I had completely forgotten about the match. It filled me with guilt suddenly. This was a rarity and a huge deal. My dad had fought Goku only twice and he took credit for winning neither battle, even if he had been the last man standing both times. During their first fight, Yajirobi had interfered and stolen my dad's victory, and their second clash had been instigated by Babidi when he possessed my dad, causing him to trick Goku into letting his guard down and sucker-punching him in the back. I would have counted that as a win, but my dad refused to entertain the notion. He hadn't been looking for a rematch since and would not even spar with Goku. All he was ever about, was training to surpass him. That they were doing battle today, may mean that my dad believed he finally had a shot at a clean victory. As far as I knew, he had not reached the third stage of super yet, so he would have to beat Goku on skill like Turles had done with Goten.
I saw them clash high above the field, both still in the first stage of super. That took me by surprise. My dad was apt to go on full blast from the outset. They were feeling each other out, toe-to-toe and equalized to the exact fifty percent. Defence, offence, everything was swapped in even shares. Turles had little to judge. These warriors were self-regulated. The pride they took in their art would keep them from making fouls. It would almost be boring to watch, were it not for the stakes. My dad deserved to have his win after all the years spent training for it and Goku had his reputation as the strongest warrior in the universe to keep up.
"The prince is a slick battler." Ringo observed.
The captain made a disgusted sound of the throat and spat on the ground. "Don't remind me."
My dad must have really taken her to the cleaners during their sparring sessions for her to sound so aggrieved. I figured she didn't like him very much. Most didn't. My dad wasn't a likeable guy. He wasn't outgoing or friendly and he refused to be polite on principle. But, since the captain possessed none of those traits herself, I expected she would appreciate him for that. She had taken his rebuke without blowing up, however, and I knew that couldn't have been easy on her. As my dad pointed out when I told him that she had started calling me by my hardly complimentary title, I shouldn't be taking any consolation in that because the captain takes shit from no one. He had seemed pleased about that and going on the fact that she had made it on the very short list of people my dad would spar with, I guessed that he at least did not dislike her, which was half the battle won really. That she in return could take orders from him without bucking, must mean there was some hope left for them to get on good terms. I wanted that. I wanted the Saiyajins to stick around and have many more days like this, where we were all hanging out and fighting. I wanted all of us to play the keepers game together next time. That would be awesome.
Ringo made no reply to his captain's remark. They were both engrossed in the match. I doubted they could fully follow it, considering the speed at which my dad and Goku were now fighting. Since the captain told me she was done answering questions, I aimed for Ringo.
"Can you see the fight?"
"Some of it. They are moving too fast for me to track." Ringo smirked down a long way at me. "But I know where they are going to end up. I focus on that."
"My lieutenant is a tactical wizard." the captain supplied. "No one is escaping his calculations. Not even these two giants."
"What about you?" Goten, always the more brazen and less obedient of us two, asked.
The captain answered willingly enough. "I never rely on my eyes to see." It was true that she shifted focus whenever my dad and Goku moved around and she was on point every time. "Kakarot is getting a right rinsing."
Instead of asking her how she could see without using her eyes, like I was dying to find out, Goten was more interested in answering her provocation. "Wait till my dad goes for three. Vegeta hasn't even reached that level yet. He doesn't stand a chance."
This provoked me so I snapped hotly: "He will!" and, feeling ashamed of my childish outburst, I muttered: "I know he will. One day."
"Audacity does run rampant in that bloodline." The captain gave Goten a repulsed sideways look, then demanded of me: "Is this true? Kakarot is ahead of your father?"
"Yes." I admitted reluctantly.
"My dad has been ahead ever since he reached super." Goten expanded. He threw me a challenging smirk. "That is why Vegeta never stops training. He…"
The captain made a sissing sound to break him off. "That is the second time you pissed upward, brat. I advise you not to try that with me. I am no stone. My temper flares hot. Put my name in your mouth and I will make you regret it." She rearranged the murderous look on her scarred face to her usual scowl. "You were saying?"
Goten's hand shot to the back of his head. "I mean…" he stammered, giving me a helpless look.
I repaid him with the same smirk he had given me and let him struggle with the intimidation a bit longer. "My dad doesn't mind."
The captain hmphed. "Finish what you were going to say." she ordered Goten.
"Well uh… you know… his dad… prince… whatever…" Goten gave up, blurting: "My dad is just better."
The captain took that in silence, detached, her face raised to the sky where things were quickly heating up. Goku was using Kaio-ken to amplify his attacks. With my dad already maxed out on his second stage of super, he lost the upper hand and went on defence. He was going to try ride it out. Kaio-ken was a taxing technique and Goku wanted to have enough energy left for his transformation into super three. He couldn't expend too much on stacking power with Kaio-ken. Once Goku seized his assault and powered up to transform, my dad would have a chance to slip in and finish him off.
