I'm not really a fan of the Potara wish because making use of it involves a significant amount of setup. And if we have time to set up a fusion worth doing, then we have time to go Spirit Saiyan.
I would much rather go for a more "immediate" powerup, or solve a problem. Ideally, solve a problem that we have no other viable solutions for (Ki Stealth, other ways of unlocking SSJ2 safely (and using it!), arguably Dandeer, though she can probably be beaten by getting past any traps on our body and getting strong enough to transport her to the Senzus.)
My thought here was that the Potara would allow us to remain manifested for the duration of the fusion; Vegito did not have half a Halo, as it were. If we fused with, say, FPSSJ Perika, we can safely be at 1.5 Billion plus (probably significantly above it at that) while broadcasting Human Ki and without using spirit bomb in public, which is supposedly a bit of a giveaway.
My thought here was that the Potara would allow us to remain manifested for the duration of the fusion; Vegito did not have half a Halo, as it were. If we fused with, say, FPSSJ Perika, we can safely be at 1.5 Billion plus (probably significantly above it at that) while broadcasting Human Ki and without using spirit bomb in public, which is supposedly a bit of a giveaway.
Why would a fusion involving a Saiyan broadcast human ki?
In any case, we can't go that high on Garenhuld without some mitigating factor* - any ki signature, even a human one, tells anyone who can sense it there's something impressive at the edge of the galaxy there. It might not immediately tell the Enemy there are Saiyans there, but it'll be the beginning of the end.
*We did as Golden Oozarus that one time, but 1.5 billion PLs detectable at the very edge of possible spacefaring routes were a calculated risk versus the threat of Dazarel.
Why would a fusion involving a Saiyan broadcast human ki?
In any case, we can't go that high on Garenhuld without some mitigating factor - any ki signature, even a human one, tells anyone who can sense it there's something impressive at the edge of the galaxy there. It might not immediately tell the Enemy there are Saiyans there, but it'll be the beginning of the end.
Fusions retain all the abilities of the originals, which should include Masque. If we weren't masqued it would be 5 Billion. As for Garenhuld... yes? We have all of one serious fight predicted there, and if we have a spirit saiyan up it should be trivial. I want potara earrings for everything else we want to do with our life.
Potara is also stronger than fusion dance, both in allowing longer fusions and in the resulting fusion being stronger; this is confirmed multiple times in both anime and manga, btw.
Good to know. It's on the list, then.
By the way, is the armor "power armor that lets someone of Bulma's level fight at Blue Vegeta's level", or just "armor that provides meaningful protection for Blue Vegeta"?
Sure, but we're a seer. It would be annoying to get fluent but I bet we could figure out any given wish' wording. If nothing else, we could at least copy Zamasu's super immortality.
I'm not really a fan of the Potara wish because making use of it involves a significant amount of setup. And if we have time to set up a fusion worth doing, then we have time to go Spirit Saiyan.
It's conceivable that we'd be fighting alongside Jaffur without time to gather a Spirit Bomb. And I suppose there's a chance that Perika would reach FPSS level with our training, in time for the invasion. We still quite desperately need a way to avoid detection during that fight, but I suppose there's a chance our Masque would still work, although I would expect it to limit Kaperika to Karen's maximum power level.
My verdict: Maybe later, if things line up for it.
Good to know. It's on the list, then.
By the way, is the armor "power armor that lets someone of Bulma's level fight at Blue Vegeta's level", or just "armor that provides meaningful protection for Blue Vegeta"?
Point!
It's conceivable that we'd be fighting alongside Jaffur without time to gather a Spirit Bomb. And I suppose there's a chance that Perika would reach FPSS level with our training, in time for the invasion. We still quite desperately need a way to avoid detection during that fight, but I suppose there's a chance our Masque would still work, although I would expect it to limit Kaperika to Karen's maximum power level.
My verdict: Maybe later, if things line up for it.
Armor that provides meaningful protection. Power Armor would be cool, but the only ways to artificially augment mortal power mechanically at that level appears to be gero tech and that one Kaioshin from universe 3.
If it does so, then perhaps it would not be so useful; I certainly rate it below a HTC or katchin training area or the like.
Fusions retain all the abilities of the originals, which should include Masque. If we weren't masqued it would be 5 Billion. As for Garenhuld... yes? We have all of one serious fight predicted there, and if we have a spirit saiyan up it should be trivial. I want potara earrings for everything else we want to do with our life.
Fair enough. I still think an anti-detection method would be better - if we can crack SSJ2 on Garenhuld and have time to train it, 5 billion is small potatoes - but that does make sense.
Fair enough. I still think an anti-detection method would be better - if we can crack SSJ2 on Garenhuld and have time to train it, 5 billion is small potatoes - but that does make sense.
Well, the idea is that it scales with all other methods, but having a way to keep our Ki invisible is a superior option to simply appearing to have human ki, so I don't disagree.
4)...ok, this is not really a good choice, but...i kinda want to ask WHY the garenhulders fear the unknown. I kinda expect we'll get a crisis about it at some point, some ancient villain appearing out of nowhere like majin bu did in DBZ.
5)...knowledge of what we'll have to face in Hell and a way to face them?
I'm not really a fan of the Potara wish because making use of it involves a significant amount of setup. And if we have time to set up a fusion worth doing, then we have time to go Spirit Saiyan.
We could wish for our Ki to be like the Trio of Danger's from Universe 9, which apparently couldn't be sensed.
I don't see a lot of point to wishing for Potara earrings or anything else that raises our power level before we have a way to hide that power level. I guess it'd come in handy in the champion fight in a Katchin dome.
We should wish to have no power cap in our human masque. That way we can train as high as we want in masque. Enemy wouldn't care about human ki getting SSJ2 level.
We should wish to have no power cap in our human masque. That way we can train as high as we want in masque. Enemy wouldn't care about human ki getting SSJ2 level.
