White light. Then, the smell of burning rubber and cheap air freshener.
The truck had been loud. The screech of tires was the last thing Ryu heard before his world turned into a kaleidoscope of red and black. He didn't even have time to finish his soda. One second, he was wondering if he'd pass his history final; the next, he was a smudge on the asphalt.
So this is it, he thought, drifting in a void that felt like warm soup. Truck-kun finally got me. I hope my browser history is deleted.
Then, the soup got cramped.
He felt a sudden, violent weight. Air—harsh, cold, and smelling of ozone—burst into his lungs. He tried to scream, "Where am I?" but all that came out was a high-pitched, shrill wail.
"Power level of two? Pathetic. Just like his father."
Ryu's eyes snapped open. His vision was blurry, but he saw green. Not grass. Liquid. He was floating in a tank. To his left, another tank. Inside it, a tuft of spiky black hair was visible through the bubbling fluid.
Wait. Green tanks. Saiyan armor. Spiky hair.
He looked down at his own hands. They were tiny. Pudgy. And there was something else—a weight behind him. He wiggled his hips. A brown, furry limb lashed out in the water, splashing against the glass.
A tail.
Panic surged. He wasn't just in an anime; he was in the anime. He was on Planet Vegeta. And if his memory of the "Broly" movie and the "Bardock" specials served him right, this was the nursery. Which meant...
He looked at the baby in the tank next to him. A small tag hung from the base.
Kakarot.
Ryu's eyes bulge so wide they nearly hit the glass. I'M GOKU'S ROOMMATE?!
The door to the nursery hissed open. A man stepped in. He was rugged, scarred, and wore a look of grim determination that could crack granite. Bardock. He didn't look like a hero; he looked like a man who had seen the end of the world and was trying to outrun it.
"Forgive me, Kakarot," Bardock muttered, his voice a low rasp.
He began punching commands into a console. A nearby space pod hissed, its spherical door swinging upward. Bardock grabbed Kakarot, wrapping him in a rough cloth, and shoved him into the seat.
Then, his eyes drifted to the tank next to it. Ryu's tank.
"Ryu," Bardock whispered, reading the nameplate. "Son of... well, it doesn't matter now. The King is a fool. Frieza is coming."
Bardock looked at the monitors. A red alert was flashing. Frieza's ship was already in orbit. He didn't have time to find Ryu's parents. He didn't have time for anything.
"Two pods are better than one," Bardock grunted. "Maybe you'll keep him company in hell."
With a rough jerk, Bardock yanked Ryu out of the tank. Ryu gasped, the cold air hitting his wet skin like needles. Before he could even process the sensation of being held by a legendary warrior, he was tossed into a second pod.
Wait! Ryu screamed internally. The plot! I'm supposed to go to Earth! Put me with Goku!
Bardock didn't hear him. He slammed the doors shut.
"Go!" Bardock roared, slamming his palm against the launch button.
The pods roared to life. G-force slammed Ryu back into the padded seat. Through the small, circular window, he saw the crimson sky of Planet Vegeta shrinking. Then, a flash of purple light. A massive ball of energy, cold and suffocating even from miles away, descended toward the planet.
Frieza's Supernova.
The shockwave caught the pods, sending them spiraling into the dark expanse of space.
Space was boring.
Ryu spent what felt like days staring at the stars. The pod's computer hummed, a robotic voice occasionally reciting coordinates.
"Destination locked: Planet 4032-877. Local designation: Gaia."
Ryu's baby brain struggled to stay awake. Gaia? That sounds familiar. Is that Earth? No, Earth is usually just called Earth.
He fell into a deep, Saiyan sleep. He dreamed of steak. Mountains of steak.
He was awakened by the sound of screaming metal. The pod was vibrating so hard his teeth rattled. Fire bloomed outside the window as the sphere hit the atmosphere.
Brace for impact! he thought, clenching his tiny fists.
BOOM.
The pod hit the ground like a fallen star. It skipped across a wasteland of rusted metal and industrial debris, finally carving a hundred-yard trench into the earth before coming to a halt.
Steam hissed from the vents. The door groaned, then blew outward with a pressurized thump.
