As if he'd never had my foot slam into him, never been beaten into unconsciousness and back, Tater rushed at me with everything he had.
Over the last year and a half, Tater had done more training than any of us. In fact, overwork was no small part of why he'd slammed his face into the bottleneck that he was staring at as hard as he had.
Despite his physical strength not growing much, and his technique falling far behind the likes of Pepper and I, who focused more on truly understanding what we were trying to learn rather than simply brute forcing our way to more strength, there was one area in which Tater truly believed that he had an advantage.
He'd spent more hours, more blood, sweat, and tears mastering the various techniques he'd created than any of us. The Pinball technique was only the first in a long line of techniques at Tater's disposal, all original, all extremely refined and powerful.
And he attempted to use them all on me now.
"Catapult Crasher!" He blasted at me, feet-first, with everything he had once again, just like he had with the Pinball technique, though this time, his foot was positioned for a textbook perfect ax kick, which I naturally dodged effortlessly, only to be engulfed in a spray of water as his foot slammed into the water beneath me. "Catapult Bomber!" A giant energy blast shot at me from my blind spot while I was distracted by the water's spray.
"HAA!" With a shout, I released my aura at Tater's Catapult Bomber without hesitation, forcing it to explode before it even reached me. But Tater wasn't done yet.
"CATAPULT…" This time, I could feel Tater's energy concentrating into his hands. An energy wave. A powerful one, too.
I decided to respond with one of my own. I drew energy through my right arm to my palm, around my shoulder, my other hand at my waist. "Re-"
"DRILL!"
My hand traced a line across my chest, fast as lightning, leaving a brilliant trail of flickering light. "-galia." As soon as my hands met, the energy attempted to begin pooling in my left hand, and I thrust it forward quickly, a wave of brilliant light erupting from my converged palms as I pointed the wave at Tater's.
Both waves erupted at the same time. My half-assed one that I'd made on the fly, and still wasn't putting much energy in out of fear of seriously injuring the boy who, even after everything, I still considered to be my friend, and the well-prepared one that was essentially Tater's final gambit.
They met, and for a second, it looked like time had stopped. The world froze, each drop of water from the waves below seeming to pause in place with perfect, incredible clarity, as the two energy waves clashed above the ocean.
Then, my Regalia Wave began swallowing up Tater's Catapult Drill seemingly without a single ounce of resistance, overpowering it like a hot knife cutting through butter.
Honestly, I was barely using any energy on my Regalia Wave. I was trying to match the energy output to around two thirds of what Tater was pouring into his Catapult Drill, but my Regalia continued to swallow it seemingly without effort.
"NO! I WON'T LET IT! I WILL WIN!" And like that, the dam opened. I could feel the bottleneck that Tater'd been stuck at begin to break, as desperate energy poured out from his body into his Catapult Drill, which began to grow in size as Tater's mind and body strained in unison, breaking through to new levels of power as it's sheer size began swallowing up my entire wave.
Only to explode in a dazzling display of light, completely scattered as I forced my Regalia Wave to expand and explode in the air, interrupting the Catapult Drill's larger beam's energy flow with it's overwhelming, comparatively unstoppable might.
But stopping the energy wave struggle didn't do anything to extinguish the deep-seated emotions fueling Tater's growth as his pure desperation smashed through whatever mental and physical block he'd been slamming his face into over and over for this last year. Even without the Catapult Drill funneling all of the energy, Tater's aura had grown to the point where it was warping the air around him in a visible way, a very real manifestation of the desperate plea of a scared, confused young man screaming into a void for the strength that his entire upbringing told him would make him worth something.
I could understand that… But it wouldn't make him happy.
So, when Tater came at me, punching, kicking, biting, scratching, and clawing for all he was worth in a rabid display of Saiyan power far beyond what he'd been capable at the battle's beginning, and still ever-climbing, I finally chose to end the fight.
One well-placed chop to the back of the neck, and the older Saiyan was out like a light.
No matter how much one grew in the heat of battle, some gaps couldn't be overcome so easily.
Before Tater's body could fall into the ocean, I grabbed him by the back of the collar of the Frieza Force armor that he tended to wear pretty much all day, every day, flexing my muscles as I wordlessly transformed back into my Super Saiyan Primal form, making my physical body suddenly explode in size to the point where I could comfortably carry the heavyset boy with one arm without it looking too awkward.
Then, I flew off without another word.
…
The three most unpopulated spots on this version of Earth were, in order from least populated up, Yanzubit Heights in the far northwest, the Diablo Desert in the central continent, and a large stretch of barren land to the far west. I suspected that Fortuneteller Baba's 'out of the way' abode was somewhere in the third place, but I didn't really care enough to check.
Flying over to the deepest depths of the third option, I unceremoniously dumped Tater's unconscious, spent body in the middle of a desert and left.
Choosing the most populous of the three options wasn't a mercy for Tater.
If I'd left him in Yanzubit, as he was now, Tater wouldn't have lasted a day. He'd gone so far past his limits screaming into the hurricane that was my power during our fight that he'd probably end up getting a pretty good Zenkai boost by the time he woke up. He wouldn't be in much of a shape to cross an entire ocean, and the howling winds and biting cold of that random, hellish island in the far north… I didn't want him dead, I wanted him to struggle.
And, while, the moment that I'd realized that Tater couldn't grow while living in the village with the rest of us anymore, I'd mostly decided to give up on my reluctance for altering of the timeline, I still didn't want to drop Tater in the same desert as Yamcha would eventually end up.
After all, it was right between the known locations of at least five of the seven Dragon Balls. Probably all seven actually, if my guesses on the likely locations of the final two were correct.
A bit too volatile a location for my liking. So, I dropped him off in the butt end of nowhere, much further west than even West City itself.
He'd have a tough time, but as tough as he was, Tater would survive.
I only hoped that he'd learn something as he did