This chapter was brought to you by ShadowMajin and Mysterious Prophetess.

Previously on TBLB, Karato found out his siblings had learned how to use powers like the alter humans on their own and that there was a whole group of people who could do it too, including Leche. Then he found out that Speed had violated his rights as a human by altering him against his will and then learned his humanity was being rapidly erased. How will this play out? Find out in the next chapter of TBLB!

Chapter 10: Transition

Karato clenched his fists so hard his nails broke skin and blood began to leap out, dripping from his clenched hands.

"How could he do that?! I'm not someone's science experiment! I'm a human being, damn it!" he yelled. Leche placed a hand on his shoulder lightly,

"I don' blame ya for bein' mad. He ignored proper science and ethics to do this t'ya," she said softly.

"If I'd known about that, I think I'd have volunteered." Karato looked up at Kaidon as Param face palmed. "The idea of facing them makes me excited, and being able to get strong enough to face stronger and stronger opponents, ah that sounds amazing. I'm actually jealous of you right now, little bro!" Looks were exchanged before the rest of the Zeta Force took a huge step away from the Son siblings and Leche.

"Are ya a utta blit'a'in moe-ran!" Leche yelled. Before she could charge forward one of her sisters had marched over and caught her, arms locking around the furious woman as she kicked and clawed at Kaidon. She was still yelling, but the sounds coming out were best rendered as, "HAFABRAINCOM'PLE'LYAAHHHH!YAAFUCKINIJITT'IS-AHHH-ITAHHAAHAH!"

"Kaidon. Are you telling me that you're jealous of me being someone's fucking science project?" Karato growled in a low tone.

"Dude, you're not looking at the bigger picture—."

"Bigger picture, Kaidon? I'm being turned into something inhuman and you're trying to tell me to 'look at the bigger picture' whenever you're a fighting-obsessed moron who is too dense to see something everyone else can!" Karato stormed off, the force of each step leaving indents in his wake.

Kaidon blinked owlishly before he noticed all the eyes in the room focused on him.

"What?" he asked. Param took a breath before she slapped the back of his head so hard that echoed around the clearing.

"Pa-ram!" he whined. Param kicked his ass, literally, before she followed the trail of footprint holes Karato had left behind.

Param saw that the trail of damage vanished after a while. She shrugged before she used her actual tracking skills to follow the trail he had left even after he stopped stomping like a four year old. Her brothers, she swore. She now suddenly understood why Aunt Wheta had so many gray hairs by the time she and Kaidon were sixteen. She heard something and looked up to see a massive boulder sitting in a second clearing and there was a set of feet dangling over the edge. This was a simply massive stone at least sixty feet high, and without being an expert rock climber, or a ki warrior there was no way up there. Yet, there sat someone. She leapt up from behind and saw it was Karato.

"Before, there was no way in hell that I could have gotten up here, now look!" he said smashing his fist into the rock. Param sat next to Karato and placed a hand on his head, running her fingers through his hair. Despite being spiky, it was still soft.

"There are times that I swear I got all the brains between the two of us, even though we weren't identical twins, with how his simplistic one-track mind can be when it comes to fighting," Param said.

"You got most of the common sense," Karato muttered.

"That I did." Param stopped her finger-combing and stood up offering her hand to Karato who took it. "Look around, baby brother. Sitting up here, isolated from the problems of the world, it would almost seem like nothing bad could happen, but shit is happening miles away as we speak. It's happening to bad people, like that fucker who did this to you, and shit happened to a good person like you. If I'm being honest here, it's probably a good thing that you were the one that had this happen to them."

Karato stared at her with disbelief.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because, you don't want power like most people do. If given the choice for this, you probably wouldn't see this as something you'd want, unlike that idiot twin of mine. If you did it at all, it'd be to help people." Param smiled at her brother who looked away.

"You're wrong. I did almost say yes to this back at the lab when Speed offered it. I just didn't think we should be doing what Gero did, changing people so that they're stronger. If Gero hadn't done that, I might have said yes. I might have just done it to be stronger than I am," Karato admitted clenching his fists again, "You're the real selfless one of the three of us, Param." Param laughed.

"Even I'm a little bit selfish too, Karato. Now, what do you say that we get off this rock and get somewhere that we can monitor you in case something goes wrong," Param said.

"Why say that?"

"Well, from the way Leche was frothing at the mouth, there's probably a lot that could go wrong during these changes," she explained.

"Right." Karato leapt off the boulder and landed with a crater. Param landed next to him gracefully, laughing as she did so.

"We're going to have to work on your control there, baby brother. The holes you made in the ground made it all the easier for me to follow you." Karato blushed and took a few steps before he screamed in pain. Knees buckling, he dropped to his knees, using his arms to brace himself against the ground. He dug his fingers into the dirt and grass, before he completely collapsed to the ground.

Param was immediately at her brother's side, wrapping her arms around his body before hefting him up, throwing him over her shoulder before she flew straight up and over to the first clearing. Her abrupt landing made the other members of the Zeta Force, plus the siblings Briefs jump.

"What happened?" Kaidon asked rushing over.

"Do you really think I know? You, Vegeta wasn't it? Think you can figure this out with little Leche?" Param said. Vegeta scoffed,

"This is my specialty." He took Karato's pulse, "It's been years since my residency, but his pulse is erratic and unless there's some way to stabilize him, he may not live long enough for me to figure out anything about his condition." Param looked over at Tien, who had also gotten closer to Param.

"Please tell me those healing tank things you guys were yammering about are up and running," she demanded.

"Healing tanks?" Vegeta said with a raised eyebrow.

"This way," Tien said motioning for her and Vegeta to follow him before they took off running.

"Do you have any equipment that can be used for blood analysis here too?" Vegeta asked.

