Krillin charged in a circular dash around the control panel in the center of the ship that controlled the various artificial settings within the ship, including the gravitational pull, colliding with Yamcha's raised elbow. The eyes of the bald martial artist wandered off to the screen of the main computer on the control panel that listed "300".
This momentary distraction had been Krillin's undoing for Yamcha stepped in and well within Krillin's close-range with a step-in backhand strike before flipping on his front and shooting backward stomping feet thrusts at Krillin who recovered from the skipped strike and leaned down under, throwing a well wound-up kick which forced Yamcha back on his feet.
Because Yamcha didn't return to proper balance on his own, he wobbled as the hefty pressure of the gravity chamber continued to weigh him down. Krillin dashed in with a roundhouse kick. Yamcha grunted, accepting the kick but offering his raised, cross-shaped arms for a block to it. The scarred fighter slid back, despite the gravitational pull that was so intense it hummed and rattled the spaceship. Weak flares of transparent red aura shined from Krillin, alongside jets of white trails of lingering smoke.
The two fighters charged at one another, exchanging blows repeatedly as their flurries connected and answered each other's calling perfectly. Yamcha's King Kai's Fist x 50 exploded all at once. He rolled in mid-air and swiped his palm with fingers curved inward down upon connecting with Krillin. Seeing his swipe leave a gash on Krillin's face and flinching his opponent, Yamcha transitioned into a roundhouse before turning around and dropkicking Krillin to slam into the back of the spaceship wall.
Krillin didn't take nearly as much damage from this attack as Yamcha had hoped. In fact, his feet landed firmly on the wall and the martial artist corrected his trajectory with an elegant bounce down on the ground, at which point he entered a fighting stance again. The bald martial artist intensified his combination of Cool-White and King Kai's Fist to rush toward his sparring partner.
Demonstrating his flawless transition from motion to attacking, Krillin jabbed so fast that Yamcha couldn't even see it. The jab left an indentation in Yamcha's jaw. It also flinched the Earthling warrior and made him stumble back a few steps before Krillin continued with a stiff high kick and then turned his entire body around to deliver a devastating double ax handle slam that grounded Yamcha. Though, much like his partner, the martial artist rolled back on the floor and elegantly returned on both feet, signaling his partner for a time-out.
"Your fighting style has changed a lot, Krillin," Yamcha observed while Krillin skipped to the gravity control panel impatiently to return to normal gravity.
"Has it? Because I see little difference in yours. Besides the vast increase in strength and speed, of course…" Krillin rubbed the back of his head, humbled by his partner's observation while complimenting him at the same time.
"That's right. I recall Tenshinhan using the combo of King Kai's Fist and Cool-White. I think it was interesting how all of us took King Kai's Fist in vastly different directions. Where I focused on amping up the rank of my King Kai's Fist, you combined it with Hot-Red for a very similar, over-the-top power-up. Meanwhile, Tenshinhan combined his with Cool-White to counteract the adverse effects of the technique so that he could use King Kai's Fist without exhausting himself and damaging his body." Yamcha explained while fetching himself a towel. Krillin collapsed on the ground, reflecting on what his friend had just told him, as he hadn't noticed it before. He just fought how it felt natural to him.
"Yeah, I guess… But it's not like we can't adapt and borrow from each other's experiences, right? I mean, we borrow techniques all the time. Picking up the techniques of others and using them in different ways or elevating them a step beyond is what makes martial arts so unique–we're all working to improve martial arts together," Krillin pointed out. Yamcha sighed and moved to the fridge to sip on some refrigerated soda to cool his head off a bit.
"Is that what you're doing, I wonder…" Yamcha mumbled while taking big gulps of the chilling drink. He gave Krillin a worried look after placing the can back in the fridge. "Or are you just trying to save yourself from trouble by worrying about your body's condition?"
"What? What do you mean? Even if I am worried about the well-being of my body, why would that be a bad thing?" Krillin scratched his cheek, looking flustered and his tone shifted from being embarrassed to sounding defensive and even accusatory.
"It's not in of itself," Yamcha admitted with a shrug after flipping the towel over his shoulder. "Though I wonder if you're willing to make your muscles hurt like old times to get some real gains out of it or if you've picked up a mean habit of half-assing it from your days selling people insurance."
