The next few days were probably the only relaxing ones I had the entire time I was in that dimension.  After Krillin took to me to Master Roshi’s house in the far east, he gave me hordes of books and data pads to read about the history of the Z warriors and such.

            I tried to absorb as much of the information as I could, the pieces about Goku and the rest, about the battle against Vegeta, about the super saiyans, about both versions of Trunks (the past and the present versions), about Gohan and his classic battle with Cell, about Goku being turned back into a child by Pilaf, and then finally absorbing the dragon balls into himself.  I don’t think I ever read so much in my life, but within five days I’d digested the entire history of the dragon balls and began to understand some very important concepts.

            Like who we were going to fight for one.  The aliens coming after the dragon balls were called the Caprians, but really there were too many races to name within the ranks of the oncoming enemy.  I didn’t want to even think about how powerful their leader, General Yoorabit was; he’d been seen destroying solar systems for fun before heading towards earth.  Three years didn’t seem like enough time to prepare for the looming assault.  Ah, thanks to the miracle of deep space posts and satellite images, we even knew how the assault was coming, in three waves.

            The first wave would arrive in a little under three years, and consisted of mostly grunts and supplies.  Their job would be to soften up the defences of the planet, and set up base camps for the second wave.  The second leg of the attack would consist of the bulk of the army.  It would have the more powerful elite troops, and would probably be doing most of the fighting.  It would arrive two months after the first wave.  The last wave was really just General Yoorabit and his elite cadre of guards.

            Yoorabit himself was Caprian, but most of his cronies were of different species.  Almost all of them were mutants, genetically engineered or enhanced to be better fighters.  The universe had never seen such a large number of super powered fighters; no doubt we had our work cut out for us.

            Ah, the we aspect of things.  There was a we, that much was sure.  Six humans (including me), one Namek, and one saiyan.  That’s right a saiyan.  Of all my allies’ stories, Phoenix’s was the most intriguing.

            He was originally a Tyran, a race of small, weak, psionically-gifted and brilliant people.  They all had the ability to alter people’s thoughts, read minds, and even move small objects with their mind.  Phoenix’s real name was Younthat Katat, and was one of the most powerful Tyranese in the universe.  His amazing psychic and psionic powers allowed him to bring Tyran up to a universal economic power through shrewd negotiations and dealings.  He was on his way to Earth to see if there was any way he could aid the Earth warriors against the incoming threat, when he passed through the rubble of the old planet Vegeta, the home of the saiyan race.

            It’s said in old tales that when a warrior dies, a piece of his soul goes back home.  Most believe this is just a legend, but Phoenix proved them all wrong.  Katat’s ship crashed into some of the debris of the planet, crippling both Katat and his ship.  Holding onto life with a very thing thread, he used his powerful mind to attract what he thought was remnant ki energy in an attempt to replenish his strength enough to repair his ship.  In actuality though, he garnered the spirits of all those dead saiyans.  Something happened when all those spectres attached themselves to Katat.  He recalls a brilliant flash, and then fire covering his body before slipping into unconsciousness.

            Spectators from the nearby planet of Kafatar back his story up, saying that a bright flare torched the sky from far away.  When Katat came to, he had changed completely.  That of a saiyans had replaced his body, right down to his genetic make-up.  He claimed to have been reborn (hence the name Phoenix), and that he had the memories of all those saiyans, whether it was true or not was known only to him, but when he spoke, his words resembled those of a sage, so many assumed he told the truth.

            Me, I hadn’t met him yet, so I didn’t want to make any rash judgements, but his story did intrigue me.  The rest of the group went like this:  Karnai, the namek warrior Krillin had originally gone to see (it was believed he was a direct descendant of Piccolo, but no one knows for sure even though he seemed to look a lot like him), Arsenia, a human who was raised in the streets of the western capitol, Gideon, a bulky black skinned human, Yukio, a lanky and hard-nosed human, and Kennard another human who was the training partner of Yukio.  Then there was Nikita, the only woman recruited by Krillin and Kami; she wasn’t as strong as the rest of them, but was nearly four years younger than any of them.  She was 15 like me, and a bit closer to my power level, near 1000.  She had a bit of a Son Gohan aspect to her though, and when she was pissed, she could quadruple her power in a second.

            None of them had trained under anyone except Kami their whole lives.  I was sort of amazed when I found out about this.  None of them had walked down the path Goku had, training under Master Roshi first.  I didn’t understand this; during my time with him he’d treated me like a king.  He’d given me tons of room in which to recover in, a room with a beautiful view of the ocean and sky, and food more delicious than anything I’d ever had before.  For five days, he gave me anything I wanted, with no questions, and I felt kind of sorry for him, since all his friends had long since passed away from old age (which I found out he was immune to).  It was after I had dissected and re-organized the history of the planet in my head did I finally go up to Master Roshi on the evening of the fifth day.  It was 8:30, I remember looking at the clock on the wall and sweating.

