Three months had passed since Erasa had begun practicing Kame-Sennin's Turtle School style of training. She and Gohan had eventually come to a bump in the road – a bump with piercing blue eyes and flowing, ebony, pig-tailed-tresses – that had tried to ground their training to a screeching halt. Specifically, Videl. Erasa's friend had made pursuit for the duo to the furthest reaches of the continent for the sake of one thing.
Learning to fly.
Mercifully, Videl proved to be a quick learner, and no average talent; within ten days, the girl was flying freely through the skies with as much ease as Goten had before her. With her new-found skill in flight and interest in the manipulation of ki, Videl promised to redouble her training efforts to give Gohan quite the showing at the tournament.
With the daughter of Mr. Satan finally departing, it left Gohan and Goten open to resume their training, as well as giving Gohan the time needed intensify Erasa's training. One of the first things he'd introduced Erasa to, within a month after her training had begun, was the concept of meditation. Proper manipulation of ki required more than simple awareness and a basic ability to draw it out, but the concentration and refinement to use it effectively. Meditation provides both of these; improving the capacity to concentrate, allowing for the user to pull out more of their ki, as well as refining the energy itself through this spiritual art.
While not initially one for meditation, Erasa had taken to it rather quickly, allowing Gohan to move her schedule along as he intended. At the beginning of the third month, Erasa had finally undergone enough training that Gohan felt confident upgrading the turtle shell she wore to twice the wait, and push her skills to something more challenging; sensing ki.
As the sun began to rise, Erasa rose with it, groggily rubbing her eyes as she stumbled out of Chi-Chi's bed. With three months having passed since the beginning of her training, she'd grown accustomed to waking up before the alarm; a mercy for the inanimate object that Chi-Chi had grown so fond of crushing between her lithe hands.
"I should probably buy her a replacement," Erasa mumbled sleepily, knowing this wasn't even a fair way of repaying Chi-Chi for everything she'd done for her. But given Erasa knew she wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon, an alarm clock would be a good first step, no? Capsule Corp. had recently released the 'Irate Husband', complete with 40 lines of 'choice dialogue'. Rumour had it the president of Capsule Corp. based the trinket on her own husband.
After a quick rinsing of her face in the restroom, Erasa swiftly made it to the bedroom once more, making it just in time for the alarm to go off, quickly silencing a machine that had long since surrendered. Donning her gi and turtle shell, Erasa waved at the sleeping form of Chi-Chi as she turned to face the new day of training with absolute confidence.
"Let's go!" She cheered under her breath.
"So, Gohan, what will you be laying on me today?" Erasa queried playfully, tightening her obi as she stretched to ensure proper blood-flow to the limbs.
"Today, I'm going to add something new to the curriculum," Gohan replied, more than pleased to see what time had done to Erasa's drive for training. She had never been one for slacking, but now, Erasa, at least to him, seemed quite different than the Erasa who had failed the qualification test in the jungle. Back then, she seemed ready to give up; now, Erasa had an air of someone who could take on the world and win. Gohan smiled to himself, proud of Erasa for not only coming as far as she had, but striving to push herself even further. "And we'll do so by playing a game of tag."
"Tag?" Erasa flashed Gohan a blank look, obviously wondering how a simple game of 'tag' could be used for training. Remembering her current training, however, Erasa knew better than to question the methods Gohan used; she'd felt the results with her own body, the training worked.
"It'll be quite simple, really," Gohan pulled out a thin, white blindfold, which only further added to Erasa's confusion. How could anyone play 'tag' with a blindfold? "But I'll give you a demonstration." The Saiyan folded the cloth over his eyes, effectively blocking out his sense of sight. "I'm sure you're confused, but humour me; start running and I'll try and catch you. I'll even give you two minutes of a head start to break from here."
"No need to tell me twice," Erasa quipped, before she immediately took off running. A huge benefit of her training was the running speed at which Erasa now traveled, capable of covering more than half a mile in under a minute. She took only a moment to glance behind her, and saw Gohan still standing patiently, even a smile on his face, and knew one thing; she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of being caught. Approaching the cliffside, the blonde teenager met an old friend; the jungle.
