I don't notice the pain first.
I notice the quiet.
No boots scuffing asphalt, no iron stink of blood, no rasp of my own breath tearing through bruised ribs. Just…hush. It spreads around me like still water, velvet‑dark and oddly gentle, and for a moment, I think I've gone deaf. Then a single sound blooms in the void, my heartbeat: one slow, resigned thump…another…then nothing at all.
So this is what comes after the last punch.
The city materializes below me, streets I know by the ache in my knuckles and the warmth of shared cigarettes. Neon kanji smear across puddles. Sirens wail in muted echo. High above it all floats my body, or what's left of it, stitched together from pale blue light. I look down and see where I made my stand: overturned crates, a spray of blood that has already begun to brown, the bent aluminum bat Yumi dropped when the others dragged her away.
I should feel rage at the rival gang still celebrating somewhere, or shame that I couldn't finish the fight. Instead, I feel a slow‑creeping grief, heavy as wet wool.
I hope they ran far enough.
My sisters, my loud, brilliant, chain‑swinging idiots, are alive because I bought them time. That matters.
A tug on my consciousness, like someone hooking a finger behind my collar, yanks me forward in time. Suddenly, I'm inside a tiny Shinto shrine. Thick incense fog curls between paper lanterns painted vermilion. On a low table sits my photograph, me, grin crooked, middle finger up, propped against a cheap urn. Half the frame is cracked; it looks like somebody dropped it and tried to hide the evidence with a sticker of a pink skull.
The pews overflow with white long jackets and smeared eyeliner. Mika clutches the hem of Fuyuko's sleeve so hard that the fabric warps. Rika, who never cries, has stuffed tissues up both sleeves because she can't stop. And Yumi, tough, trash‑talking Yumi, stands at the lectern, eyes red, voice raw.
"She hit like a freight train," Yumi says, knuckles whitening on the podium edge. "But Emi's real power? She made you believe you could stand beside her. Even if your knees shook. She treated us like Family."
Laughter, broken by sobs, ripples through the room. I stay near the ceiling, weightless, wishing I could fling an arm around each of them. Tell them I was never brave alone; they made me brave.
When the eulogies end, they light slim white candles, one for every girl standing because I once stood for them. Flames wobble, catching on the draft, but none go out. That makes me stupidly proud.
The service drains away, people filing out in clumps. Yumi is the last to leave. She rests two fingers against the photo's cracked glass and whispers, "See you in the next fight, big sis." Then she squares her shoulders and marches into the night, my old coat snapping behind her like a banner. My gang has a new leader, and she'll do fine.
The quiet returns. The candles burn low. And I begin to fade.
Wind, if it's wind, whips around me, sweet with something like plum blossoms and hot metal. The world folds into a tunnel of shimmering ash‑white light. I tumble upward until the city, the shrine, and all the aches of living shrink to motes.
Space opens like a lotus. Petals of indigo and gold curve into infinity, each veined with star‑fire. I hang in the center. There's no up or down, just is. Strangely, the place feels familiar, the way a word hovers on the tip of your tongue before you speak it.
I test my arms, silver outlines flex with zero resistance. No blood, no scars, only energy shaped like the girl I used to be. When I reach for the faint pulse of my heart, I find instead a swirl of sparks where muscle once beat. It doesn't scare me. It's beautiful, and for the first time since I can remember, nothing hurts.
They're safe.
I kept my promise, Older sister.
I remembered the old gang leader before I took over. I had made a promise as a leader to keep them safe.
Contentment spreads through my chest, then pops like a soap bubble as the space ahead tears open.
A ragged oval of pitch‑black yawns, edges crackling violet. Wind roars out of it, hurricane fierce. The void wants me, no, commands me, to enter. I brace on instinct, but there's nothing to grab. The pull is relentless, a tide beneath thought itself. Around the rim of the portal, faint symbols flare: ancient strokes that hum of battle hymns and war drums. My pulse.
Not done yet, Emi.
One more round.
I glance back once, hoping to glimpse the tiny Earth below, the glowing line of the river, the bridge where it all ended. But the lotus closes its petals, and the vision is gone. All that remains is the roar of wind, the scent of plum steel.
Wind becomes water, water becomes light. I tumble through colorless space that feels both infinite and womb‑tight, spun along a current with no beginning or end. Somewhere behind me, the human world collapses to a pinprick; ahead, a faint drumbeat thunder‑thumps like a distant festival.
I lunge for balance, forgetting I don't really have a body, and right myself by sheer will. The darkness parts. A scarlet torii gate, lacquer gleaming as if drenched in fresh rain, hovers in the void. Sakura petals sweep around its pillars even though no trees are in sight. Beyond the lintel stretches a bridge fashioned from locked arrow shafts and katana blades, their edges glinting crescent‑moon silver.
