"Young Navy, please… Young Navy!" a handful of servants called out to a preschooler blitzing around in the air like a distressed bee. In a mood as cheerful as he's ever been in, Navy looped around and dashed all across the territory of the mansion, ending up at a random point in the garden or the yard or taking into the skies as a test of his natural limits.
The fact that none of his keepers could even dream of catching up to him proved to be immensely hilarious to the young boy, as he wasted plenty of time grimacing and mocking them.
"Young Navy, that's indecent! Stop it this instant before your mother finds out!" a maid demanded, but then became static with terror as she loomed at a relatively petite woman casting a truly haunting shadow. The face of the maid flattened and stretched as she clapped her hands against her cheeks and shook her head in disbelief. Meanwhile, young Navy noticed the expression on the faces of the source of his entertainment, though he refused to turn around. In a very childish notion, he believed that something he couldn't see didn't exist.
"Too late," Chayote said in an eerie tone, making Navy turn around and stare at his agitated mother hovering behind him with her hands crossed and tapping against her biceps as a nervous tick. Navy vanished without a trace, speeding across the garden, then the yard, passing through the gate and switching locations a good dozen times before any of the servants as much as blinked.
"That won't work on me," Chayote declared, snagging the boy from behind, utterly indifferent to his thrashing, kicking, and unintelligible complaints. At his current age, Navy could speak, though only in keywords, with the rest of the sentences being gibberish filler. Regardless of the fact, it didn't take a distinguished linguist to decipher the fact that the preschooler demanded to be unhanded and let go to do as he liked.
"That's impressive!" a voice familiar to Chayote distracted the mother from the thought process of disciplining her child. With Navy stuffed underneath her armpit, yet still refusing to calm down, Chayote brought herself down to greet Gohan and Videl, who seemed to have come back with an unexpected third wheel. "Little Navy is so incredibly fast already!"
"Yeah, I'm a bit jealous of how early he started flying around. He's been juggling and tossing around furniture and shooting around like a rocket in mid-air before he could walk," Videl sighed in frustration, recounting the terrifying nights when the boy seemed to get the zoomies and decided to crash out through the roof to test his strength out in the outskirts of the city. Back when Chayote still trained Videl herself, she would ask Videl to catch Navy. Initially, it seemed like a joke of a training exercise, something demeaning, like a chore. It was only after a few chases Videl realized how taxing this was to her then-fledgling stamina and flying abilities.
"His battle power is scary. That's the unpredictability of the Saiyan anatomy for you. He didn't seem to inherit the Legendary Super Saiyan gene, though his natural abilities dwarf mine at this age," Chayote groaned in complaint, stonewalling little Navy's thrashing for a time. After a few mean shots and kicks at his mother, the captured brat yawned and began rubbing his large eyes with his cutesy little knuckles. "I think he's all tuckered out now. He's like that, blows up, and then winds himself out."
"I see, Chayote-san, this is Sharpner. He's a classmate of ours from Orange City, looking to learn martial arts," Gohan turned to the brawny kid with a full head of blond hair and brown eyes. The poor guy looked much more chiseled than Gohan, though his long face of complete befuddlement didn't do his cool disposition any favors. An unintended side effect of witnessing Navy's antics, most likely.
"Branching out, huh? If I was as cutthroat as Bulma, I'd charge you for the business idea to teach martial arts," Chayote winked at Gohan playfully before gently rolling Navy over her shoulders and letting go of him. The little monkey wrapped his fingers together despite being snoozy and kept a tight hold around his mother's neck as if it was an instinct engrained into him.
"It's nothing like that," Gohan laughed after a polite nod, acknowledging the wit of Chayote's observation. "It's just that Sharpner is interested in learning martial arts and Goten is around the age when Saiyans start training too, with the World Martial Arts Tournament being on the horizon, this ended up really great for us."
"The… The World Martial Arts Tournament!?" Chayote lost her cool as a few spikes of hair shot out of her slick ponytail formation. "I thought we had a deal that you guys wouldn't sign up for it?"
