Aeris was now living in that miserable state where she'd eat one meal, then go hungry for the next. Mentally, she was hanging on by a thread.
Sure, she'd visited a lot of planets, but that didn't mean she could stomach the food on all of them. Some worlds served things so disgusting they could ruin your whole day. Bursting giant bugs. Giant bug salad. That kind of nightmare fuel.
"AAAAAHHH... what the hell am I even searching for? I seriously regret ever deciding to look for those shitty parents of mine!! Anaga... I miss your cooking..."
Aeris lay sprawled on the floor like a wilted houseplant, looking like life had personally kicked her in the face.
Seriously, who the hell knew the universe was this damn big?
And to make it worse, she got lost.
She hadn't even known where she was supposed to go in the first place. She'd just flown around blindly, and after enough blind flying... surprise, she had no idea where the hell she was anymore.
She let out a long, miserable sigh.
"Well... guess I can only take it one step at a time. No, wait. One flight at a time."
That was the only way she could comfort herself now.
Thankfully, during her travels she had managed to make a number of very friendly, definitely not violent trades on the planets she passed through.
By "trade," of course, we mean "snatch and run."
She'd collected all kinds of useful everyday items along the way, especially things for stress relief.
Like punching bags.
A lot of punching bags.
She had also picked up a few survival skills. During that same period, she fought plenty of people too. At first, she got her ass kicked so badly she had to run around holding her head and screaming. Later on, though, things changed. By then, she was dropping people the moment she met them, and if she got pissed off enough, blowing up a planet wasn't exactly rare either.
To be fair, she had never claimed to be a good person.
Along the way, she also heard a lot of stories.
Stories about brutal aliens scattered throughout the universe.
The name she heard most often was Frieza, of the Frieza Force, along with the underlings who worked beneath him. The race she heard mentioned most was the Saiyans, known for two very obvious traits: tails, and turning into giant apes.
Putting all those clues together with her own situation, Aeris made a bold guess.
She was probably one of the Saiyans people kept talking about.
Then she heard that the Saiyan race had been wiped out over ten years ago for reasons no one seemed clear on, and once she compared that timeline to the day she'd suddenly lost control of her emotions and broken down crying...
Yeah.
It lined up way too well.
Which meant...
"Motherfucker, then what the hell am I even searching for?! They're all dead, every last one... ah, no, wait. Not every last one. There's still me. AAAAHHH, this is so damn annoying!"
The sheer amount of information hit her like a truck, and she lost control of her temper on the spot.
The last punching bag in the room exploded.
Aeris stared at the shredded remains.
"..."
Great.
Now she didn't even have a final emotional support punching bag left.
Suddenly, she really wanted to pick a fight.
"Nope. Nope. I need to go blow up an ugly planet before I implode."
And because Aeris believed in immediate action over emotional regulation, she got up at once, located the nearest small planet, locked in the coordinates, and flew straight toward it.
A little over an hour later, Aeris arrived on that poor, doomed world.
"AAAAAHHH... DIE!!!! Galnei Burst!!!!"
She thrust one hand forward, and terrifying waves of energy blasted out from her palm in rapid succession, tearing across the planet in every direction.
Boom!!!
BOOM!!!!
"AAAAAHHH! DIE, DIE, ALL OF YOU, DIE!!! AAAAAHHHH!"
As she vented her rage, violent currents of energy erupted all around her. Sparks of crackling electricity danced through the air, flickering around her body.
She didn't notice.
Her pupils and hair color kept shifting too, changing over and over as her power surged wildly.
She didn't notice that either.
Then, all at once, she pulled everything back in.
Every bit of it.
The pressure vanished.
"Phew... that feels better."
After letting it all out, Aeris climbed back into her ship looking refreshed and spiritually cleansed.
Before leaving, she only "accidentally" left behind a giant energy sphere large enough to destroy the entire planet.
Just a little whoopsie.
What she would never guess, not even if someone beat it into her skull, was that she had come that close to becoming the legendary Super Saiyan every Saiyan dreamed about.
Yep.
That close.
Fate really was a weird little bitch sometimes.
Aeris leaned back in her seat and sighed.
"Hard to believe I've already been drifting through this universe for over ten years..."
She genuinely hadn't realized it.
Out in space, there was no day or night, no natural sense of time passing. There was only endless silence, endless emptiness, and endless loneliness.
Though by now, she had more or less gotten used to it.
She had only thought it had been "a while."
She never imagined that "a while" apparently meant over a decade.
