Aeris had only been waiting a few minutes when Goku came back.
He hadn't brought any food.
Hadn't packed any supplies.
He had literally just changed into a training gi and called it a day.
Aeris stared at him.
"..."
Well, fine.
If he didn't bring food, then he didn't bring food. It wasn't her stomach that would be screaming later. Besides, she had only agreed to take him somewhere to train. How that training actually went was entirely up to her.
Even so, she still gave him a warning and suggested he bring something to eat.
Goku scratched his head and said, "If I get hungry, I'll just catch something. No need to make it complicated."
Aeris stared at him again.
Inside, she was already thinking, Do you really think I'm going to leave you enough strength to go hunting? Don't be ridiculous. By the time I'm done with you, you may not even be able to crawl out of the gravity room, and you're talking about catching food?
Still, whatever.
He had made the choice himself.
Not her problem.
Without saying anything else, Aeris glanced at him once, then took off toward the horizon.
She was heading for a gravity chamber she had set aside specifically for training.
Not the one inside her ship, though.
There was no way she was dismantling that one. This was just an auxiliary gravity chamber from one of her old ships, the detachable kind. And besides, this one only went up to a thousand times gravity.
At most, it was something she had once used as a stepping stone.
For Goku, though, it would be more than enough.
Whoosh.
Whoosh.
As they flew over a mountain valley, a figure in a purple gi looked up just in time to see Goku streak overhead.
His face turned green with anger.
Literally.
Of course, that was Piccolo.
But when his eyes landed on the woman flying ahead of Goku, he froze for a split second.
Not because she was beautiful.
Because he could feel her.
The energy she carried was even greater than Goku's.
Piccolo's stare was sharp enough that Aeris noticed it. She glanced down in the direction of that burning gaze and spotted him.
"Huh," she murmured under her breath. "Interesting. I didn't expect there to be a Namekian on Earth."
She was surprised, sure, but not enough to care all that much. She had run into Namekians before while wandering through space.
Not Namekians from Planet Namek itself, necessarily, but groups who had left their old world long ago in search of somewhere more livable.
What Aeris didn't know was that Piccolo heard every word.
Far above, Kami heard it too.
"A Namekian..." Kami murmured to himself from his seat. "So that's what I am. I knew I was different from everyone else..."
Half an hour later, Aeris arrived at the gravity chamber.
From the outside, it just looked like a small house.
But instead of going inside right away, she turned around and looked behind her.
"You've been following us this whole time. Are you going to show yourself or not?"
Goku turned too.
Then he blinked.
"Oh. It's Piccolo. What, you came to challenge me again?"
Goku said it casually, like this was the most normal thing in the world.
To him, Piccolo was both rival and companion, one of the few people who could keep pace with him on the path forward.
Piccolo, unlike Goku, was not that relaxed.
He kept his eyes fixed on Aeris, every muscle in his body tight with caution.
"So you brought in backup, Son Goku?" he said coldly. "Didn't think you'd go that far just to beat me. You actually found someone this strong."
Aeris looked at him in silence.
She really wanted to say that she couldn't care less about whatever rivalry the two of them had going on, but she kept her mouth shut.
The last thing she wanted was to turn into one of those people who answered every question just because someone asked.
Goku waved a hand.
"You mean Aeris? She's not backup. I asked her to train me. And if I'm beating you, I want to do it myself."
Piccolo clicked his tongue and let out a cold little huff.
Goku grinned.
"Come on, Piccolo. Let's have a match. You can see if I've gotten any better. If I haven't..." He smiled wider. "Then I guess you can kill me."
With that, Piccolo shot up into the sky.
Goku followed immediately.
Aeris stood below and watched as the two of them started fighting in midair.
To her, it looked like a playground scuffle.
Of course, that was only because her own strength was in an entirely different realm now.
Then she hopped up onto a tree branch, somehow produced a bucket of popcorn from nowhere, and settled in to enjoy the show.
