8 Hours Until Departure, The Room of Spirit and Time
The blast of searing heat was the first thing to welcome Gohan back into the Room for the first time in well over ten years. The numbingly white and vacant dimension burned like something on the surface of the sun with torrents of fire spewing dozens of feet into the air right.
The second thing to greet him was the explosions frequently blasting from on high and smashing into the fire streams, temporarily blowing them away wherever the ki struck.
Louder then the fire or the blast impacts was the last thing to greet Gohan, Vegeta's usual growl shouting from somewhere high above ground level. "About time you showed up boy! Get up here!"
Walking up to the very edge of the inner entrance, Gohan felt the blast impact and heat more strongly than ever, fighting the urge to try and shield himself with his arm. He searched for Vegeta's ki and couldn't detect it at all while the fire pillars made it almost impossible to see anything more than a foot ahead of him.
The only giveaway for Vegeta's location was a peculiar blue light shaped like him shining like a star in the sky. Dropping off the bag of cut up Senzu onto a nearby table, Gohan took a deep breath and took flight towards the Saiyan Prince. As he approached, the blue aura glowed even more brilliantly, nearly blinding him before vanishing entirely, leaving nothing but plain old Vegeta waiting for him with his usual scowl and crossed arms.
"Took you long enough," He growled, tapping his upper arm impatiently. Gohan was keenly aware of Vegeta's intense gaze looking him over from head to toe to gauge his strength. "You seem to have restored your old power, at least."
And only that, more or less, Gohan thought sourly, trying to keep it from showing on his face. Elder Kaioshin warned him of hitting one's limits, and through the ritual, thankfully, passed much faster than last time. It wasn't anything close to what he'd need to help everyone. He hoped four months would be enough to bridge this gap. If anyone could help him, it was probably as someone as relentless as Vegeta.
"Well let's get on with it," The Saiyan Prince sighed, hovering a few feet away from Gohan. Snapping his body into a fighting stance, Vegeta transformed into a Super Saiyan half a second before throwing his first punch. Gohan only narrowly managed to avoid it and the ensuing barrage kept him firmly on the defensive.
Gohan couldn't help but marvel at how strong Vegeta had become. Just a few years ago no one but Gotenks was even close to matching him. Now, Vegeta was his equal, if not slightly better, as a regular Super Saiyan. The idea he had two more in reserve amazed and worried Gohan in equal measure.
As he kept blocking and dodging, straining himself to make his body remember old sequences and movements, the worry started to win out. Even with his full power back, Gohan felt just as clumsy as he did against Dabra. Power couldn't compensate for rusty skill, not in a close fight like this.
"This is more pathetic than I ever dared to imagine!" Vegeta shouted louder than the impact of his connecting blows and the spewing fire. "You can't even defend yourself without looking like a fool!"
Gohan couldn't help but agree, and so decided to take the initiative. Feigning defensive laps by purposefully allowing a punch to land, he withstood the force of the blow then rammed his foot into Vegeta's gut. It was strong enough to give him an opening or two.
With a mighty shout and burst of power, Gohan glowed a brilliant white, carving through the fire spirals shooting around them with his offensive. His attacks felt just as clumsy as the rest of him, missing their marks to varying degrees, being too fast or too slow. But at least Vegeta wasn't smashing into him anymore.
Indeed, the Saiyan Prince seemed to take the attacks in stride, deftly intercepting them and successfully repaying Gohan for every single punch to meet its mark. Eventually, the two of them broke off, flying across the sky, through and above the burning room around, attacking one another from all possible directions with physical or ki attacks.
By the time the day was over, the fire suddenly vanished, leaving the room back to its neutral, empty appearance. Gohan struggled to stay on his feet, the dozens of bruises and fatigue had taken their toll on him. Vegeta didn't seem winded at all, but thankfully, less angry then at the start of their training.
"Not as awful as I first thought," He admitted reluctantly, Gohan noted. "Still, Trunks was better than this when he first arrived."
Gohan thought he misheard, but then like a sleepy man struck by cold water, all his fatigue and injuries seemed to vanish. "B-but, how?!"
"Similar to you, he trained with the Kaioshin to fight Majin Boo, though he lacks this unique ability of yours to release power without transforming. But most importantly," Vegeta's tone grew a touch sterner. "He learned from his mistakes and trained properly."
