The earth shuddered.
A shockwave of displaced air flattened the tall grass of Mount Paozu as my fist collided with Dad's forearm. The sound was like a thunderclap, sharp and concussive. I didn't let up: I pivoted on my heel, driving a fierce roundhouse kick toward his ribs. He caught it, his boots skidding backward through the dirt, digging twin trenches into the ground.
He was smiling. Actually, he was practically beaming.
My abilities had skyrocketed multiplicatively after the Zenkai boost from the Garlic Jr. incident a month ago. I could feel the density of my Ki—a roaring, restless engine humming just beneath my skin. The way my muscles tightened, how light I felt on my feet. How easy each movement seemed.
For the first time in my life, I was better than my father. Of course, the feeling was odd. I got this much stronger from a Zenkai Boost. It felt wrong, yet I also couldn't deny how amazing it felt to have my father no longer hold back during spars between us at the end of him teaching me the Kame style.
But strength wasn't everything. I lunged forward, throwing a rapid flurry of strikes—jab, cross, sweeping low kick. Dad didn't just block; he flowed. He used my own kinetic force against me, parrying my heavier blows and slipping inside my guard.
His decades of martial arts experience bridged the gap in our raw power. He fought smarter, anticipating my weight shifts and exploiting the microscopic openings in my stances. Yet, I was keeping up.
I dodged his right hook, swept the left fist away, and used my own leg to block his kick. We broke apart, chests heaving, the air crackling between us but the grins on our faces said everything.
"You're incredible, Yuzu!" Dad laughed, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. "I've never felt anything like it. You're hitting harder than Piccolo ever did!"
"And you're still dodging half of it," I shot back, dropping my stance slightly as I surveyed our surroundings.
We weren't just fighting in a random clearing anymore. We were standing at the edge of a massive, meticulously tilled field that stretched out over two acres of what used to be wild Mount Paozu brush.
Step one of my long-term plan to secure domestic peace had been a resounding success. A month ago, I had casually planted the idea of starting a farm to help with Mom's budget. I expected Dad to maybe plant a small garden.
Instead, Goku had approached agriculture with the exact same terrifying, single-minded dedication he applied to martial arts.
"Well, I've had a lot of good practice lately!" Dad beamed, gesturing broadly to the sprawling rows of dark, overturned earth beside us. Tiny green sprouts of daikon radishes, cabbages, and carrots were already pushing their way through the soil.
He wasn't lying. Dad hadn't bought a tractor. He was the tractor.
Over the last few weeks, I had watched him integrate farming into his daily training regimen to keep up with me.
To plow the fields, he would strap weights to his back, sink his hands deep into the hard earth, and pull backward using only his stance and core strength, carving perfectly straight trenches across the landscape. To water the crops, he would fly to the nearest river, fill two massive wooden vats that weighed tons, and hover over the fields, practicing his Ki Control to release a perfectly even, gentle artificial rain.
Although I believed using Ki to make water would be more effective.
Even planting the seeds was an exercise in precision and speed. He would blur into motion, his fingers darting out like striking vipers, dropping seeds at the exact depth required, hundreds of times a minute.
"I still can't believe how perfectly spaced those rows are," I muttered, looking at the agonizingly straight lines of radish sprouts. "You didn't use measuring tape. How did you know to space the root crops exactly six inches apart?"
Dad proudly planted his hands on his hips. "Oh, that was easy! I read a book!"
I blinked. My brain, which was currently processing future timeline contingencies, ground to an absolute, screeching halt.
"You... read?" I asked, my voice flat.
"Yep!" Dad chirped, entirely missing my internal blue-screen-of-death. "Chi-Chi told me if I was gonna do this, I couldn't just throw seeds at the dirt and hope for the best. So, I went down to the library in West City when I was visiting Bulma and found this big book. 'The Fundamentals of Root Crop Cultivation and Soil Aeration.' It was really interesting! Did you know radishes need loose soil so the roots have room to expand, but if the soil is too loose, they don't get strong enough to hold their water?"
I stared at him. The man who sometimes forgot the word for 'envelope' had just flawlessly recited agricultural theory.
"You read a textbook. On soil aeration," I repeated slowly.
"Well, yeah! It's just like fighting, Yuzu," Dad explained, his expression turning surprisingly earnest as he crouched down, brushing his fingers against a tiny green sprout. "The book said the plants need to face a little bit of resistance from the dirt. If it's too easy, they grow weak and frail. If the soil pushes back just right, the roots have to fight for space. They get thicker, stronger, and soak up more energy from the ground. It's resistance training, but for vegetables!"
I stood there, momentarily humbled. It was so easy, knowing the future and having my past-life intelligence, to look at my father and see a simple-minded brawler—if I hadn't actually rewatched and read the Anime and Manga to realise that wasn't true. He wasn't dumb, he just wasn't well read.
And now my presence has changed that, of course it was still him.
Dad, when he found a framework that made sense to him—whether it was the flow of Ki, the mechanics of a martial arts tournament, or apparently, the resistance training of root vegetables—he absorbed the knowledge perfectly.
He understood growth. He understood that without a struggle, without something pushing back against you, true potential remained buried.
I looked down at my own hands. I had raw power now, yes but I was like a radish grown in perfectly loose soil. I hadn't truly fought for this gap in power; the Zenkai had handed it to me. And because of that, I still had a massive, glaring vulnerability.
"Resistance makes you stronger," I murmured, echoing his words. I looked back up at him, my expression hardening. "Alright. Let's test that theory."
I turned my back to him, deliberately letting my furry brown tail sway into his line of sight.
"Grab it," I ordered.
Dad blinked, his grin faltering, agricultural theories instantly forgotten. "Uh, Yuzu, you know what happens if I do that. You won't be able to move."
"Exactly. Grab it. It's a weakness in a fight. It's the tight soil I need to break through. Don't let go, no matter how much I scream."
He hesitated, looking from my tail to my determined face, then lunged. His hand clamped around the base of my tail.
The world turned white. It wasn't just pain—it was an absolute, systemic shutdown. My muscles turned to jelly, my Ki flickered out like a blown candle, and my stomach did a nauseating somersault. I collapsed to my knees, gasping for air that wouldn't come.
"Yuzu!" Dad started to let go.
"No!" I wheezed, clutching the dirt of the freshly plowed field, my fingers digging into the same soil he had fought with earlier. "Keep... holding. I have to... overcome it."
