cornbringer - Dragon Ball Z: The Beast Within - CH134

I sat cross-legged on the grass, eyes shut tight, stripping away the physical world until nothing remained but what I wanted to see within my own mind.

I was back in Planet Vegeta, and standing in front of me was King Cold.

I smiled, and without a word, I kicked off the ground, bursting forward. King Cold raised a single hand to block my opening strike, our clash sending a shockwave rippling through the air, before we broke apart.

King Cold barely shifted his stance before coming at me with a backhand that I narrowly managed to duck by taking a step back, feeling his hand cut into my cheek, before I countered with a kick to his ribs, one that he unfortunately caught, swinging me into the ground hard enough to leave a crater beneath me.

I rolled onto my feet before he could follow up, firing a volley of ki blasts at his face. The explosions covered his body in smoke, and I took the opportunity to rush him before it cleared. My fist connected with his stomach, followed by an elbow to his jaw, but without Super Saiyan, the bastard barely reacted. He looked down at me with a bored expression, before punching me.

I woke up on the grass with a sharp gasp.

That… could’ve gone better. I should’ve made some space, and changed the strategy.

"Again," I muttered, sitting up.

I'd been running image training for… most of today, and my win rate against King Cold remained a big old zero. Not that I'd expected to beat him without using Super Saiyan, but I had hoped to accomplish something beyond repeatedly discovering new ways to get my ass kicked. So far… I'd been punched, kicked, pierced, impaled, exploded, bisected, burnt, thrown, strangled, drowned and, in one particularly humiliating session of training, slapped so hard that my head had spun around killing me.

The last one had been especially insulting.

In my mind, King Cold wasn't taking me seriously. I could throw everything I had at him, chain together my best combinations, using the resources I had at hand, and yet, nothing seemed to work.

I closed my eyes again, reconstructing the battlefield in my mind. The image training was supposed to help me improve by allowing me to gain experience, with the added benefit of letting me practice against enemies that I couldn’t face just yet, or in this particular case, were dead. 

Taking a deep breath, I returned to Planet Vegeta, standing across from King Cold in the same barren landscape, for the hundredth time today. Slowly, I circled him, watching his shoulders, his hips, and the subtle movements of his feet as I searched for some indication of how he intended to attack.

King Cold followed me with his eyes, before he smiled. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Have you finally realized how outmatched you are?"

I ignored him and continued circling. I needed to stop treating this like a contest of strength, without the Super Saiyan, I would lose that fight every time. Trying to overpower him was pointless, and hoping that a clever combination would somehow catch him off guard wasn't much better when he could read my movements before I finished committing to them.

So I changed my approach.

I needed to be… unpredictable, powering up. I darted forward, aiming a punch at his face, but pulled the strike a few inches before it could land, and shifted to his left before he could catch my wrist. He turned to follow me, exactly as I'd expected, and I took this chance, to drive my knee toward his side. He blocked it with his forearm.

That was better.

Smiling, I used the contact to push myself backward, landing several meters away before firing a ki blast at the ground beneath his feet, creating a massive explosion. The explosion threw dust and broken debris into the air, obscuring his vision for a fraction of a second, and I immediately rushed through the cloud of smoke with my fist drawn back pushing as much energy into it as I could.

However, before my attack could reach him, his tail snapped out of the cloud of smoke, and wrapped around my waist.

"Oh, come on—"

He slammed me into the ground, and the world went dark.

I opened my eyes on the grass, staring at the sky again.

"...I hate this."

I sat up, brushed the grass from my clothes, and took a moment to review the fight. The mistake hadn't been the feint or the ki blast, or the last advance I had tried. In essence I had done most of it right, the mistake was thinking there was a way to beat someone who was so much stronger than me at base.

That said… I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, and I needed to keep trying. But not today, there’s only so much defeat a man can take before it starts being infuriating.

I sighed.

This would be so much easier if I didn’t go berserk as a Super Saiyan…

“What to do…” I muttered, looking at the sky. If Whis was here, things would be so much easier, Lord Beerus and him could just… keep stuff under control, but without them, well… people would die if I decided to experiment on my condition.

No matter how I looked at it… the time chamber seemed to be the only real answer, or only available answer at least. No matter how many times I circled around the problem, it always brought me back to the same conclusion, it was the best, and perhaps only, place where I could safely push my limits without risking everyone else… and it had the added bonus that if I lost control, I could be caged, it was a win win.

The distant hum of an approaching bike engine cut through my thoughts as I turned my head toward the noise, to find Tights coming in my direction in what appeared to be a very big bike, with an even bigger container on the back.

"Hello, hello," she said, coming to a stop inched away from crashing into me. "Brought some fuel for the bottomless pit you call a stomach."

"Good timing," I chuckled, wiping a line of dried sweat from my jaw with the back of my hand. "I was starting to get hungry."

I stood up, walked over to the back of the bike, and effortlessly unlatched the massive cargo container strapped to the frame. Lifting it with one hand, before setting it down on the ground.

Tights kicked down the bike's kickstand and hopped off, resting her hands on her hips. 

“Thanks for the food,” I said, smiling at her. The container had enough food for a decent lunch, not enough to satiate me, but enough to keep the hunger at bay.

"I know, I know, I’m awesome," Tights said, tossing her hair back with a dramatic smirk. "Though I think Mom was more excited to fill that container than I was to bring it. She loves cooking, and you’re giving her an excuse to do it… a lot."

"Well, tell Mrs. Brief she has my eternal gratitude," I replied, popping open the latches of the oversized container. The aroma of roasted meats and freshly cooked rice drifting out, instantly causing my stomach to rumble in approval.

Tights leaned against her bike. "So, what were you doing out here anyway? You looked pretty out of it when I rode up. What did you call it? Schizophrenic training?"

"I suppose the name isn’t that farfetched," I mumbled around a mouthful of food, swallowing before continuing. “But yeah, I was trying to work out tactics against opponents who outmatch me in raw power."

"And judging by that look on your face earlier, I guessing your imaginary opponent was winning?" Tights asked, tilting her head.

"Yeah," I admitted with a wry chuckle, picking up another dish. "But hey, I killed him in real life, so… I win."

“Aww, I love how normal you think that sentence was,” Tight chuckled.

Right… the killing part, sometimes I forget I’m no longer surrounded by Saiyans or warriors, but… well, normal people, well at least compared to my usual group of people, I suppose. 

“If it helps, he was a very bad guy,” I replied, shrugging.

Tights laughed, waving off the explanation. "Oh don’t worry, I’m very biased, because I like you, so… fuck that guy which name I don’t know."

I laughed. “Okara will love you.”

"On other matters though, we should probably have some scientists study you," Tights added, watching in awe as another huge plate of food vanished. "I've seen you eat portions bigger than your entire body. It makes absolutely no biological sense."

"I don't know what to tell you," I chuckled, swallowing another mouthful. "Food comes in, and... poof, it's gone."

“Yeah, I can see that…” Tights replied.

“So… are you ready for your second lesson on ki?” I asked, letting out a burp. Mrs Briefs was quite the chef, I was starting to fall in love with her, or maybe it was with the idea of someone else cooking for me, instead of me doing the cooking… for everyone else.

Tights sighed, shaking her head with a light laugh. "Charming, truly a gentleman." 

“Is that a no?” I asked, taking another bite of food.

“You know it wasn’t,” Tights replied, throwing a rice ball at me, which I caught and ate, in a single bite. “I mean no offense by this, but the way your people eat is… downright scary…”

I mean… she wasn’t wrong, I just stopped caring about it, it’s like breathing, or blinking, you just stop noticing it, and it becomes second nature.