Authors Notes: A couple of dialogue lines in the last chapter have been refined. Gohan says ten thousand instead of twenty thousand.
"Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety eight. Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine." Gohan struggled with the final squat, every last muscle on fire, on the verge of tearing. His energy was near spent, his knees refusing to bend one last time.
He did it anyway. "Ten. Thousand." He tumbled onto his back. The ground was slippery with his own sweat.
"Well done," 18 said with a drip of sarcasm. She had finished her workout minutes earlier, but her weights were only five hundred kilograms a piece.
"Thanks," he wheezed. The compressive force of the weighted jacket made breathing itself a workout while lying down. He tried to sit up… and found that he couldn't, pinned by two ton ankle and wrist bangles, which weighed twenty tons each thanks to ten-times gravity, a hundred tons of total downward force including the jacket.
18 asked, "Do you need help?"
"That'd be nice."
She heaved of the left wrist bangle with a lot of exertion, and when she pulled the one on his right, she grimaced in pain, but she powered through, an electric arc sparking around her forearms. She palmed the ground. Sweat rolled down her arms while she panted. "You can do the rest."
"Give me a minute. Or ten." A strand of hair at the corner of his eye turned black. Two ton weights were too much, even though he had been comfortable with them five years ago. He had lost so much strength.
"Do you want a bean? I could use one."
His neck aches as his head shook. "They're only for if we badly injure ourselves."
"Fine." She lied down, eyes closed, the back of her hand on her forehead.
"I thought you have infinite energy."
Her tongue clicked. "That doesn't mean my body is infinitely durable, and I do get sleepy like you. What's the time?"
At the mention of sleep, his eyelids were suddenly heavier. "I think we've been awake for over sixteen hours."
"Does it ever get dark here?"
"It's always bright." And the temperature had risen to scorching degrees.
"My god. This is like torture. This is torture."
He huffed a sore breath. "That's what my dad said to Vegeta."
"Do you still want to go on?"
"Of course. I need to master Super Saiyan Two at least, and before even trying, I need to regain my lost power." With a smidgen of remaining willpower, he forced himself back into base Super Saiyan and did one excruciating sit-up. "Ugh," he coughed as his jelly arms somehow were able to lift the weighted jacket over his head. He dropped it, and the ground vibrated on impact.
She mumbled, "Careful. Take it easy."
"I know." The weights at his ankles came off with much less struggle. "There. Now let's wash up."
"How does the plumbing work? Do we need to save water?"
"It's magic. Try to not flood the place."
"Then I want a warm bath. Can you carry me?"
Gohan tried to scowl, but even his facial muscles were exhausted and sore. "You can't walk?"
"Think of it as your warm-down exercise."
He sighed. As he stood, his body was both weightless and heavy, his legs wobbling as though made of tofu rods. He scooped up her slightly taller body, carried her like he had seen in his parents' wedding photos. Trying to not stumble, he stepped twenty times toward the entrance structure. Gravity returned to normal when his feet touched polished stone, and the washroom had been renovated, a nice surprise. There now was a spacious walk-in shower. The bath was much longer, wider, deeper; he placed her inside.
"Thank you, Gohan," she said mischievously. "You can wait your turn outside."
He gave her a long, unimpressed stare. "Really?"
"I'm kidding, you little perv." She patted the marble. "Come in, there's plenty of space." She unzipped her track suit and peeled off the sweat-drenched fabric. She smelled of coconuts and musk and a hint of beefy spice. She undid her bikini while he undressed. Their clothes went into shallow buckets to soak overnight.
"I'm so tired that I can't get aroused," he chuckled, sat next to her, and lifted the mixer tap's flat handle.
"Good. It means you're really pushing yourself." She covered her private places while the water level rose. The water was magically soapy, lavender-scented. Foamy bubbles popped at their necks.
He rested his head against her shoulder. A yawn made bones in his jaw click. "Hey, 18?"
"Hmmm?"
"My dad wasn't lying about my cooking skills. You can cook, yeah?"
"Lucky for you," she said, throwing water at his face, "I've taken culinary classes before. Only a few classes. Don't expect the world's finest gourmet meals."
Good enough for him. He sank deeper, hugged her close. His eyelids lazed shut, and he drifted somewhere far away on the world's comfiest pillows. She said something lost to his ears.
A bell went off, startling him awake. Just the alarm clock. He had fallen asleep in the bath with her, and she had apparently done the laundry and dressed him. His pajamas smelled of mint. He pushed up against the hard mattress, his body still sore, sorer than yesterday. But he was fully refreshed.
Fully energized.
He instantaneously transformed without grunting or needing a trigger memory. Yes, this was the power which he had lost. Not all, but some—a small portion regained. There was still much to do, days if not weeks of training to endure, but today was for very light training at most. As Father had said, resting was as important as training; his muscles needed to heal.
18 was lounging at the dining table, drinking tea. She pleasantly said, "Good morning, Gohan."
"Morning, 18." He sat and grabbed a toasted triangle sandwich off the plate. The bread had been well-preserved, magically, and the ham, lettuce, and sliced tomato was well-seasoned with salt, cracked pepper, butter, and mayonnaise. Not bad, thanks to Dende. Much better than Kami's brown rice and water. He scarfed down three triangles, then said, "You're a good cook, and sorry for falling asleep on you again."
