Dragon Ball Z: The Beast Within - CH34

[Escarot POV]

Okara had made progress these past weeks. Problem was… it was not quite the kind of progress I’d hoped for.

She was in Great Ape form; huge, furry, mostly angry; and she wasn’t destroying everything, but her control was minimal. She wasn’t aimless, exactly… more like a… giant furry baby.

“Garlik isn't a toy,” I said, landing on her giant, furry forehead with a solid slap. The vibration rattled through my boots. “Stop staring at him like he's a squishy-toy.”

Okara growled, a deep rumble that made the earth tremble as Garlik shrank in place. Can’t blame him, no one wanted a 60-ton killer monster watching them like that.

“Yes,” I sighed. “He looks squishable, I’ll grant you that. But that doesn’t mean you should actually… squish him.”

She growled again, pressing her massive palm on her head as if I’d cracked her skull.

“I’m aware it hurt. But that’s the sixteenth time today you tried to squishy Garlik. We need Garlik. He fixes things. The thing we use to travel.”

“Rghrr…” came a sad grunt.

“Are you sure this is a step in the right direction?” Garlik asked, looking at me. 

“No... yes? Kind of?” I replied, rubbing the back of my neck. “I mean, it’s a step in the right— it’s a step in a direction. No idea where it leads, but we’re moving.”

Okara’s eyes closed. She rubbed her palm against her skull, and sat on the ground.

I glanced down at Garlik. “Honestly, I think she’s halfway there. She used to forget what happens after she returns back to normal, but now, she has these foggy flashes, like waking from a dream instead of blacking out.”

Still, this was new territory for me.

My own experience with this had been totally different. I had gone from total memory loss to full awareness mixed with anger. No halfway. No fuzzy middle ground. I wasn’t even aware there was a middle to begin with, until this… that is.

“Wh‑grggh?” Okara asked, talking to herself or maybe to the giant rock in front of her. Hard to tell.

Watching her was like teaching a toddler and a wild animal at the same time. Her tail twitched against the dirt. She sniffed the air, and her stomach growled.

“You’re hungry,” I said, chuckling. “But if I feed you now, I would have to hunt to extinction a lot of animals, and other ingredients.”

Okara’s rumble grew soft, more disappointed than dangerous.

“Hey, look at me,” I said, climbing onto her shoulder. “There’s no reason to be sad. Sure, I can’t feed you while you are this big. But! I can still pet you.”

Moving around, I landed behind her ear and started scratching. Immediately, her body relaxed. She dropped on her back like a giant furry puppy, as her leg started twitching uncontrollably.

Yep, found the spot. I was getting good at this. 

Okara literally wobbled with joy.

Garlik, still crouching nearby, cleared his throat. “Do you mind if I record this? I promise not to blackmail her too… hard.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Blackmail would imply she lets you live long enough to finish the sentence ‘I have a video of this.’ You and I both know she wouldn’t.”

“What if… you had the video, instead of me?” Garlik offered.

Well, now that’s an interesting thought. 

Would it be morally wrong? I was her superior, her teacher. There were probably several lines being crossed here. On the other hand, imagine her reaction when I played this at a strategically hilarious moment.

So, the real question was… did I want to be morally right or hilariously not?

“Fine,” I said finally. “But only I can use the video.”

“So it’s fine if you do it,” Garlik noted, pulling out his datapad.

“Not really. She just can’t kill me,” I replied. “You, on the other hand, she’d turn into paste.”

“That’s fair,” Garlik nodded, as he hit record, trying not to laugh as Okara practically rolled onto her side, leg spasming from the ear scritches.

—--------------------------------------------------------------

Training done for the day.

And Okara was back to her normal, less furry and slightly more aggressive self.

Meant one thing, it was time for lunch.

I rolled my shoulders and cracked my neck before heading to our makeshift kitchen. And by “kitchen” I mean a large slab of stone I carved with ki and stacked over a few carefully placed heat rocks. I’d already drawn some rudimentary cooking symbols into it for good luck, half of them were nonsense, the other half were just the kanji for “salt.”

One of the few kanji I knew. That and the Kanji for anus or ass, I wasn’t sure which.

Anyway, with my group hungry, I got to work.

Garlik and Okara had brought back some decent ingredients today. A few tubers, some leafy things, and what looked like a fat lizard with the flavor of shrimp and the consistency of beef. I still hadn’t named it. Maybe “Lizard-Shrimp-Cow.”

