Dragon Ball: Taro Saga Chapter 7 — Ki Control

Three days passed beneath the twin suns, and in that time the worst of Taro's wounds had settled into a dull, manageable ache instead of the constant stabbing heat that had kept him half-delirious after the fight. His ribs still complained every time he twisted too quickly, and his left arm remained stiff and swollen, but the bone had begun to knit back together and heal. He could flex his fingers again, even if it sent a quick pulse of discomfort up to his elbow.

He stood near the edge of the oasis clearing now, barefoot in the reddish sand, going through a slow sequence of movements meant to loosen the stiffness in his limbs. He leaned forward until his hamstrings pulled, rotated his shoulders as far as the splint would allow, then shifted his weight from foot to foot while watching how his balance shifted across the ground. He was careful with his torso, careful with any motion that might hurt his ribs again, but even with caution he could feel unmistakable improvement.

"Another day and I should be able to fight without feeling like my chest is folding in on itself," he murmured, rotating his neck until it gave a soft crack. "Not that fighting with one arm is ideal, but I'll take what I can get."

He finished his warm-up and walked back toward his shelter. Calling it a shelter felt generous, husk was more accurate. It had once been the forward half of a scouting ship, broken open like a tin can and half-buried in the sand when he first dug it out. Now, after three days of scavenging, rearranging, and reinforcing, it looked like a battered metal cocoon set comfortably into the ridge near the oasis. The exterior was dented and sun-faded, with scorch marks across one side and a missing viewport, but it was stable and safe enough for sleeping, and that was all that mattered.

He pushed through the makeshift curtain he had crafted from woven plant fibres and stepped into the pod interior. He had lined the inner hull with fragments of cloth and dried leaves, creating a bed on one side that was far softer than the stone alcove in the ravine. A cracked storage crate served as a table, covered in little scavenged tools and scraps of wiring he had painstakingly collected from the wreckages nearby. He even had a small fire pit outside the entrance, which was far enough from the oasis to avoid spooking wildlife, but close enough to reach at night if the temperature dropped.

Taro sat down on the edge of his bed and pulled one of the fruits from the bundle he'd gathered the previous day. The bright orange skin gave slightly under his fingers. He peeled it open and took a bite, juice running down the corner of his mouth. It was sweet, with a slightly earthy aftertaste, something between a mango and a pear, and compared to raw monster meat it was practically fine dining.

He washed it down with a long drink of fresh water from his filled skin, letting the cool liquid soothe his throat. He exhaled slowly afterward, relaxing into the softness beneath him. "This is... better than anything I ever had back on Earth," he said, almost laughing under his breath. "Quiet, sun, water, food, and nothing trying to boss me around and no deadlines to worry about. If the arm wasn't broken and the ribs weren't cracked, this would almost feel like a vacation."

He finished eating, wiped his hands on a scrap of cloth, and stepped back outside, stretching his legs as he walked. The suns were high, burning bright but warm in a way that soothed his skin. He bent his knees and leaped onto the roof of the pod, landing with a solid thump that made the metal ring beneath his feet. The view from the top was always nice to see. He took in a slow breath, feeling the gentle heat settle across his shoulders.

'I think I've reached the point where brute strength isn't enough. I can't keep flaring my Ki like a firework, I need to learn some techniques.'

He lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the pod roof, his good hand resting on his knee, and the splinted arm set carefully in his lap. His aura flickered faintly around him as he took in another deep breath, letting the energy settle in his chest.

"I need control," he said. "The real kind. Not just blasting power everywhere and raising my ki to full power every time."

He closed his eyes and exhaled.

'When I was Darren, I used to watch characters talk about Ki as if it was simple. Focus, feel it, push it, shape it. But that's easier said than done. Right now I'm somewhere between a toddler and a drunk in terms of precision.'

He adjusted his posture and let his breathing slow.

'There has to be a starting point....'

His fingers curled slightly as he focused inward, seeking that warm center where his Ki gathered.

"Let's do this..." he muttered before he attempted to properly control his Ki. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the energy within himself, tried to imagine it gathering.

