Monkey Prince vs. Saiyan King! The Difference Seven Years Makes!
Gohan stood on what he had a sneaking suspicion was the same rock his mom had stood on about a decade beforehand when she had fought Vegeta. After all this time, Gohan noted that the battle scars the planet bore from that conflict remained more or less unchanged. He could look out and see the enormous crater where his mom had powerbombed Vegeta from the upper atmosphere, as if she'd been trying to drive him through the Earth itself. He saw the divot in the terrain where Goku had fired her Kamehameha to stop Vegeta's Galick Gun. Though time and wind-blown dust had scratched most of the surface, it was still undeniably glassy from the heat of Goku's blast. Gohan could see the devastated landscape where he and Vegeta had battled each other as Oozaru and he even recognized, with a small level of discomfort, the rubble of the giant rock Vegeta had smashed over the back of his head. In that fight, however, Goku had been fighting to defeat Vegeta in what seemed very likely to be a fight to the death and to stop him from destroying the Earth. Thankfully, Gohan was comfortably sure that this fight wouldn't escalate to such dire levels.
He was reasonably sure.
As Gohan adjusted the strap of the small cooler he was carrying over one shoulder that his mother had packed for him with fruit and water, he hoped that Videl wouldn't mind too much that Suno would be the one covering her and Goten's flying lesson today. He was also just a little bit worried about whatever his mother might actually say to Videl.
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"So you're sure you can handle the lesson?" Gohan asked his mother as he finished tying the red belt of his gi and making sure his boots were on tight. "You've never really taught lessons like this before."
"Ohhh, don't worry," Suno told Gohan in a reassuring tone as she handed Gohan what was essentially his pack lunch. "If I can teach your sister not to bite her toothbrush in half and teach thirty something kids long division, I can help your girlfriend figure out how to stay in the air."
"Thanks mo–" Gohan started before he noticed what his mother had said, his face immediately reddening. "Motheeeer!"
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Even thinking about it now caused Gohan's face to redden. Was it really the right decision to leave Videl and his mother more or less alone? Soon enough, however, he thankfully had something to take his mind off of it. About a minute after Gohan had arrived, Vegeta appeared as well, carrying a cooler of his own over one shoulder. Like Gohan, he was wearing a gi. The sight of it still gave Gohan some small degree of pause, even though Vegeta had been fighting in gi for years. He supposed that the experiences in Gohan's life where Vegeta had been wearing PTO armor had burned themselves rather emphatically into his brain.
"I was wondering how long you were gonna keep me waiting," Gohan said with a bit of a smirk as he set his cooler down. "What's wrong? Starting to slow down as you get older?" Vegeta glared at him as he let his own cooler slide off of his shoulder.
"Still fast enough that I could beat you into a coma before you even realized I'd thrown a punch, boy," Vegeta retorted. "Besides," he added, "Which one of us has been actively trying to better himself and which of us has allowed himself to atrophy?"
"Hey," Gohan objected, "I've kept up my sparring with mother and I've started training Goten. I've been keeping in shape!" Vegeta scoffed.
"If your arms are chained behind your back and your legs are shackled together," he asked, "Does that make wiggling your nose exercise?"
"I dunno," Gohan retorted with a smirk. "Why don't you tell me after I win? I'm pretty sure nose-wiggling is the only exercise you'll be able to get." Vegeta rolled his eyes before looking down at Gohan's cooler.
"And what," he asked in a condescending tone while gesturing toward it tersely, "Is that?"
"Just something my mom packed me," Gohan replied with a shrug. "It's got water and… and apple slices… and grapes… and oranges…" he dropped his head and muttered under his breath, "And a bento." Vegeta let out a bark of derisive laughter.
"A-are you a child?" he asked between guffaws. Gohan huffed and pointed an accusing finger right back at Vegeta's own cooler.
"So what's in that?" Gohan demanded. Vegeta scoffed and crossed his arms.
