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.
A/N: Let me first start by thanking TheRangerBoy for helping me out, by being a beta for this chapter.
"So," Vegeta began, "Who's going next?"
There were a few moments where nobody said anything.
Evidently, the fact that Vegeta had just killed one of his own allies in cold blood had silenced the other fighters.
...And that hesitation to answer was a little worrying to Gohan.
If nobody stepped up, would the saiyans try to initiate a free for all?
That would be annoying to deal with, no doubt.
He needed more time for his dad to get there.
If he had to, he would volunteer to go next himself.
Showing a little bit of his own power was better than escalating the conflict, in his view.
"Alright! If no one steps up we'll have a free for all!"
"No," Krillin said quickly. "I'll go next!"
"Hold on, Krillin," Yamcha cut in.
"What's up?" Krillin asked, after turning to face his friend.
"Let me go, would ya? I'm really anxious to show these guys what we're all about down here on this planet."
"That's great, but I've got this one okay?"
"You've already been wished back to life with the Dragon Balls once. I haven't. So if anything happens at least we know that I can be revived."
Yamcha started stretching.
"Sit this one out for me Krillin. You'll get your chance. Don't you worry about that."
"Okay," Krillin accepted, hesitantly. "He's all yours."
Nappa laughed.
"How touching? I'm all warm and tingly. Now go kill him!"
Another Saibamen stepped forward, and Yamcha settled into a stance.
"Alright, let's get this thing over with."
Yamcha charged towards the Saibamen, and Gohan entered the slow motion world as the fight began.
They immediately engaged in hand to hand combat, rapidly launching themselves across the battlefield.
As soon as Gohan saw that happen, he settled himself in for a long fight.
This wasn't like the fight that Tien had fought earlier.
It was likely that that Saibamen had underestimated how strong the Triclops had been and had been caught flat-footed. Which had resulted in a quick defeat.
But this Saibamen wasn't making that same mistake, and was holding his own considerably better than his former comrade.
It was also possible that this Saibamen just didn't want to be killed for being a disappointment to the saiyans as well.
...Everyone in the clearing had their eyes and senses locked onto the ensuing battle.
The first series of engagements lasted quite some time, as both fighters seemed to mostly just be testing each other's defences.
But it was hardly interesting in Gohan's opinion. The Saibamen was weak, and so was the person in orange. They weren't even doing anything interesting either...
Just hand to hand martial arts essentially, for several minutes.
There hadn't been any useful pieces of information revealed in the fight just yet. All that was evident so far was the speed and relative skill of each fighter.
Compared to his own spars with Piccolo, this fight so far was about as interesting as watching two animals fighting in the woods somewhere...
Since the fight was unlikely to reach an intensity that he himself would find threatening, Gohan allowed his senses to expand over the entire battlefield.
And it was unnerving.
These two saiyans were like stars.
Their power level was terrifying to experience first hand. Even just passively feeling it the way he was doing right now.
...They weren't very far away from him physically, either.
Gohan knew just how abruptly an experienced Ki user could summon their power and attack, if his own skill in doing so was anything to go by.
He could himself, at any time, power up and attack the saiyans probably faster than any of the other fighters apart from Piccolo and the two saiyans themselves, could react.
And by that logic, these saiyans had to be capable of that too.
This fight was literally of no consequence to them. The four of them, Gohan, Piccolo, Vegeta and Nappa. To all of them, it was pointless.
At any time, either of these two saiyans could interrupt the fight, and kill all four of Gohan's temporary teammates, before any one of them could even notice what had happened.
From their perspective, his teammates', they'd be watching the fight in one moment, and then there would just be blackness in the next. There would be no warning in advance, as the attack would have happened too suddenly for them to have a hope of seeing.
...
It reminded him of a bunch of insects.
These four temporary teammates of his were undoubtedly among the most powerful fighters that the world had ever seen, but their strength counted for nothing here.
The only people that even mattered at all were the two saiyans, himself, and Piccolo.
Everyone else were like insects in comparison.
That was what this situation seemed like. He was watching a bunch of insects fighting each other and pretending that it was important.
And so were the saiyans.
Gohan himself was hoping that these insects would bite and sting his opponents, irritating them just enough to either create an opening for him to strike, or to draw out some information on how the two saiyans fought.
