Like Earth, Namek was blue and green. Somehow that made it feel welcoming. The air smelled salty and grassy and intensely fresh, and the place Gine and Kakarot had landed was still with a profound quiet. It would have been the perfect place to ease her fears of going back to space.

Except Vegeta was already here. And he was fighting her family.

Without a glance at Kakarot, Gine shot into the air from the entrance to the ship and flew toward the cluster of energy signatures. Chi Chi and Krillin and Yamcha were powered up, their energy strangely brighter than it had been, but it was Gohan Vegeta was fighting. Gine put on extra speed, Kakarot only inches behind her.

They cleared the last ridge of rocky outcroppings in time to see Vegeta kick Gohan viciously in the stomach. Everything shrank down to that single moment— the boy folding nearly in half as the air was ejected from his lungs, Vegeta's nasty grin as he witnessed his handiwork— and even though Gine was travelling at supernatural speeds it felt like she wasn't moving at all.

Then she blinked and she was there. Her foot slammed into Vegeta's face with every ounce of her power, speed, and righteous fury behind it. The Prince plowed into the earth, sending up a spray of soil and grass. Distantly Gine was aware that Kakarot was holding Gohan, that Chi Chi was yelling something, that Gohan was crowing victoriously despite having been beaten half to death, but all she could think about through the tunnel of her rage was that she had just drop-kicked the Prince of all Saiyans in the face.

At the end of the furrow of earth, Vegeta sat up, shaking the soil from his hair and the fog from his brain. Slowly he rose into the air, touching down on the first solid piece of ground he came to. He was staring at her in something like amazement. He looked the way Gine felt.

"Well, well, well," he said, "look who just sealed their fate."

And he held out his palm and sent an artificial moon streaking into the sky. Absently, Gine took out her sunglasses, a strange emptiness blooming in her chest. Vegeta stared up at the moon with a feral grin on his face, which began to lengthen and grow. Kakarot said, "I guess I'll take care of him, ma," and she realized the emptiness was where her fear would be.

Vegeta was nothing compared to her.

It almost wouldn't process. A prince of the royal house of Vegeta, especially this Prince, was supposed to be the strongest. It was part of what made him royalty in the first place. And Vegeta IV was a prodigy, rumored to be the Legendary himself reborn after a thousand years. His sheer power was unparalleled by any Saiyan, before or since.

But Kakarot, having handed Gohan off to Chi Chi, stood impatiently and waited for Vegeta to finish transforming, because otherwise what was the point?

Gine had known, though she hadn't paid attention to it, that she and Kakarot were growing stronger. Every day they'd inched the gravity up higher and higher, waiting to see when it would become too much for them. It hadn't happened. She'd begun to wonder if it ever would. But even knowing that, she hadn't been prepared for the ultimate yardstick to lay itself down beside her and come up that short: Vegeta had double the power he'd had on Earth and it still meant nothing.

Transformed, of course, he was stronger than her. The Great Ape transformation was feared throughout the galaxy for a reason. Even Kakarot's power was dwarfed, but Gine wasn't worried. Her son stepped forward and shouted, and in an instant centuries of Saiyan class distinctions were proven meaningless.

He'd tried teaching her the Kaio-ken on the trip here, but it had come to nothing. The technique was too advanced to be learned in a week. His off-handed assurances that she just needed a little more practice had grated on her nerves— even he had needed months to master it.

And he'd progressed even further with it in the last six days. Already he was starting off at two times his own strength, and he pushed it up to three with no effort after throwing the first punch. He'd had to leap the height of a building to land it, but land it did, Vegeta not so much rocking back with the force of it as flinching at the piercing blow. A fist the size of a grasshopper's striking with the force of an army would punch pin-sized tunnels straight through a person's head; the only reason Vegeta wasn't instantly killed was because of his admittedly impressive ki control.

Gohan bounded up to Gine, throwing his arms around her waist. She tousled his hair and gave him a once-over to make sure the senzu bean had done its job, but both of them turned without speaking to watch Kakarot, spell-bound.

Seeing a normal-sized person fighting a giant ape was visually absurd, but even more absurd to Gine was the enormity of Kakarot's power. He was controlling himself enough that the landscape around them was only mildly trembling, but she could feel the full weight of his power like a star leaning against her soul. Vegeta's power, by contrast, was unfocused and blurry, and he seemed to be moving through molasses as he tried to catch the tiny figure bouncing circles around him. Gine didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

The Oozaru transformation had been the Saiyans' greatest weapon, yes, but Gine could still remember echoes from her childhood, legends told around campfires and old-timers spinning tales in the pub, that gave it a deeper meaning. According to the old beliefs it was a sign from the gods that the Saiyan race was destined to conquer the galaxy. The arrival of the Cold dynasty had thrown that into question, but even in Gine's time there had been a belief at the base of every Saiyan's soul that they were special, and that what made them special was the Great Ape inside them, waiting only for the moon to bring it forth.

Watching an untransformed Saiyan not just going toe-to-toe with an Oozaru, but dispatching it easily, gave Gine a jarring sense of unreality that had her gripping Gohan's shoulders out of more than just relief.

In a matter of seconds the absolute pinnacle of Saiyan achievement lay bloodied on the ground, Kakarot standing uncertainly over him like a dog that has actually managed to catch his own tail and now doesn't know what to do with it. He looked over at her with a question in his eyes that Gine did not know how to answer.

She felt someone step up beside her. It was Krillin.

"Ma'am, do you mind if I…?" He called up a kienzan and jerked his head toward Vegeta. It took her a second to realize what he was getting at, but when she did she nodded firmly.

"Please," she said. Krillin flicked his wrist expertly, and the spinning razor disc of light arced toward Vegeta's prone form and sliced cleanly through his tail. Instantly he began to shrink, moaning in agony, though Gine knew it was not pain that was tormenting him.

Cutting off his tail was probably the most humiliating thing they could do to the Prince. Being killed would be less galling. A Saiyan who lost his tail was hardly a Saiyan at all, and now the one thing that put Vegeta, alone among Saiyans, in the rankings with the likes of Frieza's private guard, was gone. Gine found it a fitting end.

"You scum!" Vegeta was screaming, but he was screaming it from the ground, bloodied and terrified. "I'll kill you! I'll kill every last one of you! How dare you!"

"Grandma, you're here!" Gohan said, bouncing up and down. He was ignoring the Prince, along with everyone else. "I have so much to tell you! Oh, but first I want you to meet—"

He choked. Gine felt something electric slide down her spine. The others all felt it too, and in tandem every head turned toward the sky, in the direction of the five enormous powers that had just entered the system.

"Who is…?" Chi Chi whispered.

"That," said Vegeta, standing gingerly, his queasy grin shining with the light of madness, "is the Ginyu Force. And they're here to kill you."