Don't Look At Me Like That

By Moonraker One

A/N: My method of titling these chapters is I'll use a line from a Bruce Springsteen song, or a title of a Van Morrison song. This chapter breaks that pattern, with a line from a Doors song. An issue I gotta bring up: I've been getting emails asking me why I chose Nakia to be of gypsy heritage before she inherits her Saiyan might. Well, my blood is like this: 50% Hispanic, 10% Hungarian, 10% Polish, 15% German, 15% Gypsy, yet I look whiter than Simon Cowell. I've got more ethnic variety than a man-sized salad bowl!

CHAPTER FIVE - "Day Destroys a Night, Night Divides a Day,"

Nakia, driven by anger and hatred more than anything else, rocketed over the tiled floor to where the main personality of her opponent had been preparing himself. She launched a right hook, which by some miracle, he managed to dodge. Unfortunately, he didn't dodge fast enough to avoid being slammed in his gut by her knee, a blow that felt at least twice as strong as any of her previous attacks. A small pulse of blood splattered on her face from the force of her knee attack, but it didn't slow down the flurry of punches to his face and chest that followed. As he began to wear out, the other Goku came in from behind, and although she tried to dodge, she couldn't, and lost her momentum of attack when she yelped in pain. The Saiyan may not have been a Rhodes scholar, but in battle, he could calculate better than a Texas Instruments graphing utility. Without wasting a single instant, the Goku that was behind her locked her arms up in a full nelson, while the main personality, still bleeding from a cheek wound, Gathered as much ki in his hand as he could, and ferociously plowed his fist into her gut. Another time, another fight, he may have been gentle, even on an enemy; not here. Broly, he knew, would never accept anything that didn't involve the death of Goku, so he made sure he kept his assault on Nakia up until he was absolutely sure she'd lost enough of her reserve ki not to get back up for a few hours. A final punch to her forehead caused her to go limp, so the two of him became one, confident the worst was over.

Apparently, he'd miscalculated; she didn't move from being unconscious for close to four days. When she finally did stir, he made sure he kept his guard up completely. "Errhh," she moaned as she sat up in her bed. Looking around, both Saiyans kept their eyes on her like a hawk; apparently, what she hoped hadn't happened had. "Uggh…let me guess. Broly took over, heh?"

Goku nodded, with a very characteristic smile on his face. "Used up almost two times more power than I could safely use in order to put you out," he carefully explained. "Two and a half days of non-stop sleep really do wonders for serious losses of ki."

Nakia shook her head; the thought plaguing her mind was how long Goku's patience could hold out. It was only the gentle powerhouse's will that kept Vegeta from killing her when he had the chance and the desire. However, she believed that it would only take a few more "episodes" before even Goku wanted her dead. Gohan cleared his throat, and approached. "Nakia?" he started. "Since you're having problems with keeping control over yourself…" She cringed; he wasn't going to say the k-word, was he? She whipped her head around to both warriors, and the new serious look that appeared on Goku's face didn't spell good times.

"The physical training's gonna have to take a backseat to a technique I call, 'Elemental Mental Training,'" Goku finished. She breathed a sigh of relief. They weren't going to kill her after all. But wait, what was this "Elemental Mental Training?" "Nakia, come out into the open area with me and I'll help you with the meditation phase; Gohan, you can do whatever you want for about two hours, I think after that we'll be done.

Gohan took his time, practicing his fighting skills inside his meditative dream sequence, fighting opponents from the past like Raditz and Freeza, but every so often his train of thought would be interrupted by his wondering exactly what his father was thinking. Usually, the scholar/warrior had an easy time deciphering his father's thought process; but not here. Ever since the arrival of Nakia onto the scene, all the usual actions that Goku normally would have taken just seemed to be a bit frazzled. Ultimately, he decided it would be in his best interests if he merely gave up on the little bit of meditation he currently had undergone, and take a peek at what his father decided as proper training of the mind for Nakia.

Apparently, the two seemed to be full-on into it.

