"I'm a little bit glad that your old fighting attire got tattered during the tournament!" Muten Roshi declared with a proud shine on his shades. At least now, seeing the almost resort-like conditions that the old timer lived in, Chayote could somewhat rationalize his choice of accessories.
"Say that to my face…" the Saiyan grumbled, giving the old man her best sudden-death-inducing stare.
"No… I mean… If it didn't get torn, you'd have never gotten the chance to try out the patented Kame-Sennin fighting uniform!" Roshi shook his hands out in front of him as if deflecting the imaginary barrage of strikes that Chayote threw his way. The old timer turned around and burrowed in oversized luggage. Given how the Earthlings had nearly limitless storage capacity technology, one that was entirely unique throughout the universe, as far as Chayote had experienced it, the old master's choice for storage of his prized relic seemed foolish.
"Oh no…" Krillin smacked his forehead. Bulma lifted her own shades and sat up from her sunbathing chair. While she appeared to be uninterested in most fighting matters, the brilliant inventor was thoroughly entertained by Muten Roshi's attempts at hyping up his famed uniform.
"Behold!" Muten Roshi roared as he pulled out black and pink lingerie and raised it into the air.
While Chayote's eyes gleamed with a nova similar to the reflections of sunlight on Muten Roshi's own shades before, the thud from Bulma's side of the beach distracted the Saiyan. With surprising swiftness for an Earthling who was a stranger to martial arts, Bulma loomed over Roshi with fire and fury emanating from her very essence. Had this Earthling any hidden martial arts potential, surely rage such as this one would have amplified it tenfold.
"That's just underwear, you old perv!" Bulma yelled out. "As if I'm letting you make an unsuspecting alien girl wear that!"
"It's not just underwear, it's the Turtle School Uniform and for your information, Goku and Krillin both also trained in them!" Muten Roshi snapped back at the bloodthirsty rage monster up in his face.
"Well… Muten Roshi's methods may be unconventional but… Goku and Krillin got this strong training under him…" Yamcha patted his non-existent chest, having slipped into lingerie that was entirely too small for him but his trained pecks compensated for the lack of upper pride of the female forms.
"You imbecile!" Bulma switched the target of her anger toward Yamcha and began chasing him around the island, insistent on tearing the Turtle School Uniform off of her boyfriend's body.
"B-Bulma, be reasonable now if you tear this off, I'll be naked!" Yamcha pleaded with his girlfriend as he ran laps around the Kame House. It was an odd Earthling habit to name one's houses but at least Muten Roshi had the decency of painting the name of his house on the front. Chayote had missed out finding out the names of so many Earthling homes over the time she's spent on Earth.
The Saiyan did not even notice the odd twitch to the tips of her lips, the shifting of her face and the adoption of a happy expression as she observed Yamcha having possibly the most intense training of his life running laps.
"You can feel it, can't you? The meaning you needed. You speak about wiping the Earth clean, about joining with the other Saiyans and the Frieza Army but… I wonder if you truly need that anymore?" Roshi's thoughts popped into Chayote's own mind. With a mindful and forced end to her goofy smirk, the Saiyan turned back at Roshi.
"Keep pushing it and I won't mind the fact you're still useful to me. I'll eliminate you in an instant." Chayote concentrated on her own thoughts so that the old man could see them crystal clear. No matter how hard she concentrated on them, it did not seem like she herself could see them as clear as she wanted to transmit them.
"While you're demonstrating some impressive speed that would have served you well in the tournament, how about finally getting some training done?" Muten Roshi addressed Yamcha who stopped all of a sudden.
"Really? I can't wait!" Yamcha raised both of his fists and pressed his arms against his sides in excitement. One that would have looked way more badass had he not been wearing pink and black lingerie while expressing it.
"For starters, I need to see if you can even handle the training. Both of you spar with Chayote, that way Chayote will catch onto your martial arts mastery and even up with your skill while the absolute death behind her will force your bodies to approach your limits and break past them in terms of power, speed, and endurance." Muten Roshi instructed.
"Wait, I need to prove myself too? But I've already done your training? Can't I just skip to the real thing?" Krillin squinted at Roshi.
"You fool! Son Goku is on his Kinto Un right now, not even completely recovered from his injuries and he's already scouring the world, looking for the next challenge and his grandpa's Dragon Ball! If you slack around and take shortcuts, you'll fall even farther behind!" the Turtle Hermit scolded his pupil. "The very fact that you even insisted on taking a shortcut in your training tells me I may have rushed you through your training."
Chayote bobbed and weaved around Yamcha's Wolf Fang Fist, observing the immense speed that fueled his relentless attacks. She may have focused too hard on it, given how Krillin's sweep kick from behind caught her unprepared. Yamcha jumped up and pursued Chayote with the full intent of hitting her while she was down. That was just fine with Chayote – she was not going to accept anything being held back.
Yamcha's reach was too long. His barrage of Wolf Fang Fist strikes forced the Saiyan on the defensive, placing her hands in a blocking position while she weathered the storm. Not that it was that difficult, Yamcha's attacks were quite swift but, not unlike King Chappa's technique, which was, in fact, more advanced than Yamcha's own signature technique, he was all speed and no substance.