"That's ridiculous!" Krillin jumped up. "Pushing your body to where it starts hurting it is the worst thing you can do! What's the point of tearing yourself up if you're just going to skip more training sessions while you recover? If your body hurts–it's a clear sign you shouldn't do it."
"The only way your body grows stronger is if it hurts and if you push yourself…" Yamcha stretched himself out to ease the pressure in his numb muscles, then hopped in place and shadow-boxed a bit to purge himself of the light as a feather feeling one got when returning to normal gravity after cranking it up a bunch. "It's not just true with Saiyans. We don't quite get Zenkai boosts, obviously, but we need to push ourselves and question our limits the entire time. When it feels like you can't go any further, you go for five more minutes, because that's how improvement is made."
"Did you learn all that bullying ordinary athletes with your superhuman speed and strength playing baseball?" Krillin raised a mocking eyebrow while placing his hands on his waist.
"I did, as a matter of fact." Yamcha closed his eyes, shrugging off the intended offense and playing it cool. "Pro athletes have honed the art of improvement and have discovered so many rules about how the human body works. They pretty much have to, since they don't know a thing about Ki control. They have to discover all those hidden tricks because, in their case, improvement comes through sweat and blood and it only comes with minute margins. I've seen my teammates all but sell their very souls out to run the square a few milliseconds faster."
"Hey! I know what it's like to sweat and bleed. It's just that I've learned in my career about how dangerous life can be, and I don't need to add killing yourself during light sparring onto that list!" Krillin objected.
"Say, this gravity is beginning to feel tame. What do you say we crank it up to 500?" Yamcha challenged his friend, bending his head to the side a little as he sharpened his look. Almost as if stabbing at Krillin.
"500…? Come on, Yamcha… That's like… Almost twice the amount we use now and we need King Kai's Fist to handle ourselves right still. We'll sprain or pull something and then we'll get sidelined, and then we won't be able to either train or get the Ultimate Dragon Ball," Krillin adopted a bargaining tone and body language as if trying to reason with his friend. "Professional athletes and sports competitors suffer 20 000 injuries per 100 000 workers each year. Civilians don't even get to experience turf toes, pitcher's elbows, or sports hernias, but it's a cheap sucker's trick to sell them the same insurance plan as that of a sports competitor. Makes them feel all proud and strong and healthy…"
Before Yamcha could scold his sparring partner, the entire room became engulfed with crimson light as both martial artists began throwing their gazes around to scope out what might have been the reason for it. It was only when the loud, mechanical-sounding shriek of "Ultimate Dragon Ball detected!" started filling the hull that the pair realized what had happened.
Krillin approached the control panel and opened it up to peer through the portholes and see what they had to work with. He didn't expect to see a crimson ball of flames far surpassing even the largest cosmic orbs that they've seen throughout their space-faring adventures. Krillin leaned back, covering his eyes up as the light seemed to even penetrate through the protective glass and almost stab through his very pores. The bald martial artist stumbled back and sneezed.
"Holy crap!" he whined out, wiping his runny nose. "That ball of fire is intense."
"Is the Ultimate Dragon Ball on the surface of a star?" Yamcha went pale, turning to the ship's AI system for consultation.
"Negative!" the ship's AI slashed through their eardrums, almost feeling happy to prove them wrong. "Star Blake 12-34 is a red supergiant who is about to pass onto and go supernova within the nearest handful of years. The Ultimate Dragon Ball is on Planet Lev, the closest planet to the red giant."
"Huh? Where is this Planet Lev? I can't seem to find it but the radar shows it being nearby…" Yamcha tried to solve the puzzle, baffling him by turning his head in different directions, though nothing seemed to work.
"Planet Lev is located right within the Star Blake's borders. You might not be able to make it out because of how bright and potent Star Blake is. Planet Lev circles its star once every twelve hours and the fiery jets of gas from Star Blake have fully encased Planet Lev, dooming it for a fiery demise long before Star Blake goes supernova. Not only is the gravitational field shattering and splintering the planet but the violent outbursts of stellar radiation have coated the entire planet in flames." The AI replied without skipping a beat.