Just as she was preparing to head for her next destination, three small spherical ships came flying straight toward her, moving like baseballs hurled through space at terrifying speed. Compared to them, her own ship looked like a turtle dragging itself through mud.
Luckily, the three ships only passed by her.
They didn't stop.
But in the moment they crossed paths, Aeris felt something familiar.
A strange wave.
Something that stirred deep in her soul.
The feeling hit so suddenly that she immediately turned around to look.
But by the time she did, the three spherical ships had already disappeared into the darkness.
In the end, she could only assume she was overthinking it.
...
Meanwhile, the people inside those three pods flew directly to the location where the planet Aeris had destroyed used to be.
"Prince Vegeta, the energy signature here matches the one we've been tracking all these years," said a large bald man to the shorter warrior beside him.
That shorter warrior was, of course, Vegeta.
"Tch. Still too late, huh?" Vegeta said irritably.
"Then what now, Prince Vegeta?" Nappa asked. "Do we keep chasing?"
"Forget it. We still have a mission to finish. No point wasting time on this. It was never our top priority anyway. Nappa, Raditz, we're leaving."
With that, Vegeta climbed back into his pod and departed.
Nappa and Raditz followed right behind him.
What, you're asking how they can move around in space?
Brother.
Do you think the ship's oxygen system is just there for decoration?
Use your head.
...
At this moment, our dear little Aeris still had no idea she'd already attracted attention.
Then again, considering how many planets she'd destroyed, it wasn't exactly shocking. She had indirectly interfered with Frieza's planetary resale business, after all.
And cutting into someone's money was basically the same as murdering their parents in the eyes of capitalists.
So, yeah.
Pretty serious.
Of course, even if Frieza actually came looking for her, it wasn't a huge problem.
If she couldn't win, she could always run.
She wasn't some brave hero or noble warrior.
She was just a delicate young lady.
A weak little girl, really.
All that fighting and killing was so uncivilized, don't you think?
Aeris let out a contented breath.
"Man... taking a hot bath after blowing off steam really is one of life's greatest joys."
After that, she grabbed a book and started flipping through it. It was full of gossip from around the universe, plus profiles on various well-known figures.
"Frieza, huh... power level 530,000... He's probably holding back. There's no way someone with only that much would become this dominant. Huh. Now I'm curious..."
She stared at the picture in the book, the one showing Frieza sitting in his hover pod like some creepy little emperor-baby, and muttered to herself.
Then she put the book back on the shelf and walked over to a strange device.
A machine.
After stepping inside, the top panel lit up.
Immediately, the entire chamber filled with an intensely oppressive pressure.
The instant she activated it, an invisible force slammed down on her and crushed her flat against the floor.
"Ghk... damn it... I... I set it too high by accident..."
Aeris couldn't move.
That crushing force pinned her down so completely that even with everything she had, she only managed to drag herself forward by a single centimeter.
"Am... am I going to die...? No... no, I can't..."
She kept struggling, inching toward the control panel.
"Almost... almost there... I... I have to hold on..."
One centimeter...
Two centimeters...
Three centimeters...
After exhausting herself nearly to death, she had only moved three centimeters.
By then, she had already become a blood-soaked mess.
If she hadn't known healing magic, she would've died on the spot ages ago. During the process, the pressure made her pass out several times.
Every single time, she had one foot in the afterlife.
And every single time, her healing ability dragged her back by force.
That went on for six full days.
For six days straight, her entire existence became nothing but the same cycle over and over again:
Move.
Collapse.
Wake up.
Heal.
Move again.
Why did it take so damn long?
Come on, think about it.
She had collapsed face-first when the chamber activated. First she had to roll over. Then turn herself around. Then crawl toward the control panel.
That was already insanely fast under the circumstances.
And the only reason she could move at all was because her body kept getting stronger while gradually adapting to the pressure, little by little, through repeated near-death experiences.
Otherwise?
She would've died on day one.
No question.
By the ninth day, after dragging herself through literal hell, she was finally able to push up part of her body.
Only for a moment.
Then she immediately slammed back down again.
She had finally reached the area beneath the control panel, but standing up still seemed nearly impossible. If her body hadn't been absurdly durable, she would have burst apart the very first day she activated the machine.
The biggest reason she was still alive, of course, was her healing technique.
And honestly, she had almost trained it into a passive skill at this point. Thanks to all those repeated brushes with death, her body practically started healing on instinct. Without that, she probably would've died while unconscious.
On the tenth day, she finally managed to stand.
Barely.
Her whole body trembled so violently it looked like she might collapse into pieces. Still, once she got upright, she fixed her eyes on the shutdown button and simply let herself fall forward.