"We did," Gohan defused the situation with an uncomfortable chuckle, "It's just that there shouldn't be any harm to beginners like Goten and Sharpner signing up, right? I know we intend to give the Earthlings a chance to win and get invested in martial arts. I'm very much into that idea, Chayote-san, but don't you think it would be an incredible incentive for the beginner martial artists to register and show what real martial arts are truly like, without completely eclipsing the other fighters and crushing their hopes too early?"
Chayote groaned, grinding her teeth and clenching her fists by her thighs, shaking with tensed-up shoulders. Feeling like it was no longer safe for him to hang over his mother's shoulders and back, Navy slid back down and took Chayote's hand, just in case he dozed off and needed support to keep him afloat. Feeling her veins pulsing and her blood flow kicking into overdrive and fearing swelling up with muscle and losing control, Chayote focused on Navy's soft little hand as an anchor, using it to regulate her breathing.
It was a much healthier method of regulating her anger compared to coffee and cigarettes, which was Bulma's recommendation from when Chayote was still Bulma's apprentice in the world of business. If people like Goten and someone trained by Gohan and Videl enroll, Hercule will have no hope of winning and reclaiming his mojo and his rightful stage name. He'll forever be Hercule, the emasculated, down on his luck, businessman, and never again Mark Satan, the Savior of the World and the Hero of Earth. What aggravated Chayote's situation even more was the fact that she just couldn't convince Hercule to actually train. All he did was sulk, eat junk food, and watch TV. Because he had basic Chayote Security training and his general knack for martial arts, Chayote was confident that even mid-life crisis Hercule would trounce Earthling world-class fighters, but the chaos factor of Goten and however strong Sharpner could become with the right training in three years would've ruined his odds.
"Never mind that," Videl interrupted, noticing Chayote's frustration. "The tournament is still so far away. We can talk about this at any time. This isn't why we came here, remember?"
"Oh, right!" Gohan snapped his fingers. "Say, Chayote-san, Navy is around Goten's age too, right?"
"Navy? Yeah… Something like that, I guess…" Chayote nodded after letting go of the little rascal when he began tugging her hand to let go to take off and do whatever. While his energy levels surged to a ridiculous degree and then emptied all at once, they were similarly quick to replenish. In one blink Navy could have seemed lethargic, the next he was ready to go and play with himself by throwing the ball and then dashing to where it should have gone and catching it. He really could have used a playing partner when Chayote wasn't there to keep him entertained and put him back in line.
"Well… We were wondering, this was Videl-san's idea, actually…" Gohan poked his fingers together, looking hesitant to speak up as a combination of both his modest and polite nature and his fear for his own safety in overstepping boundaries in front of someone terrifying like Chayote. "How about we all train together and Navy can then train alongside Sharpner and Goten? We could host a little training camp and get all the beginners trained up at once. Who knows, maybe Navy can register for the tournament too?"
"Absolutely not!" Chayote put her foot down, freaking Sharpner out as he stumbled back and fell on his rear end, shaking and wrapping his head in his hands, wondering if he had truly just seen Chayote's thigh bulk out when she stomped her foot down and caused that violent quake or if it was just his imagination. Realizing how desperate she sounded, Chayote loosened the collar of her shirt and breathed her aggravation away. If Navy were to sign up for the tournament, there would be absolutely no controlling the little chaotic rascal. Not even if she told him to lose against Hercule on purpose would he listen? Meanwhile, Chayote had the honor of seeing the outcome of that brawl many times already, having witnessed it take place around the house.
The once inspiring hero that any abused and afraid for his life Earthling had hoped to see after looking up when Dr. Puri's robot army rolled up into town became a deadbeat dweeb, bullied and held hostage by a toddler in his own mansion. If Navy was bullying Hercule now, enjoying the sight of the weeping dolt begging for his life as the kid lifted a fridge over his head and threatened to whack Hercule with it for his own amusement, the brat would be absolutely unchained and uncontrollable with a bit of adequate training.
