A few days after Raditz had arrived, peace had returned to the Son Household. However within a clearing far from the house the mountain air rippled with the sheer weight of two bodies moving faster than the human eye could track.
On the ground, Yuzu and Goku blurred into motion, their fists and forearms colliding with a rhythmic, thunderous cadence.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Goku grinned, leaning his head back just enough to let Yuzu's left hook graze the air in front of his nose. He countered with a swift, low sweeping kick, but Yuzu didn't jump to evade it. Instead, she dropped her weight, planting both hands firmly on the dirt, and launched her body into a fluid, handstand-driven spin. Her heels whipped through the air, forcing Goku to bring his forearms up in a cross-guard to block the sudden momentum.
The impact echoed across the clearing, but Goku didn't yield an inch. Sliding his back foot along the dirt to absorb the pressure, he instantly pivoted, converting the defensive block into an aggressive push. He lunged inward, driving a swift, direct palm strike aimed straight for Yuzu's exposed ribs while she was still upside down.
Yuzu anticipated the counter. Twisting her core with sharp precision, she arched her spine, letting Goku's palm slice through the empty air inches beneath her gi. Using the momentum of his missed strike, she snapped her wrists, pushing off the ground to flip upright. As her boots touched the grass, she immediately dropped into a low, coiled stance, launching a swift succession of straight jabs.
Goku deflected her first jab with the back of his hand, stepped inside the trajectory of the second, and brought his elbow upward to jam her third strike before it could fully extend.
He instantly shifted his weight, driving a heavy knee toward her midsection.
Instead of retreating, Yuzu met the strike head-on. She channeled her energy outward, intending to use some Ki to enhance her defences by lacing it over her legs however she instinctively compressed the Ki. Nothing really changed about her however as Goku's knee connected with her knee a sharp sound rang out as if Goku's leg had impacted some kind of invisible armour.
By lacing Ki over her legs and then instinctively compressing it as she is used to doing this, Yuzu had accidentally discovered a strange application of reinforcement. The energy hardened against her skin like an invisible armor.
The sheer force of the collision rippled through the ground beneath them, causing the dirt to spiderweb with shallow cracks.
Goku's eyes widened slightly at the sudden, unnatural density of her block.
Seizing the moment of his surprise, Yuzu—suppressing her own surprise at what she had done—slid her hands down his leg, gripping his ankle, and spun on her heel to hurl him across the clearing.
Goku caught himself mid-air, spinning gracefully to land on his feet yet Yuzu was already closing the distance. She blurred into a full sprint, her movements jagged and erratic, making it impossible to predict her angle of approach.
Goku dropped into a solid horse stance, his eyes tracking her blurred silhouette. When she finally appeared in his blind spot, throwing a high roundhouse kick, Goku ducked smoothly underneath the strike, simultaneously driving a low, sweeping fist toward her anchoring leg. It was a flawless textbook counter, but Yuzu didn't let her foot touch the ground.
She rode the momentum of her own high kick, twisting her entire body into a secondary, mid-air spin that brought her opposite heel crashing down toward Goku's crown.
The impact sent a shockwave through the clearing, kicking up a ring of dust as both fighters pushed off and launched themselves straight up into the sky.
Goku adjusted his posture, expecting a standard aerial brawl, but Yuzu immediately changed the rhythm.
Using the open air as her canvas, she flipped upside down, snapping a heel toward Goku's jaw. He parried it, but the momentum carried her right into a secondary spinning strike from her opposite leg.
Thwack!
Goku was forced backward, his boots carving invisible trenches in the sky.
"Whoa, that's a wild style!" Goku laughed, his aura flaring a brilliant white as he drew more energy to match her speed. He rocketed back toward her, throwing a barrage of heavy, atmospheric punches.
Yuzu smiled, entering a flowing, rhythmic stance in mid-air. By adopting Capoeira into her style, she treated the empty sky like a playground. Her movements became entirely inverted and acrobatic, utilizing her center of gravity to dodge his direct assaults while launching unpredictable, looping strikes from angles Goku had never encountered.
To keep up with her fluid aerial evasion, Goku was forced to actively pump more Ki through his body, enhancing his speed just to match her tempo.
As Goku stumbled through the air toward her, Yuzu prepared her counter, lacing her legs in energy and compressing it once more. If she could accidentally do it, she could do it on command. That was her thought process.
With her legs wrapped in this compressed invisible armor, she dissipated the Ki Construct just as she drove a devastating kick straight into Goku's chest. In a blur she followed up instantly, landing two rapid, snapping kicks across his ribs.
