SS: Young Roshi: Chapter 17-18 (Patreon)

I rolled on my stomach as I felt the blood exit my lungs. It was still impossible for me to breathe, but I needed to drain them before I healed myself; otherwise, it would cause problems later on. Thank god she only went for a slow, painful death for me instead of killing me outright, otherwise I’d really be dead right now. I kept healing myself as I got to my feet to watch the fight.

Frieza hadn’t strengthened herself more since she was struck; it appeared that while lowering her power was effortless and almost instantaneous, increasing her power took time. I bet she was really regretting not taking us seriously from the start. Gorage(the combination of Gohan and Barrage) was putting in work; the combination of the two was certainly not addition but multiplication when it came to power.

Gohan brought the power, while my son Barrage, brought the technique. Frieza might have been stronger than them, but she really didn’t know how to fight; that was another thing that made us different from the people in space. Most had gotten by on their power levels, brute-forcing the situation, which meant that we could close that gap just by knowing how to fight.

Raditz came to this planet, but at this point, she was too weak to do anything and had stayed behind to defend the Namekians. I felt it, two power levels approaching, both were on the higher side. It was Goku and Vegeta. Vegeta was on the same level as me, while Goku had far surpassed me, easily as strong as Frieza and the combined children right now.

I focused and teleported to their ship before teleporting back with Goku. The moment Frieza noticed us, she grew a smirk on her face. “So this was your backup you were waiting for?” Her power level shot back up tenfold in an instant, showing that she could grow her power instantly. I’d estimate it at around 50 million. Goku and Gorage were around 5 million, and Vegeta and I were at 1 million, which meant I couldn’t do anything to help in this fight, at least when it came to the fighting.

I also hadn’t brought Vegeta with us; she was still coming on the ship, which would take another five minutes to enter the planet's atmosphere. Goku managed to get in between the two with a Kaio-Ken times ten before Frieza put a hole through Gorage. The fight was surprisingly close. Goku could, for extremely brief moments, go Kaio-Ken times ten to close the power gap when Frieza did something impossible for him to avoid, or just to catch her off-guard.

The fusion wore off at this point; it should have lasted thirty minutes, but because of how hard they fought, it broke in only a fraction of the time. I quickly teleported them to safety as Dende finally made it back to the rest of the dragon balls. I could have teleported Dende, but I waited for Frieza to kill some of our fighters first. The best case scenario, in my opinion, was to revive everyone and teleport us away before Frieza even realized, but then we’d still be stuck with Frieza alive.

I wanted to see him, now her, and see if we stood any chance at defeating her. The answer was clearly no right now, but yes in the possible future. With how fast Goku was growing, it might not even take a year until he is capable of fighting on par with Frieza without any Kaio-Ken. The effect me changing Frieza into a female might have been the most dramatic.

It was a small decrease in overall power when someone was turned from a male to a female, but something in Frieza’s DNA reacted very negatively to the changes. I could only speculate, but I could have reduced his overall power by around 33%, which was far higher than normal. That was why Goku could compete with her and not outright lose at the moment, because if Frieza was walking around with 75 million, there would be nothing any of us could do.

Goku was still losing. Over time, he would be whittled down as his body became more and more hurt, while Frieza seemed to be only hitting her stride, almost using the fight to learn how to actually fight. All of her previous fights weren’t really fights, but overwhelming force, normally in the form of an energy ball that annihilated the enemy.

I needed to buy him time, but couldn’t with my low power level; I would only get in the way… Unless I used a move I had been saving, but it would doom the planet, perhaps even more if I kept pulling life force from creatures on other planets. It was an extremely costly move that I had only learned for situations like this. I began to charge the spirit bomb.

It was an attack that made no sense to pull off in most fights. For one, it took an incredible amount of time to use; the second reason was that it dealt significant damage to the environment, possibly killing off the flora and fauna of the planet just to empower the attack. Only fights where you couldn’t outright face the opponent, but you had an ally who could, and the risk to the planet was worth taking, because the alternative was the planet's destruction anyway.

I teleported away, far enough that I might go unnoticed while still able to see the fight. I expected the energy ball to become gigantic; hopefully, Frieza wouldn’t notice until after it was big enough to defeat her. I watched as I pulled energy from the planet. Thankfully, there were enough Namekians alive that I only had to do this singular planet. They were going to have a lean few years after this, but it was better than having no planet.

Goku was losing now as Frieza still looked fresh; Goku’s wounds had already piled up. Frieza wasn’t taking the fight seriously again as she played with her enemy. If she really wanted to, it wouldn’t take more than going into a beam clash or attacking our children, who had stayed close to the fighting, which was a mistake; obviously, they should have run when they realized they were outclassed.

It was charged just in time to stop Frieza from killing Goku. She had somehow not noticed the gigantic ball of energy forming within eyesight of her, only after I closed the distance and tossed it at her did she finally feel something was off. “Hey Frieza! Catch!” The ball flew true, Frieza attempting to catch it. I teleported Goku and the kids away from the ball before it exploded.

Handing over a senzu bean to Goku, I caught my breath as the explosion finally went off. I felt Frieza’s power diminish, then disappear as if she were dead. I could have healed Goku with my magic, but senzu bean was instantaneous, while healing magic wasn’t. They celebrated, while I couldn’t. Something felt off; that was the only reason I could push Gohan out of the way, so I took the beam that pierced my chest.

I felt Frieza’s energy begin to tear my body apart, which meant I could only give one last goodbye before it killed me. “Don’t go easy on her, Goku. She needs to die. Don’t let my sacrifice go to waste.” Frieza pulled me into the air with the energy she still controlled in my body as I felt myself explode from the inside. I sighed as I looked at King Yemma. “Well… That sucked.”

