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Growing Pains [DBZ/DC]

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Pi In The Sky said:
Everyone in Dragonball is randomly telepathic when it's convenient for the plot and then stop being so once the need has passed.
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Goku doesn't even know how he learned it.

There's also the random telekinesis that's used here and there, but it at least has more plot relevance in most fights. Other times, it's just used as flavor, like when Frieza threw a mountain at Goku or when Piccolo in Super Hero threw a ball of random debris at Gamma-2.
 
From a quick look, skilled martial artists in Dragon Ball can read minds, though I'm guessing it requires skill in Ki use as well so Kalifa would likely be the only one to gain it that way. What you're likely talking about is Image Training, which can be done solo since you imagine a foe and battle them, which is apparently what Frieza used to get stronger while he was dead and restrained. According to the wiki there is a two-person version of Image Training requiring both users to match their Ki level and visualize each other, which probably has similar effects to the solo one except your opponent can improve as well. Creating a false Image Training battle using Telepathy would likely work, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was far less effective compared to the Ki version.
 
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Growing Pains - Chapter 44
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    • Growing Pains - Chapter 44

    I wasn't surprised when Superman left me in the dust on the way to the now burning lab. I still was a long way off from catching the Flash, not to mention the Kryptonian. Especially when his girlfriend was in danger. But I was happy to note that I wasn't that far behind.

    I made it through the broken window just in time to see Superman catch a bit of the ceiling that was about to crush Lois while Bizzaro was busy breaking tubes filled with…were those yellow mannequins built to look like Superman? Why would anyone want fifty of tho– oh, those were more clones.

    But why were they yellow?

    "Superman! You have to help us get out!" I heard Lois shout and looked her way to see her standing next to Lex Luthor, who was here for some reason, and an old scientist dude. I was actually surprised Lex hadn't ducked out by now considering how everything was currently on fire, but a quick glance around showed he wasn't here by choice. At some point a giant machine had been wedged into the doorway, locking everyone who couldn't fly inside.

    "You!"

    And of course we still needed to deal with Bizzaro himself.

    "Hey, I had dibs on a fight!" I shouted as the clone slammed into Superman.

    "Me kill you!"

    And I was totally ignored.

    While I mentally debated whether I should break up the fight so I could have a go or let them continue, Lex stepped forward and shouted at me. "She meant now, girl! We're sitting on top of a half-kiloton of explosives." The businessman said briskly, "Enough, I presume, to destroy even Superman, let alone all of us!"

    I almost laughed at him for that, because while I had no idea how big an explosion half a kiloton was, I was pretty sure Superman could handle it no problem. Unless it was laced with kryptonite or something.

    And considering it was Luthor, he probably did have kryptonite laced explosives in a lab meant to clone Superman. Just in case one of them went nuts and started tearing up the place.

    …kinda like what Bizzaro was doing now.

    Well, crap. And even if Superman could survive, Lois certainly wouldn't.

    "Why would you set off a bomb that big when you're still inside the building? What are you, stupid?!" I complained as I flew towards the blocked door.

    Lex bristled at that but didn't say anything. Probably because he was waiting for me to actually open the way out first. He was at least that smart.

    "Califa, look out!"

    "No one leaves!"

    I only had a heartbeat to react to a flash of white and purple in the corner of my vision before my arm snapped up in a reflexive block. I managed to stop Bizzaro's fist from hitting me in the face, but defective clone or not, he was still a Superman clone and I was sent crashing into a burning machine on the other side of the lab from the strength of the punch.

    "Ow." I muttered as I shoved my way out of the jagged bits of metal and rolled my wrist.

    Definitely gonna feel that bruise later. But more important thing first, dealing with Bizzaro.

    "Alright, you asked for it!"

    I flared my ki and shot towards Bizzaro, who was already turning to focus back on Superman. But I had already had my dibs call ignored and then been attacked, so I had no issues crashing into him and driving him through a row of cloning tubes. I heard Luthor shouting in the background, but he wasn't important right now.

    Superman could deal with him.

    Bizzaro burst out of the wreckage with a roar and took a swing at me. It was fast, but unlike the original, it was sloppy. So I was easily able to duck under it and give him a quick kick to the ribs.

    He reflexively caught my leg before I could spin away and when I went to kick him with the other to free myself he caught that one too.

    Bizzaro gave me a crooked grin and I gave him a sharp one in return. Next thing he knew my hands were cupped a few inches from his face as I blasted him with a Ki beam.

    As expected, he let go of my legs to shield his face and I poured more energy into the attack hoping to do some actual damage. I wasn't sure if it worked, but it definitely sent the clone flying backwards.

