Nappa's aura rolled off him like the suffocating atmospheric pressure before a hurricane. It was a heavy, physical thing, violently projected with the specific intention of inducing terror. The giant cracked his thick neck. He swung his massive arms through a lazy warm-up arc. The baked earth directly beneath his heavy boots had already developed a sprawling network of jagged stress fractures simply from the casual, ambient release of his ki.
This was the specific sequence of planetary conquest where Nappa truly enjoyed himself. He lived for the visceral fear on the faces of weaklings who had never encountered anything resembling Saiyan power. The delicious, crushing desperation when they finally realized the sheer mathematical gap between them. It was the deep, sadistic satisfaction of confirming, yet again, that he existed several evolutionary categories beyond whatever pitiful resistance the locals could muster.
"Six of them," Nappa rumbled, his dark eyes sweeping over the assembled martial artists with the unhurried boredom of a man evaluating a grocery list. A cruel smile stretched across his face. "Lord Nappa is in an incredibly generous mood today. Go ahead and come at me all together if you want. I'll make a special exception."
"Gohan," Krillin whispered quietly, not taking his eyes off the giant. "Why exactly do they think Raditz is dead?"
Gohan frowned in confusion. "I was actually wondering the exact same thing."
"Jordan probably blocked or manipulated the scouter's audio transmission at some point during the fight," Krillin deduced smoothly. "Vegeta is actively working from incomplete tactical intelligence."
Behind a pale stone pillar at the far edge of the canyon, Raditz was barely visible as a trembling sliver of an orange martial arts uniform. When Krillin's peripheral glance found him, the disgraced Saiyan violently shook his head. It was the frantic, emphatic motion of a man transmitting 'absolutely do not correct this misunderstanding' at long range.
Krillin mentally filed the request and returned his absolute focus to Nappa.
"I'll take the big one."
Yamcha stepped out from the group.
He was carrying himself entirely differently than he had a year ago. He possessed the same baseline cocky swagger, and the same rugged cross-scar on his left cheek, but the fundamental quality of his stillness had profoundly changed. A martial artist who had spent six grueling months sparring against an alien opponent who completely understood how to kill him came out the other side with drastically different body mechanics. He was still wearing the heavy, gravity-weighted training suit Jordan had forged. He hadn't even bothered to take it off.
Nappa stared down at him.
"You?" The giant's sinister smile widened, revealing sharp teeth. "Stepping up first just to die, kid?"
"You've got a seriously foul mouth on you," Yamcha replied pleasantly. He aggressively cracked his knuckles and seamlessly dropped into his starting stance. It was the classic Wolf Fang Fist posture—an old, reliable habit from before his Turtle Hermit years, but entirely his own. "I'll take care of you first. Try not to embarrass yourself."
Nappa's immediate response was to violently release his energy.
It was the full, theatrical intimidation sequence. His white aura aggressively expanded outward, cratering the ground beneath him. The local air pressure violently dropped, pulling a howling wind toward his body. The overwhelming, crushing presence of an apex predator who had never encountered a situation he couldn't physically dominate completely filled the space between them. His massive form burned with power. Rocks shattered into dust around his ankles. The roaring sound of his ki was the deafening announcement of something incredibly large and incredibly dangerous.
Nappa waited eagerly for the crushing desperation to finally appear on the Earthling's face.
Yamcha's expression remained perfectly, professionally calm.
He tilted his head slightly, completely unbothered by the hurricane of power. He was, very clearly, waiting to see if there was a second phase to the light show.
"Is that your full release?" Yamcha asked flatly.
Nappa's sadistic grin froze.
"Because if that's really it," Yamcha sighed, rolling his shoulders, "I might not even need to take the training weights off." He shrugged. "Let's find out."
The desert floor exploded.
Nappa crossed the distance in a single, violent motion. It was the terrifying, explosive acceleration of a brute-force warrior for whom raw power had always been the only necessary solution; a man for whom the physical gap between him and his victims was usually so massive that actual martial arts technique was entirely optional.
Elbow feint. Spinning backhand. The massive, sledgehammer punch that followed through was designed to catch Yamcha squarely across the jaw with the absolute full force of Nappa's combat power, violently ending the skirmish before it complicated the schedule.
Gohan, watching from the rock formation, barely had time to gasp, "He—"
Yamcha's left hand casually snapped up and caught the incoming fist.
The smack of the kinetic impact was bone-rattling, clean, and absolutely certain. Nappa's fist stopped dead. In the exact same fluid motion, Yamcha's right arm was already piston-firing forward. It was a flawless, compact straight punch with an entire grueling year's worth of 10x gravity training violently packed behind it. He drove his fist directly into Nappa's exposed abdomen with the razor-sharp timing of a man who had spent months sparring against opponents significantly faster than this.
