"My child. Compared to the other trials, yours is simple." Pepper eyed the old man in front of her with obvious disbelief, but the elderly Namekian forged onward as if he hadn't noticed at all.
He led Pepper to a grove of trees just outside the village's Ajissa plantation.
Likely the village's previous Ajissa plantation.
"All you need to do is grab a fruit from that tree, and the Dragon Ball is yours."
Pepper eyed him again, sensing the hidden trap there. This planet was full of wily old bastards who'd make you waste weeks or months at a time just to comprehend the beauty of nature. Pepper still remembered Tarble repeatedly telling her "It's going to be the toughest test of character and will that you've ever undergone, Pep."
"What's the catch? Is that fruit going to eat me?" She wondered aloud, making the old Namekian laugh.
"Absolutely not, I promise! The fruit itself is perfectly safe, healthy and non-toxic. Us Namekians may not need to eat, but we do add them into our diet every once in a while, simply for the taste."
She eyed him distrustingly, but walked up to the nearest fruit anyways, and gave it a sharp tug. It came free of the tree immediately, but Pepper couldn't help but eye it in disgust as it suddenly turned moldy and rancid in her hand. "What is this?!" She couldn't help but shriek, throwing the black, disgusting fruit to the ground and repeatedly wiping her hands clean of it, "That was the most disgusting thing I've ever touched! And I've punched Tommy in the face on a really hot day!"
"Oh, yes. Did I forget to tell you? The fruit rots instantly upon coming into contact with chaotic or evil energy. In order to grab one, you will need to make your aura flow like water."
"E-EVIL GREEN MEN!" Even as Pepper complained about that, her aura was surging just beneath her skin, almost completely out of her control.
Now, Pepper was a Saiyan, trained in ki by the unexpectedly knowledgeable Tarble. She did ki-mobilization exercises with Tarble for over an hour straight every single morning without fail, training her ki to follow her body and will with greater and greater ease, but frankly, none of the team came even close to Tarble in the way of ki control. Even after training almost exclusively in controlling her newfound abilities over the course of the last month, Pepper still couldn't control her ki effortlessly like Tarble could, unless she was moving.
Honestly, Pepper's ki was almost as turbulent as Tarble's was when he used that 'Ikari' thing that he could barely control. And it was like this constantly. For her, flying was an all or nothing deal, the same with ki blasts, and her attacks had little to no moderation, either. Either her energy surged, or it just disappeared. No in between. Tater, Lynn, and Tommy weren't much different in that regard.
But now, Pepper looked at the fruit tree in front of her with annoyance. The trial required her to grab the fruit. She found herself wondering if Tarble could do it. Probably so, none of their kis had even a touch of the evil that she'd felt in the other Saiyans and Dodoria, likely since they'd never tried to kill anyone. With how calm he could get his energy, he could probably juggle the fruits.
Pepper decided to try a second time. This time, she suppressed her energy as much as possible, so that it didn't escape her body at all. This was one of the first things Tarble had taught them, and the entire team could do it with fair ease.
As expected, the fruit rotted, the moment her hand touched it, coming into contact with her uncontrolled energy through the tiny bit that raged through her skin passively. She tossed the damn thing to the ground in irritation, which made her lose her pointless little display of control anyway.
"It seems like you will take quite a while. Simply take the fruit to the village when you finally become capable of doing so."
"Hmmm…" Pepper groaned back at the crafty old Namekian with a shrug, not taking her eyes off of the prize in front of her as she crossed her arms, trying to think of new ways to go about this. Some way of touching the fruit without actually touching it?
In the end, there were no shortcuts. She managed to get the fruit into a wooden bowl using a stick, but when she made it back to the village, the elder asked her to hand it to him. She couldn't, so she failed and was forced to trudge back to the tree in annoyance.
"...Dammit. I'm gonna lose to Tarble." Something about that really irritated the seven-year-old girl. "I won't lose to the others, too!"
Pepper was the second strongest in the group, but that was only thanks to her body's physique adapting after the beating that Dodoria had given her, which meant that it really didn't fully count, in her eyes. Just because she was the second strongest after Tarble nowadays, didn't exactly mean that she was also second best, and that bothered the girl to no end, especially since she was also the second youngest behind Tarble. The triplets had just turned ten, Tarble had just turned six, and she was just a year and a half older than Tarble.
She had more to prove than anyone else. Pepper would not be the last to pass this stupid trial!