"Left hook, right hook... ooh, nice one. That one looked personal."
She munched happily while watching them go at it.
Honestly, they were both putting on a great show.
Goku even started biting at one point.
It was beautiful.
In the end, though, neither of them won. They just fought themselves into exhaustion and crashed to the ground, breathing hard.
Aeris frowned.
"Come on, keep going," she muttered. "You can't just stop now. This kind of entertainment doesn't come around every day. Come on... I want carnage."
Sadly, her hopes were crushed.
Both men were sprawled on the ground like overworked stray dogs, too tired to do anything but gasp for air.
Then Aeris had an idea.
A fun one.
She could train them together.
And every so often, she could make them fight each other.
If either of them asked why, she could just call it a progress check.
The more she thought about it, the better it sounded.
Once she made up her mind, she walked over and crouched beside them.
"You're Piccolo, right?" she asked. "Interested in training here with Goku?"
Piccolo said nothing.
Aeris didn't push.
She just waited.
While waiting, she "accidentally" let a little of her aura slip out.
Piccolo's whole body went rigid.
The pressure rolling off her was monstrous. Suddenly, he didn't even want to breathe too loudly, just in case this terrifying woman decided to kill him on the spot.
Still...
If someone like her was offering to train him, maybe that wasn't such a bad deal.
Judging from the ki she had just leaked, ten Piccolos working together probably still wouldn't be enough to beat her.
And from the look of things, he wasn't really losing anything by agreeing.
So he did.
The second Piccolo gave in, Aeris stood up and casually tossed a healing technique onto both him and Goku.
A few minutes later, the injuries they had taken from the fight were gone.
"All right," she said. "Come with me."
Once they were both more or less recovered, she flew back toward the gravity chamber.
Goku and Piccolo followed.
When they arrived, Aeris smiled brightly at them.
"Go on in. You'll both be living in there for quite a while."
Piccolo took one look at that smile and felt a bad feeling settle into his bones.
Goku, being Goku, noticed absolutely nothing. He was too busy staring at the strange equipment inside. None of it looked like anything he had ever trained with before.
Aeris pointed to several oddly designed outfits and gestured for them to put them on.
"Relax. They're just training clothes. Go change."
She was still smiling.
Piccolo disliked that smile more with every passing second.
Goku and Piccolo each picked up a set and immediately realized how heavy they were. Each one had to weigh at least five hundred pounds.
Still, it was manageable.
Only about twice as heavy as what they were already used to wearing.
After changing, the two of them stepped back out.
The way they were walking, slightly unsteady and awkward under the increased weight, made Aeris want to laugh.
At the moment, neither of them was reinforcing their body with ki. They were carrying the weight with raw physical strength alone. If they had used their energy, this amount wouldn't have meant much.
"All right, handsome boys," Aeris said cheerfully. "Time to warm up."
Then, without waiting for a response, she left the gravity chamber, stepped outside to the main power switch, and very thoughtfully shut the door behind her.
She wasn't going to go overboard right away.
At first, she only set it to one times gravity.
Inside, Goku and Piccolo were stretching when suddenly they both felt their bodies get heavier.
The next second, they slammed into the floor.
It took a huge amount of effort just to push themselves back up, and when they tried to draw on their usual power, they found they couldn't.
Aeris's voice came through a small speaker.
"Don't bother trying to use your energy. Those training suits are limiting that for you. For now, you'll be relying on your bodies alone. So go ahead, keep warming up. And enjoy it. Once the real training starts, it won't feel this easy."
A few minutes later, after watching them slowly regain the ability to stand and move, Aeris picked up the mic again.
"Looks like you're warmed up enough. Time to begin."
Then she cranked the gravity straight up to five times normal.
"What the..."
"Ah...!"
Neither of them even had time to react.
They crashed face-first into the floor all over again.