For the next two hours, it was a cycle of agony and stubbornness. I forced myself to move, to strike, to even just crawl while Dad maintained the grip. Chi-Chi eventually came out to the edge of the farm, a basket of laundry on her hip. Her face paled with worry as she watched me thrash in the dirt, but she didn't intervene. She understood. As a Martial Artist, having such an easily exploitable weak spot was a death sentence.
By the fiftieth time I commanded him not to let go, the blinding agony began to dull into a sickening, heavy throb.
My muscles still shook, and my vision swam with dark spots, but the paralyzing short-circuit in my nervous system was slowly adapting. Saiyan biology was a marvel; subject it to a localized trauma enough times, and the body simply forced an evolutionary patch to keep moving. The root was fighting the soil, and the root was winning.
I pushed myself off the dirt. My legs wobbled, but they held. I clenched my fists, and unclenched them. The effort of doing this was so much harder than I thought, my breathing ragged and shallow.
"See?" I panted, a victorious grin pulling at my lips as I turned to my father. "Not... a weakness anymore."
Dad finally let go of my tail, looking equal parts horrified and immensely proud. "I can't believe you pushed through that in one day. It took me way longer to train my tail when I was a kid!"
I collapsed onto my back, chest heaving as the afternoon sun beat down on us. Mom walked over, handing me a canteen of water with a look that hovered dangerously between scolding and maternal pride.
"You're too stubborn for your own good, Yuzu," Mom sighed, though her hands were gentle as she brushed the dirt from my hair. "But... I suppose in our world, weaknesses are just liabilities."
I took a long drink, letting the cool water soothe my throat. As I sat up, I looked at Dad, who was casually wiping his face with a towel while inspecting a nearby row of crops to ensure we hadn't crushed any during our session.
This was the opening I needed. He was already primed to think about growth, about buried potential, and about pushing past natural limits.
"Hey, Dad," I said, keeping my voice light, innocent. "When you were fighting King Piccolo... how did you beat him? You said he beat you the first time. Did you just train really hard?"
Dad paused, rubbing the back of his neck, his eyes drifting away from the farm and up toward the sky. "Well, yeah, but not normally. I climbed Korin's Tower and drank the Ultra Divine Water. It was supposed to draw out all my latent power or potential. Hurt like crazy, though. I thought I was gonna die."
"Latent power," I repeated, letting my eyes widen slightly. "But why did you get stronger after that? No, stupid question, potential likely increases with training which means your ceiling should be far higher now than it was back then. If it draws out what's buried... couldn't Gohan, Mom, and me do the same thing? And couldn't you drink it again?"
Dad rubbed his chin, his eyes sparking with that familiar competitive glint. He looked at the fields, then back at me. "You know, I never thought about it like that. Korin said it was a one-time thing, but maybe that's just because most people don't survive the first time. If the 'roots' have grown deeper since then... maybe there's more to pull up."
He looked over toward the porch, where Gohan was currently trying to "hover" a few inches off the grass, his face scrunched in absolute concentration before he tumbled backward into a bush.
"Chi-Chi," Dad said, turning to Mom. His voice lost its usual playful lilt, settling into the serious tone of a protector. "What do you think? It's dangerous. Really dangerous. But if Yuzu is right... if there's more potential in us..."
Mom looked at me, then at the bruised, healing skin on my arm from where Garlic Jr. had struck me a month prior. Her eyes flicked out to the horizon, no doubt remembering the sheer terror of seeing her family broken in the yard. She didn't hesitate.
"If it keeps them safe, Goku, then we go."
—Time Skip: 1 week—
The wind whipped past my face as I cut through the clouds, my silver-tinged aura hummed with a low, steady vibration. To my left, Dad was a streak of orange, his expression one of pure, unadulterated joy. Below us, the Kinto'un carried Mom and Gohan, weaving through the mountain peaks like a golden needle.
I glanced down at Gohan. He was sitting cross-legged on the cloud, his small hands gripping the soft, misty edges. He looked... quiet. Too quiet.
Figured.
The Garlic Jr. incident had been a wake-up call for me, but for Gohan, it was a haunting. My plan to get him to not be traumatised had failed. He had watched his mother get beaten and his failure to help her with how weak he was, even if he had been training alongside us, was an eye opening experience to the boy. It's why he was finally training more seriously.
I adjusted my flight path, drifting down slightly so I was gliding parallel to the golden cloud. As I did, my mind immediately shifted back to the cold, hard mathematics of our survival.
Plan ZA. The fact that Garlic Jr. had shown up confirmed my worst fears: the movies were part of this timeline's canon. In the original series, the progression of villains was a somewhat linear staircase. Raditz, then a year of prep for Vegeta and Nappa, then the trip to Namek. It gave the heroes time to breathe, to train, to adapt.
Movie canon didn't care about breathing room.
If Garlic Jr. was real, then Dr. Wheelo was out there, frozen in ice, looking for the world's strongest body. Turles and his Crusher Corps were likely already charting a course for Earth to plant the Tree of Might. Lord Slug, an ancient Super Namekian, was wandering the cosmos. And beyond them... Cooler. Broly. Janemba. Bojack.
The timeline was going to be a crowded, chaotic meat grinder.
Raditz was arriving in exactly 109 days.
His Power Level would be roughly 1,500. Currently, thanks to my Zenkai, I was likely hovering right around half of that.. Dad, without his heavy clothes, was probably resting around 100 less than me. And we had far more days to prepare. But if Dad didn't die against Raditz—which I initially intended to make sure he did—he would never travel Snake Way. He would never meet King Kai which meant no Kaio-ken or Spirit Bomb.
Thus, my plan was simple where without Kaio-ken's artificial multipliers, we needed to drastically raise our base power.
That was where the Ultra Divine Water came in.
In my past life, analyzing the lore of Dragon Ball, the Ultra Divine Water was often overshadowed by the Grand Elder Guru's potential unlock or the Old Kai's ritual—whose potential unlock became a form. But mechanically, it served the exact same function.
It was a potent, agonizing poison that forced the body into a state of absolute crisis, drawing out every drop of hidden, latent power to survive the ordeal. When Dad drank it as a child, his power skyrocketed enough to obliterate King Piccolo.
But what happens when you give that same water to a fully grown Saiyan whose body has been tempered by years of Ki training and martial arts?
More importantly, what happens when you give it to a Saiyan-Human hybrid? Gohan's latent potential was an endless, bottomless well. If the water successfully drew that to the surface now, at age four, he wouldn't just be ready for Raditz; he would be a localized weapon of mass destruction.
