Tarble's place in the Frieza-force:

He doesn't want Tarble to be the face of the Frieza-force, but the Saiyans. They'll make up a pretty substantial portion of his forces but the face of the Frieza-force will always be him. As for why he wants Tarble to be the face of the Saiyan race, his story is going to be pretty fucking metal. And Frieza is going to make sure that everyone knows Tarble's story due to propaganda. I mean look at it in this context:

As a literal newborn infant, he fought to the brink of death, healed, then fought again every single day for three months. Then, still as an infant by his people's standards, he goes on a suicide mission to instigate a war with one of the most powerful empires in the galaxy. He spends years behind enemy lines, growing stronger all the while until he does the impossible- he becomes a mid-class saiyan as a toddler whereas the rest of his species spends decades trying to manage that same feat. Now, he's killed a Green Lantern in single combat.

A month later, on his first mission, he proves to be a brilliant tactician and leader. He provided the plan that took out a sizable Reach fleet that vastly outnumbered their own, and it was a decisive victory until reinforcements showed up. He rescues a company that was on the verge of being wiped out to the man, fighting through Reach controlled territory that was infested with scarabs. And it only gets crazier from there - he steals incredibly valuable data from the Reach, he captures a high-value prisoner, he fought an army of scarabs to a standstill for six hours, he killed a Champion scarab with a flashy finish, then the incredibly valuable planet of Rench was rendered useless for years. He turned a crushing defeat into a total victory.

And he's still a toddler. What's he going to be like in another four years? Or ten? Or twenty?


The next few arcs:

So, on a general note - this concludes this arc. There are two interlude chapters coming before the start of the next arc. They'll cover about a two-year time skip. After that, there will be a short arc and you'll finally get a peek at what King Vegeta has been up to. Originally, there was going to be a six-year time skip after that, but I've decided against it. I'm planning to introduce new characters and elements to the story and I don't want to run into the same issue that I hit with the team in terms of lack of development.

So, there will be two very short arcs that each span about three years each. I'm planning them out to be around four chapters long or so. By then, Tarble will be twelve and have his first growth spurt. Just figured I should make a small announcement since I noticed some questions about it.

Edit: On another note, a fun fact - Leek was supposed to remain dead. Originally, I wanted his death to be left in the air to show that sometimes you don't get closure to some character's deaths. That something as simple as a loss in communication could get a character killed. It wasn't even the lack of response to his death that changed my mind. When I was writing the fight, I realized it was just another generic, faceless scarab. It had less narrative weight than the vanguard that Tarble killed in the last arc because at least then it served as a milestone and stage to introduce the Wrath State.

So, I brought Leek back and gave him a proper send-off.


Romance: I'm still undecided but it's incredibly unlikely that this will become a harem fic. I don't particularly enjoy them in the first place, and I don't think I could write one well enough to feel realistic and organic. Right now I'm leaning to either a Raven or Cassandra Cain pairing, but it's still in the air. It could just as easily be Blackfire, Starfire, or someone else. The only person I'm leaning against is Supergirl - personally, I think that their world views clash too much, but Supergirl apparently has an unhealthily large tolerance for creepy shit if the guy is hot enough, so who knows.

I made a post about Cass over on QQ, because of course that would be their concern, so I'll just crosspost it here:

I would disagree because there are plenty of parallels between Cass and Tarble. Their initial upbringing - Cass was tortured by her father, crippled socially, in order to create the perfect warrior. Tarble was put in the equivariant of a dogfighting ring as soon as he was born, and was only allowed to leave when he killed the dogs, all to create the perfect warrior. From there, the parallels run past each other, turning both of them into reflections of what could have been.

Cass ran away after she killed the first time, and Tarble didn't. Cass rebelled from what the league of shadows and her father was trying to turn her into, and Tarble conformed and embraced trying to turn into what his father wanted him to be. Cass learned to have a great respect for life, and Tarble gradually lost that respect except for a select few. Cassandra uses her talents to save people and Tarble uses them to kill for a war he doesn't know why it started against enemies that he's only killing because someone told him to.

It's a fun idea to toy around with because, if Tarble had run away, then he would be a lot happier for it in the grand scheme of things. So, I can see him having that respect for Cass. And I can see Cass looking at Tarble, and seeing what she could have become, and knowing what Tarble's past has cost him.

So, I think it could be rather interesting. I guess it comes down to chemistry when I write the characters. But, like I said, the romance isn't set in stone because I might like the idea of two characters together, but when I write them they won't click like I want them to. And there's nothing worse than a forced romance.


Romance Continued: I'm playing it by ear. As someone who has read and wrote bad romance, nothing can kill interest in a story faster for me than dealing with a poorly handled romance with forced together characters because the author wanted them to be together. There's a not-insignificant chance that Tarble doesn't end up with anyone - it all depends on how I feel writing character interactions when I get to earth if they have chemistry if they bounce off each other well, and if the romance itself lends something interesting to the narrative.