    I wasn't letting up though!

    I surged forward only for part of a column to crumble right on top of me, it slowed me down a bit but a bit of rock wasn't enough to stop me from getting close to my opponent! But…why wasn't he looking at me?

    "Superman…save, Lois?" he mumbled, more to himself than anything and I took the risk to check over my shoulder to see what he was looking at.

    At some point Luthor and the scientist cleared out but it looked like Lois got caught under some of the rubble. I don't know what Superman had been doing before that, but right now he was carefully lifting a big chunk of the building off his girlfriend's leg.

    Superman had it handled, there was no reason it should distract from our fight!

    Even the sound of part of the roof collapsing wasn't going to distract me from this fight as I turned back to Bizzaro, but he obviously didn't feel the same. He was still looking behind me –

    Whoosh!

    – at least he was until he blitzed past me towards the others!

    "Hey! You're fighting…me…" I trailed off as I saw that Bizzaro wasn't taking the opportunity to attack his original.

    He was stopping the giant section of the ceiling I heard falling just a second ago from landing on both Superman and Lois.

    "Me hold. You go!" The clone told the others, even as he struggled under the weight. To pretty much everyone's shock considering he said no one was leaving just a minute ago and said he was going to kill Superman. "Me no am Superman. YOU am Superman. Superman…save Lois."

    Oh.

    This wasn't a change of heart. Up until a moment ago Bizzaro had at least partly truly believed that he was the original Superman. I don't know what the last straw was, but that apparently wasn't the case anymore.

    And I guess that meant our fight was over.

    Superman gave his clone a nod and quickly scooped Lois up before getting her out of the lab. The lab I just remembered was sitting on a huge bomb because I got too wrapped up in trying to fight Bizzaro!

    "Hey, you gotta leave too!" I shouted, blasting the ceiling slab to pieces and moving to shove Bizzaro towards the door but he wasn't budging for some reason!

    "No leave, me no am Superman. Me belong here." He denied.

    I was getting flashbacks to Donna, "That's stupid! So what if you aren't Superman!? That doesn't mean you should just throw your life away, you're still a person!"

    "Bizzaro…am person?"

    I pushed harder and this time got him to take a few stumbling steps. "Of course you're a person! And you still need to finish our fight so get, moving, already!" Another push got me a few more feet when Bizzaro suddenly shifted and made me stumble past him. Before I could do anything, he grabbed me by both arms so they were pinned to my sides and picked me up.

    "Hey! What are you–?"

    "Monkey girl good person." The clone stated as he shifted me to a side. "But no place for Bizzaro out there."

    "Wha-?"

    "But me am hero, so me save you!"

    The last thing I saw before Bizzaro threw me up through a hole in the roof was his crooked smile, but this one was different, almost proud of what he had done, before the building blew up with him still inside.

    …

    …

    I don't know how long I hovered there watching the remains of the burning lab, but I just couldn't bring myself to look away even when Superman flew over carrying Lois. No matter how hard I focused…there were just no Ki signatures down there.

    "Califa? Are you okay?"

    I didn't know how to answer that right now.

    "Why didn't he escape? There was more than enough time!" I asked instead.

    Something dripped down my cheek and I angrily brushed it away with the back of my hand.

    Superman and Lois exchanged a look but I still couldn't look away from the lab.

    "I don't know." Superman said eventually. "I can't say what he was thinking in the end. Maybe he thought there wasn't a place for him in the world. But what I do know is that in the end, he chose to be a hero and make sure that you got out."

    "That's stupid." I growled as more liquid dripped down my face, I brushed that away too. "It doesn't matter where you come from, as long as you're alive there's a place for you somewhere."

    "That's a good attitude to have." Lois said, "but you don't have to keep it in. You're allowed to feel sad."

    What was she – ?

    I felt something roll down my cheek and this time I caught it in my hand.

    It was water.

    …oh, I was crying…

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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    • What happened to Lex? Did he get exploded too?

    Edit: found the line that said he and the scientist got out. Thanks for the chapter
     
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    Oh, sad ending. Though probably better than Bizzaro originally had. At least here he went out on his own terms rather than slowly deteriorating further. End the end, he got to be a hero.
     
    Blaflaix said:
    Well Superman already took red and blue, so they have to use the last primary color.
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    If I remember correctky Kryptonians are notoriously difficult/impossible to perfectly clone, so I imagine being yellow may have been either a stabilizing effect going on to keep them stable. Perhaps via pumping yellow sunlight onto them, or maybe it was yellow light being drawn out of their bodies.

