Monkey Business

In a realm making up half of the universe stood an almost infinite line of different creatures with halos levitating above their heads.

"*Sigh*… Next."

A giant red-skinned ogre in a purple suit and a hat with horns to match sat at a desk peering down at tiny individuals that he could seemingly crush between his fingertips effortlessly. Before him stood another soul that was about to either be expelled to hell or excelled to heaven. The creature looked like a bipedal grasshopper.

"Sha'thawn. Arlian. Title, warrior of the harvest. Murdered 75 thousand, but due to the insectoid nature of your race, this is quite normal. At least 5 thousand deaths were committed upon birth.

The other 70 thousand can be chalked up to your duties as a warrior. You have always remained loyal to your queen and never betrayed your loved ones. You were a role model to the youth and an inspiration throughout your galaxy. Reading your energy, I sense little to no negative. Heaven it is." With the snap of his fingers, a huge white light of transcendence consumed the Arlian's entire being.

"Krik Krik" The Arlian kneeled on one knee putting his hand over his chest as the light washed him away. Soon, his body disappeared without a trace.

"Next… Sar'fa. Liff. Willingly served under Frieza. Killed his entire family in order to prove his loyalty. Lived a life full of cowardice and vagrancy. Hell." With another snap, an unyielding fire consumed the body of the Liff.

"YEMAAHHHH!!" He screamed and cursed in pain as he was enveloped by flares. Then, he disappeared as well.

Yema was the king of the underworld. He had been doing his job for longer than some species existed. As the king of the underworld, his memory had to be absolutely impeccable. So impeccable that even the slightest stray hair on an individual's brow was noticed, captured, and remembered by him.

With such a brain, no one was able to slip his memory; god, demon, nor mortal. He remembered every being that had ever crossed his path… including all Saiyans. One member of this race, in particular, had been gnawing at the back of his mind for quite a while now.

It had been exactly 1 year since Yema sentenced all of the war-bound race to their respected afterlives. From that day, He had been patiently waiting for one person. One child to be specific who he had thought got lost in line…

He took a break from sentencing, opening a drawer in his desk and taking out a sheet of parchment that had "Saiyans" written across the top with a strange ink that allowed it to glow red.

The parchment inscribed an incredibly long list of names that included all those who died and those who had remained throughout the universe. The list of those who were deceased seemed to go on almost endlessly while the names of those who had survived could be counted on two hands.

"Djin, Sayian… Alive and dead. It still hasn't changed after all this time." He mumbled in longing and slight distress. No matter how long he stared at the name, it provided him with no answers.

Closing his eyes, he began to concentrate. He needed aid to settle this difficult mystery that he had been neglecting for far too long with the assistance of an extra pair of eyes. This anomaly could not go unchecked for much longer.

*

*

*

On a small planet the size of a 4 story skyscraper

"*bbbbzzzz*" Two antennae vibrated intensely on a chubby blue man in pink pajamas' head.

"*yawn*" Giving a mighty stretch, he then spoke with a grand tone, "Oh? A call, huh? Who could it be?"

The elderly man said, getting out of bed, putting on his sunglasses that were resting on his nightstand. Clapping his hands together, his pajamas transformed into a black and yellow martial arts gi with the kanji "world king'' written on the front.

"Top of the morning! This is King Kai. The mightiest of all Kais. How may I help you." He said with a flagrant and cheerful tone.

"Hey. It's me. I'm calling because I'm curious about something. About 9 years ago during the destruction of Planet Vegeta, you said that there was a child that was on the verge of death, stranded in space. You mentioned that he should have been arriving at my palace. Do you have any updates on him?"

"Child?" questioned King Kai obliviously.

"The one that appeared to be perpetually dying… or struggling for life, rather." Spoke King Yema.

"Um… I have updates on a lot of things and a lot of people. If you want to get down to the specifics, tell me who I'm speaking with first. It's the least you can do." He scalded while walking outside his house, grabbing his key for a morning drive on his tiny planet.

"It's your student… King Kai." Yema said impatiently.

"Ohhhh! My student. My lovely student. Yes-yes. The one that I trained and had bonded with over the years. My good ole student…might I ask, which one?" He asked, tilting his head in confusion with a grin on his face.

"..." Yema sighed, messaging his brows with his right hand.

"Hello?" King Kai asked while driving his red Cadillac around his tiny planet.

"Yes... I'm still here. I was just taken aback for a moment. You asked me what student? I believe that I'm the only one you have… unless you've decided to take someone else under your wing within the last 9 years."

"Oh! It's you Yema! The ungrateful child that never calls or visits. I almost got you confused for Gregory. I sent him and Bubbles to pick up a few things for me on Snakeway a while back… Anyway, long time no see! What brings you to call this amazing master of yours? You don't usually check in unless it benefits you. Oh yeah! You wanted to know about the Saiyan kid." He said with glee, but there were obvious vindictive undertones.