Take Cass for example. Tarble dating her puts him in direct confrontation with Batman since she's his favorite kid. The batfamily is one of the more popular list of characters, so it offers organic ways to interact with that cast. Not to mention the sheer hilarity of the conflict between Batman and Tarble while they try to keep it civil for Cass' sake.

Raven, on the other hand, I think is one of the few characters that would be able to understand Tarble and the clusterfuck that is his mental state. Right now, a psychiatrist would take one look at Tarble and prescribe him so many pills he'd be using the cap as a serving size. Her being an empath lends her rather well to this, and then there's the destruction of Azarath to think about. Their characters serve as good foils to each other because both of them were born to be monsters and they struggled against that fate. One with more success than the other. With Raven, the Teen Titan cast opens up.

With Starfire or Blackfire - They come from warrior backgrounds, which gives them a much better understanding of Tarble's mindset than, say, Superman. With Star and Blackfire, their people's histories share a great deal of similarity and both of them could be interesting foils for Tarble in different ways. Blackfire because she treats power with respect and seriousness, while Starfire is far more lighthearted and goodnatured, so both of them would bounce off Tarble in interesting ways.

So, in the end, nothing will be decided until we reach Earth. I think a poll would be a bad idea because if one character wins and I don't end up liking how the characters interact or I don't personally care for the pairing, then it's going to step on some toes if I decided against exploring the relationship.

Also, to clear things up - Tarble growing larger was him entering the second stage of the Wrath State. It's the stage where Broly's hair grows spikey, he grows larger and the green aura around him is intensified. Tarble's growth spurt will happen when he's twelve. And since it was brought up over - Tarble is biologically seven or eight years old, but the years he spent in the gestation tank don't count, like how the nine months spent in the womb don't count.

So, technically speaking, the first growth spurt happens around sixteen years of age, but because of gestation tanks, they actually happen around the twelve-year mark.


Telling the Guardians to fuck off: I was aiming for a subversion of expectations, and a benchmark for Tarble's progress in going native. If he was as human in mentality as he was, say four years ago, he would have used the ring. Instead of relying on borrowed power he told the guardians to fuck off and to rely on his own power. Was this the smartest move? No, it wasn't for reasons beyond the immediate loss in a power-up that would have saved the day. However, I do think it was an in-character decision on Tarble's part.


Zenkais and how they work (an older post): Also, on a general note, zenkais aren't as game breaking, stupidly overpowered yet as they were in DBZ. Yet. As I understand it, the zenkais effectiveness is determined by the saiyan biology reacting to the power of an opponent, while the healing part was the body building itself back up stronger than ever, like a broken bone. The closer to death, the more it can rebuild and toughen up.

Zenkais only become game breaking when combined with ki sense. That way the body feels exactly how much stronger an opponent is, so it responds accordingly to match that strength. This is supported when Vegeta is shocked he heals after fighting Goku on earth, his pl jumping up 6,000 points, growing stronger by a 1/4. Up until this point, during the fifteen years or so of serving under Frieza, if we accept that he was stronger than his father when Planet Vegeta was destroyed, he only gained roughly 5,000-8,000 pl.

Currently, the scouters do the same thing as ki sense but in a much less effective method. Seeing a number that is bigger than your number isin't the same as feeling the gap in power. Which brings me to the point of this little spiel.

Until ki sense is gained, the largest zenkai a saiyan can gain is about 5%. Most will be closer to 1%. This first one is an outlier because the SI understands that if the saibaman stood there, doing nothing while he punched it, the very most he could hope to do was get it dirty with his blood. His body reacted to that gap in power, which is why he got closer to a 30%.


Zenkais continued: Sort of? A lot of it is how close you get to death so the body can build itself back stronger. The rest is how the body feels the difference in power. For example; I have a friend of mine that does MMA, and he thinks that he could put up a fight against big names like Mcgregor and Cris Cyborg Justino. He can't, but because he has fighting experience, he thinks that he would at the very least get a few good hits in. It's that mentality that makes zenkais less useful as time goes on. Because you have experience, because you think you can at least do something to the opponent that so much stronger than you, the body doesn't get this feeling of 'holy fucking shit, I'm so dead they'll have to make a new word to describe how dead I am.'

But, again, a lot of that funnels into how damaged the body is. When you get that feeling plus being beaten within an inch of your life, you get a 30% zenkai. If you get that feeling but don't get beaten within an inch of your life, then you don't get a zenaki at all. If you get beaten within an inch of your life, but you thought you could totally take the guy even though you knew deep down that you couldn't, you get a 1%-5%.