Convinced

At 5:55 in the morning, the corridor on the ship's lowest deck was so quiet that even breathing could be heard.

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

After soaking overnight in the green repair fluid of the medical pod, his dislocated joints and broken ribs had long since healed. A Saiyan's freakish constitution—where they could practically come back to life as long as they were not completely dead—was indeed useful.

But he could not feel happy at all right now. Staring at the tightly shut metal door before him, Raditz's palms were drenched in cold sweat. Back when he followed Frieza, he feared losing his head; now, he was genuinely terrified of the younger brother named Son Goku behind that door.

At exactly six, the door opened.

Son Goku, dressed in a black training uniform, sat cross-legged on the floor. The Gravity Chamber settings had not been adjusted and remained at Earth standard.

"Close the door after you come in." Son Goku did not open his eyes.

Raditz took a deep breath and walked in despite himself. The door shut behind him, and the sound of the lock engaging struck his chest like a hammer.

"Kakarot, you said yesterday that you'd teach me how to become stronger." Raditz clenched his fists, his eyes burning. "Where do we start? Will you teach me that move that crosses space? Or a more powerful energy wave?"

"You wish!"

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

Bang!

Raditz felt his organs sink sharply downward. His legs buckled, and he crashed to one knee on the floor. Fifty times gravity bore down on him, making every muscle and bone in his body creak under the pressure. This was nearly the limit of what he could endure while remaining conscious. Even taking a deep breath made his lungs ache as if they were bellows.

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

Son Goku turned around. Under fifty times gravity, his steps were as light as if he were strolling through a backyard.

"When you worked under Frieza, you relied entirely on brute-forcing battle power numbers in a fight. You opened your energy wide open, crushed weaker opponents outright, and when you met someone stronger, you had no other option besides waiting for a full moon and turning into a Great Ape."

He walked up to Raditz and poked his solid chest muscle with a finger.

"Your energy is like a broken furnace leaking from every crack. When you throw a punch, most of the power turns into flashy sound-and-light effects and leaking energy. Starting today, throw away everything you used to do."

Son Goku stepped back two paces, spread his feet slightly, and assumed the most ordinary Turtle School opening stance.

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

Looking at his seemingly wide-open younger brother, Raditz gritted his teeth and slowly straightened his back against the crushing pressure. Without another word, he poured all his remaining strength into his legs and charged like a crazed rhinoceros, his sandbag-sized fist flying straight at Son Goku's face.

Boom!

A dull impact echoed through the Gravity Chamber.

Raditz did not see how his opponent had received the attack. He only felt his punch, heavy enough to topple mountains, land on cotton, its force redirected away. Then his wrist tightened, and an irresistible, ingenious force twisted up his arm and flung his entire body away.

Raditz flew back even faster than he had charged in, smashing solidly into the special alloy wall.

Clutching his stomach, he slid down to the floor, hurting so badly he nearly spat up bile.

"Too crude." Son Goku shook his head. "You don't even know which muscles in your body are exerting force. You're just blindly throwing strength around. Get up and keep going!"

Raditz wiped the sour fluid from the corner of his mouth, his eyes red with frustration, and lunged at him again.

Over the next two months, on the lowest deck of the Water Drop Ship speeding back toward Earth, the dull thuds of muscles colliding could be heard on schedule every day, along with Raditz's ever-changing variety of screams.

It was not until the middle of the second month that the one-sided beating finally came to an end.

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

Drip... drip...

Beads of sweat the size of beans pounded down from Raditz's chin onto the floor. His eyes were shut tight, his cheeks twitching violently with pain. The savage crimson aura around his body was like a wild horse that had broken free of the reins, desperately trying to burst through his skin, scorching the surrounding air until it sizzled.

"Try pulling your energy back in."

Son Goku sat in a chair nearby, propping up his chin with one hand. His tone was like that of a merciless exam proctor. "Energy is life force, not explosives. The more you suppress it like you're holding down a pressure cooker, the more violently it'll rebound once it hits bottom. It'll turn your internal organs to mush."

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

Raditz nearly crushed his molars. He felt as though lava, not blood, was flowing through his veins!

Earth's martial arts emphasized a calm mind, but violence and love of battle were carved into Saiyan genes. Back when he worked for the Frieza Force, all he had to do was release his energy and blast half a planet flat. Yet now Kakarot wanted him to pull this restless energy back into his body bit by bit, like kneading dough, and pour it into his flesh!

What was the difference between asking a Saiyan who had turned into a Great Ape to sit down and thread a needle? It was simply torture!

Crack...

The special alloy floor beneath Raditz split open with several spiderweb-like cracks from the energy leaking out of him.

"Settle your mind." Son Goku stood and walked over to him. "Feel how this power flows through your blood."

Raditz sucked in a huge breath and forcibly pressed all his mental focus into the depths of his body. Accompanied by a series of muffled cracks from his bones, the wild red glow around his body finally receded like the tide, sucked back in by sheer force.

The price was obvious as well. He collapsed on the floor like someone freshly dragged out of water, gasping heavily.

For a Saiyan to transform into a Super Saiyan, aside from meeting the required battle power, the most crucial condition was having a large number of S-Cells within the body. And a tranquil state of mind was the perfect breeding ground for S-Cells.

Raditz naturally could not achieve a mind as still as water yet, but if he could...

Son Goku began calculating in his heart.

In the original story, Son Goku spent his entire life competing and desperately trying to outdo Vegeta. He had no desire to live that kind of life. With time like that, wouldn't it be better to live comfortably with Bulma?

Still, since Raditz had turned over a new leaf and was training so obediently...

Son Goku looked at his eldest brother sprawled on the ground, and his eyes lit up! Then he could take his place from the original story and be Vegeta's lifelong archenemy!

They were both surviving Saiyans who had suffered under Frieza. Raditz had no less pride than Vegeta. He could dump all that drama of butting heads with the tsundere prince onto this bargain-bin big brother, while he himself sat securely behind the scenes as a big shot and watched the show. The arrangement was simply perfect.

At that thought, the way Son Goku looked at Raditz changed, revealing a hint of amusement.

At noon that day, in the spaceship cafeteria.

Bulma sat at the dining table, watching the long-haired man across from her stuff synthetic steak into his mouth in huge bites. She found it rather curious.

Raditz's forehead was covered in sweat, and even the hand holding his fork was trembling. It was not from exhaustion, though—he was trying to control his energy.

He had to focus all his attention on controlling the violent energy within his body. Forcibly compressing his energy inside himself left his entire body with a strange, taut tension. A two-meter-tall muscular brute delicately pinching a fork as he cut his steak made for quite a comical sight.

Still, this special training had produced immediate results.

Whenever Bulma had approached him before, she had always felt as though he were a powder keg about to explode, prickling uncomfortably against her senses. Now, all of his energy had been forcibly locked inside his body, with not even a trace leaking out.

"What are you looking at?" Raditz noticed her gaze. Chewing his meat, he struggled to lower his voice, terrified that speaking too loudly might shatter the water glass.

"Seeing whether you're about to burst from holding it in!"

Bulma rolled her eyes and casually pushed a cup of green nutritional fluid toward him. "Drink it! If you're training that hard, you need to keep up your nutrition. I don't want to be dragging you out of the medical bay every day. Recovery fluid is expensive."

Raditz stared at the strangely colored liquid, the muscles in his face twitching.

His first instinct was to refuse, but when he looked up, he met Bulma's expression that clearly said he would be cut off from food if he did not drink it. His tense muscles stiffened for a moment. In the end, he picked up the cup and obediently downed it in one gulp.

When it came to this sister-in-law, he truly had no temper left at all.