Vegeta stared blankly, his expression hollow, as Frieza lifted his foot from Nappa's broken ribcage. Blood and shards of bone clung to the tyrant's heel as it rose with a squelch. Vegeta's mouth opened and closed, but no sound escaped. His gaze was fixed on Nappa's cloudy and unseeing eyes, but in the fractured depths of Vegeta's mind, they seemed to burn into him, full of accusation.
Deep down, Vegeta knew that wasn't true. Nappa's final words had been filled with loyalty and belief, not reproach. But logic was drowned beneath the emotions flooding his chest—rage, shame, and crushing guilt that warped Nappa's vacant stare into one of silent condemnation.
"Good riddance," Frieza sneered, shaking his foot to dislodge the blood and gore before casting a mocking glance at Vegeta. "Come to think of it, weren't you Saiyans big on honor and burials? Especially for those who've 'gloriously fallen in battle'?" His lips twisted into a sinister smirk.
"Well," Frieza said as he took a slow, measured step forward, "how's this for an honorable burial?"
He rested his foot lightly on Nappa's head, the pressure so minimal that it barely disturbed the dirt beneath.
For a fleeting second, Vegeta clung to the faint hope that even Frieza wouldn't stoop so low—but that hope shattered as Frieza pressed down.
The nauseating crunch of bone splintering and flesh collapsing sounded as Nappa's skull crumpled beneath Frieza's heel with horrifying ease. Blood and brain matter splattered outward in a grisly halo as the force of the stomp drove Frieza's foot deep into the earth, leaving a crater that mocked any burial Nappa might have deserved in death.
A strangled, broken cry tore from Vegeta's throat—half rage, half despair. His fist dug into the dirt beneath him, coarse soil grinding against his palms as he trembled with barely contained grief.
But Frieza only regarded his foot with a sneer of disgust as though it had been sullied beyond repair.
"Ugh, what a mess. Now I've got monkey brains all over my foot." Without a second thought, he wiped the blood and filth on Nappa's armor.
The casual callousness of the act twisted the knife deeper into Vegeta's already cracked psyche.
In the distance, Gohan made a strangled noise, part gasp, part growl, as his small frame trembled with fury. His eyes shimmered with tears of outrage, and his teeth were clenched so tightly it was a miracle they didn't shatter. His aura erupted violently, flickering with pale arcs of electricity as the untamed rage of his Saiyan heritage surged to the surface.
But before he could act, a green hand clamped firmly onto his shoulder. This time, Piccolo's grip wasn't gentle—it was unyielding, a silent command that anchored Gohan where he stood.
Gohan whirled around, eyes blazing. "Let me go, Mr. Piccolo!" he all but snarled.
"I'm not letting you throw your life away, Gohan," Piccolo replied firmly, his tone brooking no argument.
He said no more, but his sharp eyes flicked briefly to Krillin. The silent exchange between them was quick but meaningful. Krillin subtly shifted so that he was in a position to intervene if Gohan acted impulsively.
Meanwhile, Vegeta remained motionless. He could do nothing but stare blankly at the scene, his mind sinking into the quicksand of rage and helplessness.
Frieza's lips curled into an even crueler smile, his glee almost childlike as a fresh idea struck him—a memory of something he could wield to further break Vegeta. He clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward slightly before sharing a delightful secret.
"Ah, that reminds me!" he said with unsettling cheerfulness. "I'd always assumed someone like Dodoria might have let this slip at some point, but based on our exchange so far, it seems I have the privilege of revealing it myself. You see, Vegeta, the destruction of Planet Vegeta wasn't caused by some stray meteor."
The words were like death knells to Vegeta, and he flinched as if struck. His eyes widened, his lips parting soundlessly as the implications began to sink in. A dreadful realization clawed its way into his mind, a horrifying conclusion he desperately wished to reject but couldn't.
Frieza began pacing, and when he spoke again, his tone was that of someone recounting a well-worn tale.
"Let me enlighten you, but first, let's recount the story you've been fed: your oh-so-glorious father, King Vegeta, along with his ragtag band of elites, were summoned by dear old Father and me to discuss how to handle the… consequences of offending someone you really shouldn't have. Naturally, they left Planet Vegeta to heed my call. And why wouldn't they? After all, who could ignore the summons of Lord Frieza?"
Frieza chuckled softly, a cold, mirthless sound. "Of course, I made sure to welcome them with the respect they deserved. I am, after all, a magnanimous ruler, wouldn't you agree?"
"Ah, but your father…" he continued. "He didn't trust me. Could you believe that? After everything I've done for your kind, he had the audacity to doubt me. Perhaps he believed my father and I were plotting to weaken the Saiyan race by eliminating its strongest warriors. Such baseless paranoia, really. And so, in his infinite arrogance, your so-called 'king' did the unthinkable—he staged a rebellion against me on my own ship." Frieza laughed sharply. "A rebellion! Against me!"