"...*Cough* Well… Yes." Yema Cleared his throat out of discomfort.

"What's wrong? Truth got yo- I mean cat got your tongue?"

"No… It's just I'm ever so excited to speak to my amazing teacher once more."

"Riiiiiight… anyway. His name was Djin. And he had a very strange anatomy if I remember correctly… He somehow managed to survive in space for more than 30 minutes, not even blacking out once! I don't know exactly how long he lasted, but I couldn't bear to see that child suffer any longer. His willpower was just too insane… it's to be expected from his race, I guess… anyways, what is it that you need involving him?" Asked King Kai with a raised brow.

"He's not here. Nor have I heard anything about him since you made me aware of his existence… The only bit of information you gave me was that he was dying in space. Last year I met his biological parents, but upon questioning them about their child, I received nothing. They were both just mid-class Saiyans who abandoned their low-class child, which wasn't a rare occurrence at all when it came to their people. Upon his birth, nothing seemed out of the ordinary from their perspective… And yet… This is far from what one would consider ordinary."

"Hmm." King Kai pondered.

"My Historic Life List for the Saiyan race has arrived at its near conclusion. And in all my years, he is the only one that has ever been simultaneously dead and alive. There's more that needs to be unveiled about Djin. I… no we need all the information we can get on him," Yema said with a serious tone.

"Strange… Dead and alive, you say… That's a first for me as well. Did he somehow manage to survive the vacuum of space for 9 years? I mean, he's obviously not in limbo if you're contacting me right now… If you say you haven't seen him, then it's the only plausible conclusion." Stated King Kai.

"If he's in the realm of the living, I think it's best that you make contact with him. Or at least, observe him."

"One step ahead of you." King Kai said as he entered his house in order to take the position at his Kai orb.

"Inform me of how things continue on your end. I'll be here." Said Yema.

"Well, duh." Mumbled King Kai as he separated the connection between the two.

"*sigh* Welp. Time to do my God thing."

"*pop pop*"

"This is gonna take a bit." He mumbled while cracking his knuckles. The Kai now had to search the entirety of the universe for an individual child virtually the size of a speck of dust, in hopes that his existence didn't endanger the balance of that sed macrocosm.

*

*

*

On a moon 4 years in the past

Seated cross-legged, I was now meditating attempting to get a further understanding of how my body and the concept of ki worked. I had been practicing ki for a while. At least for 8 months, I gathered, but I had lost track of time. Even then, I continued on my merry way.

To any outside observers, All they probably saw was an oversized muscular monkey with onyx skin and almost ruby-red crimson fur seated atop a shooting star.

Why would they see a Monkey on a large meteorite? Because I was in my Great Ape form, training.

Why would they gaze at the little rock I now called home with the perspective of it being a shooting star? Because bright red, green, and white lights were being emitted from microscopic dust particles and minerals.

I had no notion of how quickly this meteorite was rocketing, I could only assume that if I was on earth, I would have made a wish upon it.

If I was taking into account the fact that a planet's explosion was the benefactor of my speed, I could only infer that I was being hurled at Mach speeds.

Even though I knew I was moving rapidly, I could barely tell if I was moving at all, from only my perspective, solely using my eyes. Space was ever so boundless. The only thing that tipped me off visually that I was in motion was the fact that every few minutes, the constellations in the distance changed formation ever so slightly.

How did I even arrive at the point that I was in the gravitational pull of a playground-sized rock, precisely? Well… I didn't exactly know for sure. All that I understood was that one moment, twin planet-sized full moons bombarded me with the radiation of blutz waves and in the next, I was being converted into a Great Ape losing all rationality.

The pain of such a rapid transformation plagued me with PTSD to this day, and that was coming from someone who remained conscious as they took a lava bath.

I didn't know if the trauma was due to the circumstance of me being directly in front of the celestial bodies without the planetary protection of a magnetic field, or if it just was that painful to transform.

The last thing I had recalled was that I transformed, blinked a few times, and woke up on my rock.

While being on my rock, I could only recall time vaguely. Any duration that I calculated was only a guess, consequently, I didn't know how much time had passed. I wasn't around any stars to tell me when a day and night cycle began or concluded. All I knew was training and sleeping, solely.

I was being quite literal by that. Considering that I didn't have a sense of hunger or the need to use the bathroom, training was all that I could do…

Well, I did other things like, reflected on how shitty my previous and current lives were, talked to myself internally, reminisced on old T.V shows/Books that I had read, and plotted on how I would one day be the strongest being. The training was the only thing that I had deemed productive use of my time, even though I had technically lost a concept of such a trivial thing when I had woken up in my current form.

