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She frowned, annoyed that the breeze had chosen this particular moment to pick up. Right when she had lifted
her head, meaning that the tall stalks of grass would bend right into her eyes.
Suppressing a frustrated
sigh, she gently pushed the offending vegetation away and continued to drag herself along the ground. No doubt she would get
some grass stains down her front but, if her plan succeeded, it would ultimately be worth it.
All
of a sudden her hand seemed to hit nothing but air and she smiled. She had reached her destination. Curling her fingers around
the edge of the ridge, she pulled herself along the last few inches and looked down.
Sure enough,
there he was. The one who she had been hunting. He was sat right below her, perfectly positioned for her to execute her plan.
All she had to do was pick the right moment and then make her move.
The breeze stopped and the grass
stood still again. Now seemed as good a time as any; now or never as they say.
Sharply sucking in
a lungful of air, she launched herself off the cliff and fell straight down to the ground. For a few moments she felt the
wind whip past her skin and through her hair before colliding with something hard.
His back. Perfect
landing.
There was an “oomph” as he was suddenly thrown forward and landed head first
on the ground. For a moment nothing happened. Then a tail suddenly erected itself into the air, fur bristled out. A sign of
Saiyan annoyance.
“Ani!” Raditz bellowed out, throwing himself up to toss her off his
back. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You disturbed my nap!”
“Nap?”
she blinked hard, quickly rising to the occasion of yet another argument. “You said that you would be meditating!”
Raditz
opened his mouth to ague back but was cut off as Ani continued.
“It doesn’t matter. I
caught you, now you have to keep your end of the bargain.”
“What bargain?” Raditz
quickly rose to his feet, his tail snapping back around his waist. “I wouldn’t make a bargain with a weakling
like you.”
“Don’t play dumb! You know exactly what I mean,” with a stomp
of her foot, Ani rose to her feet too. “You said that if I managed to successfully catch you while you were out doing
your training then you would each me to fly.”
“I was sleeping, it doesn’t count.”
“Yes
it does! It was still during your training time.”
“It does not!”
“It
does! You promised!” Ani’s face was a picture of rage but then she sighed heavily and her featured relaxed into
a more calm and crafty expression. That, to Raditz, meant trouble. “Fine, don’t keep your promise. But I think
that Goku and the guys might have something to say about it.”
Raditz’s eye twitched.
Damn woman, he hated her and her blackmail. Had that threat come a few years ago then he would have merely laughed. But Goku
was very strong now as well as his crew of ‘Merry Men’, as Raditz would sometimes call them.
“Fine,”
he gave in, cursing whatever had been inside him that had made him make the damn bargain in the first place. “But after
this you don’t bother me while I’m training ever again.”
“Fine,” Ani’s
face suddenly burst into a cheerful smile. “It’s a deal.”
Raditz’s eye twitched
again. How did that woman do that anyway?
-------
“Okay,” Ani sat cross-legged
on the ground in front of Raditz. “Teach me how to fly.”
“You’re sure you’re
a Saiyan?” he raised an eyebrow. “Learning to fly pretty much goes hand in hand with learning how to walk. It
comes naturally to a Saiyan.”
“Quit picking on me!” now it was Ani’s eye
that began to twitch. “If you want to keep the roof over your head, you’ll teach me.”
“Whatever,”
Raditz sighed heavily as he closed his eyes and crossed his arms, presumably thinking of the best way to pass on his knowledge.
After a few moments of thought, his eyes opened. “What was your power level again?”
“About
… well they said that it was about ten.”
“Ha! How puny!” Raditz scoffed.
“Well then, this should be interesting. Let’s test your ki ability first, you’ll need it. First form a small
ki ball between your hands.”
To demonstrate, Raditz held up both hands and, with a quick flash,
a small ball of ki appeared floating between his palms. With a cocky smirk, he raised his eyes to look at Ani; his expression
silently saying ‘now you.’