"Stronger." Ringo said without taking his eyes from the battle. They lit up like sparklers in the glare of the sudden, unannounced Final Flash attack my dad summoned. "Not better. Not by far."
"KA-ME-HA-ME-HA!" Goku begged to differ from across the seething field.
My dad's beam was forced back and quadruple Kaio-ken knocked him straight into stratosphere. Goku used the time my dad needed to get back down to phase into his third form, in effect setting the clock ticking on the end of the match. Maintaining super three alone consumed a massive amount of ki. When Goten and I fused and went for that level, it made me feel like a deflating balloon. Goku had trained for expansion on the very narrow attack window, but if he wanted to win, he had to do it within the next minutes. My dad reappeared and jumped straight into the hand-to-hand, fearless and desperate, so far outclassed that there was no way for him to come out on top. He should have stuck to riding it out.
"He wants it too much." I said as I watched the match draw to its inevitable conclusion.
"No." the captain said, her eyes stuck on my dad out there trying for glory. "He doesn't want it at all."
Goten and I both laughed at how far off she was. Everybody knew that surpassing Goku was my dad's sole objective in life.
"Oh my Dende!" Goten hooted. "That is so ridiculous, even your dad is bound to crack a smile when he hears."
I sniggered, assuring the captain: "It is all he wants. Goku has been his rival ever since he first came to Earth."
"You silly little buggers think you have it all figured out?" the captain snapped, her predatory eyes whizzing down to me and Goten. "What is to come after for a warrior such as the prince, who wields power that breaks worlds and has the fate of creation itself at the tips of his fingers?" She poked a hard finger in my chest. "Your father is second only to his ambitions. Where do you presume those will take him after he defeats Kakarot?"
That was a good question. What would my dad do once he surpassed Goku? Would he still be training from sun up to sun down every day or would he have lost his incentive? I couldn't picture him do anything else.
The captain put her hands on her hips and went on speaking much softer. "I have seen the chaos bred from power in idle hands. There is nothing more dangerous than a man without a cause. Men need goals. When the war is lost and the banners are burnt and there is nowhere left to rally, what else is there for the poor sod still standing on the ruins of defeat? What else than more violence? The prince does not want this victory. He does not trust himself with it. Kakarot gatekeeps the power they attained to overthrow men whose ambitions would have seen the whole universe in chains."
There was a weight to those words I could not readily comprehend, and I didn't have room to set my mind on unravelling it because my dad was doing something that should have been impossible. He was still in the second stage of super, yet his battle power was peaking at level three, giving him all of the form's benefits and none of its drawbacks as it did not devour his energy. Nothing could be seen at this point. Their speed was beyond tracking.
Goten zipped into super at the same moment I did to give myself a better shot at catching what was happening up there.
"We have to fuse. Take it to three." my best friend said hurriedly.
It was too late for that. One of the two competitors came crashing down from the sky, impacted the ground in a blazing ball of fire and did not emerge from the cloud of dust that billowed across the destroyed site. It wasn't my dad. He was still up there in the sky, outline flaring in that untransformed third stage.
"How?" Goten voiced for me.
No one answered and the silence lasted as long as it took for every single dust particle to settle on the scene. Nothing was moving out there on the battlefield. Turles hung still above the crater looking down and above him, my dad had elected to fold his arms while he waited for the match to be called. The four of us looking on, seemed rooted to the spot as well, our tongues stuck to the roof of our mouths. Not even the captain had anything to say. Goku had a reputation for making grand come-backs and I was holding my breath waiting for that to happen. It didn't. No interference, no sucker punch. A clean win. My dad had done it. He had defeated Goku.
"Eat dirt, Goten." I at long last took the chance to gloat in my best friend's stead.
"No way!" Goten exclaimed, coming to life suddenly. "No way!" And he was off, tearing across the ruined field yelling for his dad to get back up.
"I guess he wanted it after all." I said up to the captain and my smile was becoming so wide, my face hurt.
"Your guess is wrong." she said. "You seek to understand things, and to a galling extent, but your riddling is falling short here. Have you ever asked yourself why your father should hold such a low opinion of Kakarot? Is that what your views would be on someone who has, time and again, proven to be your better?"
"Maybe." I said. "If I were bitter about that."
