Chapter 3: The Sky Dance and the Turtle Devastation Wave

Upa shook his braided hair as he climbed out of the ocean, once more having faltered in his flight abilities and crashing down into the sea below.

The art of Sky Dancing had only recently been added to the Kame School of martial arts from the proliferation of the technique after Goku had revealed his own new mastery of the technique in his fight against the reborn Piccolo in the most recent World Martial Arts Tournament. In fact, Krillin has said that Master Roshi still refused to learn and thus incorporate the useful technique officially.

Master Krillin didn't exactly have the best handle on the technique yet either, though the justification for learning it early on was that it was apparently a wonderful technique for developing ki control and ki reserves.

Which would help him speed through the other part of the curriculum about energy blasts and eventually the Kamehameha Wave.

"Alright, that's enough of that, Upa. Come over here and put your shell back on and we'll work on some drills." The bald monk called over from a lounge chair under an umbrella higher up the beach.

Upa tried not to be frustrated at that sight, he assumed it was some sort of test of his patience and ability to remain calm, outright taunting him with the casual air that Master Krillin was taking his training.

The young Karinga warrior made it onto dry sand and flared his aura enough to cause his new Turtle School gi to flutter in the generated breeze, this mostly dried him off, though not quite all the way. He was still new to this kind of external expression of life energy. Vigor, vitality, ki, it was all the same he was learning.

He trudged over to where his extremely heavy purple turtle shell lay and pulled it up and around onto his back like a pack. Strapping it on he barely managed to keep his balance and stop from tipping over. It changed his center of balance completely. Which he was learning was a key point of the Turtle Style. Increasing natural strength and speed by constantly increasing your benchmarks (the weight of the shell) and training you subconsciously to always maintain perfect balance and control even when something unexpected impacts your center of gravity.

It was simple and effective. That appealed greatly to the hunter within Upa. It also frustrated the analytical side of his personality. He wanted to pick apart the use of ki and see how far it could be taken.

'Not yet,' Upa reminded himself, 'Not until after I can fire a Kamehameha.'

That was the benchmark he had set for himself before he would allow himself to experiment with any of the fascinating and wild ideas bouncing around his mind, many based upon Karinga myths about the wonderful and amazing things their progenitor, Iko, could do. He imagined Iko was some kind of prodigy in a martial art that used ki that had become lost to the ages.

In order to motivate him, Master Krillin had showcased some of his ki techniques to Upa a few days prior. It was fascinating the breadth of utility ki techniques could accomplish.

The Kamehameha of course, but also things like a scatter of energy blasts, punches and kicks that sent out shockwaves, the Solar Flare, and a double energy wave attack turned into a homing attack! The possibilities were endless, and fascinated his young and eager mind. He'd already figured out the Afterimage technique so that was already one down.

But first…he had to run around the island's shoreline a hundred times with his heavy shell on.

Krillin slurped loudly from the straw in his coconut drink. Upa was suspicious there was rum mixed in with the coconut water.

"Ehehehehe!" Master Roshi's disturbing cackling echoed out from inside of the beach shack they all lived in.

He felt that it was going to be a long few months of training. In reality, when looking back, Upa would say they passed by in a blink.

"Ka!" Finally! After two months of long training, Upa knew he had it. He was going to do it! Today was the day! He was going to fire off a real Kamehameha Wave!

"Me!" He stood upon the beach, focusing all his intent and ki down into a single point between his hands cupped by his hip.

"Ha!" A point of light centered between his hands slowly grew.

"Me!" It flickered but he clamped his will back down and it steadied then grew more.

"Ha!" As it swelled to the size of a baseball he thrust his hands forward until his arms were straight and willed the energy to compress hard enough to burst outwards in a single concentrated beam.

A jet of blue-white light shot out across the ocean, it petered out after a mere twenty meters, nothing compared to what he had seen either of his masters perform.

But it had been stable, had not exploded in his hands this time, and had held its shape the entirety of the energy expenditure.

It was perfect. Now he just needed to make it stronger and then he could start experimenting! He'd seen Master Krillin toying around with his own new techniques, pushed forward by the mere act of having an acolyte following in his footsteps, just as Master Roshi had intended.

Upa pushed himself on the Kamehameha Wave for the next few weeks, slowly getting if not to mastery than at least to what he would call a consistent proficiency.

He continued to train with his master, Krillin, in other techniques as well. He'd gotten his flying to where he was stable and could fly for a long time, if not particularly quickly. Krillin had mentioned off hand that Goku had a magic cloud that could carry him more quickly than any of them could fly currently. Saved on energy expenditure as well.

