Odianna, Aneurin, Aideen, and Pan sat around the now dwindling firepit quietly, mulling over their thoughts for a time.

Finally, Odianna cleared her throat and resumed the story, "With a month to go before the arrival of Rutabage's brother, I struggled to learn the Kaio-Ken. It was a foreign concept to me at the time. I wasn't the best student, not by a long shot. Me being immortal didn't help out, made me arrogant."

"But you got it down just in time, right? asked Pan.

Odianna laughed. "No."

Aneurin shook his head slowly. "She butchered the technique every time she tried. If she hadn't been immortal, she would have died dozens of times over. By the time the Guardian felt the saiyan's presence in our solar system, Odianna only had some poor half-assed version of the technique developed."

Odianna scowled. "It gave me a lot of power for a lot of pain and didn't last long before it managed to overwhelm my lesser immortal stamina."

Odianna frowned. "The Saiyan landed in the middle of a city and begun the second invasion by blowing it up. We rushed over as fast as we could and engaged him. He introduced himself as Aggeplan, complimented us on defeating his weak little brother, before telling us to brace ourselves for fighting a true saiyan warrior."

"How much stronger was he than Rutabage?" asked Pan.

"More than twice as strong, with far more honed techniques and a real fighting style," said Odianna, "I wasn't even close to being ready to fight a warrior of his caliber."

She grunted and nodded towards Aneurin. "He carried the fight, I wasn't nearly strong enough to faze Aggplan in battle. Once I realized that, I used myself as a distraction in battle to get in his way. The only reason he lost to us was his arrogance. If he had killed Aneurin off, I wouldn't have been able to honestly do anything against him, the gap between me and him was even bigger than me and his brother. Instead, he was toyed with me, mocked me, but said he was impressed how I seemingly always came back from a beat down every time, despite how 'weak' my power level was."

She frowned. "He had this device on his head called a Scouter that allowed him to 'read' power levels, said I was at... what was it... 400? 600 when I did my piss poor Kaio-Ken, Aneurin was at...hrm..."

Aneurin shook his head. "I never really cared about their power readings. It was meaningless for us since we could raise and lower our power levels in addition to using the Kaio-Ken. Saiyans put so much value in those readings at first, it was absurd. It was like they thought it was all that mattered, that you couldn't outsmart or outwit them."

Aneurin sighed. "I could have beat him earlier, but, we tried to get him to back down and surrender. He of course refused, well, until we discovered a glaring weakness, his tail."

Pan tilted her head in confusion. "Tail?"

Odianna nodded. "Yeah, we didn't know Saiyan's had it at the time. I asked Master Kokatsune through Prince Kai about it later, and he revealed that he had cut off Rutabage's tail well before we first met him, said that it held a 'terrifying' power, but wouldn't speak of it."

Odianna frowned at Pan. "Aggplan was our first experience with what happens when you show Saiyan's mercy. After I got his tail, he agreed to surrender and leave. Instead, the moment I let him go, he punched a hole through me. Hurt like you wouldn't believe."

Aneurin nodded. "Up until that point, I had only been using the base Kaio-Ken, which allowed me to roughly keep up with him. Though Prince Kai told me I wasn't ready for it, once Odianna was knocked out of the battle, I burst up to a time three and killed him."

Odianna sighed. "Of course, that only made things worse. We heard people talking from his Scouter and I put it on. The voice on the other end was intrigued by the human race, saying that it was rare for a race to survive two Saiyan warriors, even if they were 'low class'. He said he'd be personally coming to 'test' our race, and to avenge the insult to 'Saiyan Pride' that the others failure had left. He left it ambiguous as to when he'd arrive, as to 'keep us in suspense and fearful', and told us to prepare to fight a Saiyan Elite."

"We threw ourselves into training after that. I mastered the Kaio-Ken and started pushing to higher levels immediately. I couldn't die, so, there was really no risk to me going far higher than I could handle. Sort of...," said Odianna.

"What do you mean?" asked Pan.

"Even if it wouldn't kill me, going too high would be useless, as it would instantly drain my strength before I could even fight," explained Odianna.

"The Saiyan arrived alongside a squad of his warriors about a year after Aggplan did, and started laying waste to Terra. There was no talking, no negotiations, we found them, we fought them, we killed them, except for the Elite. He was on a whole class of his own and picked us apart with relative ease. He boasted, saying his power level was over twenty thousand, and that 'pitiful humans' like us could never challenge him," said Odianna.