**Chapter 7: First Time in the Gravity Chamber**
Aeris had only been waiting a few minutes when Goku came back.
He hadn't brought any food.
Hadn't packed any supplies.
He had literally just changed into a training gi and called it a day.
Aeris stared at him.
"..."
Well, fine.
If he didn't bring food, then he didn't bring food. It wasn't her stomach that would be screaming later. Besides, she had only agreed to take him somewhere to train. How that training actually went was entirely up to her.
Even so, she still gave him a warning and suggested he bring something to eat.
Goku scratched his head and said, "If I get hungry, I'll just catch something. No need to make it complicated."
Aeris stared at him again.
Inside, she was already thinking, *Do you really think I'm going to leave you enough strength to go hunting? Don't be ridiculous. By the time I'm done with you, you may not even be able to crawl out of the gravity room, and you're talking about catching food?*
Still, whatever.
He had made the choice himself.
Not her problem.
Without saying anything else, Aeris glanced at him once, then took off toward the horizon.
She was heading for a gravity chamber she had set aside specifically for training.
Not the one inside her ship, though.
There was no way she was dismantling that one. This was just an auxiliary gravity chamber from one of her old ships, the detachable kind. And besides, this one only went up to a thousand times gravity.
At most, it was something she had once used as a stepping stone.
For Goku, though, it would be more than enough.
Whoosh.
Whoosh.
As they flew over a mountain valley, a figure in a purple gi looked up just in time to see Goku streak overhead.
His face turned green with anger.
Literally.
Of course, that was Piccolo.
But when his eyes landed on the woman flying ahead of Goku, he froze for a split second.
Not because she was beautiful.
Because he could feel her.
The energy she carried was even greater than Goku's.
Piccolo's stare was sharp enough that Aeris noticed it. She glanced down in the direction of that burning gaze and spotted him.
"Huh," she murmured under her breath. "Interesting. I didn't expect there to be a Namekian on Earth."
She was surprised, sure, but not enough to care all that much. She had run into Namekians before while wandering through space.
Not Namekians from Planet Namek itself, necessarily, but groups who had left their old world long ago in search of somewhere more livable.
What Aeris didn't know was that Piccolo heard every word.
Far above, Kami heard it too.
"A Namekian..." Kami murmured to himself from his seat. "So that's what I am. I knew I was different from everyone else..."
---
Half an hour later, Aeris arrived at the gravity chamber.
From the outside, it just looked like a small house.
But instead of going inside right away, she turned around and looked behind her.
"You've been following us this whole time. Are you going to show yourself or not?"
Goku turned too.
Then he blinked.
"Oh. It's Piccolo. What, you came to challenge me again?"
Goku said it casually, like this was the most normal thing in the world.
To him, Piccolo was both rival and companion, one of the few people who could keep pace with him on the path forward.
Piccolo, unlike Goku, was not that relaxed.
He kept his eyes fixed on Aeris, every muscle in his body tight with caution.
"So you brought in backup, Son Goku?" he said coldly. "Didn't think you'd go that far just to beat me. You actually found someone this strong."
Aeris looked at him in silence.
She really wanted to say that she couldn't care less about whatever rivalry the two of them had going on, but she kept her mouth shut.
The last thing she wanted was to turn into one of those people who answered every question just because someone asked.
Goku waved a hand.
"You mean Aeris? She's not backup. I asked her to train me. And if I'm beating you, I want to do it myself."
Piccolo clicked his tongue and let out a cold little huff.
Goku grinned.
"Come on, Piccolo. Let's have a match. You can see if I've gotten any better. If I haven't..." He smiled wider. "Then I guess you can kill me."
With that, Piccolo shot up into the sky.
Goku followed immediately.
Aeris stood below and watched as the two of them started fighting in midair.
To her, it looked like a playground scuffle.
Of course, that was only because her own strength was in an entirely different realm now.