"Let's take a dip!" She joked, taking a swan dive off the cliff, before leveling herself out in the air, floating to prevent a stinging collision with the ground. Erasa propelled herself forward, ducking in and out of trees before she made another landing and continued running; she would have flown, but she knew Gohan would disapprove. After all, if she flew, where would the training be?
Blindfolded, after two minutes had passed in his head, Gohan turned towards the forest. "And now its time for the game to begin."
Erasa gripped a thick tree branch above her head, pulling herself over it to allow for a wide leap, trying to place as much difference between herself and Gohan as she could before the two minutes had elapsed; however, she didn't have a natural clock in her brain, and thus couldn't tell how much time she had left before Gohan made his move to catch up.
"I think this is far enough," Erasa muttered to herself, landing next to a small lake within the jungle. She knelt before it, sloshing water on her face to rejuvenate herself; the coolness of the liquid shook her out of her half-awake stupor. "I don't think Gohan can catch me now, not hidden under all this foliage."
"I wonder about that."
Gohan's voice slightly smug, broke Erasa's concentration and caused her to look around for his location. Her curiousity was soon answered when she saw Gohan, still blindfolded, floating above her with his arms folded.
"H-How!?" She stammered in shock, scrambling to her feet. Shaking her head, Erasa quickly regained her composure, and even smiled in spite of herself, if only to cover up the shock of being discovered so quickly. But this was still 'tag' and the game didn't end until the 'demon' caught its target; and Erasa wasn't caught yet.
"I won't give up that easily, Gohan!" Erasa called out as she took off running, making heavy using of her ability to fly to quite literally skate across the surface of the lake shed been drinking from only moments prior. A sloshing white rift of water shot up in her wake, moving ever high as Erasa revved her own speed higher.
"Heh," Gohan chuckled, and easily tore after Erasa, pursuing the girl over the water. Still blindfolded, he followed her effortlessly, creating a far larger wake of water as he tore across the surface.
Skidding off the surface of the lake, Erasa kept fleeing; she craned her head backwards only once, her sapphire orbs locking onto Gohan's face. As if the man could see her every action, he smiled; not an arrogant smirk, a kind, genuine smile; the one Erasa loved so much. Unable to help herself, she smiled back, and this delay is what stopped her movement completely, allowing Gohan to overtake her, gently tapping the girl's shoulder.
Much to Erasa's mixed feelings, the game was over.
She had been tagged.
"Gragh!" Erasa slumped to the ground next to the Son household, lightly punching the ground in a minor fit of frustration; in doing so, she created a small crater, slightly larger than her fist. "How were you able to catch me? You couldn't even see me." If training was doing anything for Erasa, it was making her more assertive; and this shined through in the young girl's anger at her own failure.
"That's because I wasn't using my eyes to find you," Gohan explained, finding Erasa's frustration to be endearing. Just three months ago, she'd have lost all of her confidence from this one failure. Now, she seemed determined to better herself, and even angry at herself for failing to evade him. "During our game of tag, I was following your ki."
"You followed my ki?" Erasa flashed Gohan a very confused look. She hadn't remembered exerting any ki, except in those brief moments she needed to fly; he certainly couldn't have found her on the first attempt by following her ki.
"Let me explain," the teenage Saiyan figured he may as well start from square one, "I've already explained the concept of ki to you; life energy. This is the energy that is found not only in all living things, but the inanimate objects as well; plants, buildings, even clothing, have some small degree of ki. This is because everything possesses a soul, no matter how small. Living creatures simply possess larger souls, and due to that, a proportionately larger amount of ki."
"That doesn't tell me much," Erasa began, only for Gohan to raise a finger for silence.
