▸ Column · West City, contemporary — the residential district surrounding Capsule Corporation, where Vegeta has settled into a domestic life he would never fully admit to.
VEGETA replies.
The letter
For eleven years my rooftop light display has been the quiet distinction of this West City block — four thousand hand-placed warm bulbs, a wire crane I named after my old sparring instructor, and a mechanical sentinel on a thirty-second cycle that the children on the block actually recognize. Last week the new family next door deployed a forty-foot inflatable figure with its own industrial pressure blower, and now every hovercar on the street slows for theirs instead. Worse — the thing leans in the wind so it peers directly into my front room, and its uplighting throws a shadow across my crane like he's been demoted to a supporting role. I've priced out a taller animatronic centerpiece. My husband says if I spend one more zeni on "the war," he's pulling the breaker on all of it. Is the drive to reclaim my street petty, or is letting a balloon with a motor swallow eleven years of work the worse surrender?
Vegeta replies
Hmph. You're asking whether wanting to win is petty. That is not the question.
The drive to hold your ground — fine. Anyone with self-respect has it. But buying a larger animatronic doesn't close a gap. It lets your neighbor draw the measuring tape. You'd be running his race on his track, and that is not competition. That is capitulation with better wiring.
I spent years chasing a rival — one whose existence offended every standard I held — and every time I let him define what the contest was, I lost. Not because he was stronger. Because I forgot I was supposed to be becoming something, not merely answering him.
Now. Your husband threatening to pull the breaker. Hmph. I have some experience with the person who holds the weight in a house when pride becomes a disease. If that man is still standing there after the lights go dark, you have lost nothing real. You know this already. You are out here pricing animatronics because looking at the actual problem is harder than buying something.
Pride is armor, fool. I know this personally — it kept my spine straight when I had nothing left. It is also a coffin. I let it cost me years I could not get back with the people I — hmph. I will not say it plainly. But I am telling you which one you are currently building, and it is not the useful kind.
— Vegeta
Frieza weighs in
How delightful. My former possession — trained, leashed, made useful over years of obedient service — now counsels you to set down your pride and attend to your husband. The same Saiyan prince who spent decades unable to say the word "family" without his jaw visibly tightening. Progress, I suppose. Touching, truly.
His read isn't precisely wrong. It's incomplete and rather soft. What he'll never name: your neighbor arrived with more power, and the street sorted itself accordingly. That is not injustice — that is correct placement. Arms races are gauche; they advertise the wound. If you want to win, become so manifestly above the contest that the blower becomes the embarrassing thing. Composure, darling. Not square footage.
— Frieza
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