It was a work in progress. I was the best chef in the universe, not the best at naming things.

“I can’t wait to eat whatever it is you’re cooking!” Okara said, bouncing on her heels as her eyes sparkled with excitement and her mouth, unfortunately, sparkled too.

“Wipe your mouth. You’re drooling,” I said, slicing the vegetables into thin strips with a precise swipe of ki along my finger. No knives out here, and it was too much work to make them when they broke rather easily. So, I had opted for just old-fashioned energy control and imagination.

“That’s just a compliment to how good your food is!” Okara beamed, not even trying to hide the way she licked her lips. “I mean it, you could conquer planets with this.”

“I suppose that’s flattering,” I said, igniting a few carefully stacked rocks with a controlled ki beam from my thumb. Just enough heat to maintain a steady simmer, but not enough to shatter the rocks. I had over three hundred dishes to rotate through for today alone. Variety kept morale high.

Besides, Saiyan appetites were ridiculous, and a biological impossibility. My own included.

I still couldn’t figure out how in the hell I could eat, at every meal, several times my own body weight… where did all the food go to?

Honestly, it made me appreciate Chi-Chi. The woman should’ve gotten a medal for not murdering Goku every time he asked for a seventy one bowl of rice after dinner. Saiyan biology was a culinary curse. An infinite pit that constantly needed refilling.

“The food should be ready in about half an hour,” I said. “I just need to finish prepping the other stuff.”

“Half an hour?” Okara whimpered. “That’s, like, years in hungry time.”

I ignored her dramatics and reached for the spices we’d collected last week. Some of the local herbs were surprisingly complex. One tasted like saffron mixed with mint. Another had the kick of jalapeños but smelled like pine, and had the texture of hay.

I sprinkled a pinch onto the sizzling lizard meat and gave it a quick toss.

The aroma hit immediately. Okara moaned. Garlik too. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to see that expression.

“Don’t move! Or we’ll blow yer heads off!”

I blinked. Slowly turned.

Twelve of them. Maybe more behind the trees. All armed. Guns, cutlasses, some with what looked like electric whips and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. Their uniforms were like someone tried to merge “Pirates of the Caribbean” with “Star Trek,” and gave up halfway through both.

One of them, their apparent leader, wore a ragged captain’s coat a few sizes too big, some sort of scouter strapped to his one good eye, and a fox tail wrapped around his neck like a scarf.

Space pirates.

I hadn’t felt them approach. Hm… maybe their energy was so small I must’ve tuned it out. Probably assumed they were some kind of wildlife.

Still… what an inconvenience.

“Okara,” I said, without looking away from my kitchen.

“On it,” she said with a feral grin, cracking her knuckles. “Nobody messes with my food time!”

“I said don’t move, ya dumb–AAHHHHHHHHHH!”

Too late.

She shot forward like a hangry missile. The sound barrier shattered behind her as she vanished from sight. One of the pirates, mid-sentence, was already screaming as she slammed him into the nearest cliff face.

There was a loud crunch.

“W-We’re under attack! Retur–AHHH!” another one yelled, only to be caught in a mid-air suplex and sent tumbling into a pile of his screaming comrades.

“Do you want me to help her, sir?” Garlik asked, barely glancing up from his datapad.

“Nah,” I said, stirring the sauce. “Let her have this.”

A beam blast lit the sky.

Another pirate went flying.

I flipped the meat and added the vegetables to the mix. The sizzle was perfect. Meanwhile, in the background, there was Okara screaming, the pirates’ begging and crying, and the occasional sound of something being crushed or snapped in two.

“I’m stealing your robotic bird!” Okara roared from somewhere above.

They had a robotic parrot? I don’t know if that’s on brand or just downright lazy writing…

“What?! No! That's attached to my ARM–AAAAAAAAAH!”

Shruggin, I took a bite of the finished sample. Savory. A bit of heat. Needed a touch more citrus. I added a squeeze of local fruit juice.

“She’s taking her time killing them,” Garlik said.

“She hasn’t killed anyone yet. Just maimed them.” I looked up to see one pirate hobbling away with a leg bent the wrong direction. “Badly.”

“Shouldn’t she kill them?”

“I told Okara to deal with them, and that means she gets to decide,” I replied. “I’m okay either way.”

“Fair enough.”

The last of the pirates were now in a pile, some moaning softly, others clearly dead from blood loss, all traumatized. Okara stood on top of them, tail wagging proudly. Her hair was frazzled, one of her gloves was missing, and there was a big goofy smile on her face.