Ryu crawled out, coughing. His body ached, but his Saiyan blood was already pumping, repairing the damage. He looked around.
This wasn't the rolling hills of Mount Paozu. This was a nightmare of iron and smog. Massive pillars reached toward the sky, supporting a colossal metal plate that blotted out the sun.
Midgar.
Ryu's jaw drops. I'm not in Dragon Ball. I'm in Final Fantasy VII. I got sent to the wrong game!
"What in the world..."
A voice. Feminine. Sharp.
Ryu turned his head. Standing at the edge of the crater was a girl. She looked about eighteen. Her hair was a vibrant, fiery red, tied back in a style that screamed authority. Her dress was expensive, standing out against the grime of the construction site. Behind her stood two men in Shinra officer uniforms—her parents.
Ryu froze. He knew that face. He'd seen it in high-definition cutscenes.
Scarlet.
The future Executive Director of Advanced Weaponry. The woman who would eventually build the Mako Cannon and slap Tifa Lockhart on top of a giant robot. Right now, she was young, beautiful, and looked absolutely baffled.
"Is it a meteor?" her father asked, hand on his sidearm.
"No," Scarlet said, her eyes narrowing as she stepped closer. "It's... a craft. Look at the metallurgy. This isn't Shinra tech. It isn't even Wutai."
She peered over the edge of the pod.
Ryu stared up at her. He decided to play it cool. He did what any baby would do.
"Goo?" he said, tilting his head.
Scarlet gasped. "A child? Inside a weapon like this?"
She reached down, her gloved hands lifting him out of the pod. Ryu was surprisingly heavy, his muscles denser than a human's. As she pulled him up, his tail unwrapped from his waist and flicked her in the arm.
"Eek!" She nearly dropped him. "It has a... a tail? Is it a monster?"
"It looks human enough, Scarlet," her mother said, stepping forward. "Except for the limb. Perhaps a mutation from the Mako radiation?"
Scarlet didn't look disgusted. She looked intrigued. Her fingers traced the fur of his tail. Ryu felt a strange shiver. Wait, why is she looking at me like I'm a new prototype?
"He's strong," Scarlet whispered. She looked into Ryu's eyes.
Ryu didn't look away. He didn't cry. He looked at her with the intensity of a warrior. In his mind, he was already calculating. It's 1985. The game starts in 2007. I have twenty-two years. Twenty-two years to get strong enough to stop Sephiroth, stop Meteor, and maybe keep this woman from becoming a complete psychopath.
"I'm keeping him," Scarlet announced.
"Scarlet, we should report this to President Shinra immediately," her father warned.
"And let Hojo get his hands on him?" Scarlet snapped, her eyes flashing with a precocious cruelty. "No. This fell in our sector. This is my discovery. He's mine."
She looked down at Ryu and smiled. It wasn't a motherly smile. It was the smile of a girl who had just found the most interesting toy in the world.
"I'll call you Ryu," she said. "Since it's written on the pod. You're going to be my little secret weapon, aren't you?"
Ryu sighed. Well, it could be worse. I could have landed in Hojo's lab. At least Scarlet is easy on the eyes.
Ryu gives a small, arrogant smirk. Surpass Zeno? First, I need to survive potty training with a war criminal.
Twelve Years Later: 1997
The training room was a dome of reinforced steel, located deep within the Shinra Building's private R&D levels. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and scorched metal.
A dozen Mark II Combat Droids circled a central figure. They were fast, armed with stun batons and live-fire Vulcan cannons.
"Initiate Sequence Gamma," a voice boomed over the intercom. Scarlet's voice.
The droids moved.
Ryu, now twelve years old, didn't move. He stood in the center of the room, wearing a weighted black gi that Scarlet had specially commissioned. His spiky hair defied gravity, and his tail was wrapped firmly around his waist like a belt.
He closed his eyes.
Sense the energy. Not Mako. Ki. The life force.
In the last twelve years, Ryu had realized something vital. Gaia was overflowing with energy—the Lifestream. But while everyone else was trying to bottle it into Materia or burn it in reactors, Ryu was using his knowledge of Dragon Ball to tap into his own internal reserves.
A droid lunged.
Ryu vanished.
