Potential Unleashed

“Someone’s coming!” Trunks and Goten shouted at the same time, their heads snapping in the same direction as Piccolo’s. Where the massive, sudden power was coming towards them.

“... But who...?!” Piccolo asked, feeling a fresh cold sweat break out all over. “Such powerful ki...! Can this be some new enemy...?!”

He hoped not, after everything that’s happened these past 24 hours, an even stronger Majin Boo was trouble enough. It didn’t help the monster in-question was back on his feet and growling behind Piccolo at whatever was coming.

His sharp hearing picked up the sound barrier cracking and ground underneath being snapped aside from the force of the flight. Piccolo soon started picking up what it looked like, an Earthling from the skin, body shape, and black hair. Very distinct spiked black hair he swore he recognized. Then he saw what this person was wearing, white gloves and boots with a black outfit.

“It’s... Vegeta?!”

“No!” Goten shouted back the answer. “It’s... My big brother!”

Piccolo snapped around to look at him. “What?!” Then he turned back toward the approaching shape. “... But how...?!”

That’s when he finally landed, skidding his boots against the ground and smiling at them. Looking just like he did when Piccolo last saw him before Dabra turned him to stone. Gohan was alive!

“Phew!” He sighed. “I’m in time!”

“Gohan!” Trunks shouted while Goten ran over to him.

“Gohan!” He cried out, hugging his big brother’s leg. “We thought you were dead!”

“Lord Kaioshin saved me!” Gohan explained, rubbing the top of Goten’s head affectionately. “I was with him and dad till now.”

Piccolo kept staring silently at his former pupil, not only because he was miraculously alive in front of him. Something felt different about him, not just his features, but the intensity of his ki.

Its strength was incomprehensibly vast, but also calm, lacking the ferocious intensity it always had when Gohan got mad.

Before he could ask what happened to him, Gohan asked them first. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Boo killed them all!” Trunks yelled.

“What?!” Gohan’s smile vanished. “Mom? Grampa?! Everyone...?!”

“Yeah, we’re all that’s left!” Goten answered with an angry shout before scowling over to Majin Boo.

“Eheheh,... They tasted good!” Boo, the monster, actually had the gall to gloat. “I turned ’em into chocolate! They tasted real good!”

He kept laughing and rubbing his belly, and Piccolo prepared himself to stop Goten and Trunks from doing something stupid when Gohan moved. It took him a second to understand what exactly happened when Boo was suddenly gone.

If he didn’t see Gohan move into his punching stance, Piccolo doubted he’d have ever realized what exactly just happened.

“You two can’t fuse yet, right?” Gohan asked the two boys who were just as shocked as Piccolo. They answered with stunned noes and nopes. “Okay, I’ll try to finish him off before then but please don’t interfere unless you’re ready to become Gotenks again, alright?”

They answered with stunned yes’ and sure things.

“Thank you! Oh and listen to Piccolo!” Then he moved again and was halfway across the planet where Majin Boo was waiting.

“Rrrraaawwwwrrrrr!” Majin Boo shouted, tossing dozens of pink ki blasts Gohan’s way, his arms spinning like helicopter propellers with each throw. “You die!”

Gohan zigzagged through the barrage, ducking, rolling, jerking suddenly up and down. None of them were landing, but he knew they’d do some damage if they did. Luckily for him, Boo was too angry or inexperienced to correct the problem.

Time to use it to my advantage.

Dodging a couple dozen more blasts, Gohan closed the distance and shouted when his arm pulled back for a punch. Boo growled at him and swung his arms to attack but hit nothing. A second before he attacked, Gohan thrust his pulled backhand towards the ground and propelled himself over Boo with a small blast.

While Boo was wondering what just happened, Gohan was already landing a mid-air spin kick to the side of his face. The spot where he landed, Boo’s face had a big hole shaped like Gohan’s boot heel in it. Before Boo could recover, Gohan landed on the ground in a crouching position and spun to sweep Boo off his feet. With Boo helpless in mid-air for a few seconds, Gohan jumped from the crouch, spun vertically in mid-air then rammed both his fists into Boo’s stomach.

