"...Seriously, Tater? No." I declared as soon as the larger man landed on the crater-infested pile of rock that we used for training.
"Oh, come on, Tarble. He's a Saiyan-" Tater started, but I cut him off.
"Does Cynthia know that you brought Cynder to our training?" I shot the question at him. The fact that he didn't immediately respond proved my suspicion right, "Tater, I thought we agreed, I'm not training a six-month-old Saiyan. He has no business learning anything about fighting until he's at least three years old."
"But he's already learned to walk. Show them, Cynder. Go on, walk to Tarble." Tater set the little boy down on the ground.
Unsteadily, Cynder made his way over to me, stumbling as he grabbed on to my leg. Cute.
Pepper picked him up and held him in her arms. "Adorable. Yes you are! Yes you are!" She tapped the baby's nose. The baby responded with a giggle. All children loved Pepper, even if they hadn't even started growing teeth yet.
"Lynn?" I called.
"Yeah, I already messaged Cynthia. She's flying over now." Lynn replied without me even having to say anything.
Interestingly, as Cinder gestated in Cynthia's stomach, she found herself overflowing with the baby's excess ki. Noticing that, Tater had managed to teach his wife how to utilize her ki and fly over the latter half of her pregnancy period, despite the fact that she was completely lacking in talent.
Without Cynder's ki, her own aura was dreadfully low, a power level of around 50 or so, but it was enough dregs that she could still fly fast enough to cross the continent in about six hours or so, if she pushed it. She'd probably be over to pick Cynder up and yell at her husband sometime before we broke for supper.
In the meantime, we'd just have to drop the baby off in the village. Miss Dahlia would probably love to take care of the little guy.
"...Time to use our ultimate weapon! Cynder, ultimate weapon time! Do it!" Tater encouraged his son in Pepper's arms.
I watched in amusement as the boy looked around, clearly having no idea what was going on. "Aibuuu!" Cynder made a noise.
"Can you really say no to that face, Tarble?" Tater asked.
"Taarbleee…" Lynn warned, but it was already too late.
Critical hit. Tater's ultimate weapon was simply too effective. The child was too cute. Even if Lynn was capable of being strong in the face of such ultimate cuteness, Pepper and I were simply too weak.
I still refused to train a six-month-old, but there wasn't any harm in letting a baby boy spend time with his father.
Unfortunately, I miscalculated something.
"Oh-Ohh! You almost got it! Oh, look, the pretty light's coming your way again! Can you grab it? Oh, it's just out of reach. Stretch, stre-etch!"
BOOM! BABABABABABABABABANG!
Cynder's head snapped up as a new series of explosions lit up the sky above us. The other three were in an intense sparring session high above. Every once in a while, an errant ki attack or two would slam into the ground on the other side of the island, but never anywhere near us.
Between my all-nighter two days ago and my weak stance on Cynder's inclusion, apparently simply locking me out of my laboratory wasn't enough punishment, according to Lynn.
So, today, I was on babysitting duty. No training for me.
I generated another tiny ball of ki to grab the little boy's attention. This one, I tried to make look like a fish.
Unfortunately, it turned into something resembling an oval or something instead. The other four little balls of ki surrounding the boy, a bird, a dog, a star, and a half-moon, also got a bit fuzzier as my control mildly dimmed from the strain, since I wasn't used to this.
But adding another ki creation to the list did what I wanted. "That's right, grab the little fishy, Cynder. Grab the little fishy, I know you can do it!" The sloppy fish swam right by Cynder's arm. He tried to grab it, but it slipped right past the little boy's hand.
Rather than being deterred, though, the boy simply tried again with the moon. When it slipped away too, he clapped and made a noise, something between excitement and mild frustration. He would not give up. Not until he caught one of the elusive ki constructs.
That probably wasn't going to happen, though. But he was trying.
Already, I could tell that it was probably a good thing that the boy hadn't grown any teeth yet, because if he could talk, he'd probably be begging me to let him train like the people sending massive volleys of ki at each other high above our heads.
As if on demand: BOOOOOM!
"Oahhhhh!" Cynder's tail waved in amazement as three separate ki waves merged above, creating a shockwave that, even way down here, still carried enough force to throw full-grown men off of their feet.
Not that it affected us. Even as a baby, Cynder had a power level three times higher than my father's. In fact, in the six months since he'd been born, the kid's power level had shot up all the way to 33,500 or so. A shockwave that could probably be resisted by a particularly strong human was nothing to the baby. I didn't even need to protect him from it.
"Oh, no! The little fishie and his friends are flying away! You'd better catch them, Cynder!" To be a little mean, I made the ki constructs slowly float out of Cynder's grasp, just to see how he'd respond.
His face scrunched up as he climbed to his feet, trying to catch them and failing. They were slowly drifting just out of reach.
But just when it looked like he was about to cry, the boy's feet slowly lifted off from the ground.
Surprised, I cut off the ki flow to my ki constructs, which faded from view.
A few seconds later, Cynder lost concentration and fell. I caught him before he broke the rocks with his landing. "Okay, little Cyn… You're some kind of genetic miracle." I muttered under my breath.
"Eah?"
I pumped a bit of ki out of my finger, shaped it into a fish, and floated it by Cynder's hand. He tried to grab it.
"No unsupervised flying for you, kid." I scolded gently.