    Or maybe they were just already breaking down like all cloned pure-Kryptonians do after a while.

    It's why Conner Kent is half human, because otherwise he'd just break.
     
    Cecylene said:
    If I remember correctky Kryptonians are notoriously difficult/impossible to perfectly clone, so I imagine being yellow may have been either a stabilizing effect going on to keep them stable. Perhaps via pumping yellow sunlight onto them, or maybe it was yellow light being drawn out of their bodies.

    Or maybe they were just already breaking down like all cloned pure-Kryptonians do after a while.

    It's why Conner Kent is half human, because otherwise he'd just break.
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    I wouldn't say Kryptonian DNA is the problem, given that Kryptonians tended to enjoy genetically altering themselves. Probably something to do with only Krypton's own atmosphere being suitable for Kryptonian cloning, and since Krypton is gone, and the only records in the Fortress of Solitude, replicating those conditions cannot be easy. Or maybe it requires being under a more native red sun. Or maybe only Kryptonian science can clone Kryptonians.
     
    Aww, she got to fight, but it didn't end the way she'd hoped. I didn't even know it was raining outside that lab at the end there. But... it must've been, because otherwise it would mean that Califa would've been feeling... sad? Preposterous!

    ...Poor Bizarro. :(

    Azura said:
    "Superman! You have to help us get out!" I heard Lois shout and looked her way to see her standing next to Lex Luthor, who was here for some reason
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    He probably just wandered in, got lost. A respectable businessman like Lex would have nothing to do with anything so shady! :lol:

    Azura said:
    And considering it was Luthor, he probably did have kryptonite laced explosives in a lab meant to clone Superman. Just in case one of them went nuts and started tearing up the place.

    …kinda like what Bizzaro was doing now.
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    Lex Luthor as the ancestor the Illusive Man, confirmed? "Let's experiment on something obscenely dangerous that we probably shouldn't be messing with. What's the worst that's going to happen, it's going to break loose and start attacking our own people?"

    ...

    "Let's set up even more labs for even more experiments!"
     
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    Had an unfortunate thought: what if, instead of being half-human, the next Superman clone is half-saiyan?
     
    Azura said:
    "But me am hero, so me save you!"

    The last thing I saw before Bizzaro threw me up through a hole in the roof was his crooked smile, but this one was different, almost proud of what he had done, before the building blew up with him still inside.
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    I know Bizarro will return since he has the power of Superman through his DNA and Califa would take him in than let him wander on his own and end up being a dumb muscle of the supervillain groups who is just there to give the Justice League a fight.
     
    LocalCatHybrid said:
    Had an unfortunate thought: what if, instead of being half-human, the next Superman clone is half-saiyan?
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    You do not want that mix.
    At the very least you'd have to just get rid of the moon. Kryptonian Oozaru would be the stuff of nightmares. You might as well find a new planet if they got Broly/Kale berserker tendencies. At the worst, you'd wind up with a kid who would want to fight a 4 v1 battle against Lobo, Amazo, Darkseid and Doomsday at the same time.
     
    Shinzero01 said:
    You do not want that mix.
    At the very least you'd have to just get rid of the moon. Kryptonian Oozaru would be the stuff of nightmares. You might as well find a new planet if they got Broly/Kale berserker tendencies. At the worst, you'd wind up with a kid who would want to fight a 4 v1 battle against Lobo, Amazo, Darkseid and Doomsday at the same time.
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    Especially since AFAIK Oozaru are only able to fly if they are in control of the form, so are usually limited to where they can jump or walk. A Flying Berserk Kryptonian Oozaru would be the thing of nightmares, as you said, and you'd have a hard time removing the tail to turn them back. Only good thing is that as a partial Kryptonian it would be much harder for them to train to gain strength or take damage to get Zenkai Boosts. Well that and the fact Kalifa has yet to reach Super Saiyan, so there'd be a lower chance they would be able to easily reach it like Trunks and Goten. Unfortunately being a half-Saiyan seemed like it gave higher potential to Gohan, Goten, Pan, and Trunks, so I wouldn't be surprised if they still managed to find a way to get stronger.

    Edit: Now that I think about it, it's really lucky Kalifa has never mentioned or used her Attack Pod's Moon Projector or whatever it's called, as adding the ability to transform into an Oozaru at will would make it even more terrifying.
     