“Guuuaaaaagghhhh!” Boo groaned out when all of him smashed into the ground, breaking it into millions of pieces.

Gohan tried to fire off a Masenko to end the fight but Boo must’ve gotten even angrier or felt his ki spike up because when he shouted, Gohan had to break the attack and shield himself from the massive explosion of ki.

The whole world seemed to spin all over the place as Gohan flew and only stopped when he finally landed his feet on firm ground. Boo decided to go on the offense, flying towards him with his pink ki leaking out all over the place. Gohan ducked under a punch then retaliated with one of his own.

It landed, twisting the lower part of Boo’s lip into a weird mess of mangled teeth but he just growled, fixed it and kept coming at him. As the two traded blows, Gohan got a better feel for his power.

He’s almost as strong and fast as me! But! Gohan caught another punch and used the momentum Boo built up to swing him a few feet off the ground and smash him right into it. He has no idea how to fight!

But it wasn’t enough of an edge, every time it looked like he’d done some damage, Boo just fixed himself. It didn’t help his ki didn’t go down at all. Even Cell got tired the longer he fought or fixed himself up, but Majin Boo was on a totally other level.

No wonder Goten and Trunks had so much trouble finishing him off!

Boo shouted again and raised his hand for another punch but when Gohan went to stop it again, it suddenly stopped an inch away from his palm. “What the-”

The monster grinned when, in a split second, his whole head sunk into his chest then launched itself toward Gohan like a messed up wind up toy. It took Gohan by surprise and suddenly knocked him off his feet when their heads connected.

Before he could land, Boo’s hands extended too, wrapping around his legs and with one fast motion, swung into a mountain. Gohan wasn’t sure how many miles of rock he’d gone through by the time it was over but he was pretty sure Boo cut half of it with him. Then the arms pulled him out with Boo cackling on the other end which Gohan let him do until the distance was closed.

When it was, Gohan swung his arm, firing off a stream of ki out of it all the while and cutting Boo’s arms off. The look on his face when it happened was kinda priceless. But it meant an opportunity too.

“Sorry for borrowing this Krillin!” He said before firing off a few Kienzan at the fuming Boo, just like he’d hoped, they sliced through him like a knife through fish. When Boo looked more like a few big chunks of meat falling towards the ground, Gohan powered himself up and put both his hands over his forehead. When he thrust them at Boo, the energy was bright, yellow and very powerful. “Masenko!”

The battlefield went up in an explosion going for miles into the air and ground, filling up the whole place with smoke and fire. Besides that, it was quiet too, he couldn’t sense Boo at all.

Is he dead or...?

“H-holy crap!” Trunks shouted, smiling like an idiot. “G-Gohan did it! He smashed that creep Boo!”

“Awesome! I always knew big bro was awesome!” Goten joined him, smiling as well and giving his best friend one of those high fives Piccolo had heard about. As expected, the two launched into a tirade about who was stronger, this incredibly improved Gohan or Gotenks. Piccolo almost envied their naivete, even if he hoped their predictions of Boo being defeated were correct,...

“I-Incredible,...” Kibito stammered out, observing the force of Gohan’s Masenko blast from the Sacred World of the Kaioshin. “Feeling his power rise was one thing but to see him triumph over Majin Boo,...!”

“It is quite impressive yes,” Kaioshin answered, keeping his shock better in-check. “But Boo will not fall that easily.”

“Hey!” Goku said, squinting at the magic ball letting them see the fight and thumbing his finger on it. “What’s that movin’ in the rocks?”

A pink snake-like blob shot out from the rubble at him with Gohan reflexively jumping back. The second his feet touched the ground again, two more came, then three, then way too many for him to possibly avoid. If he stayed grounded. Blasting off into the air, just when the growing blob was about to get to him, Gohan saw a grinning Majin Boo’s head form from the blob then open his mouth so wide it would’ve snapped an ordinary person’s jaw right off.

When he saw a pink spark off ki light up in the back of Boo’s mouth, Gohan’s eyes widened while his hands reflexively snapped to his side.

“DDDIEEAARGHH!” Boo gargled it out when his mouth beam went off.

