I don't know why Cris and I chose to go sparring that night, it was a foolish choice, to say the least. I guess we were just both worried.
We both knew we'd be starting our gravity training in under a week, and we both wanted to be strong enough to withstand the high gravity we'd be putting our bodies under. So when Cris barged in on me sleeping in my room, shoved me awake and asked me if I wanted to spar, I agreed in a few seconds.
After I changed, we left the room and floated down to earth, before proceeding to fly off to a small island off in the north west corner of the planet. Neither of us spoke much on the journey there, we were both tired, so you think I might've noticed the extra light that night, but my senses eluded me at the time, so we continued on.
When we reached the island, we plopped down in an open clearing, with very little vegetation around. There were mountains off to the west, but other than that, there was nothing separating us from the mountains. Cris and I both took in some fresh night air, stretched out a bit, and then faced off.
We stood nearly two hundred yards apart, staring straight into each others eyes. I remember seeing an extra ordinary amount of reflected light in his eyes, but I still didn't hook on, I was really tired. Cris' power level had tripled in the four months he'd been training under Kami, it was almost at 3000 now, and with the gravity training to begin in just a little while, he'd be even stronger very soon.
As for me, I was beginning to think something was wrong with me. I'd been stuck at a 12,000 power level for almost two months, and no matter how hard I trained I couldn't get past the hump. Gideon had noticed it and tried to help, but whenever he and I sparred, he just opened up on me, and I wasn't ready for that.
I'd begun to think that maybe all saiyans max out at some point, until they go under an immense amount of training, or get beat up really bad and are healed back to health. So I'd been waiting patiently for the start of the training, and usually wasting my hours away sparring with Cris.
The small kid surprised me more often than not. He had some amazing moves, some of which I had trouble dodging or countering. Often though I'd just block whatever attacks he sprung at me, I was still way more powerful than him.
After a few seconds of waiting, he nodded. He and I had devised a sort of system with which to alert the other of what they wanted to do without words. A nod meant we would rush each other and just duke it out, not the best of strategies, but I knew meetings like that increased Cris' speed dramatically.
We both sprinted forward, I covered the ground much more quickly than he of course, so we ended up meeting at more the two thirds mark. We collided with a humungous "Bang!" sound that shook the ground beneath us. We hurled punches, kicks and small ki blasts at each other, at such a rapid pace no one except the Z Warriors and Kami would be able to see us. My fists often collided with Cris, usually just with his forearm, or his leg or even his own clenched fist. For several seconds we darted across the length of the island, each of us exchanging blows, but rarely striking the other.
After a while, I zanzokened away from him, perching myself on a small rock off to Cris' right. He turned to me soon after and fired a small ki blast straight at me. I thought nothing of it, and was about to swat it away, when suddenly the blast swerved sharply in mid-air and blew open the rock I was standing on. The explosion threw me up horizontally, while I tried to control myself in the air. Cris tried to capitalize on my awkward position, rocketing towards me with a dynamite kick, but I knew he'd try such a thing.
I immersed myself in my ki and shot off away from the rapidly advancing Cris. He was un-able to keep pace with me of course, and I was soon a safe distance away. He and I faced off again, this time he was crouched in his fighting stance (the one Master Roshi taught him) while I hung my arms lazily off to the side. Suddenly he blurred out of view, and I lost track of him. Of course the natural place he'd zanzoken would be right behind me, so I swung a wild backhanded fist behind me, even though I never felt him there.
Once I realized I'd struck only air, I tried desperately to find him. In the few panicky seconds it took me to locate him, he'd already sprung. He'd been off to my right, but was now right behind me, so I'd practically given him position. Being the good little boy he was, he proceeded to kick me in the spine, roundhouse me in the neck and nail me with a hook to the temple.
It hurt, but it wasn't paralysing pain or anything, so I merely jumped forward, away from him, and then shot off into the air. I felt him flying behind me, so once I'd cleared my head of the pain, I looked behind me. He was there all right, struggling to keep up with my leisurely pace. I pushed all my power into my bukujutsu technique, speeding away from my opponent.
Once I felt he couldn't keep up with me, I abruptly changed directions, zanzokening right below Cris. He was shocked, if not stunned, and completely unprepared. I thrust my leg out, striking him hard in the abdomen. I heard the air rush from his lungs, and after a second or two I followed up the attack, flying above him and axe-handling him down towards the ground.
He managed to regain control of his body, and halt his swift descent. He landed calmly, stared up at me high above him, and then performed a manuever I'd never seen before.
He opened his mouth, as wide as humanly possible, condensed his ki into his chest, and then proceeded to fire it from his gaping jaw. The greenish beam caught me by surprise, and almost struck me. In fact if it weren't for my saiyan reflexes, I probably wouldn't have avoided the attack. It singed my body, but completely tore through my shirt and weighted clothing underneath. Only a tattered half of the shirt and clothes remained, so I ripped them off, and dropped them to the ground far beneath me.
While I was doing this though, Cris was wasting no time, zanzokening first off to my left, and then closer to my right, before finally appearing behind me. I admit, I didn't think he'd recover from my previous attack as fast as he did, so when he blew me away with two small ki blasts, zanzokened in front of me again, and drop kicked me into the air again, I wasn't really expecting it.