"Let me continue," He scolded, and pressed on with the lecture as if Erasa hadn't interrupted. "I'm capable of 'sensing' energy; it's the method I used to find you while I was blindfolded. By concentrating on your ki signature, which as as unique as a fingerprint, I was able to seek you out in spite of the dozens of other, smaller signatures surrounding me. Making it far easier is the fact that simple movement causes a large flare in the ki of a living person; while I told you to hide from me, I actually made it easier to find you by forcing you to run."
It took Erasa all of five seconds to get the gist of what Gohan was saying. By having her run, she exerted ki, airborne or otherwise, and he used some kind of sixth sense, the ability to locate her energy. "If I'm right, I bet you're going to have me try the blindfold next, aren't you?"
"Astute as ever," Gohan smiled, happy to see she caught on quickly, "this exercise is meant to teach you how to sense ki. It's not always a reliable skill; we've had it fail us before. However, if your eyes are ever failing you, the ability to sense the ki of the living will be a vital skill."
Taking a deep breath, Erasa stood up, catching the blindfold that Gohan tossed her way. Fluttering in the breeze, she tied the cloth around her eyes, causing her vision to fall into self-imposed darkness.
"This is already off to the kind of start I expected," Erasa thought, focusing far more on her inability to see a thing than trying to concentrate and find Gohan's ki signature. "I can't see a thing; this is going to be a lot harder than I expected."
"Don't try to 'see' me," Gohan scolded, quickly moving out of reach as Erasa made her first move, hazarding a guess – a lucky one at that – at his direction. "Focus on my ki; concentrate, and try to connect to it and follow my movements!"
"I'm trying!" Erasa huffed, making a wide leap and thrusting her arms out, only to catch thin air. She knew she was a sinking ship; getting nowhere very fast. Erasa began to flare up an invisible aura of ki, trying to get a feel in the area for Gohan's own aura. Despite her efforts, this yielded no results; Erasa's vision was still plagued by darkness.
It didn't take much for Gohan to remember how this version of his training went when he was training to combat the oncoming Saiyans so many years ago. Piccolo had been far less reluctant to provide a blindfold and preferred more violent measures to get the job done.
"You're slacking!" The Namekian reprimanded sharply, a balled fist mercilessly meeting with Gohan's stomach, causing the young Saiyan to double over, winded. "If you have time to check your footing, then you're not concentrating on my energy!"
"I'm trying, Mr. Piccolo, but-!" Gohan protested through gasps of air.
"Try harder!" Piccolo's sharp reply came with a furious kick, sending the boy hurtling back at breakneck speeds. "If this were a real fight, I'd have killed you long before now. Do you think the Saiyans will show you the kindness I'm displaying now? How do you think your father wound up on the ground with broken ribs from our last nemesis? Innocence and naivete, pure and simple!" Clicking his tongue, Goku's archnemesis extended his left arm, stretching it an immense length to grab Gohan by the leg.
"Get back here, brat! I'll beat the lesson into you if I have to!"
"W-Whoah!" Gohan cried as he felt himself reeled in, and spun around in the air like a ribbon before Piccolo slammed the Saiyan child into the ground, causing the boy's eyes to widen with the shock of the pain from the impact.
"Is that the best you've got?" Piccolo snarled. "I told you to feel for my energy; relying on your other senses will only get you killed."
Rising from the dirt, the dust-stained Gohan's face was straining with tears, as well as the effort to try and hold them back. He wanted to prove he could fight; if only to protect the planet. But Piccolo's training was too tough. Despite this, within all the self-doubt, Gohan felt a surge of something else; anger. An emotion he only remembered vaguely from several months ago, when the man who claimed to be his uncle was crushing his father under the weight of his foot.
That furious emotion welled in the young Saiyan's heart, and he began to charge a condensed orb of ki in his hands, causing Piccolo's eyes to widen.
"MASENKO!" The energy exploded in a blinding flash, releasing a torrent of heated plasma beam of pure death that was firing straight at Piccolo.
The Namekian, more surprised than he cared to let on, firmly rooted himself into the dirt, braced for the worst. As the energy blast closed in, Piccolo slammed his own forearm into it, altering the trajectory of the beam and sending it hurtling away, destroying a nearby plateau.