"Even still, to become so strong without the ritual or God forms,..."
"There are many ways to power, and Trunks discovered one of his own," A note of pride was in his voice now. "Similar to you and Kakarot, he focused on perfecting the power of Super Saiyan, then attaining Super Saiyan 2. But unlike Kakarot, he didn't try to find something else above that. Instead, he spent most of his time improving the first two transformations, making his body familiar with their power and eventually, raising their strength well beyond anything the rest of us have accomplished. Bulma, the... future one created a sort of chamber to emulate this place to help push him along."
"I see,..." Gohan finally knelt, letting his mind contemplate the implications of all this. Trunks couldn't match Black even when the body snatches was weaker, despite being stronger than Gohan himself right at this moment! Now, Trunks and Black were both so much stronger.
And he felt so confident that he could help just a few hours ago...
"Don't start losing your edge again!" Vegeta barked, pointing an accusing finger at him. "If you want to go feel sorry for yourself leave this instant before I toss you out! I came here to train, so either pull your weight or leave. I'll not suffer your presence here otherwise!"
For a moment, Gohan seriously considered doing so, feeling the bruises, the scorching fire and the absence of Videl and Pan viscerally now. But he quickly shot this down, he couldn't back out, Trunks and the entire future could very well depend on him helping this time. Everything and everyone there could die if he didn't help.
So, Gohan pushed all this aside and brought himself back to his full height. "I'm staying."
Vegeta just looked back at him, probably looking for any sense of insecurity or worse, insincerity in Gohan's demeanor. The half-Saiyan could have sworn he saw his lip quirk upward before he powered down.
"Good, we'll resume tomorrow."
"Huh?" Gohan couldn't help but stare at him. "You-you're gonna rest?"
"Of course! I've been training all day well enough, a few hours of rest is what we both need to let our bodies rest."
"That sounds like something my dad would say."
Vegeta's eyes flashed darkly at him, Gohan took half a step back as he felt a cold sweat suddenly breakout. "Yes," He slowly admitted, scowling. "Trunks told me our old method of constantly forcing ourselves was the reason we fell behind last time. He suggested doing things your way. Training harshly then resting peacefully."
"I mean, the results kind of speak for themselves,..." Gohan hesitantly replied, reconsidering his decision to stay there.
"We'll see," Vegeta started walking towards the door and purposefully butted into him with his shoulder. "Needless to say, we won't speak of this to anyone else. Will we?" He very pointedly looked back at Gohan.
"D-definitely n-not!" Gohan stammered, nodding his assent.
The next few days fell into this routine, with Gohan and Vegeta spending most of the time honing Gohan's pure martial arts skills back to perfection then sleeping seven to eight hours every night. The scholar worried the process of dusting himself off would take longer, but Vegeta, pridefully, of course, touted this as another Saiyan advantage.
He said that a Saiyan's body was built for combat unlike any other and that it always remembered where and how to punch, kick, duck, roll, jump, and all the various fighting sequences combining these movements. Even if the mind using that body was out of shape, the body helped quicken the process of syncing them back together.
This natural fighting memory was so powerful, Black, who stole his father's body, was able to perfectly mimic his father's moves despite being a completely different person with none of Goku's training and battles under his belt.
Gohan was able to find out more about recent events during their short breaks in sparring. What this Goku Black was like, what he wanted, about Zamasu and the state of the future. Immediately, Black's purported arrogance and faux sophistication reminded Gohan of Freeza, Zamasu was much the same. From Kibito, he knew the Gods didn't necessarily like humans, but he never thought one of them would go this far.
Vegeta spoke of these two easily enough, talking about the future is where Gohan noted his hesitation and reluctance. He became suddenly angrier, raising his voice and talked in more clipped sentences. The once or twice he mentioned the Bulma of the future is when he even sounded just a bit sad, though Gohan knew his head would come off if I pointed any of this out.
Instead, he silently sympathized with him, knowing he'd feel the same way if in some future reality Pan was fighting for her survival and Vide was... gone.,
Once the rust was off, Gohan noted the immediate changes to his moves. His punches were strong and confident, his kicks didn't almost make him tumble to the ground anymore, and when he blocked, his stance was as firm as Katchin. Vegeta acknowledged this small progress with a nod, telling him that the real training would proceed now that he was as up to speed as he could be.