From the moment that I had gained control of the Oozaru transformation, my goal was to get an understanding of ki control in hopes that I would learn how to get back to normal size. During my venture of study, I had learned a few things.

For starters, Ki was like a sixth sense that I had slowly begun to master. Even though in the beginning, I was slightly discouraged.

I had learned that jumping right into ki was the same as attempting to learn how to use telekinesis through only reading about the skill in comics. I had realized that I only knew about Ki through the Dragonball manga and anime. None of my previous memories of the series helped me in the slightest in the beginning. The fault was my own for basically handicapping my way of thinking.

Surprisingly, what helped me make the quickest and most beneficial breakthrough with ki was not simply looking at it as random energy distributed throughout the entirety of the universe but instead, A second bloodstream layered over the first that resided inside one's body. Mixing that Ideology with the theories I had obtained from cultivation novels about breathing techniques and the flow of Qi, (even though I wasn't breathing) I started to circulate and sense Ki.

A cheat code that cultivation novels provided was imagining the second bloodstream flowing through an additional layered set of imaginary bones, muscles then organs.

First I started circulating energy throughout my skeletal system. It was important to do this first as the entire purpose of a skeleton was structural integrity. Having a foundation was more important than anything, especially when building.

The next thing I focused on was imbuing my internal organs. This was necessary to do second because I didn't want to deal with the possibility of Ki crushing my insides when I tried to do a powerful motion involving my muscles like punching. I needed my organs to be able to handle the possible pressure of me ending up on a planet with 1000x times the gravity that I was used to. I would hate to have to go through my heart exploding hundreds of times until I adapted. Why would I put myself through all that unnecessary pain?

After organs were the muscles. I started to focus on flexing these muscles over and over again until I was able to work them out efficiently. I wanted to arrive at a point where I had mastery over my body and could move it more elegantly. I found that I was quite clumsy as an Oozaru.

Parts of my body that I paid the most attention to were my brain, heart, and blood vessels. I took gentle care of these places because they were frankly the most important in terms of making my body function. I would spend days gently coating these parts with Ki. Possibly even weeks. I had no idea to be blunt. But what I did have was time. If it weren't for the fact that I didn't breathe in oxygen like a normal person, I would have included my lungs in my Ki refinement regimens as well.

Once I felt that I had a good grip on my body, I moved on to external exercises. External, being my Ki output.

As I started to practice more and more, I was able to concentrate my Ki, forming unique constructs. I started making little strings. My goal was to make them longer, more durable, and thinner. I had gained inspiration from Naruto's puppet masters. I didn't know how they trained their chakra, but I knew my way of training was improving my master of ki shaping.

One might ask, after all this Ki training, why not just leave? Why not just jump off of this rock and fly away. To them, I could have retorted, firstly, this Rock was going at an unknown velocity. I was certain that it was propelling itself faster than I could with my skill.

Secondly, I didn't want to risk learning how to fly in fear that I would be roaming endlessly for decades on end.

*

*

1 year later

'Ahhhhhhhhh!'

I screamed internally. If it were a possibility, I would have been sweating extremely. I was trying my hardest to condense my Ki as best I could.

I had dedicated myself to getting back to my humanoid form.

I could see it. The size of my body shrinking more and more as minutes flew by.

On a biological level, my bones were cracking, shattering, and reforming. The wild red fur on my body slowly started to become tamer.

.

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Minutes.

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Hours.

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Day.

Time went on, and so did the shrinkage of my form.

As I shrunk, I became more shocked. The reason for that shock was because I knew for a fact that I was getting smaller in size… But even so, I was still an Oozaru.

My training immersion had broken as a realization had struck. I wasn't on a small meteorite. I was on a gigantic planet-sized moon. One of the Vegeta's Two that had converted me as a child.

'How fucking big am I?!' Shock consumed as confusion made my mind run a mile a minute.

The rock that was once playground-size had now become continental. Previously, it would have taken me 3 minutes to travel from one pole to another. Now, it would have taken me months, give or take. Why was I so absurdly big? This was obscene!

'Is it because it's Vegeta's moon, specifically? Did it mutate me? Is this why I'm red?' This entire time I knew myself to be a creature like King Kong,

discoloration.

I had now realized that in the current moment, I was much more similar to a being like Godzilla, except I had been constantly nuked with radiation… Or that's what I deduced.

I didn't know how blutz waves worked. All I knew was that they were a type of energy that was created when the energy of a star reflected light onto a celestial body.

That's what I grew to know from old Dragonball Wikipedia pages and manga scans in my past life, so my inferences weren't completely baseless.