A similar problem does apply, as mentioned above, where a stupidly powerful human would still draw attention, which risks discovery down the line. I do think it's viable though.
We already have a katchin training area, so ki-blocking armor would be better. But if it's on the list anyway, a Makyo Star which makes out ki undetectable as Saiyan would be a serious upgrade to that.
Well we don't have to be the ones to learn it maybe get a namekian like the elder to learn it and they don't have to have Gohans huge potential, so even if they have low potential in my opinion for the humans and namekians it's better then nothing. Also I'm sure Maya's potential is pretty big what with her being a mutant and all. I'm not saying that Kakara should have it used on her, in fact I don't really want that I just want us to have sufficiently strong allies.
[X] Plan Crash Training
-[X] Sight - 2 AP (2)
--[X] Looking Abroad (1 AP) [The Invasion Fleet, especially the leader]
--[X] Continue Your Training (1 AP)
-[X] Training 3 AP (3+4)
--[X] Improve a Skill (1 AP) [Team Fighting]
---[X] Do this before anything else
--[X] To Go Beyond (1 AP) [Perfect Multiform]
--[X] Improve a Skill (1 AP) [Ki Refinement]
--[X] Broken Precedent (2 AP)
--[X] Style Training (1 AP) [Tien Style]
--[X] Spirit Bomb Experimentation (1 AP)
-[X] Social- 2 AP (2+1)
--[X] Strange Sister (1 AP) x2
--[X] Potential Unlocking (1 AP)
-[X] The Outside World - 2 AP (2)
--[X] Instruction (1 AP)
--[X] Historical Insights (1 AP)
-[X] A Cause - 1 AP (1)
--[X] Improve a Skill (1 AP) [Ki Refinement]
Setting Out
"...so, Bassoon and I are going to have to go away for a little while," you conclude, watching Perika nervously as Dazarel circles overhead, reveling in his momentary freedom. "The invasion's coming, and the Elders need information if they're going to fight back."
Perika peers back at you, listening very seriously. As you finish, she stares for a long moment. Then she nods sharply. "Understand. Will pack." She turns on her heel and starts strolling back towards the little hut the Namekians built for her.
Next to you, Bassoon blinks. "...very direct."
You pinch at the bridge of your nose. "Ugh. Perika!" You walk after her; she stops when you call. You shake your head as you approach. "I don't mean that we're going."
Perika's eyes narrow. "What do you mean?"
"I mean you're staying," you say, watching as a scowl slowly spreads across her face. "We can't bring you along. This is easy stuff to mess up! It's not your fault, but-"
"But, you will make me stay," she replies, hands planting on her hips.
You sigh. "Yes.
"We are train!"
"Training," you correct her. "And I know. I'm going to teach you a few more things before I leave, so you're ready."
"I am at a wall!" she snaps, folding her arms.
"The Namekians have warriors too, Perika," you say.
She snorts, tossing her hair back. "I know that! But that is not what I really need! I want to know how to be saiyan!"
You flinch.
Perika's expression immediately shifts to alarm. "What? What is it?"
You close your eyes. "...I'm not the best person for that," you say. "You want Jaffur."
"Who is Jaffur?" she asks.
"The friend I've told you about," you say, turning away. "He's a much better saiyan than me."
For a long moment, neither Perika nor Bassoon say anything, even as you walk away a bit. Then you feel Bassoon lifting off, and Perika steps up next to you. "Sorry," she says.
"You didn't do anything," you say. "I just have memories."
She grimaces. "Hm."
You immediately feel guilty. "Oh, no. I'm sorry-"
"Do not worry," she says, shaking her head. "You said not my fault. It is not yours."
You feel tempted to correct her grammar for a moment, but you're just too tired, all of a sudden. "Okay," you say instead.
Perika glances at you. "I think you are a good saiyan."
That startles a laugh out of you. You shake your head. "You just don't know enough saiyans," you say.
She shrugs. "If I meet more, and they are not like you, I think I know too many."
You feel as though you've been doused in ice water. No, hot water. Like you've had a bucket of pins dumped over your head. You stare at her, eyes wide.
For the first time in the time you've known her, you see Perika blush. She clears her throat. "I'll go in these house, now." She turns away and hurries off. You keep your eyes on her the whole way.
As her door closes behind her, Dazarel swoops in for a landing on your shoulder. 'Her proficiency in your language has improved spectacularly.'
You grit your teeth. "Shut up, Dazarel."
* * *
Tamar.
Tyrant. Leader. Demagogue. Murderer.
A man who rose above what the galaxy saw as his racial weakness to rule a world. A human who stood among the true galactic champions. A power not merely on the planet he ruled, but in his general neighborhood. A charismatic -- near-magnetic, in fact -- leader, who commanded the services of hundreds of champions.
Tamar, the failure. Tamar, the loser. Tamar, the man broken and beaten by the last remnants of Earth, allowed to live only by their mercy. Tamar, who writhed in Lazuli's grip as she spoke her contempt of him for the entire planet to hear. Tamar, who fled his planet seconds ahead of a one-hour deadline with the last remnants of his army.
Tamar.
At long last, years after learning of him, you finally lay eyes on Tamar.
He is a giant of a man, well over six feet tall and corded by powerful muscle. His hair is dark brown, almost black, and his eyes are green. Every move he makes is backed by incredible strength and a burning vitality. You can see how he has kept the loyalty of so many of his subordinates.
But you are not them, and you do not have your identity and self-esteem bound up in your fealty to this man. Your livelihood is not -- not, irrevocably -- shackled to his success. You have no motive to overlook weaknesses. In fact, insofar as you have any leverage on the situation, your motive is exactly the opposite.
So to you, Tamar looks like a man drowning in his own desperation.
You cannot see bags under Tamar's eyes; you can only see the concealer he's using to cover them up. You can see the slight trembling in his fingers whenever he relaxes the death grip they have on one another. This is a man on the edge of total collapse. He's barely staving it off; you can recognize, after having spent so much time around Jaffur, Jaron, and Dandeer, the burning light of fanaticism when all else is collapsing.