And Mom? Chi-Chi was a human, but humans in this universe had incredible potential when pushed. Krillin and Tien proved that. If Mom's potential was unlocked, she wouldn't just be a bystander. She would be a legitimate threat.
It was a massive gamble. The water was lethal. But considering the alternative was watching my family be systematically hunted by space tyrants and rogue Namekians, it was a gamble we had to take.
I pulled myself from my thoughts, focusing on the boy sitting on the Kinto'un.
"Hey," I called out over the rushing wind, easily matching the cloud's speed.
Gohan looked up, his dark eyes wide and a little hollow. "Hi, Yuzu."
"You're thinking too loud," I said, offering a small, reassuring smile. "Your Ki is all bundled up and jittery. You're practically vibrating."
He looked down at his lap, his fingers twisting into the fabric of his tiny gi. "I'm just... remembering the bad men. The grey one. He hit Grandpa so hard. And Mom..." His voice hitched, cracking slightly. "I tried to use the Kamehameha. I really tried. But it wasn't big enough. I wasn't big enough."
I felt a sharp twinge in my chest. Empathy in this life was still something I was getting used to, but with Gohan, it was entirely instinctual.
I drifted closer until I was hovering just inches from the edge of the Nimbus. I reached out, resting my hand on his small shoulder.
"You stepped out from behind that porch," I said, my voice firm, cutting through his doubt. "Mom told you to hide, and instead, you stepped out and fired a beam to protect her. Do you know how brave that is, Gohan? Most grown men would have run away."
"But it didn't work," he whispered, a tear finally escaping and tracking down his cheek. "You had to save us. You and Dad. I was just... in the way."
"You bought her time," Chi-Chi's voice interjected.
Mom turned slightly from her position at the front of the cloud. The wind whipped her dark hair wildly, but her gaze was steady. She reached back, resting her hand over Gohan's and mine.
"If you hadn't fired that blast, Gohan, their attack would have hit me directly in the chest before I could brace for it. You dampened it. You saved my life," Mom said, her tone leaving absolutely no room for argument.
Gohan sniffled, looking up at her with wide eyes. "Really?"
"Really," she confirmed, giving his hand a squeeze. "But you're a child, Gohan. It is my job to protect you, not the other way around. What happened back there... that was my failure, not yours."
"It wasn't a failure, it was a data point," I corrected, shifting back into my more analytical mindset. "We fought an unknown enemy, we learned our current limits, and now we are actively taking steps to surpass them. That's what today is about."
"Exactly!"
Dad suddenly dropped from the sky above us, hovering upside down with his arms crossed behind his head, completely unfazed by the aerodynamics of the situation.
"You guys are being way too gloomy!" Dad laughed, his bright energy instantly lifting the heavy atmosphere. "We're going to see Korin! It's gonna be great. Wait until you meet him, Gohan. He's a giant, talking, martial-arts-master cat! And he has these beans that make you full for ten days!"
Gohan blinked, the tears momentarily forgotten in the face of absolute absurdity. "A... a talking cat?"
"Yep! And he lives at the top of a tower that touches the sky!" Dad flipped right-side up, pointing toward the horizon. "Look! You can just see it coming up over the next mountain range."
I squinted against the glare of the sun. Far in the distance, rising from the center of a dense, emerald-green forest, was a pillar. It was impossibly thin, perfectly straight, and stretched upward until it pierced the cloud layer and vanished entirely into the stratosphere.
The Sacred Land of Korin.
"It's huge," Gohan breathed, leaning forward on the cloud, his earlier melancholy entirely replaced by childlike wonder.
"Sure is," Dad agreed, a nostalgic smile touching his lips. "I climbed it when I was just a little older than you guys. It took me three whole days to get to the top the first time."
"And the water?" Mom asked, her voice dropping an octave, carrying the serious weight of a mother about to subject her family to poison. "Goku, you need to be completely honest with me. What does the Ultra Divine Water actually do to you?"
Dad's smile faded. For a brief moment, the carefree idiot vanished, replaced by the seasoned warrior who had faced death more times than most people had hot dinners.
"It hurts," Dad said simply, his voice devoid of any exaggeration. "It feels like you swallowed a fire, and that fire is trying to burn its way out of your skin. Korin told me that it searches your soul. If you don't have the physical and mental strength to contain the power it pulls out of you... it kills you. Fourteen martial arts masters drank it before me. All fourteen of them died."
Silence fell over the group. The only sound was the rushing wind.
Gohan gulped visibly. I kept my face perfectly neutral, though my mind was rapidly calculating survival probabilities based on Saiyan biology versus human biology.
"Are you scared, Chi-Chi?" Dad asked gently, floating closer to the cloud.
Mom looked at the looming tower in the distance, then down at Gohan, and finally at me. Her jaw set, a stubborn, fierce light igniting in her dark eyes.
"I'm terrified," Mom admitted freely. "But I am more terrified of what will happen if another monster like Garlic Jr. shows up and I am too weak to keep my children safe. If the water gives me the strength to protect our family, then I will drink the fire, Goku."
Dad stared at her for a long second, his eyes wide, before that massive, proud grin returned. He reached out, gently ruffling Mom's hair. "You're amazing, you know that?"
Mom swatted his hand away, though a faint blush dusted her cheeks. "Focus on flying, Goku. And don't think this gets you out of tilling the south field when we get back."
"Aww, man!"
I allowed myself a genuine chuckle. Despite the looming threat of agonizing poison, despite Raditz speeding toward Earth in a space pod, and despite the very real possibility of timeline-altering chaos... I felt perfectly at peace.
Because we were doing this together.
In the original story, the Z-Fighters were reactive. They waited for the threat to arrive, got beaten down, and then scrambled to train or find a magical solution while people died.
Not my family.
Under Plan ZA, the Son family was going to be a preemptive strike force.
Below us, the forest canopy broke, revealing a lush, beautiful clearing dotted with teepees. Standing at the base of the massive tower were two figures—a towering, muscular man with a spear, and a younger teenager waving enthusiastically at the sky.
The flight ended at the base of the pillar, a white needle that seemed to stitch the emerald velvet of the jungle to the bruised purple of the upper atmosphere. We touched down softly on the sacred grounds, the grass swaying in the wake of our descent. As Mom and Gohan hopped off the Nimbus, we all stood at the base of Korin's Tower. Up close, the sheer scale of it was dizzying.