She smirked. "That's when we discovered the great Saiyan weakness, their pride. I made some offhand comment to Aneurin, saying if we could weaken him to half-strength I could maybe take him if I really pushed the Kaio-Ken. He laughed at us and said he'd accept the challenge and fought using only half his strength, he even boasted that he probably wouldn't have needed even a fourth of his power to beat us."

Pan gave her an incredulous look. "He... seriously did that?"

Odianna nodded. "Yeah, he was an idiot, though, he was right. I still couldn't match him."

"How'd you beat him then?" asked Pan.

"Spirit Bomb," said Aneurin, "Since he couldn't detect energy on his own, and his scouter was damaged during the fight, he had no idea I was charging the attack. It was overkill, but, it finished him off."

"Spirit Bomb ended up saving you guys a lot, didn't it?" asked Pan.

Aneurin shrugged. "A few times, whenever we actually managed to use it, it never failed us."

Pan smirked, unlike Grandpa and his uses of it, well, except for Majin Buu.

Odianna frowned. "After that, it only got worse and worse. Rather than the yearlong waits we had with the Second and Third Invasion, attacks started springing up monthly. We kept calling them invasions, well, until we had our first real invasion. An army of Saiyan's, the battle was horrific, we lost over half of our remaining population. After that, we decided to create the defense corps and began training anyone who would volunteer."

She grew quiet for a time before resuming. "Then, it happened. Five years after the end of the first invasion. An elite squad of Saiyan's landed on the planet and made straight for us. They bore no scouters, could sense energy as we did, and could lower and raise their power level at whim. Apparently they had investigated the 'truth' in the rumors about the warriors of Terra and managed to replicate some of our abilities. Unlike most Saiyans who preferred to fight alone, these ones fought together, we weren't prepared to fight that."

She shook with anger. "They slaughtered most of the defense corps, and I thought they had killed Aneurin as well. I lost control, pushed my Kaio-Ken up to fifty for the first time, and beat them in a fit of rage. But, rather than simply kill them, I acted like a Saiyan. I was so enraged that I slowly tortured and killed them one by one, until their was only three left. I discovered that two of them were mates, I ripped off the tail of the man, and strangled his woman with it."

Pan said nothing. She should have been disgusted with Odianna, but...

Odianna face went lax and she whispered. "He transformed... he transformed into the first Super Saiyan... I can still see it if I close my eyes, still feel it..."

She stood up, walked to the firepit, and re-ignited it with a ki blast. "I was woefully unprepared to fight the Super Saiyan. I could only maintain the times fifty for a short duration. He beat the crap out of me and slaughtered anyone who dared interfere. But, midway through the fight, he suddenly stopped when our battle took us near his dead mate and his other comrade. He knocked me away, and ordered his comrade to take his mate's corpse and leave the planet. I should have stopped him, should have killed that Saiyan before he escaped, but I was too focused on the Super Saiyan. His comrade escaped to tell the tale of the first Super Saiyan, the secret to unlocking the transformation, and like a plague, it began to spread throughout the universe. The fact that I ripped off his tail before he transformed apparently started a tradition that all Super Saiyans would remove their tails after transformation in honor of the first Super Saiyan."

She scowled. "The Super Saiyan eventually realized I was immortal after he blew my head off and it slowly regrew. He was frustrated to realize that becoming 'the Super Saiyan of legend' wouldn't be enough, and tried to blow up the planet. He threw everything he had into that blast, but, I dove right into it and detonated it prematurely. The explosion obliterated my entire body, and badly wounded the Super Saiyan. I eventually regenerated and regained consciousness some time later. I killed the unconscious Saiyan, and left to check for survivors."

She smirked at Aneurin. "Thankfully, this guy is one tough bastard and survived the fight."

Odianna sat back down. "Slowly, more and more Super Saiyan's began to appear over the next few years. They also began to unlock higher levels of the Super Saiyan transformation. There was a muscly form that drastically increased their power and speed. Then, there was a gigantic muscle form that skyrocketed their power, but crippled their speed. I had to burst into the unstable levels of the Kaio-Ken to match them."

"Unstable?" asked Pan.

"Going higher than fifty drastically destabilizes the ability, the power becomes uncontrollable and impossible to balance. Let's just say that collateral damage happened a lot when I went that high, and what's more, it damaged me in ways that even my lesser immortality took far to long to heal," explained Odianna.

