I Give In

At five fifty-five in the morning, the corridor on the ship's lower deck was so quiet you could hear people breathing.

Raditz stood outside the Gravity Chamber, his body taut with tension.

He'd spent the night soaking in the greenish restorative fluid of the medical pod. His dislocated joints and broken ribs had long since healed. The Saiyan ability to bounce back from the brink of death was downright freakish, but certainly useful.

But he wasn't happy in the slightest. Staring at the shut metal door, Raditz's palms were slick with cold sweat. When he'd worked for Frieza, he'd feared losing his head. Now, he was genuinely terrified of the younger brother inside: Son Goku.

Right on six, the door opened.

Son Goku wore a black training uniform and sat cross-legged on the floor. The Gravity Chamber settings hadn't been adjusted; it was still at Earth's standard gravity.

"Close the door behind you." Son Goku didn't open his eyes.

Raditz took a deep breath and steeled himself as he walked in. The door shut behind him, and the lock clanged like a hammer against his heart.

"Kakarot, you said yesterday you'd teach me how to get stronger." Raditz clenched his fists, his eyes alight with anticipation. "Where do we start? Teach me that move where you cross through space? Or a more powerful ki blast?"

"Dream on!"

Son Goku opened his eyes, rose, and walked to the control panel. He pushed the gravity lever to 50G.

Bam!

Raditz felt his organs plunge downward. His knees buckled, and he slammed down onto one knee. The fiftyfold gravity bore down on him, crushing his muscles and bones until they creaked. It was nearly the limit of what he could endure while staying conscious. Even drawing a deep breath sent a stabbing pain through his lungs, which wheezed like bellows.

"Before you learn how to kill, learn how to walk."

Son Goku turned around. Under fifty times Earth's gravity, he moved as lightly as if he were strolling through a garden.

"You used to work for Frieza, and you relied entirely on power levels when you fought. You let your ki run wild and crushed the weak. Against someone stronger, you had no answer except to wait for the full moon and transform into a Great Ape."

He walked up to Raditz and poked his solid pectoral muscle.

"Your ki's like a busted furnace that leaks air from every crack. When you throw a punch, most of your strength turns into flashy effects and wasted energy. Starting today, forget everything you used to do."

Son Goku stepped back a couple of paces, set his feet slightly apart, and took the most ordinary Turtle School fighting stance.

"Hit me! When you can make me take even half a step back under fifty times gravity, we'll move on to the next exercise."

Staring at his younger brother, who seemed to be leaving openings everywhere, Raditz gritted his teeth and slowly straightened his back against the crushing weight. Without a word, he poured what strength he had left into his legs and charged like a crazed rhino, his fist—big as a sandbag—flying straight for Son Goku's face.

Boom!

A dull thud echoed through the Gravity Chamber.

Raditz didn't see how the other man blocked his attack. He only felt his earth-shaking punch hit something like cotton, its force redirected in an instant. Then his wrist was caught, and an irresistible, deft twist traveled up his arm, flipping him into the air.

Raditz flew back even faster than he'd charged forward, crashing squarely into the reinforced alloy wall.

Clutching his stomach, he slid to the floor, in so much pain he was about to puke up bile.

"Too rough." Son Goku shook his head. "You have no idea which muscles are generating your force. You're just flailing. Get up and keep going!"

Raditz wiped the sour liquid from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot with frustration as he lunged forward again.

For the next two months, on the lower deck of the Water Drop Ship as it raced back to Earth, dull thuds of colliding muscles and Raditz's ever-changing screams rang out like clockwork every day.

It wasn't until the middle of the second month that the one-sided beatdown finally came to an end.

Inside the Gravity Chamber, Raditz sat cross-legged on the floor. His posture was obedient enough, but the scene was anything but peaceful.

Drip... drip...