'It's okay… Relax. You have a goal in mind… Reach it.' I counseled myself internally.

Halting my sporadic thinking, I went back to condensing my power.

*

*

*

1 year later

I had finally managed to become humanoid, but upon reaching my form, I realized much had changed.

Looking down at my body whilst in the nude, I realized that I was absolutely pulsating with muscles. My body was more defined than I had ever thought possible.

I knew for a fact that I wasn't done growing but by taking that into account, I realized I was ripped. More defined a fully grown man twice my age who had spent their entire training in weight lifting. I was simultaneously slim and bulky in all the right areas. My thighs looked so strong that it looked like I could kick elephants to death and my arms looked so powerful that they looked like I could strangle a lion. You could grate cheese on all 8 of my abs and could cut diamonds on my calf. I looked like a god… From a human standard.

I knew for a fact this wasn't normal. I knew what saying children looked like and for certain, it was not this.

Perhaps it was due to my muscle reconstruction that came along with my adaptation or perhaps it was the mutation I underwent after blutz. Whatever it was, I was quite thankful.

Observing my body a bit closer, one would notice that my spiked hair had two bangs hanging in front of my face and also made its way down my back. It was wild like Raditz and was reaching my tail, which was now colored red instead of the brown that it was previously. It was also thicker and longer as well, being appropriate for a Saiyan my age.

My skin was bronze with no blemishes at all from as far as I could tell. It would have made sense if my body didn't have any consideration after reconstruction, a piece of me would be brought back perfectly.

These are all the details that I could take note of without a mirror. I was nothing impressive before but now, I looked like a real manga character. Spiky hair, muscles, and Ki. Admiring myself, I could only smile.

'It was a rough start… But things are looking up… They really are.' I said taking in the view of the stars.

'Now that I'm human… Relatively speaking, it's time to learn how to fly.' Now that I was normal-sized, I could rely on the gravitational pull of the planet to keep me grounded.

*

*

*

1 year later

Far off into the distance, with my evolved eyes, I could see it. I was now rapidly approaching. A solar system with a blue giant at its epicenter. For the first time in a while, I could actually see planets. All four of them had strange patterns.

The first planet orbiting closest to the sun was a dark shade of purple that had murky black bodies of liquid where oceans would have been. The second planet looked to be virtually the same as Saturn, the ring included except it had a red and pink color scheme.

The fourth planet could barely be considered a planet. It was a third the mass of Vegeta's moon. That left me with the third orbital planet. It had beautiful hues of blues and whites, looking to be some kind of ice planet with a vibrant green forest on its epicenter. Strangely enough… It didn't have a mood.

Now was the time for me to finally leave. 'Maybe… Just maybe, I'll be able to find some people. If not… Well, let's just hope for the best. At Least let there be animals.' I thought while crossing my fingers and praying to the god of transmigration that provided me with a new life.

With that, I focused all of my energy on my legs, and with a mighty leap, I was off. My exploration mission was now greenlit.

.

.

.

.

"*krakakakooom!*" The effect of the sound barrier-breaking shook the world.

If not for my metamorphosis, my eardrums would have burst. My brain would have been slush.

Blasting my way into the planet's atmosphere, I felt my skin start to heat up. Luckily for me, my body had evolved past the point where low temperatures like this would never affect me. But I was moving fast. Faster than I had ever flown before. So fast that it was difficult to break.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't halt. The gravitational field was just far too strong…

but then… Although I felt my body still in motion, I saw everything stop. The clouds… The sun… even the moon of Vegeta that looked like a tiny speck in the sky from my location… It was like I was put into status, that, or I was put on pause like an action movie character on a T.V. Not a single muscle of my budged no matter how hard I tried… but then, after I counted 1,800 seconds, I saw things started to flow back in slow motion.

"*krakakakooom!*"

"*krakakakooom!*"

"*krakakakooom!*"

"*krakakakooom!*"

"*krakakakooom!*"

Faster and faster I descended. From the sheer force that the planet was dragging me in, My neck had broken and dangled like a soggy french fry until I healed enough in real-time to withstand the pressure… which only took me breaking my neck 8 times.

Then, As the ground closer,

"*Booooooooooooooom*" I crashed into trees, vaporizing them on contact, then slammed into the ice-coated soil, shattering my spine, legs, arms, and skull, resulting in an enormous mushroom-shaped explosion that destroyed everything within sight.

.

.

.

As my body adjusted, I began to crawl out of the crater that I had made which surprisingly was not even that deep, and yet, all the trees around me had been converted into ash which mixed in with snow.

"That… wasn't fun."

I said while gritting my teeth. standing upright, removing dust and soot from my eyes I climbed out.

"*sigh*" Taking a deep breath for the first time in a long time…

I could start living.