"Getting angry?" Piccolo berated coldly. "Then harness that anger and use it against me!"
Simply snapping was pointless; upon seeing his attack deflected, Gohan's anger diminished, replaced with shock, and in accordance, his power level dropped. Gohan then collapsed onto the ground in shock and exhaustion.
"Tch..." Piccolo was growing frustrated with Gohan's antics. He needed to push the boy farther, and yet he couldn't do any lasting harm – not while they still needed him as a potential fighter against the Saiyans. He needed to push Gohan farther; and he knew the best way to do that. Dashing forward, Piccolo appeared to materialize before Gohan's eyes, sliding the tips of his claws along the ground, forcing soil from the ground towards the young Saiyan.
"Uwah!" A cry escaped the young Saiyan's throat a the dirt splashed into his open eyes, the stinging pain sending him stumbling back. Blinking furiously, the young boy found himself blinded by this simple, effective method executed by his teacher.
"Is needing to rely solely on your eyes a Saiyan trait?" Piccolo snapped harshly; his words rang louder as Gohan's young ears began to pick up the slack due to his new lack of sight. "If you can't learn such a simple technique, you're worthless as a fighter!"
The young Saiyan was now backed into a corner, precisely what Piccolo wanted. Panic flooding through him, he knew he needed to find a way out. He couldn't see a thing anymore, and he forced his eyes shut from the pain. Despite this, he could hear Piccolo advancing, his time running short.
"Wait...what's...this?" Gohan thought, and a glimmer of light flickered into his vision, despite his shut eyes. This flicker flared, and became a gaseous blob of light, forming into the shape of an advancing Namekian. "I can see Mr. Piccolo..it's faint, but it's definitely him, bathed in energy...!"
"You're truly pathetic, kid!" Piccolo raised his arm above Gohan as he stopped before the young boy. He would knock the child unconscious and begin from the ground up.
"Raaaaaaaaah!" In a move that surprised Piccolo, Gohan, his eyes still scrunched tightly shut, encased his own arm in ki, and performed a swift and powerful uppercut. Gohan's fist collided with Piccolo's oncoming arm, the force of the mighty blow creating a very large cracking noise as the arm was torn off entirely, with Gohan rocketing upwards into the air.
"Urgh!" Piccolo grunted in pain, gripping his new stump of a shoulder. The irony of Gohan, the nephew of the Saiyan he had fought, taking off his arm when the Saiyan had done the same thing was not lost on him, and yet he also admired the boy's display of power in the face of danger. To not only learn to sense ki so quickly under pressure, but to also take off his dominant arm...
"That's the spirit, brat," Piccolo mused, as he began to concentrate on his shoulder stump to begin the regeneration process while Gohan entered freefall. "That power of yours...I'll give you the training of your life until you've acquired the skill to hone it."
"I can't force Erasa into a situation like that," Gohan shook his head at the memory. It was precisely because Piccolo's methods were too difficult for a human to endure that Gohan had taken up the mantle of Muten Rōshi's training methods. The most Gohan could do for Erasa was simulate blindness in the safest way possible. And yet she still could not 'see'. As he dodged her final grab, Gohan appeared behind Erasa, slipping the blindfold off her.
Erasa squinted, as light flashed into her eyes, momentarily dazing the human girl. "G-Gohan, why'd you do that? I had to have been close!"
"If you want an accurate measure of distance, you were about to freeze to death in the Blue Bell Artic," Gohan quipped, smiling gently at the frustrated girl. "I'm beginning to think you'll need a demonstration, to see where you're going wrong."
"A demonstration...of errors?" Erasa sounded puzzled; that seemed to her like the least helpful way to demonstrate anything.
"Just watch; if you see exactly what you've done wrong from the perspective of a viewer, you may be able to rectify the problem," Gohan explained, before turning away from Erasa. "GOTEN! COME ON OVER AND LEND ME A HAND, WOULD YA!?"
