"Wake up, Kakarot. Destroy all life. Wake up, Kakarot. Destroy all life."
When we got to Mt. Paoz, following the satellite's tracker, Lynn and Pepper were forced to immediately put on sunglasses, for there was a fake moon being projected into the night sky by the round, white space pod below.
Half-melted against the pod's exterior were the remains of the satellite that we'd worked so hard on. It sent a surge of rage through me, but I tamped it down. Nothing could be done for it now, and a freak accident like that wasn't Kakarot's fault, anyway.
But seriously, what were the chances of that!? How the heck is it even possible?! What divine jackass decided 'Oh, hey, let's intervene and make Goku's space pod hit the one in a trillion shot and knock the satellite Tarble and the Hyperions worked so hard for right out of the sky!?' SERIOUSLY, COME ON!
…It honestly felt like true divine intervention. But part of me knew that was impossible. The gods of this reality weren't competent enough to do something this subtle.
But there was a slightly bigger problem afoot.
"...What do we do about that?" Lynn asked.
"Zeck, wanna fight it?" I gave Zeck the option. To be honest, the amount of ki in both of their bodies was roughly in the same league. In fact, Zeck had a pretty good advantage in pure amount of ki, though the Oozaru's physical strength would've possibly closed that gap. Zeck probably could have fought the giant ape.
But he shook his head no, still staring down at the wreckage of our satellite. His expression of an annoyance level bordering on disbelief probably perfectly matched my own.
"I'm not sure I can take that thing down without hurting it. It's flailing around too much." I snorted at Pepper's uncertain words. With her crazy talent, she was probably the most capable of judging the perfect amount of force, but I didn't push it.
Kakarot's greatest strength was the fact that he was one of the weakest, least naturally talented Saiyan babies ever born, but one of the most naturally gifted, savant-like combat geniuses of all time. He had all of the benefits that came from being a Saiyan, including a natural talent beyond that of any human, but also the control… depth, that came from being human.
But right now, he was just a really weak, but really big monkey, ripping trees out of the ground and throwing them in random directions, or slamming them back onto the ground as if they were simply giant toothpicks.
To be honest, I was around 50/50 split between waiting the three year old Saiyan out, letting him exhaust his strength and coming back later, or simply cutting his tail off and getting it over with, since it'd grow back anyway, but then I remembered something.
Kakarot only became Goku after losing his memory. Right now, even if we gave him over to Gohan to raise, if he didn't hit his head and lose his memory, Kakarot would still have all of the crap that they'd fed him during his three year incubation period.
Culture, basic elementary-school-level education, basic Saiyan biology and history, those types of things.
However much of it stuck differed from Saiyan to Saiyan. I'd remembered all of it, while Pepper, while originally retaining most of it, had forgotten pretty much everything except for basic reading, writing, and a bit of math over the last two years.
If I had to guess, Kakarot hadn't retained many of the general skills, but he'd probably kept everything that his brain decided was important.
In other words, everything that was directly related to combat. All the useless crap that I'd immediately shoved aside. Until Kakarot shoved it aside too, he'd never live up to his full potential.
He didn't need to struggle with that.
Kakarot would thank me for this, one day.
I stoppered my ki completely, dropping out of my flight, onto the limb of a nearby tree.
"...You're too stubborn to die from this, Kakarot. Still… I'm sorry." I murmured to myself, keeping perfect balance despite the limb swaying beneath me.
What happened next, happened so quickly that not even Pepper's ki-augmented senses could follow it, despite the fact that not a single lick of ki energy was involved.
One moment, I was standing on the branch, so far away from the rampaging Oozaru that he couldn't even see me, or the three flying directly above me, slightly above the treeline.
And the next moment, there was a loud BANG and I was falling out of the sky, far above the Oozaru's form, where he lay, his forehead bleeding profusely.
"Delaware Smash…" I muttered as I fluttered down to the ground like a leaf caught in the wind. My single, non-ki-enhanced attack, had propelled me so high up into the atmosphere that, by the time I made it to the ground, Kakarot had already transformed back into his base, humanoid form, a naked, three-year-old boy with a shallow, irregular breathing pattern and a bleeding forehead.
Picking him up in my arms, I scanned his head. Formless thoughts, but no dreams. Coma. Possible brain damage. At least, if he were human. For a Saiyan, at worst, he'd lose a few IQ points, wake up without even a single chance of slurring his words. Perks of Saiyan biology.
Poor kid… If he hadn't been a Saiyan, I wouldn't have dared to try this, but Saiyans didn't do permanent brain damage. While our healing factors weren't up to Namekian levels, Saiyans didn't get cancer, and permanent, debilitating brain damage wasn't a thing, either. We could lose IQ points, and memories, too, but anything worse, anything that interfered with daily life, and our bodies would naturally notice it and fix it, simply extending the coma a bit.
Saiyan biology really was insane.