...He was going to fight his real opponents in a room full of mosquitos basically, but he had the advantage of having insect repellant. The mosquitos wouldn't try to bite him, only his opponents.
It was a minor advantage, but one that he would happily take, regardless.
"Oh no you don't!"
Yamcha's shout abruptly cut off Gohan's train of thought.
A bright light flashed, as Yamcha charged up an energy attack, and fired it into the Saibamen. Planting the creature firmly into the ground.
And that was pretty much the end of the battle.
All he had to do was finish it off, which to be honest, Gohan was fully expecting the fighter in orange to not do. Even after seeing what had happened with Tien earlier.
Gohan was pretty sure that the man just wasn't a killer.
"Yeah!" Krillin cheered along with the other spectators.
Yamcha landed in front of the crater containing the Saibamen, and glared down towards it.
...Was Gohan wrong? Was the man in orange going to actually deal a killing blow?
After seeing the man pause though, Gohan figured that he wouldn't.
Gohan's finger twitched, and his bubble sensing technique activated.
With it, Gohan could clearly feel the rise and fall of the Saibamen's chest, despite not being able to see it with his own eyes.
It was still alive.
Actually, it seemed to be perfectly fine from what he could tell. Why wasn't it standing up again?
"That's two," Nappa.
There was another intense moment of silence.
...And then Gohan almost felt his eyebrows shoot into his hairline as he saw the man in orange, his teammate, completely drop his guard and spin around to face his friends.
He started gloating.
...Gohan tuned him out immediately.
The man was about three meters away from his downed opponent... An opponent that looked to be playing dead.
An alarm went off in Gohan's head, and a hypothetical scenario flashed before him.
...
If the Saibamen had noticed the man's carelessness as Gohan had himself, it could have taken that last hit on purpose to make the man in orange drop his guard.
If that was true, it worked, and literally any moment now, the Saibamen could launch himself out of the crater for a surprise attack.
And now that the thought had crossed his mind, it stuck, sending Gohan's mind whirling.
...
When he made his plans, he usually assumed that the worst case scenario would occur.
So, by that logic, he would make the assumption that the Saibamen was going to do exactly what he had thought it would, and deliver a surprise attack.
The worst case scenario was that this attack would not only be successful, but it would be fatal.
It was unlikely that anyone else but Piccolo or himself, could stop it from happening, as everyone else was a good distance away from the man.
So with that in mind, he would make that assumption.
He would assume that moments from now, the Saibamen would attack, and kill Gohan's temporary teammate.
Now, what should he do about it, if anything?
He could stop it, but it would tip his hand, and would attract everyone's attention to him potentially derailing a few of his future plans.
It was a gamble.
The man wasn't important in the grand scheme of things from what he could tell.
...Was it worth it? Was that lost element of surprise worth this man's life?
Well, maybe it wouldn't happen still. Maybe he was just overthinking things again.
Gohan glanced at Vegeta out of the corner of his eye, and noticed the saiyan suddenly smirk.
Gohan's mind went into hyperspeed.
...
It was going to happen. That was not the expression of a person who had just lost at something.
The man in orange was about to die, because the scenario Gohan predicted was about to play out in front of him.
...For a moment though, a malicious thought crossed his mind.
It was what this man deserved.
These people needed to know what was at stake here. If you drop your guard, you're going to die.
Maybe he should let this man die to emphasize that?
Three temporary teammates that had learned this lesson were better than four temporary teammates who had not.
The Saibamen twitched, and launched itself into the air.
...
For a brief moment, Gohan went all out.
He accelerated his perception of time to the utmost, and everything froze.
...
From his new perspective, the Saibamen was making millimetric progress towards its target, while the man in orange slowly spun around in surprise.
Gohan had predicted that this moment would happen, so he had been able to sort of catch this moment of time and stretch it out as it happened.
There was this lurching feeling in his chest that he just couldn't shake.
He knew logically that letting the man die wasn't really of any concern. As the man had said himself earlier, he could be revived with the Dragon Balls at a later date.
But it just felt like Gohan was going to lose something if he let it happen. Lose a piece of himself.
...This man was his dad's friend.
One of his closest ones, at that...
