SS: Young Roshi: Chapter 21-22 (Patreon)

Goku’s Point of View

I fought against the strongest out of the three, knowing that I had to hurry, otherwise Frieza might get mad and just blow the planet up. That was the problem with high power levels like ours; someone with a power level of twenty thousand could potentially blow up the planet, and we were so far past that now that some of us could even do it by accident.

Someone actively trying to blow up the planet with a power level in the millions wouldn’t even need to try hard, and we were over a hundred times stronger than that. No, this ‘Cooler’ was well over two hundred million, maybe even slightly higher than my two-hundred and fifty million. I felt it, it was only seconds into the fighting, but Frieza was already dealt with.

That made me breathe a sigh of relief; I could focus on this fight more if there was only one other combatant fighting. My eyebrows rose in shock, and even Cooler paused for a moment when we felt the other power level disappear. Roshi had somehow beaten two combatants significantly stronger than himself, and I’d have to figure that out after my fight with the only surviving enemy.

The fighting was amazing, I felt myself grow stronger as the fight went on, only these death matches with people as strong, if not stronger than me, had me grow at this speed. I could tell he noticed my rapid growth, and he didn’t like it, which made him begin to show signs of his underhandedness. Breaking off from our fighting, a ball of light appeared in his hand, and a split second later, it was hurling down at the planet.

I managed to teleport in front of it as I pushed it away, but he took that opportunity, the split second of my defenses dropping from knocking away the ball to strike me. I feel my body almost torn apart from the weight of the kick as my ribs break. That was enough to turn the fight in his favor as he began battering me. Every moment, I accumulated more damage as he pummeled me over and over.

He was now toying with me; whatever Roshi did to beat the other two put him out of the fight, as I sensed his energy was far too low to help here. It was selfish to think he would do me harm, but I didn’t care. I had dropped the ball by not killing Frieza, and now it appeared that the world was going to be destroyed. “Well, I think I’m just about done here. Let me finish you and the planet off at the same time.”

Cooler began to charge a much larger ball as he chuckled. Before he could finish it, someone made their move. Gorage teleported behind him, slamming into him with enough force to break the ball and almost break his spine. At the same moment, Vegeta teleported in and handed me a senzu bean. I looked at the combination of Gohan and Barrage, and I’m shocked.

He’s clearly stronger than me, and not just by a small amount. The other shocking thing was that he was in his Super Saiyan form. He was making quick work of Cooler as I could only sit back and watch; there was a problem with his strength. The stronger he was, the more rapidly the form would break apart, and a minute later, after battering Cooler and putting him on his last leg, they broke apart.

They looked surprised at the sudden defusion, as they most likely hadn’t ever gone into Super Saiyan in their fused form. Cooler quickly punched them both, but I stepped in before he could do more. Vegeta was just on the verge of becoming a Super Saiyan, so as I fought, I yelled out. “Vegeta, take over!” She didn’t need another heads up as she slotted in, striking at him. Cooler was still strong, easily close to 160 million, over 50 times stronger than Vegeta, but Cooler was also hurt.

Every strike hurt Cooler as much as it did Vegeta, and just as she was about to lose, to be blown away as Cooler recovered, she reached it and began to go Super Saiyan. I smirked as my second wife was now that much more powerful. I held back on growing too much stronger, mainly focusing on getting her to my level over the past year, and it was finally showing results.

Vegeta had that same lust for battle, striving to find strong opponents as I, but she was different; when she grew bored, she didn’t let her opponents go. Channelling a Galick Gun, she shot him off the planet and into the sun. I felt Cooler’s life force wane, but leave the area I could scan before I felt his life be snuffed out. It was most likely fine, though; with no help, he would be so far weakened that it would be impossible for him to ever recover and become a threat.

I sighed again as I wasn’t really satisfied with the fights I’ve been in. It just felt like I should be the one finishing these, but they’re too weak to push my limits. It was fine right now, but who knew if me not being pushed to the limit every battle would backfire… No, Gohan was already rapidly approaching me in strength, as long as he didn’t go off and stop training, he’d eventually surpass me and be able to protect Earth from threats in my place. If he couldn’t, there was always Roshi.

…

Third Person Point of View

Meanwhile, a mile away, a bug drone watched the fighting taking place. It was unfortunate, two of the three new DNA resources of whatever the three aliens were no longer existed on Earth. It wasn’t the first setback for Doctor Gero. He watched the fighting take place over and over again, and one thing stood out now more than ever.

Goku was a threat, of course, he already knew that, but that young man who managed to take out two of the three enemies was clearly the bigger problem. He defeated one in a single attack, then managed to seal another, while it had taken multiple people fighting together to defeat the final one. Whoever he was, he did have a weakness.

Several other screens blipped on as drones caught the man in several bad situations. He had a glaring weakness that Doctor Gero was going to capitalize on. His weakness towards attractive women. The man had a large family; perhaps he could do something with that. There was no way he could constantly defend all of them; holding one hostage wouldn’t be that difficult to accomplish.

Doctor Gero no longer wanted world domination. He wanted revenge. Sidelining the true strongest man on the planet so he could kill Goku more easily was another thing he had to do before he could put his plans into motion. He looked at the four pods, all holding different androids inside, as his plans shifted. The herculean willpower to wait until he was ready was the only reason he hadn’t been slain already; he needed to know for sure that Goku would die.

