Don't Look At Me Like That
By Moonraker One
CHAPTER THREE - Into The Mystic
Flight was a feeling she'd never experienced before.
The wind in her face provided a sense of ease and disconnection with the Earth as she rocketed over the city. For her to go about flight without regard to witnesses seemed strange at first, but then again, with her power, she figured, there was no way she would be affected seriously. Also, she flew much too fast for people to see a lot. Her first target before going to school would be her breakfast, so she swooped down to the nearest dark alley in order to go to the nearest McDonalds. In her mind, thoughts of how she was going to practice her new power today, in order to more properly control Super Saiyan. However, her plan came up short when, shortly after landing, a man put a knife up to her throat while he stood behind her.
"You smell good," he said, keeping the blade to her neck. Frustrated, she put her hand around the blade, and crushed it without it even nicking her skin. Immediately proceeding the destruction of his weapon, she leaned her head back quickly, hurtling him twenty feet backwards to slam against a brick wall.
"You don't," she muttered, and began walking. The streets were filled with pedestrians on the sidewalks and cars driving, honking furiously at each other. A déjà vu scene came to mind as she saw a teen running up hastily upon a elderly woman's purse with arm outstretched. Nakia lifted her index finger, and with a mild surge of ki, threw him up against the light pole feet behind the old woman. Finally, with a slight bit of walking—and, fortunately, few incidents—she came up on the restaurant. Once she'd ordered her food and eaten it, she was on her way to school.
Strolling into the main hallway, she saw a crew of repairmen working on the holes in the walls that she had formed by the kicking of a trash can. Her locker didn't initially want to open, so by putting her finger up to the combination dial, she used her ki to line up all the holes inside the lock, opening it with little problem. She put all her books into her pack and shut the locker, noticing one of her classmates standing next to her. "Oh, Gohan! I didn't notice you!" she stated, catching the better of his attention because she previously hadn't heard his name from him. Carefully thinking of a response to the confused look on his face, she replied, "I looked you up in the school directory." Although she'd been in class with him before, she never before noticed exactly the "warrior" aspects of him; now that she'd unlocked (at least partially) her power as a Saiyan, she could sense his ki, and his stance—no matter how calm it seemed to be—meant that he never let his guard up, even when at peace.
S…Son of Kakarot! Kill!
An instantaneous, overwhelming desire to spill blood over came her mind all at once. The hallway, fortunately, cleared out a few moments earlier as students rushed to class, as was Gohan; however, her aura began to slowly flare up towards Super Saiyan, and the fact that his walking pace began to slow down signaled that he could sense it. Angrily removing her pack from her shoulders, she mildly threw it behind her, causing it to smash a locker door in. "Y…you…won't get away with…killing me…"she muttered.
All at once he whirled around to avoid a flying kick sent his way. Ducking neatly beneath her attack forced him to prepare quickly for a separate attempt at his chest, which he barely dodged by moving slightly backward. A left handed uppercut caught him slightly off guard, but fortunately he was able to quickly recover from the strike. The moment she threw a straight punch towards his chest, he was able to power up to Super Saiyan and blast her in the abdomen with a kick of his own, sending her flying out the building through a door. He made sure he pushed the button on his watch to activate his Saiyaman costume (his helmet barely stayed on his head), and pressed the battle outside.
Calmly, he stared her down as the two of them floated silently in midair. "It's been almost nine years, Broly," Gohan flatly stated. "I didn't think you'd be coming back. Much less as a female reincarnation." Nakia said nothing; she merely launched towards him again. Her speed was amazing, and her power had already surpassed Ultra Super Saiyan. Gohan had reached his apex of Super Saiyan two, but her power seemed to be reaching his at an alarming rate. At first, her attack seemed to be erratic, childish even—but not for long. She seemed to be gaining years of fighting experience as she began to predict better where and when her opponent threw his attacks. He knew he couldn't keep up the struggle much longer, as her speed began to overtake his ability to read her blows. Then it happened; she turned the tide of their combat instantly with a single blow to Gohan's stomach (she caught him off guard on a left handed upswing), to which she added an axe-handle smash, sending him plummeting towards the ground. Gravel saw flight for at least twenty yards from the impact. But before she could fly down to finish him off, a ki signature—no, make that several—came into her vicinity.
And a blow from an especially powerful Super Saiyan Three Goku caught her defenseless, and thankfully, rendered her unconscious.