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    Pen-Paper Toad said:
    Especially since AFAIK Oozaru are only able to fly if they are in control of the form, so are usually limited to where they can jump or walk. A Flying Berserk Kryptonian Oozaru would be the thing of nightmares, as you said, and you'd have a hard time removing the tail to turn them back. Only good thing is that as a partial Kryptonian it would be much harder for them to train to gain strength or take damage to get Zenkai Boosts. Well that and the fact Kalifa has yet to reach Super Saiyan, so there'd be a lower chance they would be able to easily reach it like Trunks and Goten. Unfortunately being a half-Saiyan seemed like it gave higher potential to Gohan, Goten, Pan, and Trunks, so I wouldn't be surprised if they still managed to find a way to get stronger.

    Edit: Now that I think about it, it's really lucky Kalifa has never mentioned or used her Attack Pod's Moon Projector or whatever it's called, as adding the ability to transform into an Oozaru at will would make it even more terrifying.
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    Using Zenkai to get stronger is not a good idea, as the character in question would have to be very close to death, the Dragon Ball character managed to survive this due to the seed of the Gods and other miraculous healing methods.
     
    Growing Pains - Chapter 45
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    • Growing Pains - Chapter 45

    After the lab incident I decided to take a few days for myself. No training, no fights, just flying randomly across the continent and taking in some sights and trying to clear my head.

    It was nice.

    By the fourth day I had pretty much sorted myself out and while what Bizzaro did still upset me, I decided he made his choice and I had to respect that even if I didn't get why he did it. I would respect that.

    Of course that left me in a slightly awkward position of what to do next.

    I had a feeling all the older heroes were going to be weird about things for a while and I didn't want to deal with that. I mean, I didn't blame them. Making sure other people were okay was kinda their whole thing…but I didn't need that anymore.

    And I didn't want the first time meeting up with the Sidekick Squad after a while being awkward because they thought I was fragile or something.

    So I needed to find someone who could let the Justice League know I was okay now and didn't need to be babied and wouldn't get weird about meeting up for some fun.

    …I was pretty sure Thanagarians dealt with all their problems by hitting them in the face like a proper person, so Hawkie should be a pretty good choice! Plus I hadn't seen her in a while anyway.

    Now I just had to find her…

    -o-

    Why was it so hard to find a woman with giant freaking bird wings attached to her?! Why was she harder to find than freaking Superman? Seriously, I found an internet post about how he helped put out a fire less than an hour ago with a two minute internet search, but the last thing I found about Hawkie was over a month old!

    Wait, crap. She was an alien who wasn't abandoned on Earth. Was she even on the planet?

    I groaned and collapsed on the keyboard in front of me. This sucked.

    "Are you having trouble, dear?" A kind voice asked behind me.

    I looked up and around to see the old librarian had wandered over – probably to get me to stop laying on her equipment – and was now looking kindly at me through some thick glasses and occasionally glancing at the computer monitor.

    "School project?"

    I shrugged, not surprised by the mistaken impression. Afterall, I had ditched my armor today for a tight black shirt and some looser fitting cargo pants – so many pockets! – that hid my tail pretty well so I did look like a normal human teenager just looking things up in the library.

    "I'm trying to find stories about Hawkwoman, but it's not going great. Nothing recent is coming up."

    "Oh, that's because the media started calling her Hawkgirl a while back. I think it was to make her seem a bit more friendly since she is so…aggressive…when she's going around fighting." the librarian sounded disapproving of that. "We don't want little girls going around thinking that screaming your head off is something we want mature young women to do." She sniffed.

    "Right…"

    I got the distinct impression that doing anything but smiling and nodding along was going to get me a long lecture about the 'proper' way of things and I had no interest in being talked at until I fell asleep.

    I had other things to do!

    Such as looking up sightings of Hawkie using her actual name since I had apparently lost that mental coin flip. Seriously, Hawkgirl instead of Hawkwoman? Hawkie looked like she was around the same age as Wonder Woman. If Donna showed up calling herself Wonder Girl or something like that and the media put them on the same level, Hawkie was going to flip.

    I paused reading the article I found while I thought about that.

    On second thought, I prayed that would happen. The mental image of a bunch of newsies getting chased around by a pissed off Thanagarian screaming that she was a grown woman was too funny to pass up.

    "This is exactly what I needed! Thanks, Miss Librarian!"

    "Happy to help, dear. Good luck on your assignment and please don't lay on the keyboards again."

    -o-

    Unfortunately Hawkgirl wasn't as famous a hero as Wonder Woman, Superman, or the Flash.

    Kinda, I mean she was obviously well known considering she was a founding member of the Justice League. Maybe it was better to say she wasn't as popular? As media friendly?