"Protein," Vegeta replied smugly. "Because I'm an adult and a man." There was an awkward pause as Gohan just kept looking at Vegeta with one slightly raised eyebrow. "That… that Bulma bought for me," he grumbled. Now it was Gohan's turn to laugh and Vegeta seethed. Which was, of course, Gohan's strategy. Through years of fighting both against and alongside him, Gohan had noticed a crucial detail that defined Vegeta's fighting style. As much as Vegeta liked to try and overwhelm his opponents with unrelenting force, he was also a capable and even cunning warrior when he had to be. However, get him angry and he wouldn't be able to focus on strategy. He'd get tunnel-vision and become predictable. While it made Vegeta more dangerous, it also made him vulnerable. That, Gohan told himself, was the paradox of Vegeta. His anger was his best weapon and his greatest weakness.
"Just so we're clear," Gohan reminded Vegeta, "The fight doesn't leave the desert and no–"
"Yes, yes," Vegeta interrupted dryly with a roll of his eyes. "No beams pointed toward the Earth. Just because I don't care about the mudball doesn't mean I'm actively going to destroy it." Then the two warriors got into their stances and eyed one another coolly.
Gohan's mouth quirked slightly and Vegeta hesitated for a moment, wondering what clever comment Gohan was going to make so that they could engage in a last little moment of witty pre-battle repartee. In that moment of hesitation, Gohan was suddenly gone before he appeared in front of Vegeta with his Instant Transmission, driving an uppercut into the King's jaw that knocked him into the air. He followed up on the punch with a driving kick to the gut that sent Vegeta crashing into the mountainside. Gohan flew after Vegeta to continue his attack when Vegeta burst furiously out of the rubble. He used his ki aura to lift the rubble into the air, whipping it around him like a hurricane before sending it all flying toward Gohan at frightening speeds. Gohan dodged and punched away at the rubble, blasting boulders bigger than his entire body to get to Vegeta. Now it was Vegeta's turn to surprise Gohan as he came from behind the Monkey Prince while his focus was elsewhere, smashing his fists down on Gohan's back in a sledge hammer blow to knock Gohan out of the air. Gohan let out a cry of pain reflexively from the blow and grit his teeth to stifle it as he caught himself, landing in a crouch on the ground. The half-second of a rush of air was the only indicator he had to duck down even lower, practically parallel to the floor as Vegeta's roundhouse kick whizzed over his head. He popped upright again and drove the point of his elbow hard into Vegeta's shoulder blade, causing Vegeta to spasm in pain and cry out before Gohan swept his feet out from under him and threw a precise palm strike to the side of the head and send Vegeta spinning off in a spiral. Angry, off-balance, and now disoriented. The fight was only getting started and Gohan already had the advantage.
Vegeta dragged his feet along the ground to stop himself and straightened himself slowly. As he let out an irritable breath he ran a fingertip along his temple, looking irritably down at the red staining his hand wrapping from the thin trickle of blood from his temple.
"Okay," he snarled as he balled his fists and got back into his guard. "The games are over." In the space between "v" and "er", Vegeta turned into a Super Saiyan.
'Oh right,' Gohan thought to himself as he watched Vegeta barrel towards him, transforming himself as quickly as he could. 'Super Sai–' Vegeta interrupted him with a punch to the gut that lifted Gohan off the ground, driving the air out of his lungs and making him cough painfully. Vegeta's foot found its way under Gohan's chin with a flip kick that knocked Gohan backwards and into the air, flipping end over end, the rotations only stopped by a series of rights and lefts across the face by Vegeta before he swung Gohan around by the ankles, hurling him back to the ground. Gohan bounced hard off of the desert floor with a pained gasp and Vegeta was already on him again, grabbing Gohan hard around the middle and sending both of them crashing through several stony spires, pain shooting through Gohan's back with every violent impact. Gohan managed to gather himself in the spaces between the slams and wrapped his arm around Vegeta's neck, grabbing one hand with the other to secure his grip. He squeezed hard while driving his knees into Vegeta's gut over and over, driving the wind out of him. Vegeta shoved Gohan away forcefully and rubbed at his throat, coughing and spitting. Gohan didn't give him the breathing room, however, and pressed his attack with a flying knee that he smashed into the side of Vegeta's face. Gohan pivoted with Vegeta still staggered and drove his other knee into the other side of Vegeta's face hard enough to make Vegeta spin around. Gohan cinched his arms tightly around Vegeta's middle and flung him backwards, spiking Vegeta on his head with a back suplex and cracking the Earth underneath them. Vegeta responded by making the ground explode with a full-body ki blast, wrenching himself out of Gohan's grip before he drove both hands into Gohan's chest and fired off a ki burst to knock him back.
