[March] 15th

Age: 732,

5 minutes later.

...

.....

I'd been trailing him as stealthily as I could manage, taking in the sights of this new district of alien bone.

The buildings seemed to be made to a higher quality than any of the buildings back home in spite of their seemingly organic origins. Again, super disturbing, but I decide to move on before I risk losing track of the kid.

I hop from building to building while noting the lack of adult Saiyan's wandering around, it wasn't as barren of people as my own village was but I still would rarely see Saiyan's in groups larger than three people. I noted it down as something to ask Toto later, it was starting to become apparent that he'd given me explanations that were slowly becoming more and more irrelevant and confusing.

Not mention I needed to learn more things about my new home world in general.

Like how weird the buildings can get!

Each one was far taller than any of the ones in my home village, all intertwining in such a way that made it seem as though they were each piece of a skeleton belonging to a titanic creature. The alien architecture built in such a way that even most folk from my village would find this place a pain to traverse, it was like this place was just built for the sole purpose of training it's citizens physical capabilities.

I honestly wouldn't expect it if that was just how it was the architecture's actual purpose. With how physically focused Saiyan's were as a species it was only right that every part of their society would be devoted to it, even mundane day to day things.

My mark was beginning to dip into the underground section of this city-like area and after waiting a few seconds I followed him in. I made sure to caution to not alert him of my presence yet I found myself, once again, shell shocked at the sheer alienity of the structure I was witnessing.

It was an ever expanding catacomb of tunnels, far more vast than any of the underground structures beneath my own village and far more complex. The symbols of the Saiyan language were scrawled across the walls in a fashion similar to graffiti with names like Broc, Lifa, Raddi, etc all placed in a way that made them resemble poses of combat. Strikes, jabs, kicks and sweeps all were used in the graffiti each one exceptionally dynamic in nature.

All of this just served to remind me of an argument I got into from my past life, a rarity these days considering how those memories are starting to fade.

I think It was after he had forced me to watch all of DBZ, I'm pretty he was the one who introduced me to this series considering I don't recall liking this show much.

He definitely loved the damn thing though, owned a bunch of the merch and was even the moderator of a server of power scalers I think. I can remember poking fun of him for that, calling him a "Big Nerd" and "Lame", he laughed off all of my masterful insults though. I do recall myself enjoying listening to him rant about all the lore and interpersonal stories within the manga and such.

For me It was my friends passion that breathed life into Dragon ball, rather than the comic itself.

But now that I was fully comprehending that this was an absolutely gargantuan setting, spanning a literal multiverse with beings that could wipe away solar systems like they were smears on a chalkboard. The idea that I had to deal with all of that with a realistically minimal amount of information was... Stressful. Yet strangely exciting? Ah. The almost sickeningly alien pulse of emotion was present again, it was probably causing this.

I focused and the feeling was suppressed almost instantaneously. I was getting better at that at least! I wouldn't be rash because of some strange shit beyond my understanding again, at least not for a good long while. thoroughly drawn out of my walk down the ever-fading space that is memory lane I continue to chase after puffball who was, much to my surprise, going down a path that seemed to continue downwards.

How deep were these routes!? And why would you even make them this deep! I didn't know much about underground structures, but something told it just seemed absurd to make them in such a high gravity environment. And yet, in spite of all my silent protests, the path Puffball took continued to angle deeper beneath the city, leaving me no choice but to follow. Or leave.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I slunk behind the kid keeping a safe distance, praying that his abysmal sense of awareness hadn't improved since I had last trailed him, and some miracle I remained unnoticed allowing me to take in the changes to my surroundings as we both descended.

...

......

The walls had changed drastically, slowly swapping from the familiar walls of Saiyan civilization to rough unrefined cavern walls. Support beams now were periodically placed, making the area feel more like a coal mine more than any type of tunnel.

It was a novel experience to look around the tunnel, seeing what I assumed was the graffiti of a younger generation shift to the much more "aggressive" art style of the old guard. Instead of paint, the art seemed to be made from carefully imprinting of part of your body into a wall. From what I could gather, you could place only a single imprint or combine several of them to create a much larger piece.