She pursed her lips. "There was one more form after the giant muscle one. Prince Kai warned us of it before we encountered it. The ability to sustain the Super Saiyan form near indefinitely without any backlash, negative affects on emotions, or power drain from transforming. He told us of it's unreal strength, and to be frank, I didn't think humanity would survive an encounter with one of these kind of Super Saiyans."

"That's when the Guardian called us to him, and told us for our service to Terra, he would allow us to train in a sacred place, a room where time flows differently...," began Odianna.

"Oh, the Hyperbolic Time chamber? One day out here one year in there?" Pan confirmed.

Odianna looked shocked. "You... know if it? It exists in your world?"

Pan nodded. "Yeah, my Grandpa uses it all the time."

She was startled when Odianna flew through the fire, grabbed Pan by her shirt, and lifted her up. "What do you mean all the time?! Are you telling me that you can use the one in your world more than twice?"

Pan nodded. "Y-yeah, I think it used to be like that, but Grandpa got our Guardian to change the room after the lookout was blown up in a fight."

Odianna slowly let Pan down, a devastated look on her face. "Waste, what a waste, the guardian could have changed the room, allowed us, allowed me, to train indefinitely. I don't need to eat, I don't need to sleep, I could have easily grown strong enough to never allow the Saiyan race to ever win over humanity!"

Aneurin nodded. "Probably, but, that's most likely what the guardian feared, granting you infinite power. He didn't trust us Odianna, you know that, he only trusted himself."

Odianna walked back to her spot and sat down, a furious look on her face. "That blasted fool!"

She ground her teeth before sighing. "Aneurin and I took a day in the chamber and came out far stronger than before. I still couldn't push my Kaio-Ken higher than fifty stably, but we tried a different root. Rather than training with the Kaio-Ken, we trained in our base forms. The intense gravity and circumstances within the chamber pushed us to our limits and beyond. We came out drastically more powerful than we went in. We still weren't close to being able to fight Super Saiyan's in our base form, we still can't, but a times fifty kaio-ken on my part was overkill for most super Saiyans."

Odianna closed her eyes. "The first time we fought the true power of the Super Saiyan was also the first time we encountered an Ascended Super Saiyan. The Saiyan race were devious, power hungry bastards. They'd do anything for more power, even sacrifice their own. As I understand it, most Saiyan's don't readily keep family ties, or value them that much. The ones that did apparently had a far easier time triggering their transformations, and someone took note of that."

Odianna looked sickened. "They came, twenty years ago, and everything changed. A family of Super Saiyan's came for us, a mother, a father, three teenage children, and a adolescent a little older than you are Pan. The mother was... horrific to me, she sent her family to die, one by one, intentionally. I didn't understand it, what she was doing, and why. Each death was agony for her, when I had finished with most of her family, and was about to kill her youngest, she... ascended in a rage I had never felt before."

Pan looked at her, horrified. "She... she used her family to push her to the next level..."

Odianna nodded. "She had intentionally bonded with them, knowing that she was going to one day get them killed. She was crazy, insane, but, she was also incredibly cunning and intelligent. She told me she was one of the first of the Saiyan race to theorize there was another level beyond Super Saiyan."

Pan shook with rage and disgust. In one fleeting way, the story made her happy, Vegeta had always teased her that a woman could never go super saiyan, so this put that to rest. However, the fact of how this... this... monster, had ascended to Super Saiyan 2 was too horrific for words. For a moment, as she had done countless times in the past, Pan imagined herself as a Super Saiyan, and was for once was utterly disgusted with the picture.

Aneurin spoke up, his voice showing hints of fear. "You cannot fathom it Pan, fathom the power of an Ascended Super Saiyan. It's a power unlike anything else, a power that should never have existed. It was a power that finally drove the guardian to break his code and interfere, but it was to little to late."

Odianna spoke with a strange calmness, almost as if she were in a trance. "The guardian was butchered with ease and without him, the Dragonballs were no more. The Lord's Palace was sent crashing to the ground, and Master Papaya and her tower were destroyed. Aneurin began to charge our final Spirit Bomb as I desperately fought. Terra burned during our fight, humanity was driven to dangerously low levels of population, less than a million remained. Finally, I lured the Ascended Super Saiyan back to Aneurin, fed his bomb all the energy I could, he threw it, and it killed the Ascended Super Saiyan."