“HHHHAAAAAAA!” Gohan shouted back, the blue blast meeting Boo’s pink one in a clash. Neither one of them gave an inch, Gohan gritting his teeth hard enough for all of them to hurt and Boo literally blowing smoke out of his head holes. Between the two of them, Gohan had a slight edge in the clash but it wasn’t good enough of one to definitively turn it to his favor. It didn’t help Majin Boo had, if it was really possible, an unlimited amount of ki. Even with so much energy pouring out of him, it wasn’t going down at all. But Gohan’s would sooner or later,...

Just when he was considering breaking off the clash, Gohan’s ki sense picked something behind him and from his peripheral vision, he saw Boo’s decapitated arms transforming into a big, blanket-like blob coming right for him.

“D-Damn it!” Gohan shouted, losing focus for a second which almost bit him in the hide because Boo immediately overtook a good chunk of his Kamehameha. He’s either gonna swallow me up... or blow me away!

With Boo’s beam and blanket inching closer, Gohan growled and did the only thing that made any sense. “Please let this work...!”

The silence was almost deafening, even to his sharp Namekian ears. The boys’ revelry and celebrations died off almost as quickly as Gohan’s power faded, slowly but surely into nothingness.

W-What happened,...?! Piccolo mentally shouted, clenching his fists. What did that monster do?! Gohan was winning, damn it!

“I’ll smash him!” Goten shouted, powering up into a Super Saiyan. Piccolo only barely caught his leg in time, stopping him from rushing off. “Lemme go! I gotta crush that monster, he killed Gohan!”

“And he’ll kill you too if you try to fight him without fusing!” The Namekian shouted back, sympathizing with the boy’s anger and feeling it intimately as well. But anger alone wouldn’t produce results.

“P-Piccolo’s right Goten!” Surprisingly, Trunks backed Piccolo up. “Let’s fuse then go smash that monster once and for all!”

Before they could argue more, Super Boo blasted away from where he fought Gohan, his power growing all the while. When he finally arrived at where they were at, Piccolo could see why that was: a gargantuan ball of ki growing bigger and bigger and bigger each passing moment hanging over his head.

“C’mon brats!” Majin Boo shouted, elongating his mouth into a megaphone shape. “Fuse and fight me or I’ll blow everything up! You got five seconds!”

Is this accursed day ever going to end...?! Piccolo cursed for what felt the millionth time then let Goten go. If Gotenks was bad before he couldn’t imagine what the hell he’d do now...

“Damn it!” Goku shouted, scowling at the image of Boo preparing to blow up the Earth. “What happened? What’d Boo do t’Gohan?!”

“He absorbed him! Just as he did with my fellow Kaioshin long ago!”

“He ate im? Just like Chi-Chi and the others?!”

“N-Not exactly,” Kaioshin gulped. “This is him taking the person’s attributes to improve himself, it’s the reason why he’s different from what he was originally…”

“Well then, something’s gone wrong on his end.” Elder Kaioshin said it like everything was fine.

“Whadda ya mean?”

“Honestly,” He rolled his eyes. “You young folk have worse eyesight than me, look at him! He’s the same as before!”

The three of them looked at the crystal ball closer.

“My word!” Kaioshin shouted. “You’re right revered ancestor! Boo has remained the same despite absorbing Gohan!”

“Would that not mean he is not... absorbed?” Kibito suggested, after a brief silence, Goku thumped the crystal ball again.

“Can this thing see inside a’BooAAAHHH!”

Old Kaioshin scowled at him after smacking his hand away. “It will if you don’t break it first! Clumsy oaf!”

Waving his hands at the ball, the image of Boo throwing the ball at Gotenks zoomed into him, going through whatever he was made out of it. The blob that swallowed Gohan went into Boo’s stomach so they focused there. Inside, they saw almost like a cave system inside of the monster made of pink, veiny goop.

Inside that goop, surrounded by a ki barrier all over and looking around all confused was Gohan!

For anyone fearing another incomplete story, fear not! I wrote all of the chapters before publishing this time! Also, I would like to think my new (first) editor, Kagari, for helping me iron out even more kinks.