In the secluded rear courtyard of the West City Martial Arts Hall, the air hummed with a different kind of tension.
The semi-finished Time Machine sat on the manicured lawn like a strange, metallic egg. Rhode's clone was inside, his finger hovering over the activation sequence. With a final nod from the main Rhode standing a dozen meters away, the clone initiated the startup.
Buzz~
A silent, profound tremor radiated outwards. The effect was instantaneous and absolute. The lush green grass froze mid-sway. A gentle breeze became a sculpture of air. A butterfly was captured in a perfect, unmoving arc of flight. The world became a hyper-detailed painting.
Time Stop.
In this realm of absolute stillness, a sound broke the silence.
Tap.
It was soft, but in the dead quiet, it was as sharp as thunder. Rhode's main body, which should have been as immobile as everything else, had moved. His right leg, trembling with immense strain, had lifted a mere centimeter off the ground and settled back down. It wasn't a step. It was a twitch given monumental significance.
"Whew~" The breath that escaped Rhode's lips as time resumed was ragged, torn from a place of profound exhaustion. Sweat drenched his gi. But his eyes, bloodshot and tired, blazed with triumphant fire. "Finally... that crucial step."
Fifty subjective eternities had passed since his return from Namek with Porunga's bounty. A year of Earth-time had been consumed in a voracious study of temporal mechanics and a brutal regimen of self-experimentation. He had endured the frozen hell of time stop over and over, first wrestling his consciousness back to clarity within the stasis, then fighting to ignite a single spark of movement in a body turned to stone by causality itself.
The journey had been agonizingly incremental: the return of thought, the faint prickling of sensation, the sluggish dream of blood flow, the monumental effort to twitch a finger. Today's fractional leg lift was the summit of that mountain.
It was a victory measured in millimeters, but its implications were galactic. He had not just resisted time's pause; he had, in a minuscule way, commanded himself within it. Spacetime was no longer an absolute prison.
Whoosh!
The air displaced as Aira Instant Transmissioned beside him the moment the field collapsed. Her senses, sharpened by her own repeated (if involuntary) exposure to the stasis fields, had picked up the anomalous ripple in the otherwise perfect stillness.
"You succeeded?" she asked, her gaze scanning his exhausted but exhilarated form.
"Yes," Rhode confirmed, the smile on his face genuine and unguarded. "A breakthrough."
Aira felt a flicker of shared triumph, but it was quickly overshadowed by a more practical concern. She knew the roadmap he'd laid out from Porunga's data. "So," she said, her brow furrowing. "Next, you test the method for locating spacetime nodes?"
After Rhode's return, he hadn't kept his research a secret. Aira, with a Saiyan's pragmatic interest in survival and power, had focused her extracurricular studies on the lifespan-extension methods from the data dump. The intricacies of temporal theory held less appeal for her than the promise of eternal youth.
The method for finding "spacetime nodes"—weak points, fractures, or naturally occurring gateways in the fabric of reality—was the practical application of his new knowledge. It was the step between understanding time and manipulating it for travel.
Rhode's smile didn't fade, but it gained a determined edge. He looked from the crude Time Machine to the vast, blue sky above. The first step within stopped time was taken. The next step would be to find a door through time itself.
"That's the plan," he said, his voice firm. The era of passive experimentation was over. The hunt for a tangible gateway through the fourth dimension was about to begin.
Especially after Rhode offhandedly mentioned that even spacetime power could be overwhelmed by sufficient raw strength, any lingering intrigue she had for the subject evaporated completely. Why bother with convoluted temporal theory when you could just punch hard enough to break reality? That was a Saiyan solution.
Still, living with Rhode meant being a captive audience to his theories. She'd absorbed the concepts through osmosis—spacetime nodes, dimensional fractures, causality loops. She understood the goal. And that understanding bred a quiet, persistent dread.
She was glad for his breakthrough, truly. But the next step... finding those nodes? It sounded like poking at a sleeping cosmic beast. The idea of him brushing against one and simply... vanishing from this timeline, ceasing to exist in her present, sent a cold tremor through her that had nothing to do with battle. The feeling was foreign, uncomfortable, and she buried it under layers of pragmatic concern.
"What? Worried something might happen to me?" Rhode's voice cut through her thoughts, teasing and perceptive.
Aira's cheeks flushed instantly. "Hmph! Who's worried?" she shot back, her tone defensive and sharp. "I'm just concerned about losing a decent opponent, that's all! Don't flatter yourself."
"Haha, don't worry. I'll be fine." His laughter was confident, dismissive of the danger, which only irked her more.
"Whatever," she grumbled, letting her expression frost over. If he wanted to charge into temporal minefields, that was his business.
Rhode, wisely, let the subject drop. He surveyed their domain—the pristine training grounds, the sleek architecture of the Hall. "The Martial Arts Hall has been quiet for two years now. The staff is trained, the systems are ready. It's time to open our doors to the public."
"I don't care about such things," Aira stated flatly. Her involvement began and ended with the occasional, stern lesson for Bulma—a task that had become more sporadic now that the little genius was engrossed in formal schooling. Aira privately thought it was a waste; with focus, even an Earthling like Bulma could achieve something noteworthy.
"Heh, you don't have to," Rhode agreed easily. "Just enjoy the benefits." He had long ago delegated everything. A team of capable martial artists he'd personally vetted and trained handled instruction. A corps of professional managers dealt with logistics, finances, and public relations. The "West City Martial Arts Hall" would run itself, a legitimate front and a steady source of mundane income, requiring nothing from its true masters but their names.
As they spoke, a figure approached from the front compound, crossing the boundary into the private rear courtyard with a respectful bow.
It was a young man named Bruce, with a compact, powerful build, sharp eyes, and a serious demeanor. He was the head instructor, a disciple in the formal, traditional sense—someone Rhode had found with solid potential and honed into a competent martial artist and a loyal lieutenant.
"Master," Bruce greeted Rhode, then nodded respectfully to Aira. "I have news regarding the individual you asked me to locate: Dr. Gero."
The name hung in the air, charged with a different kind of potential. The pursuit of theoretical spacetime nodes was put on hold. A more tangible, and perhaps equally dangerous, piece of the puzzle had just appeared.