“Who the hell are you?” Vegeta jumped to his feet, face twisted in anger as he processed Hal’s words. “You dare to call yourself my king!”
The short statured young man launched skyward, a burst of ki that brought him up to Hal’s face. He raised his arm, palm opened as if filled with light. The Saiyan Prince released a blast of energy, an explosion that flattened against Hal’s chest and filled the air with dust and fire.
“I am the only rightful heir that the Saiyans have,” Vegeta turned back toward the ground, a smug smile on the corners of his lips. “And you’re dust on the wind…”
“I’m afraid not,” Hal cleared the air with a sweep of his biofield, one eyebrow raised as he swept a bit of dust from his shoulder. “I respect the attempted power move, but you know that Saiyan’s are endangered, right?”
Vegeta had moved to kill him, even though his existence increased the Saiyan population by over ten percent. The loss of one, at least from the perspective of those without access to genesis technology, should be a tragedy.
“One less hardly matters now,” Vegeta snorted as he pressed the button on his scouter. His lips turned in a frown, before he shook his head. “Your power level reads as zero, but that’s impossible… you must have some method of hiding your energy.”
Indeed I do,” Hal smiled as he let the smallest trace of his ki leak free of his body. The scouter on Vegeta’s ear chirped and the Saiyan paled. “There, now your scanner has something to read.”
“Impossible…” Vegeta ground his teeth, while Nappa and Raditz both activated their own scouters. The Saiyan prince ripped his eyepiece from his head and tossed it aside. “It has to be a lie, a false reading…”
“His power is over nine-hundred-thousand…” Nappa swallowed, a reflexive gulp as he staggered back. “Let’s get out of here, Vegeta!”
“Nine-hundred-thousand…” Raditz flinched and removed his own scouter. “Vegeta’s right, it can’t be a real reading.”
Hal appeared in front of Goku’s biological brother and flicked him on the forehead. The Saiyan rocketed backward, driven through the side of a mountain. Nappa fell to his knees, while Vegeta was struck dumb.
A second flutter carried Hal to face the Prince, his lips set in a relaxed smile. Vegeta opened his mouth, too late as Hal delivered a short chop to the side of the Saiyan’s neck. Colour drained from his face, eyes rolled back as he dropped next to the horrified Nappa.
“Pickup Vegeta and Raditz, baldy,” Hal gave the bulky Saiyan a smile that didn’t reach his cold eyes. “We’re going on a little trip.”
Nappa bowed low, face a mask of terror as he scooped Vegeta onto his shoulder. He darted toward the hole that contained Raditz, eyes fixed on Hal as he rushed to comply. The Saiyan returned, his friends in hand, and Hal opened a door back to New-Krypton.
“Get going, and behave yourself or I’ll make you pray to be delivered to otherworld,” Hal ushered Nappa through the doorway, into an isolated section of his fortress. A few commands to Jor-EL via his symbiote and the area was modified to restrict outside access. “Give them each one of these… I don’t want to repeat myself, so it’s best that you’re all awake for this next bit.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Nappa snatched the senzu beans from the air and shovelled one each into his friends’ mouths. The Saiyan didn’t even hesitate, apparently committed to obedience in the face of power. The beans did their work and Vegeta and Raditz snapped awake with mirrored groans.
“Now that everyone’s up, it’s time to hear the rules,” Hal clapped his hands to collect the dazed Saiyan’s attention. “This section of my home is surrounded by an area with uncontrolled gravity, you can think of it as ten times the gravity of Planet Vegeta.”
Hal opened a door behind him and tossed one of their disabled scouters inside. The reinforced device flattened against the ground, shattered under Krypton’s pull. A flash of his heat vision vaporised the remains, before Hal turned back to the pale faced Saiyans.
“If you step beyond the marked area, you’ll certainly die,” Hal waved to an interior door and it opened to reveal a training area. “This space has adjustable gravity and equipment to help you grow, once you can walk free we’ll talk again.”
Vegeta and these darker Saiyan’s were different from Goku. They would need to earn their fruits of might and change their ways before he treated them like family. Hal paused, halfway out the door.
“If you have any knowledge of Frieza’s location, tell me now,” a wave of unrestrained ki drove Vegeta to his knees and flattened the others to the floor. “I’ve already killed off his Father and Brother, but the youngest seems to have slipped away.”
“You… you killed King Cold and Lord Cooler?” Vegeta ground his teeth, face awash in conflicted emotion. Fists clasped tight, he met Hal’s gaze with a less hostile stare. “Frieza has gone into hiding… he told no one where he went, but from our orders it seemed to be a long term absence.”
Hal nodded and walked from the Saiyans’ prison. It wasn’t great that Frieza had slipped away, but in this timeline he had no concept of the dragonballs to lure him to Earth or Namek. Even if a Golden Frieza appeared, he wouldn’t know where to find Hal or his friends.
“Time to check in on the good Doctor,” the walls of the emerald Fortress slipped past as he closed on his laboratory. Bulma and her father had been inside for over three days, in constant study of SCP-914. “I might need a refined phantom drive to get to my next location.”
Hal floated through the doorway to his lab, just as Dr. Brief ushered a Kryptonian Robot into the intake of the Clockworks. Sil sat below the setting dial, his emerald ki wrapped around the machine to hold it onto its “Fine’ setting.
“Young Hal! You’re just in time,” the Doctor beamed, a child on a never ending Christmas day. “We’re just about to send Jor-EL’s crystal through the machine, alongside an upgraded robot!”
“We’ve discovered some of the rules of this crazy thing, and even how to bend a few!” Bulma popped up from behind the Clockwork, a sensor in hand. “You can’t refine the same thing twice, but if you refine a bunch of components and modify them a bit…”
“Then you can refine them again!” Dr Bief jumped in. “It seems to be limited to a single extra refinement, but another round can be done if you tweak the parts for a second time and combine them into a new whole!”
Hal shook his head at the father/daughter pair. They had learned so much in a short time, though they seemed focused on improving technology. It wasn’t a bad idea, Krypton was a type two civilization after all. The phantom drive alone was a true marvel, an FTL drive that could travel the full length of the universe instantly.
“Very interesting,” Hal smiled as a robot reached for the Clockwork’s activation switch. The rest of his words died in his throat as Sil cried out in shock and batted the drone away. The dial had shifted, pointed to the ‘Very Fine’ setting. “...get back!”
A sweep of his biofield and the group was placed behind him, his mind focused on his three-minute-sight. Hal frowned, his guard up despite the positive outcomes in his visions. SCP-914 could render his ability unreliable.
The outtake door hissed opened with a billow of steam. It masked a well built humanoid figure, armoured like a warrior of Krypton. The sigil of the house of EL was branded on his chest, the top of which was hidden behind a silver-white beard.
“Jor-EL?” Hal stepped forward, gaze on the man’s face. His eyes were closed, features relaxed as if in sleep. “Are you alright?”
A ripple of silver, almost invisible to the eye, travelled from the man’s head to his toes. His eyes snapped open and a smile parted his lips. He took one step forward and cleared the outtake door, before he went to one knee and bowed his head.
“Greetings, my son… it seems the machine worked,” Jor-EL looked at his hands, face touched with a hint of awe. “My processing power has increased exponentially and my body seems to be composed of bio-organic nanomachines… I believe I may even be able to absorb the light of the sun like a true Kryptonian!”
***Power Levels and other notes***
Hal: 13,500,000 (135 million with symbiote armour enhancement, 270 million with symbiote transformation, 27 billion with Max kio-ken: 100x)
Jor-EL: ???
Vegeta: 12,000
Nappa: 4000
Raditz: 1000