Thankfully, her body landed right on it.
The machine powered down.
"Haah... haah... haah... I was... this close... this close to dying for real..."
She lay there on the floor gasping, grateful to still be alive.
At that point, she had truly reached her limit. If that machine had stayed on even one more day, she would've been dead. Under that kind of relentless pressure, practically every bone in her body had broken at least once. There wasn't a single part of her left in good condition.
After resting for a while, Aeris started dragging herself toward the exit using only her chin.
Every inch she moved left a long streak of blood behind her.
At last, she reached a table.
She rammed her head into one of the legs hard enough to knock the items on top crashing to the floor. Then she grabbed one small pouch filled with green liquid in her mouth and bit it open, drinking it in the least dignified way imaginable.
Of course, half of it spilled everywhere.
Still, after finishing one pouch, she could at least prop herself up into a sitting position. Then she grabbed another.
After three pouches, she was finally able to stand.
"Hah... all right. I'm alive again. Food first. Cleaning later."
She walked over to a nearby cabinet, grabbed an unidentified slab of meat, and started eating it raw on the spot.
Right now, the urgent issue was restoring her strength. Who cared whether it was cooked? Food was food.
Besides, she was used to this.
When she had to run for her life in the past, she'd eaten the same way, grabbing whatever looked edible and stuffing it into her mouth while fleeing.
When you're escaping for your life, are you really going to stop and complain about presentation?
Don't be stupid.
This was about survival.
By the time she had eaten everything in the cabinet, she was only about thirty percent full.
Which was honestly horrifying.
Then again, that appetite explained a lot. No wonder Anaga had been so eager to send her off. The amount she just ate would've been enough to feed a normal person for at least ten days.
And she was still only three-tenths full.
Truly worthy of a warrior race.
"Let's clean this place up first, then take a bath. It looks like someone got murdered in here and left to rot for a week."
So she started cleaning.
"Damn... the gravity chamber really did a number on this place. Not bad, me. Lost that much blood and still didn't die."
Aeris looked at the horrifying mess inside the chamber with a weird little burst of pride.
Because really, not everyone gets to lose that much blood and keep walking.
After cleaning up, she went to take a bath.
And now... Crimson King skips ahead.
When she came back out, she stood in front of the mirror, admiring herself shamelessly.
"Now this is what a proper person should look like. Heh. Damn, I'm gorgeous. Look at this waistline. Look at these faint abs. How the hell is there such a stunning beauty in this world? Come here, gorgeous."
She blew a kiss at her own reflection.
Then she looked herself over from one side, touched here, checked there, and then...
CENSORED.
What are you thinking about?
Trash.
Absolute trash.
Whatever filthy nonsense you imagined, none of that happened.
Absolutely none.
Aeris swears on Anaga's life that none of the things in your filthy little brain happened.
At that moment, Aeris noticed a blue planet in the distance.
"Whoa... that looks like a sapphire. Though it's pretty far. At this turtle speed, it'll probably take me five days to get there. Eh, whatever. I should test my power level first. If I'm too weak, I might get bullied when I arrive."
So she took out a scouter, the same model Vegeta and the others used, and scanned herself.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The number climbed rapidly.
Then stopped.
78,930,000
"Hm. If I run into someone strong, I should at least be able to protect myself."
Earth: Do you maybe want to listen to the words coming out of your own mouth? One slap from you would blow me to pieces.
Ahem.
Just kidding.
Our young lady would never be that violent.
Right?
Right?
Aeris smiled sweetly while the corner of her brow twitched and her face darkened with extremely convincing nonviolent intent.
Meanwhile, on a small planet somewhere else in the universe, a short man wearing Kai robes and tiny sunglasses suddenly felt something.
King Kai froze.
Then he started pacing around his little yard with his hands clasped behind his back.
"This is bad... this is very bad... Why is such a terrifying monster headed this way? This region isn't like the others. There aren't that many strong fighters here!"
Cold sweat dripped down his face.
But after a little while, the terrifying presence disappeared again, as if it had never been there at all.
King Kai blinked.
"Was... was it just passing through? Wahahaha! Of course it was! It must have been! Scared me half to death there. I was worrying over nothing... hahaha!"
Whatever stupid thought entered his head after that made him start laughing so hard he ended up clutching his stomach and rolling around on the ground.
Aeris: ...
Naturally, our Miss Aeris had no idea any of this was happening.
And even if she did know, she probably wouldn't care.
After all, who gets bored enough to randomly entertain themselves like that for no reason?