A.N. IT'S BEEN FOREVER SINCE I LAST WROTE ANYTHING. My life seems to be getting back in order and I've gotten back my desire to write shit. Yeah, I am working on I am E.N.D., just catching up on the manga and re-reading the tenrou island arc (where the next few chapters will take place). So in order to pass the time while I remember what the hell was going on with the plot and to get my groove back, I am going to write a DBZ fic.
With DB Super out and gaining popularity, I found this to be a damned good time to write a DBZ fic. I personally love this entire franchise, but two things have ALWAYS bothered me about it. The Saiyajin favoritism that is rampant in this show is just plain unfair. Unlike many DBZ fanfic authors, I understand that a huge part of the power gap is the humans' own fault, and that will be addressed, and dealt with, same with the power gap. The other major issue I have about the show is the horrible inconsistency among power levels and gaps. Like how Toriyama can't ever decide if SSJ2 acts as super super saiyajin, or just a multiple of x4. (SSJ has been stated to be a multiple of x50 {which I do plan to keep since Kiaoken x20 was so much weaker})
Because the power levels are done away with in the show after Frieza, and the Word of God magazines that gift us with the canon power levels make absolutely no fucking sense, I will be overriding them almost completely. I will start this story with the canon power levels of characters and enemies but they will be completely left behind in order to make sense and most importantly BE CONSISTENT. This is not a speculation sheet on power levels or transformations, and I really don't care if you agree with it or not. All I promise is to be consistent.
Anyway, the plot of this story is to explore the potential of humans, namekians, saiyajins, and everything in-between equally. This WILL very quickly turn to an AU. Feel free to think of this as Crack or a serious AU. I hope you enjoy it, either way. This chapter will be a little short, as it's kinda me dipping my toes back in the pool of writing. If you guys enjoy it, after I post my FT fic chapters I will increase the chapter size.
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The scorching sun was, unfortunately, the first thing he saw when he forced his eyes open. Blinking rapidly and turning his head away from it, Tien tried to move his battered body and only succeeded in twitching. He attempted to collect his thoughts as he was fairly sure he had a concussion, and couldn't really remember where he was. Swallowing hurt, even when his mouth was bone dry. He started to remember why he was here. He had failed, but Goku was fighting Piccolo.
Tien couldn't remember exactly what had happened last, but he didn't see anyone nearby. A shout from above him caught his attention, and his gaze. He saw a flash, and heard Goku scream, whether in pain, or anger, Tien couldn't tell. "Goku..." He hoped that the kid wasn't killed.
A new scream made him look harder, but they were too far up to make out very well. The scream clearly came from the demon king, as Goku's voice wasn't that deep or guttural. Tien almost gave up on figuring out the outcome, but he saw the smaller form rocket away from the larger one. Shortly afterwords, the large form began to free-fall from the sky before exploding. King Piccolo was dead! Tien's whole body slackened in relief, before noticing that the explosion sent Goku careening towards the Earth.
"Oh no...Goku." He wanted to reach out and save the hero, but he barely had enough strength to speak, let alone run up and catch a child falling at terminal velocity. As he fell closer, Tien could see that Goku was just as tired and broken as himself, and he wasn't going to be able to land safely. He couldn't turn away, even though he didn't want to witness Goku's end. As Goku came within twenty feet to the ground, a shadow nabbed him out of the sky and carried him to the other side of the crater Tien lied in.
As the man struggled with his balance Tien got a better view of him. He was new, and had wild black hair, and a sword hanging off his broad back. Tien wanted to get a look at the stranger's face, but he and Goku started a conversation and what was left of his stamina was rapidly dwindling. Blackness surrounded his vision, and his head fell back to the ground.
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Bulma sighed as the hot water soothed her muscles. She had already rinsed off the dust and powder from the desert and rocket launcher respectively, and was now enjoying a reward for surviving another day. She had watched Goku helpless against King Piccolo's underhanded hostage technique, and felt just as useless as he must have.
The only difference was that Bulma always felt worthless when her friends or herself were in danger. Goku trained and bled every single day to get stronger. Bulma noticed that the kid she met those years ago often had to use his hard won strength to help her and his other friends because he was the only one who seemed able to keep up with the ever increasing dangers they faced.
She couldn't explain why, but something about that fact rubbed her the wrong way. No, it outright pissed her off. She just didn't really know why. Maybe it was helplessness. As the daughter of a rich super genius, and no dunce herself, she always had felt a sense of security and confidence in herself. Until she met a ten year old kid with a tail who shrugged off a car crash and 9mm bullets in the forests around Mt. Paozu.
She unplugged the drain and stepped out of the tub. Grabbing a towel, she waltzed into her room and began drying herself off. Head consumed in thoughts of her best friend and the fairness of him constantly having to save those weaker than himself. She opened her underwear drawer and searched for her favorites.
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4 months later
Krillin ignored the sweat running off of his upper lip as he finished his 50th set of 500 push ups. He had an extra large shell on his back, but he was already getting used to the extra weight after only a week. He rolled onto his back and rested on the shell.
He knew that Goku was training with Kami. There was no way a turtle shell was going to be enough to keep up with that sort of training. That disregarding the fact that Goku was over twice as strong even before the training. Krillin was extremely grateful that he was brought back through the effort of Goku, but it was a bit disheartening that the difference between the two turtle school students had such a vast divide.
He enjoyed the melody of the tides and the warmth of the sun outside of Kame House as he rested. Bulma had called him to ask him to bring Yamcha to Capsule Corp for a new invention. Unfortunately Yamcha had left weeks ago on a "Journey of Self Improvement". Krillin had no idea where the ex-bandit was.
'Oh well.' Krillin thought. He knew he had to shower before his trip to Bulma's. The high society girl always kicked a fuss about sweat smell. He rolled back over to his feet and shrugged off the shell and walked towards the house. 'Guess I better get ready.'