Chapter 18

Goku’s Point of View

I felt my power surge as I watched Frieza slay my master. I couldn’t think, I was that enraged, the only thing I could do was wait for my boiling power to settle. When I finally came to, I looked at Frieza, who now had fear in her eyes. It was an instinctual fear, one that involved the legend of Super Saiyan. She could feel the difference in our power as she started to beg.

“W-wait! I haven’t gotten to my full power yet. Let me reach my full power before we fight.” If we had fought, and I was revealed to be stronger than her, then perhaps I might have decided to let her grow to her full power. But she was too weak, I couldn’t respect her, in every single fight she was ever in, she was the stronger of the combatants, and the first time she wasn’t, she immediately begged for time to power up.

It disgusted me as a warrior, it was so cowardly, I almost smited her before giving her the chance… But that thought in the back of my mind, that wish to face strong opponents, urged me to let her get to full power. I clicked my tongue. “Tch, fine. I’ll give you five minutes to reach full power. Gohan, Barrage, go! Go to Bulma or Vegeta and wait for me to finish here.”

They left after I urged them again; they couldn’t do anything about this fight any longer. As I waited for her to power up, I felt the changes in my own body. I was dramatically stronger, and it felt much more natural than Kaio-Ken. Kaio-Ken would constantly stress your body, even at the base times two multiplier. This felt like it was a part of me, and even after I deactivated it, as long as I recovered, it would be possible again.

I could feel her growing stronger as she bulked up in a similar way to Roshi… Honestly, it was a very similar technique, Frieza’s just seemed to take longer, which would result in a longer period Frieza could sustain her full power… The problem was, even at double her power, she still felt heavily short of me. Besides a sneaky attack, or some underhanded thing she could do to defeat me, she couldn’t beat me in a fight. 

Frieza had no warrior spirit. I was beyond disappointed, and Frieza knew she came up short when we looked at our power levels. I just wanted to get this fight over and done with, which was when Frieza began threatening me. “I-if you kill me, my family will come after you!” Woah, that was some new information she was bringing to the table. “Oh? Are they stronger than you?”

She gritted her teeth as she spoke. “As much as it annoys me, yes. Both my father and brother are indeed stronger than I; if you were to kill me, they most certainly would go after you.” I had to make sure. “What about heavily injuring? If I almost killed you, would they come after me?” Smirking now that she thought I was scared of her family, she agreed. “Yes, even if you just injured me, my family would come after you.”

“Awesome! Well, I can’t leave you here on Namek, because you’ll kill everyone and blow it up. So I got to hurt you, you can breathe in space, right? I think King Kai said you could.” Looking wary again. “Y-yes. I can breathe in space, why?” I chuckled. “Hehehe. That’s good. Well… Don’t come back. Kamehameha!” I laughed as she screamed out an insult and flew away. “You dirty monkey!”

I noticed the sky blackening as they finally began making their wishes. King Kai must have told them I dealt with Frieza, and it was safe. I just hoped that Master Roshi wasn’t too mad at me for letting Frieza go.

…

“YOU LET FRIEZA GO!?” I couldn’t believe what he told me. What was the point in fighting in the first place if we were just going to let every enemy go? Now, instead of facing one, maybe two of them, we would no doubt be facing all three, and Frieza said his father and brother were stronger than him. Goku, with his new golden form, was the only one who stood a chance.

“We need to get stronger again because Goku keeps letting all our enemies go!” I couldn’t help but feel angry at the situation. That’s why I de-aged myself, because relying on a battle junkie like Goku was a bad idea. He was also too kind for his own good. I could understand Vegeta, at least coming from a tactical standpoint, she wasn’t all that strong, and it was only her.

Frieza was a completely different monster, though. She was pure evil, and had a family that was just as strong as her. Leaving her alive would only come back to bite us in the ass, especially since she knew which planet we were from, at least she should… We did kind of kill all her top subordinates, and I doubt she remembered it off the top of her head. 

I just hoped she didn’t know how to use the technology to figure out where Earth was in the galaxy. That was wishful thinking, though. “So, where did the Namekians go?” I hadn’t been alive when the wishes were done, and King Kai hadn’t kept me up to date. I looked around for them, and they were nowhere to be found. “They used the Earth’s dragonballs to create a new home planet and the second wish to teleport themselves there.”

“So they used the three Namekian wishes to revive everyone Frieza and his men killed on Earth and Namek, teleport everyone off of Namek or Otherworld to Earth, and the final Namekian wish was for Frieza and her men to forget about the dragon balls. That was a pretty smart wish, but she would still remember fighting us, so she’d be mad at us, but wouldn’t remember why, only that we showed up on Namek and beat him up after changing him into a female.

Someone as strong as Frieza couldn’t be wished dead, but altering a few months of memories was something possible for the dragon to accomplish. It made me wonder why they didn’t just wipe her memory completely, that would be akin to wishing her dead. Even if we just deleted years of her life's memory, it would have hurt her far more than just wishing for her and her troops to forget about the dragon balls… It must have been too much for the dragon, and they needed to limit what they’d forget.

Either way, I knew we’d need to prepare for when Frieza showed up with his family. Goku couldn’t be the only one capable of fighting with them, because more than likely, he’d let them go again, even if they killed his people. Because they could give him a good fight in the future if he let them live… 

He was an idiot sometimes. I looked at Vegeta as she was around my power level right now, the same went with Piccolo, and the children could grow stronger to help in the same situation. I wondered if the combination of the two could go super saiyan like one of their fathers. Could Gohan ever go Super Saiyan? I wasn’t sure. That was something we’d need to find out before they came to Earth… They were going to 100%. I also had to teach the few fighters who didn’t go to Yardrat the techniques we learned.