Before Chayote could properly ascertain that she'd just seen herself facing against an actual Saiyan, the image on the rippling surface of the water changed. It was now displaying a massive building with a handful of others in the distance. Atop of every building flapped a crimson flag with two white R marks on them. The flags were triangular and unlike most of the military decoration that Chayote had seen. All around her were Earthlings wielding larger version of the local arm cannons that the bandits used, man-sized military robots were jetting about and aiming their own attacks as well in the frozen image.
The next flash returned Chayote back to the odd, white rectangle, surrounded by a well-maintained lawn and an entire crowd of people observing the happenings on the rectangle. While Chayote was still present at the time, this vision did not show the same thing as the one with the Saiyan before. This time Chayote was wearing a uniform similar to that of the armed Earthlings from the previous flash, except for the minor detail of the double R ribbon. She was not facing the boy Saiyan either, instead of the most interesting aspect of these visions, the sole thing that kept Chayote focused on them, to begin with, the teen Saiyan was standing in front of a three-eyed weirdo who mirrored Taopaipai's stance almost beat for beat.
Another flash… Chayote, with a significantly more damaged version of the uniform she previously observed herself in, stood alongside the Saiyan boy. Intrigued by the vision and this curious figure, the Saiyan leaned closer and closer in so that she could catch a proper glimpse of this unexpected vision. The two appeared to be standing in a fighting pose in front of the massive Kami who sat on a throne edged by bone and skulls. Could this mean that Chayote might team up with another Saiyan to finally claim this planet for the Frieza Army?
"You know, if you keep dawdling on the future, you'll forget to live the present so it becomes the future eventually." A lazy and dragging voice distracted Chayote, the Saiyan jumped up and turned back, very nearly keeping herself from flipping over and fumbling into the prophetic pot of water.
"That boy inside that pot. He was a Saiyan, wasn't he?" Chayote pointed at the pot, trying to address the creature that caught her by surprise. Much to the Saiyan's own shock, it was neither Kami nor Mr. Popo that greeted her. In fact, it was a fat, white cat. One with closed eyes and a stick not too much different from the one Kami used to walk around with.
"Oh my, is there someone in these pots? I must admit, I haven't cleaned them in a while and a lot of fools cruise along here these days. If there truly is a drowner in there, may as well…" the cat rushed toward the pot, lifted it up with its stick and carelessly flicked it over the hole that Chayote crawled onto the bottom section of the tower's summit through. The Saiyan reached out over the spilled water with regret and a speck of fury aimed towards the dumb cat.
"Answer me now, what is this place? Where's Kami? Who was that boy in the ripples?" Chayote stepped forward, swinging her fists around as if she was to let them loose. Truthfully, she couldn't care how much this cat pissed her off, it looked like a puny weakling and therefore not of any interest. Chayote's own good and evil radar had not yet properly evaluated the white cat with an eternally closed glare.
"Huh? You know Kami?" the cat bent his head to the side. "That is… Unusual. I see… You must have somehow stumbled across the Lookout without having been approved. In that case, you must have been cast down."
"Yes. Mr. Popo kicked me down. So what you're saying is that you must approve me before I can meet Kami? I'm looking to learn some martial arts from him." Chayote leaned up closer to the cat and grabbed his hands, almost like she was about to congratulate the chubby feline.
"That so?" the chubby fur ball licked his paws. "In that case, my name is Korin, and you are correct. I must test you and approve of you before you can even climb up higher to meet Kami."
"Huh? Oh… I see… I haven't climbed all the way there yet…" Chayote looked up, even though all she could see was the ceiling of the small cradle that Korin had built for himself up here. "Although… This tower is named after you, isn't it? The Korin Tower. You must be pretty good yourself. Maybe you can teach me a few moves?"
"Well… I wouldn't say all that good… It's more like legendary." Korin rubbed his cheeks before jumping up and down like a monkey. One surprisingly more agile than the cat's chubby build was initially suggesting. Chayote surmised that Korin may have even been faster than Taopaipai. Someone this strong with the train of martial arts would surely be useful in her growth. "But if you are to obtain my approval, you will need to pass my test, for which case you may need my guidance. You've climbed my tower all by yourself and you do have the proper courtesy of respecting your host."
"Cour…Tesy…" Chayote mumbled the odd word, disgracing the way it was spelled and uttered with her own mouth. It was only after she could digest what the fat cat was saying word for word that her excitement busted down all of the brick walls of her cool. "You mean you'll train me for your test? Sweet!" Chayote shot her fist up into the sky.
"Before I do… You look like you've been through quite a journey on your way up here. Someone really did not want you to finish this climb. You may wish to take some of these beans in one of those jars." Korin gestured with his hand.
