Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, Dragon Ball Super, or anything else related to the Dragon Ball universe, or any of its characters. They are all owned by Akira Toriyama.

Gohan was stuck.

He had been on his own for a week, and during that time, had fallen into a routine. He would wake up to the sunrise every morning. After which, he would eat a breakfast consisting of whatever food he had stored in the cave from the previous day. Mostly berries or fruits. After finishing, he would spend the entire day exploring the forest, trying to map it out as best as he could. At some point, he would stop to refill his basket with fruits and nuts, and stop to eat lunch, but for the most part he spent all of his time exploring. During the late afternoon, he would stop by the river he had found, take a bath, and catch a fish or two, depending on the size, and take them back to the cave to cook. After dinner, he would leave the fire going to keep warm during the night, and carve a tally into the cave wall with a rock to keep track of the days.

He had seven tallies on the wall, meaning he had done this for a week straight. Today was his eighth day. The forest he was in was, for the most part, completely safe. There were some wild animals such as rabbits, snakes, and deer, but he had yet to find anything really dangerous.

For the most part, it was all pretty boring, when compared to the woods around his old house, but mapping it out was also necessary. He needed to know the layout of the place in which he was living, so he had to explore. He had to know if there were any dangers.

At first, getting through a full day had been exhausting. His back and legs would be sore from all of the walking, climbing, and fishing, that he had to do, but he would always be ready to go the next morning. He would be completely healed the next day, and most importantly, there would always be a noticeable increase in his strength. He would find himself at the end of each passing day, noticeably less sore, and with more overall energy. During the day, everything he needed to do was just easier. He was getting stronger.

This was also the reason why he was stuck. At the end of the previous day, he wasn't sore at all. He had the majority of the forest memorized, and he no longer had to worry about food or water. He had gotten completely used to his routine. He wouldn't get any stronger unless he changed it. He was ready to start training on his own.

The problem was, he had no idea where to start.

He had already eaten breakfast, and was currently sitting in his cave, deep in thought, trying to figure out what he needed to do to start training.

He had never trained before in his life. He knew that he had the ability to use something called Ki, but aside from those occasions where he had used his hidden powers, he didn't know how to access it, or how it worked. Other than the stories his dad had told him, and watching his dad use it himself, he had no experience with it. He had easily read hundreds of books in his short life, it used to be all that he did, but none of them ever mentioned Ki, at all. It was like nobody knew that it even existed aside from his dad, and his dad's friends.

All he had to go on, was his own past experiences, limited as they were, what his dad had told him in the past, and what his dad had done to train himself. Other than that, he had to figure out everything on his own.

When he thought about it that way, despite the situation, it kind of got him excited. His mom had always drilled into him that she wanted him to be a scholar. As a result, he spent most of his life studying. Science and math were some of his favourite things to read about, and they were both about making discoveries. He had read all about some of the most renowned scientists in the past, and some of the breakthroughs they had made. Now, he was in a similar situation as they had been. He was on the edge of the unknown, and needed to discover some of the secrets of a new field of knowledge. At least, it was new to him and most of the world anyways.

Discovering how Ki worked would be great practice for when he needed to discover something new in the future when he was a scholar. It was kind of like following in his father's footsteps, while still keeping his mom happy at the same time, too. Maybe Ki could benefit humanity in some way. If it could, then it was worth researching. If the idea had potential, then maybe he would be able to convince his mom that he could still be a scholar by studying Ki, the energy source that just so happens to involve allowing him to train like his dad. It was worth considering in the future.

'Applying science to Ki…' He certainly loved science, and he wanted to be strong like his dad. It was perfect.

In any case, he needed to learn how his power worked before he could get stronger. He had to be ready for the saiyans. His dreams for the future had to wait until he was sure that there would even be a future in the first place.

In order to get started, he had to start from scratch.

'Ok, so what are the facts?' He knew that Ki was a source of energy that lets you shoot lasers, fly, and do all sorts of other incredible things. From what his dad had told him, Ki was also used for the body to surpass its biological limits. The body can only get to a certain limit of strength by itself, so Ki is used to break through that barrier. Finally, training is necessary to increase or maintain a person's Ki level. If this were not the case then his dad wouldn't need to train all the time to be the strongest. In other words, the more often that a person's Ki is used, the stronger it gets.