"Okay, Nakia?" Goku asked, making sure his pupil knew that she was ready. "Now that you're in a meditative state, push your mind even further down. Do you see the darkness of your inner body, near where your inner pool of ki is?" Her response was a nod.

"Great," he continued, "now plunge your mind into your pool of ki; it should feel a bit hot." From the sweat dripping off her forehead, he could tell that she managed to get this far along. "Now, after I tell you what to do next, I can't talk to you for the rest of the activity: Find the innermost room to your soul, and get inside." With his final instruction given, Goku used his psychic ability to probe what images she found as she dove deeper into her own spirit. He knew if she came across anything disturbing he'd be the first to get involved.

What her more experienced counterpart said earlier in the exercise, proved to be true; she felt pain as she continued pushing herself deeper into her soul. There simply must be depths, she thought, that the mind wasn't supposed to go beyond, but even so she pushed on. Her own pool of ki seemed to be limitless, yet after what seemed like an hour's worth of swimming her own energy, she saw a bottom that had a end, and along the wall near the floor of her pool of ki, a single door sat. It refused to open as she tried her hardest to pull it; with a bit of force, the lock decided to surrender, and the door opened without any resistance. Nothing could prepare her for what she saw.

Nakia…Lem…ke… the tall, slender man with a strange demeanor said. From memory she knew this had to be the creature whose power was hers. He wasn't in Super Saiyan form, but she could tell he had power beyond imagination, even it didn't exactly belong to him at that particular moment.

"Are…Are you Broly?" her calm question seemed strange, considering she was just a little bit away from quivering from fear.

Free me… His frail plea seemed miserable taking into account how powerful he was.

"I can't do that…and you know it." Suddenly, his plea became a demand, an order.

FREE ME! The Broly that stood before her, had to be just the soul of him, for she was within her own soul, independent of his control, but still, here his spirit took tangible form. He snatched her into the air by his right hand, rapidly charging up to Super Saiyan two. Just the way she could feel how powerful he was put fear into her. His grip on her neck tightened as the sound of his maniacal laughter echoed through the chamber.

All of a sudden a flying knee slammed into the back of the legendary Super Saiyan. Nakia fell to the floor on her rear end, and looked up to see Goku standing over Broly, who lay on the ground, angrily trying to get up. "Nakia!" cried Goku, motioning for her to help him. "I want to knock him unconscious, that way we can tie him up!" Nodding, Nakia charged up as far as her power would allow her, and lifted Broly slightly off the floor, nailing him in the face as hard as she could. He fell out of it almost instantly. Goku and the girl both saw their chance. "NOW!" Goku shouted. Without wasting a moment, he fashioned some rope out of pure ki and they attached each of the Legendary Super Saiyan's limbs to the closest wall. When he came to, he struggled, but could not break the bonds that chained him.

Outside, in the chamber, once the two exited the dreamlike meditation, she looked at the warrior who'd enabled her to accomplish this end. "Thank…you Goku," she merely replied, "I'm glad we got him under control. You know, I've only known you for a short period of time, and you've already done so much for me."

Goku shook his head. "I've only helped you. Most of what's gone down you've done yourself. A good teacher is more of a resource than a textbook." His plan to get Broly more under control had passed without a hitch. Even Nakia, who normally heard Broly's voice inside her head when she didn't want to, could feel that he finally was under control. Perhaps, she thought, things were finally getting back to whatever state of normal that existed before.

Later that afternoon, in the chamber, as Goku and Gohan sparred with each other for awhile, Nakia sat on the step leading out into the wide open blank area that the chamber was famous for. She stared at the seemingly never-ending tile floor and contemplated the purpose for her existence. Had she been merely a reincarnation, and nothing more? Or were bigger things destined for her? She swished her tail from side to side as she wondered. In the middle of a peaceful thought, her train of thought got interrupted by a searing surge of pain as her an electric-like surge went through her as though she'd been zapped. Suddenly, she found herself standing in the middle of a battle-torn field, lifeless rock ground for miles and miles, with no visible life behind her. Insane laughter caused her to whirl around, and two distinct figures floated high above the ground. A short imp of a figure with an insect-like face laughed while a slightly larger pink figure scanned around, searching eagerly for something to destroy. Almost as if struck, two hands seemed to shake her back into reality.