Okay, Emi, I tell the spark of me that still thinks in street‑corner slang, just roll with it.
I step—float?—onto the bridge. Metal hums beneath me like plucked strings, each note chiming higher the farther I cross. The air thickens with the scent of ozonic steel and burnt pine incense.
On the far side, a plain of clouds spreads out, hard as tatami underfoot. Crimson banners stab upward from the mist, each embroidered with a single kanji: 勇 (courage), 義 (honor), 仁 (compassion). Taiko drums pound somewhere beyond the fog, slow and solemn.
Lightning forks overhead, no thunder, just a flash that leaves the taste of iron on my tongue, and a silhouette coalesces at the center of the plain. First shadows, then lacquer, then living flesh: a woman in o‑yoroi armor the color of sunrise over blood. Gold lamellae overlap across her chest; crimson silk flags trail from her kabuto helm like fiery hair. Every plate bears tiny etched sakura, as if war itself decided to bloom.
She rests a tachi across her palms, edge up. The blade gleams white‑hot, then cools to mirror‑bright steel. When she speaks, the drums hush as though the sky itself is listening.
"江美—Emi." My name rolls from her tongue like the strike of a temple bell. "Your stand was fierce and unflinching. Few mortals die with such purpose."
Her voice is neither thunder nor whisper—it's both, layered like twin harmonies. I know without being told that I'm looking at a kami: the Japanese Goddess of War. Hachiman is the war god I learned about in manga footnotes, but this aspect is unmistakably feminine.
Instinct kicks. I dip into a bow that feels half‑remembered from shrine visits as a kid, but my energy body judders, not sure where to bend. "Goddess," I manage, thinking the word rather than saying it. Sound isn't needed here; intention is enough.
She smiles, a small, razor thing. "You defended your nakama without hesitation, accepting death so they might live. That is the spirit of bushidō."
Images burst in the air between us: my last fight replayed in ink‑and‑wash style, every punch rendered as black brushstrokes, every kick a spray of red petals. I watch myself bleed, grin, and fall. The goddess flicks her wrist, and the scene scatters like paper caught in the wind.
"No apology," she says, reading my quick pulse of shame at the messy street brawl. "Valor is not measured by marble courts but by resolve."
I straighten. "Then why am I here? Judgment? Reincarnation lottery?" My old sarcasm slips out before awe can throttle it.
"Neither." She paces a slow circle, armor plates clinking like wind chimes forged from coins. "I seldom intervene. Yet now and then a spirit burns so bright it draws my notice across realms." She stops before me. "I offer three boons. Weapons forged from desire itself. You may shape them into wishes."
Three. The number hangs in the air like a gong‑stroke, vibrating through marrow I don't possess. My thoughts scatter—Saiyans, Dragon Ball, stars streaking across alien skies—but I bite down on the rush. Not yet.
"What's the cost?" I ask. Too many stories warn that gifts from gods come wrapped in hidden barbs.
"Cost is the shadow of choice," she replies, amber eyes reflecting twin flames. "Granting power is simple; bearing its weight is not. Choose poorly and universes buckle. Choose well and they bloom."
Her tachi dissolves into red sparks that spiral into her gauntlet and vanish. Empty hands rise, palms upward in invitation. "When you are ready, speak your desires, warrior of the alleyway. The drums will heed."
I clear my throat, even if I'm basically made of fog, and push down the tumble of half‑formed ideas pinging around my head. The goddess waits, unreadable behind the lacquered mask of her face. Banners snap in the wind. The drums slow to a heartbeat.
"All right, first wish," I say, forcing calm. "I want to be reborn as a Saiyan, female, freckles stay, memories sealed from any god or angel poking around. And…" I drag in a breath, "I want the smart atoms from the Invincible universe woven into my body. Synced with Saiyan biology."
The goddess's eyebrow tips up. "Ambitious package deal."
"Efficiency, ma'am," I quip. My voice only trembles a little.
She reaches into nothing and pulls out a thread of shimmering crimson. "Smart atoms are aggressive by nature. Left untamed, they overrule native DNA, twist will, and even overwrite culture. You trust me to declaw them?"
"Yeah," I answer, and it's true. Something in her presence tells me honesty gets rewarded here. "Just make sure they sit in the passenger seat. My Saiyan cells drive."
Her lips curve, neither smile nor frown, more a smith testing metal heat. "Request accepted." The thread unspools, looping around me in wide spirals. Every pass sinks sparks into my outline. Warm, tingly, not painful, like downing the best energy drink ever brewed.
"Side‑effects," she warns. "You'll keep whatever strength you've earned, even if you slack off, but you still have to train to climb higher. Fair?"
