Growing Pains

I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that I might be an impulsive idiot.

How did I discover this?

Because I couldn't follow my own stupid plan when distracted by a shiny robot and a combat high!

I was supposed to find Lois Lane, ask her how to find her boyfriend, and then leave. I wasn't supposed to kidnap her off of any army base because everyone told me to!

Kidnappings are serious business! I wasn't ready to kidnap someone yet! I didn't have a slow-moving, easily disabled deathtrap or a cage suspended over a lava pit or a bomb with a giant count down timer or anything! Heck, I didn't even have a warehouse to put her in! Lois was going to think I was a total amateur when all I could do was ask her not to wander off because humans were stupidly fragile (usually) and I couldn't just tie her up and leave her in my cave. That was just asking her to get eaten by a bear because I wasn't going to babysit her the whole time.

"Hey! How far are you taking me?! We've been flying for hours!"

Oh, yeah. And then there was Lois herself.

I really hoped I would figure out what to do with her soon.

-o-

Lois looked around the place I had made my home and I could tell she wasn't impressed. Yeah, the space pod in the back was probably pretty cool but that didn't really matter when everything else looked like it would have fit in on an episode of the Flintstones.

But it wasn't like I really needed furniture and I was durable enough that rocks weren't all that uncomfortable.

"So you've been living here since you landed on Earth?" Lois asked, politely ignoring how unprepared I was having a human here.

"More or less. Sorry if it's not what you were expecting. I'm still getting a hang of the whole 'villain' thing and haven't really focused on living spaces or lairs." At least that was the story I was going to stick to. Peer pressured into kidnapping Superman's girlfriend? Who, me? No, I was just a novice that didn't have a convenient underground base just yet.

Of course that still meant I was stuck with Lois for a while.

"I'm guessing you don't exactly have some master plan if you just brought me to your home." The reporter accurately guessed. "And I'm guessing you aren't going to let me leave until Superman shows up?"

"I have a plan!" I quickly interjected. "It's…" I trailed off.

Was there any point in futilely trying to pretend I knew what I was doing?

Well, my pride. But that was going to take a beating anyway because it was obvious I wasn't fooling Lois.

"Okay, yeah I don't have a plan." I admitted. "But it's not my fault okay?! I wasn't expecting everyone to assume I was kidnapping you!"

"What else were they going to do after you broke into a military base only to focus on me?" Lois's eye was twitching. Yeah, she was annoyed.

"Not tell me to kidnap you?" I suggested but that only made the twitching worse and decided to switch tracks. "Um, do you want something to drink? Or maybe a snack as an apology? I can't let you go until Superman shows up and I don't have somewhere to put you but I have a bunch of stuff from the last time I went out for food…"

Lois stared at me for a few seconds before eventually sighing and making her way over to the stone chair I had carved out of a boulder I liked. "Do you have a cushion for this or something?" She waved a hand at it.

And while I didn't, I did keep several pillows and blankets in the Attack Ball she could use instead.

"Well, if I'm stuck here, do you mind giving an interview?" Lois asked once she was comfortable. "At least that way I'll get something out of this clusterffffff– mess."

Lois took out her notepad and a pen while I thought about it. There wasn't much of a reason to do an interview but at the same time there wasn't much of one not to. And it would help pass the time while we waited.

"Sure, what do you want to know?"

"Why don't we start off easy with the Saiyan race. What is your culture like?"

Oh, that was an easy one. "We're the greatest warrior race in the galaxy!"

"Really? What would the Thanagarians say about that?"

"Who cares? Yeah they're strong, but a Saiyan is always getting stronger. We don't need fancy Nth metal weapons to do awesome things, we just use our fists."

"So Saiyans don't use tools often?"

"I mean some of them do?" I replied, thinking of Trunks and his sword or Goku and his Power Pole. "But most of the time we're stronger than whatever you make the weapon out of. And the strongest of us can blow up a planet with just our Ki, so why bother with a weapon?"

"That's…not…exactly what I had in mind." Lois said hesitantly. "I meant machines or vehicles… Can you really blow up a planet by yourself?!"

Oh. "I mean we use spaceships, obviously." I said, looking at my Attack Ball. "And I think we have some other stuff on Vegeta to help carry things? Not really sure about that cause I wasn't allowed to explore a lot before I got a new mission. And for the planet thing, not yet but I'm training really hard! I'll get there one day!"

"...I changed my mind, I need a drink." Lois said, and then patiently waited while I got her a bottled water. "You mentioned Vegeta. Is that the name of your homeworld?"

I nodded. "Yeah, it's also the name of our King. And the prince actually." I think. I knew we had a king thanks to Old Me's memories, but Jerk Dad never mentioned his name or if he had a son. But it's not like Lois had a way to check, right? And unless another Saiyan came after me for some reason, no one was going to correct me.

"A dynasty name then?" Lois mused. "Is he a good king at least?"