Frieza stopped pacing and leaned forward slightly.
"You can imagine how that little farce played out. Your father, your elites—every last one of them—obliterated by their own hubris. And the best part?" He laughed quietly, shaking his head as if savoring the memory.
"By gathering everyone, they made a fatal error. They left no one to protect your precious homeworld. And then, just a few days later, that infamous rogue meteor—oh, what impeccable timing—arrived above Planet Vegeta. With no one strong enough to stop it, your world, your people, were reduced to cosmic dust. It was almost poetic. Almost as if it were the will of the gods."
Frieza grinned as he nonchalantly kicked Nappa's body.
"And that just so happened to align perfectly with what Nappa here knew about your father's secret little ambitions, didn't it? You, too, were well aware of whom your father had offended from your own personal experiences, no? Now, I'm sure you had your suspicions—how could you not? But then again..." He chuckled, the sound devoid of compassion.
"The footage of your father's rebellion and the records of the meteor that Zarbon had so thoughtfully provided were rather convincing, weren't they? And let's not forget, I had a rather impeccable alibi at the time of the impact, didn't I?"
Frieza once again clasped his arms behind his back as he delivered the punchline.
"The rebellion was fact, but the meteor's timing, the security footage, the alibi, the meteor—it was all lies. I destroyed Planet Vegeta. I watched as your pathetic world and its people turned to ash. I watched as the scouter readings plummeted to zero. It was me!" His grin grew impossibly wide. "And the best part? You—you, Vegeta—danced like the perfect little monkey, loyally slaving away for the very person who annihilated your entire race! The irony of it all! Hahahaha!"
Vegeta's mind reeled. The physical pain from his wounds felt distant, insignificant in comparison to the horrific revelation. The world around him seemed to dissolve into a maddening white noise as his worldview shattered. The brightness of his surroundings grew unbearable as it pulsed and warped in sync with the frantic pounding of his heart.
"And here we are!" Frieza declared, throwing his arms wide in a dramatic flourish. "Both of your little monkey friends are dead. In the end, all that talk of honor, all those grandiose ideals—worthless! You couldn't protect your planet. You couldn't save your people. You couldn't even save the last two sorry souls who clung to you. And soon..." He leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper. "You won't even be able to save yourself from dying on your knees before me!"
"You're pathetic, Vegeta! The so-called Prince of All Saiyans. Oh, but wait!" He tapped a finger to his chin in mock contemplation. "That doesn't quite apply anymore, does it? There are only two of you left now. So really, you're the Prince of… Nothing!"
The shattered, broken look on Vegeta's face seemed to bring Frieza immense satisfaction. He raised a delicate hand to his mouth and laughed with delight.
Vegeta's mind teetered on the brink of madness, barely clinging to any semblance of coherence as Frieza's mocking laughter stabbed into him. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. All that remained was the suffocating rage, despair, and failures that bore down on him with the intensity of a thousand suns.
His teeth ground together with such force that cracks splintered through his molars. The intestines he had painstakingly shoved back into his body slipped out again, slapping wetly against the blood-soaked dirt as he doubled over and pressed his forehead to the ground. For the first time since he was a child, tears streamed down his face.
His fists balled tight, and with a roar of despair, he began smashing them into the ground.
"Frieza!" His voice cracked, carrying all the fury of a broken prince. "FRIEZA! FRIEZA!! FRIEZAAAA!!!"
Confronted by his utter helplessness, his absolute failure, and the abyss of his despair, Vegeta's sanity finally snapped.
The battlefield fell into an uncanny stillness, broken only by Vegeta's screams and the relentless, rhythmic thuds of his fists striking the quaking earth—the sole sounds that remained as he descended into madness. Soon, even his screams twisted into incoherent howls.
Vegeta's vision faded to black as his pupils rolled back into his skull.
At that moment, the battlefield dissolved, and Vegeta found himself standing alone in an infinite expanse of darkness. It stretched endlessly in every direction, swallowing all sense of orientation. The oppressive silence felt corporeal as it pressed in around him, interrupted only by the sound of his own labored breaths. He stood there, naked—devoid of armor, power, and his wounds.
A strange sense of detachment washed over him, as if his soul was slipping further and further from his broken body that remained on the battlefield.
Who are you?
A voice came—cold and distant, echoing from everywhere and nowhere. It sounded like his own, but there was something subtly alien about it. It had a strange foreignness that sent a shiver down his spine.
The words reverberated through the void, demanding an answer. Before Vegeta could speak, a terrible roar exploded from the darkness. It wasn't a singular cry but a cacophony.