"Huh? These tiny things? No way, got any dinosaur meat?" Chayote examined the little boogeresque saplings with her eye before tossing it over her shoulder and off the Korin Tower.
"You do know there is a limited supply of these, right? They are, in fact, quite rare." Korin spoke as if he had squinted in disappointment with his eyes although it was impossible to tell for sure given his unique ocular behavior.
"These little things?" Chayote eyed another bean before coming up to the same conclusion and tossing one over her shoulder. This one, however, did not fly over the edge, because Korin had caught it between two of the fingers of his thumbless paws.
"Please stop doing that," Korin spoke with a hint of bitterness before flicking the bean in an arc toward the Saiyan's mouth. Chayote may not have thought too much of these petty beans but she was not about to let a bean hit her face and fall to the ground when literally all she needed to do was to just open her mouth. The teenage alien crunched the tiny bean with a little hesitation to do so. It tasted like slimy seaweed on the inside and had a remarkably similar aroma to it inside one's mouth.
"It's a Senzu. It is enough food for ten whole days. A numbskull like you may very well just drain my resources of these before you are approved." Korin shook the larger, pointing end of his stick at Chayote.
"Huh? I must admit, I would much rather eat real meat than this… Midget celery thing." The Saiyan compared it to the closest earthly equivalent to the fishy taste. A detestable vegetable that Bora once tried tricking Chayote eating with her meat. "Anyway, I may not get to eat another one so is it fine if I take some with me? I don't have much patience so I plan on completing your training much faster than ten days."
"Imagine my surprise…" Korin rubbed his eyes. While he did enjoy the complimenting and polite first impression of the visiting Saiyan, currently he was shifting that impression quite radically. "Follow me. If you're so eager to move up, I won't keep you waiting too long. I'll brief you on the way things work and then it's all up to you."
"Aww, cool!" Chayote exclaimed in excitement, her bouncing knees could barely contain the excitement. After the cat departed from the bottom section and went higher up, using a round set of stairs by the side of the Korin's little temple, the Saiyan snagged a handful of the beans and stuffed some of them inside her pockets. The best part about wearing a boy's pants!
Feeling the irritation from her burns and the stiffness in her muscles disappear completely, Chayote's face lit up like the northern lights. She tapped her pocket to which she deposited the magical healing beans and ran up after to where Korin tapped his giant cat feet to.
"The test of your worthiness is quite simple – catch me and you'll get to drink the Holy Water. It's a mystical liquid that draws out and multiplies your hidden powers. Prove worthy to me, Korin, the Immortal Cat Deity, and you won't even need to go up and embarrass yourself in front of Kami anymore." Korin chuckled while licking his paw. The white chubby extended his staff to pick up an ancient-looking jar of water. The cat swung it about, as an alluring trick for the Saiyan to get hooked by.
Chayote dashed forward without warning. Korin leaped aside only for the Saiyan to follow. After the trick of catching the Senzu on the lower part of the temple, Chayote was well aware of the mystical technique that appeared to leave after-images that the cat employed. It must have been this "martial arts" thing that every Earthling she met spoke of. It appeared as if though Korin would not teach her any unless she overcame his test.
The chasing Saiyan only charged through a shapeless image of the cat with the real Korin already floating aside. A deafening smacking sound echoed through the temple. Chayote appeared behind the white cat and smacked it across its chubby buttocks.
"Y-You caught me…" Korin exclaimed in surprise. A sentiment that the teen was not counting on the white cat being capable of. "Right out of the gate… That has never happened before. Why didn't you take the water?"
"You kidding me?" Chayote grinned. The Saiyan pointed at her own excited face with her thumb. "Just seeing you move once back then taught me this much about movement in combat. I can't wait to see what else I can learn chasing and slapping you around."
While Korin could not open his eyes, the Saiyan could have sworn that she saw his right one twitch a tiny bit. The cat's usually lax and slowly wiggling and tangling tail froze and curled up its white fur like a hedgehog exposed his quills to the potential predator.
"I might just be in a bit of trouble, it seems…" the white cat deity lamented.
The sorry cries of a cat getting smacked across its chubby behind once in a while emanated from the Korin Tower for days on end. Chayote's instinct tipped her off to something golden in value. Korin's movements truly were all just a goldmine. The alien teen did not require the cat to teach her anything. All she could ever learn about martial arts came to her by just observing the white fluff bounce about. She saw him disperse into countless after-images. Dash with incredible speed and grace, move its body with perfect control.
