My eyes jolted open to a dull hum and a gentle thrum vibrating under my back, like a cosmic massage chair. Stars drifted past my pod's viewport in slow, zy streaks, and I blinked groggily, blinking again to make sure I wasn’t dead. Still alive. Somehow. Again.

  ‘Goddammit, this baby body. Fell asleep before I could even figure out where I was headed. I escaped a gactic genocide and didn’t even check the GPS. Brilliant. Real five-star IQ move, Kalbi.’

  I gnced down at my tiny fingers, still clumsy and underdeveloped, and sighed. The pod was comfortably warm, life support ticking away with that soft hiss of recycled air, but I had no idea if I was headed to Earth or straight into a star. Knowing my luck, this was the scenic route to Namek’s sun.

  ‘Still… doesn’t feel like I’m dying. So that’s nice. Real five-star luxury escape pod experience. No peanuts, but at least I’m not vapor.’

  The pod beeped softly, a calming alert tone that rose in tempo. Symbols glowed red, then yellow, then green. Something was happening. I stared at the console like it owed me rent.

  Then the pod shook.

  The stars stopped drifting.

  Everything tilted.

  And suddenly gravity spped me across the face like a pissed-off ex.

  BOOOOOM.

  We hit atmosphere hard. The pod screamed. My stomach did a somersault. Clouds whooshed past the window, fiery streaks licking the sides as I plummeted through the sky. My face pressed against the gss, cheeks fttened, baby body squished into the harness like a sack of wet tofu. A shadow stretched below me—trees, fields, what looked suspiciously like a house—and then:

  KRA-KOOM.

  The pod crashed like a divine meteor, tearing a crater through the earth before smming through what had once been a small house. Bricks exploded. Dust billowed. Something definitely crunched.

  Everything went still.

  For a second, I thought I had gone deaf. Then the hatch hissed open, warm air rushing in and smacking me with the fresh, earthy scent of… life. Dirt. Grass. Burnt wood.

  A silhouette appeared in the dust. Short. Broad. Shoulders squared like a brawler and posture like a soldier who hadn’t un-clenched since her twenties. Hair up in a messy bun streaked with grey, arms roped with muscle like she'd bench-pressed tanks in her free time.

  She stepped forward and squinted into the smoking pod.

  "Kid," she said, voice low, gravelly, and already disappointed in me. "You just destroyed my house."

  I stared up at her from the safety of the pod, baby brain gging behind the horror of the moment.

  "How’re you gonna pay me back, huh? I oughta rip that weird tail off and hang it over my firepce."

  My tail twitched like it had its own survival instincts. I followed its lead and immediately nodded.

  ‘Yeah. Take the house. The tail’s non-negotiable. I like having bance and not screaming in pain.’

  The woman raised one bushy eyebrow. "You understand me?"

  I nodded again, slower this time, my big dumb baby head bobbing like a dashboard toy.

  She blinked. Her eyes narrowed. "Huh. Smartass baby. You got a name, or do I call you Crash?"

  I tried. I really did. My mouth opened. My throat gurgled. “K-Ka…bi…” I said, baby voice choking on the sylbles like they owed me money.

  "Ka-bi? Weird name. Fine. Kabi it is."

  ‘Close enough, dy. Just don’t eat me.’

  With one hand—one—she reached in and plucked me out like I was a ragdoll from a cw machine. Carried me under one arm, turned toward what remained of her backyard, and muttered, “Well, guess we need a new roof. Again.”

  And that’s how I met her. Grandma. Or Granny, as I eventually called her. Name unknown. History vague. Strength? Terrifying.

  She brought me around the side of her now-half-destroyed property to a smaller round building tucked behind some shrubs. It looked like a stone igloo someone had stuffed with plumbing and discipline. Inside, it was sparse. One bed, a small fire pit, a single table with exactly two chairs, and a wall full of martial arts weapons and worn training gear.

  ‘Yup. Definitely Earth. Also, definitely in the home of a war vet with unresolved aggression.’

  She set me down on a pile of woven bnkets and pointed a calloused finger at me. “If you can nod and crawl, you can survive. Don’t die, kid.”

  ‘No pressure, huh?’

  Time passed faster after that. I ate. I slept. I listened. Observed. By the time I turned one, I could talk, sort of. My words were slurred, but functional, and the moment I got a full sentence out, I used it for the most important thing:

  “My name is Kalbi, not Kabi, Grandma.”

  She stopped in her tracks. Turned around slowly like a kung fu horror movie antagonist.

  "You can talk?"

  "And walk," I added, taking three whole steps before tripping over my own tail and facepnting into a cushion.

  "Huh." She scratched her chin. "Talkin’, walkin’ little brat with a monkey tail. Well then. Time to start your training."

  I sat up. "Wait, what?"

  But it was too te. I had revealed my power. The training began the next morning.

  Day one of martial arts training began with her throwing a log at me.

  Not a metaphorical log. A literal one.

  "Bance is everything," she said, pointing at the tree trunk she wanted me to walk across. "You fall, you try again."

  "I’m one!" I squeaked.

  "Then you’ve got no bad habits. Perfect age to start."

  And thus began a rigorous, no-mercy, no-cookies martial arts regimen that made Roshi’s turtle training look like a luxury retreat. She strapped tiny weights to my ankles and wrists—made from sandbags and leather cords—and expected me to walk. Run. Kick. Punch. Fall down. Get back up.

  Push-ups on gravel. Sit-ups with a rock on my chest. Katas before breakfast. Meditation before lunch. And if I cried? She handed me a damp cloth and told me to keep my eyes open so I wouldn’t miss the next punch.

  "You’ve got potential," she said once, after watching me dodge a swinging sack of rice. "But no muscle. No guts. No ki control. You’re all tail and talk."

  "That’s snder," I grunted, holding a pnk position that made my baby arms tremble like old noodles.

  "You’ll thank me when you’re not dead at five."

  She didn’t go easy. Not ever. But… I didn’t want easy. I didn’t want soft. Not here. Not in this world. This was Dragon Ball. The universe where gravity was optional, but dying dramatically was mandatory. I had no interest in being a Yamcha. Hell, I didn’t even want to be a Krillin. I wanted to be alive.

  So I trained.

  I cried, sure. But I trained. I kept my tail. I learned how to wrap it for stability. I learned how to punch without breaking my wrist, how to fall without snapping my neck, how to breathe like my lungs were bellows and my feet were roots.

  Grandma was merciless. But every night she fed me. Every morning she woke me. She patched my cuts and taught me to sharpen my hearing, widen my stance, anticipate a strike before it came.

  And when I asked why she was training me like I’d signed up for the Saiyan Hunger Games?

  "Because strength is survival. I’ve buried enough weak kids."

  That shut me up real fast.

  So here I am. One year old. Stronger than I was as an adult back on Earth. Still a sarcastic mess inside, but a little less pathetic on the outside. Living in a round house with an old woman who could punt a bear into the sun, training like the world was ending—because in this timeline?

  It just might.

  But not for me.

  Not if I can help it.