Afterimage.
The droid struck thin air. Ryu appeared behind it, his palm flat against its chassis.
"Kiai," he whispered.
A focused burst of invisible pressure exploded from his hand. The three-hundred-pound droid was sent flying across the room, crumpling into a ball of scrap metal as it hit the wall.
"Fire!" Scarlet yelled from the observation deck.
The remaining droids opened up. A hail of bullets filled the room.
Ryu moved like a blur. He wasn't just fast; he was dancing. He swatted bullets out of the air with the back of his hand, the metal clinking harmlessly against the floor. He felt a surge of adrenaline. This was what he lived for. The heat of battle. The push of his limits.
He leaped into the air, spinning.
"Kame... hame..."
Blue light began to coalesce between his palms. It flickered, unstable. He hadn't mastered it yet. The Ki on this planet felt different—heavier, more emotional. It was like trying to spark a fire in a swamp.
"...HA!"
A thin, vibrating beam of blue energy erupted. It wasn't the planet-destroying wave Goku could fire, but it was enough. It tore through the line of droids, melting through their armor and causing their power cores to detonate in a chain reaction.
Ryu landed in a crouch, steam rising from his shoulders.
"Time," Scarlet said.
The heavy blast doors opened. Scarlet walked in, clapping slowly. She was thirty now, in the prime of her beauty and her power. She had moved up the ranks quickly, her "adoption" of the mysterious boy providing her with insights into metallurgy and energy that Shinra had never seen.
She walked up to him, pulling a silk handkerchief from her pocket to wipe a smudge of grease from his cheek.
"You're getting sloppy, Ryu," she teased, though her eyes were burning with pride. "That last blast took you three seconds to charge. In a real war, you'd be dead."
Ryu grinned, his teeth white against his tanned skin. "Then give me something harder than droids, Scarlet. These things are boring. They don't even have a power level worth reading."
Scarlet's smile faltered for a second. She reached out, her fingers lingering on his neck, near his pulse. She was possessive. Over the years, her "little brother" had become her obsession. She had hidden his true nature from the Turks, from Hojo, and even from the President. To the world, Ryu was a "Mako-enhanced prodigy" from a classified R&D program. To her, he was the only thing in the world she actually cared about.
"Don't be arrogant," she hissed, her voice dropping into that yandere-lite tone he had grown used to. "You are mine. If you die, I'll have to destroy the planet out of spite."
Ryu laughed, scratching the back of his head. "Yeah, yeah. You've said that since I was six. Relax. I'm not going anywhere. I still haven't found a decent rival on this rock."
"You might soon," Scarlet said, her eyes turning cold. "The President is obsessed with the Wutai problem. And there's a new program. SOLDIER. They're using Jenova cells. A boy named Sephiroth is showing... interesting results."
Ryu's expression went serious. Sephiroth. The man who would become a god.
"How old is he?" Ryu asked.
"Seventeen. He's already a hero. The silver-haired 'Angel of Death'."
Ryu tightened his belt. He felt his Saiyan blood boil. A challenge. Finally.
"Good," Ryu said. "Tell the President I want in. If Shinra wants a war won, they should send a real warrior."
He looked up at the ceiling, his gaze piercing through the metal plates toward the stars. I'm coming for you, Sephiroth. And after that... the rest of the universe.
A close-up of Ryu's eye. A spark of golden light flickers in his pupil for a fraction of a second. Super Saiyan? Not yet. But soon.
Scarlet watched him, her heart thumping. She hated his obsession with training, but she loved the way he looked when he was focused. She leaned in, whispering into his ear.
"Win for me, Ryu. And I might just give you that reward you keep asking for."
"Steak?" Ryu asked, his eyes lighting up. "The A5 Wagyu from Sector 1?"
Scarlet blinked. She sighed, her face twitching with a mix of affection and annoyance. "Yes, Ryu. Steak. You're such an idiot."
"Best sister ever!" Ryu cheered, picking her up and spinning her around.
Scarlet shrieked, her face turning bright red. "Put me down! I'm an Executive! Someone might see!"
But she didn't stop him.
The tragedy of Final Fantasy VII was still years away. But the variable had arrived. And he was hungry.