Beads of sweat as big as soybeans rolled off Raditz's chin and hammered the floor. His eyes were shut tight, and his face twitched violently with pain. A layer of blazing red energy raged around him like a wild horse, desperately trying to burst through his skin. The air around him sizzled from the heat.

"Try to draw your ki back in."

Son Goku sat on a chair not far away, his chin propped on one hand. His voice was as emotionless as a strict exam proctor's. "Ki is life energy, not explosives. The harder you try to hold it down like a pressure cooker, the worse it'll be when it rebounds. It could turn your insides to mush."

"I... can't control it!"

Raditz was grinding his back teeth to dust. It felt like his veins were full of magma instead of blood!

Earth's martial arts prized a calm mind, but Saiyans were born with violence and a thirst for battle etched into their genes. When he'd worked for the Frieza Force, he could simply unleash his ki and blow up half a planet. Now Kakarot was telling him to gather that frenzied energy back into his body, thread by thread, as though kneading dough!

What was the difference between that and asking a Saiyan Great Ape to sit down and thread a needle? It was torture!

Crack...

Several spiderweb-like cracks spread across the reinforced alloy floor beneath Raditz, split apart by the energy leaking from him.

"Clear your mind." Son Goku stood and walked over to him. "Feel the path this energy takes through your bloodstream."

Raditz sucked in a deep breath and forced all his focus inward. With a muffled series of cracks from his bones, he finally drew the wild red aura back inside him like the tide receding.

The price was obvious: he lay sprawled on the floor, panting heavily as though he'd just been dragged out of the water.

For a Saiyan to become a Super Saiyan, he needed not only enough battle power but also a large number of S-Cells. A peaceful state of mind was the perfect environment for them to grow.

Raditz certainly couldn't achieve a mind as still as water yet, but if he could...

Son Goku began to scheme.

In the original story, Son Goku had spent his whole life competing with Vegeta, pushing himself to the limit. He didn't want that kind of life. Wouldn't it be better to spend that time enjoying himself with Bulma?

Still, Raditz had turned over a new leaf and was dutifully training...

Son Goku glanced at his brother sprawled on the floor, and his eyes lit up! Why not let him take his place as Vegeta's lifelong rival from the original story?

They were both Saiyan survivors who'd suffered under Frieza, and Raditz's pride was every bit as strong as Vegeta's. He could leave all that rivalry with the haughty prince to his big brother, then sit back safely behind the scenes and watch the show. It was the perfect plan.

At the thought, Son Goku looked at Raditz with a hint of amusement.

At noon that day, in the ship's cafeteria, Bulma sat at the table, watching the long-haired man across from her stuff synthetic meat patties into his mouth. She found the sight rather curious.

Raditz was drenched in sweat, and even the hand holding his fork trembled. It wasn't from exhaustion; he was trying to control his ki.

He had to focus all his attention on keeping the turbulent energy inside him under control. Forcing his ki to stay in his body left him with an oddly tense air. The two-meter-tall musclebound man carefully held his fork as he cut into his meat patty. The sight was downright comical.

Still, the training was clearly working.

Before, when Bulma got close to him, he'd felt like a powder keg about to explode, and his presence had made her skin crawl. Now, all his ki was locked inside his body, without a trace escaping.

"What are you looking at?" Raditz noticed her watching. Chewing his meat, he struggled to lower his voice, afraid that a loud sound might rattle the water glass.

"To see if you're about to burst!"

Bulma rolled her eyes and casually pushed a glass of sickly green nutrient drink toward him. "Drink it! If you're training that hard, you need to keep up your nutrition. I don't want to have to drag you to the medical pod every day. That restorative fluid is expensive."

Raditz stared at the unnaturally colored liquid, his facial muscles twitching.

He instinctively wanted to refuse, but when he looked up, he met Bulma's expression: drink it, or no more food. His tense muscles stiffened for a moment, but in the end he picked up the glass and obediently downed it in one gulp.

When it came to his little sister-in-law, he truly had no fight left in him.