A powerful shockwave of escalating Ki emanated from Chayote's body, creating an invisible orb that could only have been perceived by the dust it had picked up and the brutality of how it swatted both of the Turtle School pupils aside. Chayote rose on her feet, finally having measured Yamcha's exact strength and powered up to the degree where she would have beaten him but with enough challenge to show potential to make her power grow some more in the process.
Chayote charged onward, utilizing the space in between when she blasted Yamcha aside with her Kiai roar and when Yamcha recovered but just before she could begin to punish her opponent, the Saiyan froze and looked down at the Turtle School Uniform. The Saiyan broke her stance and stretched her uniform a bit further so that the breeze of moving around did not get so close to feeling uncomfortable.
"I've heard that Frieza's elite wear shorter bodysuits that don't get in the way with how tight they are but… This feels really awkward…" Chayote complained. "I think I'd rather wear those orange uniforms Son Goku and Krillin had at the tournament."
"Well, that's too bad, they don't grow on trees. You'll have to make do with these for now unless you want to wear those clothes you've bought with your cut of the tournament money?" Muten Roshi fixed his shades with a slight blush on his cheeks.
"No. Training will make me go through a bunch of different clothes, I'd rather save them for the real deal." The teenage Saiyan sighed.
Fighting Yamcha and Krillin when they got into their zone was frustrating. While Chayote felt like she had a dominating edge in terms of raw power and even speed, it felt like it did not matter in the slightest. The two were just too slippery, it was almost like they were reading her mind. Krillin, in particular, was exceptionally skilled in utilizing his pint-size with clever rolls and flips and hops to avoid Chayote's power strikes as well as manage space. Yamcha even pulled off multiple Afterimage Technique uses out of sheer fear for his life, proving Muten Roshi right about a deadly challenge pushing their bodies to their limits and then past them.
At one point, Chayote snapped, with a roar that escalated and supercharged the immense aura around her, the Saiyan just disappeared into thin air and smacked Krillin in the forehead with her knee and then thrust her elbow right at the lower chin of Yamcha, sending both of them down on the ground, twitching and grunting in pain.
This was not her training power. It was not even her entertainment power, she'd never receive a single Zenkai power-up at this pace but, for whatever reason, at that time Chayote's Saiyan pride was more important than mere ambition for power. Fighting on an even playing field made her feel humiliated by the vast difference in martial arts skill still present between the three and Chayote was not too fancy about being humiliated by a bunch of lousy Earthlings.
"This is pointless. They're better martial artists than me and I'm stronger and faster than them. Unless you finally teach me martial arts and train their bodies to get stronger, this won't change no matter how many times we spar." Chayote flipped out. An orange gleam passed through her dark pupils, a true blink and you'll miss it moment, however, despite his old age and thick shades, Muten Roshi was not a man that missed much.
"Can you perform the Kamehameha? A weak one, just one that spans across this ocean here?" Muten Roshi asked with a sense of calm.
"I tried, the blast just waves around and darts off wherever…" Chayote grumbled. She did not understand how bringing up something that only accentuated that Roshi was focusing on all the wrong things in her training would help his case.
Just for the sake of argument, the Saiyan cupped her hands together and drew them back to her hips while leaning her body forward from her waist up. "Ka…Me…Ha…Me…" she yelled out. Any attempts to mirror Goku's Ki manipulation when he performed the move were pointless when she could not sense or understand Ki yet. Regardless, as always, her sheer power pulled her through. A shimmering orb of pure energy formed in her cupped hands.
"Ha!" Chayote roared out while thrusting her arms forward. The ball expanded into an intense aura of blinding light that enveloped her entire body. Instead of the concentrated mass of Ki erupting outward in the shape of a destructive wave, the entire blob of bursting aura erupted outward in the direction that Chayote forced it out. Like a spring on drugs, the wave contracted into a thinner and much looser projectile that then sprung into an unpredictable direction, this time, diagonally upward to the right where it exploded after traveling a decent distance from the source.
"Can you do it, Krillin?" Roshi turned to the tiny warrior who blushed and began shaking off responsibility. When the old man insisted, the student took the pose he saw Goku take when using the move and repeated the movements but only a puff of smoke left his hands.
"It's no good…" Krillin sighed while his eyes showed signs of great weariness.
"No, your technique was flawless but your physical aspect of Ki has taken a dip since Chayote beat you up. If you practice, after recovering, you should not be too far away from picking the technique up." Roshi shook his head while stroking his beard.
"You took that as more successful than what I've done?" Chayote raised a curious eyebrow.
Without replying, Muten Roshi turned to Yamcha. "What do you think? You've taken some damage as well but perhaps you have more guts in you than Krillin, mind to take a shot?"
Yamcha nodded without a word. He did not rush his try. First, the martial artist entered a standing fighting pose with his right arm extended and bent over his head while the left one mirrored the exact same position but inversed downward. The young man moved his hands and his entire arms as if it was a curious swimming technique of sorts. His movements flowed. Chayote knew what that was – Yamcha was concentrating.