How they got the walls that soft and what they pieces mean is much less intuitive to me so I decided to pay them less mind, especially since the boy was now entering a far more interesting area.

The smell of old machinery, metal, and oil had been building up for quite a while but now it was an ever present part of my olfactory senses.

The boy had entered what looked to be an underground scrap yard.

It was exceptionally built for an underground area, constructed in such a way that one could mistake it for being perfectly organic to the point where the buildings jutting out of the cliff face-like walls of the area seemed naturally made. Stone and steel Flora jutted out from the floor to form areas for sorting what I assume was old alien tech.

Every piece of this place came together to form the appearance of some sort of sci-fi junkyard, one that was clearly still in use despite the miniscule amount of workers. There seemed to only be two adults manning the entire yard, a thin woman who was doing the work of hundreds of humans by zipping about at an incredible speed, and a large gruff looking man who seemed to be working as a sort of enforcer or bodyguard.

Initially I though Puffball would be familiar with these people and would stop sneaking about, but instead he went on high alert. With every second that passed it became harder to keep track of him as he ducked between the unfamiliar landscape of the junkyard, showing uncanny familiarity with the area.

I had to be more careful than the boy when tailing him but I somehow managed to keep from the gaze of the two adult Saiyan's. The lady had stopped working for now, perhaps going on break for a short while, and the man had begun to move around the compound beginning what I assumed to be his job.

He was pretty far away from me, making it incredibly difficult to make out any of the finer details of his outfit aside from his armor. A bad feeling began to settle in my gut "If my hunch is correct and he's a guard for the junkyard, then It would make sense to have some form of picking out intruders."

I strained my eyes as I watched him place what I could only assume to be a scouter on his face before floating lazily up to the ceiling of the cave, gaining an incredible vantage point. "Damn... Ok, that does make things tougher. But you've got this Coli, all you gotta do is suppress your power level right? That's how they gained an advantage back in beginning of DBZ right?"

My mind was working in double time already, pushing myself to focus on my inner energy. I could actually feel my recovery building towards a Zenkai boost, it was like witnessing the waves recede before a massive wave, incredible potential but no way to utilize it just yet.

It was almost mesmerizing, but currently I had I job to do.

I had two Ideas on how to hide my current energy, clamping down on the energies passages and shifting the energy around to make it less obvious respectively.

I hastily shifted the energy around but instead of it being less obvious it seemed to be rapidly increasing in potency whenever it was clumped in a single area of my body, I would feel a surge of strength in that part of my body as well. "Useful, but not right now, dammit!"

Filing the info away for later, I began the more difficult of the two options. I prayed to whatever Kai handled luck that the Saiyan would be slow with the scouters since I was going to try something new.

I returned to sensing my own Ki before attempting to 'zoom in' towards my ki, I could feel the miniscule pathways that the spiritual energy was traversing and my heart skipped a beat with elation. I swiftly tamped down on my adrenaline, stress making my perception of time switch between glacial and rapid on a dime, I began to try and will the energy to slow.

To my surprise, it actually responded.

It slowed to a crawl, it slipped from my mental grasp for an instant but I clamped down on it and forced it to be calm. I felt my strength begin to go dormant, inactive yet ready to be summoned at a moments notice. I opened my eyes and noticed that a miniscule amount of time had passed, sweat dripped from my brow and I could feel a whole new type of mental exhaustion kick into place.

The man had only just gotten set up atop the cave when my stomach dropped. I had blinked once and he was gone, flitting out of my perception as though he never existed. I didn't have to look around to hear him hit the ground on the other side of the junkyard.

I quickly summoned a meager amount my strength so I could reach where the adult had landed, "Looks like puff didn't know how to suppress his energy. Wait shit that's right, the ability to do this was something that main cast did! Kinda amazed I did that on my first try!" I had to fight the grin that was currently splitting my face, the guard probably wasn't gonna let puff off with a warning.

Sure he definitely shouldn't be here, but Saiyan's weren't known for their kindness. Who knows what that guy'll do to the brat!