Ch. 50: Potential Problems (2)

I was worried about meeting Guru, because of a certain ability he possessed. The ability to unlock potential.

Potential unlocking wasn't as easy as it seemed. In order to do it, you needed the ability to modify one's soul. I'd learned this ability in a rather extreme way... by modifying Senzu beans.

Potential unlocking the way Guru did it meant guiding one's soul to the point where they were able to perfectly use the latent energies in their body, rather than having it all wasted. Goku was able to do it to himself in the anime (more or less) because he'd gone through the experience of having his soul swapped out with someone else's. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't exactly an expert in the field of soul manipulation. He never even realized what he'd done.

But I did. I'd mastered the ability more thoroughly than even the Elder Supreme Kai. I'd even managed to learn how to control my own spirit to the point where I could use ki without a physical body. That was the basis for my resurrection skill. Even outside of the Core, in a universe where every single soul that lost its physical body was naturally pulled to otherworld and given a halo, I could ignore that pull and resurrect myself. It defied the laws of nature.

But it meant that I didn't have any potential to spare. The moment that someone with access to the technique looked at me, they'd realize that something was wrong. It wasn't possible for a normal mortal to have their spirit as perfectly attuned to their current physical body as mine was. That meant that my soul had already been manipulated by someone far more skilled than Guru. There was no denying that. 

On top of that, I didn't know what other skills Guru had.

Namekians had a certain skill. Assimilation. It let dying Namekians pass their knowledge and experiences down to the younger generations. Guru had untold millennia of experiences and knowledge from assimilation inside his mind. A lot of the memories had disappeared with time, but the skills that those past Namekians had cultivated remained. Honestly, I had no clue how far Guru's skills extended when it came to the art of spirit control, but it was clear that he'd definitely blow my cover the moment that I got anywhere near him. So... I had to deal with that somehow...

I had tons of choices when it came to dealing with Guru... but the ones that didn't involve mind control or blatantly killing him off were few and far between. So I did what anyone would do when they were stuck without any ideas.

'Shay. Tell the Core Girls to figure out how to deal with Guru.' I left it all to Shay and my girls. They knew the problem. They'd find a solution that didn't mess up Guru's mind or the canon.

...

"Gohan, don't mess with her concentration. Hanna's been meditating for five days straight." Piccolo chided.

"It's really amazing. She's been able to acclimate to two huge shifts in gravity without breaking concentration at all!" Krillin muttered, amazed. It was easy for me... since I wasn't actually concentrating. I was hungry, though. The drawback for completely ignoring everyone and everything was the fact that I couldn't join them for breaks without pretending to break my concentration. At which point there was a good chance that they'd rope me into training with them again and I wouldn't be able to say no. Then, they'd get too strong...

"Guys, get up here! I can finally see Namek!" Bulma's voice blared from the speakers. She'd been using them fairly often ever since the ship took off. After all, it was her only way of speaking to us without going down here and getting flattened like a pancake under the pressure.

It seemed to really annoy her that all of the time she was spending on this ship, she was spending alone on the top decks, but nowhere as much as it annoyed me that she spent all of this time around the strongest fighters in the world and never bothered to learn how to use ki. Even her daughter, Bulla, in the far-off alternate version of the future that held the events of Dragon Ball GT, never learned to use ki at all.

Not that it was certain that Bulla would be born at all, now that I existed.

We turned off the gravity machine before going back up to look at Namek alongside Bulma.

"I can't believe it! That trip took forever! I was starting to think we'd never make it, but here we are! It's Namek!" Bulma declared. Clearly, she was a little drunk.

"Namek..." Piccolo breathed, looking on at the planet. It didn't seem to be very lush. The grass was a different shade of green than Earth's, and the oceans were more plentiful. It seemed to be a planet mainly composed of small islands separated by rivers and lakes. It had its own charm, though.

Checking the planet for a certain Ki signature, I found everyone that I was looking for fairly easily. Guru's ki was aged. It was clear that he was dying. The only reason that he'd managed to hang on this long was because of how insanely powerful he'd been at his peak. Now that that power was declining, he was on course to be gone in a few weeks. Once Frieza finished collecting the Dragon Balls, those few weeks would likely disappear like a gust of wind. 

Frieza was on the planet, too. He was accompanied by Zarbon and Dodoria, just like in the canon. They were going towards a village right now, and I could sense the divine energy that made up three dragon balls in their grips. Canon was still on track. I wanted to find Dende as well... but I had no clue what his ki felt like, since it wasn't exactly different from all of the other Namekians still alive on the planet... yet.

Stretching my awareness beyond the planet, I looked for Vegeta and Nappa's energies in the vast reaches of space. I found them fairly quickly. They'd land shortly after we did. Following their trail fairly closely was an unfamiliar energy signature that was probably a little stronger than Nappa... maybe. That must have been Cui.

All the pieces of the puzzle seemed to be set. Now, we had a week before dad and Raditz got here. I just hoped that my girls were ready to deal with Guru.