They belonged to Goku, who while shaking her, kept repeating, "Nakia! What's wrong?"

When she finally got back to reality, she gave her answer. "You think there's evil coming? Well, I think it's already here and we just don't know it yet."

He gave her a strange look. "What do you mean?" She, however, knew exactly what she was telling him.

"I mean," she continued, "I think that someone's looking to unearth something extraordinarily powerful, and buried their means of coming here beneath the soil so as not to be prematurely discovered." Goku looked down for a moment, obviously gathering his own thoughts; he hadn't considered that possibility. He figured, from his years of experience that a powerful ki is detectable regardless of the situation, except for if there is suppression involved. The more he thought of it, the more he blamed himself for not having seen the option before her. Then again, he knew, she was the reincarnation of who, arguably, was the strongest being in existence.

"If we keep worrying about it," Goku explained in a tone that hid his apprehensiveness towards the subject, "we'll never be ready. If we just stick to our training, it won't take us very long to get to our best!"

So, they kept to a rigorous schedule: every morning at exactly five a.m., they'd get up and do their morning stretches after their breakfast. Once that ended, they'd meditate for a few hours, and spend the rest of the day sparring with each other. Getting stronger without even knowing it, the weeks and inevitably, months passed with unprecedented speed. Until, at the end of the tenth month, Goku could no longer stay in because his twenty hours of outside time were up. Thus, starting on the eleventh month, Gohan and Nakia were the only two remaining.

The door to the home of Niko and Elizabeth Lemke experienced a rapping sound as a visitor begged non-verbally for entrance. Elizabeth approached the door and opened it, subconsciously writing the visitor off as a nutcase because of his haircut. "I'm sorry," she told the man, "we aren't buying anything." She motioned to close the door.

"I'm here about your daughter, Nakia." One sentence from the visitor was all he had to say, and immediately he commanded Elizabeth's full attention. She swung the door open.

"IS SHE IN DANGER!?"

The man shook his head. "No," he began to explain. Right away he saw her breathe a sigh of relief. "I've come here to tell you something important. Forgive me for not introducing myself earlier; my name's Son Goku." She pulled the door open further to allow him in without question. Although, in her mind, she didn't understand what he could tell her about her own daughter that she already didn't know.

She and her husband Niko plopped down on the couch while Goku sat at the armchair, carefully planning his words. Quick and easily-understandable words were his requirement; a screw-up would arouse unnecessary suspicion. "I don't easily know how to explain this to you, you being her parents who know her so well, but she's…not Human."

Nakia's father Niko didn't understand. "What…how can she be not human? I raised her!"

"I know, that's what makes this difficult. She's a Saiyan, like me."

Elizabeth shook her head and rolled her eyes. "You mean those freaks that Hercule keeps telling us about?" Goku made a mental note to catch up on words said by the champ. "He says that he found out about them from this guy Vegeta that fought against Cell, and that they like to fight using these pathetic light tricks."

Goku chose not to verbally argue, but rather, to give a visual description. Standing up, he clutched his fists tightly at his side, and rapidly charged up to Super Saiyan. Elizabeth, being a woman raised in the "it's a trick" society, didn't believe it was but a well-established parlor trick. Niko, however, was full-blooded gypsy; his skill with gypsy magic and rituals just clicked that everything being displayed in his living room was real.

"How can you expect us to believe…" Elizabeth began to say, but her husband cut her off.

"Liz, this aura is real." She looked at him. Looking back, he gave an expression that confirmed his thoughts. "I'm skilled at determining auras by means of magic; this guy's not faking it."

"Do I have your attention?"

Both parents of Nakia nodded instinctively.

