Death was not the peaceful slumber the poets promised. It was not a gateway of white light, nor was it a fiery descent into hell. It was, simply put, a glitch.
I remember the headlights. I remember the screech of tires on wet asphalt, the shattering of glass, and the sudden, crushing pressure against my chest. Then, the sensory input just... stopped. It didn't fade; it was severed. One moment I was a twenty-something salaryman driving home from a late shift, thinking about the frozen pizza in my backseat and the Mortal Kombat 1 reboot I wanted to play; the next, I was floating in absolute zero.
Time lost its meaning. I might have drifted in that black soup for seconds or centuries. It was a cold that didn't just freeze the skin; it froze the soul. It felt viscous, oily, like I was submerged in a deep ocean of tar.
Then, the tar began to speak.
It wasn't a language of words, but of intent. Darkness. Hollow. Wrath. The concepts seeped into my consciousness, stitching my frayed mind back together with black thread. I felt a tugging sensation—a violent, vertical yank—and the crushing weight of gravity returned.
I gasped, my lungs filling not with air, but with biting, razor-sharp cold.
My eyes snapped open.
I was staring at a sky the color of a bruised plum, heavy with swirling grey clouds. Snow was falling—thick, heavy flakes that landed on my face but didn't melt. I sat up, disoriented, my hands sinking deep into a powder-white snowbank.
"Where..." My voice caught in my throat. It sounded wrong. It wasn't my voice. It was raspier, deeper, carrying a strange, metallic echo, like two grinding stones.
I looked down at myself. I was expecting my jeans, my work shirt, maybe the blood from the car accident. Instead, I saw a small, slender body clad in tattered rags. My skin was the first thing that terrified me. It wasn't just pale; it was grey. Not the grey of a corpse, but the grey of ash.
I frantically pulled the rags back to look at my chest. Veins ran beneath the skin, but they weren't blue. They were jet black, pulsing with a rhythmic, sickening sludge.
"What the hell am I?" I whispered, scrambling to my feet.
I stumbled, my balance off. I felt lighter, faster, yet physically brittle. I looked around, desperate for a landmark. I was in a mountain range, surrounded by jagged, impossible peaks that looked like teeth biting into the sky. To the south, I saw a forest of pine trees that looked strangely stylized—too round, too perfect.
Wait. I knew those mountains. I had seen them drawn in ink a thousand times.
Dragon Ball? I thought, a surge of adrenaline hitting me. The Northern Mountains?
It was impossible. But as I scanned the horizon, I saw something that confirmed it. In the far distance, nestled between two cliffs, was a massive, cylindrical tower made of grey steel and red brick. It had the distinct, rounded architecture of the Red Ribbon Army.
Muscle Tower.
"Okay," I breathed, panic rising in my chest. "Okay, calm down. You've been Isekai'd. People dream about this. Just... check your stats. Do I have a system?"
"System!" I shouted into the wind. "Status! Menu!"
Nothing happened. Just the howling wind and the eerie silence of the snow.
"Okay, no Gamer System. That complicates things."
I tried to remember how Dragon Ball worked. Ki. Life energy. It was in everyone. I closed my eyes, trying to replicate what I'd seen Goku and Krillin do. I focused on my center, searching for that warm, humming ball of light that represented life.
I searched. And searched.
There was nothing. Inside me, there was no warmth. There was no light. There was only a deep, freezing void.
"Am I an Android?" I patted my chest. No, I felt flesh and bone. "Why don't I have Ki?"
Panic began to truly set in. In this world, if you didn't have Ki, you were fodder. You were the background character who got vaporized when a villain missed a shot. I clenched my fists, frustration boiling over. I reached deep into that void inside me, trying to force something to happen.
Move! I screamed internally at the energy. Do something!
I didn't find light. I found a shadow.
It felt like pulling a chain from the bottom of a well. I yanked on the cold sensation in my gut, and suddenly, the snow beneath my feet exploded.
FOOM.
I fell backward, terrified, as my own shadow detached itself from the ground.
