Latent Potential

Dudo online says: Man this is so good

ANSWER!

Thank you so much for your compliments! I had some vices about starting a dragonball series since I didn't think I could match up to other, more experienced authors in the field, but I'm glad you're thinking its going well so far. There's definitely more to come so stay tuned!

Why're dokkan rates so low :cry:

"Bulma! Mum, Dad, I'm leaving now!" Atom called out, slipping his capsule box into his pocket, he looked at the clock and saw it was 1:00 am, they were all waiting for him to go, his family.

"Have a good trip!" They all called back from the dining room. Atom smiled and ran out into the front yard, throwing a yellow capsule into the air as a yellow plane poofed out of thin air. Atom swung into the plane and set the coordinates in for his destination.

"Now, lets go train!" He yelled, pulling the stick backwards and flying into the air. "First stop, Gengoro Island!" The plane immediately sped off into the sky, Atom leaving his home of 6 years behind for a short while.

3 hours into the trip, Atom set the plane into autopilot and sat in one of the back seats. "He said I should try meditating to feel out my ki…" Atom placed his hands together and imagined the flowing pipeline through his body. The pool inside of his body felt… full, far too full, Atom tried to drag some out, but stopped out of fear of damaging his 'pipes'. 'How can I move it? There's way too much! Maybe a limiter? Or a filter? How would that even work in my head?'

In his head a tap formed on top of each pipe, he slowly released a few, letting the ki flow his body like a breath of fresh air. A loud beep brought his attention to the panel at the front of the plane. Atom reached out his hand but it was coated in a white aura, spiky and erratic.

'What the? Is this my ki?' Atom tried to stop it from flowing, but the taps in his head wouldn't close! 'I-I can't control it!?' He breathed deeply in an attempt to calm himself, but Roshi's words rung in his mind.

"Life energy, what I use to make the beams and my max power form."

'Is my life flowing out of my body? What the hell is going on?!'Atom looked outside of the window and ignored the beeping of the console. "We're getting close, Roshi might know how to help. Stay calm Atom, stay calm." He breathed in deeply and looked at the beeping console.

"God damnit, I thought the tape would fix that." Atom sighed, unscrewing the top of the panel and removing a piece of duct tape he had sticking two wires together. His aura made it hard to see what he was doing with the electronics, but he pulled through and grabbed his capsule full of tools.

He heated the rubber between the wires and stuck them together, sighing out loud before closing the panel and screwing back in. "I should really stop procrastinating with that stuff."

Atom looked outside of the window and smiled at the lush grass of Gengoro island, the hills and farmland painting a picture of serenity. "It's not often I get to go outside the big cities, it's a nice change every once in a while." He twisted the centre stick and the plane slowly started to descend.

A small pink house came into view as he stopped on the grass, pressing a button outside of the plane and containing the vehicle once again.

'Kame house?' He walked up to the front flyscreen door. It had a green border around it, which didn't mesh well with the pink walls and red roof.

"Hello? Is anyone inside?" Atom called out, politely tapping on the screen with his fist.

"Um, who're you?" A loud, odd voice called out. Atom whipped his head around to see a large brown shelled turtle with spots covering it.

"A-Atom Briefs, and you are?"

"Turtle, Roshi told me about you, come in, he's a bit busy right now." Turtle waddled up the staircase and put his mouth on the door handle, swinging it open and pushing the main wooden door inside.

Roshi was sitting in front of the couch, mesmerised by a yoga video with young women, around their 20s stretching on the screen. He had a bit of blood dripping down his nose before he turned to the door and saw Turtle, then Atom. "Oh! You're here!" He quickly paused the TV and stood up, wiping his face, and smiling.

"Welcome to kame house, where you'll be staying for the next month. Now, what's with the aura?"

Atom smiled, walking into the kitchen, and placing his capsule box on the counter. "It just started when I meditated, can you explain it?"

"Of course, your ki is leaking. A side effect of having as much as you do. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it isn't good either. Your ki is slowly being depleted by having this aura surrounding you, but, if you did keep it all cooped up inside of you, with your lack of control, you would surely explode!"

Atom went wide eyed and nodded. "Then what can I do?"

"Well lets start on the first lesson, try and thin out your aura as much as possible, only leaking small bits at a time. I like to think of my ki as a nozzle, that I can turn to increase or decrease the output.

"I do that too, but mine isn't working."

"Well, how exactly do you think of it?"

"A tap on all of the pipes in my ki network, is that bad?"