"There should be, most of what we were restoring is ancient, but some of the machines are similar enough that we can guess at what they do," Tien explained.

"You're trusting a guess?" Vegeta looked at Param.

"If it saves Karato, I'd trust a million of them!" They stopped at a metal door carved into the ground, which Param stomped open.

"And she destroys another one," Tien sighed before he and Vegeta followed her down a tunnel, "Welcome to the actual head quarters of the Zeta Force, Dr. Briefs."

Vegeta was impressed by the level of advancement and yet simultaneous antiquated look the underground complex had to it. He stopped to admire some strange device that Bloom would probably be able to identify, and lost Param and Tien. He ran down the hallway glad there didn't appear to be any major forks and glanced into the open doors and found Param and Tien in a room filled with tanks. Tanks he recognized. Oh boy.

"My sister is going to murder all of you," he said, "She reported these missing from the West City site after only a day of finding them. She was so pissed."

"Surely she can't still be made about that," Tien said.

"She was so mad, she decided researching a Hellmouth sounded like a good idea and look where that got us!" Vegeta said.

"Would she forgive us if we told her we got them running?" Vegeta turned around to see it was one of the other twins in this place. It was the guy with black hair, Ches.

"Not really," Vegeta said. A "whooshing" sound made him turn back to the tanks. There was liquid filling it up. The way it flowed, it did not look like it was water.

"What is that stuff?" he inquired.

"We're not sure, exactly. All it needs is some basic proteins and water and whatever is in there programs it to become something else," Ches said, "So we use jello mix. Over in the next room, best we can tell, are machines that can scan blood and DNA. The data is too technical for most of us to read and Leche's still frothing at the mouth because of Kaidon's stupidity."

"I'll take a look, but only after I'm sure he's stable," Vegeta said pointing to Karato, "Also, you'd probably better get my sister in here. She might forgive you all if you beg and praise her."

"Is that what works for you?" Tien asked.

"Not unless I buy her at least ten pizzas." Vegeta studied the tank's side panels, finding screens with weird symbols but the readings on Karato's vitals were still in a form he understood. All signs stable. Phew! He poked at it a little bit more and jumped whenever it squawked at him.

"What are you trying to do?" Ches asked.

"I need to open it so I can get a blood sample from Karato to analyze," Vegeta said.

"Oh, press this button and then this one," Ches said, pressing what looked like random buttons.

"Don' ya need t'ese first?" Vegeta looked over his shoulder to see Leche had suddenly appeared next to him holding syringes and Tien was missing from the room. When had that happened?

"Calmed down now?" Vegeta asked before sticking the needle and his hand into the weird fluid. This was going to stain. Ugh. He found a vein and carefully withdrew the blood. He stepped clear of the tank, allowing it to close and shook some of the goop off.

"Let's see what's going on inside of you," Vegeta said staring at the sample.

Karato felt like he was—his eyes snapped open and he was in yet another tank, though this time the mask covered his whole face and didn't feel like it was strangling him. In front of the tank, though distorted a bit, were Param and Kaidon. Param pressed a button,

"Can you hear me? Nod if you can." Karato nodded.

"There's an ear piece that's part of your breathing mask, and a microphone out here, but we can't hear you," Param explained, "This is a "regen tank" that they dug up from a Lost Age site and have restored to working order. Best your friend Bloom can tell, this tank is as alien as our ancestor. The reason you're in this thing right now is—." Param pulled a piece of paper out of her back shorts pocket and cleared her throat, "and I quote Dr. Vegeta Briefs on this, 'Due to the virus accelerating its rate of genetic mutation and alteration, the stress on your body is being interpreted by your nerves as pain signals.' In other words, the virus is making you go Saiyan faster and it hurts like hell. For your own safety, you're being kept in this tank because it's one of the only ways we can ensure that any damage caused by your conversion is fixed." Karato wanted to argue, but he felt way too tired to even try to have a silent argument with his sister. Though, past experience had taught him that any type of argument with Param was just a waste of time; she always won.

"Oh, he's asleep." Param and Kaidon turned to see it was Vegeta Briefs who had just entered the room.

"We explained it exactly the same way you did," Param said waving her paper around, "though, I think I wrote something down wrong, but then I also made sure to give him the Kaidon proof version."

"Hey!" Kaidon protested.

"Thank you," Vegeta said.

"Have you looked at the blood samples?" Param asked.

"I have. This virus has no effect on a blood sample from the Galaxy siblings, but when tested against my or Bloom's samples, there was a definite reaction. If any of us Saiyan descended are not careful, you could be infected by this virus and end up being turned into a Saiyan too," Vegeta said.

"Do it," Param said.

"What?"

"Infect Kaidon and I with this virus. As much as I love my baby brother, he's untrained. There is no reason for us to not do this whenever we are actually trained martial artists who can use this power to its fullest extent and take down that robotic would-be tyrant," Param explained.

"There's also the chance this will kill you! We're lucky that your brother isn't dead!" Vegeta shot back gesturing at Karato's unconscious form.

"I don't care. This is the world we're talking about. My life doesn't matter," Param responded.

Vegeta stared at her incredulously before turning his sights onto Kaidon. "What about you, are you on board with possibly dying for a power-up!"

"Not exactly, but I was being honest that day I pissed off Karato. I would love to be stronger so I can fight stronger and stronger opponents," Kaidon said.

"Do it, or we will," Param said.

"Please understand the only reason I'm even helping you at all is so I can monitor you properly," Vegeta said, "If you infect yourselves then I'll have no data and you'll definitely end up dead." Vegeta carefully pulled up the sample of Karato's blood and withdrew a little. He sliced each sibling's finger and put a drop of the blood in the wound before sealing it shut with bandages.

"You will check in with me every damn day, understand?" he ordered.

"Understood."

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