Nion

They sent for the science team on the eleventh day, which told me two things about the King's situation.

The first one, was that the medical staff had run out of explanations for whatever they were experiencing, which intrigued me. The second was that they had spent ten full days deciding whether they could get away with not asking us for help, because doctors are the same in every world I had visited, and the last thing any of them wants is someone from a different discipline standing over their shoulder, like most things on this planet, it’s a battle of the egos.

I didn't hold it against them, honestly, I couldn’t care less about it, I just accepted the order from my superior, collected my equipment, and went.

The King's chamber was on the lowest level of the medical wing, behind two sets of vaulted doors, an energy field disruptor to avoid readings inside the area, and several guards, at least a few dozen of them.

Inside, our new King, Escarot, he floated in the center of a healing tank with the fluid at half-saturation from what I could see, which was exactly as the treatment plan specified for such scenarios, meaning he looked like every other critically wounded Saiyan I've ever seen, perhaps a bit worse, which was remarkable.

To the side, there was a display on the far wall, where somebody had left eleven days of energy telemetry running, and where the line that should have been flat very clearly was not.

That was… interesting, and hopefully would have something to do with this.

"Thank you for coming," the head physician said. "I understand this isn't your field."

I mostly dealt with newborn studies, a stepping stone towards my goal of becoming the head scientist of Planet Vegeta.

"It isn't, which is presumably why I'm here." I set my case down and pulled up a stool. "Start from the beginning, I'd rather know the whole shape of it before offering my opinion."

He nodded.

"So far, the muscle regeneration is proceeding within acceptable margins," he said. "We're running the tank low so the fibers knit in the correct alignment rather than scarring over. It's working. Eleven days in and the deep tissue is reconstructing cleanly."

"And how's the arm?"

"It’s also progressing." He brought up an image of the shoulder, all nerve mapping and colored threads. "We're rebuilding the neural connections one bundle at a time. I would say we are roughly nine percent complete. It'll take months, perhaps more than we expected, but things are moving along."

I could probably accelerate that timeline if given enough data to work on. But for now, I’ll see what the problem at hand is, before offering solutions to things they haven’t asked for.

"The reason we called your team," He hesitated, which is a thing most living beings do when they're about to admit they've been beaten by something they begrudgingly thought couldn’t defeat them. "We called you because we've had to recalibrate the tank six times in eleven days, and we don't know why…"

Well… that’s certainly unexpected, and interesting.

"Elaborate,"

"The tank regulates its output against the patient's energy," he said, pointing at the control, "Standard procedure. It reads what the body is producing and adjusts the saturation to match, so we're not over-healing or under-healing any given region. It also assumes the patient's output is stable, because for an unconscious patient it always is."

I think I was starting to see the problem.

"And his isn't."

"No."

They put the telemetry up on the main display, and I spent the next several minutes looking at it without saying anything, because it was not what I had expected to see.

A sedated body produces a flat line, that much isn't a theory, it's just how it works, no consciousness, no exertion, no output beyond the baseline hum of a living organism that is sleeping. I've measured millions of them, and that fact remains the same for every single one of them. 

The King's line did not sit anywhere, it fluctuated.

It climbed, then it fell, over and over again. At irregular intervals, without any apparent rhythm that I could find on a first pass, a spike three hours after midnight, nothing for a day and a half, then four spikes within six hours. Each one rose well above what resting output should be, each one held for somewhere between eight and forty seconds, and then dropped back down as though nothing had happened.

"You've ruled out the equipment?" I asked, looking at the data at hand.

"Several times, and nothing is wrong."

"External stimulus?"

"None, we have made sure of that, no handling, no procedures, no changes in the room during the events. We had a technician sitting in here for two of them just to watch…. Nothing happened. He floated there and his power went up, and then it came back down."

Perhaps it was a reaction to pain or trauma? It would make sense, but this was a conjecture, which was something I hated, but the data was lacking to prove more than that so far.

"Pain response?"

"That was our first theory," the physician shook his head with a sigh. "So we increased sedation, and that changed nothing… the spikes simply continued. We increased it again, to a level I was frankly uncomfortable with, and we had the same result… Whatever this is, it isn't his body reacting to injury. He's too far under for that."

I sat back and looked at the line, this was fascinating from a scientific point, but concerning for a medical one… as oscillations of this kind can mean a plethora of complications and diseases. 

Oh… 

Could it be?

“Bring me Broly’s file from the infant records,”

The physician frowned. "May I ask what you're looking for?"

"A comparison."

It took them about ten minutes to find it, because nobody has any reason to look at nursery data twice, as most of it is considered disposable.

The King’s brother had a similar problem when he was at the nursery, not to the same magnitude, but the same fundamental behavior, an unconscious infant, doing nothing, producing energy that rose and fell on its own schedule with no external stimuli.

That said… anyone with half a brain would notice this wasn’t the same, it looked the same, but it wasn’t. 

"They're the same phenomenon," the physician said slowly.

Leave it to the doctor to come to the stupid conclusion…

"No," I corrected. "Look at them properly."

I put them side by side and traced it out for him.

Broly's fluctuations swelled…. The line rose in a smooth curve, held, and came down... Escarot's on the other hand jumped, sharp climbs, hard peaks, sudden collapses back to baseline. Where Broly's line looked like a wave, his looked like something being struck repeatedly.

"The King’s readings are much more volatile," The doctor muttered, his eyes widening as he looked at the chart.

"Yes, considerably more so." I marked three of the peaks. "His fluctuations are larger than Broly's were, which we can attribute to age and power, he is after all, a full fledged warrior unlike his baby brother, but what we cannot attribute to that, is that they're less stable, and much more… volatile."

"Do you have an explanation?"