"Not really but try and think of it like this. You aren't very experienced yet, so you can't control all of those taps with your mind right? So as soon as you move to the next tap to turn it off, the other one turns back on. So how about you combine all of the pipes, that eventually split off from one larger one."

"So, one big pipe?"

"Yep, then you only have one tap to keep track of right?"

Atom nodded and closed his eyes, his aura first exploding like a flashbang until it slowly simmered down to just a thin coat. 'One big pipe, one big pipe.' He thought, the handle slowly tightening until it only let a sliver of ki throughout his body.

He opened his eyes and looked at his hands, an extremely thin, but visible coat covering his fingers. He looked at Roshi, whose eyes could be seen over his glasses in surprise.

"You're… very quick."

"Really?"

"Mm, extremely, it took me a long while to figure that out, but you just did it in minutes."

"How long exactly?"

"About… 4 years?"

Atom's mouth dropped before he laughed and scratched the side of his face. "Maybe I'm a prodigy or something haha."

Roshi shrugged and looked at the capsule box on the counter. "Whats in there?"

"Gifts! Since you're taking the time to train me, I thought I should bring you something as a thanks. Plus, I brought my old man's stash with me."

"Stash?"

Atom smiled and cracked open the case, picking up a pink capsule before looking at Roshi with a smirk. "This stash. You should probably step back." Roshi and Turtle gulped and moved across the room.

Atom chucked the capsule in the air, hundreds of dirty magazines falling to the ground like a rain. "He just keeps these things lying around, so I took a few for you."

Roshi had tears openly streaming down his face as he hopped in the middle of the pile to make… porno angels? "Thank you, my student, you truly are my one true disciple."

Turtle sighed and covered his face with one of his fins. Atom giggled and brought out a green capsule. "Sorry Turtle, I didn't know you existed, so I didn't grab you anything. But you won't need to buy groceries for a while."

Atom tapped the top of the capsule and several bags of groceries dropped onto the counter. Turtle smiled and crawled over to the counter, looking at all of the food. "Thank you so much, this'll save me a lot of time."

Atom smiled and nodded, looking at the remaining 6 capsules, including his plane, in the case. "The blue one is my study supplies, the purple one is my current project that I'll need to finish over my trip here, the grey one… is a little secret. The red one has blueprints for future projects I need to review and my tools, the orange one is full of emergency supplies and clothes, and finally the rainbow one here contains a large notebook for all of my ideas."

Turtle gulped and nodded. "So much stuff, you're a scary kid you know." Atom laughed and scratched the back of his head. "Maybe a little…"

Roshi stood up while holding a magazine in his hand and nodded. "You have brought all you will need for your training, so let's get you started right away. Remember this, everything I do is for your benefit, and everything I will make you do relates to training. Your first task… will begin in 15 minutes, follow me."

Roshi stepped out of the house and slowly jogged up the road, Atom following, recycling his breath with the cool morning air. It was 5:00 am when they reached a large white capsule building with a man checking his watch outside the front.

"Ah! You're here, are you sure you want to do this free of charge?" The man called out to Roshi. Roshi stopped in front of him with Atom panting and sweating heavily behind.

"Of course, its always great to help the community."

"Okay… well you have until 9:00 am, after that you will have run out of time."

The man pulled out two large sacks and handed them to Roshi. "Remember to ignore the ones with no junk mail signs."

Roshi nodded and threw a sack back at Atom, the boy barely catching it as he stood up. "C'mon Atom, this is just the first exercise today."

Roshi walked over to a large box and emptied it into his sack, forcing Atom to do the same. "We'll be back by 9:00." Roshi said, jogging up the rest of the road with Atom barely following under the weight of the sack.

"W-W-Why are we handing out newspapers?" Atom panted, reaching into his bag and placing a paper into a rusty mailbox in front of another capsule house.

"Training, until you can do this in less than an hour, your training will not be complete. Now hurry up, we have an island to run around."

Atom groaned and threw the sack back over his shoulder, throwing his legs in front of him and following Roshi through the first street of houses.

Roshi watched curiously as Atom continued to bend over, grab a newspaper and throw the sack back over his back in a robotic pattern. "Atom, why don't you use that tail of yours?"

Atom looked behind his back, his tail curling up and picking up a newspaper. "Ah, I didn't think of that." He said, letting his tail flick the newspaper into a mailbox.

Roshi chuckled and looked up the street, following the roads with his eyes as they curled up the hills that dotted the islands. 'He's going to hate this, but it'll be worth it.' Roshi tucked a newspaper into a mailbox by his side and watched as Atom ran ahead and let his tail flick another in, the process going much more smoothly now.