Vegeta also, to Gohan's confusion, gave a limitation on him: not to use his ki sensing but rely on his natural senses of sight, smell,... His natural fighting instincts. When asked why, the Saiyan Prince just said it was necessary for the last part of their training, assuming Gohan managed to get that far before they left.
That's how the next month passed.
6 Hours Until Departure
The situation was remarkably reversed, Gohan noticed, as he and Vegeta fought each other in the last portion of what Gohan dubbed Phase 2 of their training. The phase where Gohan was able to push past Vegeta's Super Saiyan power and was now having the edge against his Super Saiyan 2 self.
For every blow Vegeta himself managed to land, Gohan was the one responding with three or four blows of his own. The Prince was constantly pushed back in this exchange of blows, trying and failing to hold his ground and muster a purely physical offensive.
Gohan even noted the apparent fatigue Vegeta was trying to hold back, he could notice the raggedness of his breathing and the slowing down of his body. Small details he'd been able to see now that he fought without sensing ki.
That was a particularly grueling process, responsible for taking up almost 15 days worth of their time just for him to get the hang of. It felt like he was fighting blind for several sessions on end, or with a broken arm and leg. Gohan even thought of voicing the idea that they drop this but he knew Vegeta wouldn't budge. So Gohan persisted, and his Saiyan body simply got used to the change.
With his feet, he could feel the ground shake under Vegeta's heel when he took off into the sky, Gohan could know where he was just by listening to the direction of where his flight cut through the air. When they fought man to man, he noticed chinks in his attacks or defense to gain an edge.
One of them was presented to him now, he noticed Vegeta twist his body for an uppercut, pulling his dominant right and arm back. Except now, Vegeta's fatigue or failing focus made him pull his leg too far, leaving him exposed to an attack from below. Deftly avoiding the uppercut, Gohan struck Vegeta's other leg and swiped it right from under him.
For a second, the Prince was in the air until Gohan's fist connect to his left cheek and smashed him face first into the cold ground of the Room. The impact felt especially powerful thanks to Gohan's focused regular senses when the ground shook, he swore he could feel his bones quiver as well.
But Vegeta wasn't done, with a grunt he decided to forgo martial combat and took off into the air before Gohan could shoot him down or chase him, dozens of blasts were already on him. But not just from one direction, Vegeta flew all over in random directions to maximize his barrage of ki attacks destructive potential.
Gohan soon found himself pinned to one location but not overwhelmed, he was able to block or dodge the attacks well enough. As he stood there doing so, he noticed the trajectory of Vegeta's attacks, how they were all aimed approximately at his chest. The biggest target to hit and none of them smashed against the ground.
The scholar recalled a hunting trip he took with his father in law where Mister Satan talked his ear off about guns and how they worked. One particular detail of that trip sprang to mind, how marksmen were always taught to focus on body shots, specifically for the chest. Everything else was too small and difficult to hit, the chest? It was always a much surer thing.
Mentally thanking his father in law, Gohan decided to take advantage of Vegeta's mark and just as a new barrage of blasts came at him, he purposefully fell on his back. The blasts collided with one another, releasing a brilliant explosion less than half a foot away from Gohan himself.
As he hoped it would happen, Vegeta took the mass of explosions as a sign of success and rushed into the smoke cloud to capitalize on it. When the flying kick connected with nothing at all, Gohan was on him instantly. With a mighty shout, he roared the name of his attack, "Masenko!" and watched as the Prince was devoured and launched over a dozen feet away bit it, suffering the full brunt of the impact and ensuing explosion.
Re-entering his fighting stance, Gohan prepared himself for another attack, but as he focused on the ground beneath him, he didn't feel Vegeta take off or even walk at all. Cautiously, Gohan walked up to the spot where the smoke of his Masenko still rosed and halted when he felt Vegeta stomp back on his feet.
With a wave of his hand, the Prince blew aside the smoke and only then did Gohan notice the multitudes of scrapes and wounds all over him. Even Bulma's incredibly durable armor looked cracked and broken in several places- But, despite panting and looking like he was about to keel over, Vegeta was smiling at him.
"Impressive... boy..." He panted out and depowered from Super Saiyan 2. "I didn't expect a trick like that..."
Allowing himself to relax, Gohan felt a familiar embarrassment creep up to him at the praise. "Gee, thanks, Vegeta!"