Loosening up her outfit somewhat and waggling her feet to prevent numbness, Chayote walked up to a nearby bench in the garden. Gohan, Videl, and Sharpner all followed her without a peep, looking just as curious about what, if anything, the hysterical Saiyan would say, as they were worried about their well-being if she lost control. They hadn't seen Chayote like this; they thought only her opponents did. For some reason, they still couldn't wrap their heads around why this tournament drew the worst out of her.
"I don't know if I want to follow the Saiyan tradition in putting Navy through a trial by fire and honing him up to be a kid soldier yet," Chayote groaned with a tired voice, expressing something that sounded more like a complaint and betrayed her indecisiveness about what to do rather than stomping her foot on the ground as she did when the matters related to the World Martial Arts Tournament. "Here on Earth, kids get to be kids and get to just enjoy their childhood. I think I would like for Navy to have that chance."
"Hmm…" Gohan hummed, staring at Navy dashing front and back, leaving a transparent and wobbly afterimage and then collapsing on the ground, laughing it up at the whacky image of his own mirage duplicate. "I don't know, Chayote-san. Haven't you noticed anything peculiar about his behavior? Navy isn't as eloquent as Trunks was back in the day, but I think all this roughhousing and fits of energy he's going through is his body and mind begging to put them through a test. I think young Navy wants to be trained, he wants to explore the depths of his strength, speed, and toughness."
"Of course, I've noticed," Chayote replied with a groan, albeit one with a much-softened tone compared to her earlier outrages. Sharpner carefully leaned behind Videl's back to peek at Chayote, wondering if he'd seen her body bulk up disproportionately again. Deep down, he kind of wanted to see it, so that it would prove his earlier episode to be something rooted in the very whacky reality of Gohan and Videl's world, rather than it having all been in Sharpner's head. "But sometimes what twerps this age want isn't what's best for them. I think that I'm the clearest example of it there is…"
"I don't think I get it," Videl mumbled, pouting her lips like a duck's beak. "Didn't you come from Planet Vegeta, haven't you grown up with the other Saiyans and gone through the same early-age training they did?"
"Heh…" Chayote's eyes almost closed, making her stare off into the distance and follow Navy's antics around with a dreamy look of nostalgia. "You'd think so, huh?"
"To be honest, I thought that you'd disagree because you wanted to train Navy yourself," Videl said. Having Gohan and Videl turned at her from both sides almost made Chayote feel like something was wrong with her and everyone was checking up on her. Even Sharpner was glancing at her from time to time while maintaining his façade of admiring the garden and the yards of the mansion from the bench area.
"That's definitely a part of why I'm not diving straight into the idea," Chayote shrugged. "I've spent enough time away from him with all the training, fighting, and working, and then the whole getting petrified thing happened. But…"
"If you tell us what's bothering you, we can see if we can fix it. Besides, we're not asking you to not take part in Navy's training. You can still check up on him and help train Navy, Goten, and Sharpner up," Gohan brought up. That was so much like him–always trying to find the problem in everything and fix it. Some problems didn't need fixing and we can only understand some problems, not fix them. Just the act of trying to fix them screwed everything up about them.
"When I was a kid, back on Planet Vegeta, I didn't really have too many authority figures. My dad cared little about me or my mother, which is part of the course with low and mid-class Saiyan families. My mom ended up dying fighting on some remote planet. All I had were the few troublemaker friends I made from some low-class urchins along the way. When I was to be brought up in the Saiyan military, I met instructor Yuca," Chayote felt a bit embarrassed talking about all that stuff. Most of it she hadn't really told anyone, but, somehow, just by tearing herself open and exposing the nerves to the outside world, she felt weak enough to be unable to go berserk. It was at those times that Chayote enjoyed feeling weak a little.