'Makes sense so far…'

At some point, he needed to unlock his own Ki, and learn how to control it himself. He had a huge amount hidden. But that wasn't all that was important. He would be using his Ki to fight, which meant that his physical body had to be in good shape as well. He needed to be able to dodge and evade, while also counter-attacking. This meant he needed to be flexible and agile. He was small, and would still be pretty small in a year when compared to everyone else. He could use his size as an advantage. He wouldn't just body build like so many other people in the world did to get stronger. There were plenty of famous martial artists that just beefed themselves up. It was impressive to normal people sure, but his dad's group of friends were far more capable then these people. Their excessive Ki, was far superior to massive amounts of muscle mass.

His own enormous Ki could count for his strength. Gaining excessive muscle mass would simply make it harder for him to move. It was a basic principle in some of his physics books. The more mass you have, the harder it is to accelerate, or dodge, in other words. If his Ki could be used to augment his strength he really didn't need a lot of muscle mass. He just needed a lot of Ki. But flexibility on the other hand, that actually would help out a lot. Having a much larger range of motion will allow for a huge variety of martial arts techniques to be learned.

He had to keep this concept in mind during his training. It probably wouldn't be too hard, considering he was super young, meaning his body was undeveloped, and he probably wouldn't be able to grow huge muscles even if he tried, but he had to keep it in mind in the future. Since he himself couldn't directly control the rate at which his muscles grow, he had to make sure they didn't get too big if he wanted to maximize his speed and agility. Those were the things that would give him the advantage at his age, not excessive physical strength.

He didn't want to get big, so he needed to learn how to use his Ki properly. He needed to improve his flexibility, and agility. He needed to learn how to control his movements completely, allowing for minimal energy loss as well. The amount of Ki that a person has is finite, so he needed to learn how to not waste any of it, so that he could last longer in a fight.

It was a lot to keep in mind, and there will probably be even more that he will learn once he started training. This was all just a starting point.

Pretty much everything relies on him unlocking that Ki of his first, so he needed to focus on that the most for now.

Ki, flexibility, and agility for now. Martial arts will come later.

That was his starting point. Now he just had to come up with a training schedule.

'Where to start…' He supposed that he should focus on his control, flexibility, and agility in the morning, and Ki in the evening. He just had to decide on how he wanted to do that.

'To start I should probably figure out what each of those are and how to go about improving each of them.'

Flexibility, he could improve with some basic strength training, and stretches for the most part. Agility and control are very closely linked. For agility, he could go on runs throughout the forest, maybe through the canopy of the trees. Maybe practice climbing trees and cliffs as fast as possible. Control however, is all about minimizing the amount of energy he wanted to expend. He had to learn how to use the absolute minimum amount of energy in every movement. How would he go about doing that?

After thinking for a while, he came up with an idea.

'Stealth training.' Whenever someone makes a movement, energy is required. Every sound that is made, and every redundant move someone makes, also expends energy. If he could practice eliminating those, then he would theoretically have far better control over his energy, and would waste far less of it.

From now on, he needed to learn how to make every move silent and controlled. Something that he expected would take a while to get used to. But that was ok. He had time.

He wanted to be able to move as silently as possible all the time without thinking about it.

He needed to re-learn how to move.

With that, he came up with a plan.

Throughout the entire morning, he'd go on a run throughout the forest. He'd climb through the trees, and simply do whatever he felt like, with as little noise as possible. He'd collect his food, and do everything he needed out in the woods, come back with his fish for dinner, then work on accessing his Ki while it's cooking, and before he goes to sleep. He'd do that every day until he could move absolutely silently all the time and had no problem with his Ki, or if this current plan didn't end up working the way he thought it would.

With his plan set, he stood up from where he was seated, and promptly winced at how much sound he made. He had to be much more careful. He had to take it one step at a time. He slowly picked up his basket and sword, and turned towards the exit of the cave while strapping them over his shoulder.

He took a hesitant step towards the exit to the cave, doing everything he could to make it as quiet as possible. He barely heard it. He had a long way to go. He started walking forward incredibly slowly. He made sure that each step was as silent as possible. He was moving incredibly slowly at the moment, and was actually using more energy walking than he normally did, but he knew that once he got used to moving again, this new method of movement will be proven to be far more efficient. It would also be more effective. Walking silently would let him sneak up on enemies in a fight, and catch them off guard.

He exited the cave and began silently walking towards his favorite location to collect fruits and nuts. He would start out walking for now, until he got the hang of it, and would try some more advanced movements later.

He expected this to take a while.

A/N: Please excuse any grammar and spelling errors, as I have no beta reader at this time.

- LeviTamm