"Ka!" Yamcha opened his eyes, cupping his hands out in front of him. "Me!" he drew his hands back and brought his body back with his hips while leaning forward himself. "Ha!" Yamcha strengthened his pose, it was the phase where he let loose the energy residing in his body while still giving his heartiest effort to not break his stance. "Me!" a massive blob of shining Ki formed in Yamcha's hands, erupting with about the same amount of light as when Goku and Chayote used the technique.
"Ha!" Yamcha roared out while thrusting his hands out, the Ki mass swirled for a while, remaining stationary but it fired out a minuscule energy wave akin to the simplest forms of Ki manipulation but gleaming with the signature white-blue shine of the Turtle Destruction Wave. The blast was not by any means powerful – it had barely managed to split a patch of the ocean but it served its intended purpose.
It was the world's puniest Kamehameha but it was one nevertheless.
"Do you know why Yamcha succeeded where you, a vastly superior combatant, have failed?" the Turtle Hermit wondered.
"Don't congratulate me too hard…" Yamcha rustled his hair with his hand while looking down. This was the most pathetic he looked after a victory in his entire life. "Throw that around the whole time, why won't you?"
"Because somebody bothered to teach him about Ki manipulation instead of forcing him to spar with a pair of weaklings, wasting his time?" Chayote grumbled.
"It's because he is exactly where he needs to be and he knows it!" Muten Roshi stepped forth right in front of Chayote's face and he did not care that he did not measure up in terms of height to the Saiyan who was still in her mid-teens.
"I'd like to be out in space, serving by Lord Frieza's side but I can't…" Chayote sighed. She did not fight back or complain, her voice sounded almost as beaten as somebody outperformed by a mere gynophobic Earthling should have sounded like.
"No!" the Turtle Hermit slammed his staff into the ground. Bulma sat up and removed her earphones for a second as even she picked up the intense atmosphere coming from the master and his unruly pupil. "You don't understand. It's because you're not one in body and mind that your Ki control is not consistent. When you feel content with your life, when you're sure of your choices and when you're moving toward your own happiness, when your heart is pure, not necessarily with innocence but with anything that defines you, that is when a martial artist is whole. Ki is equal part body and mind, if you keep lying to yourself about your true intentions and confusing your mind, you will never achieve true Ki manipulation."
"The other kids blasted Saibamen with their Ki blasts without trouble." Chayote recalled watching the other recruits training with the cultivated warriors while instructor Yuca held her back from endangering her life.
"That's because they were absolutely sure of their intentions. They did not declare themselves heroes or harbor false promises of world peace when doing it. It might be the easiest for rotten people, people who are evil by nature and all they need to bathe in that power is to accept their true selves. However, it is in the kind-hearted souls that Ki manipulation truly excels, because nothing of quality is ever achieved by taking the easy way in martial arts." Muten Roshi replied. He did not need to know who the Saibamen was to formulate his lesson into words.
"That's why you've called me up here…" Chayote muttered to herself. Of course, Roshi would not go on to attempt hardening Chayote even more – if Korin failed at that task, so would he. Training at this level would not grant Chayote any advantages and would possibly even lead to her current power degrading. Dropping slower than it would rot away if she sat around doing nothing but reducing nonetheless.
"That's right. Setting you straight is more important than any technique I can teach you." Muten Roshi nodded. "You must stop lying to yourself about why you're here on Earth and accept the person you truly are."
Chayote looked at her own hand. Her hand lit up like a lamp but she could form no Ki blasts in her hand. It was only when the battle was all she thought about and both her body and her mind were focused on winning without caring much for anything else that Ki blasts came out with some consistency.
A blonde woman approached the Saiyan and smacked her hand across the teen's shoulder with a confident smirk of a rascal. "Don't fret, I'll harden 'ya up tomorrow with some bullets! That's how the other two pipsqueaks used to train. You'll be doing crazy martial arts in no time!" she declared while showing off one of her Earthling handheld guns on the other hand. Chayote had taken much of the spitfire that came out from the barrel of that device and she failed to see how the equivalent of peas being flicked at her would harden her in any way.
Regardless the Saiyan smiled and nodded. Seeing such a positive reaction, the blonde walked away looking all proud and happy with herself. Chayote raised her thumb and pointed it at the blonde.
"Who the hell was this lady?" she inquired of everyone.
"That's just Launch-san. When she's in her blue hair form, she cooks and cleans for us. When she's blond, she just shoots at us. She switches between forms when she sneezes." Krillin sighed. For good reason, as Chayote put it together for herself. If the resident house sitter was stuck in her rampage form, that meant no dinner and the sky was slowly starting to turn red.
"Let's see what we can do about that…" Chayote cracked her knuckles and her neck. She then turned at Krillin and Yamcha. "After we eat, how about we go for a few more rounds until bedtime? I can't wait to take you two on again, I learn so much from every encounter."
Krillin and Yamcha looked at each other, baffled by the sudden shift of attitude from the Saiyan, before looking back at the teen and nodding.
"Launch, I'm gonna help you cook, where's the pepper!?" Chayote yelled out before entering the building.