Lionheart

Lionheart is a one-shot written by KidVegeta about Nappa. This story takes place before Nappa goes to Earth in Dragon Ball Z.

“Stand back, Vegeta”, Nappa shouted.

The hulking brute jumped forward, flinging a handful of white energy matter ahead of him. It exploded brilliantly, briefly silhouetting the behemoth of a Saiyan in its all-encompassing wake. When it cleared, the ground was burnt to atramentous ruin, and carcasses littered the vapored land like shards of broken glass. Nappa stood amongst it all, breathing heavily and frowning.

“Come on, Nappa. This is boring. Lord Frieza wants us to hurry up,” Vegeta said after some time. The gall of his voice exuded impatience as much as it did arrogance.

“Shut up, prince. Just let me do this,” was the larger Saiyan’s only reply.

The princeling was taken aback, he could tell. Nappa had never disrespected Vegeta so openly, and surely, Vegeta wasn’t taking it well. Nappa didn’t care. He didn’t so much as look at the small boy flouting his arrogance and childish pride behind him. Nappa stepped forward, the light of the planet’s sun shining off of his armor in robust crispness. He looked up and saw a fortress towering over the landscape but a few miles ahead. It was as stygian as it was foul, and when Nappa saw it, his face grew red and hot. He gritted his teeth together and seethed uneven, ragged breaths. Then, he suddenly pushed off from the ground with such force that he left a crater in his wake. By the time the dust had cleared from that, he was already on fast approach to the great fortress.

It was an ugly thing, Nappa thought. Its high, pointed walls, its numerous misshapen skyscrapers, its dull, smog-filled atmosphere reminded him of home. He grit his teeth again and sneered. This was no devilish grin, no happily evil expression. Nappa’s face with rife with rage. He started pelting the metropolis with his most powerful energy attacks.

The buildings exploded, bodies were flung about in ragdollish lifelessness, and screams punctured the constant explosions like a well-choreographed chorus. With each explosion, Nappa slammed his teeth together harder still. He thrust his hands forward with more force. His face contracted into a fiercer and fiercer gaze of hateful ire. He did not delight in the mayhem he was causing. But he craved for it to never end.

Nappa descended to the ground, landing in a moderately-sized pothole which he had created himself. Beings ran around him in terror and mindless paranoia. He ended their sad, miserable lives with the flick of his wrists. The carnage soon overtook Nappa, and the sunlight, which had been shining on him and providing his visage with a polished, scintillating glow, was lost. He was neck-deep in the shit; the clouded, sooty destruction he had unleashed upon the city was now consuming it like a swarm of locusts.

Then came to the giant the planet’s defense force. He had not seen them on his scouter – so consumed with ravenous slaughter was he that only when their forces started shooting their energy blasters at him did Nappa turn his attention towards his own survival.

Nappa yelled, baring his teeth like a rabid dog. Out of his spumescent mouth came a vicious beam of energy. It tore a swath through the aliens, knocking them away blades of grass from a weed-whacker’s grasp. Then, the warrior leapt forward with feline-like deftness. He coated his hands in burning white ki, and with every punch, he ripped limbs and flesh from anyone who was unfortunate enough to get near to him. He tore heads from their necks, split torsos in half, snapped appendages as if they were wood, and caused his victims’ blood to spray everywhere. He coated himself in the sanguine of his enemies, bathing in their mortality with grim enmity and a deathly hunger. Their screams all melded into one constant, re-occurring voice that was soon his own, though he knew not why he heard it so.

Growling, Nappa pushed the soldiers away from him. He blinked furiously in the inky, ebon area around him. The soldiers stood on the edge of light and dark, where their figures were gigantic and monstrous. But when he threw a refulgent ki blast at them, they shrunk to normal size and disappointed Nappa in their insignificance.

The visibility soon betrayed the great Saiyan. For as he picked off stragglers on the edge of sight, the majority of the soldiers disappeared altogether. Nappa was an impatient beast, and in his state, he could not tolerate such cowardice. He threw himself forward, and it was directly into a trap. There, the remainder of the defense forces were grouped together. One of them at the head of the troop let out a shout that sounded like a wheeze and a choke. Then, the others fired their blasters simultaneously. Nappa gasped, stopping his momentum and putting up his arms to block the attacks. Yet, they collided with him like rainwater hitting pavement. For a moment, Nappa hollered, and then he was swallowed up by so much energy and smoke that his voice was lost amongst it all. For some time, there was silence, save for the whist that was the constant stream of energy from the soldiers’ blasters to Nappa’s body. Once their batteries had run dry, the soldiers dropped their weapons and looked on with frightful trepidation, for they knew not if Nappa was still alive.

It was then that, like a savage wind from the north, Nappa flew forward from the dust cloud. He landed right in front of the soldier at the head of the pack and picked him up by the face. With a low roar, Nappa placed his other hand on the back of the alien’s head and then pulled his hands apart from one another. The alien screamed a muffled yell under Nappa’s huge palm, but it soon died away as the creature’s head split in half. Blood poured out, and its brain fell like a stone into an empty river. The others watched this, too horrified to move or make a sound. Nappa was bloody, his face bruised and burnt. His armor was chipped and cracked, his clothes ragged and torn. But he seemed unaffected. The pain he felt, he did not express. The only thing he could emote was rage.

Nappa screamed, then raised two fingers. Still screaming, he thrust the fingers to the sky. At once, a white energy attack exploded at the feet of the soldiers, instantly incinerating them. Once the light from his attack died down, Nappa saw that there was nothing left. No aliens, no city, no darkness. He dropped to one knee and started panting.

Nappa felt the sun on him again, though he guessed that it did not make him look as lustrous as before. He didn’t care. They were gone. They were all dead. That was all that mattered.

The beast of a Saiyan looked up as he saw the prince land next to him. The boy had his arms crossed and his face much the same. Nappa knew the boy had watched him take out the city. Though Vegeta would never show it, he was surely shocked at what Nappa had just did. Being covered in blood and dirt and withstanding that last attack like he had, Nappa shouldn’t even be alive, let alone kneeling there calmly. Vegeta was surely envious of his endurance and power. Surely.

“Hmph, look at you, Nappa,” he began. “You almost let a bunch of weaklings kill you. You’re an embarrassment. Out of all the Saiyans, why did I have to be left with you?! You’re going to ruin our reputation as the greatest warrior race in the galaxy!”

Nappa looked back down, shielding his eyes from the sun’s rays. He looked once again to the energy-scorched ground, and found it dark as death. “Sure, prince. Whatever ya say.”

“Come on, let’s get going. Lord Frieza’ll want to know the planet’s cleared,” Vegeta whined to him.

Nappa wanted to call him a brat; he wanted to punch that smug smile off the boy’s face. But he had neither the strength or will to do either. So he nodded and followed his prince back to their pods. Before he stepped inside, Nappa once more looked up to the starless sky where the sun hung. It was bright, hot, unforgiving, like the one on his homeplanet had been. But he would never see that sun again, he thought. Nappa bowed his head and stepped into his pod.

It had been three days since the destruction of Planet Vegeta.