Smashing away the weakness

”You must strengthen your Tail, Natto! This is a weakness your foes will take advantage of. Our tail is our blessing, a crucial part of our beings, responsible for nurturing our body with our true strength! But to exploit its full potential, one should master it completely. Now keep on training! Resist!!” the echoes of that day, almost 7 years ago haunted Natto’s dream and he woke up in fright, all sweaty and panting heavily. ”That dream… It was so real… I almost felt like I was with my father, back on that day, on the eastern wasteland…” he ran his hand down his face, wiping the sweat with it as he thought about that distant past. Natto couldn’t help but to feel ashamed. Ashamed because the one advice his father gave him about combat was completely forgotten by him.

”I had no time to train in Argavat…” he thought, trying to justify it, but it was in vain. He had a WHOLE YEAR in Vegeta to focus on his tail and he did not. He was just like his brother: unable to see the bigger picture. His father, with a power level that wasn’t even above 10.000 had mastered his tail to the point of it losing all of its negative traits. His tail was a strong limp, battle-ready and skilled, unlike Natto’s, who had to keep it tightly wrapped to avoid the risk of having it grabbed and die in a stupid and avoidable way.

He had no excuses, truth be told, he just didn’t want to focus his time on strengthening only one limp, instead of his own power level, but it was about time to change his ways. Another glimpse of memory came to his mind; when he was training with his brother, Miso, the saiyan caught his tail and used it to weaken Natto and hammer him to the ground multiple times, while he was there, completely helpless, feeling his body going all numb and unable to move. His fists clenched and he almost hit his bed, but stopped at the last inch, as he remembered that he had no way to pay for a new bed in case he broke it.

”War is coming and if the arcosian empire knows a tiny bit about our anatomy, their soldiers will aim for our tails to ensure victory… I will not be a useless casualty on a battle! I will be an elite soldier… And as such, I cannot afford to have such an obvious weakness!” he thought to himself, feeling rather motivated. It was about time to hold some mastery over his own body, with the goal of making it whole. All of his body should be equally strong.

The saiyan grabbed some rope at his dormitory and left it. When outside, he jumped high into the air, firing his ghostly-white ki aura as he did that and took off as fast as he could, all the way to the barren central wasteland, on its eastern part, where he used to train all the time when he was not at the gravity chamber. As soon as he good there, Natto stopped, hovering in the air, letting his ki aura vanish as he looked around in search for a mountain high enough with pointed rock formation. When he found one that was acceptable by his standards, he flew there.

Following that, Natto wrapped his tail around a pointy and strong looking rock and breathed deeply, feeling quite nervous. ”Okay… It’s Time to do it!” he encouraged himself as he stopped his ki flow around his body, making him fall. The one thing that stopped his fall was his tail. The moment it stretched he felt a shock running through his spine and a terrible pain taking over his body. His limbs shook intensely and his tail almost unwrapped itself. ”Ugh!... It hurts quite a lot! But screw that! It wasn’t supposed to be easy anyway!” he thought to himself as he gathered guts to do it again.

And so he did and the pain was even worse, making him scream with the pain. It felt like someone was pulling it so hard that it would rip apart at any time, but it was just the sensation, as the tail is as resistant as any other limb; it wouldn’t be torn apart, but it would hurt like hell soon enough. Even on his second exercise, he was already panting quite heavily and sweat was running down his temples and forehead, to the point of making him run his hand through his face to wipe it off. ”Goddammit it hurts!” he complained with a grimace, but it was about time to start it over and so he did.

He kept on doing that exercise, pushing himself up with his tail and suddenly releasing his body, keeping the tail wrapped around the stone, abruptly stopping his fall, which put a lot of stress on it. The screams were very loud, and he even started crying a bit, as he could not hold in his own feelings, but luckily there was no one around the area. He was safe, both from physical harm and from some cold saiyan judgment about showing weakness.

When Natto reached the 18th exercise, when he let himself fall, he felt a greater shock and his tail suddenly unwrapped from the stone making him fall all the way to the ground. Midway to the ground, he hit the mountain and crashed, rolling the rest of the way, until he hit the ground at the foot of the mountain.

– Argh! That hurt more than I’ve expected! – he moaned as he got up, cleaning the dust on his clothes and armor with his hand. After that, he stared back at the pointy rock, frowning his eyebrows as he got filled with a anger, that drove him to keep up with his training. He dashed back there, firing his ki aura on his way, making his way up there in a blink of an eye. Quickly, he wrapped his tail at the stone and started all over again.

This time Natto was a little more used to the pain and shock through his spine. Don’t get the wrong idea! It was still incredibly painful, but he was determined to get rid of that weakness and nothing comes without a price, and the price of freedom is indeed steep.