Sharp bolts of lightning ricocheted across the tiled floor of the Room of Spirit and Time as two Saiyan warriors zipped across the field towards each other at incomprehensible speeds. Goku's preparedness training methods had already gotten them to be as controlling over their powers as possible, so now all that remained was to increase the actual amount of ki in reserve. The only way to do that, both knew, was by actually fighting hand to hand with as much fury as was necessary. As such, both Gohan and Nakia went at each other as though nothing mattered, save for the singular battle that had halfway passed. However, because Goku put much effort into his son's abilities, Super Saiyan two saw the two warriors at a power level so equal between them that neither got anywhere in particular. It had required quite a bit of father-son sparring matches, but Goku pushed his Super Saiyan three and Gohan's Super Saiyan two as far as they could both go. Nakia found herself as much on the defensive as the offensive.

"I think you're slacking off," Gohan provoked. In truth, he knew she had every one of his moves predicted by the time he thought of where to launch them, just as he kept doing the same.

Surely enough, a smile came to her face as she ducked beneath a powerful roundhouse. "You know me better than that," she warned him. "I'm a gypsy; we're good at knowing opportunities." Her furious swipes in his direction somewhat distracted him as he couldn't help but notice how her attack pattern made her figure look even better. More primitive instincts found themselves triggered whenever he could feel the sweat on her skin when she finally found an opening and nailed him in the face. The pain seemed an afterthought…one he dismissed as idiocy.

After about four minutes of searching his patterns, she couldn't help but notice a chance, and so, a powerful kick delivered to his midsection tossed him feet away from her. Landing on the ground where she was, she clenched her fists at her side. Her already intensely pulsating aura flared up as a brilliant flash of light surrounded her entire frame at once. A new burst of energy shot from her aura and launched Gohan even further away from her, when he got to his feet, the light died down and he saw the reason why.

"What…the…HELL?!"

"So, my daughter's one of these 'Saiyan' things?" Elizabeth stated. Frankly, she found this Goku's story a hard pill to swallow. "Tell me more about 'em." Goku cleared his throat and began.

"We Saiyans originated on a planet called Vegeta, that ended up being destroyed," he began. "The survivors lived because they were sent out as children to grow up and conquer planets. Now, some of us, like myself, we decided that it'd be better if we worked to save it instead of kill it. I thought all of us were already known, and then I discover that your daughter is one."

Niko shook his head. "W…wait," he interrupted. "What reason do we have to trust YOU?"

"Cell wasn't killed by Hercule," Goku explained. "He was killed by my son and myself."

"But Hercule said..."

"Hercule said he killed Cell in one blow. At the beginning of the tournament, he was knocked from the ring with a single hit. The cameras were destroyed, so only people's word do you have to go on. Who do you believe?" He found himself questioning it; after all, this 'Goku' did do a real demonstration in his living room.

Gohan could hardly believe the sight he knew he saw with his own eyes. Yet, the elongated hair, the sudden lack of eyebrows, and the exponentially-increased power all told him that this was no lie. Nakia Lemke, after only eleven months of training—twenty-two hours outside world time—she had achieved the level of Super Saiyan three. From what Gohan could sense, she had easily enough reserves to last four times as long in this form as his father. As she pulled part of her fiery aura back towards her—a move that cut her S.S.3 power by one-third but increased her time in the form by a whole hour—she prepared to launch a final assault to end the sparring match with the golden-haired scholar/warrior. She amazed Gohan; despite sacrificing a full third of her outward ki, she still outclassed him by a factor of five and a half ki units for every one of his. To further dampen his chances of winning, she still had more reserve ki than he did, even though she'd burned almost twice as much during their fight by keeping herself a whole level of Super Saiyan below him to equalize the fight.

Holy gods in Heaven! Gohan thought as he prepared to launch a final blow. Her power hits a ceiling at S.S.3, but she's got a never-ending supply of potential energy!

He couldn't help but chuckle; her sex appeal and her fighting skills were on equal footing. Which meant one thing. She'd already won. Nevertheless, he yanked back his fist and she assumed her stance.

"Want some of this?!" she shouted across the tiled plain, motioning her hands in front of her chest, beginning to chuckle. "Yeah, I see you eye-balling! You're gonna pay for that!"

"Bring it, gypsy!"

"Oh you don't wanna play it like that, white-boy."

Then the two flung themselves at each other without regard.