"Now!" He shouted, no longer smiling. "Get me a piece of those Senzu you cut up, now that you've proven yourself capable, it's time for the real training to begin!"
Nodding, Gohan flew back to the entrance, noting his own lack of fatigue despite several cuts and bruises too. The bag sat on the table and he gingerly removed half of a Senzu bean out. Luckily, he told Yajirobe to divide the few that were left into bits and pieces, meaning they could fix themselves up here, or against Black should the need arise, even if the full healing effect was diminished.
"Now then," Vegeta cracked the bones of his neck both ways in preparation. "We let get down to business."
For an instant, his usually black eyes flashed blue half a second before an aura, the same one he noticed a month earlier from a distance enveloped him from head to toe. It looked thicker than the usual Super Saiyan aura, more all-consuming. The flames burned most blue on the edges while closer to Vegeta himself, it looked white with sparks of gold particles faintly flowing around.
"This is a Super Saiyan with the power of a Super Saiyan God," Vegeta explained. "But for brevity sake, we call it Super Saiyan Blue."
Gohan didn't notice much if any change in Vegeta's physique besides his hair and eyes turning the forms color. What he did notice on further inspection is how he couldn't detect his energy at all anymore. Despite the fact Vegeta was standing right there in front of him, if one relied solely on their ki sensing, they'd probably think Vegeta had just vanished into thin air.
"That lack of feeling is precisely why I instructed you to fight without relying on ki sensing, "Vegeta noticed the inspection and explained further. "When your father and I reached a certain point in our training with Whis to attain this form, we temporarily lost the ability to feel ourselves or our opponents, forcing us to clumsily waste time on training without sensing before we could properly cultivate the God ki inside us."
"Cultivate it? I thought you and dad got it from those rituals?"
"Nothing but a shortcut," Vegeta snorted with contempt. "A hodgepodge of other people's energy put into ourselves. This form is one's innate God ki nurtured and fully realized through a transformation."
Gohan supposed that made sense when they performed the ritual at his dad and Vegeta's insistence some time ago, Gohan felt something strange but powerful well up inside of him before vanishing inside the other two Saiyan's. He hadn't felt it since.
"But won't I need to sense to get this power?"
"Your Saiyan body will do the work for you. Remember what I said earlier, Saiyan bodies are special, they learn, they react and they remember. Remembering and feeling the sensations has helped us out before. I remembered the feel of your father's strength and Trunks' when they demonstrated Super Saiyan to me for the first time. Goten and Trunks remembered the feel of Kakarot's Super Saiyan 2 and 3 power and purposefully chose to pursue it inside their own energies."
"As you and I do battle, your body will learn from the sensations and gradually, you will learn to tap into the same power you must've felt during the Super Saiyan God ritual and mature it. Although," Vegeta crossed his arms. "I don't know how it will work for you since you've grown past the need to transform. Perhaps you'll simply stay like this or perhaps you'll attain that form Trunks did."
"Yeah, I remember you mentioning something like that," Gohan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I wondered how he could do it without practicing with Whis."
"Him becoming as powerful as he was certainly helped matters and our own sparring sessions were down with me exclusively in this form. Though, his isn't entirely like me. The power of Blue is calming but Trunks attained his own version through raw anger the likes of which I haven't seen since your childhood days."
Gohan's blushed in embarrassment again at being reminded of that but quickly corrected himself. "I hope I can pull off learning this, I know it took you and dad a while to get this far and we've only got three months left."
"You're already stronger now than we were when we started training and your non-reliance on ki sense will save us at least two or three weeks that would've otherwise been wasted. But enough talk!" He suddenly barked, entering a fighting stance. "Now is the time to fight, harder than ever, and I expect you to show ten times the progress you've achieved thus far! Understood?!"
Responding by entering his own stance, Gohan allowed his own white aura to flare to life and without a hint of hesitation or worry nodded his assent. Vegeta smirked and the two began the first of many, many battles for the months to come. All dozens of times more fierce than all the one's proceeding them...
Phew! Lots of exposition and working around Super's... iffiness when it comes to powers and abilities but honestly, this is probably my favorite chapter so far. Hopefully the flow of events I felt while writing is present for you guys, the readers.
Next chapter, you can expect us going back to Piccolo and Goku with some other characters getting POVs.