"I didn't do anything wrong!"
In the sterile silence of the Time Chamber, Aira lay sprawled on the hard floor, utterly spent from Rhode's disciplinary pummeling. She stared up at the featureless white ceiling, her voice a hollow mix of frustration and defeat.
She had thought herself powerful enough. She'd destroyed the Planet Destruction Ball. She was going to defeat Frieza and save everyone. But in a single, brutal instant, the entire planet—her people, her history—had been erased into cosmic dust. All she'd managed was her own escape.
Rhode stood over her, silent. To him, the Saiyans' end was a karmic equation balancing itself. But he understood that for Aira, it was a raw, personal wound.
"It's all Frieza's fault." Rhode finally spoke, his voice flat.
"Yes," Aira muttered from the floor, the words a bitter agreement. "It's all his fault."
"Train harder," Rhode stated, a simple command. "Frieza is very strong." Seeing a flicker of grim resolve return to her eyes, he bent down, hauled her up, and deposited her unceremoniously into the healing pod within their stored spaceship.
Frieza was now a confirmed, top-tier threat. Engaging him further without overwhelming power was folly—it would only make him stronger. The tyrant's evil was matched only by his monstrous talent.
While Aira healed, Rhode sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed. He replayed the brief, explosive clash with Frieza in his mind—every movement, every surge of energy, every instinctive dodge. He dissected it, learned from it, internalizing the lessons of fighting a being whose power dwarfed his own.
Time lost meaning in the chamber. Eventually, Aira emerged from the pod, her body whole but her spirit still heavy. She walked over to the meditating Rhode.
"Something wrong?" Rhode's eyes opened, calm and assessing.
"Our race is gone. Our planet is dust," Aira said, her voice tight. The earlier grief was hardening into something sharper. "Why aren't you angry?"
Rhode met her gaze, his own unwavering. "Anger doesn't solve problems."
The simple truth hung in the air. Aira's angry retort died before it formed. She was silent for a long moment. "You're right," she finally conceded, the words tasting like ash. "Anger doesn't solve problems."
But it can make you stronger, Rhode thought privately.
Aira's mind, however, was already racing ahead, the memory of Frieza's planet-shattering power casting a long shadow. "Rhode," she said, her eyes narrowing with renewed, focused intensity. "You told me Frieza's power was 530,000. That wasn't 'a little' hidden. That was a universe of difference!"
"I also said he was hiding power on the scale of hundreds of millions," Rhode countered mildly, spreading his hands. "And you were there for all the preparations. The signs were clear."
"'A little'?" Aira hissed, her frustration boiling over. "This isn't 'a little'!"
But her anger had no target. She couldn't fight Rhode, and she couldn't yet fight Frieza. The impotence crystallized into a single, burning desire.
"I want to become stronger." The words were a vow, stripped of all her earlier arrogance.
"Well said." Rhode approved. Power was the only currency that mattered.
"Then teach me," Aira demanded, stepping closer. "Teach me how to use the Oozaru's power in my base form, like you do."
Rhode shook his head, a gesture of genuine limitation. "I've already taught you the method. The theory is the same. You can maintain consciousness in the Oozaru form. You can trigger the transformation without a moon. You've even begun to control the Oozaru's power. The final step—compressing that tenfold power back into your base state without transforming—is a matter of will, refinement, and practice. I can't do it for you."
The path was laid out, a brutal staircase of self-mastery: conscious Oozaru, then moonless transformation, then perfect Oozaru control, and finally, the ultimate compression of that titanic energy into the frame of a Saiyan. Aira had climbed the first few steps. The summit, where Rhode stood, awaited her relentless effort.
Mastering the gradual compression of the Oozaru's power back into the base form was the penultimate step, a monumental feat in itself. The ultimate technique—skipping the transformation entirely to channel that raw, multiplicative energy directly—demanded not just knowledge, but a transcendent level of control over one's own life force.
Rhode possessed unique advantages: a transmigrator's profound comprehension and a soul tempered by two lives. This allowed him to brute-force the technique through sheer understanding and will. He'd mapped the path.
Aira, however, had to walk it. She wasn't a natural-born anomaly like Broly, whose base form was his Oozaru power. For her, every step—conscious transformation, lunar independence, Oozaru mastery, power compression—was a sheer cliff face of discipline. She knew the theory. Rhode hadn't held back. But knowing the route and climbing it were worlds apart. Her control, while vastly improved, still couldn't match Rhode's surgical precision. Suppressing her battle power to double digits was her limit; Rhode's single-digit suppression remained a distant peak.
"Is that so…" Aira muttered, her brow furrowed in frustration. She couldn't blame Rhode. The blueprint was in her mind; the failing was in her execution.
The silence stretched, filled with the hum of the Time Chamber and her simmering discontent.
"Is there… any shortcut?" she finally asked, a hint of desperate hope in her voice.
"I don't know about shortcuts," Rhode said thoughtfully. "But I do know of a planet. Its inhabitants have developed the use of ki to a degree that makes Earth's martial arts look primitive. Their techniques are… miraculous. It might help you break through your current limits. At the very least, it could grant us new ways to grow."
His own power was now in the millions. With Super Instant Transmission as his safety net, the previously inaccessible Planet Yardrat was now a viable destination. Back when his power was a mere two thousand, it would have been a deathtrap. Now, it was a library.
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go!" Aira's eyes lit up, all earlier melancholy burned away by the promise of a new path to power.
Planet Yardrat had always been the next logical step in Rhode's itinerary. Seeing Aira's renewed drive, he saw no reason to delay.
Exiting the Time Chamber onto the barren moon, Rhode focused. The three-dimensional star map in his mind unfolded. He found the unique, serene energy signature of the peaceful Yardratians. With Aira gripping his arm, space folded around them.
Whoosh.
The featureless gray rock of the moon was replaced by a world of soft, rolling pink hills, strange floating flora, and an atmosphere thick with a gentle, pervasive ki. They stood on a grassy plain, the air alive with a tranquil energy far removed from the violence of Vegeta or the focused discipline of Earth. The journey to master the deeper mysteries of ki had begun.
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