The attempt fell apart instantly.

His thoughts wandered, first to his broken arm, then to the dull ache in his ribs, then to the memory of the creature's stinger piercing his side, then to the mine and the Saiyans, then to Kale and how little her outfit covered. He shifted slightly and cursed under his breath, resetting his posture.

"Focus, Taro," he muttered, inhaling again.

He reached for that warm center inside his chest, the same point he had felt during his first attempts at powering up, but instead of a stable glow he felt something wild and uncooperative, flickering in small bursts that refused to stay still. He tried to guide it downward toward his stomach, then out toward his limbs, but the moment he placed any intention on it, it scattered like loose sand slipping between fingers.

He growled in frustration and tried again.

Breath in.

Ki gathers.

Breath out.

Ki spreads.

At least, that was what he wanted to happen.

What really happened was that his Ki flickered, flared, sputtered out, and then surged unexpectedly in small bursts that made dust rise off the pod roof. Taro let out a long exhale and pinched the bridge of his nose. "This is harder than the show made it look," he said quietly. "Goku made this seem like breathing, damn battle genius." He assumed that this would be the same as directing it, like he did when he flared his ki and powered up, or fired those ki blasts, but it really wasn't. 

He reset his position again, straightened his spine, and pressed his good hand to the metal beneath. He breathed slowly and reached, once again, for the internal center that felt like a  stubborn knot he couldn't undo.

This time he didn't try to move it. He simply... listened and tried to feel.

Minutes dragged into longer minutes, the quiet settling deeper around him. The suns crept across the sky, shadows shifting along the ground. Sweat gathered at his brow and dripped down his face in slow trails. The urge to stop, to stretch, to lie down, to drink water, all came and went in waves, but he pushed them aside. The Ki inside him flickered, dimming and brightening in erratic pulses. Every time he tried to adjust it consciously, it recoiled. So he stopped forcing it. He breathed and let it settle. He breathed and let it move how it wanted. He breathed and let the silence grow around him.

Time blurred and hours passed.

After hours of sitting still on top of the pod, Taro's mind finally stopped jumping around long enough for him to actually feel what he had been trying to reach. It didn't hit him all at once the way powering up did. Instead, it showed itself in a faint pulse deep in his chest, like a muscle twitch he couldn't place. At first he thought it was just his heartbeat echoing into the soreness in his ribs, but when he focused the pulse returned, and it was something separate from his breathing.

There you are, he thought, adjusting his posture slightly. That's what Ki is supposed to feel like.

He had usually only felt it when he was flaring it or shooting it, not when it was calm like this. It was like a flow running through him, something he could follow if he didn't push too hard. He tried shifting it downward through his stomach, but it slipped away the moment he tried to control it outright. He reset himself and tried again, this time letting it move on its own. The Ki drifted toward his arms, then back toward his chest, then spread out through his legs in a soft wave that he didn't guide so much as observe.

Hours more passed. 

Slowly, he began to understand the difference between what he had been doing before and what real control required. Powering up was just dumping energy outward like opening a valve and letting it blast out in all directions. Real Ki control felt more like tightening and relaxing specific parts of a muscle, guiding parts of the flow without clenching the whole thing at once.

He tried to pull just a little of the Ki upward into his shoulders. It resisted, slipped away, then finally moved just a few centimeters before settling again. He tried pushing it downward toward his legs. The energy jumped, wobbled, then stabilized in a thin line through his thighs before drifting back.

It wasn't much. But it was the first controlled movement he had ever done.

A long breath slipped out of him from the hours of work.

"I actually... moved it," he muttered, surprised at how loud his voice sounded after so much silence.

He kept going. Another minute. Another slow breath. Another attempt. This time he tried spreading the Ki across his back, letting it settle evenly instead of bunching up around his core. The flow stuttered at first, but he held his focus and eventually the warmth smoothed out along his spine. It wasn't perfect, but it held. 

He opened his eyes as the last of the sunlight dipped behind the ridge, the sky turning a darker orange with shadows stretching long across the sand. He flexed his fingers slowly, feeling the faint thrum of Ki under his skin. For the first time since he'd arrived on Alecto, he didn't feel like he was wrestling with his power.