"It's fine. You can make it up to me with today's lesson."
"What lesson?"
"Have you forgotten already? You promised to teach me the Kamehameha."
He swallowed a mouthful of strong green tea, then gobbled up three more sandwiches, leaving only crumbs on the plate. "Sure, let's go." The chair's legs harshly squeaked against the floor as he stood. He led her into the white wilderness. Today, the temperature was moderate on the warm side. Perfect.
Fifty yards from the entrance, 18 asked, "What other techniques do you know?"
He listed off his fingers: "Solar Flare, Destructo Disk, and Masenko, which is like the Kamehameha but not as energy-efficient or powerful."
"Is that all?"
"Unfortunately."
Her head tilted. "What about the energy bands you used on me when you were holding me down?"
"Uh, that was more of an instinctual thing. I just shaped my energy into bands and used my mind to keep them in place, if that makes sense."
She held out an upturned palm. For ten seconds, she stared at her fingers, her expression calm and unreadable. "I don't understand."
"Well…" He held out his palm, willed his energy to focus into a ring. A thick, golden-white band formed. Now that he examined it, this improvised technique was very energy-inefficient, atrocious for long battles. He willed it to shrink to a point. "Like that. Did you feel how I did it? The trick is to project your will into your energy, if that makes sense."
Her eyes shut, and she tried again and stayed absolutely still for over a minute. Even her hair was unmoving… until the temperature abruptly dropped ten degrees, causing an upward draft. From her throat she grumbled in frustration, and it seemed she was about to give up when a ball of her pale-yellow primal energy lit up in the shape of a narrow tube that gradually bent into a ring. It then shattered into a million sparks.
Her eyes opened, and her silvery irises seemed to glow very slightly. "That was harder than you made it look."
"Maybe it's because you're using primal energy."
"Maybe." She exhaled. "So which of your techniques is the easiest to learn?"
"Well… Solar Flare is the easiest in my opinion, but it's very similar to igniting an aura." He scratched the side of his face. "So we'll start with Destructo Disk. It's basically just an energy blast that doesn't explode. First, try to hold an energy ball like this." He again presented his upturned palm. A sphere of energy grew to the size of an orange.
Her first attempt yielded a blast shooting off into the white sky and detonating over their heads. With supreme effort, her second try was better. Tendons in her neck were visible while she held a ball steady. "What's the next step?"
"From here, there's more than one way, but I prefer to start by spinning it, which makes it easier to flatten. Once you have it as a disk, keep making it thin as possible; that's when you kind of start making the energy thicker and harder by focusing more into it, and at the same time you want to get the edge as sharp as possible with serrations. You want it to be quarter of an inch thick and dense as possible. Any thicker and it wont be energy-efficient." A pizza-sized disk spun on his palm. He revved its rotational speed until the serrations blurred into a smooth edge. "There." He held it without throwing. "Now you try."
"How do I know how efficient it is?"
"It's pretty much guess work. You'll have to judge based on its performance and physical properties. For this disk, it's the cutting power and how well it flies."
She nodded. Over the course of several minutes, her energy ball undulated between a shapeless mass and a rotating flattened lump with a few spikes on the edge. Eventually, she got it right to the size of a Frisbee, but she couldn't get a perfect circle, settling on a circular ellipse. "Now do I just throw it?"
"You can." He lifted his own disk above his head. "Or you can direct it with your will, and that's a bit trickier." He threw, projected a visualization of his will, and the disk swerved back to him. He caught it, making sure to not touch the edge. "Be very careful though, or you might end up like Freeza."
"Is that how your dad killed him?"
"Pretty much. Dad said he even tried to warn Freeza at the last second. Kind of sad, really."
Apprehensively, she looked at her smaller disk. "I'm quite certain that I can't regenerate my body like Cell. Should we move on to the Kamehameha?"
He was tempted to say yes out of fear, but logic won: "If you can master controlling the Destructo Disk, your control over primal energy will be way better. The Kamehameha will be much easier."
"Fine." No warning given, she threw the disk. Her fingers curled halfway as her arm nudged rightward, but the disk disobeyed, tilted on its axis, and crashed into the ground.
"Good," he said in a positive, instructor's voice. "Now again." And a naughty idea sprouted. "If you can't make it turn ninety-degrees within ten tries, you'll have to take your track suit jacket off."
She cut him a dirty glare. "What?! How will that help my control?!"
"It won't, but I'm kinda getting bored. This'll be funner if you're naked, and we'll have less laundry to do. Now, again."
"Fine," she spat and began forming another energy sphere. She flatten a larger mass within five minutes this time, and the disk was more circular with finer serrations. The edge wasn't rotating quite fast enough when she threw it. Her arm swiped rightward.
Crash.
"Again," he commanded. "This time spin it much faster. And five more tries before your jacket's coming off."
"You said ten tries," she hissed.
"Changed my mind." He stole her smug expression. "I can make it three tries if you want, sex slave."
"Oh, fuck you," she snapped, but she chuckled. For sure, she wanted it real bad.