The sky split open.
A violet comet screamed across Namek's atmosphere, trailing a tail of ionized air that looked like a comet's wake.
Vegeta wasn't hurrying.
This was a leisurely stroll at Mach 30.
Zarbon felt him long before he saw him: a pressure that crushed the air itself, a killing intent so thick it had weight.
He turned.
A black speck on the horizon became a man in less than two heartbeats.
Zarbon's perfect face went the color of old milk.
"Ve Vegeta?!"
The prince braked to a dead stop five meters away, arms folded, tail flicking lazily.
"Running already, Zarbon? How unbecoming. I expected at least a little dignity from Frieza's favorite pet."
Zarbon's aura flared in panic, green hair whipping as he poured everything into raw speed.
Useless.
Vegeta matched him without effort, then overtook him, then cut in front and stopped again, blocking the path like he'd been waiting there for hours.
Zarbon skidded to a halt, chest heaving.
Sweat traced perfect lines down his cheekbones.
Vegeta's smile was small, sharp, and utterly merciless.
"Dodoria's dead, by the way. Took three seconds. Maybe four. I lost count after the first scream."
Zarbon's composure cracked like cheap glass.
"That's impossible. I was with him twenty minutes ago!"
"Twenty minutes is a lifetime when you're dealing with me."
Vegeta raised one hand, palm open, a marble-sized sphere of violet-white ki spinning above it.
Dense enough to make the air scream.
Zarbon's eyes locked on that sphere and forgot how to blink.
"Wait wait! We can talk! Lord Frieza "
"Frieza isn't here," Vegeta cut in, voice soft. "And even if he were, he'd be next."
Zarbon's pride finally shattered.
His aura detonated.
Muscles bulged, bones cracked and lengthened, beautiful features twisting into something reptilian and monstrous.
The transformation rippled across his body like a nightmare given flesh.
Power surged 22,000 climbing toward 30,000 and beyond.
The ugly, hulking "Beast" Zarbon floated there, chest heaving, eyes burning with desperate triumph.
Vegeta stared for three full seconds.
Then he started laughing.
Not mocking. Not cruel.
Just genuine, incredulous laughter.
"That's it?" he wheezed, wiping an imaginary tear. "That's your big trump card? You turn into a lizard-skinned ogre and you think that scares me now?"
He powered up just a flicker, barely one percent.
The ocean beneath them dipped fifty meters as if an invisible hand had pressed down on the planet itself.
Zarbon's beastly face went slack.
The gap wasn't a gap anymore.
It was an event horizon.
Vegeta's laughter died.
His eyes turned ice-cold.
"Turned ugly for nothing, Zarbon. Time to die."
He vanished.
Reappeared behind the frozen monster, two fingers already glowing at Zarbon's spine.
"Bang," he whispered.