            There were butterflies in my stomach; he hadn’t spoken more than two words to me in a row since coming to his house.  I took in a deep breath as I stepped in-between him and the T.V.  Looking back, that may not have been the best move.  As I blocked off his vision, he looked up at me and squinted through his sunglasses.  Then he simply asked me “Yes?”

            I was forced to take another deep breath, I’d faced death on a platter before, and I was afraid of this rickety old man, didn’t know where that came from.  “I’d like to train under you Master Roshi.” I paused as an un-timely lump formed in my throat.  I cleared it with a cough and continued, “If it isn’t too much of a bother.”

            He looked me up and down, and then slowly, with the creaking of a thousand bones, got up from the sofa, and nodded.  He then walked off to his left, to the open space beside the sofa.  I followed him a few steps, and then he stopped, turned to me, and told me flatly.  “Do five hundred push-up’s, five hundred squats, and a thousand sit-ups.”

            Direct, but no doubt effective, I got down to it.  I did the sit-ups first, breezing through them fairly quickly, then moved onto the squats, then after about 20 minutes, got to the push-ups.  The whole time, Roshi had sat down on a chair and read some sort of a magazine. Afterwards, I was slightly worse for wear, but couldn’t complain, it was a bit more than I was used to doing every morning, but not all that hard.  When I was done, Roshi looked up from his reading material and calmly asked, “Done?”

            I was breathing heavily and instead of answering just nodded.  He got up from the chair and moved to a row of turtle shells that stood on the chair.  He examined each of them carefully, moving from one to the next, each progressively bigger, before finally “settling” on one of the larger ones.  He picked it from the rack on the wall, and then turned to me and flung it at me.  I caught it easily, but was amazed at its weight.   For something of its size, it must’ve weighed 40 pounds.  He then said, “Go ahead, and put it on.”

            I turned it around, and found straps around the hollow side of the shell.  Assuming correctly, I slung the shell over my back, and attached three straps together over my torso, one over my waist, one under my pectorals, and one by my neck.  It felt kind of odd to be carrying an extra forty pounds on my back, but it wasn’t hard or anything.  The shell reached from the base of my neck to right above my butt.  Roshi then lazily went back to his chair, picked up his magazine, and then said, “Now do it again.”

            I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I figured he meant the exercises.  I started over again, doing them in the same order.  It was much harder to do the second time; the extra weight posed a great problem.  Un-like last time, I had trouble in the home stretch.  The last fifth of all the exercises was torture, my legs, arms, chest, and abs all burned by the time I was finished, I hadn’t felt like that for a while, it’d been nearly two weeks since I’d trained all out.

            I finished though, even if it was almost 45 minutes later.  He’d finished the magazine, and was almost done another one by the time I was finished.  I was sweating profusely, and was gasping for oxygen, and he just calmly asked, “Done?” again.

            I nodded, and swallowed saliva down a dry throat.  Roshi got up again and went on to look over his shells again, moved to the absolute biggest one and picked it up then hurled it at me.  I barely managed to catch it, not because of its weight, but because my arms were already burning up.  This much bigger one must’ve weighed 65 or 70 pounds.  I took off the old shell and place it carefully off to the side before attaching the new shell securely on my back.  This one weighed me down, hell it was almost half my weight, and I found it hard to keep my balance after already having my legs burning.

            He then said the one sentence I’d feared.  “Now do it again.” I obliged, and set down to do the exercises.  Through about halfway of each of the exercises, I slowed to a crawl’s pace, barely getting through the motions.  The last hundred push-ups were the hardest; sweat dripped down my forehead and created a pool in the carpet underneath me.  I didn’t know if I would finish, but somehow I did.

            On the last push-up I collapsed into a heap on the floor.  It must’ve been nearly an hour and a half since I started the third set, and air eluded me at that moment, but that didn’t stop me from trying to capture some anyways.  My entire body burned, the muscles refusing to give any more.  I could sense Roshi peeking out at me from behind another magazine, and asked, “Done?”

            I managed to answer in a hoarse voice “Yes.”

            “Good. Then that shell shall be your training shell.  Whenever you aren’t sleeping, you’ll be wearing that shell on your back.”  I nodded, and managed to get up from the now sweat-stunk ground without using my arms, then climbed slowly up the stairs to my bed.  It was almost 11 o’clock and I had a feeling I was going to need as much sleep as I could get.  “I’ll tell Krillin you’ve decided to train under me for the time being.”  I just nodded, and continued climbing up the stairs, trudging along.  Boy, was this going to be fun.