A/N: I left out a famous bit of filler in this chapter in which the gang at Kami's Lookout goes into the past and are killed by Saiyans. I feel that this sequence belabors the point(We get it, sayians = strong) and I don't like writing based on things I haven't seen if I can avoid it.
~Chapter 13: Training, training, and more training~
It was a very quiet ride back to the Kame House. It wasn't that we didn't have anything to say, it was that the mood was too solemn for anything to be said. As the minutes passed, one thing really started to sink in: Goku was dead. It made me feel sick and delirious just to think of it. He'd always seemed just about invincible, and somehow I'd never thought that I'd have to see him die, at least not like that. It hadn't looked like he was suffering. In fact, he looked pretty happy for a dying man. What really makes Goku so special is how he always seems to be so full of hope, even in the worst times, that it gives everyone hope. With him gone, the whole world felt a lot more... hopeless.
I was still holding Gohan's hat. It had the four-star dragon ball attached to it. "I can bring him back," I thought. Yeah, sure, absolutely. I could bring him back, and I damn well intended to. Goku was dead, but he wasn't really gone, so there was no real reason to mourn, right? Yet, I felt rotten whenever I started thinking that way. I'd just seen my best friend die, and here I was just shrugging it off, saying "Darn, Goku's dead, oh well, we'll just have to get the dragon balls together and bring him back, no harm, no foul." What the hell kind of attitude was that to have? I guess I'm being a little hard on myself - that wasn't really my attitude - but dragon balls or no dragon balls, he had died. Everything had gotten pretty screwed up if that didn't count for something. So, I was really sad, but I scarcely had time to be sad from all of the worrying. I wasn't looking forward to facing Chichi. I didn't even know her; I'd only seen her twice and that was over 5 years previously. All I knew was that she was Goku's wife and she was not likely to be very happy to hear that her husband was dead and that her son had been kidnapped by Piccolo, of all people. I was worried about Gohan, too; to say that I didn't trust Piccolo would be an understatement. Most of all, though, and I think that this was true for Bulma and Muten Roshi as well, I was afraid for the fate of the entire planet. I couldn't stop thinking about what Piccolo had said: in a year, probably less, two Saiyans who were each even stronger than Raditz would arrive on Earth. Things already seemed hopeless. Even if Goku was revived, and we found Yamucha, Tenshinhan and Chaozu, and we all trained and got a lot stronger, and Piccolo stayed on our side and trained Gohan to be a strong warrior, even allowing all that, what could we possibly do against that much power? It was all I could do not to give up before the struggle even started.
Back at the Kame House, we made plans about what to do next. We didn't know where Chichi lived, so we decided to just wait until she came to us to tell her about everything. We decided that the next day Bulma and I would hunt down the dragon balls, and we'd contact Yamucha and Tenshinhan somehow to let them know about the situation. I was too drained and miserable to do anything but go right to sleep just then, though. I slept straight through until morning. During the night, someone destroyed the moon again. I think that it was Piccolo. You'd think that something like that would have an enormous effect on the entire planet, but it really doesn't seem to have that much effect, other than tidal shifts and, of course, the absence of the moon. You know, sometimes I miss the moon. The sky looks lonely without it.
I awoke to being shot in the head, one of the more psychotic things Bulma's ever done. Apparently she was upset that we'd gotten to sleep while she spent all night repairing Raditz' scouter and converting it to our numerical system, and she spotted one of Lunch's old firearms lying around. Where'd she learn to use a gun like that, anyway? Yeesh. She gave us a quick demonstration of the device by reading our power levels. I had my power read for the first time ever then - it was 206. I was kind of surprised how much higher it was than Muten Roshi-sama's, 139. Bulma demonstrated that the device could locate powerful people anywhere in the world. She found a 250 - Tenshinhan, we figured - a 177, which sounded like Yamucha, and a much greater power, the greatest on the whole planet, a 329. That had to be Piccolo. We realized that we could use the scouter to find people, and we considered going after Piccolo. Actually, we really wanted to go after him and try to rescue Gohan. I felt so sorry for that little kid. But, when we thought about it, Piccolo's taking Gohan was part of a greater plan to save the Earth, and besides, Piccolo would have killed us all if we'd tried. With a level of 329, he wouldn't have had much trouble.
