"Haah…" I sighed. She'd actually managed to do it. All four of my teammates stood in front of me, ready for travel. Sure, Pepper looked like a gift-wrapped, pretty pink, purple, and blue package, and sure, Tater looked like his face had just gone a dozen rounds with a meat grinder, but they were all ready to go. I hadn't expected her to be able to pull it off.
Still, I was a man of my word. "...Fine. You guys ready to go?" I asked, picking up a small bag I'd grabbed, just in case Pepper somehow managed to actually work up the courage to apologize to Lynn.
"Kay!"
"No-Ouch!" Tater almost declined, but Pepper stepped on his foot with a ki-enhanced stomp that probably would've put most anyone else on the planet in the hospital with several missing toes. "..." He scowled, but shut his mouth.
"You don't want to see the rest of Earth, Tater?" I asked.
I'd thought that he'd get better after his trial on Namek, but Tater still had a bad habit of being stubborn and refusing others' advice. I could practically feel the bottleneck that he was about to smash his face into, if he didn't grow up pretty soon.
"I don't see the point. I can't sense a single power on this entire damn planet worth dealing with at all!" Tater retorted, making me roll my eyes. Tater was reliable when it came to direct combat, but everything else… That irritating pride of his was only getting worse, the further away the memories of what it'd turned the Saiyans of Planet Vegeta into got.
But there wasn't any point in correcting him verbally. If he kept single-mindedly training, he'd have to figure something out for himself eventually.
"Tater, you can be really stupid at times, you know… Fine. Come on. Let's go."
I floated up into the air, followed by my team, but once we got high enough that the village was just a speck on the ground, I hesitated, considering my options on where to take them.
The options were limited. Without a detailed map, I was forced to rely on my energy sensing for locations. I'd spoken with Hyperion about overcoming that little problem by sending a satellite into space to gather that kind of information, but the timeline there was at least six months to a year before it was feasible. We simply didn't have the manpower, and Hyperion refused my offer to go somehow find a place where I could buy robots to assist.
But my energy sensing abilities were actually pretty good. I couldn't sense the entire planet from our little village, but I could get a pretty accurate picture of certain locations, after a day or so of meditating, when we;d first arrived.
For example, I had a pretty good idea where the six largest cities on the planet were, Central, North, South, East, West, and Orange (which would later be renamed Satan) cities. Those were the six largest population centers on the planet, and fairly easy to pinpoint.
Then, I knew where the strongest people on the planet were (besides Korin and Kami, who were probably hiding their energies, having certainly picked up on our own energy signatures upon our appearance and begun immediately defecating rectangular building materials made of clay or mortar), but only the ones that really stood out. Specifically, the people whose power levels exceeded everyone else's by more than around 20-50 points.
In this age, with Piccolo, Kami, Korin, Mr. Popo, Tien, Chiaotzu, and other random high-level martial artists who didn't exist yet, out of the picture, that meant that I could sense Master Roshi on his island nearby, the slightly weaker Grandpa Gohan somewhere in the mountains to the north of Roshi, Mercenary Tao somewhere to the south-west, in South City for some reason, and his brother Shen in the mountains to the far north. There was also something weird that stood out in the far west, but I was pretty sure that it wasn't quite human, making me suspect that was the vicinity of Baba's palace.
In the end, I made my decision by the process of elimination. With Tao at South City, the options were narrowed down quite a bit. The energy signature that I'd decided was Gohan's was fairly close to Orange City, Capsule Corp was based in West City, Central City was really just a giant palace belonging to King Furry, and I was pretty sure that North City was close to the place that Gero eventually based himself in the future. I was stuck between visiting Gohan and going to East City.
To be honest, I wouldn't have minded visiting Gohan. I was planning to check in on the guy from time to time over the next couple years, since I didn't know exactly when Frieza would destroy planet Vegeta.
But visiting him for the first time with my entire team in tow?
Pass.
So, East City it was.
…
East City was a port city, pretty much a straight shot north from our island. Even holding back to match Tommy's speed, we made it there in less than an hour, landing near the warehouse district. I made sure to remind everyone to wrap their tails around their waists before we actually went and began touring the city proper. Even though weird animal mutations were a common thing in this world, I didn't like the idea of showing our tails off.
"...So many people… And they're all so weak!" Pepper exclaimed as we wandered our way through the shopping district, accidentally knocking some guy off of his skateboard as she moved.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing, kid!? Watch where you're going!"
"Then don't ride your skateboard in the streets, idiot!" I replied, standing between the angry skater and Pepper defensively.
"Tch. Whatever, it's not worth it." The skater guy got back on his board and skated away, ignoring my advice.
"Idiots… Same on any planet…" I muttered, "Come on, guys."