Long time no see yet again!

Apologies as always for the sporadic updates, but I do at least have a decent excuse this time: I was busy writing a book. Like, a whole book, hundreds of pages, entirely original work, that I intend to publish. So, you know, didn't have as much energy to devote towards this fic until I was done with that. Even so, another reason I wasn't sure about updating was that I wanted to be certain I had a decent buffer of content available so that I could upload the next saga in relative security. Alas, with grad school on the horizon and a few issues I had in determining where I wanted the story to go, this still isn't exactly the case. At least, not without making some changes.

The main problem I ran into was what to do with the main timeline Vegeta. After largely being an afterthought on Namek and not even coming up at all during the Frost Demon Saga, Vegeta's kinda been relegated to the sidelines. Of course, with the arrival of Future Vegeta came an opportunity for me to change that, as he and his past self are very different people who therefore have an interesting dynamic, but the vast difference in power between them left some problems to be had with any potential confrontation. I didn't want to bring Vegeta back only to have him killed almost immediately, and it wouldn't make sense for the gang to just leave him alone once things start happening, so it took me a while to work out a way for them to get involved in each other's stories while allowing them to play out.

Ultimately, this wasn't something I could resolve in just a few chapters as a minor thing before the Cell Saga kicks off in earnest, so I've decided to rework the way that this story is structured with, shockingly, another mostly-original arc, whose name I tossed around for a bit before settling on the "Old Foes Saga." It's called this because it starts with the gang facing off against Dr. Gero, who has a few different tricks up his sleeve, but may not prove as threatening to the Z-Fighters as he would have liked to think. Once this is resolved, then we get to the consequences of Future Vegeta's meddling with time; namely, Vegeta finding a way to escape the deserted planet months ahead of schedule, prompting a confrontation. After that, who knows what will happen next, and what other old enemies of the Z-Fighters might decide to pop out of the woodwork?

I currently have five chapters of this arc more or less done, and I suspect that I can bring it to a decent conclusion with another five after that, but seeing as I will be starting grad school shortly and still have other things occupying a lot of my attention, it's become clear to me that even this "every other week" schedule probably won't allow me to comfortably finish this story, and the repeated hiatuses are something that should be avoided in the future. For that reason, I am here to put forth an alternative: with this Old Foes Saga at least, Hermit will switch to uploading on the 1st Sunday of every month, starting with the first chapter of the arc on August 7th. That way, with these five chapters I've managed to finish so far, y'all will at least be covered with guaranteed monthly content for the rest of the year, and I will have ample time to not only finish the rest of the chapters for this arc, but potentially get started on the subsequent Cell Saga so that I can start uploading those chapters as soon as the previous arc is finished. Obviously it remains to be seen how well it will work, and I understand that a month is a long time to wait between uploads, but I hope that the consistency of this new schedule will at least ease the frustration that may have come with the hiatuses.

In any event, that just about covers everything I wanted to cover with this update, so let's go ahead and cover the handful of reviews that were left!

Zeon Paralysis Crystal says: "Shit didn't see this coming." Glad I'm keeping some of y'all on your toes, lol; I remember a few were disappointed by how I followed the manga in some cases instead of diverging even further than I already did with some of my changes, so it's nice to hear that my take on the story thus far isn't entirely predictable.

warriordark says:

"Saiborgs? Well the name brought a little chuckle when i read it haha. Heres another variation for you. Psychic based cyborgs called psyborgs. Is Future Vegeta planning on interfering in his present selfs decision to kill Pybara when the time comes? Or revive him with the dragonballs? This whole history of Vegeta mini arc was interesting. I was pretty curious how things went for him. Cell is going to be interesting especially if he absorbs the androids. Wonder what his evolved states will look like."

Glad to see someone else liked that silly thing, lol. As for your questions, you'll have to wait and see, although I will say that Future Vegeta would rather not interfere in any of his past self's actions if it can be avoided, in the hopes that not doing so will allow Vegeta to develop into a man very similar to the one that Future Vegeta is now. He may find that he doesn't have much of a choice, however...

Anonymously96 says:

"Nice fic till now. Really excited to see where you take it from here. Also, how did Gohan, without ssj get to 150 million in base form? Doesn't the base form plateau after a point if the ceiling, aka ssj form, is not unlocked and raised? Same way as ssj2 is generally out of reach unless you master ssj1. Update soon."

I figured it made sense for a couple reasons. Gohan has a great deal of potential, to the point where he was able to get from 10 million to 12 million just by a leisurely hour of normal training with Piccolo and Tien every day for a couple months. This was without a gravity chamber, without Zenkai, without anything other than just basic sparring. Therefore, it stands to reason that a three year period where Gohan dedicates himself to training with the exact same fervor as his father or Vegeta, taking every opportunity to grow stronger through intense gravity training and pushing himself to the absolute physical limit day in and day out, would result in a far greater power increase. I also would argue that the power increase makes sense based on canon, seeing as Gohan was able to knock Android 20 out of his chokehold on Piccolo. Given that Android 20 is presumably comparable to Android 19, and that Android 19 handled Goku in his weakened Super Saiyan state while both of them crumpled like wet tissue paper against Vegeta and Piccolo, that's probably as reasonable a guess as any regarding how strong Gohan was at that point.

Beyond the internal logic of the story itself, though, there were two reasons why I hesitated to make Gohan a Super Saiyan. Firstly, it was the main way to ensure that Cell could rise to become the big future timeline threat in the first place. If Gohan could become a Super Saiyan even without training any further from where he is in the present timeline, he'd be at over half a billion, more than enough to smoke everyone there. Secondly, however, denying him the Super Saiyan transformation for now forces him to explore alternatives, alternatives which I am eager to pursue over the course of this upcoming arc and potentially beyond. Hopefully you all will find these alternatives as exciting as I do.

Guest #1 says: "Wait a minute. The lower part of Vegetas body was replaced with mechanical implants. How on earth Trunks and Bulla were born?" That might be on me; my intention with Future Vegeta's augmentations was to depict his digestive system as being the only thing that needed to be cybernetically replaced, not his entire lower half. His legs and everything else below the torso are still 100% flesh and blood, so him and Bulma having their two kids in the future is still 100% possible.

Guest #2 says: "Please update please," but worry not! Like I said, August 7th will see the first chapter of the Old Foes Saga uploaded. All I ask is for another week of your patience, dear readers, and you will see what I've been cooking up for this story, at least in part. I hope you enjoy it.

Anywho, that about does it for me. As always, thank you all for reading, have a fantastic day, stay safe, wash a mask and get vaccinated if possible, and take care. See y'all in a week!