"Kakarot, you know what we have to do," Vegeta calmly stated, watching the shiftless form of the girl as she remained in dream land. From the moment he'd first lain his eyes on her, and felt her ki, he knew she was trouble. Her beauty was a mask; the evil within her definitely spelled trouble for all humanity. For, as he knew, this girl's power far exceeded any of the Z-warriors—even Goku—but since she hadn't yet come into her power, they still had a chance to implement his plan. "We have to kill her while she hasn't yet achieved full power." Unbelievably, Goku shook his head.
"No, Vegeta," he explained. Maybe the Saiyan Prince didn't see it, but of all people, Goku himself did. "We can't kill her. She's slowly coming into control over Broly's influence."
"Kakarot?! ARE YOU INSANE!?" loudly blurted Vegeta. "SHE'S THE LEGENDARY FRIKKIN' SUPER SAIYAN! HER ONLY DESIRE IS TO KILL ALL LIFE!" He believed every word of what he bellowed, even if the third class warrior didn't.
"I'm not going to allow you to kill her, Vegeta, because I sense an evil may soon come to threaten Earth, and…" He'd been getting disturbing visions in his mind, but he refused to believe it at first. He didn't have a clue as to what it was, but it was BAD.
"What?!" Vegeta sincerely couldn't see what the hell the clown had against simply murdering the girl before she did the same to billions.
"Well, I think she's Broly's reincarnation because an evil is coming that the Kais wanted us to prepare her for."
"That's preposterous," explained Vegeta.
"Is it, Vegeta? I mean, the reason I'm alive today is because North Kai told me I had to come down to Earth to see that a certain someone didn't destroy it. I was granted another life by the upper kais because I was supposed to prepare this girl for an evil that approaches as we speak."
His speech took the prince by surprise; he did wonder why Goku had been allowed to return to the world of the living after Cell killed him, but he didn't expect this kind of thing. This new piece of information didn't come exactly as a pleasant surprise. Secretly, Vegeta had been getting a few signs of impending evil himself, but refused to believe it; the piece-of-trash planet he'd settled for was so out of the way that it seemed absurd to him that someone would actually go out of their way to conquer the mudball. Nonetheless, evil had come here in the past, and he considered for a moment that perhaps the third class warrior was correct. Even so, he didn't see how this girl could be used as a tool in preparation for evil.
"Okay, Kakarot," he uttered, trying his best not to sound too defeated, "let's say for a moment that you're right. Let's pretend something vicious is coming. How do you propose that we get her ready in time to face it when we don't know anything about it?"
His question—although perfectly predictable—caught the lesser classed Saiyan without an answer. If he provided personal training for her, there could be no assurance that she would get herself under control by the time that whatever was coming got there. He didn't, however, think he had a genuine choice. He knew the only way for her to gain control over her own power despite the destructive Broly inside her body was to improve her mind as well as her body. "I guess," he said, thinking of the idea as it came to him. "I guess I'm gonna just have to train her mind and body. It's the only way."
Vegeta shook his head. "I can't believe the Great Kakarot is such an idiot regarding such an important thing. You're talking about providing one of our most powerful enemies with a way to come into her power more readily!"
"No, Vegeta, I don't think she's as evil as Broly."
Vegeta sniggered a bit. "You obviously don't think enough, then."
"Uggh, my stomach," grumbled Nakia as she forced herself to a seated position. "Wow, what the hell happened?"
"That's what we'd like to know," hastily added Goku. "One minute I sense my son's ki at school, perfectly normal, the next minute, a powerful burst of ki appears. Why'd you go after Gohan anyway?" Gritting her teeth within her closed mouth, she furiously debated whether or not she should tell him the truth; after all, she'd been very lucky the first time. Then again, she figured, maybe he'd be less rough on her if she merely told him the truth.
"I just took one look at Gohan, and felt his ki, and boom! I got this feeling of bloodlust," she answered, as calmly and truthfully as she possibly could. After all, it didn't take much for her to go off the deep end, a trait she had to work more carefully on.
"Sounds like a winner to me, Kakarot," Vegeta sarcastically interjected. Goku shot him a look that instantly shut him up, and then faced her.
"Look, Ms. Lemke," he stated, coolly gathering his words. He had to go about this case very delicately; any slipups in training and she'd be on the dark side faster than he could blink. "I can't have you having these mood swings anymore." She winced, preparing herself for the big one. He was going to take her by the neck right here, and easily kill her without her being able to put up much of a struggle. Somehow, he could see her tensed up fist at her right side.
"You're going to kill me, aren't you?"
"As much as I'd love to," the Saiyan prince said, saying his part, "I can't. It's up to Kakarot here to decide what to do."
"Which leads me to tell you what my plan is," explained Goku. "I believe an evil force is approaching Earth. I think one of the reasons Broly was reincarnated as you is because this evil force is so powerful, that the gods need you to help me defeat it. Thus, effective immediately, you, my son, and me we're all going to train in a place called the Room of Spirit and Time." Vegeta looked at him.