"Oh, man… Don't even get me started on odds of surviving that extraction mission…" Krillin squinted, staring at the closed porthole and caressing the cold steel with his hand in self-pity.
"We don't have time to mess around!" Yamcha clenched his fist. "This Blake thing is slurping up our planet every second. With each passing moment, we risk having the Ultimate Dragon Ball get gobbled up and absorbed by the star, making it a real pickle to extract it or get flung into the depths of dead space if the star goes supernova."
"Are you insane? We can't set our foot on that planet!" Krillin objected. "There can't possibly be an atmosphere there, is there?" he turned to the ship's AI for assistance.
"There is not. Star Blake has long since incinerated the planet's atmosphere whole." the AI was glad to assist.
"See? There's nothing to breathe there but actual, pulsing flames and deadly radiation. There are so many different hazards there to consider and all of them have a 0% survival rate!" Krillin got into Yamcha's way as the brave baseball ace approached the compartment where his spacesuit was stored in.
"That's exactly what I was talking about, Krillin!" Yamcha lashed out, brushing Krillin aside. "You're unwilling to put your body at risk at all. Our lives are dangerous. Yes, it calls for us to risk injury or death constantly. Even when we're just preparing for troubles ahead and not fighting for our lives at that moment. We just can't help it. When the stakes are this high, we can't afford to linger or fear putting ourselves in the line of fire or doing five hundred more push-ups than we feel like we can do."
"B-But… The risk factor is off the charts! This must be the least insurable situation imaginable!" Krillin grabbed his head and tensed up his grip, threatening to pop his own belfry from the pressure.
"What are you so worked up about, dummy?" Yamcha cracked a cocky grin, turning to Krillin with his helmet in his hands to strike a cool pose. "I meant nothing for the likes of Frieza to blink out entire stars and we've tangled with that guy when he was at his best. Even if the whole damn star blows up, it can't be much worse than that, right?"
"Even so!" Krillin placed himself in between Yamcha and the shaft that would have allowed him to leave to space once Yamcha fully himself suited up. "You're not talking about raw energy here. Out in space, you'll also be both freezing and burning to death at the same time. The radiation stats will be absolutely off the charts and you'll have nothing to brea…"
Krillin's pupils dilated and his eyes twitched twice in shock as Yamcha had turned on the full brunt of his King Kai's Fist in a blink and dashed behind his unsuspecting partner, driving his elbow to the back of Krillin's head and leaving him to flop flat on his face while Yamcha put his helmet on and connected all the essential life support systems.
"My gut tells me you might not be entirely off the mark. You've spent entire years studying different risks in how the universe can screw a guy over and I'm just your run-of-the-mill guy at the end of the day. Still, my arms are open. The universe can screw away. All I know is that there's an Ultimate Dragon Ball I need to save the world, and it's on a dying planet that's about to be swallowed by a dying star. I might die, but I kinda need to go get it…" Yamcha snickered, looming over the unconscious body of his friend. The spaceship turned to hover at the right angle for a straightforward trip. The brave spaceman entered the hull, preparing to depart.
"Sheesh, couldn't you have parked closer? It's like I have to zoom across the whole star system to get to my planet…" Yamcha groaned with a mechanical-sounding, augmented voice while staring at the radar on his wrist.
"Any closer than where we are now, and the star's gravitational pull will be inescapable to our thrusters. Your chances of surviving a supernova are questionable, given your physical stats. The ship's, however, are non-existent." The AI replied. "I must say though…"
Before the AI could warn Yamcha, the man who started out his life as a desert bandit stared off toward the seemingly infinite ball of fire. Ready to kick off the open hatch and dash off toward what felt like an entire universe of its own made of burning hell.
"Everyone's a doubter…" Yamcha joked to himself. Even he could feel his shins quivering. He didn't quite have a chance to screw things up anymore, given how he's already been brought back by the Dragon Balls. "I'm feelin' like if I had a bat durable enough, I'd punt that damned Blake thing outta the orbit myself!"