I craned my neck, feeling a strange sense of vertigo. In my past life, I had seen skyscrapers—glass and steel monuments to human ego—but they had foundations, structural supports, and blinking lights. This was different. This was a smooth, ancient defiance of physics. It didn't just stand; it loomed.
"Do we really have to climb this when we can fly up?" Gohan asked, his neck craned so far back his hat nearly slipped off. He was squinting up at the impossibly high pillar of white stone, his small hands already beginning to fidget with the hem of his tunic.
Dad chuckled, crossing his arms over his chest. The heavy weights he usually wore were gone, and he looked leaner, more dangerous. "We could, Gohan. But Korin's a stickler for the rules. The climb isn't just a commute; it's the first test. If you fly up there, he won't even look at you, let alone give you his water. You have to earn the right to stand in his sanctuary. The tower knows if you've cheated."
"Besides," I added, stepping up to the cold, curved surface of the tower and placing a flat palm against the stone. I could feel a faint vibration, perhaps the wind, or perhaps the tectonic pulse of the earth itself. "It's a structural endurance test. Flying uses Ki, which acts as a buffer against physical exhaustion. It's a cheat code for gravity. Climbing forces you to rely entirely on your slow-twitch muscle fibers, your grip strength, and your lung capacity. As we get higher, the partial pressure of oxygen will drop. The temperature will plummet. It's an exercise in maintaining homeostatic equilibrium under extreme environmental stress. If you can't manage your own body heat and breath, you won't survive the water."
Bora, the massive guardian of the tower, let out a deep, booming laugh that rattled my ribs and sent a flock of colorful birds erupting from the nearby trees. "Goku, your daughter speaks like an ancient scholar trapped in a tiny body. Her words carry the weight of books I have never seen."
Dad grinned, scratching the back of his head with that classic, sheepish look. "Yeah, Yuzu's a genius! She takes after her mom. Sometimes I have to ask her to repeat things three times before I get the gist of it."
Chi-Chi offered Bora a polite, respectful bow, her posture perfect despite the rough journey. "It's an honor to meet you, Bora. And you as well, Upa. Thank you for guarding this sacred place. I know we come seeking much, but we do so out of necessity."
"The honor is ours, Chi-Chi," Bora replied, resting his spear against his shoulder. His dark eyes moved over us, lingering on Gohan and me. "May the Great Spirit watch over your ascent. You are attempting something few humans have ever survived. The mountain is tall, but the sky is taller."
"Good thing we aren't exactly normal," Mom muttered under her breath, tying her hair back into a tight, practical bun that wouldn't snag on the stone. She rolled her shoulders, her eyes narrowing as she looked up at the endless pillar. The protective mother had vanished, replaced by the daughter of the Ox-King. "Alright. Let's get this over with. Nobody falls. If you fall, you're grounded until you're thirty."
"Yes, ma'am!" Dad, Gohan, and I answered in unison.
Dad went first, naturally. He didn't just climb; he flowed. He leapt onto the white stone, his fingers finding imperceptible grooves in the polished surface, and began to scale the tower like a predatory spider. Every movement was a study in efficiency—minimal effort, maximum vertical gain.
Gohan followed, his small hands gripping the stone with a strength that would have crushed a normal child's bones. Mom was right behind him, her eyes locked onto the small of her son's back, her hands moving in a protective shadow of his. I took up the rear, playing the anchor.
The first ten minutes were almost laughably easy. The stone was cool under my hands, and my muscles barely registered the effort of pulling my four-year-old body weight upward. We moved at a blistering pace, leaving the forest canopy behind so quickly it felt like the earth was sinking away from us.
But as the minutes ticked by, the true nature of Korin's Tower revealed itself. It wasn't just a physical barrier; it was an environmental crucible designed to strip away the ego.
At the twenty-minute mark, we broke through the first cloud layer. The transition was jarring. The comforting, humid warmth of the Earth's surface was replaced by a biting, frigid wind that whipped around the cylindrical structure. It acted like a giant turbine, trying to peel us off the stone.
"Keep your core tight, Gohan!" Mom called out, her voice slightly strained as she adjusted her grip. A gust of wind nearly knocked her off balance. "Don't let the wind dictate your center of gravity! Become part of the stone!"
"I'm trying, Mom! But the rock is slippery!" Gohan yelled back, his voice thin in the rushing air.
At the forty-minute mark, the physical toll began to manifest in earnest. Specifically, oxygen deprivation. We were entering the upper limits of the troposphere, the "Death Zone" for unacclimated humans. The air was frighteningly thin. Every breath felt like I was inhaling crushed ice, and it yielded only a fraction of the oxygen my burning muscles were demanding.
I looked up. Dad was still moving at a steady, rhythmic pace, his breathing controlled and deep. He was in his element, his Saiyan heart beating a steady drum.
Gohan, however, was slowing. His knuckles were white, his small shoulders trembling with the effort of fighting both gravity and the freezing wind. His tail was wrapped tightly around his waist, a reflexive attempt to maintain balance.
"Rhythm, Gohan," I called up to him, projecting my voice just enough to cut through the howling gale. "Don't focus on the top. Focus on the next six inches. Inhale when you reach, exhale when you pull. Sync your heartbeat to your grip. Don't fight the mountain; just step up it. It's just a ladder made of stone."
He gave a small, jerky nod, forcing his breathing into a deliberate, mechanical pattern. I watched as his Ki stabilized, the jagged spikes smoothing out into a low, blue hum.
Mom was the one I was worried about. She was sweating despite the sub-zero temperatures, the salt freezing into crystals on her skin. Humans, even exceptionally strong ones, didn't have the biological "cheat codes" that we hybrids and Saiyans possessed.
Her muscles were screaming—I could see the slight, tell-tale tremor in her calves every time she pushed off a ledge—but her eyes were locked upward, burning with that same terrifying maternal resolve. She wasn't just climbing for herself; she was climbing to ensure she was strong enough to never be a spectator again.
Exactly one hour after we left the ground, the endless pillar finally curved inward, widening into the flat, tiled underside of Korin's sanctuary. The transition from vertical to horizontal was the final test of grip.
Dad reached the lip first, vaulting over the edge with a cheerful grunt that sounded more like he'd just finished a light jog. He immediately leaned back down, catching Gohan by the scruff of his gi and hauling the exhausted four-year-old over the top like a sack of grain. Mom pulled herself over next, her fingers clawing at the tiles until she rolled onto the cool stone with a heavy, ragged sigh that bordered on a sob.