With a lot of effort he managed to finish a first series of a 100 tail push-ups. When he finished, he immediately flew to the top of that mountains, laying there for a while, to catch his breath and allow the pain to slip away from his body. It was incredible how sore his WHOLE body was. The tail nerves appeared do emanate to all parts of the body, like a centerpiece. No wonder it was responsible for such an event as the Great Ape transformation. ”When I overcome this weakness, my tail will become even more important, as I will be able to use it as a fighting tool too!” the thought itself made him quite excited and after a couple more minutes, he got back on his feet, ready to continue his training session.

Natto fired a Ki blast toward a mountain nearby, making its upper part explode into pieces. Swiftly he vanished, moving as fast as he could, grabbing a huge rock from what was left from that mountain before it fell to the ground. It wasn’t heavy for the saiyan, but if could easily kill someone with a power level of the hundreds, have it fell on them. Grabbing it sturdily, he got back to that point rock and wrapped his tail around it. ”Okay! Let’s begin!” and with that thought he started over again. This time, however, he almost fell down on his first try.

In truth, he was getting sort of used to his tail being put on such a stress before, but with the new weight things got back to square one, and the suffering began again. This time he was a little more resilient to the pain, since he saw some progress which fired up his determination. His mind wandered as he kept doing the drill over and over again, taking him long years to the past, back to when he was training with his father.

Douchi would squeeze Natto’s tail, to the point of making the youngling cry and beg for him to stop. At that time, he wasn’t focused on making his tail stronger to withstand the pain. No, he was only begging for the training to stop, so he wouldn’t feel that pain anymore. When thinking about that he felt shame and a sense of wasted time, since he could’ve mastered his tail from such a young age to the point of it not becoming an issue by his adulthood.

But there’s no use crying over spilled milk. The only option now was training, and that was precisely what he was doing. Through blood and tears he would overcome his limits and achieve success on his training.

Slowly, even though Natto was getting pretty tired of training, the huge pain began do diminish giving place to some sort of numbness and creeps on the tail and lower spine. It was still quite discomforting, but was much better than ever before. Natto smiled relieved as his reached the ending of that drill, finishing another 100 tail push-ups. He was now ready to the last part of his training. Still holding tight to that rock, he landed near the mountain which he blew the top. The ground was filled with all sizes of rock, that were blew to pieces by his ki blast.

Holding the rock he used to train with only one hand he squatted, resting his tail straight to the ground and threw the rock really high up in the air. He breathed deeply as he gathered enough guts to go forward with the next drill and after a few seconds he started it. The rock fell with all its might right on top of his tail, shattering with the impact. The pain was so great, the he couldn’t help himself but to scream and swear, as he rolled around the ground, holding his tail in agony.

– Holy f*&k shit!!!! Goddamit!!! – he cursed, as he rolled on the floor, feeling that obscene amount of pain. It took him some minutes to recover and as soon as the pain went away, leaving only numbness and a sense of pulsing on his tail, he squatted again, throwing another rock high up in the air. Another few seconds of tension as the thing fell like the messenger of the doomsday, and another moment of excruciating pain.

His reaction was pretty much the same, only this time he also punched the ground, infuriated with the pain, making a huge crater out of it. He had to gather quite a lot of will power to keep pushing forward with this training, that almost resembled a torture session, but it was very necessary. There’s nothing in life that comes without a price, and the ones that require huge sacrifices are usually the ones that gives the best rewards, and to get rid of the tail weakness was a great asset to have.

He spent hours with that last part of the drill, feeling so much pain that at some point his body had to either start ignoring the pain or collapsing, and he was putting all his will on staying awake, straying strong and lapidating his will to go on. He would break things out of frustration due to the pain every now and them, but at the hours of the twilight, the pain from the impact was no more. Instead, there was just a slight numbness and creeps, mostly like the feeling with the other drill.

As this other feeling started fading away, the feeling that took its place was that of a slight discomfort every time a rock would fall on top of it, like if it was hitting any other part of his body. He was finally satisfied and got up, moving his tail to the front. He stared at it, seeing the fur all messed up and with a few signs of blood. He had just one last thing to do to call it a day.

In a quick movement, he grabbed his own tail, squeezing it as strong as he could. He felt pain. But it was the same pain he would feel if he held his arm or his leg with the same strength. A happy smile took over his face. ”It’s over… I’m free of the saiyans weakness!” the happiness he felt was so intense that a couple tears ran down his face, as he stared at the two settling suns of Vegeta. ”Dad… I did it! I overcame my greatest physical weakness… Just like you told me to!” he said on his own mind, as he sit down to watch the sunset, with a feeling of accomplishment taking over his heart.