▸ Column · Modern suburbia — Vegeta answering from his domestic life at Capsule Corp, where the Prince of All Saiyans keeps house next to ordinary neighbors
VEGETA replies.
The letter
In April my neighbor Gerald set a little ceramic gnome with a fishing rod on his lawn. I answered — fairly, I'd say — with two bigger gnomes flanking it, facing his house like guards. He countered with a four-foot lighthouse; I went six feet, solar, with a beacon that rakes his bedroom window every eight seconds after dark. Last week he raised a life-size metal rooster. I've already put money down on a steel heron a yard taller, posed mid-strike as if devouring the rooster. My wife says enough. But Gerald hasn't pulled the rooster, so technically HE escalated last. Do I concede the lawn at some point — or do I see it through to a concrete fountain shaped like a leaping marlin?
Vegeta replies
Hmph. "Technically he escalated last." Listen to yourself hiding behind that word. You're not measuring a rival — you're a man who fears stopping because stopping admits the whole campaign was beneath you. It was. Spare me.
Understand what you've confused. There is a gap worth closing relentlessly: against someone who makes you stronger by chasing them. A heron eating a rooster forges NOTHING. You'll wake no faster, endure no more, BECOME no one. That isn't pride. That's vanity wearing pride's armor — and I know the difference because I nearly buried myself in mine. I chased a rival until the chase was the whole of me, and it cost me every fight that ever truly mattered. Trinkets on a lawn are a coffin you're pouring in concrete.
Now the part you skipped: your wife told you to stop. That woman is the thing you'd suffer for — your real strength, not the marlin you'd boast about. You'd defend HER to the end of everything. So defend her wishes over a stranger's chickens. Drop the deposit. Close the gap that matters, fool — the one to being a man she's not ashamed to stand beside.
— Vegeta
Frieza weighs in
How touching. The prince I once leashed, now counseling you to lay down your arms because your wife frowned. He always did soften the moment domesticity got its claws in.
But he's half-right by accident, you poor thing. The war is indeed beneath you — not because it lacks tenderness, but because escalation is the tell of someone already losing. A man secure on his throne does not answer a rooster. Your every counter announces the neighbor reached you. How humiliating.
Vegeta says fold for love. I say render Gerald irrelevant. Plant nothing. Let your serene, unanswering lawn inform him precisely how far beneath your notice he sits. They always learn.
— Frieza
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