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Bulma watched the fight unfold with the spy camera she'd had installed into the Capsule Corp Megamoon (which the public obviously didn't know about) with a glass of merlot and a big bag of popcorn, which she gobbled greedily as Gohan caught a ki ball from Vegeta and hurled it back at him, only for Vegeta to smack it back at him with a backhand, which Gohan kicked back in return, all of this at subliminal velocities.
"Mrs. Bulma," her assistant said from the speaker on her desk phone. "The King is on the line and he sounds angry." It was Heidi, who Bulma had hired back once she'd fully sobered up and realized that firing someone for literally doing what they were told wasn't the best business strategy. Even if Capsule Corp would have obliterated her in court, it would have been a PR nightmare.
"Patch him through, Heidi," Bulma said as she put down her popcorn and picked kernels out of her teeth with one hand and picked up the phone with the other. "Your Highness, hi!"
"Don't 'hi' me!" Giran growled on the other line. "What is going on?!"
"Now I know what it looks like," Bulma replied as she tried to soothe the Giant Dragon Monster. "But Gohan and Vegeta are just sparring."
"Are you sure?" Giran snarled. "Because to me, it looks like they're trying to DESTROY MY PLANET!"
"Oh come on, now," Bulma admonished the King with a bit of a jovial tone. "I think that's a bit of an–"
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"Galick Gun!" Vegeta roared as he fired his signature purple death beam at Gohan, purple lightning arcing across the sky.
"Masenko ha!" Gohan cried in response as he raised his hands overhead, firing the volatile yellow beam and shooting his own electric bolts through the air. The beams met in a blinding multicolor explosion.
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"I'll… uh… I'll keep an eye on 'em," Bulma muttered nervously.
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The two beams exploded mutually against each other, equal and opposites. Gohan and Vegeta flew right through the explosion and met fist to fist, pushing off of the impact to strike again, their fists colliding again. They exchanged a competitive glare before they launched into a striking rush, their fists crashing into each other with grunts and cries of effort before pushing away again. Before either one had a chance to recover from the recoil, they resumed their clash, replacing fists with balls of ki that filled the air, hitting each other and exploding in a dazzling display, as though the sky was filled with tiny, exploding suns. Through the hale of ki blasts, Vegeta was able to see that Gohan had disappeared and smirked, throwing his elbow backward into Gohan's face… or more accurately, through his face as he struck an afterimage. Gohan came from Vegeta's left, swinging a vicious hook into the older man's side and causing his body to practically curve around Gohan's fist as he tried to absorb the blow. Vegeta threw his head over to his left and caught Gohan with a glancing headbutt, staggering him. Vegeta swung a kick up into Gohan's ribs as hard as he could, knocking out a mixture of spittle and blood as Gohan hacked up painfully. He followed Gohan as he bounced along the ground, hitting him again each time he came up to knock him back down. On the fifth time, however, Gohan was ready and he grabbed the front of Vegeta's gi to launch him head over heels with a flip toward the powerbomb crater. Gohan pushed off the ground and drove his feet down into Vegeta's back to knock him down into the hole in a veritable slam dunk as he followed him down.
The crater, which was normally pitch black even in the light of day, was suddenly overflowing with light as the two Saiyan warriors exchanged punches and kicks, racing each other in circles around the walls of the crater. They crashed into each other in a thunderclap and an explosion of light like a flash of lightning, each one grabbing the front of the other's gi as they shot up out of the crater in a glowing spiral. They each let go with one hand to bash their forearms into one another's faces before Gohan suddenly let go of Vegeta's gi completely.
"Taiyoken!" he cried out and in a blinding flash of light… Vegeta punched him right in the nose. Gohan cried out painfully and clutched at his face.