"How? I thought you can't spend more than forty-eight hours in that chamber!"
"I got twenty hours left," Goku explained, "and Gohan has a full twenty-four. It'll work out."
Nakia sat upright in the bed, confused as to whether or not what she was hearing was correct. "You…you're gonna train me? Really?!" Goku nodded, signaling that what he was saying was true.
"Yeah, I'm gonna make sure you're completely ready for what is up ahead," Goku instructed. "what I gotta make sure, though, is that once I take you back to your parents, now, that you don't tell them anything out of the ordinary? After all, you're gonna be getting a year's training in a day." She non-verbally agreed, and flew off towards her house.
"NAKIA!" shouted her mother, the instant she walked through the front door. "We got a call this morning that you didn't go to school! Did you play hooky!? This isn't like you!" Her angry tone, indicated that she was in for quite the lashing out. Indeed what she'd learned today put a damper on her social life, but on the other hand she had little choice.
"A kid I knew was sent to the hospital," she lied, "and I felt like I had to go with him to make sure!" Her excuse, although predictably a rather thin one, seemed to stall her mother long enough to think. This was Nakia's strategy every time she got into a dispute with her mother; if she could get her mother to stall, it would require her to think, and that would throw her off enough to break her claim. Sure enough, as her mother thought about it, the weak excuse fit. After all, Elizabeth Lemke's daughter wasn't one to run off from school for no reason or do any childish things like that. At least, she realized, in her own mind.
Snorting a burst of air out her nose, Nakia's mother shook her head and accepted the weak cop-out. "Okay, Nakia," she told her daughter, "I'll buy it this time. But next time, I don't want any reason to think you did anything but go to school like you normally do. Capiche?"
"Yeah, I understand." Nakia's main problem was that she already agreed to train with her new sensei, Goku, and here she stood, agreeing not to do anything out of the ordinary. Certainly, she figured, being a Saiyan warrioress counted as being out of the ordinary. Surely, she thought, having to train to prepare for approaching evil counted as out of the ordinary. How she could go about a whole year's worth of training in one day without her parents becoming suspicious of the time spent away from home could be another detail she didn't have the answer to.
"Oh, Nakia?" inquired her mother. "Are you still on for spending the night at your friend's house tomorrow night?" A bright smile made itself onto the face of Nakia Lemke; here she stood, desperately searching for an excuse to go out and train for a day, and her mother just happened to hand her one perfectly legitimate excuse. No better symbol of fate could exist.
"Um…sure!" she agreed. Definitely then, she was still on for it.
The next afternoon, after school, Nakia waited for Gohan to show up out behind campus in order to escort her to the Room of Spirit and Time. The ki signatures of warriors all over the Earth seemed to be gathering near a point high in the sky, so she figured that's where this chamber had to be. Nothing of the entire, complicated process made even the slightest bit of sense to her; how in the world could one get an entire year's worth of martial arts training in a single twenty-four hour period? Had to be magic, she figured.
"Ms. Lemke?" Gohan said, gently strolling up to where she was leaning against the wall of the school. "I'm supposed to take you to the chamber, in order that we get in some training."
She shook her head. "Please! Call me Nakia! I hate all these formal introductions," she responded, "and tell me one thing beforehand; how do you get a year in a day?" Gohan gave a slight grin.
"It seems impossible," he began to explain, "until you see the inside of it. Inside the chamber, is a world as big as Earth, but with ten times the gravity and a fourth of the oxygen. Temperatures vary between negative forty and a hundred twenty degrees Fahrenheit. It's a chamber that, once you close the door, all the outside world is shut out. Time goes by faster in the chamber, which makes twenty-four hours outside a year inside. Also, you cannot spend more than forty-eight outside hours' of time inside the chamber or else the exit vanishes and you're stuck forever."
"Wow," she merely exclaimed. "Sounds like I'll be getting a lot stronger."
"C'mon. Let's go." With that, the two of them streaked off into the sky.
The sheer magnitude of Kami's lookout always was the first thing to strike visitors whenever they came. One of the first things that she noticed when she landed on the upside down hemisphere that was the lookout, automatically was the size of the place. Close to thrice the size of a football field in diameter, it easily had enough space to occupy close to six or seven hundred people. Gohan helped her along as she didn't want to move, just to take in the magnificence of the palace of the guardian of Earth. A short, dark-skinned servant named Mr. Popo came up beside to lead her to a single door with a strange type of clock above it.
