By the time I turned five, I had legs like a jungle cat, abs that could grate cheese, and a tragic understanding that real birthdays were less about cake and more about being drop-kicked into a tree by a woman who could body a T-Rex without flinching.

  Grandma didn’t ease up. If anything, she doubled down.

  I had been training under her iron fists and terrifying gres since I could waddle. And while the past four years had blessed me with physical strength, speed, stamina, and enough bruises to form their own consteltion, something had been missing.

  “Granny,” I said one morning, standing barefoot on a patch of packed dirt behind our house—again, a new house, because yes, I had wrecked the st one during entry. “You ever gonna teach me actual martial arts or just keep making me squat with trees strapped to my back?”

  She looked up from sharpening a spear with a whetstone. “Who said we were just exercising?”

  “Come on,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead. “This is Dragon Ball world, not a CrossFit gym. I want to learn moves. Forms. The cool stuff. The ‘crater a mountain with a finger’ kinda stuff.”

  Her eye twitched, just a bit. She stood, slung the spear across her back, and cracked her knuckles like she was about to pick a fight with God.

  “You wanna learn real martial arts?” she said.

  “Hell yes.”

  “Good.” She pointed a thumb to her chest. “I studied under the Mutaito school.”

  I blinked. Froze. Brain screeched to a halt.

  ‘Mutaito? The Mutaito? Old man beard, sealed King Piccolo, trained Master Roshi and Shen? That Mutaito?!’

  “You’re kidding,” I said aloud, mouth hanging open like I’d just seen the Holy Grail double-parked outside our house.

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?” she replied, stepping close enough that her nose nearly touched mine.

  “No, ma’am. You look like you could strangle a dinosaur.”

  “Good eye.” She stepped back, arms crossed. “Now shut up. Training starts today. Real martial arts. Swift, efficient, and dangerous. You mess around, you lose teeth. You die, I bury you and start over with a cactus.”

  ‘Finally!’ I thought. ‘Real training! Canon-connected martial arts! And terrifying cactus threats!’

  From that day forward, my life took a sharp, chi-infused turn. Granny didn’t just teach me how to hit—she taught me how to fight. No wasted movement. No fshy stances. She drilled footwork until my ankles cried, burned parrying drills into my bones, and forced me to eat dinner with my off-hand until my punches were equally lethal from either side.

  She showed me how to pivot mid-air, how to track opponents by sound, how to move without breathing. I learned to block with my forearm and counter with a palm to the sor plexus before my attacker even thought about recovering.

  “Martial arts ain’t about looking cool,” she’d bark while I y in the dirt with a bootprint on my chest. “It’s about ending a fight before it starts. Hit fast, hit hard, don’t stop unless they’re on the ground or running away.”

  I nodded every time, wiped the blood off my lip, and got back up.

  Because truthfully? I loved it.

  But despite all the progress, I had one rule: never train at night.

  Granny didn’t question it much. She just figured I didn’t like the cold or the dark. But the truth? I remembered.

  I remembered Goku.

  I remembered how Grandpa Gohan died—crushed under the feet of a berserk Great Ape after Goku looked up at a full moon. I remembered what that tail did. What I could do. And I wasn’t about to let history repeat itself.

  ‘Not gonna let this badass old woman get fttened like a pancake because I caught a glimpse of moonlight and went bananas.’

  So I made excuses. Always trained during the day. Never left the house without checking the sky. And I never, ever talked about it.

  Until the night I forgot.

  It had been a long day—training under the sun until my arms felt like noodles and my shirt was stuck to my back with salt and regret. Granny had gone into town to get groceries, barking over her shoulder as she left.

  “Finish your drills before I get back, or I’m feeding you raw turnips.”

  “Got it!” I shouted, waving her off.

  Once she was gone, I hit the yard with everything I had. Practicing punches, kicks, spins, and footwork patterns on muscle memory alone. Sweat rolled down my forehead. The sun dipped lower. The wind picked up.

  By the time I nded my st strike, knuckles stinging from where I’d grazed the bark of our practice stump, I was exhausted.

  I leaned back on the ground, chest heaving. Looked up.

  And saw the moon.

  Big.

  Round.

  Mocking me like a smug bastard in the sky.

  “Oh,” I whispered.

  Then I said something else.

  “Fuck.”

  Pain nced through my spine. My body seized. My skin boiled. My chest heaved again, but not from exhaustion—this was transformation. This was chaos. My tail stiffened, twitched, and bristled like it had just remembered its original programming.

  I sat up, barely, vision swimming.

  Something inside me roared.

  I saw Granny’s silhouette coming over the ridge.

  “Granny, run!” I screamed.

  My voice cracked. My bones snapped. Hair burst from my skin. My body stretched and expanded like a balloon filled with molten rage.

  “CUT… TAIL…”

  That was the st thing I managed to say before the beast took over.

  Granny’s POV

  She knew something was wrong the moment she saw the sky.

  Full moon. Clear as day. Bright enough to light up the forest like a ntern. She didn’t remember checking the calendar, but then again, she didn’t usually worry about space baby biology when shopping for cabbage.

  And there he was—Kalbi.

  Doubling over.

  Screaming.

  Her grip tightened on the bag of groceries.

  Then he exploded.

  Not literally, but damn near. Hair burst from his skin. Muscles ballooned. His jaw jutted forward, face morphing into that of a snarling ape. His roar shook the trees. The ground cracked beneath his feet.

  “What in the name of Mutaito…” she breathed.

  The giant ape smmed its fists on the ground and let out another roar that sent birds scattering from miles away. It turned wild eyes toward her.

  Then it charged.

  Granny moved. Faster than any fifty-year-old should. Her bag hit the dirt. She ducked low and rolled under the ape’s swinging arm, her braid trailing behind like a whip. She wasn’t young anymore, but reflexes? Reflexes didn’t age.

  The ape spun, roaring, swiping wildly.

  ‘He said something before he changed… “cut tail”…’

  She watched it—his movements were raw. Unfocused. But the tail? It twitched with every move, flicking like a bullwhip behind him. Too banced. Too stable.

  ‘That tail… he’s always protected it. Always kept it wrapped. And now he wants me to cut it?’

  She narrowed her eyes. Pulled the spear from her back.

  “You better not regret this, brat.”

  She waited. Dodged another strike. The ape was fast—but not as fast as her. With a running leap, she bounded up the wreckage of their porch, pushed off a wall, and unched herself straight at the tail.

  The spear fshed.

  SHINK!

  The tail dropped.

  So did the ape.

  With a guttural cry of pain, the monster twisted, shrunk, imploded into itself, body warping and curling until—

  Poof.

  There he was.

  Kalbi.

  Small again. Naked. Curled up in the crater, unconscious and snoring.

  Granny exhaled, dragging the back of her hand across her forehead.

  Then she looked at the destroyed house behind him. Again.

  Smoke. Rubble. A broken porch.

  “…One troublesome kid I got,” she muttered. “Destroyed my house. Again.”

  She grabbed the bnket from the wreckage, draped it over the boy, and sat down next to him with a sigh.

  “You better have a damn good expnation when you wake up.”