Finally, she spun her body completely, bringing her heel down in a brutal axe kick right onto his shoulder. Goku was sent flying down to the ground.
BOOM!
Exactly two seconds after physical contact, a violent explosion of Ki erupted directly off Goku's shoulder. This was a technique Yuzu made heavily inspired by something she saw in her first life.
Yuzu makes some energy lag behind her actual strike creating a secondary impact. It was meant to take an enemy off guard, but when used like this it set her up for…
"Ka…" a ranged attack, "me…ha…me…ha!"
Yuzu unleashed a Super Kamehameha.
A blinding column of blue light tore through the sky, illuminating the clearing in a vivid azure wash.
Goku, still reeling slightly from the delayed secondary impact of the axe kick, snapped his eyes open.
Seeing the massive wave of energy bearing down on him, he didn't panic. Instead, he grinned wildly, throwing his hands forward. A rapid-fire burst of energy shot from his palms, colliding with the Super Kamehameha.
The opposing forces met in mid-air, canceling each other out in a brilliant, harmless shower of blue sparks that rained down over the forest.
Goku dropped smoothly to the dirt, landing lightly on his feet. He shook out his shoulder, his eyes wide with genuine excitement.
"Okay, I give!" Goku laughed, waving his hand to call the spar. "That was amazing, Yuzu! But what exactly was that last part? First your leg felt like I was kicking a steel block, and then my shoulder exploded after you already hit me! I couldn't even sense the energy coming!"
Yuzu descended from the sky, her boots touching the grass without a sound. She let her battle aura fade, taking a steady breath to calm her heart rate.
"The first one was an accident, however since I can use it at will, I might as well give it the name. 'Kōga-jutsu'. The 2nd one was something I tried using on you earlier in the spar but made Kōga-jutsu instead, I call it 'Sōiten-jutsu'. When I strike, I purposefully make a fraction of my energy lag a second or two behind my physical body creating a secondary impact. Because the energy isn't moving with my initial attack, it doesn't register on your senses right away. It catches you completely off guard."
Goku scratched the back of his head, chuckling in awe. "Wow. I've never even thought of doing something like that. You really are a genius, Yuzu."
Before she could respond, the low hum of an engine echoed from above. A sleek, yellow hovercar descended rapidly through the trees, kicking up a breeze as it settled into the clearing. The passenger door popped open, and Bulma stepped out, holding the cracked, repurposed alien scouter in one hand and a bulky datapad in the other.
"I hope I'm not interrupting," Bulma said, adjusting her sunglasses. "But I finished tearing apart that alien device you handed me on the beach."
Goku jogged over, still wiping sweat from his forehead. "Hey, Bulma! Did you figure out how it reads energy?"
"That, and a whole lot more," Bulma sighed, leaning against the side of her hovercar. She held up the scouter. "It's a highly advanced communication network and thus someone, likely other Saiyans were listening in."
Goku blinked, digesting the information. Then, his signature grin stretched across his face. "So... you're saying more of them might be coming here?"
"Goku, did you not hear the 'deep space aliens' part?" Bulma groaned, rubbing her temples.
Mom stepped out from the edge of the clearing, having watched the spar from afar. She wiped her hands on her apron, looking completely unimpressed. "Let them come. If this Raditz was supposed to be a terrifying space warrior, I think the universe has a very low standard for strength."
"Chi-Chi's right!" Goku agreed cheerfully, punching his palm. "If his friends show up and they're just like him, we won't even have to break a sweat. It'll just be a good warm-up!"
Bulma looked back and forth between the two parents, her jaw slightly slack. "You people are insane. You just beat an alien invader, and now you want to fight his bosses?"
"We're just not worried, Miss Bulma," Yuzu chimed in, offering a perfectly innocent, reassuring smile. "If they do come, we'll be ready."
Bulma let out a long sigh, tossing her hands up in defeat. "Fine, fine. I'll leave the planet-saving to the martial artists. I'm going back to my lab to see if I can reverse-engineer the scouter's circuitry. Let me know if the sky starts falling."
As Bulma climbed back into her hovercar and zipped away into the clouds, Goku and Chi-Chi immediately started discussing what to have for dinner, completely unbothered by the looming threat of the cosmos. After all, they had time to train.
(A/N: Kōga-jutsu is Steel Fang Arts and Sōiten-jutsu is Divergent Arts, both of which you can guess are inspired by. I was also kinda bored when I made those and realised that yeah, set up for the next big fight wasn't there. Not like it mattered much as we all know Vegeta and Nappa are coming).