I climbed over last, my boots touching the immaculate stone of the Lookout's lower level.
I took a deep, steadying breath, reveling in the sudden lack of wind. My arms felt like they were filled with molten lead, and my lungs were burning as they worked to extract oxygen from the thin mountain air, but my Ki was stable. An hour. Dad had taken three days to do this his first time. The sheer difference in our baseline power was staggering, yet I knew it wasn't enough. Not for what was coming.
"We made it," Gohan wheezed, lying spread-eagle on the floor, staring up at the milky white ceiling. "I think... I think my fingers are stuck in the 'climb' position."
"Good job, guys! I knew you could do it!" Dad beamed, standing over us and looking like he hadn't even broken a sweat. He turned toward the center of the room, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Hey! Korin! You home? I brought the family!"
The sound of his voice echoed through the circular chamber, bouncing off the jars of Sacred Water and the various martial arts relics.
Korin waddled forward from the shadows, his wooden cane tack-tack-tacking against the tiles. He stopped a few feet away, leaning his weight onto the staff as he peered at us through those perpetually closed eyes. He looked exactly as he did in the records—a small, white cat who carried the wisdom of centuries.
"An hour," Korin rasped, his whiskers twitching with a mixture of amusement and genuine shock as he looked at Goku. "You brought them from the forest floor to my front door in a single hour. When you were a boy, it took you three days, and you nearly died of exhaustion halfway up. You've certainly changed the neighborhood, Goku."
Dad grinned, though it was a sheepish, tired sort of grin as he looked at Mom. "Yeah, well, I had a bit more motivation this time, Korin. And I've been training. A lot. This is my wife, Chi-Chi, and my kids, Gohan and Yuzu."
Korin's gaze shifted to Mom, who was currently wringing out her hair, her face flushed but her dignity returning. Then to Gohan, who was shivering slightly in the high-altitude chill. Finally, he looked at me. I didn't look away. I kept my gaze steady, my Ki pulled in tight, though I knew a master like him could feel the "heat" coming off me regardless. I was a sun tucked into a thimble.
"I can feel it," Korin muttered, his voice dropping an octave, becoming gravelly and serious. "The air around you four... it's heavy. Saturated. You haven't just been training; you've been forced into a state of constant, violent growth. It's unnatural." He pointed his cane at Dad. "Goku, you are far stronger than when you defeated the Piccolo brat. But these three... they shouldn't exist. Not like this. A woman and two toddlers with power that makes the Kami of Earth look like a flickering candle in a hurricane?"
"That's why we're here, Master Korin," I said, stepping forward. I kept my voice respectful but firm, the cadence of my past life bleeding through. "We aren't here for the Sacred Water—the one that's just plain water designed to build muscle. We're here for the real thing. The hidden extract. The Ultra Divine Water."
The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. The playful, nostalgic energy Dad usually brought to this place vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp tension that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Korin didn't move. The tip of his cane dug slightly into the grout between the tiles. "The Ultra Divine Water. So, you know the truth of it. You've been reading things you shouldn't, little girl."
"I know it's a lethal neurotoxin," I replied, ignoring the "little girl" comment. "I know it forces the body into a state of cellular crisis to draw out latent potential as a survival mechanism. And I know the survival rate is abysmal. Fourteen deaths for one success."
"Abysmal is an understatement, little one," Korin hissed, his fur bristling until he looked nearly double his size. "Those fourteen masters—the greatest warriors of their generations—drank that water with pride in their hearts. All fourteen died in screaming agony before their hearts could even process the first drop. Goku is the only soul in history to have survived the ordeal. And you want to give it to children? To your own brother?"
He turned to Mom, his expression unreadable, his whiskers twitching with disapproval. "You would allow this? You would let your daughter and son swallow a lethal extract just for the sake of power? Is this what the world has come to?"
Mom stood up straight, her legs still trembling slightly from the climb, but her eyes were like flint. "If I thought it was 'just for power,' Master Korin, I would burn this tower to the ground before letting them touch it. But I saw what happened a month ago. I saw monsters walk into my home and treat my family like toys. I couldn't stop them. I watched my daughter's bones break because she had to do my job. If this water gives us the strength to ensure that never happens again, then the risk is irrelevant."
Korin sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to carry the weight of all the warriors he'd watched die. He looked back at Dad. "And you, Goku? You've felt the fire. You know what it feels like when your blood turns to acid."
"I know," Dad said, his usual cheer replaced by a somber, protective weight. "But Yuzu is right. Our 'roots' have grown deeper. Mine have, too. I want to drink it again. I feel like there's a wall in front of me, and I need to break it."
Korin froze, his eyes snapping open for the briefest of seconds. "Again? Absolutely not! The water is a one-time trial. It draws out what is there. To drink it twice is to invite the Great Spirit to strike you down for your arrogance. You would be asking for power that does not belong to you."
"The water acts on the existing potential of the vessel. If the vessel has expanded—if the 'ceiling' of our power has been raised through years of training—then there is more latent energy to be tapped into." I interjected.
I looked at Dad, then back at the cat. "We aren't asking for a shortcut. We're asking for the tools to survive the world that's coming. Because the world is getting very, very dangerous, and we are the only ones standing in the way."
Korin paced in a small circle, his cane clicking rhythmically—tack, tack, tack. He was quiet for a long time, the only sound the wind howling through the open balconies of the sanctuary. "You speak with the logic of a scientist and the heart of a warrior, Yuzu. It's a terrifying combination. You remind me of someone... but I can't place who."
He stopped and looked at us. "Fine. If you are all so intent on flirting with the Reaper, I will not stand in your way. But I will not hand it over freely. Not yet. You have the raw power—I can feel that much—but power without control is just a bomb waiting for a reason to go off. If I give you more power now, you'll just be a bigger explosion."
He tapped his cane twice on the floor. "You will be tested. Not a test of strength, but a test of the vessel. If you cannot prove to me that you can contain the energy you already have, I will not give you the poison that will add to it. You would simply disintegrate from the inside out."
"What's the test?" Gohan asked, his voice small but surprisingly steady. He stood up, dusting off his knees.
Korin's eyes thinned into even narrower slits. He reached into his robes and pulled out a small, golden bell. "A simple game. You four will go against me one on one. You have until the sun touches the horizon to take this bell from my hand."
