Dragonball: Rewritten

Chapter 15: Frieza Saga

Pui couldn't believe it. He stared at the screen in front of him, gaping like a fish, his gloved hands shaking over his holographic keyboard. His eyes scanned the data over and over again, double checking that what he read was actually real. By the fourth go around, Pui started to believe it. The beeping on the computer continued. It didn't stop. Data kept coming in. The signal was alive. A very faint signal from a very, very far place in the universe, but it was there. It was actually there.

Somehow, he gathered enough of his wits to start recording all the data, embedding it into the main hard drive of Frieza's entire force. Pui couldn't stop shaking though. His job was to archive old data, sort through the old stuff, delete the things that didn't matter. It was routine, what he did. Normal. A job he did for Zarbon in between purging planets. This was supposed to be like every other shift: boring, monotonous, easy.

Not this. Not the discovery of a century. The discovery Lord Frieza waited so long for.

He never would've found the signal if it wasn't for that one, faint hiccup of code on the screen. Pui would've ignored it, as he was sure so many others before him did too, because it was a sequence of languages and commands that appeared nonsensical. It was hidden in other pieces of data that actually mattered, data that would've usurped the attention of anyone else. Pui almost did the same, except he knew something most of the Frieza Force didn't: a few words in Sadalan.

Pui didn't know much of the guttural, tongue-click language of those monkeys. After fighting alongside them for so long, he picked up a few of their words. Things like, "no," "here," "go," "stop," "signal," "forward," "back," and all the curse words. That way, at least Pui could figure out some of what those Saiyans said.

Of all the words he knew, it just so happened that one of them was in the code. One single Sadalan word that tipped Pui off to check within the mountain of old data.

U'qon'so.

Signal.

It didn't take long for Pui to dive into the code, starting from that one word. A few commands typed in, a couple minutes figuring out what the Sadalan across the screen was telling him, more commands, more strings of code, and there it was. Right there, under their very noses.

A decades-old signal from a damaged battle pod, out in the middle of nowhere space, far away.

Prince Vegeta's signal.

He wasted no time calling Zarbon over his scouter. A long moment passed before he heard the annoyed, haughty tone of Frieza's highest in command. "What is it, Pui?"

"I found Prince Vegeta." At the silence that followed, Pui insisted, "I swear it. I have the data to his old battle pod before it permanently shut down."

A chill struck his lungs when Zarbon snarled, "Send it to me now."

"Y-Yes, Lord Zarbon. Right away."

Typing away on the holographic keyboard, Pui shot the decoded data over to him. Before he could announce he sent it, Zarbon snapped, "Go to Lord Frieza this instant, Pui. You have full permission to enter his chambers."

He barely managed to reply, "Y-Yes sir! On the way!"

His heart pounded loud in his head, his breathing erratic as he raced down the halls as fast as possible, elbowing past soldiers in his way. At the very end of the last hall stood the door everyone in the Force needed permission to enter. Luckily, Zarbon gave him that permission.

The double doors swished open as he stormed forward. Pui skidded to a stop at the base of the floating throne, Zarbon flanking one side, Dodoria on the other.