Hey, I ought to explain power levels. I'm not sure exactly what's being measured, but it's some combination of physical strength and ki concentration. Basically, a higher power level means more fighting prowess, although that obviously doesn't mean that someone couldn't possibly win a fight with someone who had 5 times their power level. I'll try to give you a perspective on these numbers. The average person, depending on strength, is somewhere from 1 to 8 or so in power level. World-class martial artists are as high as 80. Muten Roshi, who before all this craziness started was the ultimate master of martial arts, is 139. The super Saiyans get into the hundred millions. I'm not kidding. Right now, sitting at this computer and not powered up but not surpressing my power either, I'm probably about 25,000, which might explain why this monitor flickers so dang much. Someone with a power level of 10 million or above(which I am well above when powered up, actually) could probably destroy planets. Generally, after you get above 500,000, the statistics involved start to make your head spin, so I won't go into power levels too much. I'm just pointing out that we were already ridiculously strong at this point, but it got much, much worse.
After Bulma's little demonstration, there was a knock at the door. I answered it and was surprised to find Yajirobe. He had a cross look on his face as if he was doing something that he'd been forced to do. He scarcely more than mumbled that I, Yamucha, Tenshinhan, and Chaozu all had to come to Karin Tower.
"Kami-sama's going to train us," he said. I was stunned. I, I had been summoned by Kami-sama. He was going to train us for the sake of the Earth. I swore over and over that we'd all be there right away. Yajirobe only said, "Good," and started to leave. "Oh, I almost forgot," he said, turning back to face us, "Don't bring Goku back from the dead until the bad guys get here. He's trainin' in hell. See ya." He hopped in his craft and sped off.
We all just stared in the direction that he'd gone. My stomach twisted itself into a knot. NOT revive Goku? Goku was going to stay dead for a whole YEAR? And what was with that "training in hell" remark? He wasn't just dead, he was in hell too? I might have fainted. Never, ever pick Yajirobe to deliver crushing news to someone. Ever. He's not exactly the subtle type. Yajirobe had scarcely left when another aircraft came speeding toward Kame Island. This one had Chichi and her father, the Ox King, in it. It was the moment we'd been dreading. I tried to gather myself, but the sight of the Ox King, who is just enormous, made me kind of sheepish. Sure enough, as soon as Chichi got out, she asked us where her son was. We all just kind of mumbled, and finally Muten Roshi just kind of blurted out that Piccolo had taken him. Great. I think that you can imagine how they reacted to that.
"What was Goku doing during this?" shouted the Ox King.
"Oh... dying... mostly..." Muten Roshi replied. Don't ever pick him to deliver crushing news either. Chichi nearly popped a vein, and fainted on the spot. That might sound funny, depending on how you look at it, but I felt terrible. We should have been a lot more respectful in giving her that news. We woke her back up. She and the Ox King panicked and bombarded us with a storm of questions. We desperately tried to calm everyone down, and I ended up being the one to tell the story of Raditz. I was annoyed with us for being so blunt, and I tried really hard to be a bit more tender about the whole damn thing. Poor Chichi fell to pieces right in front of me. We tried to comfort her, but her husband was dead and her little son had been taken by the greatest evil that she'd ever known. I hadn't even told her about the Saiyans that were coming yet. It all felt just terrible. She didn't even know us, and Goku had just gone off for a quick visit and now he was dead. How was she supposed to feel? I don't blame her in the slightest. Of course, things got even worse when we had to tell her that we couldn't revive Goku or rescue Gohan for a year. (She already knew about the dragon balls. At least that was one less outlandish explanation to make.) She didn't exactly take that revelation sitting down. In fact, she got very angry at us, punched me in the face, and stormed out. She came back later on and apologized, though. She said that she understood how important it was that Goku and Gohan be allowed to train, and she even gave us the two dragon balls that Goku had collected just for kicks over the years. I admire that - it couldn't have been easy for her.