"But there's a catch," Korin added, his voice dropping into a challenge. "You all will lower your Ki to mine. You will fight at my level of power. No flying, no tricks. If you go a single spark above my output, if you rely on your raw strength to bridge the gap in your technique, you fail instantly. You must prove you can control the beast before I give the beast more teeth. Who's first?"
The trial wasn't just a game of tag. It was an exercise in extreme kinetic throttling.
Lowering my Ki to match Korin's wasn't like turning down a dial; it was like taking the roaring engine of a fighter jet and forcing it to idle so quietly you couldn't hear it over a whisper. If the engine spiked even a fraction of an RPM, we failed.
Dad stepped up first having done this during his childhood.
He didn't take a stance. He just stood there, arms loose at his sides, his Ki completely retracted until it perfectly mirrored the low, steady hum of the ancient cat before him.
"Begin," Korin said, the golden bell dangling from his claw.
Dad didn't lunge. He simply walked forward. Korin vanished, reappearing on the railing of the Lookout, but Dad was already pivoting. He wasn't chasing the cat; he was anticipating the displacement of air.
The spar that followed was breathtaking in its simplicity. Dad's movements were utterly devoid of the wasted energy that characterized most fighters. He used Korin's own evasive momentum to trap him, gently guiding the feline master into a corner using nothing but footwork and spatial pressure.
In less than three minutes, Dad reached out. He didn't snatch or swipe. He just placed his hand where Korin was inevitably going to dodge, and the bell landed perfectly in his palm.
"Your foundation is flawless, Goku. You have internalized the lessons of the gods. Very well. You pass."
Mom was next.She stepped onto the center tiles, her jaw set, tying her hair back tighter. She dropped her Ki, taking a deep breath to stabilize the output, and dropped into a traditional, grounded stance.
"Whenever you're ready, my dear," Korin purred.
Mom exploded forward. It was fast, it was fierce, but it was incredibly loud. Every step she took echoed off the stone. She swiped for the bell, her fingers grazing the air where Korin had been a millisecond prior. She immediately threw a spinning hook kick to catch his flank, but he simply ducked under her leg, tapping the back of her knee with his cane to send her stumbling.
"You are fighting a war, Chi-Chi," Korin said, hanging upside down from the ceiling rafters. "This is not a battlefield. This is a conversation."
For the next several hours, it was a brutal deconstruction of Mom's martial arts. She had power, but her kinetic chain was fundamentally flawed for this kind of work. She over-committed to her strikes. In physics terms, her forward momentum vector was too large; when she missed, the force she generated carried her past her target, creating massive recovery windows.
But Mom was stubborn. Painfully so.
By the third hour, she was drenched in sweat, her chest heaving as she struggled to maintain her suppressed Ki state under sheer physical exhaustion. But I watched her adapt. She stopped throwing her weight into her lunges. She began taking half-steps, keeping her center of gravity anchored precisely over her hips.
In the fifth hour, as the afternoon sun began to cast long shadows across the tower, Korin feinted left. Mom didn't chase him. Instead, she dropped into a low crouch, letting his evasive arc carry him directly over her head, and simply reached up, uncurling her fingers to snag the bell by its tiny ribbon.
She collapsed onto her back, panting heavily, but held the bell high in the air, a triumphant, exhausted grin on her face.
"You learn through suffering," Korin noted approvingly. "A harsh teacher, but an effective one. You pass."
He turned his closed eyes toward me. "Your turn, Yuzu."
I stepped onto the tiles. I didn't bother with a martial arts stance. I just stood normally, syncing my breathing with the ambient air pressure of the high altitude. I pulled my Ki down, suppressing it until it matched Korin's exactly.
I knew how Korin fought. He didn't use his eyes; he read intent through microscopic muscle twitches, shifts in air currents, and the slight spikes in a person's aura before they attacked. To catch him, I couldn't just be fast. I had to be unpredictable to a being that predicted everything.
I stepped forward. Korin shifted his weight to the right. I didn't strike. I walked past him.
He blinked—or at least his whiskers twitched in surprise. I circled the perimeter of the room, calculating the friction coefficient of the tiles beneath my boots. I moved randomly, changing my stride length, throwing off any discernible rhythm.
'Distance to target: 4 meters. Target reaction time: roughly 0.1 seconds at matched Ki level.' lunged, but not at him. I dashed toward a nearby pillar, planting my foot against the stone, and pushed off. I wasn't aiming for Korin; I was aiming for the space two feet to his left. As expected, sensing the displacement of air, Korin dodged right—exactly into my actual trajectory.
I extended my hand, calculating the angular velocity needed to intercept his arc. My fingers brushed the cold metal, but at the last millisecond, he twisted his spine in an impossible feline contortion and slipped away.
I didn't get frustrated, that would generate intent. I simply recalibrated and continued.
For twenty minutes, the sanctuary was silent except for the soft padding of our feet. I corralled him using geometric pressure, cutting off his escape angles not by chasing him, but by standing exactly where he needed to go to maintain his evasion radius. Finally, I forced him into a mathematical dead end against the eastern railing. He jumped up to vault over me; I didn't reach for the bell. I simply held my hand perfectly still in the exact apex of his parabolic arc.
The bell fell directly into my palm.
Korin landed lightly on his feet, leaning on his cane. He tilted his head, "You have no fire in your strikes, child. Your mind is a cage of ice. It is highly effective, but deeply unsettling. You pass."
Finally, it was Gohan's turn.
By the time my brother stepped onto the floor, the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in bruised shades of violet and orange. Gohan was terrified. His Ki, even when suppressed, jittered like a bad radio signal.
"Don't think about us, Gohan," Dad encouraged softly from the sidelines. "Just focus on the bell."
It was a disaster at first. Gohan was too small, too hesitant, and far too worried about breaking the rules. Every time he got close to Korin, he hesitated, afraid his strength would accidentally spike and disqualify him. He tripped over his own feet, telegraphed his grabs by staring directly at the bell, and exhausted himself chasing shadows.
The sun set. The stars came out. The temperature plummeted.
Gohan was shivering, tears of frustration mingling with the sweat on his face. He looked at us, his eyes begging for a way out. I wanted to tell him the aerodynamic tricks. I wanted Dad to show him the footwork. But we stayed silent. This was the resistance he needed to grow.
It took the entire night.
By dawn, Gohan wasn't a thinking combatant anymore; he was pure, exhausted instinct. The fear of failure had burned away, leaving only the stubborn, inherited drive of our parents. His movements stopped being calculated and started being natural. He stopped looking at the bell and started feeling the space around him.