"You honestly thought I hadn't learned to close my eyes by now?!" Vegeta demanded angrily as he clapped his hands around Gohan's ears to discombobulate him. Completely disoriented, Gohan was vulnerable to a violent kick to the chest that sent him skidding and tumbling into the dirt at something conservatively approaching mach twelve. As Gohan got up to his hands and knees, Vegeta drove one of his own knees down hard into Gohan's back, splaying his limbs out and driving him into the ground again. "Had enough yet, boy?" Vegeta asked smugly as he got off of Gohan's back. "Maybe you should go back to fighting your baby sister. That seems like more of an even challenge, don't you think?" Gohan pushed himself up off the ground and smirked at Vegeta, stretching a little.
"You kidding?" Gohan replied with a cocky grin. "You just popped that kink out of my back! Pretty sure that's been there since I defeated Cell." Vegeta glowered at him and Gohan's grin only grew. "C'mon, let's go!" Vegeta let out a war cry as he and Gohan crashed into one another again. As long as Vegeta thought he was in control, Gohan thought to himself, he wouldn't get angry enough. The problem was, as much as Gohan didn't want to admit it, that right now Vegeta had control. He was stronger and faster than Gohan, which was a little worrying. Maybe Gohan had been slacking off more than he'd thought. That wasn't a problem, Gohan assured himself as he blocked a right cross with his forearm and feinted with a chop to the throat before really attacking with a kick to the inside of Vegeta's thigh, causing the King's leg to buckle. He'd just have to fight smarter.
With Vegeta distracted by his Charlie Horse, Gohan pushed back and fired a ki beam out of his hand. Vegeta looked up just in time to slap it irritably away. Gohan was behind him from an equal distance and fired another beam which Vegeta slapped away before Gohan nearly caught him with a beam from the left, then from the right, then over and over at various diagonals.
"What even is your strategy here?!" Vegeta asked in frustration. "Are you just trying to make me dizzy?!"
"Nope," Gohan assured Vegeta as he appeared in front of him again. "Just this," he said as he took a step back and snapped his fingers simultaneously. The ground completely vanished from under Vegeta's feet in a wide circle with cacophonous explosions ringing in his ears. It was classic misdirection. While Vegeta's eyes were on the basic ki beams Gohan had been shooting at him with one hand, Gohan's other hand had been shooting controlled ki balls into the ground. Even as someone who was able to fly, the ground no longer being under Vegeta's feet was enough of a surprise to cause him to stumble backward, as though he'd been tripped. Gohan struck like a viper, driving spear strikes into Vegeta's solar plexus at a machine gun pace. Vegeta managed to collect himself and swung with a wild haymaker that Gohan barely dodged with Instant Transmission. Vegeta spun around and swung behind him, only for Gohan to come down from above, driving his elbow down into Vegeta's shoulder. Vegeta snarled and swiped at Gohan with a grabbing hand only for Gohan to sift through his fingers like sand as he disappeared with Instant Transmission again. Vegeta looked around with wide, bloodshot eyes that darted from side to side as he grit his teeth, waiting for Gohan to make his move.
"What're you waiting for, damn it?!" Vegeta demanded, seething and red faced. "Show yourself!" Gohan's voice came at him from his left.
"Next you'll say 'Come on out and fight me already, you halfbreed little coward!'"
"Come on out and fight me already, you halfbreed li–" Vegeta started to say automatically before he realized what he'd started to say. He spun to his left where there was… no one there. "What the?!" Gohan came up from below Vegeta from the hole Gohan himself had created just a minute before, driving his shoulder into the small of Vegeta's back. Vegeta spasmed from the impact as Gohan grabbed his hair and swung him around, throwing him hard down to the ground. Vegeta burst up to his feet in a rage, the veins in his forehead bulging out.