    All of the others were constantly in the news in one way or another that my target simply wasn't. Thankfully for me though, she wasn't on the level of Batman, who was usually only caught by a camera when he wanted to be.

    That meant that even the most recent sighting I could find in an afternoon using public internet was a few days old. And considering she could fly at a decent speed that meant it was almost useless. But it did give me a place to start looking.

    So after one last check to see if there was a more recent sighting that turned up nothing, I was off to the northern part of the Rockies to hunt down a bird woman.

    And promptly got stuck on what to do next because trying to find one person in a mountain range with no idea where to start looking was really freaking hard!

    Even going by Ki sense and only looking for the bigger sources I wasn't getting much luck. Thanagarians had more Ki than your average human, but it wasn't so different that I could just pinpoint who I was looking for at a glance. I ended up dropping in on a few hikers, four bears, and some sort of gorilla man before I found a group of Ki signatures a bit stronger than usual that I immediately went off to investigate.

    Why?

    Because there were six of them moving really close together, and more interestingly, they were underground…relatively. They were still pretty high up a mountain but being inside the mountain still counts.

    But that meant there was some kind of secret base inside a mountain that was begging to be explored!

    Unfortunately knowing that there was a secret base inside a mountain didn't mean that I knew where the entrance was. And I had gotten yelled at by Donna enough to know that blasting through the walls wasn't a really good idea if you wanted whatever was on the other side intact. Or for the roof to not cave in on your head because walls were important for that.

    So, yeah. No impersonating the kool-aid man unless I knew what the other side looked like.

    But that was fine, I had learned infiltration from Batman, after all.

    And one of the earliest lessons he had given me was that sometimes all you needed to do to sneak inside a secure location was just wait until someone left and be quick. And since the six people I was sensing seemed to be getting closer to the mountain's surface, I had a hunch I wasn't going to need to wait long.

    Moving carefully just in case there were some kind of external sensors, I flew close to the rock face and hid behind some boulders. I didn't need to wait long before the group of six got even closer before coming to a stop. The rock face split open as a hidden door revealed itself and I poked my head out to–

    "Oh ffff—" I yelped and dove back down behind my own rock as some kind of ship came screaming out of the mountain and almost took my head off. I turned to track it just in case they saw me on the way out, but the ship kept going slightly up into the air before vanishing into the sky.

    Okay, I guess that explained why the six of them were moving so close together. Really didn't appreciate the near-haircut, but no time to complain, I needed to sneak in before the door shut again!

    I managed to slip through just before the fake rock walls closed and landed in a crouch. I had to resist the urge to whisper 'I'm in' as I looked around.

    Not that there was much to see initially.

    So far I was just in a tunnel big enough for the ship I just dodged to fly down that went deeper into the mountain but not much else in sight.

    Only one way to go then.

    I flew down the tunnel keeping an eye out for anything that looked like a camera or sensor like Batman had taught me, but I also remembered he told me going anywhere for the first time without scoping it out almost guaranteed that you would miss something so I went in half expecting something to notice my presence.

    So when the tunnel opened up into a large hangar with absolutely no sign that I had been noticed going off I wasn't sure if I should be disappointed that I apparently managed to sneak in so easily or be proud of my stealth skills. For now I was going to go with a bit of both and see what I could poke into before something discovered me. Maybe those six were the only living things here?

    That thought was almost instantly disproven when a door at the back of the room opened and a bipedal lizard man in some sort of armor walked into the room and began digging through what looked like a toolbox. I hurriedly ducked behind a crate of some kind and peeked out to see if I had been spotted, but the lizardman seemed focused on finding what he was looking for instead.

    Definitely more people in the secret base then, but more concerningly I couldn't sense him.

    This wasn't like with the squids the spacecrabs used or the suit the army had built because I could see the lizard was an alien and not a robot, yet even looking right at him he was invisible to my Ki sense. Some function on his armor? But then why did the previous six show up? Was it intentional, or was it just a side effect? And what were a bunch of alien lizards doing in a secret mountain base in the first place?

    Too many questions were piling up and I knew smashing through their base now meant I wasn't likely going to get many answers. I was going to have to continue being sneaky.

    But I consoled myself with the knowledge that if I couldn't find answers by poking around I could always default to smashing stuff if I got caught or found nothing…

    Now then, how to sneak into the main part of the base without getting spotted moving across a mostly open room?

    I spotted a vent that looked just big enough for me to squeeze through and felt a giant grin stretch across my face.

    If the lizardmen hadn't kicked up an alarm yet, that meant they definitely didn't suspect someone had broken into their base. They doubly wouldn't suspect someone to be crawling around inside their walls…

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