He felt like he was finally learning how to use Ki. 

...

A month passed, marked only by the movement of the suns and the slow growth of fresh scar tissue across Taro's ribs and arm, and during that time he pushed himself into a routine that never changed no matter how tired he was or how much his body hurt. Each morning he woke inside the ship husk, tightened the splint on his arm, washed the dried sweat from his skin at the oasis, and ate whatever fruit he had gathered the day before. Then he trained.

His body healed piece by piece. The ribs knitted until he could twist without losing his breath, and the bruises that had once covered half his torso faded until only faint lines remained. His left arm stayed weak longer than anything else, the bone taking time to set, but once it held together well enough he began working it every day, testing the limits of the new strength growing under the skin.

But most of his time went to Ki control.

He reached a point early on where he could feel the energy inside him without sitting still for hours, and from that day he tried to shape it in every direction he could, using slow breaths and long periods of focus to move it through his arms, legs, and back. Some attempts collapsed immediately, while others held for only a few seconds, but each failure taught him where the flow refused to go and how to redirect it. He trained in the mornings with his legs crossed on the pod roof, in the afternoons while pacing the clearing, and at night while lying on the ground with his eyes closed.

When his arm healed enough to move without the splint, he pushed his training harder. He tried forming thin lines of Ki across his palms without letting the energy flare outward. He tried pushing small amounts into his feet as he walked to see if he could lighten his steps. He tried compressing energy into his fists and keeping it from leaking. Sometimes his entire body shook from the strain and the Ki died on the spot, but the next day he tried again.

He also fought imaginary opponents in the clearing, practicing how to pull Ki into his limbs during motion, something that left him exhausted but helped him understand how to use it in real time instead of only when sitting still. He ran drills with bursts of energy at the end of each strike, testing how far he could extend a punch or kick before losing control. When he messed up, the energy blew out of his hands in flashes that scorched the ground, and he used those failures to correct his grip and balance the next day.

The oasis became his base, the ship husk his home, and the ridges around him his new training ground. On some days he hunted smaller creatures for meat, testing his Ki in quick bursts to avoid wasting strength. On others he climbed the rocks to gather fruit and to strengthen the arm that had been torn open. The suns rose and fell without him paying much attention to anything except whether the energy inside him was responding better than the day before.

By the end of the month, he could pull Ki to any part of his body with intention rather than luck. He still couldn't fly and he still couldn't fire anything larger than a small blast without losing control, but he could hold the energy in place and move it where he wanted. His movements no longer caused the Ki to scatter.

His body felt different as well. His posture changed. His balance changed. His reactions felt faster. His punches carried weight he didn't have before even without pulling energy into them. And when he stood alone in the clearing, breathing evenly after an hour of drills, he could feel the Ki resting inside him like a muscle he finally knew how to use.

...

By the time the second month ended, Taro had reached a point where he could feel the shape of his power inside his chest the moment he focused on it, and during one of his afternoon training sessions he made a discovery that forced him to stop mid-movement. He had been gathering Ki into his legs for a burst forward when he felt a subtle resistance underneath the energy, almost like a pressure point he hadn't been aware of before. When he pressed his focus down on it, the Ki inside him thinned, lowered, and pulled inward without leaking out across his body.

He blinked in surprise and tapped the scouter.

[61]

He exhaled and tried it again, pressing further this time, and the number dropped until his Ki felt barely present.

[12]

He stared at the device for a moment while the understanding clicked into place. "So that's how suppression works. You just pull everything under the surface."

He released the pressure and let his Ki rise naturally, the familiar warmth spreading through his limbs. The scouter climbed back up until it reached his true resting level, the level he had built over the last month of training and healing.

[255]

He allowed himself a brief smile at the sight of it.

"Two months ago I was barely above seventy. Now I'm at two-fifty-five. If there was a moon here right now I'd be tempted to blow it up," he said with a grin. 

He closed the scouter and set it aside on a rock before stepping into the center of the clearing behind his shelter. At the far end stood a tall ridge of red stone, a cliff face he had been eyeing for weeks while telling himself he would attempt a proper Ki wave.