The head felt heavy. A tiny drool of blood connected Krillin's flattened face and the heated floor as Krillin peeled his head off the ground. It took him a few seconds for the entire universe to stop spinning out of control and for him to find the sense of balance to stumble on his own two feet. It took a few more moments for him to remember under what circumstances he had gone out. Krillin rushed up to the control panel and noticed that someone had shut off the AI. That couldn't have been good…
"Pick up… Goddamn it, I didn't ask Bulma what the AI was an abbreviation for, what sort of name is abbreviated like that even?" Krillin ran through words that he spilled like frozen peas from an open bag. It took little effort to reset the AI system.
"System functionality restored. Resetting the last function… Warning: the spacesuit isn't designed for the intended purpose of coming near point-blank of a dying star and will not withstand the required amount of heat and will not offer any effective protection against radiation," the AI issued the warning that was meant to Yamcha before the dolt turned it off.
"Oh, come on!" Krillin cursed, pulling off some section of the control panel and slamming it against the ground. "That idiot!"
Still, it wasn't like Krillin had the time necessary to mess around. The bald martial artist ran up to the computer screen and checked on the status of Yamcha's equipment. From the looks of it, he had entered the star's dead zone–the point of no return, but his spacesuit must still have been intact for the radar to pick him up.
"Yamcha! Pick it up!" Krillin issued Yamcha a transmission on the communication systems, hoping that Bulma built them durable enough. If Yamcha hadn't advanced too far into the dead zone yet, the radiation shouldn't have scrambled it entirely.
"Whoa, you woke up pretty fast. I kinda hoped to strike a flashy pose with the Ultimate Dragon Ball in hand when you woke up… You must be more durable than I thought or I moved too slow and you actually put up some defenses against my sucker punch." Yamcha started going off on his tangent before Krillin hammered at the communications panel.
"Get back here, you absolute buffoon! Your spacesuit is going to unravel the second it gets too hot! It's not meant to be paraded with in front of a red supergiant, you complete moron!" Krillin almost lost his voice. "Not to mention–it will barely protect you from the radiation surge. It will stop protecting you once it peels right off of you!"
"Oh… Well… Unless you've got a better idea… We can't afford to lose this Ultimate Dragon Ball, Krillin," Yamcha replied on the comlink. The connection had been choppy. He must have been getting closer to when things got hot.
"I… Look… I've got… These are the worst circumstances to think under, but I think I've got a better plan with a far higher chance of survival. It'll reduce the heat and radiation peril to a minimum and it'll save us the trouble of getting the Ultimate Dragon Ball from the planet point-blank to an about-to-die supermassive star." Krillin tried to relay his plan to Yamcha.
"Whoa… Krillin… Wait, don't tell me…" Yamcha realized the only other option his partner must have been thinking about.
"You said it–Frieza's been whopping us with that sort of energy all the way back on Planet Vegeta and we've built ourselves up from that point already. Taking a brunt of a distant supernova has far better chances for us than what you're doing. If the ship stays operational and scoops us up right after, we won't have to stay without oxygen for too long. The radiation will suck but… We have healing pods in the spaceship. Let's just hope they cover that. If I amp up King Kai's Fist to the max, erect an explosive Ki wave as a barrier and Hot-Red all at the same time, I might preserve some of the spacesuit. Enough to minimize the radiation exposure." Krillin relayed his plan.
"So… What do I do in the meantime?" Yamcha wondered.
"I need you to return and erect an energy barrier around the spaceship. I'll bring her into the dead zone for my Kamehameha to reach the Star Blake and trigger the supernova so it won't be able to escape that point of no return anymore. You'll have to make sure we still have a ship to go back to Earth to and one that can provide us the oxygen and medical facilities to recover." Krillin sighed as he still couldn't believe what he was signing himself up for.
"Did you hear all that?" Krillin looked up.
"Already inside the dead zone." The AI reported.
"Huh!? Couldn't double-check it with me?" Krillin freaked out, rushing to his own spacesuit and scrambling to slip inside it. Feet seemed to tangle and Krillin couldn't stop tripping over himself as he rushed to the hatch.