Atom continued to run; he could feel his food coming up his throat as he pushed past his limits. He eventually ducked into a bush and threw up, with Roshi patting his back. He soon recovered though, continuing to run up the street with new vigor.

"Hey Atom." Roshi called out. The boy turned around as his tail flicked another newspaper into a mailbox.

"Yes, Master Roshi?"

"Make sure you check the signs on the mailboxes and don't just run past, you've been putting them in the no junk mail houses as well as the normal ones."

"Oh god." Atom ducked his head and sighed. "I'll go fix it now." He said, putting his sack on the ground before he ran off. "Wait!" Roshi called out. Atom turned around and Roshi threw Atom's bag towards him. "Take this with you."

Atom sighed and put the bag over his back, rushing back down the street, a far easier task than before without the incline fighting him. Roshi continued to jog up the street, crossing the street several times to place the newspapers in every house.

It took Atom another 30 minutes to catch back up to Roshi, sweat dripping down his forehead and his shoe's rubber quite damaged. "I-I'm back Master Roshi."

The old hermit turned around and pulled the boy up to his full height. "C'mon Atom, we're most of the way there and we have a hour left."

"Good!"

"Yep, so let's get moving."

Atom groaned before looking down the street he was at. "At least its only decline." He sighed, tugging his feet to move forward as Roshi skipped down the hill.

Once that street was done with, Roshi put his hand in front of Atom. "There is one more house to do."

Atom looked around but couldn't see any houses nearby. Roshi pointed upwards, towards a large mountain with a thin red railing surrounding the side of a thousand stair staircase.

"What the hell!?"

Roshi laughed and began to run towards the bottom of the staircase. "After this! We have a 2-hour break!" He called out, Atom lagging far behind.

Atom looked at his hands and clenched them into fists. "One more house, lets do this!" His aura sparked to life around him as he gained a boost of previously unfound speed, surpassing Roshi as he ran up the staircase.

Wind blew past Atom's face as an exhilarating feeling washed over him. He loved this world, everything in it, everything around him, the people, the animals, the life, and his excitement to soar to new heights further pushed his power to new limits!

Roshi's eyes widened as a cloud of dust from Atom's sprint overcame him. 'This kid… he's monstrous!' He thought with a smile, pushing himself into his own sprint as he caught up to the boy. "You want a race, eh?"

Atom smiled widely and nodded, just as Roshi sped up even further and planted his foot on top of the final step. Atom yelled and his aura grew even larger, pushing him to an equal speed with Roshi, who finished just a second earlier than the boy.

Roshi stood triumphantly as Atom dropped to the ground and began to pant, sweat pooling over the ground under him and his aura sputtering wildly around him.

"Calm down Atom, your ki is leaking far too much!"

Atom began to cough before his arm buckled and his forehead hit the grass. Roshi quickly put the newspaper in the letter box and picked up the boy on his back, him having fallen unconscious after too much ki leaked from his body and the built up fatigue from the hours of running.

"I carried most of the weight today young man, so be ready to do it for yourself in a few weeks… I trust you'll find a way." He said out loud, knowing Atom couldn't hear him.

Meanwhile, Atom was dreaming of his new family, his new friends, and all of the new battles he would have in the future.

None of my summons gave me anything, sadge.

A splash of cool water covered Atom's face as he jumped off of the grass, his aura spiking to life around him. Turtle back off and pointed to Roshi, who was smoking a pipe and holding an empty bucket in his hand.

"Break is over, lets get you started on the next exercise."

"Huhhh!? I just woke up!"

"You chose to sleep."

Atom groaned and Roshi put down the pail, hopping off of his seat and standing in front of Atom. "Your next task is this!" He pulled out a notepad and held it in front of Atom. "You have to much ki for me to work with right now, especially with how… erratic it is."

Atom's aura slightly sparked, as if to show anger before settling back down. Atom took the notepad and flicked it open, "basics on ki control?"

"Yep, you're a smart kid, so you should be able to figure it out. You will work with this for 2 hours, until 1pm, then we eat lunch."

Atom nodded and sat back on the ground, opening the notebook to the first page. "Ki sphere?" He looked up but couldn't see Roshi anywhere.

