"That violent transformation you're currently maintaining—that would be the legendary Super Saiyan form, wouldn't it."
King Kai slowly stepped out of his small, domed house.
He was short, completely round, and sporting tiny, circular black sunglasses. He wore the formal, heavy black uniform of his divine office. His two long antenna-hairs stuck straight up from underneath his skullcap in a bizarre way that managed to be simultaneously completely undignified, and yet exactly, perfectly appropriate for the bizarre cosmic entity wearing them. His hands were clasped securely behind his back. His pace was measured, heavy, and highly deliberate.
However, from exactly where Jordan was standing, the hands clasped behind the Kai's back were visibly, violently trembling.
Goku and Piccolo stopped sparring and stared at Jordan.
Goku's expression was the confused, calculating look of a man aggressively running a math equation in his head that kept producing a completely impossible result.
King Kai stopped a few meters away. He studied Jordan with the heavy, terrified assessment of a deity who had been managing this specific galaxy long enough to have meticulously cataloged absolutely everything in it... and had just violently encountered something that absolutely wasn't in the filing system.
—Not quite at the apocalyptic level of that ancient nightmare, the panicked thought moved so loudly through the elder Kai's ambient energy that Jordan's Mind Network passively translated it with zero effort. But this sheer volume of raw energy, condensed inside a mortal currently standing on my front lawn and smiling politely—
"Hello, Lord Kai," Jordan said warmly.
He touched down lightly from the casual hover he had been maintaining since his arrival. He stood properly on the planet's grassy surface, which required only a fractional, microscopic muscular adjustment to account for the crushing ten-times gravity. "My name is Jordan. You have an incredibly good eye—I am indeed currently operating in the Super Saiyan form."
The polite verbal confirmation that the terrifying golden monster standing before him was smiling gently, using indoor manners, and was apparently close friends with Goku appeared to do a massive amount of structural load-bearing work for King Kai's crumbling composure. Something deep inside the Kai settled—not completely, but just enough to prevent a panic attack.
May the Supreme Kai protect us all, Jordan effortlessly read, utilizing the terrifying, involuntary accuracy of a psychic whose Mind Network absolutely did not distinguish between spoken words and screaming internal monologues.
He kept his facial expression locked into polite neutrality.
"You are currently training your physical control over the form," King Kai stated.
It came out as a hard statement rather than a question. It was the professional, clinical recognition of a martial arts master who intimately understood exactly what sustained, grueling transformation practice looked like, even if the specific, apocalyptic scale of this one was completely unprecedented in his direct administrative experience.
"Yes." Jordan casually raised one hand. He condensed a tiny, localized spark of flame directly above his open palm—pure, blinding gold, perfectly contained, roughly the size of a glass marble. It was a terrifying demonstration of his current, razor-sharp calibration: I am producing exactly this much energy, and absolutely no more, exactly as I intended. "I've only very recently achieved this. My raw control still needs a significant amount of work. This is exactly how I'm developing it."
King Kai's hidden eyes tracked the tiny golden flame.
The physical size of the spark was incredibly small. The raw, devastating energy violently compressed inside it was absolutely not small. The specific, terrifying cosmic knowledge King Kai possessed—as an entity who had spent millennia maintaining strict administrative oversight of a massive portion of the universe's inhabited planets—was more than enough to instantly calculate exactly what that tiny, condensed marble of Super Saiyan energy would do if Jordan accidentally dropped it onto the surface of his tiny planet.
The Kai took a very slow, very careful step backward.
"Right," King Kai said, projecting enormous, brittle professionalism. "Of course. That is a very sensible, highly logical approach to training."
"Jordan!"
Goku had suddenly arrived directly beside Jordan with the characteristic, blurring speed of a golden retriever whose attention span had finally caught up with its feet. He was practically vibrating, moving in a rapid, partial circle, actively inspecting Jordan from multiple angles. His face was violently cycling through several extreme emotions simultaneously.
"Is this—wait, is this the legendary Super Saiyan form that Raditz was so terrified of?!" Goku stopped circling, his eyes wide. "But... you're from Earth! You're human!"
Jordan looked at him blankly. "Didn't I mention that I have Saiyan genetics?"