Later that same day, we decided to round up everyone that Yajirobe had said to bring. Bulma and Muten Roshi went to find Tenshinhan and Chaozu with the scouter, and I had to go get Yamucha. Finding him wasn't hard because Bulma knew where he lived. Yamucha had become a professional baseball player since the 23rd tournament. That's something that even I knew - we did have TV at the Kame House. He'd bought a mansion in West Capital City, not too far from the Capsule Corporation HQ. I went there dressed kind of formally for me, and I deliberately drove instead of flying(Bulma dropped me off in E. Capital first, of course). Yamucha's mansion was... well, it was big. It's nice, I guess. Well, actually, it's beautiful. I don't know, though - I really don't see what Yamucha needs a place like that for. He says that he felt like it was just something he should have, being a pro baseball player. I guess that makes sense.
I was shown into the place and pretty soon I was face-to-face with Yamucha himself. He was actually wearing his baseball uniform, which sort of made me wonder if he often hung out wearing that. His scar had faded a little, but it was still the predominant feature of his face. He was happy to see me. I wished that I could claim the same.
"Hey, Kuririn, I can't believe you're here!" he said. "Do you want me to get you anything? Because, believe me, this place is loaded. Hey, what are you doing around these parts, anyway? You're a long way from the Kame House."
I hadn't been looking directly at Yamucha. I could scarcely face him. Looking around his mansion, I saw what a nice life he'd made for himself. I was happy for him. I hated so much to destroy it all in the space of a few minutes. But I didn't have much choice, did I? I stuck my hands in my pockets and looked him straight in the eyes. "Yamucha," I said, "I'm really sorry."
I told Yamucha the whole story. It wasn't easy, because I had to explain so many things. I started out by saying that Goku was dead, just to get the biggest shock out of the way. I watched Yamucha's face as I talked, and in a short span of time it went from shocked to enraged to despairing to upset. He sputtered a bunch of questions, but I just kept going. I was determined to get it all out in one go, because it was still pretty painful just to recollect it.
"...so, that's the situation," I finished. We sat there silently for a few moments.
"We have to do something," said Yamucha solemnly.
"Yeah."
I didn't have to ask Yamucha to help. He volunteered. He wouldn't have listened to me even if I'd told him not to come. Really, what else could he do? Sit back and wait for the Earth's destruction? Somebody like Yamucha could never stand for that. So, I waited for a bit while he made arrangements to be gone for a long time, and he and Pu'ar came with me. We were picked up by a craft with Bulma, Muten Roshi-sama, Oolong, Tenshinhan, and Chaozu in it not long afterward. We greeted each other with nods. Everyone knew what was going on. The first thing we did was to go ahead and find the four dragon balls that we hadn't already collected, so we'd have them whenever we needed them. With all of us, it didn't take that long, although one of them did take a while to get to because it'd fallen into the ocean. After that, we all went back to the Kame House to rest and regroup ourselves before heading to Karin Tower to recieve training from Kami-sama. There were so many of us that almost everyone had to sleep on the floor. I didn't get much sleep. With the exception of Tenshinhan, Chaozu, and Bulma, hardly anyone did. Muten Roshi-sama and I stayed up trying to think of anyone else that we could bring, but we couldn't come up with anyone.
"What about that Namu guy? He was strong," I said.
He shook his head. "No, let's not bring him into this. He's already been killed, don't forget."
"Well, would you like to come, Master?"
He laughed slightly and shook his head. "Ah, my boy, how I'd love to... I hate so much to sit here and feel helpless... but I'm far too old, I'd only get in your way."
That was kind of a disappointment to me, even though I'd been expecting it. Then, I thought of someone perfect. "Hey, I know, we can find Jackie Chun!" I said, suddenly excited. "I'm sure he'd help us!" Of course, that was when I got the explanation that "Jackie Chun" was really Muten Roshi himself. He was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. Later, Yamucha would tell me that he'd known all along. I think that he was full of it. Anyway, we gave up on trying to find anyone else. We were it - the world's entire defense. What a scary thought. I heard Pu'ar and Yamucha outside late at night, and I could sort of see them through the screen. Pu'ar cried and told him not to go. I felt guilty and covered my head with a pillow.