You watch as Tamar smiles reassuringly at one of his subordinates, waving her off as he steps into his quarters. You watch as he immediately slumps, the facade of strength and confidence dropping. You watch as he shambles over to his personal computer, boots it up, and pulls up a picture of you and Jaron, glaring down at the camera.
"We're coming, Murk," growls Tamar. "Soon. We'll be there soon."
You feel your time running out and pull back, trying to get the best look at Tamar's fleet as you can. You're no judge of this sort of thing, but you're at least confident enough to say that it's in poor shape. One vessel's engines actually cut out, briefly, before lighting up once more. You start counting -- one, two, three, four, five, six small ones, four medium ones, four that look like warships without much carrying capacity, and one gigantic sphere with absolutely no weapons-
And the vision ends.
* * *
You close your eyes, seated cross-legged before Bassoon's projection within his mindscape and ready for another exercise. Dazarel sits at your side, watching attentively.
Bassoon raises his hand, already tracing out magical symbols with his fingers. "Ready?" he asks you.
"Ready," you say.
His probe leaps forward into your mind, and you weave lightning about your thoughts.
You feel Bassoon attack a dozen times over the next few seconds, but you ignore that, simply focusing on keeping up the shield. Over and over, the gigantic hand your thoughts visualize as reaching for the book containing your thoughts snaps forward, strikes the shield, and rebounds, shuddering. Your eyebrows pinch together as you begin to strain under a dozen assaults.
At this, Dazarel's eye opens. 'You are too passive,' he remarks. 'You hand him the initiative. You are only focusing on maintaining the shield. React, or he will overwhelm you-'
fzzzzzz-pop
Mid-word, your shield fails, and Bassoon's hand lands on your thoughts. "Twenty seconds," he says, stepping back.
You turn to Dazarel, seething. "Mind explaining now that I'm not under attack?" you ask.
'If you simply sit back, you will be overwhelmed by a thousand strikes,' says Dazarel, unperturbed by your pique. 'The value of your shield is not as a shield. Any stupid ki user can make a shield. You have the advantage of making your shield bite back without years of study.' He rises to his feet and begins pacing back and forth. 'Next time, focus on reinforcing your shield, not as a whole, but locally, where the Namekian strikes. The shield is made of lightning. If you make there be more lightning wherever he touches, then he will hurt himself the faster he pushes himself.'
Bassoon raises an eyebrow at Dazarel, then closes his eyes in thought.
You peer at him, suspicious, before shaking your head. "All right. Let's give it a shot! Bassoon, I'm ready."
"As am I," he says, tracing out patterns.
"Okay," you say, closing your eyes and getting ready to repel assault. "Go-"
POP
You yelp as Bassoon's probe smashes directly through the shield, overwhelming it in one go. Your visualization of his hand grasps the book containing your thoughts, and then he retreats. Your eyes both open. He smirks. "Heh. So that does work."
Dazarel hurtles towards Bassoon in a blur and latching onto his shirt, shrieking in his face. 'Self-important slug! I had her understanding the right concepts! We were making progress!'
You sigh and reach out, yanking Dazarel to your hand with telekinesis and the sound of a dopplering, outraged shriek. "That's enough. It was a valuable lesson."
'It was sabotage!' objects Dazarel, writhing in your grip.
"Better now than when it counts," you say. "I'll deal." You grin up at Bassoon. "Just wait until I beat you," you say.
He smirks back. "We'll see." He traces out symbols again and holds out his hand. "Ready?"
You don't get the trick of repelling him down that day, or even in the weeks afterwards. But you're getting closer, all the time.
Progress made. One more should do it.
* * *
Any moment you can spend outside of Bassoon's head, you spend drilling Perika in fighting with a partner.
Step left, let Two take the hit, blast Perika, dart forward as Two presses forward, kick Three, let the momentum drive me back so Two can hit Perika from the side as she comes back in-
Perika is a fast learner. There must be a limit to it -- nobody learns as fast as she has. It's not natural. Something about how she was made, maybe. It certainly can't keep going forever.
But you haven't hit that point yet, so on you go.
Two knocks Perika away, and you phase past her to slam into Three as she recovers, driving her back and away from your other copy. Three stumbles, and you pile on the blows, hammering into her guard and tearing it wide open before swiping your hand-
Three's expression shifts into a cocky smirk, and she deliberately puts her head in the path of the blow. She pops, and you stagger under a moment of doubled perspective as her memories come back in a rush. You hear Two reacting just as poorly.
Then you feel Perika's power level spiking, and you realize that you've been played.
You have enough distance to block the blast as it streaks in towards your back, but Two gets knocked sprawling. You spin as the memories clear, just barely managing to catch Perika's strike as she rushes in.
"Clever," you hiss, forcing her grip away from you. Then you open your mouth and spit a ki blast into her face.
She yelps and stumbles back, clawing at her face, and that is when Two rushes back in. You circle around to Perika's other side, and in short order, the two of you have her wrestled to the ground and pinned.
Once she gets her bearings back, Perika spits out something in Namekian that has people miles away gasping in shock. "I thought that would work!" she wails.
"Almost did," says Two, loosening her grip.
"Not enough," grumbles Perika as you let her go.
"That one's not your fault," you say, giving her an encouraging smile. "It was a good plan, Perika. You're doing really good! It's just..." Two dissolves, and you shudder slightly at the rush of memories. Then you flash another smile. "I'm learning too."
She sighs. "Yes, I understand."
Your smile widens. "Good. Now let's get you up."
