Move the Pistons
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] ...roll with it. Okay, let's see how this turns out. When did this happen, and why were you not informed?
[X] Business as usual. This is awkward. People are blushing. Sophie is obviously crushing. Ready the cannons, because you've got yourself some ammunition to spend. Tease everybody present! Tease them right this instant!
[X] Business as usual. This is awkward. People are blushing. Sophie is obviously crushing. Ready the cannons, because you've got yourself some ammunition to spend. Tease everybody present! Tease them right this instant!
Move the Pistons
And besides, it's not like the world's ended. You can continue on with business as usual.
An evil smile spreads across your face as you return Sophie's look, and she pales.
"Oh, sure," you say, grabbing Gemma and Jenny in a pair of hugs to stifle any protests they might make. "I wouldn't want to...interrupt."
Jaron and Sophie both start choking.
Jenny worms her way out from your grasp and starts laughing. "Yeah, Karen, I think Sophie likes him."
You arch an eyebrow at her. "Oh? I thought that was you, Jenny." You put your hands to your cheeks in mock horror. "Don't tell me we've fallen into a love triangle!"
Jenny joins the tomato team, hiding her face in her hands. "No, I didn't mean it like thaaaaaat!"
Jaron glances at Maya. "D- does she always do this?"
Maya, giggling quietly to herself, nods back at him.
Sophie grabs Jaron and starts marching off. "You know what? Just ignore her. She'll stop eventually. Come on!"
"Trying to get him alone already?" you call after them. "Sophie and Jaron, sitting in a- hey!"
You duck aside as Sophie whirls around and throws an eraser at you. "Shut up!" she hisses, beet red.
Still giggling, you start to follow after them with the rest of the Misfits. Sure, you can lay off a bit, they've had enough. For now.
"You have a problem with teasing, Karen," says Gemma, opening her book again.
"It's only a problem if I have to stop," you reply, smiling back at her.
* * *
The six of you take a seat in the cafeteria, taking out your lunches.
Jaron huddles over his, looking around the group with a distinctly uncertain expression. He flatly refuses to look in your direction for fear of further teasing.
"So...w- where are you from?" asks Maya, breaking the silence.
He hesitates. "I- it's a while away. I don't think you've heard of the town. Are you from around here?"
She blinks. "Oh, yes. I've lived here all my life."
"We all have!" says Sophie.
"Except you," you say, nodding to Jaron. "Why did your parents move in the middle of a school year?"
He shrugs, not meeting your gaze. "I don't know. Last winter Mom started talking about how we needed to move here. It wasn't even that she wanted to move away, she wanted to come here."
"Well, I'm glad," says Sophie, shooting him a big grin.
He doesn't turn red, given that he hasn't stopped being red for the past five minutes, but the blush intensifies. "I- I- I- Um. Th- thank you."
"Stepping in was very brave of you," says Gemma, turning a page. "Thank you for helping."
"What else would I have done?" he asks.
You marvel at the fact that out of everything he could be thinking at the moment, the only thing you can see on his face is honest confusion.
Gemma pauses in her page-turning. "...most people would have just left."
Maya looks down, and you find yourself remembering the boy's last words to you all: "You're the ones nobody cares about!"
Jaron shakes his head. "I...he...he was wrong. He shouldn't have said those things, or shoved you." He nods to Sophie. "I...know what it's like." He scowls in sudden anger, and snarls, "It's not fair."
* * *
"None of your lip, boy," says Vegeta. "This is necessary. We need our Scions strong."
Jaffur snarls. "It's not fair."
* * *
Your eyes widen.
Meanwhile, the conversation steams ahead.
"You have problems with other kids too?" asks Jenny.
He...sounded just like Jaffur, then.
"Some," he replies, shifting. "I don't really talk about it a lot."
Same intonation, same phrasing -- heck, I didn't notice it until now because Jaffur tends to growl, but they have the same voice!
"Well, it doesn't have to be a problem anymore," says Sophie, laying a hand on his shoulder. "You can be friends with us!"
How much is Jaffur influencing Jaron? Or are they just that alike?
Jaron ducks his head. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye and flashes a shy smile. "...thank you."
They hold themselves so differently that I never noticed, but tan the skin and fix the eyes and hair, and I'm looking at Jaffur now. Jaffur's Masque is eerily similar to him. Almost everybody's face changes a bit. My face is way rounder in my Masque that it normally is. Being so similar is not normal.
What else about Jaron is like Jaffur?
The conversation babbles along for the rest of the lunch period. You throw in a few more teases once you come back to yourself, and nobody leaves without you getting at least one dig in.
And you watch Jaron as he leaves. His stride is oddly graceful in a way that stands out once you know to look for it.
Graceful, like yours.
