Gone Native: Extreme Measures (ch. 53) (Patreon)

Earth was still adapting, but it had done a lot of it over the past three months. To the point that it was honestly shocking.

Letting Lex Luthor remain in charge had been a gamble -- a dangerous one. I had no doubt in my mind that he was taking a mile with every inch that I gave him, building his powerbase on Earth to become a major figure in my empire. But I allowed it because, ultimately,  he was doing what I wanted -- leading Earth to develop this portion of my empire and integrate into it.

What Lex had difficulty imagining was how easily he could be removed. How his influence only existed because I allowed it to. He was too used to playing by human rules, navigating Earth’s waters. In the past months, I would go as far as to say that he did an excellent job of adapting to the new political landscape. Harvest was already up and running, the entire planet dedicated to food production, and already it was producing enough to support all of Earth’s needs several times over. The asteroid belt was also being liberally mined for valuable materials.

Luthor was creating connections at the developing companies that grew in my empire. A number of them were government sponsored, thus owned by me in practice. As a result, Earth was rapidly gaining familiarity with FTL travel. To several companies that still existed on Earth, such as Wayne Enterprises and Queen Industries, mining the asteroid belt was in practice the same as going to… Utah, or somewhere else on Earth to pull up ore from the crust.

“I thought it would take longer to get to this point,” I remarked, choosing not to say anything until the person I was speaking to arrived. “Earth has a habit of exceeding my expectations,” I continued when Broly landed, an industrial amount of popcorn held in a cardboard box under one arm as I stood at the edge of Jump City. There were a handful of flying cars darting between the buildings. Luthor's brand, primarily. As far as I could tell, he had been sitting on the designs for a while and only chose to bring them out when demand for them was already there and at its height.

“Humans are pretty weird,” Broly agreed, taking a seat at the ledge before placing the box of popcorn between us. “They do some things super slow, even if they know it's better for them, but when it's something they want they just go towards it full speed. Popcorn?”

“Thanks,” I said, taking a handful of popcorn, finding that it had been liberally coated in butter and salt, before tossing it into my mouth. Chewing thoughtfully, I thought over the estimates that Luthor sent had me. Progress reports. All well ahead of schedule. The problems of the rapid development were also being seen to. A significant portion of Earth was covered in farmland, but with Harvest, that was completely unnecessary. A significant portion of humanity's farmers went to Harvest -- millions of them, which meant that their farms needed to be sold.

To me, as it turned out. I was effectively immortal. I would be king for a very, very, very long time. Ada’la's warning about the lack of gratitude from my citizen's offspring was the guiding force behind the decision. It seemed wrong to me now, but I could see all to easily how it could become difficult a thousand years down the line. To future proof the corruption, I decided that formally, all property within my empire belonged to me. Directly. As a result, all occupied land was leased out to the inhabitants.

I had to trust myself that I wouldn’t change so much that I would abuse that position for my own benefit in a far off future.

“More of them are leaving,” Broly said, sounding almost mournful of the fact. I felt what he was talking about. My range expanded until it completely enveloped the Earth. I could feel every living being on the face of the planet, and I felt the rather sharp decrease in the number of humans thanks to how many of them had left Earth in the past half year. I would say mostly in the past three months, really. The fear of my empire had lessened, and many humans were venturing beyond the only planet that they had ever known. They were making a bit of a splash, from my understanding.

The rest of my citizens were curious about Earth itself, but overall felt it unwelcoming. The humans that stayed were the ones that were either on the fence or were fully against joining my empire while the ones that embraced it were exploring it. The few visitors that came to Earth were often in disguise.

“It’ll fill back up eventually,” I voiced. The population was pretty heavily linked with how the latest generation felt about their future and the idea of bringing up children in it. For a long time, Earth had been sliding to a tipping point -- the economy was bad, climate change was happening and nothing was being done, and so on. Social issues exacerbated it, but at the core of it, no one wanted to raise a child in a world that could be ending within that child's lifetime. “Or maybe it won’t. That won’t be a bad thing in itself.”

Broly was silent for a moment, chewing a mouthful of popcorn. “Have you decided on what you’re going to do? About us?” He asked me directly, and by us he meant everyone. All of the Saiyans. “The Guardians helped a bit, didn’t they?”

“Only a bit,” I answered, an edge of bitterness in my tone. The Guardians had followed through on their end and gave me the data on my race. All of which had been on the ship that had transported us to Planet Vegeta after we destroyed Planet Sadala. There was billions of years' worth of data, and I had learned exactly how many renditions of the Saiyan race there were. One million, three hundred and twenty-six thousand, one hundred and three. Each one taking place across the universe, as the Guardians experimented to learn what worked and what didn’t.