It was the wails of billions.
They were the unheard voices of the countless souls he had coldly reaped—the innocents who had perished when he had destroyed their civilizations. Their cries seethed with hatred as their voices fused into a single, accusatory roar.
"A murderer!"
Then, a new voice, regal and scornful, emerged as the cacophony subsided.
"An heir."
Vegeta froze. He recognized that voice. It was his father—King Vegeta—demanding to know what legacy his son had carried forth.
The king's voice faded into the abyss, only to be replaced by another.
"A soldier."
Zarbon's voice reached him now, recognizable by its elegant, melodic inflection.
Vegeta's heart clenched as memories of his servitude to Frieza flooded back. The orders followed without question, the countless missions executed with ruthless efficiency—only to realize it had all been for the very person who had destroyed his people.
"The strongest!"
Raditz's voice erupted from the void, brash and full of the misplaced confidence he always had in Vegeta.
Vegeta's stomach twisted. It was a lie—empty and hollow. How meaningless that claim seemed now, when it was so far removed from the truth.
"A failure!"
Cui's voice followed, dripping with his usual smugness, a sneer in every syllable.
For once, Vegeta couldn't argue.
And then, from a quieter, calmer place, came Kakarot's voice.
"A warrior."
Like Kakarot himself, the words were simple—devoid of malice or mockery—but they still cut deep. It wasn't praise, but rather a blunt statement of fact, reflecting what Vegeta once was, or perhaps what he could have become.
Then, louder than the rest, came Frieza's voice, venomous and triumphant.
"You're the Prince of Nothing!"
The voices began to swirl around him, talking all at once, rising into a cacophony of judgment and condemnation. Each word pushed him further into the darkness.
"Who are you?!"
The question burst forth again, an overwhelming chant that seemed to come from every corner of the void.
"Who are you?!"
The voices grew louder, more insistent, and the void itself seemed to constrict around him with their rhythm, suffocating him. The chant became deafening, each repetition demanding an answer he did not have.
"Who Are You?!"
"Who Are You?!!"
Vegeta clutched his head, his fingers digging into his scalp as the sound tore him apart. He could no longer feel his body, or any sensation at all. He felt like a rubber band stretched too far, or a plank of wood sagging under an impossible weight, just waiting for the final straw to snap it in two.
"WHO ARE YOU?!"
"I DON'T KNOW!!" he roared back.
The voices stopped.
And then… silence.
The cacophony faded, the voices disappearing as abruptly as they had come. The void swallowed all sound and left him floating in oppressive stillness.
He couldn't hear anything but his own deep breaths, the pounding of his heart, and the rush of blood through his veins. But even those sounds began to fade, growing distant, muffled, until they disappeared altogether.
In that infinite void, where time and space held no meaning, Vegeta confronted the question that haunted him:
If he was no longer the Prince of All Saiyans—if everything he had ever done, everything he had ever stood for, was built on a foundation of failure—then who was he?
He still didn't know.
Darkness crept in around him.
The silence became absolute, the kind that drilled into someone's mind and drove them mad.
He felt cold. So unbearably cold.
His form began to blur, coming apart as though his very existence was unspooling thread by thread. His anger flickered and dimmed, devoured by the abyss. Titles, achievements, ambitions, pride—things that had once burned so brightly within him now felt like ashes scattered by the wind.
Memories began to fade, slipping through his fingers like grains of sand. The first time his people had called him "Prince." The metallic taste of blood on his tongue after a hard-won conquest. The faces of his people, his comrades, the betrayals, the triumphs, the vows—everything was dissolving and vanishing into the void.
Fragments of his identity floated before him, but they were just that—fragments. Just pieces of an incomplete puzzle he could no longer solve, scattered and meaningless.
Vegeta clenched his hands—or at least he thought he did. He wasn't sure if he had a body anymore.
He could no longer tell where he ended and the abyss began.
With that realization, cold understanding seeped into him: he was dying. Or perhaps he was already dead. Or worse, maybe he had never even lived at all.
Does it even matter?
The thought flared briefly before it too dissolved into the darkness. The void offered no answers, only silence. In its infinite vastness, meaning itself disintegrated.
And then, just as he fully submerged into the abyss, something yanked him back.
"Hey, hey, don't fucking die on me yet. I'm still waiting on that burial you promised me."
The words struck like a thunderclap, jolting him upright. Vegeta froze, his breath caught in his throat as the abyss receded ever so slightly around him. He couldn't bring himself to look up—didn't dare. Was it fear of what he might see? Fear of meeting the eyes of the one he'd failed so completely? Or worse, fear that he might see nothing at all? That he had forgotten even this?
"Who are you, Vegeta?"
Silence.