He frowned but stared back at the page. "Imagine a ball of rubber forming in your hand, hold it for 10 seconds, then make it larger. When you can't keep it stable, continue to hold it at a smaller size until you are comfortable to make the jump. The second stage to this exercise requires an analysis of your ki, read page 4 for that." Atom read out, stopping momentarily to fully absorb the information before he pooled his ki to his palm, making the aura around that specific region larger.

'Ball. Ball. Ball.' Atom chanted in his head. He peeked open one eye to see a wildly sparking ki… diamond? It kept changing and spasming before exploding and blowing Atom across the grass.

"Hmm, well this isn't going to work." He sat in the same meditative position and began to think. 'A ball, the end goal is a ball, so what if…' He put his hand out, palm faced down and began to imagine a drop of ki forming off of his hand, slowly, into a circular container.

'Let gravity do the work, just let the drop form.' He opened his left eye, just as the ball formed, it splattered onto the ground and exploded.

Atom got another idea and did the same thing as before but put a second hand under the droplet as a base. Ki slowly radiated from his hand until it dissolved mid-air.

"Huh!?" He yelled out loud, staring at his body, which had lost its aura from before. "What happened!? Master Roshi!"

The old hermit walked out of the house and looked at Atom. "Oh good! Finally finished, eh?"

"What do you mean?"

"I was just making you waste ki so we could actually begin to work properly. You see… you've been subtly enhancing your body with ki, that's why you were able to catch up to me earlier. Now the real training starts, no bells or whistles, just good old fashion training. You can still use the remainder of your ki though."

"Then… this exercise was useless?"

"No, not at all, it helped me understand how you think. You seem to be quite practical with things, always relating them to realistic objects or phenomena. Ki… does not have those properties, its more akin to magic than natural objects. So, what I'm saying is, get creative Atom, you're a bright kid, I know you can do it."

Atom nodded dumbly and got off of the grass. Roshi walked back inside and beckoned Atom to follow. "Lunch time!" He yelled, carrying 3 bento he bought earlier.

Atom clicked open the box and picked up a couple of chopsticks, slowly digging into his food before he looked at the table cover. "Wow, this is a cool table cover." Atom picked up a corner of the banana palm looking table cover.

Roshi nodded and brought a cup of soup to his mouth. "Mm, it's quite useful sometimes." Roshi placed his cup on the table as Atom lifted up the cover even further, the cup of soup spilling over the banana leaf looking cover.

"Oh shit! Sorry!"

Roshi sighed and moved everyone's bento boxes off of the table. "Guess I'll just chuck this thing out; I've had it for a while anyway." He pulled it off of the table, revealing a small read handle with tassels on the end. "Wait, I'll keep it." Atom said. "I'll try to clean it and return it to you."

Roshi sighed and handed over the item. "I don't want it, so you can keep it."

Atom nodded. "I-I guess, thanks!"

Roshi shrugged and moved the food back onto the table. The group continuing to eat while the legendary item with a little bit of spilled wonton soup sat to the side.

After food was finished, Roshi called for a 2-hour study period, where he tried to teach the boy basic math. "Um, Master Roshi, I already know most of this stuff, and I'll be doing my bachelor's in mechanical engineering next year."

"B-B-Bachelors!?"

"Mm, so can I work on my own projects during this time?"

Roshi dumbly nodded and Atom zipped off into the house to pick up his capsules. He threw out the purple capsule, revealing a small rover.

"Whats that for?" Turtle asked, waddling over towards Atom, he was bent over screwing in a screw near the side panel of the machine. "A pet project of mine, I want to make a little car that can scan for problems with machines using x-ray technology."

"You input the blueprint, or a usb containing a 3d model, then it will send out signals that ping off of every part of a machine and it will display any changes from factory." He said, pulling out his yellow capsule and throwing it onto the grass.

"Let's see if it works." Atom ran up to the plane and let his ki rise slightly, pushing it through his fist and puncturing the plane. Turtle yelled in surprise and Atom retrieved his hand, picking up the rover and placing it under the plane. "Can it sense the hole?" He pressed a button on a small black remote, and the rover moved under the plane, coming out the other side and beeping.

"Good, it detected an error, now…"

The rover moved towards the remote and projected a hologram onto the grass, it was slightly distorted, but had a big red marker over where the puncture was.

"Shit, it's a little bad quality, but it should be fine, now I just need to add the possible causes and troubleshooting stuff and she should be good to go!"

Atom smiled and patted the rover before he threw out a red capsule, containing his welding kit and a generator. He plugged the gear in and began to seal up the hole, attaching a new metal sheet to the panel and welding them together, adding a sealing agent just in case.