"Instructor Yuca? I think I've heard you mention her before, maybe on our way to Planet Vegeta or when we were there…" Gohan looked up with a curious expression, deep in recollection.
"That's one of your fighting trainers, right?" Videl wondered with excitement. She's heard Chayote talk a thing or two about her past before, but never with so much clarity and detail. Videl would've skipped that afternoon's training just to hear as much of those stories as she could. "I wonder what kind of people brought Chayote-san into the world?"
"She was definitely supposed to train me up," Chayote nodded. "Though I only found out about this at the worst possible time, for whatever reason, she went soft on me. She let me have my space, she didn't press on me to attend training, nor did she hassle me about ignoring the strict military routines. She looked the other way when I snuck off to get some food or when I slept through training. It was almost like she didn't want to train me at all."
"Maybe she knew what happened to your mother and felt bad about it? Maybe this Saiyan didn't want you to follow that same fate because she's grown fond of you?" Gohan spoke his thoughts out loud.
"Doubt that," Chayote shook her head. "My story is hardly anything special for any low or mid-class Saiyan. Plenty of kids back in the day lost both their parents on missions and had no one in their lives. I wasn't particularly asking for anyone's sympathy either. I was just lazy and unfocused and Yuca let me be all those things. Sometimes she sure acted like she thought of herself like my mom, looked out for me, and stuck her neck out more than she had to…"
"I don't recall us meeting anyone like that on Planet Vegeta. Nor do I recall you stepping out of the way to see her back then," Gohan noted. "Back then you still fostered some allegiance to Planet Vegeta military and your Saiyan past, all of this sounds odd to hear about now."
"Frieza offed Yuca not too long after I ended up dying in a test," Chayote shrugged and looked away. "I do vaguely recall seeing a pink flash when my head was rolling off the shoulders, but I didn't actually get to see it happen. I only became certain of what happened when Frieza himself bragged to me about it. Pissed me off to no end, severed all ties with that part of my life then and there. Helped me decide for certain about what and who I wanted to be."
"Sounds like that person ended up shaping your personality and your destiny a lot more than your parents did, ma'am," Sharpner observed from the safe spot of sitting behind Videl. The safe distance between him and Chayote a bit beyond her arm's reach certainly helped him draw some bravery to speak up. "My old man was kind of a jerk and left us too. I used to get into some trouble and struggle too. My mom was always working and eventually all her hard work paid off. We ended up upgrading our home and even got ourselves a servant. Our butler ended up sticking up for me more than he needed to for his job too, seeing that my grades improved and even getting me some personal coaching and a gym to vent my feelings in. If I ever had to pen down the name of my dad and didn't have the time to explain anything, I'd scribble his name down in a heartbeat."
"Maybe you're right, but there's one thing I know for sure–whether Yuca was right or wrong to let me slack off and refuse to train me, pretending like as some mid-class nobody I was meant for a better life than dying on some remote planet on a conquering mission, because of her, I ended up having a lot of fun and I was one of very few Saiyans to have an actual childhood. Bardock, Kakarot, Vegeta, or anyone else like me might not understand it, because training was all they've known. Who knows, maybe even Broly could have been a more relaxed guy if instead of being groomed to rule the universe he would have been allowed to do whatever he wanted," Chayote looked up into the sky. It really stank to admit it, but some part of her actually felt bad about the way Broly's life turned out.
It was a bit like the mean fiend wasn't ever given a fair chance at all. He may not have been the most mentally stable guy around and most would have considered him an abomination against nature, given his origins, but that didn't necessarily make him unworthy of living the life that he was given. More so, living it the way he wanted to live it, rather than being the muscle and the weapon of mass destruction for the dream of that fake Paragus guy who made him.
"You might be right," Gohan nodded with a smile. "But if you hold Navy back from training, thinking it's best for him to slack around and live like a child for as long as he likes, you should at least let Navy decide it for himself. At the end of his day, you're still his mother and you're in charge of all the decisions, but why not at least hear his side out and see where it goes?"
