Of everyone standing on the small island, only two people had not moved a single inch.
Goku stood with his feet planted firmly in the shifting sand. His senses were thrown wide open, actively reading the massive energy as it washed over him, absorbing the sheer scale of it without flinching. The wide smile spreading across his face was the genuine, thrilled expression of someone encountering something incredibly interesting for the very first time.
Piccolo had not moved either. But his green fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles were white.
Absolutely everyone else had arrived at some frantic variation of crouching, stumbling, or pressing themselves flat against the nearest solid object while the ocean violently climbed toward the sky.
Master Roshi managed to find his voice first. He was leaning heavily sideways against the wooden doorframe of Kame House, his dark sunglasses knocked askew at a forty-five-degree angle. His voice carried the highly specific, strained quality of an old man who was choosing to be very calm on purpose.
"Jordan. I think we have a pretty good sense of it now."
"Right," Jordan said mildly. He brought his open palms down.
The terrifying energy immediately withdrew.
It did not vanish dramatically or explode. He simply drew the massive power back inward the exact same way a normal person draws in a deep breath, smooth and entirely complete. The blinding pale blue light faded from his skin. The crushing atmospheric pressure lifted from their chests.
The ocean, however, was still in violent motion. Those towering walls of dark water had been entirely real. Trillions of tons of seawater had been violently displaced, and they were still moving under their own massive momentum. It was the kind of unstoppable natural force that routinely rewrote entire coastlines.
Jordan extended his awareness outward across the churning surface. He pressed down with a telekinetic authority that was as gentle and precise as a hand smoothing out a wrinkled tablecloth.
The ocean immediately settled. The deafening roar of the water rapidly receded. The towering waves slowed, flattened out, and simply dropped back into place. Within seconds, the sea surface was completely back to its natural, peaceful state. Warm sunlight scattered off small, gentle swells. The distant, familiar sound of normal surf returned to the beach, and the endless blue sky reflected perfectly in the water.
It was exactly as if nothing had ever happened.
The heavy silence that followed was the profound silence of normal people rapidly recalibrating their entire understanding of what was physically possible in the universe.
Krillin let out a shaky breath and sat down hard on the wet beach.
Bulma stood frozen, clutching little Gohan tightly against her chest with both arms. She did not make a single sound for several long seconds. Gohan, for his part, just peered over her shoulder and looked at the calm ocean with wide, curious eyes.
Master Roshi slowly reached up and adjusted his sunglasses back to perfectly horizontal. He took a long, deep breath of the salty air and said absolutely nothing. For a man who loved to talk, the silence meant a great deal.
It was Goku who finally broke the tension. He walked across the sandy distance with the uncomplicated, cheerful directness that was easily the most consistent thing about his personality. He reached out and extended his hand.
Jordan took it.
Two incredibly strong grips met. Goku looked up at him with those clear, open eyes and actively felt the lingering energy humming under Jordan's skin.
Goku grinned. It was wide, genuine, and completely without any reservation.
"Jordan. Your energy is really amazing," Goku said. He pumped Jordan's hand once, firmly. "You are a good guy."
Everyone on the beach paused to process this sudden declaration.
Master Roshi cleared his throat and translated for those who were completely unfamiliar with Goku's highly particular, instinctual diagnostic methods.
"What Goku means is that Jordan's ki, the actual quality and texture of it, is perfectly steady and upright. It reads as purely righteous. Genuinely dark or evil individuals physically cannot produce that specific quality of energy. It is not something you can just fake."
"I am a hero back in my own world," Jordan said, releasing the firm grip. He had just received, in practical effect, a flawless character reference from the single most reliable ki-sensor on the entire planet, delivered simply in the form of a handshake. "I can see a few people with very similar qualities standing right here."
"A hero!"
Bulma had already recovered from her near-death experience. She was now looking Jordan up and down with an intense expression that strongly suggested she was rapidly updating several different categories of personal assessment all at the same time. "That is incredibly—"
"Hey." Krillin stepped forward, raising a hand with the specific, exasperated energy of someone desperately trying to defend a friend's honor. "You literally have a boyfriend."
"Yamcha is a cheating, womanizing idiot and we may or may not currently be broken up, I will decide that later." Bulma flicked her blue hair over her shoulder with absolute precision. "Don't bring him up."
Women, Jordan noted internally with a quiet mental sigh. It didn't matter what universe he traveled to, the energy was exactly identical.
He clapped his hands together once, the sharp sound cutting through the ocean breeze.
"Let's get back to the actual issue," Jordan said.
The ambient, nervous conversation immediately settled down. All eyes turned back to him. After a fractional delay, even Piccolo shifted his hard gaze over from his isolated, cross-legged position at the edge of the group.
"The absolute fastest way to get everyone fully current on this situation is to just hear it straight from the source. He will be a lot more convincing than my quick summary."
Jordan looked down at Raditz.
Goku followed his gaze. He nodded slowly, his cheerful expression shifting seamlessly from easygoing to combat ready. "Can you wake him up?"
