"RAAAHHHH!" Tommy stumbled as the maze literally shook with the force of the Oozaru's roar, but he didn't dare let that stop him as he rounded the next corner in a dead sprint.
"Dammit!" Only to run into yet another dead end, a route blocked off in all three directions by those stupid gray walls that mocked the ten year old Saiyan.
"ROOOOOOOAAAARR!"
"Dammit!" Tommy muttered in repeat. He could feel the roars getting closer and closer. By now, they were right upon him. He didn't have time to back up and try another way.
But he didn't have a choice.
But just as Tommy backed up, he saw something that sent chills down his spine.
A flash of blue down the corridor.
Suddenly, the entire maze just felt different. Even more oppressive, somehow, if that were possible. Some sort of invisible force just slammed down on Tommy's shoulders, and he bolted back into another passage.
But the flash of blue wouldn't disappear. The roars were gone, but Tommy couldn't help but find himself running faster than ever before, a new burst of speed every time he saw the color blue in the corner of his eye.
Then, it wasn't in the corner of his eye. The figure that Tommy had been avidly trying to deny was casually walking toward him, just rounding the corner in front of him, an evil smirk on its face that he'd never seen on them before.
If Tommy were to have a nightmare, he'd never have expected the main antagonist of that nightmare to be a slender little boy under three feet tall, with spiky black hair. But seeing Tarble with that uncharacteristic smirk on his face sent a primal level of terror through the young Saiyan.
Tommy's mind barely even registered his turning on his heel and sprinting down the hallways aimlessly with all of his might, desperate to get away from that evil look in Tarble's eye, as it mocked him.
"Weak, little Tommy… To-ommy!" The voice came from a corridor behind Tommy to his left, so he slipped down the first passage to his right.
"Wimping out? Yeah, that's all you're good for, huh?" This time, it was to his right, so Tommy slipped down the first passage to his left.
"Weakest of the bunch, no skills at all… Such a shame." This time, it came from behind him. Tommy didn't have a choice but to keep going forward.
On and on it went, all of Tommy's insecurities and fears thrown right into his face as the false Tarble led him deeper and deeper into the labyrinth… until…
"Is that honestly what you think Tarble thinks, bro?" Suddenly, Tommy stumbled into a large open space, the Tarble ghost nowhere to be seen, replaced by a tall teen girl in purple Frieza Force armor.
"Lynn, what is this?" Lynn just replied by staring at the symbol-covered wall and giving a shrug.
"What do you think it is? This is your mind, after all, little Tom."
"We're the same age, you know."
"But you're like two feet shorter." She replied instantly. Honestly, it was closer to one foot, and that was only because Saiyan girls went through an extra growth spurt, making them look like preteens between the ages of 8-9 and 15-16. Since Pepper hadn't quite gotten to that point yet, Lynn was notably taller than any of them.
…
Tommy chatted with the fake Lynn for a short while as he stared at the wall. Lynn had a bit of information, but she couldn't help him with anything pertaining to the actual test. According to her, there were two phases to the labyrinth. This was the entrance to the second phase, and there'd be a second puzzle at the end of the second phase.
Still, though, what kind of puzzle was this?
The wall was covered with symbols, but most of them were incomplete, half-drawn or less. It wasn't any language that Tommy knew… Or was it?!
Suddenly driven by inspiration, Tommy began rearranging and flipping the symbols around, even discarding a handful as he arranged the wall to exactly how he saw it could be in his mind.
"OPEN" After placing the last piece of the word, Tommy stepped back to see if he'd gotten it right.
"I guess it's possible that the wall'll open if you tell it to, but really, Tommy?" Fake Lynn looked at her brother, clearly disappointed.
"Guess not." Tommy muttered to himself, looking at the part of the wall covered with discarded symbols. "How the heck do I open this thing…?" He wondered aloud.
"Tom, do you remember back in the gutter? How we survived?" Fake Lynn asked.
Of course Tommy remembered, being kicked out of their own home, forced to live in an old, condemned room in the worst part of the city, because their mother told them that she'd kill them if they wasted her hard-earned resources taking up space in her little-used home.
Back then, Tater and Lynn had been the breadwinners. They got by with Lynn providing a distraction, Tater doing the actual stealing, and Tommy as the backup, providing a secondary distraction in case Tater got made.
"Remember the time with the streamers?" She asked.
Tommy couldn't help but laugh as he reminisced. That'd been one of their greatest operations. The plan had been for Tater to steal an entire fruit cart, but the target in question had looked the wrong way at the last second, catching sight of Tater running down the street with the cart. Naturally, there'd been a chase, and naturally, Tater had been at a massive disadvantage, so Tommy had stepped in.
Luckily, Frieza had been on-planet that week, and he basically required them to hold a festival when he actually bothered to announce his presence beforehand. Tommy had dropped a mesh of streamers, glitter, signboards, and confetti on the cart-owner, giving Tater a few precious seconds to vanish down a side-alley with the cart. Since the cart-owner was a Saiyan who'd lost the chase, once Tater got away, the cart and the fruits inside were theirs by right. Survival of the fittest.
They'd eaten well for the next whole week. For Saiyans, that was pretty incredible.