Today felt right.

He planted his feet, curled his hands into open palms, and inhaled until his ribcage ached. He reached down into his core, gathered the Ki and pulled it upward toward his hands. The energy moved cleanly flowing into his arms without scattering. He brought his palms together and felt the pressure build between them. The air shifted around him.

He stepped forward and pushed his hands toward the cliff.

"HAAA!"

The energy blasted outward in a long wave, ripping across the clearing in a single line before slamming into the cliff with a sound like thunder breaking open. The entire wall cracked in a huge spider-web pattern. For a moment it stayed upright.

Then the whole section collapsed.

The cliff exploded into a rain of boulders, dust, and shattered rock that crashed down in a massive cascade. The ground shook beneath Taro's feet as the ridge disintegrated, sending clouds of sand rolling outward in heavy waves. When the noise faded and the dust began to settle, he lowered his arms slowly, breathing hard bur with a massive grin on his face.

He looked at the pulverised rock, then down at his hands.

He flexed his fingers once.

"That felt incredible," he said quietly. 

However he was brought out of his celebration when the scouter sitting on the rock behind him let out an urgent beep-beep-beep-beep much faster than the usual tone.

His stomach tightened.

He grabbed it and snapped it to his eye.

Two power levels.

Both closing in at incredible speed.

[1,204]

[1,330]

Taro's throat dried instantly.

"...shit."

There was only one way anything on Alecto could move that fast.

Flying.

And that meant. 

Saiyans.

And that meant. 

Overseers.

He didn't waste another second. He forced his Ki as low as it would go.

[255] → [31] → [14] → [2]

Good enough.

He tore across the clearing, sprinting into the shrubs and ducking behind the ridge of broken rock from the collapsed cliff. He crouched controlling his breath and trying to keep his heartbeat from shaking his ribs.

Throosh

A rush of wind tore across the sky.

Then two shadows appeared.

Taro pressed himself against the stone and held completely still.

Two Saiyans hovered above the clearing, armor glinting under the twin suns, tails coiled around their waists.

One who was tall and had a bald headsnapped his head to the side. "There. I definitely picked up a five-hundred-plus reading here just a minute ago."

The second one crossed his arms lazily. "You probably scanned one of those beasts again. You do that every time."

"I'm telling you, I'm not wrong this time," the taller one snapped. "The reading was clear."

"Yeah? Sure it was." The other yawned, drifting slightly higher. "Whatever. I'm not wasting my time on damn animals. I'm heading back."

He turned in the air, shot upward, and flew off in a streak of light.

The taller Saiyan watched him leave with an expression shifting between irritation and disbelief. "Unbelievable. Lazy bastard." He looked back over the clearing.

Taro felt a bead of sweat form on his brow and slide down his cheek.

'Don't look here. Don't look here. Don't look here.'

The Saiyan tapped the side of his scouter. "All right then... let's make sure nothing's hiding."

He raised his palm.

A ball of Ki flickered into existence, then another, then another.

Then dozens.

Taro's eyes widened in horror.

"Oh son of a—"

The Saiyan fired.

A storm of Ki blasts rained down across the clearing, tearing through rock, sand, shrubs, and everything else in sight. Explosions ripped through the oasis edge, sending geysers of dirt and debris flying. The shockwaves blew up the ships husk. Stones shattered. Smoke poured upward into thick clouds.

Taro bolted.

He sprinted out of the hiding crevice, dodging falling chunks of rock as explosions carved the ground behind him. One blast struck too close and the shockwave slammed into him like a hammer. He was thrown into the air, tumbling end over end above the burning sand. He twisted midair and managed to land on his feet, sliding backwards as dust and debris whipped past his face.

After cursing he looked up and saw the Saiyan overseer hovering above him through the settling smoke, lips curling into a savage grin.

"Found you."

(AN: So we have our boy Taro who has just gotten into his training arc and is now about to be jumped worse than Goku was when he fought android 19. lets see how he does in the fight. Hope you enjoyed.)