"Thankfully, the Lord's Palace was mostly intact. We took our second day in the time chamber immediately, though, we had forgotten something critical in our haste. The youngest Saiyan child of the Ascended Super Saiayn, we had let a witness slip away. Her youngest child fled the planet and brought word of the Ascended Super Saiyan form to the rest of them. Thankfully, that form is apparently far more difficult to achieve than normal Super Saiyan. We've only encountered it a few more times."

Aideen spoke for the first time since they arrived. "Once was when I was five years old, fifteen years ago. I watched Odianna and an Ascended Super Saiyan fight, it was the most horrifying battle I have ever seen. Seeing her fight like that, using that technique..."

Odianna frowned at her. "I do what I have to do to match the Saiyan's power."

Pan looked back and forth between them, wondering what exactly they were alluding too. Neither of them looked comfortable. Pan really wanted to know what technique could possibly allow Odianna to fight a Super Saiyan 2 if the Kaio-Ken wasn't enough. She was unwilling to press them though, and remained quiet, hoping they would reveal it.

Odianna cleared he throat. "For the next fifteen years, humanity continued to dwindle and die out from attacks and invasions. We consolidated what remained of humanity in Haven, and fought hard to protect it. About a year ago, the attacks suddenly stopped, and, one week ago, as you saw, they finally returned, and it appears they've returned with a vengeance. Two attacks within a week's time."

"Not to mention, they're attacking smarter," said Aneurin, "They lured you away with one group, and destroyed our crops with another. They've always just fought us head on, fighting like this, with strategy to cripple us, is different."

Odianna frowned intently. "They're moving in for the kill then, to finish wiping out humanity."

"I wont let that happen!" shouted Pan, standing up, "I'm going to train so hard! I'll kill any of them that dares to try!"

Odianna gave her an approving look. "Good, that's the way Pan."

Odianna stood up as well. "If they truly are moving in for the kill, I expect them to amp up their attacks. Probably start hitting our storehouses if they can identify them. We'll need to send out scavengers to the far reaches of Terra. Fruit trees, berry bushes, any animals that remain, we're going to need them. And you Pan, if you want to make a difference, your going to need at least a times ten Kaio-Ken to fight some of the strongest none-Super Saiyans."

"Then let's get training!" said Pan eagerly.

Odianna raised an eyebrow and pointed up. "Tomorrow, its almost midnight."

Pan blanked and looked up into the night's sky and at the moon. "Oh... guess we were here talking for quite awhile."

Odianna nodded and floated into the air. "See you tomorrow then."

She left, followed by Aneurin. Pan was about to leave before she noticed Aideen wasn't moving. Pan saw a sad look on her face and moved over to sit next to her.

"You okay?" asked Pan.

Aideen shrugged. "It's been a long time since I was last here, having the two of them tell me their story."

"When did you join them?" asked Pan.

"I started my training soon after I witnessed Odianna kill that Ascended Super Saiyan. I was one of the lucky few defense corps members that managed to survive fight after fight. After I survived my first encounter with a Super Saiyan, the two of them took note of me and started giving me personal training. I took my first day in the time chamber when I was twelve, my second when I was fifteen. After my second day in the chamber, they promoted me to third in command, and I've been at their side ever since," said Aideen.

Pan smiled. "Well, maybe in a few years I'll be number four myself, who knows..."

She playfully elbowed Aideen. "Maybe I'll even surpass you and take number three."

Rather than laugh, Aideen shook her head. "I hope not Pan, I'm hoping your family comes and finds you soon. So you can escape from all of this."

Pan scowled. "I want to help fight!"

Aideen ran a hand through Pan's hair. "I know, you're a lot like I was, but, the fighting wears down on you overtime Pan."

Pan frowned, there was a tone of defeat in her voice that Pan really didn't like. "It's okay, once I'm trained, you guys can take it easy and wont have to worry about covering as much."

Aideen smiled sadly. "I remember saying something like that myself a long time ago."

She sighed. "Go get some sleep Pan."

Pan obeyed and flew off, eager to go to sleep and awaken for tomorrow's training.

Aideen watched her fly away and whispered to herself to quietly for Pan to hear, "I hope they find you soon, so you don't die. Or, they find you before you end up like us, killers without hope fighting an endless battle, knowing one day, you are going to fail, one day you are going to die. You still have that fire in your eye's Pan, still have a bit of innocence, I don't want to see you lose it..."