Jordan's dark eyes flashed a sudden pale blue.
The mental force he applied was surgical and precise. It hit Raditz's dormant consciousness exactly like a blinding signal flare, violently dragging the alien all the way back up to the waking surface.
Raditz came awake with a sudden, choking gasp that was not particularly dignified.
He shot upright in the sand, both of his large hands instantly flying up to clutch the back of his skull where the telepathic nerve impulse had just forcefully landed. A rough, wordless sound of genuine pain escaped his throat before he could clamp his teeth shut to contain it. The bright world swam sickeningly around him. He shook his heavy head hard, blinked away the blurriness, and blinked again.
The sunny beach slowly resolved. Faces came into sharp focus.
Jordan was standing right in front of him.
Raditz's jaw went instantly tight, and his armored hands curled into fists in the sand.
Then he rapidly processed the rest of the bizarre gathering. He saw the old man with the cane, the short bald monk, the blue-haired woman, the small child, and the green-skinned warrior standing off at the edge.
And then the aura finally hit him. It was the exact energy signature he had been actively searching for ever since his ship broke through the planet's atmosphere. It was the specific power level his scouter had locked onto right before the device had died.
His dark eyes found the tall man standing in the bright orange uniform.
Absolutely everything else on the island stopped being relevant.
"Kakarot."
The alien name came out of his mouth sounding completely different than it had in years. Raditz just stared. He intensely studied the man's face, his muscular build, and the jet-black hair that rose into the exact same structural, spiky chaos as their late father's.
The familial resemblance was not subtle in the slightest.
"It really is you," Raditz breathed. His raspy voice carried a sharp edge to it that was not quite pure anger, and not quite anything else either. "You look exactly like father."
Goku pointed a finger at his own chest, looking genuinely baffled. "Are you talking to me? My name is Son Goku."
"Son Goku." Raditz repeated the human words with pure disgust. "Did you hit your head? You don't remember a single thing, do you?"
Raditz slowly pushed himself up from the sand and straightened to his full, towering height. Even completely roughed up, with his brown armor heavily dented and his long hair escaping its usual wild shape, his arrogant military bearing was unmistakable.
"Listen closely to me, Kakarot. You are a Saiyan. We are the warrior race. We are the absolute greatest combat people the universe has ever produced. I am your older brother. My name is Raditz."
The sunny beach went very, very quiet. Only the sound of the surf filled the silence.
"Goku."
Master Roshi's voice was quiet and incredibly careful. He took a slow step forward, leaning on his cane. "Your grandfather told me a story once about exactly how he found you in the woods. You were just a child, very young, and you had a long tail. He said you were violent. Dangerously so. You were completely wild until one day, you fell deep into a rocky ravine and struck your head hard. After you woke up from that, you were entirely different." Roshi paused, his hidden eyes resting on his greatest student. "You became a filial, gentle, happy boy. That was you."
Goku looked over at his old teacher. Something deep in the absolute certainty of the old man's expression firmly closed off any remaining path of doubt in his mind.
"Then..." Goku slowly turned his head to look back at Raditz. "All of that is actually true?"
"Of course it is true!" Raditz snapped, his military composure rapidly fraying at the edges. He advanced one heavy step across the sand, then immediately stopped himself, acutely aware of Jordan standing just a few feet away. "Saiyans are conquerors. That is exactly what we are. We identify valuable planets with large populations, we clear the inhabitants out, and then we transfer the empty real estate to wealthy buyers who need the land. Our home planet, Planet Vegeta, was completely destroyed by a massive meteorite over a decade ago. Our parents died with it."
He said this entirely without grief. He delivered the tragic news the exact same way a normal person states a boring fact about the weather.
"There are exactly four pure Saiyans left alive in the entire known universe. Just four of us. You were sent down here as an infant. Your mission was to slowly eliminate the weak humans and hold this planet until we came to sell it." Raditz's dark gaze swept across the assembled, horrified faces with an expression hovering somewhere exactly between pure contempt and utter incredulity. "And instead, you have just been peacefully living with them."
The sheer incomprehension in his rough voice was entirely genuine. He could not fathom it.
"Join me right now. Help me complete the work you were sent here to do. Help me turn Earth over to Prince Vegeta. If you do this, I may still be able to argue for your royal pardon. It is the only path forward that makes any sense for you."
He glared hard at his younger brother, waiting.
Goku was completely quiet. He stood there for exactly as long as it took his brain to fully process every single horrible thing he had just heard.
Then he finally looked up, his dark eyes entirely devoid of their usual warmth.
"Even if absolutely everything you just said to me is true," Goku said, his voice dropping low, "I am Son Goku. I grew up right here. These people standing behind me are my people."
He took a slow, deliberate step forward, physically placing his own body directly between Raditz and the terrified group on the beach.
"I am not helping you do a single thing to them."
Raditz just stared at his brother.
His mouth opened, then slowly closed once.
"Kakarot—"
"My name," Goku interrupted, his voice as steady and unshakeable as bedrock, "is Son Goku."
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