"Smallness." The captain snorted dismissively. "Your father is not a complicated man. They rarely come much straighter than him. He tells it true and he is not one to speak unless he deems it something worth saying. He means it, doesn't he? When he names Kakarot idiot? It is not just an insult. That is what gets you squirming every time he puts that out there. Hard to watch Kakarot's esteem for your father be met with such disregard. Rivalry requires no bitterness. It begs respect. As does that one opponent you can't beat. Branding him inconsequential would reflect badly on yourself. That fucker would have my appreciation and my undivided attention on top of it. None of that applies to your father's treatment of his supposed rival."
Then what? I wanted to ask. What else would make my dad hate Goku so much? I was deterred from these things the captain said making sense to me, when I saw Goten getting shooed off the battlefield by his uncle. Down from what at this point had become a crater big enough to swallow up a city, came the telltale thrumming of a Spirit Bomb in the making. I could already feel it tug at my energy for absorption and all around us, everything, animate and inanimate, was lending it strength. The fight was not over. Up above my dad hoovered, his arms unfolding and hands curling into fists. He was gearing up for round two. My suggestion that he was bitter fell short as well. He was smiling.
The captain grinned at me. "You cannot build fire on water, Princeling. Some dispositions make for a savage mixer. Is there anything more repelling to an unceremonious man like your father, than the histrionics of heroism we are witnessing here? Scrimshank Skippy made us believe the fighting was done while he lay slow-stroking down there in that hole. He had your cheeky friend skriking and everything. Well, lo and behold, our hero rises from his ashes. And what a sight it is! Your father's antipathy you ascribe to rivalry, is nothing more than disdain for the type of man Kakarot is. I am a sucker for theatrics, personally. Let us enjoy. Soon we shall see how right I am about that other thing. Should your father want this victory, he need only take it."
From the rim of the crater, the growing Spirit Bomb rose up like a mesmerizing blue sunrise and after it came Goku, unsmiling and determined, like the underdog he wasn't. It was exciting like it always was, yet for the first time, I was also able to see it for the idiocy my dad would. This was a show, put on for us onlookers, and it had everyone rooting for Goku while my dad looked bad for coming up short on his delivery.
"Do you really think he kept behind on purpose all those years?" I asked, considering it sceptically.
"I think something is holding him back and it isn't Kakarot. Believe me, I have reasons leaking out of my arse to not speak in favour of your father. Prince or no, had he sucked arse, I would have been happy to share that with you. He is easily and without bragging the best fighter out here. Slick, like Ringo said." The captain pulled a wry face acknowledging this. That was what bitterness looked like. She did dislike my dad. Yet she was just as clearly in awe of him when she concluded: "He is a cunt hair removed from reaching fluidity."
"Half that." Ringo said. When Goten rejoined us with tears tracking lines through the smudges on his face, Ringo added for his benefit: "Not to discount your old man."
I would have asked what fluidity was exactly, but seeing my best friend fall apart over his dad getting his behind kicked for once, made me feel bitter myself. Like it was some big shock that Goku would lose out against my dad. As if that hadn't been in the making for years. Goten's reaction felt like an insult to me and my dad and all the hard work he put into getting where he was.
"Are you crying? Dude, you really have to take that like a girl?" I asked. "Whimp."
"I am not crying, dickhead." Goten huffed, roughly wiping his forearm across his face.
The captain laughed. "Oh, I like that. Dick. Head. There is one for the rhyme-around."
Goten smirked brashly, apparently fortified by the praise. "I have crap in my eyes. It is all dust out there."
"Yeah right." I mocked.
"Dust and little hearts bleeding big." the captain said, topping Goten's smirk with a brasher one. "Of course no one is discounting Kakarot. He is the strongest warrior in the universe, for fuck's sake. I doubt he will give up the title of Head Dick to anyone soon. He is a right awesome battler too, his moves come to him like second nature and he has that all-heart flair making him even tougher to beat."
Ringo growled his agreement for the statement. "Routed me like a fledgeling."
"He should have finished you off proper, but that is a whole different matter." The captain focused back on me. "Your father is a spirit fighter. His moves are his nature. It is in his bones. Kakarot can spend his whole life going after it, he will never reach that level of flow. He lacks the constitution and he can't make up for it with strength."
"It is not in my dad's way to stay second when he can be first." I said. "That is just not how he works."
"No, it is not." the captain agreed.
"I'm sorry." I apologized beforehand. "I know you told me not to ask more questions, but I have a hard time following your train of thought."
"Look here, Princeling, I am not claiming that I am right. When it comes to sussing out another's motives, you can really only guess and we can disagree on who did a better job. I do not buy your explanation. A man can never want anything too much and no warrior worth his salt will get it in his head to shun a better. That is where you learn, see. From your betters. Every mong can tell that your father doesn't deem Kakarot worthy to piss on. His betters were quite a different breathe of men. They used their might to trample others. Your father is so determined to not live by their teachings, he has forgone his very birthright."