"In here is the Room of Spirit and Time," explained Goku, strolling up to the other two. "I'll be spending ten of the months of inside time with you, and Gohan'll finish off the time." A thought crossed her mind, one she couldn't help but bring up.
"You really trust me that much?" she asked.
"I'm gonna train you so well that I won't need to," he finished.
"Let me remind you that the first thing we have to get under control is your automatic response," Goku explained, as the three of them stepped into the chamber. While Nakia marveled at the blankness of the massive world inside the Room of Spirit and Time, the Gohan tried to think of a way he could put under control her instant bloodlust. Both him and his father understood why; she had in her mind the thoughts of a rather sadistic warrior.
"Before we do anything else, let's try and see what happens." Goku's suggestion seemed justified, but neither of the other two were perfectly calm about what the result would be. However, taking the offer, Nakia ambled out into the wide, open blankness. Clinching her hands into fists at her side, the dark, vicious memories of her past welled up at the front of her mind, and just like before, she felt herself wanting to murder the very first thing she came across.
Must…KILL! MUST FIGHT MUST…Van Morrison!
The singer's name registered almost as an afterthought as Gohan held in his hand a plastic-wrapped CD. Nakia did not take but an instant to snatch the wrapped case out of his hand, and marvel at the collection she had; checking the back, every song she'd gotten familiar with over the radio was contained on the thin, circular sheet of plastic and silver within the case. Everything from And It Stoned Me to Moondance to Into The Mystic had been professionally torched onto the underside of a rotating piece of reflective plastic. She was far too engrossed in the gift he'd just given her to notice something particularly startling.
She was still in Super Saiyan form, but couldn't think of death. Or murder.
"Notice something different?" Goku's question struck her as unusual, until she looked at herself. One look at her own aura, and she practically fell over.
"I…eh…Am I really still in Super Saiyan form?!" she shrieked. Then she realized he was correct.
"Now I want you to power down, and try it again," Goku explained, "this time not trying to think of any angry thoughts. Just block out everything except you and your power, and it'll come to the surface." She closed her eyes and let go, returning to normal. Deep within the recesses of her body, she could see a well of ki which sat like a circular pond at the center of her soul, endlessly pouring out and flowing throughout her body. Goku and Gohan's ki reserves appeared in her mind as well, although she kept them as an afterthought. The center pool of ki, she mentally pulled at the surface until she forced a large chunk of it to break the gentle surface, creating a flood of energy moving about her body. The dark inside of her soul suddenly became illuminated as the ki itself caused a brilliant light within that expanded to accommodate all inner space. Quickly it expanded too much, and pushed out of her body. When she opened her eyes, she noticed her muscles taut, her hair pushed slightly upward by the wind of her ki surges, and most of all, her own limits and weaknesses.
"Great. Now try to attack me."
She swung a right hook at Goku's face, only to see it avoided altogether. Predicting him to attempt a knee shot from his position, she flung her right elbow at his chest, almost nailing him save for a last moment teleportation, which she anticipated and responded to by a powerful left side kick. However, he avoided that attack too, and disappeared. She couldn't feel his ki in the moment he moved, but expected him to try a flying kick at her back, so she too vanished, about a moment fast enough. He whooshed by her just a nanosecond too slow, for as he flew by, she snatched him by the left arm, and brought her knee up at it. Unfortunately, she nailed his arm just a bit hard, as he let a piercing shout almost drowning out the tell-tale snap of a broken bone. Thus both learned a valuable lesson; don't let your guard up while training.
"Oh shit!" she exclaimed, as they both landed. His half-limp left arm hung by his side as Gohan hastily ran up.
"Thus we come to part two of today's training," he said, wincing through pain and forcing a half-smile. "Reiki healing." Gohan slid his hand up and down his father's arm, until he located the site of the broken arm; it had been nearly crushed at the elbow. He motioned, and Nakia came up closer.
"Put your hand on the site of the injury, and feed into it just the right amount of ki into it to force an instant heal." His instructions made it seem unusual that he would trust her with his father's arm, but obviously he was merely following a request. She closed her eyes and saw the flow of his ki disrupted at the site of the joint, so ever-so-gently she pushed portions of her ki into it, redirecting the flow of ki to where it should be. At first she put too much in and Goku let out a penetrating scream, but in the end, she got it right and felt the bone particles pull back together and re-fuse, forming the elbow as though nothing had happened.
"Take a short break, and we finish the day up with meditation. See? You're learning already! You've learned to—at least partially—master Super Saiyan, and Reiki healing. I guarantee once this year's up you'll won't be able to wait to show this stuff off to your friends."
First, I'm gonna pop this CD into my Walkman, she thought. THEN I can get back to training.