Chapter 22

A year quickly passed, and we decided to let out King, now Queen, Cold. For one, as terrible as the Cold Demons were, someone needed to rule the galaxies; otherwise, far worse things would happen in the chaos. Only Frieza ruled his galaxy with an iron grip, and with her death, Queen Cold would rule that galaxy again. The number of deaths was fairly close, if not higher than, while Frieza ruled, so hopefully fewer people would die with the Cold Force attempting to police the galaxy.

I wasn’t really worried about her coming back for revenge. With Vegeta becoming a Super Saiyan, there were now four people who could deal with her. Without us there to fight in the tournament, Mr. Satan won the adult league, while Videl won the children's league. Videl was already much stronger than her father, the bonus to children making her stronger than him when she was five. Now that she was ten and training, knowing what humans were capable of with ki, she reached the level of some Z-fighters.

I sparred with Goku, even without him going Super Saiyan; he could fight on par with me in my bulk form. It was truly unfair how fast Saiyans grew. Being a Saiyan was like a cheat code, and it sucked seeing my student pull more and more ahead of me just because he was born to a more powerful alien race… “What are your wishes?”

I looked at the dragon, who was a bit larger than our previous dragon. Every shift in its power made its size bigger, its shape more bulky and humanoid. “I wish that my born children and I were Saiyan.” The dragon paused for a moment before answering back. “That is… Within my power to do. But it will take all of my power to accomplish. You’ll only get this single wish.”

I smiled, thinking about it. I was a human for so long, but I grew to love my wives, and two of my wives' only goal in life was the help the Saiyan race recover. I chuckled, thinking that they’d start chasing girls to become my wives after they found out I was Saiyan now. “Yes. That’s fine with me.” I discussed it with my children, and the ones who could talk were fine with changing from human to Saiyan.

I already had over a dozen, and most of my wives were in constant states of pregnancy. I was going to do more to recover the Saiyan race than any ten Saiyans put together. I was just jealous, jealous my student could grow so much stronger than I, but not take his role as the world's strongest seriously, constantly putting the planet at risk because he couldn’t handle his own battle lust.

It was also my own children. Barrage was strong, but just because he wasn’t born a Saiyan, he would never be the strongest on the planet, and that hurt me as much as it did him. Now he would stand a chance at surpassing his rival. I felt the change occur as my body shifted, genes rewrote themselves, muscles grew thicker, bones denser, as my body pushed out a tail.

I felt the immediate change. I was much, much stronger. I could tell now that humans were most likely an offshoot of the Saiyan race. Perhaps a few hundred thousand years ago, some Saiyans got stranded on this planet and forgot how to make ships or use ki, slowly focusing on technology, which slowly weakened them until they no longer grew tails.

Fundamentally, we were technically the same race, but functionally, we weren’t. Our DNA was almost completely different. I’d have to have Bulma test the differences because I thought it might be possible to unlock the hidden power in our genes, making the human race more powerful. 

The power switch was still there, at least I thought so, but it wouldn’t create a Super Saiyan, but Super Human might be possible. I had almost reached it before I changed my race to Saiyan; that bulky form was me pushing at the boundaries of what humans were capable of, but without outside biological help to surpass human capabilities, I would have remained stagnant… 

Now that I knew it was possible, I wouldn’t leave my students or wives out of the knowledge. Bulma had to start working on a solution right away. If we could get around using the Dragon Balls, that would be for the best, but if we couldn’t, it was worth burning a wish on to figure it out. I was growing stronger, but I wanted to raise humanity up with the Saiyans, instead of always needing to rely on them for protection.

I casually went into the Super Saiyan form. Pushing the power button wasn’t as straightforward as I thought it would be, but I was at a high enough power level that I could brute force it. I felt like more was possible. Someone who was born in a Saiyan body might have never noticed, but it felt like I had more forms I could unlock.

Like switching gears in a car, I knew Super Saiyan was only the first level, and going further beyond was akin to going higher in gears. I noticed that a large amount of my energy was concentrated in my tail; it was drawing power from my body, making it harder to reach the Super Saiyan form, but with my control over my body, I knew it was equivalent to a secondary gas tank.

One of my forms had to be locked behind my tail, but it felt bottomless. If I didn’t cut my tail off, I knew it would slow my progress down tremendously, but it should be fine, though. I was fine learning forms after Goku, Vegeta, or my children, and someone would need to learn the path forward for those who kept their tails. They could take the easier path without a tail, while I’ll learn what keeping mine did.

…

One year later…

On May 12 at 10:00 A.M., 9 miles off South City, the attack began. With no forewarning, the Androids that appeared destroyed the city, bringing death and destruction to the city before anyone could stop it from happening. They caused thousands of deaths, millions of dollars in damage, and wreaked havoc on the civilians.

During that same time period, Master Roshi felt a tightening in his chest. That same feeling made him believe he was sick, and thankfully, his wife, Bulma, was a genius inventor. She managed to get him stabilized, but unless they found a cure soon, he’d die. With blood at the corner of his mouth, he asked one of his friends.

“Please… Kill me.” Goku looked on in shock at what he said before Roshi explained. “If I die to a disease, I can’t be brought back with the dragonballs. Bulma is working on a cure, but I don’t think I’ll make it. Kill me, and once she’s developed the cure, bring me back with the Dragon Balls.” Goku agreed to it before putting his friend out of his misery.