes.
It swung its stubby legs, kicking them against the crate with a dull, repetitive thump… thump… thump…
'Grand Zeno…?'
Knox's mouth opened, but no sound emerged. He clawed at his own throat, a silent scream trapped behind his teeth.
"That's new… but it's still boring."
Another voice, nearly identical to the first, spoke up. But it came from across the room this time. When Knox turned to look, he realized there were two Zeno's in his cell.
It tilted its head blankly.
"He's still just sitting there, not doing anything. Can he even speak?"
Panic flared through his body. Knox planted his hands down and pushed, muscles screaming to stand, to move. But it was like his body was an anchor of lead. He couldn't lift so much as a finger from the floor.
With gritted teeth and closed eyes, he struggled, but he couldn't move from his spot.
"There's too many. We only need one of them."
Giving up, Knox opened his eyes.
The cell had somehow… stretched. The walls groaned, space distorting to accommodate a sudden crowd. Vanella, her regal composure looking absurd in the filth. Marzette, standing rigid and silent. Granolah, his sharp eyes wide with confusion. Sakana, the GP soldiers, and a dozen other faces he'd seen in passing all packed the tiny room.
"Yeah, let's just get rid of them."
The two Zenos now stood directly in front of him, their large, empty eyes reflecting his trapped form. A profound, existential dread, colder than any fear of death, seized him.
"Okay! We can make room for better ones!"
They raised their hands in unison. A soft glow began to emanate from every person in the room, a light that promised erasure.
'No. NO!'
This situation didn't make sense. Not at all. But logic wasn't necessary for fear.
In a panic, he threw every ounce of his will against the paralysis, a final, desperate act of defiance.
"Wait!"
The glow vanished. The Zenos' hands paused. Their heads swiveled back to him in perfect, unnerving sync. Their large, empty eyes focused directly on him. It wasn't a look of malice, but of simple, utter indifference.
"He talked?"
One of them shrugged. Then its hand closed into a fist.
The world dissolved into silent, blinding white.
~
For a moment, as his eyes snapped open, Knox was convinced that this was it.
That his existence had been erased, and the only thing he could perceive in his nonexistence… was green.
Then he blinked and realized that sentence made no sense; You can't perceive shit if you don't exist.
The green viscous liquid surrounding him was just the medical chamber he was still in. The faint hum of the machinery affirmed this, calming him down from his moment of fear.
All of… that, was just a dream. A nightmare.
A rather ridiculous nightmare, in hindsight. He wasn't in that cell any longer.
He had freedom. A friend. Power. And soon, he would be on his way to Earth to get even more powerful.
'Am I traumatized, or something? Of that cell…?'
No, that couldn't be it. Despite him telling Marzette that he wanted to kill Frieza out of revenge, he was only a slave for a single day. His time in that cell was as brief as it could've been.
His only real reason for wanting to kill Frieza was ego.
He almost snorted at the thought. That nightmare was just bullshit. Why would Zeno waste his time personally erasing everyone in the–
His blood ran cold.
'I get it. The meaning of that dream… It's that I've never truly left that cell…'
If Dragonball Daima did anything, it revealed a simple truth: Zeno did not create the multiverse.
He was the Omni-King, yes, but it was stated by the Grand Priest that it had been roughly 8.6 million years since he became the Omni-King. Which meant that the position wasn't his back then.
And Knox knew for a fact that Beerus sealed away the Supreme Kai 75 million years ago.
'Meaning Zeno is… a tyrant. A new one, in the grand scheme of things.'
Perhaps he was the 'destruction' side of Rymas, the true creator of the multiverse, but Knox wasn't sure.
What he was sure about, was that this whole universe—Frieza's Empire, Planet Cereal, Earth, every star and every soul—was just a bigger prison cell.
And the warden was a chronically bored child, free to erase it all as he pleased.
Beep!
His thoughts were interrupted when the soft chime of the chamber echoed, and the green liquid began to drain with a gurgle. The struts attached to his back and limbs retracted with a click.
The lid of the medical pod hissed open, letting in the air of the ship.
Knox stretched slowly, his body fully healed. He stared down at his hands, turning them over in the light. At this point, he could destroy entire planets with just his bare hands. Soon, he would become the strongest mortal in the universe.
But in the face of that monster… his hands were as powerless as they were the first day he'd arrived in this world.
Any embers of post-victory high were ruthlessly extinguished.
"God" had called this a punishment, and now he could see why.
His freedom, his power, his entire journey… it was all happening in a cage whose walls were simply too vast to see. A slice of false heaven built into the deepest layers of hell.
"Fuck. I'm so stupid. I can't believe it took me this long to realize it."
He let out a long, heavy sigh, the sound hollow in the quiet chamber.
"I know what I need to do."
He was under no illusion that he could keep canon intact. And since he wasn't sure the Tournament of Power would even happen, there were really only two ways to save himself from being erased.
Either he stole the Super Dragon Balls and gathered them for a wish to save the universe or…
"I have to fix the whole damn universe myself. Our Mortal Level is far too low."
Frieza was just step one. The bastard was too recklessly genocidal to keep alive.
He pushed himself out of the pod, his usual manic energy completely absent, replaced by a grim focus. He found a fresh undersuit, dressed mechanically, and walked out of the med-bay.
In the ship's control room, Granolah sat quietly in the pilot's chair, looking over the various buttons and nodes Knox couldn't parse. Marzette was standing near him, her body far tenser than he expected her to be.
They both turned to look as the door opened. Marzette spoke up first.
"Finally, you're up. We have a bit of a situation on our… what's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong. You were saying there was a situation?"
Marzette gave him a long look for a moment, clearly not believing him, but let it pass. She instead shifted her gaze back to Granolah.
"Do the thing."
The Cerealian pressed a few buttons, and then used his hands to pull a hologram into view. On the holographic screen was a single ship surrounded by a few other smaller ships. It was just sitting there in the void of space.
"What am I looking at, here?"
Knox walked up to the screen and squinted at it in confusion. Granolah replied, making gestures as he spoke.
"Shortly after you entered the medical chamber, this ship and its fleet dropped into the orbit of the planet. They've made no hostile movements, and they've been following us around. Despite their ships matching the Cold Empire's design, we thought it was a third party at first. But after thinking about it, it makes sense that they haven't simply glassed the planet. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can't just kill the Sugarians along with us, as they're customers of the Planet Trade Organization, but they also can't just deal with us individually since they likely sense your high power level. Therefore, we were thinking about using their presence to our advantage. If we could lure them into a false sense of security, we could–"
"Got it."
Before Granolah could keep yapping, Knox raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
With that simple gesture, the ship and its fleet suddenly all flew into each other, exploding on impact. The resulting debris was then all pulled together, viscera and metal squeezing into a massive ball.
[Threshold not Met.]
[Threshold not Met.]
[Threshold not Met.] x48
The control room was plunged into stunned silence.
Granolah and Marzette simply stared at him. Both Granolah's mouth and Marzette's mandibles were slightly parted, disbelief emanating from them in waves.
Knox lowered his hand with a scoff.
"I don't know what I was expecting. The only strong person left in that whole army is Frieza and his direct family…"
Then he glanced up at their stunned faces.
"What…? Why are you guys looking at me like– OH. Were we going to exploit them for intel or loot, or something? …My bad, I just really like that move."