"Hmm…" Chayote looked down at Navy, dashing back and forth and forming turbulent gales that threatened to uproot trees merely from the force of resulting inertia after he stopped his movements. "Alright, I'll take him to a few training sessions and see how much he likes it. I'll decide what's best for him when we get to it, based on how Navy will feel."
Sharpner sighed, deflating, and hunching over as his upper body felt dragged toward the ground against the will of his wobbly feet. There was another super-powered toddler he'd end up competing against in training.
Blond Launch took off on her roaring motorbike with her coat rustling behind her with the added company of the wind and the hair. Whenever the bike took off a mountainous ridge and threatened to plunge down, crash, and burst into flames, the blonde ignited the exhaust and blasted off her bike like it was a jet. That way, the hi-tech bike soared across the mountain surfaces and the powerful tires absorbed enough shock from the glide for a trip across the mountains near Mt. Paozu.
When she glared across the mountainside to scan for the best way to get off the rocky and towering mountain range and get onto the road that could lead her to either the Diablo Desert in the west or Aru Village in the north, her binoculars picked up an interesting sight. The renegade bit her lip and grumbled to herself, realizing that scoping that situation out was none of her business.
So what if that crude asshole Saiyan was sitting alone on the roof of his house? What business was it of Launch's? He was the sweetheart of the Other Her, and it was because of that blue-haired naïve lass that Launch always got so far behind having a life of her own. It's because the Other Her always acted innocent, like Launch was some kind of disease that prevented her from having a life, without much care if the blond Launch didn't feel the same way about her, that Launch had only the brief stints in between the sneezing to live on her own.
It's only when she met Goku, Krillin, the old turtle creep, and the rest that she met the first long-time people she's gotten to know. Before that, Launch couldn't live in one place, she couldn't get a stint or find herself a guy, she couldn't settle down, because any time she would have done either of those things–she'd have ended up sneezing, and the blue-haired oaf would have wandered off somewhere, doing her own thing, pretending like the blond Launch didn't even exist at all.
So of course she had it rough and acted rough, of course, she lived her life in the moment and didn't spare any words or keep anything tucked away in her pockets. Of course, she acted rash and crude, because that was the only kind of life she could afford as someone whose life got a full-on reset every time she sneezed. What other kind of life could she have led? Even now, when Launch tried catching up and settling down with Tenshinhan, just when she thought she could live that kind of life and live for something more long-term, that blue-haired oaf still always found her way back to this buffoon every time she got control.
Though, no matter how many times Launch tried pretending that it wasn't so, she was a bona fide softy deep down. The only reason she turned her bike around and rolled back up to Bardock's house instead of trying to shoot off halfway across the world to the Ten Shin Ryu dojo again, was because it was impossible to miss the fact that Bardock felt the same way about the Other Launch too.
"You should cut that shit out, yer lookin' miserable!" Launch grumbled after skidding her bike across the grassy yard of Bardock's homestead and shaking her hair back into shape. Bardock looked up with a surprised expression on his face. Usually, he always let Launch go whenever the blue-haired dolt ended up making the switch on accident.
"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you go chasing off that three-eyed guy? If you need money for gas, I'm sorry. I'm not what you could call "having a job". You should ask Bulma. It's the least of what those insensitive douchebags could do after ignoring you for so many years," Bardock returned to his sulking atop the house.
"You know, I found a little note on the fridge this morning. I think the Other Me penned it down, hiding it underneath the box of beer, knowing that's the first place I'd look after we switched places again. She said that it's okay if I love Tenshinhan, but that I shouldn't treat you like crap just 'cause she's got her headlights pointed at you. She said yer a nice guy and that you've stuck yer neck out for us, even went as far as tried to use the Dragon Balls to split us up…" blond Launch growled, stepping off the bike and resting it on the little metal leg while devoting herself to the notion of returning to Bardock's home and glaring at the grumpy old fool with her arms crossed.