His space boots clicked with a pleasant, hydraulic sound and fixed to the ship's surface as the bald space cowboy climbed over its sides and kicked off. Krillin initiated the King Kai's Fist, surrounding himself with a potent, booming red aura of scarlet that crackled with crimson jolts as he cranked it up to a X 50 and wondered if he'd have to kick it up even higher than that. He'd amp himself up with Hot-Red as well once he has to prepare the Kamehameha necessary to finish off the dying star.
Yamcha buzzed right past Krillin and went like a cosmos-splitting crimson arrow, dashing toward the spaceship.
"Now that you mention it, I don't think I'm all that great with Kiai…" Yamcha joked on the comlink.
"Don't you even right now…" Krillin grumbled as he stopped beside a brilliant, planet-sized disco ball that seemed to be made of solid diamond and cupped his hands together, ready to give Star Blake everything he had.
"Ka… Me… Ha… Me…" Krillin drew his hands back, feeling his spacesuit inflate from the pressure of most of the liquids in his body evaporating through his pores as even bathing in the already scorching heat of 5000 degrees halfway across the star system had been breath-taking for the martial artist. "This is only just a step-up from the Room of Spirit and Time…" Krillin kept thinking to himself.
"Hot-Blooded Kamehameha!" He yelled out, thrusting his hands out and closing his eyes from instinct, afraid that if he didn't, he'd either go blind or that they'd run right out from his sockets boiling. The immense energy wave seemed to take forever to reach the supermassive red giant but just as Krillin had begun feeling impatient and lightly peeked through his eyes, just as his hands were feeling numb in channeling this whopper of an attack, a thunderous crack nearly split Krillin's head in half.
The wave of expanding matter decked Krillin almost immediately, peeling the spacesuit apart, then the turtle school gi just as the starter. He had never felt every individual cell in his body until he felt the washing wave of sheer force, a product of unmatched cosmic energy, try to punch each and every single particle he was made of out of place. Krillin grit his teeth clenched his fists and put up his dukes. Yamcha said that he never put his body on the line, that he stopped risking ever since finding a normal job and enjoyed peace…
As much as the searing wave of blazes burnt him, as much as the mere instant that the expanding brunt of the compelling cosmic combustion clouted him, Krillin persevered the moment until the blink passed and his strength began seeping from the overtaxed cells he had to hustle to keep intact. Telling what was heat and what was radiation was impossible and ultimately irrelevant. All that Krillin could see was his own naked, bruised, and unconscious body floating in space. It took him a few seconds to realize that it was in fact his own body that he was staring at during this out-of-body experience and just as the thought occurred to him to rush back, thoughts became sloppy, the vision began tuning brighter and brighter still and everything whited out in the end.
"What's Krillin's status?" Yamcha wondered, looking up at the ship's AI system before turning to his friend's nude body floating in the medical tank. The combination of both Saiyan technological advances looted from throughout the universe as food for Frieza's greed and the Namekian mixture of native wisdom of almost magical natural medicine worked to get Krillin back into training shape.
"It will take around eight hours to bring him back to shape," the ship's AI reported. "The energy field around him protected Krillin from most of the radiation. His natural toughness helped him withstand the heat and the concussive force. The damage dealt to his own body by a King Kai's Fist over 100 times strong and tremendous dehydration is almost worse than the burns from Star Blake's collapse."
"And the Ultimate Dragon Ball?" Yamcha looked up at the radar.
"Flung into space. It has a solid signal we can track and I can tractor beam it up when we find it." The ship reported. "I must advise that we visit the nearest space station first. Your efforts in protecting the ship from harm at the outer edges of the dead zone, while admirable, only softened the blows to its hull. The supernova damaged our electronics despite Bulma's best solutions in shielding the ship from EMPs and the entire ship is rattled both by the abuse of the gravitational technology aboard the ship and the external shock wave of the expelled matter from the supernova."
"Yeah, we probably need to check on that right after we scoop up the Ultimate Dragon Ball…" Yamcha scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. It was his role to shield the ship from the supernova with a Kiai bubble on the outer edges of the point of no return, and yet the ship still took some mean bumps. Even if a story they'd recall for a lifetime to come was on its last strokes, it felt like they both still needed some more training if they were to trade blows with the Androids and hope to come out on top.