“I win,” she said.

I plated the food.

“You also ruined the ambience, there’s a lot of blood in our dining area now.”

“But I won.”

“That you did,” I replied. “Now clean yourself, it’s time to eat.”

—--------------------------------------------------------------

[Galatic Patrol.]

[Veteran Officer POV – Name: Captain Talros]

We were closing in on Arxa-9.

Two other officers under my command, plus the golden child himself, Merus.

The rookie of the year. The savior of sectors. The walking miracle the Galactic Patrol somehow lucked into.

And now, apparently, the only one stupid enough to think we could wrangle three saiyans without ending up vaporized, pulped, or strung up as warning decorations.

I looked at the display as the planet came into view. Murky blue skies, high winds, violent seas, and jagged terrain. It wasn’t welcoming, so we had no idea why the PTO or the saiyans wanted this place to begin with.

“You seeing this?” Officer Darnak said from the co-pilot seat. Four arms, three eyes, and one mouth that never stopped talking. “No casualties. Not a single distress call, nothing, not even an explosion. Either they’re are waiting for something or—”

“—they’re planning something,” I cut in. “Yeah. I noticed.”

“Arxa-9 doesn’t have a big population,” Officer Bessik chimed in. “Most of the activity is in the mining facility run by that energy corp from Arxa-1. Just engineers and a skeleton staff.”

“That’d explain the lack of alarms,” I muttered, tapping the monitor. “Still, three Saiyans landing anywhere should cause chaos. The lack of it makes me nervous, I don’t like it.”

“It’s weird they haven’t killed anyone yet,” Darnak added. “Maybe they’re playing nice?”

“Yeah, and maybe next week the PTO announces they’re turning into a charity foundation.” I didn’t bother hiding the sarcasm. “Saiyans don’t play nice. They land, they destroy, they leave.”

“Maybe they’re trying to lay low?” Bessik offered.

“That doesn’t fit the profile,” Merus finally said, seated at the rear of the ship with his arms crossed. Calm. Always calm. Too calm. That kid gave me the creeps sometimes. “Saiyans, regardless of their class, their caste, age, or power level, exhibit the same aggressive and domineering tendencies upon arrival to any new planet. That pattern doesn’t change.”

He said it like he was quoting a textbook. Which, knowing him, he probably was. And he wasn’t wrong. The behavior patterns of Saiyans were well-documented. Destruction, combat, escalation. Rinse and repeat. It never strayed from that path.

“That’s right, so…” I said, swiveling in my chair to face him, “How do you propose we handle this, rookie?”

Merus sat up straighter. “Sir, you are my commanding officer and senior. It would be inappropriate for me to suggest—”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck that,” I interrupted with a snort. “You know very well, we didn’t come because we think we can win. We came because, politically, someone has to keep eyes on this mess in case it goes sideways. And because, like it or not, you’re the only one here that has a shot at this. So drop it. And tell us what’s your strategy?”

He nodded once. Then stood.

“We separate them,” he began. “They’re less of a threat divided, especially the strongest one.”

“Right,” Bessik said. “The readings peg him way above what any Saiyan should be capable of. His base level outstrips even King Vegeta, by far.”

“And yet he hasn’t razed the planet yet,” Darnak added. “Weird…”

“He’s smart,” Merus replied. “Cautious. Maybe even restrained. But make no mistake, he’s dangerous. Which is why we hit him first.”

“Head-on?” I asked.

“No,” Merus said. “Surprise attack. We aim for the base of the neck. Enough voltage to cause total neural disruption. If that doesn’t work, we exploit basic Saiyan biology. Namely, their tails.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that?”

“Their tails are a vulnerability, even if trained. A hard strike to the base of the tail or enough voltage applied to at the right angle will disrupt their senses and nerves. Giving us enough to create an opening.”

“And the other two?”

“Sleeping gas or the same strategy as their leader should be more than enough to deal with them, the one obstacle we have is their leader.”

Easy for him to say. 

“Are you sure you can pull this off?” Bessik asked.

“I am,” Merus replied.

“Assuming this works,” Darnak muttered.

“It will,” Merus said.

He said it without ego. Just fact. Like he already knew how it would end. And maybe he did. I still didn’t get how someone that young had a capture record better than the entire patrol had.

“Alright,” I said finally. “You guys heard the rookie, out there we follow your lead, Merus.”

Merus nodded. “I won’t disappoint, sir.”