It rose up, three-dimensional and terrifying. It was a silhouette of pure vantablack, a void in the shape of a human. It had no features, just glowing white slits for eyes. It stood there, hovering slightly off the snow, staring at me.
I stared back. The design was unmistakable. The cowl, the ninja-like stance, the aura of death.
"Noob..." I whispered.
The shadow tilted its head. Then, it spoke. Not with sound, but directly into my brain. ...Saibot.
I looked at my hands again. The grey skin. The black blood. I wasn't a Saiyan. I wasn't a Namekian. I was Bi-Han. The Elder Sub-Zero. The Wraith.
I had been reborn as Noob Saibot.
A laugh bubbled up in my throat—a harsh, rasping sound. Of all the characters. I wasn't the golden warrior or the prince of all Saiyans. I was the embodiment of death and darkness from a completely different universe.
"Okay," I said, standing up. The cold didn't bother me because I was the cold. "This... this I can work with."
The Shadow—Saibot—floated closer. I felt a connection to it, like a phantom limb. I willed it to move left, and it drifted left. I willed it to vanish, and it melted back into a puddle of ink at my feet.
"Ki relies on life," I theorized, looking at the distant Muscle Tower. "I am not alive. I am a wraith. My energy source is different."
My stomach growled. But it wasn't a hunger for food. It was a hunger for... essence. I looked at the pine forest. I could sense small fires flickering in the distance. Not actual fires, but souls. Animals. People.
I needed to test this body. I needed to know if I was strong enough to survive in a world where moon-busting was considered a casual feat.
I began to walk. I didn't trudge through the snow; I glided over it. My footsteps made no sound.
Two hours later, I found a patrol.
They were Red Ribbon Army soldiers, five of them, huddled around a campfire near a hover-truck. They were dressed in thick winter gear, holding machine guns, laughing as they roasted a wild boar.
"I'm telling you," one soldier said, spitting into the fire. "General White is losing it. He's got us looking for a 'glitch' in the radar. Some energy spike that appeared and vanished."
"Probably just a malfunction," another laughed. "Or maybe it's that snow monster the villagers talk about."
I watched them from the branch of a massive pine tree. I was perfectly concealed. The shadows of the branches seemed to drape over me like a cloak, actively hiding me.
I analyzed them. In Dragon Ball, these guys were jokes. Goku would knock them out with a single kick. But I wasn't Goku. I was a child-sized wraith with zero combat experience in this body. If a bullet hit me, would I die?
"Only one way to find out," I murmured.
I focused on the soldier furthest from the group, who had walked off to relieve himself against a tree.
I didn't jump down. I reached out with my mind.
Teleport.
The world inverted. For a microsecond, I was in a grey, silent dimension—the Netherrealm—and then I popped out of a portal directly behind the soldier. The transition was seamless. No sound. No displaced air.
I didn't have a weapon, so I used what I had. I grabbed the soldier's neck.
My grip was shocking. My hands were small, but the strength behind them was hydraulic. The soldier gagged, his eyes bulging. He tried to shout, but I squeezed.
Snap.
He went limp.
I stared at the body. There was no remorse. No sickness. Just a cold satisfaction. The "corruption" of the Netherrealm was already affecting my mind, suppressing my human empathy. I felt... powerful.
"Hey, Jenkins! You fall in a hole?" one of the soldiers by the fire shouted.
I dragged the body into the shadows. As I touched him, I felt a wisp of white energy leave his mouth and enter my chest. My veins pulsed. The hunger subsided slightly.
I feed on death, I realized. It refills my energy.
"Jenkins?"
Two soldiers stood up, clicking the safety catches off their rifles. They walked toward the tree line.
I stepped out from behind the tree. I was small, barely coming up to their waists. The wind whipped my tattered rags around me.
The soldiers paused, blinking.
"A kid?" one asked, lowering his gun slightly. "Hey, brat. What are you doing out here? Where's our guy?"
I raised my hand. I wanted to try a projectile. In the game, Noob fired a 'Ghostball' that disabled the opponent's powers/blocking. Here, I imagined it as a concentrated sphere of necrotic energy.