Just as the first rays of morning light crested the horizon, Korin tapped his cane to move right. Gohan didn't think. He didn't hesitate. He just threw his small body in a clumsy, desperate dive, his tiny fingers closing around the cold gold just before his chin bounced off the tiles.
He lay there, fast asleep the moment he stopped moving, the bell clutched tightly to his chest.
Dad walked over, gently scooping my twin into his arms.
"The vessel has been tested," Korin said softly, walking over to an ornate, wooden cabinet against the far wall. The click-clack of his cane seemed louder in the morning stillness. "You have all proven that your minds can govern your bodies, even when stripped of your supernatural advantages."
He opened the cabinet. Inside, resting on a velvet cushion, was a simple, unadorned clay teapot and four small, wooden cups. There was no glowing aura, no angelic choir. It looked entirely mundane.
Korin brought the tray over, setting it carefully on the floor. He poured the clear liquid into the four cups. It didn't steam or bubble. It looked exactly like tap water.
"I will say this one final time," Korin warned, his voice heavy with solemnity. "This is magically enhanced poison designed to aggressively attack your nervous system, forcing your cells to either adapt by unlocking their deepest, dormant energy reserves, or shut down entirely. If you drink this, you will experience the greatest agony of your lives. And you may not wake up."
Dad set the sleeping Gohan down gently on a bedroll Mom had laid out. He picked up the first cup.
Mom picked up the second. Her hands were shaking, but she brought it to her chest.
I picked up the third. I looked at the purple liquid. The original poison must've been highly potent neurotoxin based on that description. Then enhancing it with magic to bring it to a potential unlocker using pain to do so.
What a unique way to benefit someone.
Dad picked up the fourth and gently nudged Gohan awake. My brother blinked groggily, looking at the small wooden cup being pressed into his hands.
"We do this together," Dad said quietly, looking at each of us. "To protect each other."
We raised our cups.
I didn't hesitate. I tipped my head back and swallowed the water in one gulp.
For three seconds, nothing happened. It tasted like bitter earth and copper.
Then, the world shattered.
It wasn't a spiritual awakening. It was systemic biological trauma. It felt like someone had injected liquid nitrogen into my veins, followed instantly by boiling lead. My parasympathetic nervous system crashed. A horrific, blinding spasm seized every muscle in my body simultaneously. I couldn't breathe. My throat locked as my lungs screamed for oxygen.
Beside me, I heard Mom let out a single, strangled gasp before she collapsed, her body convulsing violently against the stone floor. Gohan didn't even make a sound; his eyes rolled back, and he dropped like a stone. Even Dad, who had survived this before, fell to his knees, his hands clutching his chest, his jaw locked in a rictus of sheer, agonizing pain as his muscles bulged and strained against his gi.
I hit the floor hard, my fingernails scraping uselessly against the tiles. The pain was absolute. It overrode my analytical mind, burning away my equations, my timeline plans, my logic. There was no math here. There was only the brutal, primitive mandate of biology: Adapt or die.
My Ki, buried deep within my cells, flared wildly in a desperate bid to fight off the neurotoxin. It felt like a war was being waged in my bloodstream. The fire spread to my spine, crawling up my neck, flooding my brain with a white-hot sensory overload.
I held on, forcing my body to push. Of course that wasn't enough. I just fell asleep.
—Time Skip for 10 minutes as the water does its thing: Third Person POV—
The sanctuary of Korin was a localized storm of biological and spiritual warfare.
To the ancient feline master, who had stood vigil over this tower for centuries, the sight was both terrifying and awe-inspiring. Four bodies lay contorted on the polished stone floor, trapped in the agonizing throes of the Ultra Divine Water. The air pressure in the room fluctuated wildly, expanding and collapsing as the magical neurotoxin ravaged their nervous systems, aggressively hunting for the dormant reservoirs of potential hidden within their DNA.
The room smelled of ozone and sweat.
Goku was the center of the storm. His body, already tempered by the water once before, recognized the poison. But recognizing it didn't make it hurt any less. His muscles bulged against the fabric of his torn gi, his Ki flaring in jagged, uncontrollable bursts of blinding white light. It was fighting to break through a ceiling that had been calcified by years of peace.
Beside him, Chi-Chi lay curled on her side, her knuckles white as she gripped the tiles. Humans were fragile, their biological containers small. The water was forcefully expanding her "cup," tearing the metaphorical seams of her soul to make room for an ocean.
Gohan was the quietest, but mathematically, the most dangerous. His tiny body trembled, but the energy leaking from him wasn't erratic like his father's. It was heavy. So incredibly heavy that the wooden racks holding Korin's staves began to splinter and crack under the sheer gravitational pressure of the boy's latent power trying to breach the surface.
And Yuzu. She lay perfectly still on her back, her eyes squeezed shut. Her aura was a volatile mix of the deep, violent violet of her Saiyan rage and the cold, calculated silver of her mental discipline. The poison was trying to break her down, to reduce her to pure, screaming instinct, but her mind—sharpened by two lifetimes of observation and survival—was fighting a brutal, calculated war of attrition against her own biology.
For exactly ten minutes, the Son family burned in the crucible.
Then, the storm broke.
Goku was the first to open his eyes. He didn't gasp for air. He didn't thrash. He simply stopped shaking, his chest rising in one long, deep, perfectly controlled inhalation.
He sat up, the movement fluid and utterly devoid of effort.
The air around him didn't hum; it resonated. The ceiling of his power—the invisible wall he had felt for the last four years—was gone. He felt light, yet impossibly grounded. The ambient Ki of the planet, the microscopic life forces of the jungle miles below, the shifting winds of the stratosphere—he felt it all with a clarity that bordered on omniscience. He clenched his fist. The raw strength in his muscles wasn't just a physical trait anymore; it was an absolute, undeniable law of nature.
A moment later, Chi-Chi gasped, her back arching as the final remnants of the poison evaporated from her bloodstream. She rolled onto her hands and knees, coughing violently. But as the spasms subsided, she looked down at her hands.
The human limit had been shattered. Her Ki, which had once been a small, focused flame, was now a roaring, uncontainable hearth. She could feel the kinetic potential singing in her veins. She felt as though she could punch the air and shatter the sky itself. The helpless mother who had watched her family be battered in her own front yard was dead. In her place was a warrior forged in absolute desperation.