Roshi and Turtle stared dumbfounded by Atom's actions, looking between each other and sighing. "Time for more training Atom!" Roshi called out.

Atom turned around and packed his gear back into their capsules. "It's near 3pm now, so we will be beginning our second to last exercise. You have 3 hours, and only 3, to evade me. I will wear this 50-kilogram turtle shell, and you have 100 seconds to run. I will be using ki to sense you, so try and keep yours hidden. 3, 2, 1, go!"

Roshi slipped on the turtle shell and closed his eyes, just as Atom sprinted out of the area and looked towards the forest. "Perfect!" He yelled, arriving just as the 100 second time limit was up. Atom ducked into the brush as he looked at kame house, seeing Roshi speeding straight towards him.

"Eep!" Atom squealed, immediately retreating into the forest, using his tail to swing between the trees with ease. Atom heard rustling below him and just barely ducked out of the way from Roshi leaping up to his level.

Roshi attempted 3 more swipes, all of which missed Atom as he weaved and dodged each hit. Atom jumped away into the canopy as he heard Roshi click his tongue.

'There's no way I can do this for 3 hours without ki, what do I do?' Atom barely dodged another leap from Roshi before he let his tail snap and branch and throw it into his master's face.

Roshi sliced through the branch with a chop before attempting to tackle Atom. Atom stuck his tail around the tree and swung under, evading Roshi once again before he got an idea.

'What if it's just in pulses, too fast for him to sense?' Atom let ki flow through his body, leaping away from the branches and blasting over 10 metres into the air.

Roshi didn't need to use ki as he leaped up to Atom's level and tried to kick him. Atom just barely fell passed the kick as he dropped down to the trees again, Roshi chasing in hot pursuit.

Atom kicked off of a branch with a blast of ki, Roshi immediately snapping his head to Atom's location initiating the chase again. Atom clicked his tongue before another idea popped into his head, 'what if I spread my ki so much he can't sense the original location of it?'

Atom's aura exploded around him, illuminating the forest, and disrupting Roshi's ki sense, but he could still use his eyes as he followed the boy's glowing aura through the forest.

Roshi charged towards Atom, flipping through several branches before dropping to the ground and bounding off of the grass straight into the boy's path.

Suddenly, Atom's aura cut off as he closed his eyes and Roshi stopped to watch. "I finally got it… only took 3 tries as well!" He shouted, his aura had completely dissipated around his body as he looked straight towards Roshi's direction, his eyes piercing through Roshi's body, the right one with a red glow.

"I see you…" He whispered, vanishing from the branch, and continuing to run through the forest away from Roshi's position. Atom ducked under a branch, spinning around it to avoid Roshi, the old hermit turned around as Atom flashed his aura to blind Roshi before running away again.

The pattern continued for 2 more hours, until Roshi started to get serious. 'I can't let him win the first match.' He thought, cracking his shoulder, and appearing straight in front of Atom, snatching him by the arm.

"Caught you." He said. Atom smiled and nodded before laughing. "That was so much fun! What next?! Please tell me there's more!"

'Huh?' Roshi thought, quickly, he snapped out f his confusion and coughed into his hand. "Our final activity for today is delivering food, its about 6:00pm we should get there quick."

Roshi led Atom through the forest to a small tea shop, a sign for hot and fresh dango out the front. Roshi walked in and knocked on the door.

A small woman walked out wearing a blue apron and a chef's hat. "Oh! Hello Roshi, I was beginning to think you wouldn't show. I have all of the orders here, and their addresses."

"Great, thank you Holly, we'll deliver all of these by 7."

"You better." She huffed, letting Roshi inside to pick up the dozen bags of food waiting before shutting the door rudely.

"Whats with her?" Atom asked, picking 6 bags off of Roshi's arms before running down a dirt path towards the town. Roshi caught up and explained. "She's just old, nothing else." Roshi almost looked longingly back at the shop before he slammed into a tree face first, making Atom laugh out loud before he also did.

They both laughed at each other, their chuckles echoing through the forest. This was a bond between master and disciple that would soon become unshakable.

Chapter over, just a heads up as I explained in the first chapter, Atom is a cerealian-saiyan hybrid, meaning insane potential. If I were to rate his power level now… maybe around calm: 25, excited: 40.

Now to make this fic already more cringe than it is, as you know, Gohan has a rage boost. Atom, his aura is affected greatly by his emotions, especially positive ones. The stronger the emotion, the bigger the fluctuation.

Long spiel over, cya! - tired