With your decision not to contest his inclusion, Jaron has been brought into the Misfits' fold. Jaron Somerlad is now an Acquaintance [Positive], and could be improved up to Acquaintance [Friend] or an outright ally fairly swiftly if you put the time in. You know when his mother made the decision to move, and that she specifically chose to move here. You are aware of some startling and potentially unsettling parallels between him and Jaffur, and suspect that some of Jaffur's combat training has copied over.
Given Sophie's obvious attachment to him, you will have ample opportunity to observe him further over the next while.
* * *
Now that Dad and you are talking again -- now that you're no longer mad -- he's begun training both you and Mato in the Oozaru form.
Your brother was fairly sulky about this. Still is, in fact, to the point that your presence has set him back, badly, on his attempts to control the form.
You're not quite sure what to do about this. But you know one thing: since you yourself managed to first control it three moons ago, you've been forced to help in restraining him whenever he inevitably goes berserk.
Controlling yourself was easy given your prior failures in the form. You knew exactly what went wrong; exactly what you needed to do. It went quickly from there, and since then you've been able to focus purely on gaining strength. And the form hasn't disappointed, leaping ahead with insane speed. You've gained four hundred million power units in just the past three moon cycles, a rate of improvement that you didn't even see when you were mastering the Super Saiyan form. You would never have suspected that you, of all people, would do so well in training up strength.
Of course, in your more honest moments, you admit that it's more the form than you. Jaffur would probably already have mastered the Oozaru form by now. It just improves that quickly. You'll be done by the end of the year easily. You'll likely be done by the Council.
But that's in the future. Tonight you'll focus on training. And, hopefully, on your brother staying in control.
Dad takes Mato aside, sharing a few private words with him. You politely decline to listen. When the two of them come back, though, they both look frustrated. You sigh, resigning yourself to another busy night.
Dad forms the Power Ball, sighing in irritation. "Right. Mato, try. Kakara, be ready to restrain him if you need to."
"Yes, Dad," you say, watching your brother's face redden.
"I don't need her to babysit me!" he screams.
"MATO GOKU!" yells Dad, his patience at an end. "If you refuse to listen when I tell you what you're doing wrong, then every time you transform you're putting the people around you in danger. That is unacceptable. Kakara, on the other hand, needs the training that keeping you corralled will give her. To be honest, young man, at this point you're lucky I let you train at all instead of grounding you for a month!"
Mato quails. Dad rarely yells. You don't want to know what Mato's been saying, if he's provoked Dad to actually yelling.
Dad hurls the ball upwards without further ado, and it bursts open somewhere in the upper atmosphere. You look up, and feel the transformation coming on.
As usual the rage is there, but unlike the first time it doesn't control you. You push it down and away, reminding it that it's not in charge, and with an easy application of will, are fully yourself.
The first thing you do is flex your muscles and test your power. Five hundred million, plus a couple tens of millions. The rate of improvement has gone down a bit under diminishing returns, but still over a hundred million better than last time.
Then you look across at Mato, grimly resigned to the need to restrain him coming up shortly.
Sure enough, he snorts and bellows in rage, pounding at his chest. Then his eyes, pure red and empty of any thought, fix on you, and he howls.
Of course, he attacks, and of course, it does nothing. He's not even at ten million units in his form. You sigh, the breath rumbling in your chest, and just let him punch at you for a while.
He screams in frustration, trying to hurt you. And then, as always happens, a glint of animal cunning appears in his eyes. Your brother is smart, after all. He whirls around and belches out an energy blast at the side of the Hall.
For some reason, people always come to watch this, and now they're in the path of the blast. You sigh and phase over, blocking it effortlessly, and don't even twitch when Mato howls in triumph and lunges forward to punch you.
"Nice bluff," you rumble, letting him punch some more. "Haven't seen that twenty times or anything."
You honestly don't blame him for what he just did. He's not himself, and you know he would never do anything like that if he were. But it gets tiring.
He subsides, breathing heavily and scowling at you.
And then he throws his head back and roars.
Energy blasts out from him in every direction -- an undirected explosion. It's weak, by your standards. It would simply wash over you.
It would not simply wash over all those gathered in the Hall, who are overwhelmingly weak and unprepared for the blast.
Your eyes widen and the world slows down. You can't block this! Nobody's fast enough to block this! Dad isn't fast enough, not to block an explosive wave! It's not something that's subject to blocking. The only option for stopping it directly is containing it in a ki shield, but as big as you'd need to make it, it would drain all of your ki before you could do anything with it. Neither of you are strong enough, and people are going to be hurt, or worse. You're already moving to grab some people and Instant Transmit out, but there's not enough time. You need to-
Wait.