"How did you do that?!" Vegeta bellowed. "How the hell did you–"
"What?" Gohan asked casually as he floated in the air with his arms behind his head. "The part where I predicted what you were gonna say because you're about as one-note as a dial tone? Or the part where I sounded like I was somewhere else? That part was pretty easy, too. I just threw my voice. Have you thought about getting a hobby, Vegeta? Something outside of selling shirts and perpetuating a dick-measuring contest with my dead mom?" Vegeta seethed through clenched teeth and Gohan chuckled. "And, y'know, despite her not even having one, I'm pretty sure you still lose." Vegeta let out a shriek of rage and Gohan got into his guard. 'Perfect,' he thought to himself as Vegeta came barreling forward. 'I've got him right where I–' Vegeta grabbed Gohan violently by the face and slammed the back of his head viciously into the ground, both as if he were trying to shove Gohan through the planet and his hand through Gohan's head. While he'd been patting himself on the back, Gohan had forgotten the "faster and stronger" part. Vegeta slammed his fists down hard on Gohan's chest, only missing by a hair's breadth as Gohan rolled out of the way. He lashed out with another kick to the ribs so vicious that it seemed as if he wanted to wear Gohan's left lung for a boot. Gohan did his best to roll with the impact and got to his feet just as Vegeta pounced on him again.
"Come on, boy!" Vegeta taunted as he rained punches down on Gohan's forearms that he was using to block his face and chest. "Say something funny now! I'm all ears!" He reached his arm back to deliver a haymaker that would have shattered Gohan's guard before Gohan's hand shot out and grabbed Vegeta's wrist. Gohan's spiked hair had risen even higher and lighting ran up and down his body.
"Okay," Gohan growled out as he narrowed his eyes, squeezing Vegeta's wrist harder. "Something funny." He yanked Vegeta by the wrist into a headbutt, disorienting the King of All Saiyans before unleashing a pair of left and right hooks and exploding with a jumping right roundhouse to the side of Vegeta's head and finishing with a left crescent kick that made a whip crack from the force of its impact. Vegeta staggered and almost fell to a knee before he pushed himself back up and uppercut Gohan hard enough to lift him off the ground. Apparently, Gohan suddenly realized in between the stars he was seeing and the blood he was tasting as Vegeta smashed an axehandle strike into the side of his head, Super Saiyan 2 was no longer the overwhelming, all-encompassing advantage he'd thought it was. Still as a regular Super Saiyan, Vegeta was nearly matching him. Gohan staggered and nearly fell before he recovered as well, swinging his fist just in time to meet Vegeta's high kick. Still, Vegeta was mad enough that Gohan hadn't lost the advantage. He asserted said advantage by grabbing Vegeta's extended leg in both hands and spinning him around before punching Vegeta hard in the back of the head. Vegeta took several staggering steps forward before he stopped and spun around, gathering a purple ki ball in his right hand.
"Let's go" Vegeta challenged as he flew at Gohan with the ki ball reaching back. "Come at me head on! No more games!" Gohan nodded and drew his right hand back, gathering a yellow ki ball into his palm as he rushed forward. The two warriors cried out furiously, their voices carried on the wind as their ki balls met in a flash of light and a star burst of an explosion.
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"So," Gohan said with a voice muffled by a fistful of grapes in his mouth as he and Vegeta sat on their rock spires. "I think that went pretty well." Vegeta said nothing, chugging chocolate protein shakes in a manner that could genuinely only be described as "spitefully." It would be hard to tell who between the two of them had won. Their gis were scuffed and torn in places with spots of blood in the fabric and each carried his fair share of scrapes and bruises.
"Just so you remember," Vegeta reminded Gohan as he took an aggressive bite out of a peanut butter protein bar, "You were only able to gain your advantage by doubling your strength which had already been increased fifty times before that." Gohan shrugged and finished drinking his water.
"Maybe," Gohan agreed. "Buuut it also helped that I'm kinda smarter than you." Vegeta groused as he continued eating his protein bar. "Besides," Gohan added, "You still haven't figured it out so I've got time. I mean, it's been seven years and it took you… thirty? To figure out how to become a Super Saiyan when it took me…" he paused, only counting the years after he'd learned what a Super Saiyan was, "Four? Three and a half? So I think I'm okay for a while." He chuckled and ate his bento while Vegeta scarfed and drank his proteins. Then, Gohan said the words that even he had been dreading. The words that he desperately, truly did not want to say but that he knew were crucial if he wanted to be ready for the battle with Majin Boo. "...Same time next week?"