Team Fighting skill improved! [Talented-->Exceptional]. Hand-To-Hand superskill improved! [Talented-->Exceptional]. Combat overskill improved! [Talented-->Exceptional]. That was one load-bearing action, but it's official, now: after six long years of hard, devoted effort, Kakara has made up, through hard work, much of the lead Jaffur possessed at quest start through natural talent. Also, mechanically speaking, this happened first. In the future, don't rely on being able to call it like this -- training like this isn't something you knock out of the way in the first week -- but in this case, I'll allow it.
In addition, your constant practice of Tenshinhan style has allowed you to gain one more progress towards the next level (now 4/10).
* * *
Perfect multiform and ki refinement are not two halves of the same coin. They're not even two coins in the same wallet. You might, with a burdensome strain on your imagination, call them two coins produced by the same mint, but even then, you're pretty sure that those coins have never been in the same country, let alone the same mint, and one of them looks an awful lot like it's actually a debit card to you.
That said, given the nature of what it is, you can work on ki refinement while working on perfect multiform, so hey, there's a plus. There's probably a metaphor about banking or exchange rates to torment, somewhere in there, but you're not Jaffur, and you've had your imagery for the day.
So your three clones diligently work on their ki refinement while you bury yourself in charts and notes regarding the mechanics of the split, and you try not to feel searingly envious over the division of labor.
You keep running up against a wall when it comes to splitting your bodies and your ki pools in one go. What you found last month is that doing it separately -- the way you have been -- wastes a lot of energy, since you're basically doing the whole thing twice. So, naturally, this month, you're working on doing it all as one process. The issue is that, although you weren't specifically trying for it, there's a reason you unconsciously did those two things separately when you came up with your proof-of-concept split, namely, that they're two separate processes doing two separate things. One turns energy into extra matter, one uses ki energy to somehow make more...in theory, at least. So here you are, trying to figure out how to do matter and energy conversions on the fly, regardless of how much ki you have.
And you're failing. You can do some high-level math -- specific high-level math, the stuff used for instant transmission. Unfortunately, as you're swiftly discovering, learning that left a lot of holes in your education. And there's a lot that you don't know about physics.
You throw down your notes with a frustrated huff, messing up your hair before burying your face in your hands and letting out a muffled shriek of frustration. You hear the sounds of the others' training briefly grinding to a halt before it resumes.
"I'm gonna kick one of you," you say, voice muffled.
"Hey, we decided on this before we split," they all say in unison, still enough in-sync to have yet to diverge. They then all blink, grin, and say -- again, in unison -- "Jinx! No, you jinx!"
They finally de-sync, and it devolves into an argument as they all point at different people and start arguing about who gets the blame. You lift your head up and prop your chin on your hand, watching as their auras start flickering out of their control.
You blink. You peer at Four as her aura flickers out. You look at Three, who's still holding hers together. You pick up your notes again.
We ruled out a normal multiform with power boosting, but...what if I'm approaching this the wrong way? you muse, sketching out some notes. I can split off four clones that have their own separate ki pools, and I can make those pools each sized correctly, but they come in with little ki in their reserves...
You look up at the squabbling group.
...who says that I can't make multiform be a technique that boosts power level?
You let out a sharp whistle. The other yous look at you, and then the four of you dissolve-
-before you reform at the average of your positions, re-merged. "Okay," you say, trying to hold back on your excitement. "So it's not that we apply boosts after the fact, it's that we have to tweak how it acts." You put your hands together. "One, two, three..."
You bring your will to bear on your own ki pool and begin the process of splitting it into quarters, and making each quarter as large as the original whole. Separately, you initiate a normal multiform -- you'll come back to the issue of doing both steps as one process later.
This time, however, you do not try to force the separate ki pools into being fully-filled. Instead, you tweak the splitting process, and simply ratchet up the amount of ki that they should have.
And then you open your eyes to examine your clones...each of which is hovering a little bit above 16 million power level -- your maximum in base, as a shade.
"...four," you all say in unison. "Trippy." You share smiles back and forth.
Kakara hit a roadblock on her path forward for want of qualifications, and revisited an older idea when she hit upon a burst of inspiration. She has what she will tentatively call a true perfect multiform -- although experimentation shows that it only persists for a few moments before the clones dissolve, and the cost in ki use once finished is predictably ruinous. Still, it represents another forward step in research, and perhaps the first concrete demonstration that this technique is possible.
Also, dedicated training thanks to the wonders of multiform multitasking has pushed Ki Refinement to Unlearned. You have improved the amount of power you can eke out to 7%.
* * *
Experimenting with the genki dama is...trying.
For one thing, you need to cram it into the very limited manifestation time you have; your bond with Bassoon is not yet deep enough to support that. You're very sequestered, in his mindscape; knowing that everything is intrinsically connected doesn't help when there are very real -- if metaphysical -- barriers between you and the outside world. You can only do it when you're out of Bassoon's head -- in fact, when you're out of of the katchin domes the Dragon Clan makes for you, if you want to experiment with more than an extremely small selection of the people on New Namek. Still, you manage to set aside a couple of days to experiment.
And then, perceptions boosted as much as your power allows, you whip through possibilities.
You'd had high hopes for ki refinement, but it turns out that it doesn't do that much for you when you use the genki dama, or even when you go spirit saiyan. For a heartbeat, you can almost feel it catch, almost feel it transmute that titanic well of strength into something more...but it doesn't take. All it does is improve your personal contribution to the technique, which isn't nothing, but isn't exactly what you'd hoped for, either. You feel like there might be potential here, but...as it stands, it's not working. Something about how you approach the genki dama may need to change in order to get that working.
Then, however, you turn your attention to the real meat of your experimentation -- testing out your other forms and seeing if a multiform, especially a transformed one, can contribute to the genki dama.
And it turns out that they cannot.
Base saiyan, masqued saiyan, ape saiyan, super saiyan -- none of them can contribute. The instant it hits the technique, their power merges back into your own as a unified whole. It might be different if you had perfect multiform, but your present proof-of-concept technique, while a drastic improvement on your first, still doesn't give you enough time to test this, and besides...something about it feels less tractable than ki refinement's failure did. You couldn't articulate it, but you feel like this one might be running up against more metaphysical limitations. Like you can only count once towards the genki dama. You're not entirely sure how or why that would work, or even if there's a way around it...but you have a feeling, and it feels fairly convincing, as these go.