As if he'd been lurking around the corner — in fact, he had been — Goten flew over, smiling eagerly at Gohan's request for assistance. "Watcha need, Gohan?" He quipped innocently as he landed.
"I'm sure you've been watching," Gohan tried to sound stern while reprimanding his younger brother, but he couldn't help but find the boy's mischievous nature amusing. "You don't quite know how to sense ki either, Goten, so you're going to help me demonstrate to Erasa exactly what she's doing wrong — and maybe get your training in as well."
"What's sensing ki?" Goten queried, placing a small finger to his lips in confusion.
Gohan let out an exasperated sigh as he realised he would have to explain once again from the ground up.
"Got ya!" Goten cried, the newly blindfolded Saiyan child laughing as he tried to tackle Gohan from the back, only for Gohan to lightly flip backwards over his younger brother, causing him to hurtle towards a large boulder. "Ow!" The boy cried, rubbing his forehead. How a stone could harm a Saiyan child was anyone's guess, but it was obvious Goten's head stung with pain.
Erasa couldn't help but giggle, fighting the urge to coddle the younger Saiyan. "So this is what I was doing? These wide guess strikes?"
"No, Goten," Gohan said reprovingly, landing gracefully on the ground again with a light top, and pointed directly at the blinded Saiyan child, "you're supposed to feel for myki. Don't rely on your nose or your ears. Haven't you been paying any attention?"
"B-But Gohan, it's too hard for me to find you when you keep moving around!" Goten protested, clearly missing the point.
Erasa nodded along with Goten's protest; how were either of them, new to this ki sensing, find a moving target, when neither of them could feel the ki of the stationary objects around them yet? "I don't want to sound like I'm expecting you to hold my hand for this, Gohan, but I think you may need to simplify this for the both of us."
Gohan frowned, stroking his chin in thought, before snapping his fingers from a burst of brilliance. "Erasa, shut your eyes tight. Both you and Goten, focus entirely on me. Expand your mind; use your own ki to try and feel for mine. I'm going to make it simple this time."
While Erasa certainly had her doubts, Gohan had yet to mislead her, so she followed his direction, and shut her eyes tight. Goten, blindfolded, had no need to make such an unnecessary motion. The young woman took a deep breath, focusing solely on Gohan, where she knew he still stood, and began to allow her own ki to glow gently through her body.
"She's starting to get it," A smile crossed Gohan's countenance as he waited patiently, trying to give them the necessary time to prepare. He could feel her own ki energy steadily rising, and Goten was beginning to catch on. Raising his hand to his side, Gohan flared his own ki intentionally, expelling some from his hand in the form of a sphere of ki, vivid blue in colour. "Now tell me...can you sense anything?"
Erasa felt a shock as Gohan's surge of ki registered with her brain; in the darkness of her blinded state, Erasa could see a clouded figure, muddled, but present, standing tall among many weaker 'blobs' — neither gas nor light — that seemed to meld together.
"Is this...sensing ki?" The blonde thought to herself, and found it to be a nearly overwhelming sensation. This was a different kind of sight, and she realised now why Gohan's explanation seemed so foreign; explaining this sense to someone who had never had it would be like trying to have someone who was born blind understand 'sight' by word of mouth. It simply wasn't possible.
She'd tried to rationalize the sensation as 'sight' at first but realized it was something beyond that; it was awareness. Without even needing to turn her head, Erasa was aware of the entire area for several meters; the trees that stood behind her were brimming with energy. It flowed differently from Gohan's, or even Goten's, who she could now feel as being standing at her immediate right. And the subject of Gohan himself was awe-inspiring.
"I can sense...you," Erasa struggled to place words to the feeling. Gohan stood brighter than anything else around her, with the vivid glare of energy localized above what she had to assume was his palm — a large globe held up by a protruding tendril of a brighter texture of indistinct shape. "Is that a ball of ki?"
"I see an octopus holding a beach ball!" Goten crowed excitedly.
