Super Dragon Ball: Paradise Hysteria

Into the Grasslands

Piccolo was hovering in the middle of the spaceship, surrounded by a radiant aura that undulated around him with serene precision, like waves of a calm ocean. The pressure emanating from the meditating Namekian made his cape rustle and flap over his head, almost as if Piccolo had been meditating from the bottom of the sea.

Bardock stared at the readings on the display screen, seeing the distance between their spaceship and the location of the Ultimate Dragon Ball getting smaller and smaller until it was too short to ignore. The Saiyan turned his eyes down and glared at his clenched fist. Cell was not an opponent that they would defeat by just swinging fists around and yelling really loud. Moreover, that's not the kind of warrior Bardock wanted to be anymore.

To make up for the mistakes of his past, also to become the kind of man that deserved to protect that gentle, blue-haired soul, Bardock needed to change. He needed to find a different way to overcome his opponents, instead of just swinging his fists around and relying on his strength. As much as it made Bardock roll his eyes in frustration, he needed to become a smarter fighter, like Piccolo. Even if the two of them were rivals to some extent, ever since their first meeting when Bardock first landed on Earth, as much as it pained Bardock to admit, he had at least a few things to learn from Piccolo and the way he fought.

"We're getting close," Piccolo said before the undulating aura around him vanished and the Ultimate Namekian placed his feet down on the ground, flexing his rejuvenated and rested body in a pose that telegraphed that Piccolo was ready to challenge the whole universe if need be. "When we land, leave the fighting to me. You just focus on finding the Ultimate Dragon Ball. I need this fight."

"It's not that I object to being assigned the role of Earth's savior, but that's a bit of a sudden turn for you. Something's wrong?" Bardock wondered.

"Nothing's wrong. It's just that I'm the last Namekian warrior, the inheritor of the strength of all the Warrior Clan Namekians, and the one who carries on the legacy of Namekian fighters. It's occurred to me that the universe forgot what that meant, and I'm here to remind everyone what that means. To remind everyone of the weight of the Namekian fists," Piccolo hissed, surging with the exact opposite emotions that he radiated during his meditation session.

"Suit yourself, I'm not exactly itching to beat on some mini-Cell punks anyway," Bardock shrugged and pressed a regulator to his chest. The regulator burst open, wrapping Bardock in a tight and sterile, sealed spacesuit before activating the life support functions. Piccolo hesitantly followed the Saiyan's example. The two warriors approached the porthole and glared through it, eyeing a dark blue planetoid with raging cosmic storms, occasionally illuminated by raucous rumbles of ripping thunder and flashes of strident lightning bolts.

Positioning itself at the level where the spaceship peeked through the planet's atmosphere, the spaceship opened up, letting Bardock and Piccolo jump off and glide down. The two plunged through thick and turbulent clouds that looked bottomless, but proceeded to descend to ground level, suspecting that Cell wouldn't have wasted its time leaving the Ultimate Dragon Ball in some gas-giant world.

"The wind's not messing around," Bardock noted, looking down at man-sized blades of emerald grass shuffling and bending to the wind's tyrannical demands. From where the two fighters stood, to as far as their eyes could see, this entire world was nothing but a luscious grass field pelted by a warm rain and caressed by the rough yank of an endless cosmic storm. Despite the tough weather conditions, the grass on this planet has grown tough enough to withstand it, bending and waving alongside the storm, as opposed to fighting it and getting rooted out with the dirt it grew on.

"If you can't handle some rough weather, you could have stayed on the spaceship," Piccolo gnashed his teeth, pressing the sides of his space helmet and letting it open up and close shut inside the Namekian's space suit. "As expected, Cell wouldn't have wanted the toxic atmosphere to kill us before we have a chance to show it what we've got..."