Catching him with mere speed was easy. Especially after Chayote had properly grasped the basics of movement in combat. Before she only knew the primal duo of engaging and disengaging. She charged in and swung her fists and feet when the battle started, she disengaged and ran away when the enemy was too tough. There was so much more to movement than that. Space control was crucial in a fight, If Korin positioned himself right, no matter how fast Chayote was, she would always waste too much movement in her pursuit.
This training was too precious to power through like Bora's. Chayote chose to restrain herself, try and move about as fast as she saw Korin move and try to read where he would move to next, based on the insights she had come to learn from seeing him move around normally. It took until the end of the second day for Chayote to read and predict Korin's movements. Reading and actually performing up to snuff were two different things entirely, however. Not even by the end of the third day could Chayote catch Korin while restraining herself, even if she could read the cat's moves.
She was a novice, Korin appeared to have boundless mountains of experience to draw from. It was like there was a difference of hundreds of years between their experiences.
"You know, you've caught me multiple times already. You could snag the Holy Water just like that, it's clear as day." Korin huffed and panted after the third day of Chayote's training.
"Sure. But I've already got all the power I need. Without learning this martial arts thing, power and speed are all meaningless. At this point, I think I've even been breathing wrong this whole time…" Chayote squinted in observation of how the fur under Korin's nose moved and rippled while she chased after the cat once more.
She was breathing all wrong. Namely, she hadn't been breathing at all. Whether out of ill instinct advice or because of some bad training, she's been clutching up her breath inside whenever she tensed her body and attacked someone seriously. It was only now, after chasing Korin around for a while that Chayote had learned to appreciate a little bit of smoothness in her motion and, most of all, to just let it go.
The Saiyan used to see boredom as a pathetic thing. Something to be burnt down and obliterated upon first sight. Now the girl understood that without learning every motion she did while fighting until it turned boring for her to do, she would never truly master that particular movement and while she had picked up on a lot of things from chasing the white cat around, she had not mastered anything just yet.
"I think I will grow old here…" Chayote admitted by the end of the fifth day, with a genuine smile on her face. This entire day she just chased a fat, white cat around as if she had nothing better to do. Truthfully, it was not that she did not have other goals occupying her mind, those goals may as well have not existed given how easily Chayote forgot all about them when training with Korin.
"And it will be entirely pointless…" Korin admitted.
"Wait, what?" Chayote cocked her head to the side in confusion.
"True. You've been picking up on martial arts through observation. You've got a talent for that, I must admit. Talent, unlike any student I have had the honor of showing a thing or two. It's like you're not even human, honestly… However… You're far too strong for your own good. The point of my training is to improve you by having you move around in this dense air of the high altitudes while chasing someone of my skill level. This water is just a sham, just tap water." Korin admitted.
"But… I caught right from the get-go." Chayote sighed.
"Exactly, my training is utterly pointless on someone like you. You've just been picking up what you could notice me do. I feel like this is just about enough of this trickery. What is it exactly that you want?" Korin looked at Chayote, finally moving past his trickery and turning serious just for a moment.
"I… I don't even know anymore. There's just so much on this planet for me. Initially, I thought to burn it all down, ruin it by wiping its surface clean and leaving it as just some chunk of space rock to sell for the Frieza Army…" Chayote began voicing something she's been feeling for a while now. Something that had not begun to take shape until she began looking at picking up martial arts with seriousness.
"The what now?" Korin turned his head to the side in bemusement.
"Now though… I'm not so sure… I want to beat Taopaipai because he's made a mockery out of fighting. He's turned my passion into something only done for something as useless as a stack of currency. I want to kill every evil person on this planet because it's a path that Bora and Upa set me on because it has led me to meeting you and learning about martial arts. I want to learn to shoot energy from my hands without the aid of arm cannons, I want to meet that Saiyan boy too… There's too much left for me to experience and see on this world to destroy it just yet." Chayote admitted.
"Heh… I think I can show you a thing or two about Ki, the energy you speak of. If you want to keep walking the path of martial arts and meet that boy, however, you will need to travel to Papaya Island to the south-east from here in three years and meet a student of mine who's become somewhat of a prodigy of teaching martial arts. His name is Muten Roshi." Korin explained.
"Muten Roshi…" Chayote repeated just to memorize the name. "So I have three whole years to train here then? I wonder how long an Earth year lasts…"
"Oh boy… It seems like we've got a bit of work to do before I let you out into the world. I need to make sure you can even tell south from north, to begin with…" Korin lamented before picking his cane back up. "Let's show you a thing or two about how Ki works for starters…"
While it was not meant for someone as spontaneous and jumpy as Chayote to last three whole years of the Immortal Cat Deity's training. She would take just about as much as she could before her knuckles started getting itchy, even if she could barely feel the physical benefits of the whole experience, the liberation and enlightenment she received from it were just too sweet to abandon easily.