The genki dama is highly resistant to leveraging in this sort of manner, although Kakara feels that qualitative boosts like ki refinement may not be intrinsically unattainable -- they simply are now. She believes that the key to integrating these sorts of boosts may lie in greater mastery of the genki dama itself. She is, at present, extremely skeptical of the viability of multiform boosting the technique's power, although she's not willing to say for certain that it can't work.
* * *
Bassoon darts forward, and you dart back, firing off a spray of ki blasts.
Your host snarls in frustration as he has to juke to the side again before resuming his attack. Again and again, you dart back and fire off blasts. "I'm not going to run out of space!" you call. "I can do this all day!"
"You'll get tired eventually," he replies. "Probably."
"Not before you do," you say. "You're trying to catch me. That makes it easier for me. You're having to fly through a bunch of really cheap ki blasts, which means you have to fly harder. Makes it easier for me. And I'm better at ki control than you are." You smirk, continuing to drift backwards as you sweep your hand again, unleashing a spread of blasts.
Bassoon comes to a halt, deflecting them, and scowls at you. "Are you done showing off?"
You giggle. "Yeah, okay." You slow down, straightening. "So, my people have a lot of fighting styles, and I really don't know enough to teach you about all of them. I can tell you why we're as good as we are, though."
"Ridiculous speed in power progression that nobody can keep up with?" he asks, raising his eyebrows.
"N- well, yeah, okay," you admit. "We do have that. It's not really why most of my people are so dangerous, though. Most of us aren't super saiyans. They can hit their cap, and then they stop. No, the reason we're dangerous is because we have so many people who hit their caps. We know how to train. And we have a great system for teaching people their basics." You shake out your hands. "Throw a blast at me."
He frowns. "No."
You roll your eyes. "Just do it." With a flash of light, you transform. "Come on, you're not gonna hurt me."
Bassoon sighs. "Bottle blondes." Then he raises his arm and fires a blast. As it leaves his palm, you drop your transformation. Bassoon's eyes widen. "No-!" He lunges forward, arm outstretched.
You lift your own arm and catch the blast, just as you once did Murk's. It sits there, thrumming on your hand. Then, you close your fingers around it and snuff it out.
Bassoon stares, frozen mid-leap.
"I'm not normal, for my people," you say. "That said, everybody learns the same way I did. And that's what I'm going to teach you."
"You're going to teach me how to snuff my opponent's ki blasts with my bare hands?" he asks, still wide-eyed. "That's...advanced."
"I mean, I don't think you should try it in a real fight," you say. "But...along those lines?"
Bassoon slowly relaxes, frowning at you. "Saiyans. And you're supposed to be one of the saner ones."
You spread your arms, grinning. "I like to think of sanity as relative."
"Kais, that explains too much," he groans, raising his arms into a guard position. "All right, show me."
You settle into your stance. "All right. First thing: whatever stance you like most, take it. Then, just...feel." Your smiles softens. "Feel your ki moving."
You have begun putting Bassoon through standard Exile power level training.
Relationship with Bassoon degrades to Enemy [Hated] Heh, just kidding. His power level has made it to twenty-seven million over the course of the month. He is pleading exhaustion, and you pretty much have to give him a break next month. There's no way he can keep up this intensity of training while out scouting. You may have to adjust your expectations; they might be a bit miscalibrated for people who are neither saiyans nor Maya, read, literal freaks of nature.
* * *
Let me tell you about Freeza.
Freeza returned from the Tournament of Power...changed. Not redeemed, never that. But different in some subtle way. Oh, he returned to his empire, all right. He was...oddly gentle. Relative to how he used to be, that is. It was still hell to work under him, but he stopped destroying planets out of random spite. Things were actually relatively stable, as bizarre as it sounds to say that. I've told you before about how he vanished in the wake of Goku and Vegeta's deaths. For a while, there was a rumor that he'd died with them. There were even people who started to claim that he never even existed.
And then, as I told you before, Earth died, and Freeza returned.
Freeza, upon his return, was nearly unrecognizable to how he had been. Yes, he returned to conquering, plunging the west of the galaxy into blood and death as he restored order amidst the revolts against the Galactic King. As I told you, he took the West and left the Core alone, allowing the Kingdom to survive. And in that time, he spoke.
Freeza, for the first time in his life, actually decided to justify his conquests. He spoke of the Enemy and called it the greatest threat the galaxy had ever faced. He said it made him look small time. He claimed that it was an enemy truly fit for the dead legends of Earth. And he gathered forces to him.
Freeza spent those five years combing the galaxy for the strongest champions he could find, regardless of who they were. He brought them back to his Empire and trained them with a brutality that he had previously reserved for genocide. Every step of the way, he kept on talking about how they were preparing to face the Enemy.
Nobody believed that that was why Freeza let the Kingdom live. He could have annihilated them in a week if he had cared to. It's still a mystery why he contented himself only with the West. It's not as though he hesitated to exterminate any Patrollers who crossed his path. He couldn't have believed that they were a threat. But he let the Kingdom live. All the while, he made sure to tell everybody who asked that all of his work was to fight the Enemy. It was all he would say. He sent no diplomats, he never engaged with the Kingdom, and he, for all intents and purposes, acted as though there wasn't a massive, hostile power on his eastern border. But anybody who asked him personally...he gave them his explanation, and then let them leave his presence alive, to spread the news.
It made it all the stranger when the Enemy just refused to respond. He roamed the galaxy, hunting for the Nomads, making himself a very personalized terror to any systems he visited. And he never responded to anything Freeza had to say. For five years, he wandered. And then, without any apparent prompting, he turned around, crossed the entire galaxy in a straight line, and came for Freeza's head. And...you know as much about what happened there as anybody else does, but seventeen dead star systems later, they both vanished without a trace.