Then she hopped up onto a tree branch, somehow produced a bucket of popcorn from nowhere, and settled in to enjoy the show.
"Left hook, right hook... ooh, nice one. That one looked personal."
She munched happily while watching them go at it.
Honestly, they were both putting on a great show.
Goku even started biting at one point.
It was beautiful.
In the end, though, neither of them won. They just fought themselves into exhaustion and crashed to the ground, breathing hard.
Aeris frowned.
"Come on, keep going," she muttered. "You can't just stop now. This kind of entertainment doesn't come around every day. Come on... I want carnage."
Sadly, her hopes were crushed.
Both men were sprawled on the ground like overworked stray dogs, too tired to do anything but gasp for air.
Then Aeris had an idea.
A fun one.
She could train them together.
And every so often, she could make them fight each other.
If either of them asked why, she could just call it a progress check.
The more she thought about it, the better it sounded.
Once she made up her mind, she walked over and crouched beside them.
"You're Piccolo, right?" she asked. "Interested in training here with Goku?"
Piccolo said nothing.
Aeris didn't push.
She just waited.
While waiting, she "accidentally" let a little of her aura slip out.
Piccolo's whole body went rigid.
The pressure rolling off her was monstrous. Suddenly, he didn't even want to breathe too loudly, just in case this terrifying woman decided to kill him on the spot.
Still...
If someone like her was offering to train him, maybe that wasn't such a bad deal.
Judging from the ki she had just leaked, ten Piccolos working together probably still wouldn't be enough to beat her.
And from the look of things, he wasn't really losing anything by agreeing.
So he did.
The second Piccolo gave in, Aeris stood up and casually tossed a healing technique onto both him and Goku.
A few minutes later, the injuries they had taken from the fight were gone.
"All right," she said. "Come with me."
Once they were both more or less recovered, she flew back toward the gravity chamber.
Goku and Piccolo followed.
When they arrived, Aeris smiled brightly at them.
"Go on in. You'll both be living in there for quite a while."
Piccolo took one look at that smile and felt a bad feeling settle into his bones.
Goku, being Goku, noticed absolutely nothing. He was too busy staring at the strange equipment inside. None of it looked like anything he had ever trained with before.
Aeris pointed to several oddly designed outfits and gestured for them to put them on.
"Relax. They're just training clothes. Go change."
She was still smiling.
Piccolo disliked that smile more with every passing second.
Goku and Piccolo each picked up a set and immediately realized how heavy they were. Each one had to weigh at least five hundred pounds.
Still, it was manageable.
Only about twice as heavy as what they were already used to wearing.
After changing, the two of them stepped back out.
The way they were walking, slightly unsteady and awkward under the increased weight, made Aeris want to laugh.
At the moment, neither of them was reinforcing their body with ki. They were carrying the weight with raw physical strength alone. If they had used their energy, this amount wouldn't have meant much.
"All right, handsome boys," Aeris said cheerfully. "Time to warm up."
Then, without waiting for a response, she left the gravity chamber, stepped outside to the main power switch, and very thoughtfully shut the door behind her.
She wasn't going to go overboard right away.
At first, she only set it to one times gravity.
Inside, Goku and Piccolo were stretching when suddenly they both felt their bodies get heavier.
The next second, they slammed into the floor.
It took a huge amount of effort just to push themselves back up, and when they tried to draw on their usual power, they found they couldn't.
Aeris's voice came through a small speaker.
"Don't bother trying to use your energy. Those training suits are limiting that for you. For now, you'll be relying on your bodies alone. So go ahead, keep warming up. And enjoy it. Once the real training starts, it won't feel this easy."
A few minutes later, after watching them slowly regain the ability to stand and move, Aeris picked up the mic again.
"Looks like you're warmed up enough. Time to begin."
Then she cranked the gravity straight up to five times normal.
"What the..."
"Ah...!"
Neither of them even had time to react.
They crashed face-first into the floor all over again.