Vegeta's lips parted, but no sound escaped. His throat felt tight, constricted, as though the words themselves were choking him. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he forced out a weak, strangled response.
"I don't kn—"
"Shut the fuck up," the voice snapped, sharp and uncompromising. It carried no pity, no patience. "You do. You've always known. Stop running away like a goddamn pussy."
Vegeta went still.
The voice softened, losing its edge but none of its conviction. "I'll ask you again. Are you giving up?"
"…"
"Well?"
No.
Vegeta didn't say it. It was a thought, a decision, but the lingering echo Nappa left behind seemed to understand.
"Then who are you, Vegeta?" The specter asked one last time. And then, like smoke dissipating in the wind, ghost Nappa vanished into the void, once again leaving Vegeta alone.
Alone, but not empty.
Vegeta's lips twisted into a bitter smile. The big question remained unanswered, and yet, the silence of the void was not so silent anymore.
"Heh. Hah…! Hehehe… HahahaHAHAHAHA!"
Because he began to laugh.
His laughter intensified with each passing moment, swelling into something uncontrollable, a manic, defiant roar that rejected despair.
In the midst of his laughter, the all-too-familiar sonification returned. That cosmic death screech—a song of annihilation—came back, louder this time. It was the sound of his home, his people, and his pride being destroyed, but it was also the sound of his origin, the catalyst for everything that had led him to this very moment.
It drowned out his laughter, silenced the voices, and vanquished the silence of the void. The sound pressed in on him, crushing, until every inch of his being felt as if it might unravel into nothing.
But it didn't.
Instead, it invigorated him.
Because this was who he was.
And through the thunderous screech, a single truth blazed brighter than the darkness and shame that almost swallowed him.
He failed? He wasn't worthy?
Who gave a fuck!
Who was he?
Ha! Wasn't it obvious? There had always been only one answer.
Vegeta's eyes snapped open.
"I AM VEGETA, THE PRINCE OF ALL SAIYANS!!!"
The darkness surged against his defiance, the shadows tightening their grip. The abyss swallowed him then, devouring him, for Vegeta was only mortal.
But his will remained.
It blazed brighter than ever, an inferno that drove away the darkness, defying the void even as it burned itself to ashes. His essence screamed his truth to the very end.
He was Vegeta. The Prince of All Saiyans.
And nothing—nothing—could ever extinguish that.
***
Back in the real world, Vegeta had slammed the ground with such force that it created a deep crater, but suddenly, he froze mid-motion. The incomprehensible howls ceased as if ripped out of his throat, and his body, which had been shaking moments before, was now unnervingly still.
A low growl rumbled from him as his power swelled. Dust and broken shards of stone began to quiver, rising into the air, drawn by an invisible force that defied gravity. The air grew thick and oppressive, charged with a violent static that prickled the skin.
Then, Vegeta screamed. The sound was so discordant and inhuman that it seemed like something no mortal throat should have been able to produce. It was the scream of a mad beast.
His aura ignited, exploding outward with such titanic ferocity that it instantly obliterated the ground beneath him. The blazing pillar of power roared skyward, though it couldn't break through the clouds—thanks only to Ajax's unseen influence.
But the reality was this: Vegeta wasn't ready for what was coming. His body lacked the endurance necessary to withstand the strain. His power hadn't reached the minimal threshold, nor had his Ki been refined by enough Zenkai boosts to trigger the transformation stirring within him.
But enough rage—enough pure, unrelenting fury—was capable of rewriting the rules.
And at this moment, Vegeta's fury and will blazed with such intensity that it could have stunned even the Gods. Here was an ego capable of transcending mortality, capable of shattering even the laws of reality!
Capable of bringing forth miracles.
But Vegeta remained oblivious to the immense significance of what he was on the verge of achieving. He was too far lost in the abyss, surrounded by the deafening roar of that all-too-familiar screech.
In the end, there was no warning. No buildup. No flashes of light. No bolts of lightning descending from the skies.
With one final, earth-shattering scream, the entirety of Vegeta's aura—a tempest of pure white—suddenly exploded into a blazing, resplendent gold.
Vegeta's body ascended within the heart of the cataclysmic surge of golden energy. Winds kicked up by his power howled with the force of a thousand hurricanes, but his hair remained unchanged—rigid, spiky, and black.
His head slowly tilted back to the heavens, staring upward with eyes devoid of pupils. Then, from deep within him, another inhuman scream tore through the air.
Piccolo, Gohan, Krillin, Ajax, Goku, Dende, and Frieza—every soul within a hundred-mile radius—bore witness to history being made.
Because, at this very moment, Vegeta did what no other Saiyan had ever done before. He became the first in recorded history to achieve—
Ajax's eyes flew wide open as he whispered in awe,
"The False Super Saiyan…!"