He could see the image of his dad's face in his mind, now.
...
Dammit.
What was he even thinking?
Was he seriously even considering that this was an option?
How far had he fallen?
It wasn't even that great an advantage, all things considered. His element of surprise...
Even if both of these saiyans knew exactly how strong the body he was inhabiting was, they still wouldn't know about his Ki battery. Or about his clone network. Or about the handful of other preparations he had taken in the meantime.
Even if they knew how strong he was right now, immediately saw him as a threat and attacked... he wouldn't lose all that much in terms of advantages. He had so many surprises in store, that losing one was unlikely to change the outcome of the fight one way or the other.
...
He had honestly expected to come to this battlefield having to go all out from the start.
Because he always assumed the worst case scenario, he assumed that the saiyans would be like him.
That they would be the types of people to always consider the optimal move in every scenario, and attempt to kill any resistance as quickly as possible.
He had expected that, and prepared for that.
By assuming the worst, he could only ever be pleasantly surprised.
The fact that they didn't do that though, that they had instead taken a more relaxed approach, deciding to grow those Saibamen and drag things out unnecessarily…
That had been a bonus.
It had granted him the ability to hide and use the good grace of his teammates as a shield, until an opening was created.
...But this man was a person, not a power level.
And he really didn't want to have to face his dad, knowing that he had let his friend die.
He couldn't do it.
Intercepting the attack would teach these people the same lesson anyways.
He had been plotting and scheming all this time over an inch of ground that hadn't even been his at the start.
The saiyans had given him the ability to hide himself for free at the start of all this, so he should be willing to give it up for free too.
...He'd take the hit.
Gohan chose to strike in that moment.
There was an explosion of noise, and a flash of light.
The impact had been so intense that it shook the ground, and it took about thirty seconds for everyone to finally recover from it.
When the dust settled though, the Saibamen was simply gone. There were no remains of any kind. No blood, no corpse… nothing.
...Gohan immediately noticed when everyone inevitably turned to look at him in surprise.
…
He had made a mistake, was his first thought.
He hadn't thought everything out as well as he should have.
His whole plan so far, revolved around the idea that he didn't want to waste any magic energy, because he could afford to lose as much Ki as he wanted, and it was always a tradeoff between those two.
So instead of intercepting the Saibamen with a simple attack, just strong enough to take the thing out, he had decided to use a large scale attack that conserved every last drop of magic that he had in him.
He made no effort at controlling it, at all.
...
He had basically thrown a ball of Ki at it.
A big ball of Ki.
...Since he knew that the ball would rapidly expand if he wasn't going to manually condense it with his magic, he had to put in a lot of extra Ki to do the job.
He intuitively understood the rate at which a ball containing a certain amount of energy expanded when he wasn't trying to keep it together, so he knew that over the distance to his target, the ball would expand a certain amount.
It would be larger in volume by the time it reached his target, which made the ball weaker overall.
Energy density was what did the most damage to someone, not total energy. The bigger a ball of energy was, the more of it would miss.
So Gohan had had to take that expansion factor into account, and put in a little extra power, so that when the expanded ball hit, it would still be dense enough to finish the job.
...But if he had exerted a little bit of magic instead, he could have made himself look a little weaker.
In fact, if he had used a lot more magic, and had taken advantage of that flap on the saibamen's head he could have implemented that strategy he had thought up during Tien's battle, killing that Saibamen without anyone even noticing how.
In fact, if he had been subtle enough, he could have kept his element of surprise entirely.
...
Instead, he had carved out a massive hole in the ground, completely obliterated the Saibamen, and caused a massive explosion.
There was a sizeable crater in the ground now.
...It had also been a little bit too close of a call.
Yamcha had been very close to the Saibamen he was targeting, so Gohan had had to make sure that most of the energy missed the man.
The man had still been knocked back a bit from the shockwave, but Gohan had been careful enough to ensure that the man wouldn't be injured too much from it.
It was definitely a lot better than being blindsided and killed by a surprise attack though. At least in Gohan's opinion...
It was really just a slap on the wrist to someone of that man's caliber, from what Gohan could tell. But it would have been a much better idea to just take the hit on his magic reserves to be more subtle, instead of becoming the center of attention the way he was now.
