"Okay, there's no way that 500,000 zeni was enough to buy this whole place." I muttered to myself as I walked through Tater's massive front yard.
"Who cares how he bought it? This place is awesome! I want one." Pepper decided, shrugging beside me.
"SSSCREEW YOUUU!" An ear-piercing shriek rang out, high pitched and full of unmitigated pain and suffering.
I cringed despite myself, the scream like a needle stabbing into my SSJP ears.
"She must be-"
"Let's go!" Lynn and Pepper raced toward the front door of Tater's mansion like twin cheetahs, driven by the screaming. With a quick look between us, Tommy, Zeck and I followed helplessly.
On the first knock of the door, it swung inward, revealing a very disheveled looking Tater dressed in his full replacement Saiyan armor, minus the pants for some reason. Something that looked like applesauce was splattered across his chest, like it'd been thrown at him, and there were dark rings around his eyes.
"Tarble, Zeck, you're smart, right?! Get in here and help! Come on, I need you!" Ignoring his siblings completely, a manic look in his eyes, Tater grabbed Zeck by the wrist and literally pulled him through the door, pulling the Celatian behind him like a kite fluttering in the wind, with enough force that it shattered the doorframe and part of the wall into splinters.
Not that Tater had the presence of mind to care.
"Come on, Tarble!" He shouted behind him, as he raced up the stairs, half-dragging, half-carrying the confused Zeck.
Pepper and Lynn followed closely behind, leaving Tommy standing alone in Tater's entrance hall, looking even more confused than Zeck did.
A few seconds later, another ear-piercing scream made Tommy clutch his ears. "DIE TAAAAATTTEER YOU - EAAAAHAAHHH!!!!!"BANG!
The scream was interrupted by Tater's body exploding through the wall above Tommy. Due to the way the entrance hall was set up, it was two stories high, so when Tater was thrown through the wall, he dropped a story and destroyed a table with a vase of flowers on it.
Not that Tater, dripping with water, a petal dangling from his hair, seemed to notice.
"What the?!"
"AGHHHHH!"
"Help her!" Tater shouted through the hole in the wall as he climbed up the stairs, unperturbed by anything but whatever was going on in that room upstairs.
"What?! I'm not a doctor! I don't know what to do here!" Zeck's voice sounded.
"And you think I do?! I've never delivered-"
"MOVE, YOU IDIOTS!" Lynn's voice shouted.
Suddenly, two very confused young men fell through the hole, landing lightly in the entrance hall.
Dumbfounded, they simply stared up at the hole for a moment, before giving each other a 'umm…?' look.
…
Over the next two hours, Tater was thrown through the wall around one hundred times. Twice every ten minutes or so. Every time it happened, there'd be a scream, a massive spike of energy coming from the second story, then a loud crash, or a thump, as Tater's body went flying. He'd always make his way back to the room immediately, to his credit.
Tommy, Zeck, and I weren't so stupid. We sat in the living room on the first floor and talked about the weather.
Cloudy, with a 90% chance of screaming and Tater.
"You know, he's gotten a lot stronger in the last couple of years." I commented after Tater was thrown into the entrance hall.
"Yeah, he's really calmed down." Zeck agreed, "That wife of his is pretty strong. I didn't realize she was that strong."
"She shouldn't be. She's never trained in combat, not a day in her life." I noted.
"SCREW YOU PIECE -"Thump!
We ignored that. Apparently, Pepper could help Lynn deal with that, but we definitely didn't have the right skillsets. The best thing the three of us could do was stay far away from the beast.
It'd been just over two years since the 20th World Martial Arts tournament.
Cell's growth was still on track. Though we hadn't found a way to accelerate the growth, we'd learned that Gero had used some rare species of cricket, or maybe grasshopper, as the basis of Cell's DNA. Apparently, this particular species had an interesting ability to quickly adapt to external factors. All Gero really did was supercharge and weaponize that.
And as for our strength, we'd all grown at least a little bit.
My power level in base form had gone up by nearly a million over the last two years. I was pretty sure that my staying in SSJP all the time was beginning to affect my base form, making me grow a bit as if I'd hit Saiyan puberty a bit soon. Ironically, my SSJP form had, conversely, gotten a bit leaner as the time passed.
As for the rest of my team, Zeck's power level had grown to around 12,000. A decent increase for a non-Saiyan, that made him capable of fighting against Tommy, though he still lost most of the time.
I was also starting to believe that, for some reason or other, Lynn and Pepper simply weren't capable of unlocking SSJP for some reason. Or maybe it was just prohibitively difficult, because Pepper had a pretty good handle on Ikari Mode, but no matter how much she worked at it, there was simply some sort of 'wall' preventing her from turning it into the safer SSJP. Lynn, despite her power level jumping all the way up to over 500,000, couldn't even use Ikari Mode at all.
Pepper had managed to master utilizing the Ikari for short, controlled bursts, at least.
And speaking of Pepper, she was just beginning to hit her Saiyan growth spurt this month. She'd already grown out of her clothes several times, and was beginning to look like a beautiful girl in her mid-to-late teens. She'd also stopped sleeping in my bed recently, some nights. I was pretty sure that was just hormones kicking in, but I was mildly grateful for it, sometimes.
And as for Tater, his power level had literally tripled. He still couldn't beat Pepper and I in real spars, but the growth was impressive, his power level reaching over 700,000 in his base state.
He still couldn't touch the 10-30 million range that Pepper and I were starting to get comfortable fighting in, but he was slowly getting there.
He'd also 'married' Cynthia according to her village's customs, bought a giant mansion in the middle of nowhere, near some forest or other, and settled down. This was the first time any of us had actually been at Tater's house. Normally, he was the one who came to the village. He didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about the idea of us visiting him.
But, since Cynthia was pregnant and nearing her due date, he'd practically begged. At the time, we hadn't thought much of it, but looking back, he clearly just wanted someone to help deliver his baby.
Because apparently, who needs hospitals when they have four teenagers with limited medical knowledge?
Luckily, Lynn had helped Zeck's mother, Dahlia, deliver on multiple occasions.
Still, he really should've called a real medical doctor.