The next day, Tenshinhan, Chaozu, Yamucha, and I all said our goodbyes and left for Karin Tower. All four of us could fly, so we did. It felt kind of weird flying in formation like we were. I tried to see from the other's faces how they were feeling, but they were all stony and unreadable. Me, I was a mess of worried and upset and regretful. I didn't even have any specific reasons why anymore. Karin-sama and Yajirobe were waiting for us when we got there. Karin-sama twisted his paws nervously. It was the first time I'd ever really seen him genuinely afraid about anything, as opposed to his usual cryptic and distant demeanor.
"Ah, my," he said, "Such a turnout. You're all very strong... Yamucha, Kuririn, you've improved so much..."
"We aren't strong enough for what's coming, Karin-sama," said Yamucha. "That's why we're here."
It was weird seeing someone who looked exactly like a cat sweat so much. "Yes, yes, of course... Well, I shouldn't delay you any longer. The Lookout is straight up from here, you can't miss it. Good Luck."
Some of us started up toward the lookout. Karin-sama looked as if he might be sick as he watched us. Yajirobe still couldn't fly, and he had to climb up Goku's Nyoi-bo, which still connected the Tower to the Lookout. I felt like I ought to try to say something comforting to Karin-sama. "I swear that we'll do all that we can," I said steadily.
He looked off into the distance instead of looking at me. "Oh, I know..." he said. "I'm just afraid that that won't be enough... no, not nearly enough..."
We were greeted by Kami-sama and his servant, Mr. Popo, at the lookout. Kami still looked like Piccolo. Mr. Popo is an odd-looking man who's served all of the Earth's Kamis for a long time. He isn't human, but I'm not sure exactly what else he is. We lined up in front of them, and we got an opening talk of sorts from Kami-sama. It was deadly serious. He told us that we all already knew why we'd been gathered there, so he wouldn't waste precious time explaining that. "Know only that the Saiyans are a deadly threat that will take all of the courage and strength we can manage to defeat," he said. He also explained that Goku was training with the lord of worlds, Kaiô-sama, in the afterlife. Kaiô-sama is such a high-ranking position that even a Kami never gets to see him.
"For the next several months, I will be training you," Kami-sama said. "You all have astounding potential, and I will draw as much strength out of you as I can manage."
"So, you're going to give us training like Goku got?" said Yamucha.
"No. Your training will be much tougher."
Yamucha froze. I was pretty taken aback myself. I remembered how amazing Goku had been after training with Kami-sama. Kami-sama paced a bit, and then turned to us again and went on, very gravely. "These Saiyans are stronger than you can possibly imagine. Countless worlds have been massacred by them. The one that came before was weak compared to those that are on their way. Understand how difficult our task is."
We all nodded. He didn't have to tell us twice.
"As grave as our situation is, I must ask all of you to leave all feelings of doubt or regret behind now. If you are not focused, my training will do no good. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," we all said. Yajirobe grunted. I tried to do as he said and clear my mind of emotion. It wasn't easy.
"Good," said Kami-sama, and he smiled. "You may not believe me now, but I can tell that there is a truly awesome power hidden within some of you." I swear I saw him look directly at me for an instant. "If we can tap into even a small fraction of that power, I know that we can succeed. It will not be easy. We start now."