The wet, concussive sound the impact made was absolutely not a pleasant one.
Nappa's forward momentum violently halted.
He let out a choked, ragged noise that started as an aggressive roar and instantly degraded into a wet wheeze. His dark eyes bulged out of his skull. His massive knees buckled. The giant collapsed heavily to the dirt, clutching his armored midsection with both hands, his face violently contorting into an expression of agonizing pain it was absolutely not accustomed to making.
Gohan calmly completed his sentence: "—why is he so big, but so incredibly slow?"
"Because he relies entirely on raw talent," Piccolo grunted.
The Demon King hadn't moved an inch from his position. His heavy arms were tightly folded, watching the brutal deconstruction with the cold, detached assessment of a master instructor. "What the giant doesn't have is actual, disciplined practice. He charged in blindly, completely failing to read his opponent's baseline speed or muscular strength. When you pull a stunt like that against a martial artist who is vastly superior in both categories—" Piccolo nodded sharply toward the gasping Nappa— "that is exactly what happens."
Gohan nodded solemnly, absorbing the tactical lesson. "Uncle Piccolo, you sound like you've actually thought about this specific mistake a lot."
Piccolo said absolutely nothing. He had, in fact, thought about it a great deal. It was infinitely easier to clinically analyze someone else's catastrophic tactical errors than it was to actively dwell on the time he had made the exact same arrogant mistake against Jordan.
On the far side of the confrontation, Vegeta was staring at a glowing scouter reading that had just done something mathematically impossible.
The green readout before Yamcha threw the punch: 998.
The readout at the exact millisecond of the kinetic impact: 9,998.
The readout right now: 998.
Vegeta stared at the glowing green numbers for a very long, very silent moment.
He looked at Nappa, who was still gasping for oxygen on one knee in the dirt. Then he looked at the scarred Earthling who had casually thrown the punch. Yamcha was standing in a relaxed, perfectly balanced follow-through posture, acting as though collapsing an elite Saiyan warrior with a single strike was just a light cardio warmup.
Vegeta slowly reached up and removed the scouter from his ear. He stared at the device. He was seriously considering violently crushing it in his palm when the only other logical tactical explanation finally arrived in his brain.
They can actively suppress their energy.
He had heard rumors of this obscure phenomenon. It was a highly esoteric martial arts technique, significantly more common in certain backwater regions of the universe than others, where a fighter actively trained to violently choke their actual combat power down to conceal it from digital detection. It was incredibly rare. It was also the absolute only explanation that made the conflicting data points fit.
Which meant: Every single reading this machine has taken since we breached the atmosphere is a complete lie.
Which ultimately meant: I have absolutely no tactical idea what I am actually facing.
Vegeta slowly slid the scouter back over his ear.
He was still violently recalculating the battlefield math when the empty air directly in front of the Earth warriors abruptly blurred.
Jordan materialized directly beside the group with his hand resting firmly on Goku's shoulder. The Yardrat Instant Transmission had flawlessly deposited them both in a single, silent step directly from King Kai's planet. He smoothly released his grip and scanned the assembled faces.
Everyone he had left behind. Everyone he had explicitly ordered to be ready.
Krillin flashed a confident grin. Tien offered a sharp, respectful nod. Chiaotzu waved happily. Yamcha, still standing in the combat field with Nappa wheezing on one knee a few feet away, shot Jordan a quick, cocky look that clearly communicated, Right on time. Piccolo didn't nod so much as he microscopically acknowledged Jordan's physical existence, which, from the Demon King, was its own profound form of a warm welcome.
"Sorry to keep you all waiting," Jordan smiled.
Goku had been eagerly taking in the scene with the broad, continuous, sweeping attention of a man who had been dead for a year and was reorienting to the living world as fast as possible. Then his eyes locked onto a small figure.
"Dad!!"
Gohan launched himself off the jagged rock formation. He moved at a terrifying, blurring velocity that was absolutely not explainable by regular childhood enthusiasm—it was the lethal, supersonic velocity of a kid who had been surviving in the wilderness with Piccolo for twelve months, and possessed substantially better combat reflexes than he'd had when his father died.
Goku caught him effortlessly, already booming with laughter.
"Gohan! Just look at you—you've gotten so big—"
Piccolo aggressively turned his head away, scowling at the desert.
"He still cries all the time," Piccolo grumbled to the empty air. He utilized the exhausted tone of a strict teacher who had successfully identified a persistent behavioral flaw, and wasn't entirely sure a physical solution existed.
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