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Bulma was bouncing one leg while she sat on her couch as she waited for one of her friends to show up. In her hands she toyed with a simple looking blue watch. She glanced at the time on said watch. 11:43am. She had asked them to show up at noon. She felt butterflies in her gut as she thought about the difference her invention would make in all of their lives.
She had spent months on this little thing. Her introspection months ago had led to many sleepless nights of studying the human body and ancient texts on ki. It helped to know so many people who were veritable masters of ki. Some of the things that she had read just didn't seem possible. Well, neither did coming back from the dead or flying so….
A light rapping on the door tore her from her reverie.
Bulma ran to the door and tore it open to greet the newcomer. "Hello Tien. Nice to see you again. You as well, Chiaotzu." The two looked startled by her sudden appearance. "Please, come in. Thanks for coming." The large three eyed man and the child emperor smiled shyly at her.
Bulma stepped out of the way and the two fighters entered her home. She looked around to see if Krillin had arrived and was not disappointed. A bald kid stepped off of a bus and caught her eyes. He started waving and ran over. He was in front of her in a couple of seconds.
"Hey Bulma. What's up? You said you had something to show me?" He looked up at her and was unsettled by her smirk.
"Just come inside, Krillin. I've got quite the surprise."
The monk nodded and entered the main house and was followed by Bulma, who ignored the many people gawking at the scene of a man running faster than a cheetah.
Once inside, Krillin tilted his head and asked her, "Okay, so what's this all about anyway?" Bulma just gave him another smirk and pranced to the living room. Following her, Krillin couldn't help the feeling that he was terribly out of the loop. This feeling intensified as he saw the World Martial Arts Champion and his younger friend quietly sitting on one of the couches in the living room.
Bulma spun around once getting to the corner of the room and spread her arms to display her wrists. The three fighters just stared at her.
"This is why I called you guys here." She nodded towards her right wrist, where the watch was.
"You...wanted us to see a watch? Bulma that doesn't make any sense. Why are they here anyway?" Krillin asked, running out of patience for the woman's flare for the dramatic.
Bulma just grinned widely and took off the watch. Krillin thought he saw some sort of change in her posture as she did but since the others didn't seem to see it, he didn't bring it up.
"Before you start, why don't you try it out?" Bulma asked him innocently. She walked over to him and held up the watch for him to see.
Despite his gut feeling telling him to say no, Krillin figured he couldn't look like a wimp in front of Chiaotzu or Tien. He had no idea what this watch did, 'but if I know Bulma, I'm not going to like what happens next'. He grabbed the watch from her hands and placed it on the top of his wrist. 'Nothing yet...'. Krillin snapped the band around his wrist and the watch clasped together on its own. Still nothing noticeable occurred.
Giggling, Bulma waved a hand towards Krillin while looking at the clueless Tien and Chiaotzu. "Now, watch the magic." Turning her head back to Krillin she pointed at a blue button on the side of the watch. "Krillin, please press that blue button, and uh… you might want to get into a stable stance."
Gulping, Krillin settled into a horse stance, and hesitantly reached for the button. He clicked it, expecting an explosion or something equally horrible. He was a little off the mark, as out of nowhere, a force seemed to press against every inch of his body, making it hard to move and even breathe. He felt like he was being mashed into the ground, and only the wide stance and his strength kept him from falling on his rear. He didn't know what the hell was going on, he even felt a bit more tired already.
"I don't get it. What does it do?" Chiaotzu asked. Tien just stared with wide eyes at the obviously struggling monk.
"I would like to ask...the same." Panted Krillin. He seemed to re-focus and took a deep forceful breath. The shock wearing off, he was able to stand almost normally and only had to focus on breathing. Bulma took out 3 more watches and tossed them to all three guests.
"This, is what I like to call my Resistance Amplifier Training Watch. Or RAT watch." Bulma announced and clasped the watch onto her own wrist. "And it functions exactly as it sounds. Everything in the universe has resistance. Even vacuums have gravity and occasionally light." She explained. Krillin scratched his head in confusion.
"But… what does that have to do with anything?"
Bulma swatted his head with the back of her hand and fiddled with her RAT watch some more. "I wasn't finished. What I did was reverse my dad's technology for his dynamo capsules and instead of scaling down matter and energy, I scaled it up." She said haughtily, chest out and chin high. "With this watch on, everything from natural atmospheric pressure, to gravity, your blood pressure, and even wind resistance is doubled." Bulma pointed to some arrows on the other side of the watch. "I have gotten it to be able to go up to x5, but I wouldn't do that if I were you until you are a lot stronger."
Tien leapt to his feet from the couch with all three eyes wide open. "That's amazing! Training with this watch on…"
"Will show double the results it normally would." Bulma finished for him. She looked to Chiaotzu and smiled for him. "The only payment I ask is one simple thing." They all looked at her warily and Krillin turned off his RAT watch in case he needed to run.
"As I said, this literally doubles all of your effort in training and thus will double the rate at which you increase your strength. But there is one thing this is missing." Bulma raised her fingers towards Tien and shot him with an imaginary finger gun.
"Our energy" Provided Chiaotzu. Focused on his own watch.
"Yep. I did some research on my own about ki and while it was very fascinating nothing really helped explain the actual way it works. Without a way of knowing what it even is, I couldn't find a way to raise the resistance for ki attacks so that you could practice that as well."
Krillin raised his hands behind his head and guessed her desire. "So you need us to help figure out how to limit our ki with the watch?"
"Exactly. Well… that's one condition." Now it was Bulma's turn to look towards Tien and Chiaotzu shyly. They gave her their attention, putting down the watches. "I want to be trained by you, Tien, in the way of the Crane school." She announced.