"Fair. Mama didn't raise a couch potato." I joked, cause the closest thing I had to that was my old gang leader.
A crisp nod, and the rings of light snap inward. I feel something click in my core, a new baseline settling into place.
"Second wish," I continue, chasing momentum before nerves hit. "Multiverse hopping. I want to travel any reality, comics, games, whatever, so I can throw down with the best."
"Once per twenty‑four of your home hours," she clarifies. "Your arrival will be sensed by higher powers. Move respectfully, and they may greet you as a guest instead of a virus."
"Copy that. Shoes off at the door, bow nicely."
She extends an armored hand and draws a door in the air, just a sketch of white fire. It snaps shut again, imprinting the rules in my mind: a pulse behind the eyes that whispers coordinates, return lock, daily cooldown. A cosmic subway pass with fine print only I can read.
"Third wish?" she prompts.
I rub the back of my spectral neck. "Potential. I want a growth ceiling higher than most Saiyans. Maybe as big as Broly."
Her gaze sharpens. "Raw potential distorts causality. Universes carry laws about power inflation. I must throttle your rate of climb outside your native world—call it 'environmental scaling.' You'll still blow past typical warriors, but you will not match Broly or Frieza."
"Basically cosmic speed limiters?"
"Exactly. Think of it as traction control so you don't spin the wheels off reality."
"That sucks, but I get it. Better a Ferrari with a limiter than a busted one."
She raises two fingers; a constellation of tiny golden kanji spins between them: 限界 ("limit"). They drift into my chest and dissolve. It stings for half a heartbeat, then cools, flexible.
"Deal," I say.
The goddess spreads both arms. "Then witness the forging of your fate."
The cloud‑plain darkens. Drums become thunderclaps. From every banner, threads of red and white peel free, racing toward me. They wrap my spirit like ribbons, weaving a cocoon. Inside, memories flash: rooftop brawls, manga binges, Yumi's cracked laugh, warm beer on cold nights. Each image folds into the fabric, refusing to vanish. Safe, private, mine.
Pressure builds until I swear my atoms buzz and become part of my cells. Then, snap, the cocoon bursts.
I'm hovering over a galaxy‑sized loom. The goddess stands at the spindle, feeding luminous cords, Saiyan DNA glowing olive‑green, smart atoms pulsing amethyst, raw potential blazing gold, through interlocking rings. With every turn, the cords twist into a single rope thicker than my leg.
She grips a hammer carved from obsidian, raises it high, and slams the braid. Shockwaves ripple through eternity. Stars flicker, reform. Second strike, my skull rings even though I'm meters away. Third strike, light fractures, waterfalls of color cascade off the loom, and the braid fuses into a bar of iridescent steel.
"That," she says, hefting the bar, "is your tamashii, soul‑blade in resting form. It is your wishes made form." She tosses it. I catch it on reflex, and though it looks weightless, galaxies anchor inside. It absorbs into my chest like hot honey.
"Holy—"
The sky splits. A newborn nebula swirls open, tinted green like nutrient fluid. I recognize the pod nursery instantly. Rows of stasis tanks, the gentle hum of life support, that faint pulse of power in the air only Saiyans give off in the womb.
"It's showtime," I breathe.
"Before you go," the goddess says, voice suddenly softer, "understand that potential is promise, not entitlement. Train. Fail. Learn humility. Otherwise, laws won't be the only thing limiting you; your own heart will."
I meet her eyes. "Yes, ma'am."
She offers the tiniest bow, warrior to warrior. I return it.
Gravity kicks sideways. The nebula sucks me headfirst. As I spiral, her last words chase me like a comet's tail:
"Fight gloriously, Emi of Two Worlds. Make every realm better for having felt your fists."
Pod fluid engulfs me, warm and viscous. Sensors beep. Thankfully I had a mask that supplied air and food.
Muscles I don't really control twitch; tail curls around a tiny leg. I stretch, and faint green light ripples along baby skin. Freckles bloom across miniature cheeks, as promised. Warm gel cushions every inch of my newborn skin; steady bubbles drift past my face. The incubation pod's curved glass warps the world outside into fish‑eye shapes, clipboards, crimson armor plates, and a pair of technicians in scouters arguing over readouts.
"540? That's higher than Prince Vegeta's birth rating!"
"Yeah, but look at the secondary spectrum, energy signature's off the chart in the bio‑anomaly column. Cells are… doing something."
"Mutation?"
"Has to be. Tag it for the palace."
Their voices are muffled by the fluid, but the scouters beep loudly enough to rattle my tiny eardrums. 540, the number floats inside my head, and I couldn't help but smile; solid super elite territory for an infant girl. A flicker of pride, then reality: 540 means squat against Frieza‑class monsters. Long climb ahead.