It's a flash of intuition, something that Sensei has told you to look for. It's just on the edge of your consciousness, but you grasp onto it and follow, because you need something -- anything. You grab onto it, and dig deep for power. Deeper and deeper, not that you know why, because this isn't your normal form and what works there won't work here, but-
Oh. Of course. It's so obvious. Super Saiyan isn't something that swells the pool of your base power, after all. It's you digging into a reservoir of strength apart from your base strength.
Why wouldn't you be able to use it now?
With a mighty bellow, you dig deep, and transform.
Ability Gained: Golden Oozaru [Grade 1].
Your fur is a brilliant gold, and the familiar aura plays around you. You're faster, stronger, and better. You're not as fast as you are as a normal Super Saiyan, so you still can't evacuate people.
But in exchange you are monstrously strong, even stronger than the energy you sense from yourself would suggest.
You reach out and cage in your brother's wave with a sphere of your own ki, holding it in with a supreme effort of will. Making and restraining this kind of ki construct on this scale is nearly impossible, even for one with your level of control over it. But with your newfound power, you can barely manage it. Mato's blast wastes itself on your barrier, and when the light show fades, you lunge in and knock him out. You stand over him, exultant in victory.
You look up into the night sky. You can actually see the wards, shimmering across the top of the pit. Of course, that makes sense. At your current strength, you're pushing the safety margins, even if you're within them. You take stock of your power level. The full seven-fifty million from Super Saiyan, plus another five-twenty from Oozaru...
You look up, suddenly wary. You're only about five million units short of snapping the wards entirely. You can hear a Sorcerer chanting off somewhere, reinforcing the wards just in case.
You decide to remove the necessity, and drop the Oozaru transformation. You return to normal size, still glowing with power, and the wards fade back into invisibility.
You hear a sigh of relief as the chanting stops, and Dad lands near you. "Kakara," he says, looking at you in honest awe. "That...that was..." He shakes his head. "How did you do that? There have been dozens of Scions since the Exile began who have tried to find a way to improve on the Oozaru form, and none of them succeeded."
You shrug. "I just...I needed to be stronger. Holding a blast in like that isn't something either of us can do, not like this." You wave at yourself and him in demonstration. "I knew I needed to get stronger. That's what's at the heart of the transformations, right?"
He nods, slowly. "I suppose so. I guess there just wasn't ever need enough."
You nod.
His gaze slides past you, and he smirks. "Well, I'm proud of you, Kakara. That was amazing, even if you can't afford to use it unless the worst happens. You might not be too happy about it, though."
You blink. "Why not?" You like winning, and you've basically just won the game of "who's the strongest," even if you don't like fighting.
He simply nods past you.
You turn around.
Several of the saiyans in the crowd have fallen to their knees and placed their foreheads on the floor, and if you focus, you can hear them muttering fervent prayers under their breath. You turn bright red.
"You're the strongest Saiyan since the Exile began," says Dad, nudging you. "You've made history. You're going to be a legend. The Cult is going to love you."
You bury your face in your hands, and desperately wish that all of this goes away and turns out to be a dream.
It does not.
Need is the key to transformations, and no Scion ever focused on Oozaru as anything other than a pet project until now. But you needed that strength, and now you have it. You rolled high enough to not only finish improving your strength, but to get to the bottom of your hunch that there was something more to this, in a single year. "Oozaru, Basic" --> "Oozaru, Mastered."
Reputation Gained: "The Gold." Your achievement has marked your place in legend. Your name will someday occupy its own chapter in the history books. In this time and place, your words will carry unmatched weight, and the Ancestor Cult will view you as the greatest of their demigods.
* * *
The Cult does love you.
As you land outside the Training Hall on the night of the Council, the guards hit the ground as soon as you land.
"Please stand up," you say, shifting uncomfortably. They comply, so quickly that you almost feel like asking them to get back down again so that you don't feel like you're ordering them around.
"Lady Scion," says one of them, bowing deeply. "We are honored by your presence." She turns to her colleagues. "Open the gate!" She turns back to you and bows again. "The Hall is open to you. Welcome."
The Gate opens, and you dart through, uncomfortable with the attention. You move down the stairs and pause as you bump up against the wards. You take a deep breath and prepare yourself.
* * *
How are you going to go about this?
[ ] Transform, then enter.
[ ] Enter, then transform.
[ ] Just enter.
[ ] Suppress your ki, then enter.
Given the amount of discussion going on about it, have you sought out a suit of Saiyan Armor?
[ ] Yes, it'll be useful if you ever fight somebody at your power level. And you're wearing it today.
[ ] Yes, it'll be useful if you ever fight somebody at your power level. It's inappropriate in this setting, though, so you've left it at home.
[ ] No, you don't foresee needing it.
Include Jaron in the martial arts lessons with your friends?
[ ] Yes.
[ ] No.
THESE VOTES ARE NOW CLOSED.
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