Calm biomes didn’t work well with Saiyans, the Guardians had quickly learned. Saiyans thrived off of adversity and without it, we quickly devolved into infighting. That killed a number of the past renditions of my species. Others did as Yamoshi had implied -- they got the ball rolling, and managed to coexist with powerful but kind leaders guiding the Saiyan race, but then they collapsed in on themselves when the Saiyan race as a whole became powerful enough to tap into the Super Saiyan transformation.

Only three renditions of the Saiyan race had managed to reach a point that the Guardians had labeled them successes. My own. Yamoshi’s version. And a version that existed roughly fifteen million years ago in another galaxy. It had imploded for a similar reason to what Yamoshi had said about his rendition -- things were going great until, suddenly, they weren’t and the Saiyan race destroyed itself.

“A bit?” Broly echoed, glancing up at me as I stood on the ledge.

“Some of the records were missing. They’re still hiding something from me,” I told him, which was firmly annoying. Those records were gone before I had asked the Guardians about them. As far as I could tell, it was an attempt to deliberately hide something from whoever stumbled across the ship, and learned what I now knew.

“Any idea what they could be?” Broly asked me, tossing another handful of popcorn in his mouth.

I frowned at Jump City, then at the sky above. “The last Super Saiyan that destroyed Planet Sadala was trying to combine the Oozaru transformation with the Super Saiyan form, but they lost control.” I told Broly, making him nod because he already knew as much. “Every single time I’ve discovered a transformation or stacked them, it was because I was fighting someone I couldn’t defeat otherwise.”

Broly saw where I was going with this train of thought. “You think it was Sadala?”

“Possibly,” I voiced, my lips thinning. The only information I had on Sadala was what the Guardians told me -- she was the progenitor of my race, and she was somewhere out in the universe, waiting for the Saiyan race to rise to what she desired. “But, I don’t think so. According to the Guardians, Sadala is asleep and has been for billions of years. No. I think it was someone else. Because the files that were missing were about what happened to the Saiyans that were left over from the disasters.”

I glanced down at Broly. “Some of them were space-faring by the time they were destroyed,” I told him. He instantly understood what I was hinting at, his eyebrows drawing together as his expression became thoughtful.

“Do you really think another race of Saiyans is out there? And that they attacked Planet Sadala?” He asked, and I could hear his doubt. “We would have heard about them by now, right? Or they would have come to us?” He voiced reasonable doubts, but I felt it in my gut. My instincts were telling me that the two were connected in some way. I had three million PL before I could tap into the Super Saiyan transformation, and because of it, I was in the upper percentile of the galaxy.

Stacking the Oozaru transformation on top of that would push the last Super Saiyan even higher because I had no idea how strong they had been when they died. All the same, they had died. Simply put, there weren’t a lot of figures in the galaxy, or the universe to my knowledge, that could manage to push a Saiyan that far, then overcome them anyway. Perhaps it was my pride talking, but the only kind of enemy that I knew of that could accomplish that was another Saiyan.

“Maybe,” I agreed, not fully buying the idea that I was mistaken. “It’s too early to tell one way or the other, but I do believe that there is at least a handful of the previous renditions of the Saiyan race out there. If they maintained their training, then they could survive until now.” Matillo survived for a thousand years while being, as far as I could tell, one of the weakest versions of our race to date. “I’ll find them if I can.”

“Yamoshi could help,” Broly pointed out.

“If I could find him,” I responded, my tone testy. Yamoshi was in the wind, as far as I could tell. He seemed to be deliberately avoiding me now for some reason. Which struck me as odd given how whimsical he seemed. There was likely a good reason for it, but it did mean that I was left in the dark and stumbling to find answers. “I know Yamoshi’s generation was thousands of years ago, but the last Super Saiyan existed a thousand years ago. He’s also the only one that managed to attain the Saiyan God form before me, so he is the only Saiyan god. The Guardians took note of him and his influence, so he may be able to give me answers.”

Yamoshi had been the Guardians’ greatest hope for the Saiyan race. They had thought he was the key. The notes I read were as dry as sand, but when they were about Yamoshi, there was hope there. Excitement. Eagerness to find the answer after billions of years of trying. Then bitter disappointment when his generation collapsed. Since then, Yamoshi did what he’s been doing to me -- popping in on the occasion to give advice and help. I’m betting that the last Super Saiyan had been similar to me. A Saiyan that had the same hopes for the Saiyan race, or at least the desire to take it down a different path.

“That answers what happened a long time ago, but… have you decided what we’re doing in the future?” Broly asked, taking the conversation in the direction that I had been trying to avoid. It had been three months since I learned what I now knew about my race. Six months counting the three months spent in training. I had millions of examples of failure staring me in the face, and more than a few of them eerily echoed my original plans.

It was the final nail in the coffin to convince me that I needed to do something different. An extreme measure. Because I needed my race to change. For good. To become-

Almost as if to agree with me, as I looked out at the city, I felt a presence surging towards the city. I thought nothing of it until that presence slammed through a building, punching through it like it wasn’t even there. I responded instantly, flying up an inch to avoid using the Titan Tower as a launch platform, and flew forward towards the presence. Ki gathered around my palm before it was flung forward.