Gohan sat up next, rubbing his eyes with his small fists. The crushing, gravitational pressure in the room vanished in an instant, receding back into his tiny frame like a retreating tide. He looked exactly the same—a small, frightened four-year-old boy. But the depths within him were terrifying. He was a puddle that inexplicably held the volume of the Pacific Ocean.
Finally, Yuzu stirred.
She pushed herself up off the floor, her movements slow, deliberate. As she stood, the silver and violet aura around her didn't flare outward. Instead, it pulled inward, compressing tightly against her skin until it vanished entirely, leaving no trace of the monstrous energy she now possessed.
The Zenkai boost from her battle with Garlic Jr. had made her strong. But this? The Ultra Divine Water had woven that raw strength into the very fabric of her being. Her Ki was no longer a roaring engine she had to struggle to control. It was a scalpel. It was crystalline, sharp, and infinitely precise.
Korin leaned heavily against his cane, his whiskers twitching as he surveyed the four of them. He had seen gods, demons, and monsters. But the family standing before him now defied the natural order of the universe.
"You survived," Korin whispered, his voice trembling slightly with a mixture of reverence and sheer disbelief. "May the heavens have mercy on whatever stands in your way."
"It's too late to head down safely with Gohan this exhausted," Yuzu stated, her voice returning to its calm, analytical baseline. "The atmospheric pressure is stable, and the Lookout provides a natural defensive perimeter. We should sleep here for the night."
Goku blinked, then laughed, ruffling Yuzu's hair. "What she said! Let's crash here, Korin. You got any extra blankets?"
A few hours later, the sanctuary was quiet. Korin had retired to his sleeping quarters, and Chi-Chi had tucked Gohan into a thick bundle of furs near the center of the room. The boy was out cold, his tail twitching occasionally in his sleep—no longer a liability, but a dormant limb of power.
Yuzu, however, couldn't sleep. Her mind was a kaleidoscope of data points and memories. She walked out onto the balcony, the stone railing cold beneath her small hands.
From this height, the world was a shadow. The vast forest of Korin was a sea of black velvet, and the distant lights of human civilization were nothing more than flickering embers. She looked up at the stars. They were so much brighter here, stripped of the atmospheric distortion.
She thought about her past life. The cold, demanding eyes of a mother who saw her not as a daughter, but as a prestigious project. She remembered the feeling of being a bird in a gilded cage—provided with everything, yet allowed nothing.
In that life, she had been a "prodigy" because she had no choice. Here, she was a "prodigy" because she was fighting for the only thing that had ever mattered: the warmth of a family that loved her without conditions.
A soft footfall echoed on the stone.
Goku sat down beside her, his long legs dangling over the edge of the impossibly high tower. He didn't say anything at first. He just looked at the stars, the same way she was.
"They're pretty, aren't they?" Goku said softly.
"They're distant suns, Dad," Yuzu replied, her tone factual but lacking its usual bite. "Burning spheres of hydrogen and helium, light-years away. Some of them might not even exist anymore; we're just seeing the light they left behind."
Goku hummed, a low sound in his chest. "I don't know much about hydrogen or helium. But I like looking at them. They remind me that no matter how big a problem feels, the world is way bigger."
He turned his head, his dark eyes locking onto hers. There was a gravity in his gaze that usually wasn't there. It wasn't the look of a brawler; it was the look of a man who had seen the corners of the world.
"Yuzu," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "You're real smart. Way smarter than me. Way smarter than almost anyone I've ever met, maybe even Bulma."
"I read a lot, Dad," she deflected.
"It's more than that," Goku said, and for a second, the facade of the "clueless hero" slipped entirely. "The way you look at things... it's like you've seen them before. The way you talk about the future, or how you knew exactly what that Garlic guy was after. Even the way you look at me sometimes... it's like you're waiting for something to happen."
Yuzu felt a chill that had nothing to do with the altitude.
"Chi-Chi and I... we talk," Goku continued, his voice gentle. "She noticed it first. She said you have 'old eyes.' She thinks you're a gift from the gods, sent to keep us on our toes. I think she's right. But I also think you're carrying a lot of weight for someone so small."
He reached out, placing a massive, warm hand on her shoulder.
"You don't have to tell us anything you don't want to," Goku said. "I don't care where you came from or how you know the things you do. You're my daughter. You're Gohan's sister. That's the only point that matters to me."
Yuzu looked away, her throat feeling uncharacteristically tight. She had failed massively. The extent of her nature as a Reincarnator wasn't as hidden as she thought.
'Not yet, not whilst the bugs are watching,' she thought to herself.
She hadn't been dumb, of course, far from it in fact. She knew from the second she had been reborn, even if subconsciously, that she wouldn't be able to hide the truth of what she was forever.
People who read fanfiction and hate when reincarnators reveal themselves don't seem to grasp how fundamentally unsustainable total secrecy actually is in a long-term, close-quarters environment. It isn't just about "acting normal"—it's about maintaining a perfectly consistent behavioral model under constant observation by people who know you intimately.
Family, especially, operates on pattern recognition. They notice cadence shifts in speech, gaps between expected knowledge and displayed knowledge, emotional reactions that don't align with lived experience, and moments where instinct overrides supposed upbringing.
A child shouldn't have fully formed strategic frameworks, cross-contextual analytical thinking, or predictive awareness of events they've never encountered.
Even if you suppress overt knowledge, subconscious habits leak—vocabulary choices, decision-making speed, risk assessment, even body language under stress. Over time, these discrepancies compound. It stops being a question of if someone notices and becomes a question of when they start connecting the anomalies.
Complete concealment would require either deliberately crippling your own effectiveness—essentially acting dumber, slower, and less aware than you are—or maintaining an impossibly perfect performance with zero deviation, which isn't realistic as it would essentially be following "Canon" to a T, something that just isn't plausible under emotional pressure or a high-stake scenario.
In other words, the very traits that make a reincarnator effective are the same traits that inevitably expose them.
Yes, Yuzu was going to expose herself, she already has bit by bit. However, she will say so herself sooner or later. And so, she decided, after Vegeta was taken care of and the bugs that watched them had been destroyed—because Oozaru Vegeta dealt with it.
(A/N: Ah, my true feelings accidentally got into the end there. But I do believe in it. In the amount of Fanfiction I have read and seen the comments of, I never agreed with the idea that the OC who is reincarnated is able to hide forever. It just simply is not logical to me. It's why in all of my fics, I will eventually have a scene where the OC exposes themselves).