And here is where Freeza's true impact was felt -- when he was, to the best of our knowledge, dead. He had spent five years gathering to him the strongest champions anywhere, with absolutely no regard for any other considerations. He kept them in line solely through brute force.
Once he was gone, they exploded in every direction in an orgy of violence. I told you that the Empire collapsed into a thousand warlord states, and that the Kingdom lost everything outside of the Core. Those sorts of things don't just happen. These days, we call it the Galactic Civil War. Freeza had gathered a thousand champions to his banner -- why, we don't know. Perhaps as insurance. He certainly wasn't relying on them for his clash with the Enemy -- he quite deliberately left them behind. Whatever his intentions, the result was that, as their personalities struck sparks off of one another and started setting fires, they brought the galaxy down. So many people died. Few warlords from that era are left, but their legacy remains today, in the East.
The Civil War is a significant part of the reason why the New Cold Empire isn't riven with revolts. For centuries, people have been dying in endless wars between champions of incredible strength, driven by grudges generations old and passed down from parent to child, teacher to student. Even abject subjugation, to many, is better than knowing that you, personally, will in all probability not die a natural death.
And so, that is Freeza's legacy. Centuries of bloodshed. Countless dead. A brutal empire that should not remotely be able to command the support it does. A King who has accepted his Kingdom's death so many times only to see hope dangled in front of his face again, so that now that it is truly lost, he can't bring himself to recognize that, and lashes at at all those around him. The near-total death of freedom, and a galaxy in which it is so direly threatened, it may very well never rise again. An Enemy, ultimately, left unchecked.
All because one tyrant decided to recruit a cadre of elite warriors he didn't even use.
And, personally speaking, fuck that guy.
* * *
Bassoon groans as he touches down outside of the isolated house. 'Are you certain -- and I mean absolutely certain -- that you really need this done?'
"Yeah!" you reply. "I need everything I can get, right now!"
'But are you sure?' asks Bassoon.
"What's up with you?" you ask. "What's going on here?"
He closes his eyes and lets out a deep sigh. 'You'll see.' He steps up to the door and knocks before leaping back.
The door misses his nose by a millimeter as it comes crashing open. "BASSOON!" A gigantic, overweight Namekian stands in the doorway, arms thrown wide. "YOU CAME TO VISIT ME! COME HERE, LITTLE GUY!" The man steps forward and pats Bassoon's scalp with jarring force.
Bassoon grits his teeth. "...hello, Uncle Berimbau."
Berimbau steps in, measuring his tone a bit. "Ah, you don't need to stand on ceremony with me!" He draws Bassoon into a headlock and gives him a noogie. "Missed ya, little guy! How have you been! Oh, wait, we have a guest." He releases his nephew and steps back. "Welcome to my home, Scion! I'm Berimbau! Dragon Clan mage extraordinaire!" He flashes a smile that practically glints, it's so bright. "I, ah, can't see you right now, of course. But I'm told you're in my nephew's head wait Bassoon please tell me your father wasn't messing with me when he said that."
Bassoon straightens, chuckling. "Dad wasn't lying, no. She is in my head."
Berimbau swipes at his brow, theatricality returning. "Phew! Load off my mind, it'd be just like your dad. Anyway, welcome! Come on inside, I have scents on the stove!" He whirls around and darts back into his home.
Bassoon rolls his eyes. 'And remember, you asked for this.' He then steps forward, into the house.
True to his words, Berimbau is heating something aromatic on the stove, and he gives it a swirl as you enter. "Have a seat, I have water! No good at making things that taste good."
"Doesn't that taste good?" you ask, projecting your words through Bassoon's head. "It smells good."
"Well, thanks, but no, it actually tastes like garbage," says Berimbau. "Literal garbage. I don't know how something can smell this good and taste like death. My brother's the one who can make something so good, a Namekian will eat it."
"It's true," says Bassoon. "He can."
Berimbau shoots your host a baleful look. "Nice dodge. I might've missed it, if I were blind."
"I couldn't possibly comment on your cooking, Uncle Berimbau," says Bassoon. "I never taste it."
"Oof, I felt that. Right here, Bassoon." Berimbau clutches at his chest. "I felt that here. You cut me deep. My own nephew! Why would you do this?"
"I mean, since you mention it, I always wanted cousins when I was a child..." sighs Bassoon, smirking.
"I'm not ready for kids!" snaps Berimbau, waving a finger.
Bassoon just shakes his head, chuckling.
Berimbau laughs too, sitting down across from his nephew. Slowly, the smile on his face dims a little. "So. What brings you here? Teasing aside, I know that you're busy."
Bassoon's smile vanishes as well, and he nods. "Yeah...yeah, that's right." He pauses for a long moment. Opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Closes it again.
You lose patience. "It's about me," you say.
Berimbau blinks. "Oh? Watcha need?"
"I'm locked into shade form," you say. "My strength is cut by a twentieth. I need to get home, and to get home I need to help you all enough that I have time to figure out how to get home. And..."
"...I am one of the only unlocking mages left on Namek," finishes Berimbau, downing a glass of water. "Right. Yes, that makes sense." He sets down the glass. "I don't know that I can make you stronger, Scion. If what I've heard from my brother about saiyans and power level caps is true..." He shrugs. "Nothing to be done. But if what I've heard about psychic abilities is true..."
"That's honestly what I was hoping for," you say. "I have so much to work on...I need something to progress faster than it is right now."
Berimbau peers at you. "...I just want to measure your expectations a bit, I'm not saying no," he says, holding up a hand. "Our first Guru was exceptional. He had a gift for unlocking potential. I mean that seriously; a genuine, no-fooling gift. I'm not going to be able to give you the same kind of results he could. Second, this isn't something you can just repeat over and over again. You got all that?"