Small ki blasts destroyed the debris that was going to fall upon the street, vaporizing it into nothing, while another went into the building itself to support it. I’m not sure if it needed it, but I really didn’t want to risk it. A split second later, I saw exactly who it was. Olaive. Elery’s teammate. She was looking over her shoulder -- not at me, but as if she was just realizing that she had hit something, and started to look away uncaringly before her gaze landed on me.

Her face was flushed, I noticed and clutched in her hand was a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. She slowed, floating in mid air while Broly went into the building itself to make sure no one needed help. I didn’t sense that they did -- no one’s ki signature was weakening in a way that hinted at a major injury. “King Tarble! Uh… what brings you here?” She asked, blinking oddly at me before a wide smile appeared on her face, thrusting the masked bottle in my direction. “I found some really awesome stuff! Humans call it booze! It’s great!”

I wanted to look to the sky and yell in frustration when I heard that. Olaive, like many of the current generation of Saiyans, had her third growth spurt. No longer was she a child in appearance, but a young woman. A teenager. I knew it was going to happen eventually, but I still didn’t like it. Because the very last thing I ever needed was members of the Saiyan race developing substance abuse problems.

The power to destroy a city with a stray blast and alcohol did not go together. Period.

“It’s called, uh, absinthe, I think. We have to keep it in paper bags for some reason, but its awesome!” To punctuate her point, Olaive brought her lips to the bottle and gulped it down like it was water. It was unfortunate, I thought. Most of the alcohol or drugs that did exist within my empire could only be consumed by the species that created them -- after all, the reason drugs were drugs was that they caused a reaction in that species' biology. Just because one race started hallucinating when eating a mushroom didn’t mean that another species would when they ate that same mushroom.

With Saiyans, I had hoped that our natural metabolism would mean that human substances would be too weak to have the effect they had on humans. That hope was misplaced, it seemed.

Raising a finger, I blasted the bottle, dunking half the contents on her face, making Olaive sputter. “H-hey! What’d you go and do that for?!” She protested, glaring at me for the briefest of moments before she wiped the expression from her face when she saw mine.

“You nearly leveled that building, Olaive,” I told her, gesturing to it, my lips in a thin line. I knew exactly what reaction that I was going to get. I could see it rising in her chest. It was also one that I was learning to expect to some degree.

“Then humans shouldn’t make their buildings so fragile! I barely dinged it!” Olaive argued, gesturing wildly at me and the building.

“You could have killed everyone in it,” I continued, ignoring her protests about the matter. And I saw it in her gaze this time. The complete and utter lack of empathy or care. The only reason she didn’t shrug her shoulders at the idea that she could have killed potentially hundreds of people was because I was in front of her. There was no accountability or empathy.

“I’m sorry,” Olaive told me, offering a bow before wiping the rest of the alcohol off of her face with a forearm. She didn’t mean it. I could see it. She was like a child that was apologizing simply because she wanted to avoid getting in trouble.

And I understood. I did. More than words could ever hope to convey. There had been millions of Saiyan races that all drove themselves into extinction, and they did it with their own power. Their own choices and upbringing. My generation of Saiyans was raised to fight in the most brutal war that this galaxy had ever known. The only peace they had known was during the first five years of their lives before they were shipped off to the harshest front lines, and even during that time, their days were filled with conflict.

What was the death of a few extra humans on their hands? When they had already seen millions die and killed more?

It always weighed heavily on me because I understood that would be a huge hurdle to overcome, but now it was weighed down further by the fact that my race didn’t need any help destroying itself such as being raised soldiers first and foremost.

“Are you?” I asked myself as much as her, catching Olaive flatfooted. Perhaps she expected some degree of special treatment from me since she was my sister's teammate. I couldn’t tell. “Are you that bored?” I asked her, knowing exactly what the root of the problem was.

My people grew up at war and they had no idea what to do with peace. Most of the Saiyan race was on Tamaran at the moment, which seemed to be enduring them well enough, but there were a handful of Saiyans that were lingering on Earth or elsewhere. They were trouble but they kept it in check for the most part, and this was the closest call that I knew about so far. Those Saiyans were bored.

Olaive confirmed as much, “Kinda. I thought Earth was supposed to have a whole bunch of things and people to fight but there’s nothing! So I asked around what humans do for fun and found out that they drink a lot.”

Then did what amounted to driving drunk for humans, only far more destructive. I closed my eyes for a brief moment, and in my heart, I knew that I made a decision then and there. However, when I opened them, I pinned a sharp look on Olaive as we floated above the city. “Go find Elery, and she’ll deal with you.” I told her, earning a curt nod from Olaive before she all but fled from the scene of the crime.

A hand went up to my necklace, at the complete collection of Lantern Rings upon it…

And I held the Indigo Ring of Compassion.