"Didn't really work out this time," Bardock replied. "It's funny, isn't it? We had two wishes and Baby needed both of them… All those years everyone's known you, not once did they offer to give each of you your own separate lives. Some friends, huh?"
"Heh, I see what that dolt sees in you," blond Launch snickered. "You know, a lotta of the others woulda seen me not as my own separate person, but as a condition to cure. Who knows? Maybe they're right. Even I can't remember if I came first or if it was the Other Me at this point. But yer the first one to ever consider both of us and make the case about splittin' us apart. Yer not half bad."
"What we intend and want doesn't matter. Being half bad didn't help me blast Baby away and get the Dragon Balls first," Bardock sighed.
"Don't those buggers come back after a year?" Launch scratched her head. "We can always try the next year, or the year after that. After living as part of someone else for so long, I can live for a few more years and so can the Other Me. She's a wimpy one, but her guts are stronger than even you give her credit for."
"Who knows, there might not even be an Earth around after one year…" Bardock shrugged. "Someone needs to take off and start gathering the Ultimate Dragon Balls, or the Earth is history and none of our good intentions will matter in the end."
Bardock's eyes shot wide open, and he jumped to his feet. A barrage of rapid gunfire began riddling his house and leaving smoking holes in his roof while the Saiyan hopped around, dancing with his feet, not necessarily because he needed to avoid the gunfire to avoid injury, but merely out of instinct and wanting to avoid the bullets ricocheting off of him and downing a nearby tree or hitting Launch back.
"What the heck's wrong with you!?" Bardock growled. "Now I'll have to repair that and it's not something that can just be put back together with brute strength! Changing the roof is more of a precision type of work. I ain't too good with that kind of stuff!"
"The only one's with something bein' wrong with them here is you!" Launch snarled with the end of the barrel of her submachine gun still smoldering in her hands. "What the heck's your deal about giving up and resigning yerself to just kickin' the bucket and lettin' the Earth go to waste? You asshole, don't just give us hope about gettin' to live our own lives and then just let the Earth blow up!"
Pulling her gun up over her shoulder, Launch walked back up to her bike and opened up a compartment on the rear end of the rim. From inside it, she pulled out a capsule, pressed it, and flicked it into the clearing. After a poof and a puff of smoke, a powerful travel jet softly pressed against the grass with a few bounces until the full brunt of its mass returned to it.
"Sit down, I'm drivin'!" Launch grumbled. "We're off to Bulma. She'll either hand us a spaceship or we'll steal it from her at gunpoint! You can act as my enforcer in case her husband is around. He's one of those bullet-proof folks that piss me off."
"Huh? You're after the Ultimate Dragon Balls?" Bardock jumped off the roof and looked at the riddled and sorry state of his house before turning back to Launch and her jet. "Shooting off to space sounds like a hassle, but I'm down for kicking Vegeta's ass any day. Let's do it."
And so, the two unlikely partners became yet another party looking for the Ultimate Dragon Balls in the vast expanse of the universe. With so many people looking at once, for many different reasons, ranging from personal improvement and spending time with their family, training, testing their mettle and the extent of their will, or merely out of the need to save the Earth, albeit not for entirely selfless reasons, it would take no time at all to gather them all.
Meanwhile, as those who went off to seek their serenity during peace times off into space sought their personal improvement and goals as magical, black-starred marbles, those remaining on Earth enjoyed the sweet fruit of peacetime, for as long as it would last. Every day Kami Upa stared off from the corner of the God Temple, overseeing the Earth with concern that the doom that was promised would one day come and worrying that with all the time he and Piccolo had spent trying to prevent it, they barely made any progress at all.
Hopefully, the added monster-handling expertise of Lapis would help Piccolo find this mysterious denizen of Planet Earth that's been muddling up the future-seeing waters and deal with him appropriately so that this blissful peace everyone has been enjoying for a few months now wouldn't end prematurely.