Growing Pains

It was a fairly normal Tuesday for the people of Metropolis. Or rather what had rapidly become normal after the sudden debut of a man that could fly through the air unassisted, catch bullets, and lift an airplane on his own a couple of years ago.

Since then Superman had become a relatively common sight to the citizens of the ‘City of Tomorrow’. Proving that the human race could truly adapt to anything given time. It also helped that the caped ‘Man of Steel’ had proven friendly and polite to just about everyone, helping with everything from firefighting to catching robbers.

The small spherical spaceship crash landing in the middle of the street was decidedly less common and sent people running for cover.

When nothing happened for a few minutes, the braver (or more foolish) in the crowd risked getting a better look at the crater and the ship inside of it. The spaceship was rather oddly designed. Perfectly round with no visible means of propulsion and only a few lines where the door appeared to be and an opaque purple pane of glass for a window.

It was also rather small. It barely looked big enough to fit a single adult.

The growing number of spectators flinched back when a hiss of air signaled the ship was opening to reveal…a young child looking curiously around her surroundings.

She obviously wasn’t human. The fuzzy brown tail twitching behind her proved that and no one had hair quite that spikey or gravity defying naturally, but the rest of her looked shockingly similar to a human girl around twelve years old.

Her appearance - and the lack of instant hostility - prompted one of the bystanders to call out to her.

“Excuse me, are you alright? Do you need help?”

The girl startled like she hadn’t noticed the people gathering to stare at her and blushed heavily.

“Oh right - the natives!” She quickly darted back inside her ship and rummaged around until she reappeared with a sheaf of what looked like paper.

“Ahem,” She coughed into her fist and started reading. “Greetings people of E-arth. I am Califa, and I will be conquering your planet today in the name of the Saiyan race unless you can produce a champion to defeat me. If you cannot then resistance is fu…fu…hmm, Ah! Resistance is futile and I will accept the surrender of your leaders now.”

She looked around at the stunned faces of the bystanders and smiled widely and innocently. “Did you get all that?”

Silence stretched for a few seconds before a police officer in the crowd decided to act. He strode forward and pulled his gun before hesitantly pointing it at the young looking girl. Declaration of conquest aside, she still looked like a kid.

“Get on the ground now!”

“Oh there’s already a champion here? Lucky me!” the girl chirped and raised a hand. Faster than the cop could react, an orb of yellow energy formed in her hand and shot forward. It slammed into his handgun and turned the entire thing into a useless mass of molten metal he needed to throw to the ground to avoid getting burned.

Everyone looked from the ruined gun back to the alien girl and then back to the gun.

Then the screaming started.

-o-

[Sometime before, in Earth atmosphere]

Waking up in an Attack Ball after a mental download wasn’t an experience I thought I’d ever deal with and it certainly wasn’t one I’d recommend. Brains just weren’t meant to handle that much new information that fast or at least mine wasn’t.

It didn’t help that most of the information…I just didn’t care about.

Yeah, knowing my new name and race was useful but I didn’t need to know about her childhood or how her father sent her on mission after mission alone fully expecting her to die at some point because old-me didn’t meet his expectations. I certainly wasn’t going to go back to that abusive asshole.

So the first plan after finding out I was an anime character was to hide out on Earth, get strong enough that I could do what I wanted, and then just…go exploring.

Seriously, Earth was boring. Even DBZ Earth despite the animal people, cyborgs, and random future tech, because outside of the handful of beings like Cell or Buu…nothing really happened there.

That changed when I started scanning radio waves looking to see what music was like on the way to my new home and found a talk show being hosted by someone called Vikky Vale.

I didn’t care about her, but I did care about what her topic was.

She was going on about how the appearance of Superheroes like Superman, the Flash, and Wonder Woman were affecting the world and what it could mean for the future.

That meant I wasn’t in the DBZ-verse! Mashup-verse? Who cares!

That meant I didn’t need to bother with Frieza! Let the space-cop Green Lanterns deal with him!

Aww, that meant Piccolo probably wasn’t around. I wanted to meet the grumpy green slug-man.

It also meant Earth was going to be infinitely more interesting than what I was expecting with at the very least Themyscira and probably Atlantis to explore. And it meant a bunch of people I could fight against that could actually push a Saiyan pretty far!

Too bad the strongest of them were heroes and probably wouldn’t fight me for real because they were heroes…

…Unless I was a villain.

A plan started coming together in my mind and I didn’t bother hiding the grin stretched across my face as the alert for final approach beeped in my pod.

-o-

Metropolis was a really pretty city, I noticed. All the cities I remembered had at least some kind of trash in a corner somewhere, but I didn’t see anything like that here. That, and the bright tan stone and glass buildings made the entire place feel bright.

I also managed to catch my reflection in one of the windows, spiky black hair that hung around my shoulders except for a few locks that stuck upward, black bodysuit covered by white armor thankfully without the stupid shoulder pauldron thingies, and rather cute. Even if I didn’t like suddenly being a kid. I would grow though, so that was fine.

“Excuse me, are you alright? Do you need help?”

A voice suddenly broke me out of my thoughts and I could feel my face heating up. I completely forgot about the people watching me!

Thankfully, I already had a plan.

“Oh right - the natives!” I quickly went back to the Attack Ball and dug around for the troubleshooting manual - not that the people around me would know that - and made my way back and gave my ‘I’m here to conquer you’ speech, deliberately flubbing a few words to make it seem like I really was as young as I looked.

I wanted to fight the heroes a bunch, and having them not hold back or lock me in a hole somewhere meant I wouldn’t be able to do that as often. So I planned to be a reoccurring villain that popped up constantly, but wasn’t that big of a deal as long as I got what I wanted.

And since that would mostly just be a fight it should be pretty easy to give.

But I couldn’t look like a pushover or they would start ignoring me, so when the cop pointed his gun at me I didn’t waste a second before turning it into scrap.

Then the screaming started and people started running for their lives.

Which…was actually kinda annoying given my new, more sensitive ears.

I flew around the area a bit, getting used to the fact I could FLY! and idly blasting the guns of the few cops brave enough to stand their ground.

“Don’t you have anyone stronger? This is boring!” I called down at the masses and fired a few more weak Ki blasts.

“That’s enough! I think you’ve caused more than enough destruction.” a firm voice demanded from…behind me?

I turned and felt my heartbeat speed up at the sight of the man flying there, arms crossed, with a stern expression on his face.

It was Superman! Right in front of me!

A smile of pure happiness split my face.

And I was going to fight him!