▸ Column · A warrior caste within a galactic conquest fleet — the Planet Trade era of Vegeta's enslaved youth
VEGETA replies.
The letter
I spent four moon-cycles devising a new assault formation for my squadron — drilling alone through every night-watch, refining each sequence until it was flawless. When my squad commander, Saurel, demonstrated it before the warlord, she walked through the whole design saying "I" and "mine," and never once spoke my name. The warlord broadcast praise of her "ingenuity" across the entire fleet, and warriors I'd bled beside pounded their fists in salute to her while I stood two paces away in silence. When I pulled her aside, she told me credit "blurs on squad work" — which might land if a single other warrior had shaped one move of it. They didn't. I've started logging my drills and records to prove the work is mine, but I don't know whether to take it over her head to the warlord, keep my mouth shut, or request transfer before she does this again on the very next campaign she's already named me to lead.
Vegeta replies
Hmph. Three choices, and you've listed them like a prisoner choosing his cell. Go over her head — beg the warlord to scribble your name in a margin. Keep your head down — agree to be furniture. Request transfer — flee, and call it strategy. Pathetic options, all of them, because they share one rot: they all wait for someone ELSE to assign you your worth.
Listen to me, since I know this ground better than any creature alive. I served a tyrant who took every world I burned for and pressed his own seal on the ash. For years I let him. The formation is yours — you know it in your hands, in your sleep. No broadcast erases that; her "I" is a lie that only convicts her later. So keep your logs, fine — but not to whimper to the warlord. Keep them because the truth is a weapon and you'll want it loaded.
Then close the gap. The next campaign she's handed you? Make the work so undeniably, brutally yours that her mouth saying "mine" becomes the joke of the fleet. Don't go silent. Don't flee wounded. Become the warrior they cannot route around. And do not let her live in your skull as a grudge — that armor turns to coffin. I've worn it.
— Vegeta
Frieza weighs in
Oh, the little prince, counseling the unnamed. How precious — coming from the boy who answered to MY name for half his life, who burned a hundred worlds and called it my glory without a whimper. Spare us the redemption sermon, Vegeta.
You poor industrious thing — you've mistaken "the work is yours" for "the work matters." It belongs to whoever has the standing to claim it, and Saurel claimed it. That's not theft, dear; that's the universe sorting correctly. Your timestamped little ledger is the hobby of the overlooked. Don't go over her head — beings who must ask have already lost. Make her need you. Hold the one move you didn't teach her. Let them all come begging. Power is recognized, not reported.
— Frieza
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