Whew. What a note to start out on. We all knew what was at stake, and we were diligent and did whatever we could. Well, everyone except for Yajirobe. He mostly ate and sat around a lot when he was supposed to be training. Kami-sama's training started by having us sit completely still and attempt to clear our souls. I'm still not sure exactly what that was supposed to mean, but I wasn't going to complain. It was during that excercise that I first realized the ability to sense ki. I say "realized the ability" instead of "learned" because it just kind of came to me. It was like a light switch had been thrown. I cried out a little in shock from all the new information my senses were giving me. I didn't understand any of it, it was just disorienting. Chaozu came up to me and asked if I was okay, and I just stared at him. Something seemed different about Chaozu. Then, I realized that it wasn't really him that was different, it was how I was looking at him. I saw Chaozu just as normally as before, but I could also sense him. I felt his presence, and I could sense his strength. It wasn't like a scouter, a numerical display, but I could sense that he was weaker than me. Soon, I realized that I could sense everyone there. Somehow, I knew without even looking which ki belonged to which person, and I could tell exactly where they were without even looking. I found that if I concentrated, I could sense a great strength, Piccolo, far away, and a lesser one, Muten Roshi, in the other direction. It was just awesome. When I tried, awestruck, to explain to the others what I was feeling, they just laughed. "Oh, you're sensing ki for the first time," they said. I guess that Yamucha, Tenshinhan, and Chaozu had all realized that ability already. I was kind of embarrassed. I'd been acting like I was seeing something that no one had ever seen before.
Sensing ki is impossible to explain to anyone who never has done so themselves. It would be like trying to explain sight to someone who's been blind from birth. All I can say is that it's as vivid as any of the senses, and it's always there. It took a long time for me to get used to it. It isn't just knowing where someone is and how strong they are, like a scouter. To a certain extent, you can feel the emotions of someone whose ki you're sensing. You can tell whether they're calm or angry, whether they're hurt or dying, and whether they're surpressing their power or attacking. It can be pretty unnerving sometimes. Sensing ki can even hurt. I actually feel physical pain when someone powers up over a certain amount. It washes over you like a wave.
After that incident, we recieved our weighted clothing. That stuff is really uncomfortable. It must weigh 250 pounds. At first, it was a struggle just to move, so we did basic strength training until we got used to the extra weight. It wasn't easy, and we were exhausted a lot. We were never allowed to remove the weighted clothing. Eventually, we got to the point where we could move almost as easily with them on as we had before without them. Then we really started training. At first, we all had to fight Mr. Popo, who is much stronger than he looks. Early on in the training, Kami-sama was always right there, telling us exactly what we had to do, but later on he would only walk around the lookout and supervise as we trained ourselves and sparred with each other. We worked really hard. It wasn't uncommon for one of us to collapse from exhaustion only to be back up and training twenty minutes later. At night, we ate and rested. Kami-sama had extremely good food up at the Lookout. During that time we'd socialize, something we didn't do much while actually training, and try to forget about our troubles. We'd talk about the training itself, how our friends might be doing back home, and other things. I talked mostly to Yamucha because he was already my friend and because all of the others were pretty inaccessable.
One night, I recall Yamucha being more profound than usual. He looked straight up at the stars.
"Hard to believe what's coming from out there, isn't it..."
"Yeah," I said.
"It's funny how differently I look at life now. If I make it through this, I want to do something with more meaning..."
I kind of felt the same way. It's strange how you only really appreciate life when it's threatened. "Hey, Yamucha, at least you've done something, not like me. You're famous."
"Ehh... baseball is silly. It doesn't mean much." He sighed. "I just hope that I can see Pu'ar again. And Bulma. She annoys me to death, but I want to see her again really badly."
I tried to reassure Yamucha, but I just couldn't bring myself to. I felt too much sorrow and regret myself. I hoped so much that we'd live.
Six months passed, and we trained and got much stronger. As time went on, we started to gain a kind of cautious confidence. However, I think that I was a bit more unsure than the others because of something that'd happened about four and a half months into our training. We were training normally. Tenshinhan and Chaozu were sparring, and suddenly I felt Chaozu's power rise violently, making him much stronger. Everyone noticed this, but I think I'm the only one who felt something else when that happened. I felt Chaozu hit a wall. I don't know how I knew it, but I knew right then that he'd hit his limit. I was right, too. The rest of us kept getting stronger, but Chaozu never got any more powerful than he was that day. Everyone has a limit - a point where, no matter what kind of training someone follows, they simply can't get any stronger without transforming somehow. Humans don't really have a transformation that I'm aware of, so we're pretty much out of luck when this happens. I think that Chaozu's limit is about the limit of any strong, healthy human, no matter what kind of training they recieve. I can't really explain why the rest of us got so much stronger than that, especially me. Maybe I'm a mutant or something. I don't know.