"Get lost, kid, before I—"
I snapped my wrist forward. A ball of ghostly blue fire, screaming with the faces of the damned, shot from my palm.
It moved slower than a Ki blast, but it didn't travel in a straight line. It curved, ignoring the wind.
It struck the lead soldier in the chest.
He didn't explode. He didn't fly back. He just... stopped. His muscles locked instantly. His eyes went wide in terror, but his nervous system had been completely shut down. He toppled over like a statue, face-planting into the snow.
"What the hell?!" the second soldier screamed, raising his rifle. RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
Muzzle flashes lit up the twilight. I saw the bullets coming. I couldn't dodge them. I wasn't fast enough yet.
I braced for pain.
But as the bullets struck my skin, I instinctively triggered my passive ability. My body turned into a cloud of black smoke for a fraction of a second. The bullets passed harmlessly through my torso, hitting the tree behind me.
I solidified instantly.
"Ghost!" the soldier shrieked, stumbling back. "It's a demon!"
"Correct," I rasped.
I slammed my palms onto the snow. Saibot!
My shadow elongated, stretching across the snow at unnatural speed. It rose up behind the screaming soldier, grabbing him in a full nelson hold. The soldier thrashed, but Saibot was immovable.
I sprinted forward. I wasn't a martial artist yet—I was a brawler. I leaped into the air, channeling dark energy into my leg, and drove a kick into the soldier's stomach.
The impact was wet and heavy. The armor crumpled. The soldier coughed blood, and Saibot dropped him.
The remaining two soldiers by the fire were now scrambling for their vehicle.
"Leaving so soon?" I muttered.
I looked at the hover-truck. I couldn't let them report this. If the Red Ribbon Army brought heavy mechs or General White came personally, I might be in trouble. I had low durability; my intangibility had a cooldown I could already feel.
"Shadow Slide."
I dissolved into the ground, becoming a streak of darkness moving rapidly across the white snow. I moved under the snow, bypassing the difficult terrain. I appeared directly in front of the truck as it revved up.
The driver saw me appear from the ground and slammed on the gas, intending to run me over.
I stood my ground. I didn't have the strength to stop a truck. But I had portals.
I raised both hands, ripping a tear in reality directly in the truck's path. Simultaneously, I opened the exit portal fifty feet in the air, facing downward.
The truck drove into the black void.
An instant later, it fell out of the sky, nose-first.
CRASH.
Metal crumpled. An explosion of gasoline and parts lit up the night. The shockwave blew my hood back, revealing my pale, angular face to the firelight.
I walked over to the burning wreckage. There were no survivors.
I stood there for a long time, letting the heat of the fire wash over my cold skin. I had done it. I had killed five armed men in under two minutes.
But I was winded. The portal had taken a lot out of me. My vision was swimming slightly.
limitations, the Shadow whispered in my mind. We are fragile. We need... durability.
"Agreed," I said, catching my breath. "Magical tricks won't save me from a Kamehameha or a Dodon Ray. I need to learn how to fight properly. I need to condition this body."
I looked north, toward the jagged peaks.
I had a plan. I couldn't join the Z-Fighters yet. I was a monster. If Kami saw me, he'd probably try to exorcise me. Goku would sense no life energy and assume I was an enemy.
I needed to become a myth first. The Ghost of the North.
I would dismantle the Red Ribbon Army in this sector, not to save the villagers, but to steal their resources. I needed their technology. I needed their maps. And most of all, I needed to find Dr. Gero's early labs. If I was going to survive the Saiyan invasion in six years, I might need some cybernetic enhancements. Or at least, I needed to make sure the Androids weren't going to be a problem for me.
I pulled my hood up, masking my face.
"First step," I said to the empty forest. "Level grinding."
I turned away from the burning truck and melted into the shadows, moving toward the lights of Jingle Village. I wouldn't hurt the innocent—that was the lingering humanity in me—but I would use their fear to keep people away while I trained.
The Dragon Ball world was bright, loud, and full of hope.
I was going to be the ink stain on the canvas.