"I get it," you say.
"All right, then," says Berimbau. "Out you go, I need to touch your head."
You blink. "What, specifically?"
"It's customary, yeah. Mind is the seat of the soul, and all that."
Dazarel rears up on your shoulder, speaking for the first time this conversation. 'It is not!'
You ignore him. "All right. I'll come out." You focus, strain, and stream up, up, and out-
Dazarel immediately lifts off your shoulder and flits over to the windowsill, ignoring everybody. You turn to Berimbau. "Hello!" you say. "Nice to meet you in person."
"And you as well!" he says, lifting himself out of his chair. "On closer inspection...yeah, I think I was pretty bang on the money. "Not much ki power to unlock, there. I do think that I can draw out some psychic potential you've got lying around, though."
"I'll take anything, at this point," you say.
He smirks. "Ah, young people. Very well!" He reaches out and sets a hand atop your head. "I want you to remember that this was within you all along. I'm just nudging things along a bit." And then his hand glows.
It feels like a flower unfolding in your mind; as if something precious and special that was already there has simply grown into its full potential. It feels like a rush of warmth.
It feels like the crackling of electricity.
Berimbau's eyebrows quirk, and he steps back. Dazarel cocks his head at you. Bassoon watches expectantly.
You grin, eyes wide in exhilaration. "...Bassoon?" you breathe, staring into empty space.
He shifts. "Yes?"
You turn to meet his eyes. "Try and get in."
He blinks, but, after a moment, nods and raises his hand, tracing symbols. In your mind, you see that massive hand reaching out for you-
And the lightning shield forms, swarms around the hand, and traps it, stinging it over and over again. Bassoon spasms, cursing in Namekian, and you conclude by pulsing the shield once and hurling him back. As you do, the electricity spills over, beyond your thoughts, and sparks start arcing through the air around you as your aura lights up. You slowly looks around you at the electricity playing in the air. This is not the cosmetic sparking that showed up when you first became a super saiyan. This is live electricity, and it is dangerous.
You grin. "I wasn't expecting this...but I am not complaining."
Full success on getting a mental shield established. There's more to learn, but you'll grind it further simply by grinding your general psychic abilities.
* * *
Perika strains against the blast pressing her into the ground.
"There's no way around this without going all-out!" you call, keeping the pressure up. "There's no clever trick. You transform, or you lose!"
You feel her struggling to force the beam back, hear her screaming in effort...and then the blast shatters her guard, and plows her into the ground.
You sigh, releasing the beam. "That could have gone better," you say.
She forces herself to her feet, panting. "I do not understand!" she snaps. "I need it! I want it! I will die if I do not have it!" She growls, kicking at the ground; it splits under her feet and she smoothly takes to the sky. "What is missing?!"
You sigh. "Immediacy, maybe. It's not easy to push somebody into this." You fold your arms, frowning. "I don't want you to have to transform like I did. I just don't know how to do it."
"I am tired," she sighs. "Why is this hard?"
"Wouldn't be legendary if it was easy," you say, shrugging. Then you shake your head. "I'll tell you what, though -- tired is not the right mood to be in for this-"
"I AM TIRED!" snaps Perika, whirling on you as her aura flares. "I AM TRAINING, AND STRUGGLING, AND YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, AND I AM TRYING, BUT IT IS NOT WORKING!"
You rear back at the outburst, hands coming up. "Whoa, okay, too far in the opposite-"
She snarls, her hand comes up, and a blast engulfs you.
The light clears, and you take a deep breath in and out. Through the dispersing smoke, you see Perika's expression turn to horror as she takes in your face. You paste on a smile. Judging by how white she goes, it does not help. "Right," you say. You snap your hands back to your waist. "Kamehameha!"
Perika's eyes widen as the beam lances out. "Wait sorry I sorry-!"
THOOOOOOM
You vaguely hear her screaming in shock as the beam blasts her back into the katchin and pins her there. "Getting angry is fine!" you snap, keeping on the pressure. "But if you're going to go nuts and blast me while I'm trying to give you advice, then I'm never helping you with this again!"
You feel her ki signature pulse. Your eyebrows raise. So that's what does it? Okay.
You dial up the power in the beam. "I can do this without you, and I will if you make me! I'm not interested in having to babysit you through a fight because you're not interested in learning things the right way."
Perika grunts as she strains against your power, for all the good it does her.
A little more. "You wanna know what I think when I see you throwing a tantrum? I think about my little brother, who was such a whiny brat that I had to invent a brand-new form just to keep him from accidentally slaughtering some of our own subjects!"
Perika's ki signature flares.
"...I...am..." she grits out, struggling even harder. Your eyebrows lift as she succeeds in shoving your blast back, her arms straightening. She pants in fury and exhaustion. "NOT A BURDEN! HYAAAAAAAAA!"
You grin as her power level spikes, climbing up and up, and the pressure on your beam increases-
-and then stops. Your grin vanishes. Perika's power level has risen...to about fifty-three million. And it's holding there. You release the beam to get a better look.
Perika stares back at you for a moment, gasping for air, before she relaxes and falls out of the air. "I...I did it?" she pants. "Is this it? This is it, yes?"
You frown down at her, desperately trying to parse this. "...no," you say. "It's not. That's stronger than you should be able to be...but that's not it. Only a super saiyan should be able to get that strong, but only after weeks or months of training in base! That's...that's not possible."
"Maybe I have much cap?" she asks, pushing herself to her knees.
"Maybe you have a high cap," you say. "And no. There is some difference between people, but not this much! This-" You stop, and your blood runs cold with ice. "...this isn't possible. Not unless you're already a super saiyan."
Perika stares at you, bewildered. "But...then why do I not transform?"
You search for an answer for a while, your thoughts churning. It stings more than you want to admit to finally shrug, helplessly, and say, "I don't know."
Something (else) is weird about Perika.
...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now you have to go.
Welcome back, folks!
