Dragon Ball Z: The Beast Within - CH26 (Rewritten)

[Escarot POV]

Five years to complete the mission.

I’d done it in less than one.

Now… what?

Originally, I had planned to head to Yadrat after Namek. Pick up some techniques. Instant Transmission maybe, if luck was on my side. But that plan hit a wall fast—turns out, Yadrat wasn’t even on the damn star maps yet. Probably hadn’t been discovered by the PTO.

So yeah. That was off the table.

Now? No target. No destination. Just power and time.

I could return to Planet Vegeta. Lay low. Not because of King Vegeta—please—I could fold him in half and still have time for lunch. But the Cold Family? That was the real problem.

Frieza wasn’t running things yet, but his dad was. King Cold. Less explosive, but just as dangerous. If a reading of my power level got to the wrong ears, it’d be game over before I got a second chance.

So yeah. Hiding wasn’t cowardice. It was smart.

I sat on a rocky ledge, watching the wind kick dust across the small crater we’d landed near. Okara was down below, casually blasting rocks out of the sky with her fingers. Garlik had his face buried in a scanner, probably on his third diagnostic sweep of the ships. Again.

We’d been camped here a few days. Small planet, half Vegeta’s gravity. Not great, not terrible. But not enough for what I needed next.

Time to move.

“Garlik,” I called.

He looked up. “Yeah?”

“Find us somewhere new.”

He blinked. “New how?”

“Stronger gravity. Isolated. I want a place I don’t have to hold back.”

He set his tools down, then tilted his head. “So… not going back to Planet Vegeta?”

“Nope.”

Okara’s voice cut in from below. “Good.”

I raised a brow. “You’re happy?”

“Of course I am,” she shouted back, floating up beside me. “Last thing I want is to sit around getting missions from stuck-up bastards with awful food.”

“That’s your main concern?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Training’s fine. Missions are fine. But our superiors suck ass.”

I chuckled. “You have your priorities in order.”

“I’m pretty sure you’d suffer more than me.”

Fair.

Garlik tapped a few things on his wristpad, eyes narrowing as he scrolled. “Alright… sir, according to our maps the closest viable planet that fits your parameters is about three months away. There isn’t much information about the place, but it says there’s no population, no tech, just rock and heat.”

“Details?”

“Gravity’s a little under Planet Vegeta’s. Weird orbit, though. It’s got five suns.”

Okara turned her head. “Five?”

“Yep. Constant sunlight over most of the surface. Harsh terrain, extreme temperatures, probably volcanic. Might explain why it’s uninhabited.”

My tail flicked once.

“Sounds perfect.”

Garlik shrugged. “I’ll start calibrating the jump.”

Okara floated beside me, arms crossed. “So what’s the plan there? You gonna punch mountains until they fall over?”

I shrugged. “Something like that.”

Truth was, I didn’t just want to train. I wanted to see how far I could push myself. Slug had been a test, and I’d passed. Barely. I needed more than that now.

Luck had been on my side… I couldn’t put all my bets on this happening again.

If I went to Planet Vegeta chances were I would be ordered to stay, and I wasn’t going to wait five years doing nothing just to appease the fragile ego of King Vegeta.

I knew I had to go back, eventually. But for now, I had to take advantage of the precious time I had been given.

Okara leaned against a rock. “Are we gonna stay long?”

“Until we’re stronger and the place has nothing to offer us.”

She grinned. “Alright. That’s more like it. I can feel myself getting closer to beating you up!”

“That’s adorable,” I replied with a smirk, but she simply stuck her tongue out at me.

Garlik called from across the landing zone. “Alright. Ships are synced. Ready to launch whenever.”

“Let’s go then,” I replied.

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

[3 Months Later]

[Escarot POV]

The second we landed, I knew something was off.

Not wrong, just... off.

There was no heat, no blinding light, no five suns cooking us alive like Garlik’s intel suggested. Instead, I stepped out of the pod into complete and total darkness.

Not nighttime.

Not overcast.

Darkness.

Like the sky itself had been swallowed. I couldn’t see more than two feet ahead. My hand barely stood out in front of my face, and the ground under my boots was cold, damp, and uneven.