Learning the Solar Flare and how to cause energy beams to home in or curve at targets was the beginning of his attempts to branch out and experiment. Apparently Goku had learned all these techniques much more quickly than he, so he wasn't quite a prodigy, but Krillin did praise him on learning them more quickly than he, even if he was starting at a greater age and having already done training with Master Korin.

"I think I might have a knack for this teaching thing!" Krillin remarked one day, "If we had the funds I could get a bigger place and open up a school like the old temple I grew up at." His master's face had darkened at that reminiscence.

"And I could work with the junior members while you focused on those with the talent to advance! And then next time someone like those Red Ribbon scoundrels or that Mercenary Tao came around it wouldn't just be Goku who could fight!" Upa scowled at his own memories.

Krillin nodded, thinking back to when King Piccolo's brood had taken out so many martial artists by both surprise and overwhelming power. He was fairly certain that as he was today he could defeat the monster that had killed him though. And if the world had ten or twenty more fighters at his current level in a decade or two? That was a nice idea.

The bald man ended up shaking his head after a minute however, "Can't do anything about it, only reason we're here is Master Roshi bought this island two hundred years back for a steal. We break even most years with the small fees we get from odd jobs across the archipelago."

Upa nodded somberly, "There is not much for those of martial talent to do to make money when we do not sully our hands with mercenary work like some."

"Yeah!" A voice echoed out from in the house, "Like that damned Crane School! Fuck 'em! Ehehehehe!"

Krillin rubbed his temples, "Master Roshi, Tien and Chiaotzu are friends now!"

A moment of silence, "Fine! Fuck Tao and Shen though!"

A shrug indicated that Krillin did agree with that assessment. Then he paused and rubbed at his chin for a moment.

"Hmm…maybe it would be good for your training to see some of the other styles instead of just sparring with me and occasionally Yamcha."

And that's how Upa found himself sparring with Chiaotzu a few weeks later when they went to pick up Launch from having stayed with the former Crane School martial artists the last few months. She'd called and asked to come back for a bit to do some end of summer cleaning around the house and have a break from Tien who sometimes frustrated her with his emotional distance.

"I'm going to be real honest," Krillin confided in Upa on the jet car ride over, "I have no idea how their relationship works? I mean, I guess I've never had one myself, but I just don't get it."

But that didn't matter in the present moment, as Upa pulled a backwards handspring to dodge an axe kick from the nimble and tiny martial artist.

"Not bad! Not bad!" The strange little man chanted, "Let's see how you handle something more intense! Dodon Ray!"

A thin beam of energy sliced out towards Upa, he could sense the condensed power of the technique and knew he had to dodge or deflect, he wouldn't be able to straight up block it. Stealing from his fellow acolyte, Yamcha, Upa used his knowledge of the spirit of the Bear to internally channel his ki into a specific burst of physical reinforcement.

"Ursa Minor!" He called out his technique, channeling the might of the bears his tribe often hunted and specifically his understanding of their spirit as his father's own totem animal.

Bears were not particularly fast or agile, but Upa did not need those skills, he was fast and agile himself. What Upa needed to reinforce in combat was strength and endurance. Exactly what his concept of the bear spirit could provide.

With a mighty roar as he could feel the concept of the bear flood through his body, and most noticeably his hands cupped like claws, Upa ducked mostly under the beam and brought his right hand up at an angle, the reinforcement of his ki causing it to glow just the slightest bit as he backhanded the beam up into the air.

Chiaotzu looked at him, mouth gaping and eyes wide. The three-eyed Tien looked on in interest. And Krillin let out a whoop and jumped up, punching the air.

"That's my student!"

Shaking the surprise off Chiaotzu began to float in the air, beams charging on both index fingers, "Looks like your student can take me getting serious, Krillin!"

Upa blinked, that…hadn't been serious?

Suddenly he was dodging and dancing and deflecting a complete barrage of Dodon beams.

"Put your right foot in, take your right foot out!" Upa deflected two beams in quick succession.

"Put your right foot in, and you shake it all about!" The white-faced miniature martial artist's sing-song voice was seriously creeping Upa out.

"Do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around, that's what it's all about! SUPER!"

As Upa dodged and deflected two more the barrage paused, with Upa completely out of position to dodge the charged Dodon Ray Chiaotzu began to charge.

Without much recourse Upa cupped his hands by his side and pushed his energy down, including the ki currently reinforcing his Ursa Minor.

"Kameha…"

"DODON BLAST!"

"MEHA!" The two blasts shot out, but unfortunately Chiaotzu had begun charging first, and that meant they met far closer to Upa than in the middle, so when the beam clash exploded vigorously Upa was left singed and down on one knee, breathing heavily.

"S-s-serious…h-huh?" He wobbled.