I had a few ideas, but none I would put my name to without more research.

"The obvious answer is bloodline," I said, crossing my arms, "Whatever produces this appears to be heritable to some degree, even if their cases seemed to differ down at the root….  That said, even if we can conclude without a shred of doubt that it's a family trait, that would only explain why the King's readings resemble the boy's to a certain level, not why his are so much worse behaved."

"That makes sense,” The doctor sighed.

"While Broly’s readings showed a pattern of growth, Escarot’s showed a pattern that hints to its body harming itself," I pointed at the highest peak on his chart, which was… fascinating. It almost looked as if his body was trying to tear itself apart.

"There's more," The doctor said eventually. "We didn't know if it was relevant, but considering the situation."

"Show me."

He brought up a second set of data, neural mapping, taken continuously since the incidents started. It seemed someone in this room had been thorough enough to monitor the King's brain along with the rest of him. Good… I made a note to find out who and remember the name, they might prove useful investigating this.

"We overlaid the two sets this morning," he said, pointing at the data. "The energy spikes and the neural activity."

They lined up.

Every fluctuation on the energy chart had a corresponding burst of activity on the neural chart, beginning fractionally before the energy rose and subsiding as it fell. Eleven days of data and not one exception.

"Where," I said.

"That's the strange part." He isolated the regions and highlighted them. "It isn't pain processing, it isn't distress. Those areas are essentially inactive, the sedation is clearly doing its job. The activity seems to come from the aggression centers."

I looked at that for a long moment.

"Which shouldn't be possible, considering his sedation," I replied, looking at the King.

“We know…” The physician rubbed his eyes. "Our theory is this that he dreams he's fighting someone and well.... his body answers, and so does his power."

"That's one reading of it," I smiled, genuinely excited for this job I had been assigned to.

"You have another?"

"I have a question." I stood, and walked closer to the display, and looked at the two lines running together across eleven days of a sleeping man's life. "You're assuming the mind moves first because it registers first. It's a reasonable assumption, a good one at that. But the gap between them is a fraction of a second, and 'first' at that resolution is a matter of which sensor we trust more."

I turned around, looking at them. 

"So which is it? Is something in his head reaching for power?"

I looked back at the tank, at the King floating quietly in the green fluid.

"Or is something in his power reaching for his head?"

I couldn't wait to find which was the answer!

Okara

A few weeks had passed since they put my idiot in a jar, and since I decided I was going to become a Super Saiyan. 

Today, like usual, I put Nail through a mountain, it was a good way to start the day and get the training juices (blood) flowing.

I caught his wrist as he came in, turned my hips, and threw him with everything I had towards the mountain, and he went through about forty meters of rock and came out the other side in a spray of stone, before I heard him hit the valley floor.

I gave him a second, then flew down after him. "You're getting slow, green guy!"

"I am getting tired," Nail said from the crater, pulling his shoulder back into its socket. "You Saiyans seem to have nearly limitless stamina when it comes to fighting."

Damn right we did!

"We are cool like that,"

"You know training might not be enough to reach the transformation right?" he said, looking at me.

"I know."

"Escarot didn't reach that level by training," Nail said, standing up from the ground, "He reached it in a moment where something broke in him."

"I was there." Almost dying… I remember that fucking day very well.

"I know you were there, that's rather the point." He looked at me, crossing his arms. "You were the reason, Okara. It was seeing you about to die that did it. He watched Frieza as he was about to-"

"I KNOW! NO need to bring that back to me, I remember it VIVIDLY, thanks."

I do not need someone reminding me how... weak and pathetic I was, how... scared I was to die, how terrified I was that for all we tried, all our efforts would amount to shit!

"Then you understand what I'm saying,” 

I knew what he was trying to say, that I needed a trigger like Escarot, and my answer to that was FUCKING NO!

"Forget about that green guy," I said, crossing my arms. “I know I was the trigger, but… I don’t want to wait for someone I care about to be in a situation of life and death to overcome my own weakness… instead I want to overcome my weakness the same way I want to overcome everything, by punching my way through!”

"I commend you for your dedication," Nail said, and he sounded like he meant it, but I wasn’t entirely sure… sometimes I felt he insulted me by pretending to be nice… I had no proof of that, but also had zero doubts about it.

"I know, I’m that great!"

Nail was quiet for a long, long moment, then something in his face changed, and I felt his ki move.

"Ready for round two green guy?" I grinned, getting into position.

"You're wrong," he said quietly as he turned toward the castle, raising his hand gathering a lot of energy, aiming at the towers on the horizon, right where the medical wing where Escarot was.

"Huh?"

"You have four months at best," Nail said. "And you want a clean path? There isn't time for a clean path..."

"Nail, put that hand down."

"No..." Nail continued. "I'm going to kill him. And you're going to stop me, or you're going to…"

I don't remember deciding to move.

I remember the sound my foot made hitting his ribs, and I remember him leaving the ground sideways at a speed I have never in my life put into a living thing, and I remember the mountain behind him coming apart, and then I was standing over him in the wreckage with my hand around his throat and my other fist cocked back and every single hair on my body standing straight up.

I held Nail down in the dirt with my knuckles shaking an inch from his face and I did not let go, and it was the hardest thing I have ever done, not killing him.

"That," I growled, "Was the stupidest thing you have ever done."

“Maybe it is the air on this planet that makes others dumb?” Nail chuckled, looking at me.

"I appreciate it," I said, calming myself as I let him go. "I do… I know what you were doing, I'm not an idiot, not always anyways… I know what you were trying to do.."

"Okara… I-"

"But if you EVER do that again," I growled, powering up as the earth around us cracked. "I will kill you. Are we clear?"

Nail looked at me for a second, then he laughed. "We're clear," he said.