"...Huh," I muttered, narrowing my eyes as I stared into the void around us. "Garlik?"

He was a few steps behind me, still fiddling with his scouter. "Yeah?"

"How… how is a planet with five suns this dark?"

"I… I don’t know, sir," he said. He sounded confused, and Garlik rarely sounded confused. "Coordinates match. This is the planet. Gravity feels right. But..." He looked around, clearly trying to make sense of it. "This shouldn’t be possible."

"No shit."

Behind us, there was a loud thud, followed by a string of curses.

"FUC—DAMN IT!" Okara barked. "I just walked into a rock or a wall or something. What kind of place is this? I thought this planet had five suns!"

“I know as much as you,” I replied.

She stumbled again, her silhouette barely visible in the dim outline of her own glowing scouter. Another crash. A grunt. "MY TAIL!"

I sighed. Loudly.

"This is stupid! We could’ve gone back to any other planet, but noooo, let’s go to the sun-blasted training planet, Okara, it’ll be great, Okara! We can cook on lava, Okara!"

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "You could create a light, you know."

"What?"

"A light," I said. "Just make a ki orb. And use it as a source of light."

She froze. I could feel her eyes on me.

"You’re telling me… I’ve been bumping into rocks and bruising my ego… and you could’ve suggested that five minutes ago?"

"You were doing a lot of yelling. I didn’t want to interrupt."

She growled under her breath, then a moment later, a small glowing orb of ki formed in her palm. The immediate area lit up in a soft, yellow hue, and the surroundings finally came into view.

And they were weird.

Jagged rock formations rose up like the ribcages of dead giants. Everything was wet—slick, glossy, covered in a faint layer of something that looked like ash mixed with frost. The air wasn’t just dark, it was heavy. Cold.

The gravity was about what Garlik said it would be—slightly heavier than the last place—but that was the only thing he’d gotten right.

This place wasn’t a planet. If anything, it was a graveyard.

I crouched and pressed my palm to the dirt. It was cold, but not dead. There was energy here. Strange, subtle… off. I could feel a few energy signatures on the planet.

Intelligent life? Maybe… the energy signatures certainly felt weak enough to be confused with animals, but if there was something I had learned during my time in Namek was that you couldn’t fully trust in your senses.

Ki, once mastered, was easy enough to hide.

"This place is wrong," Okara muttered, voice low as she floated next to me. "It’s not just the darkness. The whole vibe feels cursed."

Hmm, yeah. She wasn’t wrong. The entire place felt wrong, beyond the darkness itself.

Garlik stepped forward, glancing around. "I can’t feel any lifeforms in the immediate area."

“I can,” I replied.

“You do?” Garlik muttered.

"That explains why it feels like we’re being watched," Okara muttered, turning slowly in place.

Now that she mentions it, it does feel like we are being watched.

I stood. "Let’s make camp here. We’ll do some recon in the morning. Assuming there is a morning."

Okara mumbled, looking up. "Yeah… I wouldn’t bet on that."

Garlik tapped a few keys on his wristpad. "I’ll start scanning the planet’s orbital position. Maybe the suns are eclipsed or something."

"Or the intel was garbage," I added.

"Possibly," he muttered, then wandered back to his pod.

Okara floated back to hers, using her ki orb to guide the way.

I stood there a moment longer, arms crossed.

I’d picked this place to train. To push myself. And while it wasn’t what I expected, maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. If I wanted to keep growing stronger, I couldn’t rely on easy, predictable environments.

Besides, there had to be some sort of benefit to training in complete darkness. I mean… I remember like ten movies where the protagonist trained in a similar environment and ended up being stronger.

I let out a breath, watching it fog in the cold air. I’d find a way to make this place useful. Even if I had to blow half the terrain into shape myself.

"Hey," Okara called from her pod. "You planning to brood out there all night or what?"

"Maybe."

"Well, keep it down. If you get murdered by spooky shadows, I’m not saving you."

I smirked. "That’s fair."

I turned toward my pod, letting her light guide the way.

Training started tomorrow.

Darkness or not.