"Haha, well, you're partially right," Their answers were very amusing to Gohan, who couldn't help but remember his own early discerning of the things he'd 'see' with this technique, and just how they differed, "I'm charging up ki over my head so that you can tell where I am a bit better," releasing the ki sphere and allowing it to dissipate, the world became far less vibrant to Goten and Erasa, as Gohan continued to explain, "ki is a Universal energy. It flows inside of us as much as it flows around us. Like a ocean, we're submerged inside of it and it's hard to tell what's what when you have eyes aren't meant to see it. But what does sonar do for people underwater? It helps them see objects they're meant to know are in their way or what they're trying to find. Think of me as not a person but a target you have to find with your ki. If you concentrate, try to send a pulse of your ki and see if you can tell where I am better."
Steadying her breathing as Erasa had come to learn was ideal when controlling ki, she began to concentrate on her inner power, causing her hair to flourish as much as her clothes.
In a few moments, a gentle breeze flows under her soles, lapping over the environment around her; gasping she smiles and blinks a few times as she points in Gohan's direction.
"I can't tell what body part is what, but I can see your energy, Gohan!"
Goten, quickly becoming as much of a natural at this as Erasa, laughed giddily, "I see ya, I see ya, I see ya!"
"Good," Gohan nodded with a satisfied grin, "Let's work a little slower and just focus on having you get used to homing in on objects with your ki. Once that's done, try to do the same thing while in motion. With practice, you can do this without even trying and make it second nature."
Over the course of the next several months, Erasa and Goten trained hard to master the ability to sense Ki. It, among the many other challenges Gohan thrust their way, was just a daily exercise as they continued to better themselves for the competition. While they made staggering progress, they were not alone in their training.
Vegeta trained Trunks to break every limit he found. It wasn't long before Vegeta was regularly sparring with the young Super Saiyan, as a way to help prepare himself for the inevitable showdown he planned. Whether father or son was prepared to confront the Son Family remained to be seen in the ring.
Even then, others continued to better themselves. Piccolo, under the Sun that beat down the Lookout, meditated daily when he wasn't training within the ancient fortress' innerworkings. Krillin, under the persistent prodding of his cyborg wife, sparred daily with the number named beauty on islands surrounding Rōshi's own home. Goku, in Other World, continued to make sure to tap into his newfound powers he received through his own brutal training under the watch of King Kai.
Even Muten Rōshi, old as he was, was encouraged to go through his own routine of exercises. Perhaps the sight of seeing so many spirits lifted for this revived Tournament got his old fire burning. Or maybe it was for another reason.
Yes, they and many others yet to be known made their preparations for the fated day. The day of the Tournament. The time of reunion. And the moment when the whole world will be changed forever.
A/N: Holy Beerus, this chapter took quite a long time to write. Not because I had a difficult time, not at all. My real gripe was with this entire bloody month. First of all, Happy Belated Christmas to all of my readers - I'd have done a Christmas special for this story if DBZ was set in a world that could celebrate the Holiday. But all they have is Freeza Day. However, what with this entire month being December, it was a bit difficult to get work done. To explain quickly, I've moved into a new house this month so we had to settle in, which took up a good majority of my time. Add my newfound work schedule into the mix (which is really good, I thank my manager for it), my friends I love to spend time with, and Christmas, which involved spending time with my family and getting some AWESOME presents (a lot of which were GAMES, so you know how that goes), I've had a plethora of distractions in just this month alone. But, as you can see, with the help of my good friend Demod20, this chapter came to life again.
I've only got one real pun to explain this chapter: Blue Bell is an Ice Cream company, thus fitting Toriyama's food and pun motif, or so I figured. With this chapter complete, I can confidently say that the World Martial Arts tournament is on its way, next chapter, we're all finally going to step into the ring Toriyama has long since vacated! I can hear the stands already!
As always, let's thank Demod20 for his awesome assistance in getting my story up and running, I'm always so grateful!
Once again, Merry Belated Christmas to everyone, and if you celebrate a different Holiday, I still hope you had a wonderful time!