While I was gallantly soaring through the air, I felt him powering up two more ki blasts. As he was doing so though, I easily re-oriented myself, and was ready when he fired off a pair of blue ki beams in my direction.
I used the near blinding light produced by the beams to my advantage, making sure that I was out of view when I zanzokened away from the two beams. I appeared about ten feet above Cris, and before he knew it, I'd flown down to him, and kicked him savagely in the back. He was sent forward, but not too far, because I quickly zanzokened in front of him and crescent kicked him in the shoulder, plummeting him towards the earth and ungodly speeds.
Once he'd crashed into the ground with a nice little cracking sound, I slowly floated down to him. As I was doing so, he shakily stood up, and looked straight up towards me. I thought he would try to nail me with some sort of attack, but instead he just hopped back a few metres and allowed me room to land.
I dropped to the ground, crossed my arms and faced him. His face was bruised and his forearms were covered in welts, but he didn't seem to notice, he just stared at me, a sullen look on his face, and waited.
We stood there for several seconds, and I was beginning to think he forgot whom he was dealing with. I'd never been the first to break a stare-down, and as much as I respected Cris' mental discipline, I doubted he'd last as long as I did. I stood there patiently for a few minutes, as we stared into each other's eyes, when I noticed it. It was sort of like a throbbing that started in my back, slowly moving it's way downwards, lower and lower till it reached my tail-bone. I didn't flinch, for fear Cris might spring, but I wondered what was happening, the pain was getting worse.
Cris must've picked up on it, because he asked me "What's wrong Phoenix?"
I shook my head and replied "I don't know, feels like something's going to pop out of me." As soon as I said those words I knew what it was. I looked up into the sky and saw it. The moon. It was out, in full force, and shining it's brilliant, dull white glow over everything.
Something came over me, a blood lust, a fear, a hatred for all things living. I turned back down to Cris, and in a hoarse voice whispered out, "Run. Get away from here, NOW!" He looked at me oddly, but then a look of immense fear spread across his face. I knew all about Triono and how he'd nearly killed Cris when he went into Oozaru mode, it was something Cris would never forget.
Instead of running though, he flew over to me, placed a hand on my shoulder and said something, but I couldn't hear it. "Go away!" I screamed, but Cris remained. I fell to one knee on the ground, as the pain burned closer and closer to my rear end. The fire burning up inside of me felt like it was going to boil over soon. I swatted away Cris' hand and gave him one final warning. "Get the fuck out of here now. Get the others."
He nodded, but didn't go away; instead he looked up into the moon and began charging his ki into his hands. I knew what he was trying to do, but there wasn't enough time. The pain reached an apex, and I doubled over in agony. Just as soon as the pain maxed out though, it subsided, and I felt my tail rushing out of my spine. I screamed, louder than I ever had before in my life.
When I fused with all those dead saiyans so many years ago, I was "born" with a tail, but as soon as I arrived on earth Kami had it sliced off, I found out why later. Now it was back, and at maybe the worst possible time.
Cris continued to charge up his energy, but it was too late. The rage that'd been brimming up inside of me poured over, I couldn't hold it down any more. I shot up from the ground, and roundhouse kicked Cris in the sternum. I was going full power now, there would be no letting up, I needed to rip off that stupid ass red hair of his from his head.
He fell to the ground, trying to catch his wind, but I wouldn't let him. I brought my hands together and then hammered them into his skull. The blow smashed the ground beneath him and I was sure I heard a few of his bones crack. I laughed in joy, at the time, that sound was the only one I wanted to hear.
Cris whimpered underneath me, which just fuelled me even further. I elbowed him in the spine, snapping his head up from the ground, a scream of agony emitting from his throat. When he fell limp again, I flew away, not wanting to finish him, yet.
I landed in the middle of the field, and looked up. The pale light saturated my eyes, and soon I was bulging, my muscles, my entire body, convulsing and growing beyond anything I'd ever experienced before. As my body grew, so did my hate. I wanted, no I needed, to destroy Cris, to destroy Gideon, to destroy everything I knew in the world. I wasn't weak any longer, I wasn't held back by my body, my body was the source of my newfound power.
As my clothes tore off, and my body turned hairy, I roared with all my might, letting everyone on the damned planet know who I was… what I was. I was Phoenix, a saiyan warrior, and nothing would escape my wrath.
I finished my transformation, and stared down at Cris. He'd pulled himself up from the whole in the ground I'd created, but he was weak, I could feel the lack of life in his body. I roared again, stomping with my feet and crashing the ground underneath me. Cris just stared, a defeated look on his bloody face. I charged up a small amount of power, determined to finish the kid warrior.
He must've felt the power flowing through my body, because he tried to fly away at a turtle's pace. Futile. I finished powering up my energy and shoved it through my mouth, much like Cris had done just a little earlier. My memory played tricks on me. Wasn't that Cris my friend? My partner? No, I thought, the only Cris I knew was the one who needed to die.
As the beam incinerated the slow moving form of Cris, I roared again in victory, and set off to find fresh new victims to quench my insatiable hunger.