I know this took a while, and I'm sorry about that. I suffered a belated realization that, with my laptop restored, I could play video games whenever I wanted. Heh. Hehe. Sorry...?
Anyway! I'm getting back into the habit of writing, and this is step one! A 7,000 word update. Ahahahahahaha.
(You think this is bad, I've already written 6,000 words for an RP in which I participate, and most of this week vanished down the maw of a 100,000 word short novel that I wrote in a fugue and from the existence of which I now recoil in grammar- and quality-based horror. I've been busy.)
And now, onto my other quests! I hope that you've enjoyed this update! There's actually very little that calls for me to call for a vote in this plan; it's very cut-and-dried. Still, I had fun writing it, and I hope you enjoyed reading it! We'll have another plan vote next update. See y'all!
Huh. You know, in retrospect, her not having a cap would make sense. After all, a hard limit on her growth that has to be overturned with something with decent odds of getting her killed in the process unless she has an actual SSJ tutor, which is something at kind of a premium. On the plus side, she's significantly stronger than Bassoon, who is himself more than 30% stronger than he was originally.
Relationship with Bassoon degrades to Enemy [Hated] Heh, just kidding. His power level has made it to twenty-seven million over the course of the month. He is pleading exhaustion, and you pretty much have to give him a break next month. There's no way he can keep up this intensity of training while out scouting. You may have to adjust your expectations; they might be a bit miscalibrated for people who are neither saiyans nor Maya, read, literal freaks of nature[/B].
Hm. Twenty-seven million. Not bad. What was it before?
And here is where Freeza's true impact was felt -- when he was, to the best of our knowledge, dead. He had spent five years gathering to him the strongest champions anywhere, with absolutely no regard for any other considerations. He kept them in line solely through brute force.
Once he was gone, they exploded in every direction in an orgy of violence. I told you that the Empire collapsed into a thousand warlord states, and that the Kingdom lost everything outside of the Core. Those sorts of things don't just happen. These days, we call it the Galactic Civil War. Freeza had gathered a thousand champions to his banner -- why, we don't know. Perhaps as insurance. He certainly wasn't relying on them for his clash with the Enemy -- he quite deliberately left them behind. Whatever his intentions, the result was that, as their personalities struck sparks off of one another and started setting fires, they brought the galaxy down. So many people died. Few warlords from that era are left, but their legacy remains today, in the East...
And so, that is Freeza's legacy. Centuries of bloodshed. Countless dead. A brutal empire that should not remotely be able to command the support it does. A King who has accepted his Kingdom's death so many times only to see hope dangled in front of his face again, so that now that it is truly lost, he can't bring himself to recognize that, and lashes at at all those around him. The near-total death of freedom, and a galaxy in which it is so direly threatened, it may very well never rise again. An Enemy, ultimately, left unchecked.
All because one tyrant decided to recruit a cadre of elite warriors he didn't even use.
OK, I am really wondering as to Frieza's reasoning there. I'm sure he had a reason. Not necessarily a good one, but I'm sure he had one.
Full success on getting a mental shield established. There's more to learn, but you'll grind it further simply by grinding your general psychic abilities.
"...I...am..." she grits out, struggling even harder. Your eyebrows lift as she succeeds in shoving your blast back, her arms straightening. She pants in fury and exhaustion. "NOT A BURDEN! HYAAAAAAAAA!"
You grin as her power level spikes, climbing up and up, and the pressure on your beam increases-
-and then stops. Your grin vanishes. Perika's power level has risen...to about fifty-three million. And it's holding there.
Perika stares back at you for a moment, gasping for air, before she relaxes and falls out of the air. "I...I did it?" she pants. "Is this it? This is it, yes?"
You frown down at her, desperately trying to parse this. "...no," you say. "It's not. That's stronger than you should be able to be...but that's not it. Only a super saiyan should be able to get that strong, but only after weeks or months of training in base! That's...that's not possible."
"Maybe I have much cap?" she asks, pushing herself to her knees.
"Maybe you have a high cap," you say. "And no. There is some difference between people, but not this much! This-" You stop, and your blood runs cold with ice. "...this isn't possible. Not unless you're already a super saiyan."
Perika stares at you, bewildered. "But...then why do I not transform?"
You search for an answer for a while, your thoughts churning. It stings more than you want to admit to finally shrug, helplessly, and say, "I don't know."
Something (else) is weird about Perika.
...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now you have to go.
I know this took a while, and I'm sorry about that. I suffered a belated realization that, with my laptop restored, I could play video games whenever I wanted. Heh. Hehe. Sorry...?
Anyway! I'm getting back into the habit of writing, and this is step one! A 7,000 word update. Ahahahahahaha.
More or less, fine-grained detail that normal ki sensing does not provide. Really leaning into the metaphysics of, "Spiritually, we are all one being, so technically, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to tell this..."
Frieza knew about the Exile's existence though maybe not their location.
And now he's made a Galaxy that is both ripe for a new Saiyan race to challenge while growing ever stronger and also this kind of brutal broken mess of a galaxy also means that it'll take some time for stories of Saiyans to really propagate enough for anyone to hear and report on.
It's horrific and evil, but also a reasonable backup plan should he fail to kill the Enemy while hitting more than a few birds with one stone. Freezes gets to carve his name into the Galaxy's history, aid in the defeat of the enemy, and get revenge in everyone through the deadman's switch of his Empire.
My money is on Freeza looking for another Broly and then just never bothering to get rid of the rejects. Not sure if he was holding out hope for some of them to break a limit or just thought some of them could be useful whenever he found a real prodigy as punching bags, but.
His power level has made it to twenty-seven million over the course of the month. He is pleading exhaustion, and you pretty much have to give him a break next month. There's no way he can keep up this intensity of training while out scouting. You may have to adjust your expectations; they might be a bit miscalibrated for people who are neither saiyans nor Maya, read, literal freaks of nature.