“I can do that,” Ani put on a smirk to match Raditz’s.
“Bulma got Yamcha to show me. It’s easy.”
After a bit of grunting and straining,
a small ball of ki appeared floating between Ani’s hands, much to Raditz’s surprise and annoyance. It was smaller
than his and had taken longer to appear but it was still there.
Damn. He had even thought of some
good insults which he wouldn’t be able to use now. Then again, this did speed things up quite nicely.
“Fine,
if you can do that then let’s see how you handle the next stage,” he bit back his annoyance and continued the
lesson. “If you have that energy then all you need to do is gather it up inside you and push it down. It couldn’t
be any simpler.”
To emphasise his point, the ki ball in Raditz’s hand disappeared. A
second later, the grass around him was pushed back by a sudden force as he launched himself into the air.
“See.
Just like that,” he called down from his position a few meters above her. “Think you can do that?”
“Easy
enough,” Ani nodded. Her face set into a hard frown as her gaze became fixed upon the small ball of energy in her hands.
Recalling what she knew about the basics of ki, she gathered her energy and began to push it down.
The
ki ball disappeared from her hands easily enough but nothing else happened. She tried to push harder but still nothing happened.
It was as if there was some sort of wall inside her, blocking the ki from being pushed down any further.
She
could feel herself becoming frustrated, so tried to tell herself to keep calm. It wouldn’t work I she was so tense.
‘It won’t happen just like that Ani,’ she told herself. ‘Ki control may
still take a bit of work.’
Still hovering above the ground, Raditz was watching with some interest.
He could see that she was having some difficulty and the frustration that was arising as a result.
She
was trying hard, he had to commend that. But, if she really did have Saiyan blood, then it shouldn’t really be that
hard for her. Even if she did have a stupidly low power level.
Then an idea hit him. It was one
thing to know basic ki control but it was entirely different matter to have enough. Perhaps that was her problem.
Taking
in a deep breath, he came back down to the ground and sat opposite her again. Reaching out, he closed his hands around hers
to hold them together.
As his eyes closed, hers opened wide. They’d been pretty close together
when fighting before but this had to be the first physical contact that they’d had without rude words being exchanged.
“Err …” she swallowed hard to try and get rid of the lump that had appeared in
her throat all of a sudden but with no luck. “What are … you doing?”
“Transferring
ki,” came the simple reply as he continued to concentrate. “If you don’t have enough then it won’t
work, so I’m giving you some of mine.”
“Oh …” Ani’s head bowed
a little as she quietly muttered a quick “thanks.”
“Keep pushing your ki down,”
Raditz replied. An order that Ani quickly followed.
Little by little she could feel the energy inside
her grow. As it did she continued to focus it down, pushing harder against the invisible wall inside her.
Harder.
Harder.
Harder.
She
was almost there, the wall was nearly broken. She could feel it. Just a little more. She just had to keep concentrating a
little more.
Harder.
Harder.
All of a sudden she
felt a great surge of energy beneath her and then the ground seemed to fall away. All of a sudden there was nothing beneath
her but she continued to push down, afraid of what might happen if she stopped.
When Ani did chance
a look, she found to her utter delight that she was floating a little above the ground. She wouldn’t be able to fly
like Raditz for a while, that would take much more practice. But this was definitely a step in the right direction.
“There,”
Raditz let go of her hands. Much to Ani’s surprise, she found that she was able to stay afloat. So Raditz really had
given her some of his energy. “I kept my end of the deal. Happy now?”
“Yes!”
Ani felt a burst of joy as she threw herself forward to successfully latch herself around Raditz’s neck in a hug. “Thank
you!”
Raditz’s eye twitched again. This was the sort of contact that he was definitely
not used to. Looking at her, he quickly came to realise that there wasn’t any appropriate place to grab her and throw
her off without getting some sort of squeal and accusing insult.
He frowned. Damn woman.
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