"Whoa!" Goten jumped back when the captain jabbed a poke at him this time.
"Even this little shit here gets to address him by his given name. The very fact that you and I are willing to have this conversation, not amongst ourselves in private, but with ears around, shows what little bearing your father's position has. Now, I am half and half and the maternal part of my heritage has gifted me with a propensity to take huge dumps wherever authority resides, but even Southerners would give recognition to the ruler. Never gladly, but they did. And a young prince such as yourself would have been taught not to openly question his father. That man up there should be our king and we should not be subversive. In hindsight, I should not have brought any of this up at all. It is not my place. His father was king and he would have condemned me for speaking so freely. I have given you my best guess. If you want to understand, you should go ask your father."
Maybe I would. I didn't know how right she was about the rivalry between my dad and Goku, but she wasn't wrong about his position. He had never insisted on being recognized as the prince of his race. He hardly brought that up at all. All he wanted to be respected for, was his merit as a warrior. It could be true as well that the history he never spoke of, had taught him not to want power over others, the fact remained that he had been obsessed with training to outclass Goku ever since he became a super Saiyajin on Namek. Half the things my mom had invented since my birth, were designed to help my dad ascend and become better than Goku.
But, if the captain and Ringo were to be believed, my dad already was better.
"Can I ask you something else?" I broached. When the captain narrowed her yellowish eyes at me I clarified quickly: "It is not about my dad."
"Like I said, galling." she snarled, then nodded her approval.
I fired two questions just to get them in: "What is fluidity? And what is a spirit fighter?"
The captain drew up a brow. "Your father didn't teach you?"
"He would have, had he known." I was sure of that.
The captain seemed convinced of it as well and realised: "He is winging it. He figured it out on his own. It makes sense. Who could have taught him? No Northerner would dabble in arcane, tribal lore." She let out a rough laugh. "That is your second question answered, Princeling. A spirit fighter never stops reinventing himself and in his endeavours, he might well stumble on the key to unlocking sublimity." She indicated the battlefield with her chin. "Look."
I did. My dad had come back to ground and stood across from Goku who was still loading up his spirit bomb. My dad was summoning something as well and it wasn't anything I had seen him do before. He had his gloved hand cupped in front of him, palm up, fingers bent and the tips lit up with yellow, blue, white and purple energy that was flowing up into a small orb. The colours swirled about in the centre like a kaleidoscope, then mingled into darkest blue as the ball swelled. My dad looked over to us for the briefest moment and, seemingly inspired, made a spark of red energy like the captain's sprout from his little finger. The ball turned black as this fifth colour was added and it expanded further, its innards like a growing window into space.
"What do you see?" the captain asked.
Posing such a general question, made me understand that she was testing my insight. I decided to describe what stood out most to me when comparing the two warriors on the battlefield. "My dad uses his own ki for his attack. Goku draws from external energy."
"Yes, and?"
"And he made his energy into different colours." I said.
"Energy is not made into colours. Different types of energy bear different colours. He is tapping into all five sources." The captain smiled. "Fluidity. A warrior that masters all sources, is fluent in his fighting. It is the pinnacle every warrior in the South aimed for."
"And my dad reached it?"
"Not quite. I gather he only very recently found the missing piece of his puzzle." To underline this, the captain made the tiniest of red orbs blossom from the tip of her own pinkie. "All it needs now is time and practise." She smirked and goaded: "Do you silly buggers still think you have it all figured out? This is why the prince never stops training. He is after perfection."
The breeze coming from Goku's spirit bomb was growing into a gale, signalling it close to completion. My dad's orb had swollen to about a third of the size of Goku's attack, a dense, dark counterpart to the massive sphere of light. Instead of wind, it emanated electricity and rumbled thunder and together the two warriors were cooking up the storm of all storms. It made us brace ourselves as it intensified, our hair snarled back and clothes flapping around us like windvanes in the beating gusts. The violence sent Turles off the field in a hurry.
"Not catching that in the tits." he said as he reached the sidelines.
Ringo laughed and gave him a brotherly slap on the shoulder. "You will be able to call this one from space, mate."
"Nothing beats the smell of piss-filled boots in the morning." the captain remarked. "Pray that those dick-swingers out there understand the gains of abstinence. There is no outrunning this ruin. One wrong move and off to the Undying Fields we shuffle."
Turles boomed a laugh. He looked elated by the prospect of dying. "Haven't you heard, Captain? According to my brother, all Saiyajins go to hell."
The captain smiled wryly. "Behind everything I am guilty of, the Sweet Mother knows I deserve it."