"When the hell did you mention that?!"
Jordan actually stopped to consider the timeline. He very possibly had not explicitly mentioned that highly relevant biological fact. "Ah. My apologies. That's entirely on me. I really should have been significantly clearer about my build."
King Kai aggressively excused Goku and Piccolo, ordering them back to their brutal training regimen on the flimsy grounds that their schedule was 'highly time-sensitive.' Then, the exact millisecond they were safely out of earshot, the Kai spent approximately thirty agonizing seconds quietly hyperventilating and gathering his shredded nerves before proceeding.
The small, worn wooden table sitting just outside the domed house was apparently the officially designated location for serious, apocalyptic conversations. King Kai poured two small cups of hot tea with the shaking care of a man who had decided that performing a familiar ritual was the only thing keeping him physically tethered to reality. He placed the porcelain cups precisely, and sat down heavily.
Jordan sat calmly across from him.
Please just leave quickly, King Kai was currently thinking. The thought was broadcasting incredibly loudly, ringing with the highly specific guilt of a polite host who absolutely knew they were thinking something incredibly rude, but was desperately thinking it anyway. Please just get back in your ship, take your apocalyptic Super Saiyan energy with you, and let me go back to washing my car on my tiny planet that I would very much like to keep in one solid piece.
"So, what exactly brings you to my world?" King Kai asked, utilizing a voice of absolute, perfect composure.
"I was just passing through the sector," Jordan said honestly, taking a sip of the tea. "I simply wanted to drop in and see exactly how Goku and Piccolo were progressing with your training." He looked at King Kai, his expression softening into something genuinely conciliatory. "I apologize for the massive disruption. I really should explain my background—I actually come from a completely different version of Earth. A different multiverse, technically speaking. I'm just a temporary visitor to this one. It's highly likely I'll eventually return to my own native universe."
King Kai slowly processed the staggering data dump.
"A completely different Earth," the Kai repeated flatly.
"Yes."
The terrifying information rapidly rearranged itself within King Kai's cosmic administrative framework. Multiversal visitors were absolutely not, technically speaking, within his divine jurisdiction. Multiversal visitors boasting anomalous, reality-breaking power signatures randomly appearing on his front lawn unannounced were also not in his jurisdiction... but they were considerably more legally interesting.
The Kai's rigid, trembling shoulders visibly relaxed by a highly measurable degree.
"Well, no wonder!" King Kai exhaled. It was the massive, warm relief of an IT guy who had finally found the single line of broken code that made the terrifying system anomaly make logical sense. "I was literally just saying to myself, 'How in the multiverse does a catastrophic warrior like this just spontaneously appear in the Milky Way galaxy with absolutely zero prior administrative record?' Of course! It all makes perfect sense now! Come, come—please, have some more tea!"
Jordan reached up, scratched the back of his golden hair, and made a quick, polite tactical decision.
"I'll just drop the form," Jordan offered. "It might make the rest of the conversation significantly easier on your blood pressure."
He smoothly deactivated the Super Saiyan transformation.
The roaring gold instantly faded into mist. The piercing, pale teal of his eyes smoothly returned to a calm, deep blue. The crushing, apocalyptic aura that had been doing its absolute, controlled best not to violently vaporize the local environment simply... stopped existing.
What remained sitting at the table was just Jordan in his ordinary, baseline biological state—which was absolutely still not what most mortal people would ever describe as 'ordinary,' but which King Kai immediately, physically registered as the massive, comforting difference between standing directly next to an open blast furnace, and standing next to a normal campfire.
King Kai stared at him.
"This—" King Kai started.
He stopped.
"These are absolutely," King Kai said carefully, adjusting his sunglasses, "not the exact same person."
"They're both me," Jordan smiled.
King Kai stared at him for a very long time. Then he stared at the empty air where the terrifying golden aura had been raging a second ago. Then he looked back at Jordan.
"Please don't ever change back," King Kai requested with absolute, desperate sincerity. "This form is infinitely more comfortable for everyone involved. Please just stay exactly like this."
"Of course," Jordan agreed easily.