After we'd trained for about six months, Kami-sama released us to train on our own. "I leave the future to you," he said. That was a heavy weight to bear. We went through Karin tower on the way back down, and Karin-sama remarked on how strong we'd gotten and wished us luck. I noted that he still looked just as nervous as before, though. I couldn't believe that he was still that nervous after how much our strength had increased. I wondered, could the Saiyans really be that powerful?
Yamucha and I returned to the Kame House after leaving the tower. I was kind of surprised to find that Bulma, Pu'ar, and Oolong were all living there. I'm not quite sure why they decided to do that. They already had a better home at Capsule Corp HQ. They were excited to see us. Bulma wanted to take our power levels, so we both powered up and let her read it. Yamucha just cleared 1000 and I was around 1150. They were really awed and excited by how powerful we'd gotten. I was pretty happy about it myself, but we knew that we were still nowhere near the Saiyans' level. We hung out at the Kame House for a few days, which was nice. I'd gotten awfully tired of seeing the same six people all the time. We had to leave before too long, though; Kami-sama had told us to continue training, and we knew that we had a very long way to go in six months if we wanted to stand a chance against the Saiyans. So, Yamucha and I left again and isolated ourselves. We could have stayed together, but we thought it would be better for us to try training alone for a change: We'd already sparred with each other about as much as we could stand. I found a stretch of jungle somewhere and I isolated myself there for a long time, probably almost five months. The time tended to blur when I was all by myself like that. I got my own food, mostly fruit and fish because I felt terrible cutting down creatures with ki blasts, and I kept training. I thought about the Saiyans a lot. I wanted to be prepared so badly. To that end, I decided to try and develop an attack that was extremely powerful, as powerful as I could make it. I started experimenting with ki blasts again and I ended up with something called the Kakusandan. The Kakusandan is an enormous blast that's also very slow. Almost anyone can and will dodge it. However, that's when I suddenly flip the blast in the air, and split it into multiple blasts that all seek targets. That took me two months to perfect. I hoped that it would work against the Saiyans because it was powerful and would catch them off guard. I still wasn't satisfied, though, and as the time went on, I became frustrated that I couldn't become powerful enough. I fretted about that for a while, and then I remembered the Choshinsui: Karin-sama's godly tea. When Goku drank it, he'd become much stronger. I turned it down before because it was too dangerous, but these were more serious circumstances. I headed to Karin Tower almost as soon as I thought of it and told Karin-sama what I wanted to do. Yajirobe said that I was insane, but Karin-sama thought about it.
"It's true that you still aren't nearly powerful enough... the Choshinsui might help, but it's very dangerous..."
"Please, Karin-sama," I said, "You have to let me drink it. I have to be stronger than this to fight the Saiyans."
"You don't have to do this," he said. "You might not survive."
"I want to do it," I said, well aware that I was taking my life into my hands and nervous as hell. A lot of good I'd be in the fight against the Saiyans if I killed myself trying to drink some bad tea. But when I thought about going back and just being as frustrated as ever again, I decided that I had to go through with it. Karin-sama brought the stuff out in a rather ordinary kettle and poured it for me. It was black and foul. I drank it.
It hurts me now just THINKING about the Choshinsui. It was like swallowing rotating razor blades. I felt sicker than I'd ever felt and in excruciating pain. I fell to the ground almost immediately and clutched at my throat, just trying to fight the urge to throw the stuff up. I was in terrible, terrible pain for several hours. When it was over, I think my power actually had increased a good bit, but it wasn't worth it. I hope I never see that stuff again for as long as I live.
It wasn't long after that when the Saiyans came to Earth. That's a big story to tell, so I'll stop for now here.
--END OF CHAPTER THIRTEEN--