"No idea!" I chirped. "I'm only a low class and I was constantly sent on missions to prove my strength. I don't think I've spent even a full Earth year on Vegeta. And most of that was either being stuck in a healing pod or fighting my dad."

"Great. The child alien invader is an abuse victim. Just perfect." Lois muttered, though I don't think I was supposed to hear that part. "What's a low class?"

"It's how the warriors are split out. You have Low Class, which is most of the normal warriors. Mid Class which is above that, usually that's the leaders and stuff. And then you have the Saiyan Elite. Those guys are usually born at a certain power level and are like, twenty times stronger than a low class." It was a bit more complicated than that, but talking about classes was boring. It also didn't help that I was planning on leaving the Elite Class in the dust eventually, which meant I really didn't bother remembering the differences between them all that much.

That wasn't the end of it though.

Lois was doing a really good job of asking about all aspects of Saiyan society, and if she had an expert she could have written a book about the ins and outs of our culture. Too bad all she had was me.

I did my best, but in the end it was just about as effective as asking a normal middle schooler how America worked, who the senators of each state were, and what was the government's five year plan. My best explanation about how the Saiyan government worked boiled down to; we have a king, the strongest do what they want, and everyone else falls in line.

My explanation of our economy was actually worse. Did Saiyans have an economy? Was it just a barter system? Were we actually enslaved by the Trade Organization? I had no idea.

I also made sure to keep the Trade Organization out of our conversation.

Not out of any loyalty to them or anything. I just didn't want to answer a billion more questions about an organization I knew nothing about and may or may not exist. I had found the manual for the Attack Ball's radio and set it to receive only and had gotten nothing on the listed Trade Organization frequencies. It could just mean I was out of range or the radio was broken, it could also mean whatever caused me to crash on Earth had sent me to another dimension and they didn't exist. Either way, I didn't want to talk about them.

She asked about what we tended to eat, and I told her we were Omnivores, capital O, but meat was preferred. She asked if we had schools, and I told her that generally newborns spent a few years in an incubation pod where they learned basic knowledge before getting taught by someone else. Usually an older or retired Saiyan, but not always like in my case where I got to deal with Jerk Dad.

Lois seemed to get really uncomfortable with the topic for some reason and eventually the questions circled back to what I said about Saiyans. About us being the greatest warrior race in the galaxy.

"I realize Earth is a bit of a backwater to the rest of the galaxy, but how can you call yourselves the greatest warrior race next to empires like the Thanagarians, Tamaranean, and other martial races? We've even heard some stories about Imperial Kryptonians but we've never heard about Saiyans before you."

I shrugged. "Don't know why you haven't heard of us, but the reason we're the greatest is we don't need tricks like the others. Take away the sun for a Kryptonian or weapons from a Thanagarian and they're not that tough. But you can't ever weaken a Saiyan like that."

"I might be wrong, but I don't think you can weaken a Tamaranean either and they have a very prestigious warrior culture." Lois pointed out.

That was fair, and there were probably a ton of other alien races out there that were strong on their own. But…

"They have a limit." I replied smugly. "Saiyans never stop growing stronger as long as we push ourselves. And that's for normal Saiyans."

"Normal Saiyans?" Lois asked.

Ah crap, I didn't mean to let that slip. Oh well, it's not like it needed to be a secret. Or the full truth.

"Yeah, if Saiyans are the greatest warrior race then the Legendary Super Saiyan is the greatest warrior. The best. End of story."

I thought about the first time I had seen the Namek saga and the lead up to Goku's transformation.

Vegeta had thought the Super Saiyan was a being of uncontrollable power and rage. Someone that would literally destroy solar systems because his power was so vast and in some ways he was right. A natural born Super Saiyan like Broly was exactly that, an undirected engine of destruction that few could stand against.

But that wasn't the Legendary Super Saiyan in my mind.

A golden figure standing on a shattered planet. A being that refused to give up no matter what. Someone that never lost not because they were the strongest, but because when they were defeated they would get up, push past their own limits and try again.

THAT was the legend in my mind. The one I was chasing. The one I would pursue step-by-step until the next time someone talked about the Legendary Super Saiyan? They would be talking about ME.

-o-

Lois did her best not to shiver at the look in the tiny alien terror's eyes when she spoke about her people's legendary warrior.

She had met her share of religious people during her job, the kind who just KNOW something is true and would never be persuaded otherwise. That was the same look in Califa's eyes when she talked about the Super Saiyan. Califa would probably follow such a being into hell if they simply asked.

Not necessarily a bad thing. But if the other Saiyans were as cruel and destructive as the girl's answers hinted at, Lois couldn't imagine what kind of monster a Super Saiyan would be like.

She really hoped someone was looking for her and got here soon. She had a lot of information Superman and the Justice League would need to know about Califa. Earth had gotten lucky the prepubescent Saiyan conqueror had a pretty good heart despite the childhood she had. They might not be so lucky with the next Saiyan.