"Much, much better." King Kai nodded several times, his hands finally steady enough to pick up his teacup. The crushing, existential tension in his small frame had finally dropped from the 'Catastrophic Threat' category down into the 'Highly Manageable Anomaly' category, which was absolutely the best possible outcome available in a situation involving a Super Saiyan spontaneously appearing uninvited on a planet the exact size of a city block. "Now then. What else can I possibly help you with today?"
"Potential guidance?!" King Kai practically shouted, slamming his teacup down with significantly more physical force than he had actually intended. "You somehow possess the Namekian Grand Elder's legendary potential guidance technique?!" He stared at Jordan with an expression that had rapidly moved completely past 'mildly surprised' into 'genuinely, profoundly impressed,' which was an emotional category King Kai reserved incredibly sparingly. "I honestly thought that divine ability was going to be completely lost to the universe in this generation! The Elder's failing physical condition—"
"He's still very much alive," Jordan corrected gently. "And he's been incredibly generous with his time and his magic lately."
King Kai sat back heavily in his chair.
"Goku!" the god bellowed across the lawn.
The silence lasted approximately two seconds before King Kai cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled significantly louder.
"Piccolo! Both of you, get over here right now!"
From the direction of the dirt training area, Jordan heard the distinct, heavy sound of high-speed movement violently interrupted. He could clearly feel them approaching through the passive ki-sense his new Instant Transmission ability had permanently opened—two massive, distinct signatures. One was blindingly warm and bright; the other was sharp, cold, and heavily controlled. Both signatures currently carried the faint, unmistakable emotional frequency of extreme annoyance that only came from being aggressively interrupted during a highly focused sparring session.
Goku arrived first. His sweaty face clearly said, What is it now?
Piccolo arrived exactly one step behind him. His heavy arms were tightly folded, and his scowling face clearly broadcasted the exact same frustrated question, but with significantly less attempt at basic politeness.
"I have incredibly good news," King Kai announced preemptively, aggressively cutting them off before either martial artist could start complaining about the interruption. "Stop making those ridiculous faces and stand right there."
They obeyed.
Jordan quickly and efficiently explained the Potential Guidance technique in brutally practical, mathematical terms: grueling physical training slowly accumulated dormant potential inside the body. The magical unlocking technique aggressively released a massive portion of that hoarded accumulation as an immediate, usable power spike. The biological results were absolute and permanent. The divine technique was highly applicable to absolutely any person possessing a substantial, brutal training history.
He also, smoothly in the course of the exact same tactical explanation, casually answered the massive, burning question Piccolo had clearly been aggressively holding onto since Jordan's arrival—exactly where the human had just come from, and what his specific connection to the Namekian alien species was.
Piccolo silently absorbed the massive lore dump. He utilized the highly specific, terrifying quality of silence that meant his brain was aggressively recalibrating something fundamentally significant to his worldview. The shocking fact that his original, ancient self had been violently split from a literal Namekian god. The staggering, cosmic implications of exactly what alien species he actually belonged to, versus the demonic origin he had spent his entire violent life believing he was.
Goku casually reached out and rested a sweaty hand on the Namekian's tense shoulder.
"Does it really matter?" Goku asked, smiling. He spoke in the deeply honest, entirely uncomplicated way that Goku always used when he had arrived at a profound philosophical conclusion through pure feeling, rather than complex logic. "You grew up here on Earth. You're an Earthling. Who you are isn't determined by what planet you were originally born on—it's entirely determined by what you've actually chosen to be."
Piccolo stared at the Saiyan. His rigid expression rapidly cycled through several complex, violent emotions in quick succession, before finally settling into a complicated, stony neutrality. In Piccolo's incredibly guarded emotional language, that specific glare was its own profound form of total acceptance.
He didn't say a single word.
Jordan had already smoothly reached across the space and firmly grabbed the Namekian's thick green arm.
Piccolo violently violently startled—not from a primal threat response, but from the highly specific, jarring surprise of a warrior who had been deeply absorbed in processing massive internal trauma, only to have their physical attention recalled entirely unexpectedly. His ingrained combat instinct to violently pull away flared for a microsecond.
"Wait—" Piccolo snapped, his eyes narrowing. "How the hell is becoming instantly stronger through magic even biologically possible? What would even be the point of grueling physical training if you can just—actually, hold on—"