...
Gohan still had his hand outstretched, with two of his fingers pointed towards where the Saibamen had been, in a stance not unlike the one Vegeta had used earlier when he had killed the previous Saibamen himself.
...Maybe he had used a little too much energy there.
Yamcha was staring at the ground in front of him in shock, while Krillin and the others were now openly gaping at him.
…
'Uh… surprise," Gohan thought to himself lamely.
"G-Gohan?"
...Krillin was the one to finally break the silence
Gohan lowered his hand and faced him.
It had been the first time he had been acknowledged at all by a teammate of his. This had been the first time any of his dad's friends had said anything to him.
...He didn't say anything in response, though. Instead, after a moment or two, Gohan turned to face the saiyans to see their reactions.
What was going to happen now? Was the fight about to get serious?
The smaller one, Vegeta, looked curious almost. Curious... and maybe a little surprised?
...
The bald one on the other hand looked apoplectic.
"What!?" He shouted in fury. "Kid, that was a big mistake! How dare you interfere with the fight!"
"Nappa, calm down."
"But he-"
"Nappa!" Vegeta interrupted sharply.
…
"Do you really want to cross me?" He asked.
The smaller saiyan was calm and collected...
Something terrifying to see, in Gohan's opinion.
Considering it was harder to manipulate those who had a firm hold on their emotions, and a lot of Gohan's strategies involved doing just that... Using their own rage and desire for battle as a trap to take them out would be much harder than he previously anticipated.
...This one wouldn't fall for it nearly as easily as the bald one would.
"No, I-"
"Good."
Vegeta turned his attention to Gohan.
"Now, kid. I am a bit surprised at your interference. I didn't think the people on this planet had so little honour. Where's your pride? Why interfere?"
Gohan used an excuse he thought up just before launching his attack.
"I should be asking you that. You're the one who cheated."
Nappa did not take that answer very well at all.
"What!"
"You challenged us to a tournament," Gohan continued. "I don't know anything about where you come from, but tournaments have rules on this planet."
"When a fighter is down for ten seconds, they forfeit the match."
Gohan emphasized his next points.
"I counted to ten. Fight's over."
"Maybe next time you should clarify the rules before starting something like this if my interference surprised you. You challenged us to a knife fight, and brought a gun."
He threw their own words back at them.
"Where's your honour?"
...And that right there, in Gohan's opinion, was the sound of his element of surprise, shattering.
There was no going back.
"Oh no, kid… you did not just say that."
Something twisted in the bald saiyan's face, and Gohan could tell that the saiyan was well past rage, and into that quiet fury that sometimes appears whenever someone is so mad they can hardly see straight.
"Kid... I'm going to rip you in half."
Gohan's reply was immediate.
"Come and try."
If the fight was going to escalate right now, then Gohan would be at an advantage. Vegeta was still underestimating him, and Nappa was so mad that he would fall for every last trick in the book.
Gohan would put him down immediately, along with the rest of the Saibamen by going all out.
He'd probably lose his opportunity to say the things that he wanted to them, but that was just one of his many strategies prepared for this battle. It was not that big of a loss. It probably wouldn't even work, and that strategy was risky, anyway.
Vegeta started laughing.
"Maybe he should go next, Nappa. There's no need to rush things just yet."
"Saibamen!" Nappa growled out, wasting no time. "Kill that runt!"
One of the Saibamen immediately took action and launched himself towards Gohan.
...It fell over dead almost immediately, after seemingly tripping on its own feet. It slid to a halt as blood and steam started leaking out of its eyes and ears.
...
Everyone stared at the corpse in astonishment for a few moments.
Gohan hadn't moved, and the Saibamen hadn't even gotten close.
"What the?" Nappa questioned. "What happened?"
"What do you think happened?" Gohan replied. "He lost."
The fact that the saiyans had missed what Gohan had actually done was very interesting. It was clear to him that these saiyans had very unrefined senses.
...Or at least Nappa did.
"What… what did you do?"
...There was no way that Gohan was going to answer any of the bald saiyan's questions honestly, so he decided to be as vague as possible.
"I took my turn," Gohan stated simply. "Someone else can go next."
A/N: Hope you enjoyed.
- LeviTamm