Bad Medicine Is What I Need...

When the door slid open after her knocking, Jagaimo heard the voice calling from inside the confines of the building and stepped past the threshold warily, eyes darting back and forth sweeping the interior while her senses washed out over a small area, feeding back vague information about the power around her. Of note was the strength of the Tuffle sat behind the desk, his power a little unexpected as most of his kind she had met and felt through the city were barely worth remembering. But then she thought back to the women she had met in the Otherworld on that occasion, she had been a Tuffle and incredibly powerful so why not others like her. What was her name again…Amari? Imari? What had surprised her was the second power she could feel somewhere inside the lab, strong in its own right but different to the Tuffles and her own. Whoever they were for the moment she couldn’t see anyone past the equipment so the young Saiyan let her eyes focus on the person she could see behind his desk. As she looked she realised something. Even from her place across the lab she could tell something was off. This guy was way bigger than any Tuffle she’d ever seen before, in fact from the doorway she guessed he was probably even taller than her meagre frame. A tall Tuffle? And that hair, something about it… Something didn’t feel right and it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. No one had mentioned anything other than a Tuffle in her search for this guy but still…

“Greetings Doct…Korado”

She corrected herself and stepped fully into the lab, moving a little closer to where the intriguing individual was currently working. Jagaimo glanced across his desk but whatever was there didn’t really make much sense to her, she did own a scouter but had no idea how the thing worked and honestly she rarely used the thing these days. With her attention back on Korado she continued,

“Talk around the city is that you're the man to see about custom work…say if someone wanted something built to meet very specific requirements?”

While it was a little vague, the young fighter wasn’t about to blurt out straight away what she was looking for, it was quite a personal thing after all. She wasn’t even 100% sure she should be here doing this, but the young woman felt like she was running out of options and if this Korado could do even half of what she hoped for then it would be better than where she was right now. It didn't hurt to ask and if it was a bust then she'd be no worse off than when she'd walked in here, abeit with a lighter purse than before but she wasn't exactly using her Zeni for much right now.

“What do you know about energy regulators?”

“Apologies, I’m Jagaimo.”

She gave a short polite nod in Korado’s direction, raising an eyebrow at his words. When she’s spoken to people around the city his name had popped up quite a few times as the person to see and now by his own admission he perhaps wasn’t as good as everyone seemed to think he was.

“If you’ve not studied them much then maybe I'm in the wrong place. I need someone who would be able to fix up a power regulator to work with a living being, not just to raise or lower that person's power but to keep it stable as well.”

Jagaimo looked around his workshop once, the second power present still playing in the back of her mind. She knew they were there but hadn’t announced themselves. Well that was fine. Chances were, given as strong as Korado was compared to her he likely wouldn’t need support from another anyway if things turned nasty and this Tuffle held a grudge against the Saiyan’s over recent events. If he did her problem wasn’t really going to matter too much either way. At her best she’d struggle with one of the powers she could feel, never mind two of them.

It wasn’t something she was happy to be talking about but she couldn’t ignore the problem any more like she had been, trying to push through like she’d always been told to. Her old way of thinking wasn’t working, she wasn’t getting any stronger and worse she couldn’t maintain what little power she had for long. Jagaimo let out a long breath and let her concentration slip, the power she’d been holding inside slowly started to rise, little by little till it reached about half of what she was capable of and then it began to waiver. There was no massive explosion of aura’s just a faint purple glow around her body as she held it there, looking over to Korado before letting go, her own body and senses telling the young fighter than her power was dropping again now she’d stopped concentrating on it, barely maintaining itself above a third of her total and even there it flickered as she tried to keep it in the back of her mind.

“I’m sure your scouter is telling you what just happened…it takes all my concentration to raise my power up and hold it there…I let my concentration slip and it's like someone has drilled a hole in the bottom of my drinking cup…what power i have just bleeds away and i’m sure you can guess how helpful that is in a fight.”

Jagaimo hadn’t moved much further into the lab-come-workshop than past the entrance threshold but her eyes studied the man behind the desk, his expression and hand gesture clear he was thinking about something.

“Could you build something that would help control my own power flow?”

The purple light that had bathed the room when she initially powered up to show the problem was beginning to fade from around her as she pulled her concentration back to the workshop around them. It slowly settled as she stopped thinking about it, holding steady and the young Saiyan could guess what the scouter was showing Korado. He had no way of knowing her full power just from those readings but she hadn’t planned to show him everything from the get go…she wanted to know if he could help. And what he had seen certainly seemed to pique his interest as she watched his face react to her falling power.

“So you think there's a chance i won't be stuck like this?”

There was a slightly hopeful tinge to her voice but it was hard to keep her hopes up. She’d been outstripped by many people she’d met on her travels who hadn’t shown so much progress themselves when they first met. Now when she searched for them her senses let her find them at much greater distances, like fires slowly growing as they consumed more and more around them. Her own fire burned but something was keeping it contained. Hopefully not for much longer.

Jagaimo nodded when the Tuffle spoke about doing more tests, wondering what else he might have in mind. His first ask seemed fairly simple so again she nodded with a half smile,

“I’m not even sure how to find the cracks myself but ok, here goes…”

The young fighter closed her eyes and took a calming breath, the air around her beginning to flicker with a breeze of its own, whispering in the air quietly and lifting her hair away from her body, the light beginning to glow a little more around her once more, power rising steadily, faltering once or twice, a look of frustration on her face as she worked to get it under control again until finally she was maxed out, concentrating on holding it there, another breath and her eyes opening, question what Vocado might see that she couldn’t.

“Well…I know it's not much but that's it…and right now it's not easy, something just doesn’t feel right, I should be getting stronger over time not..just this.”

A she spoke, her power waivered, rapidly dropping before she caught it and with a long deep breath began to force it to climb once more…

Well the Tuffle seemed confident enough. Maybe this wasn’t going to be a permanent thing for her and the fact he had seen something like this before was encouraging…but more tests put her on edge a little. In her experience tests were never something that were painless but she’d come this far already and she wasn’t about to back out now. She concentrated on listening to the man and holding her power steady as high as she could, focusing on things around her, this Korado’s features, the way he spoke…when he mentioned something about untapped power a chill of excitement ran down her spine and her Ki flared and wobbled a little…dropping and rising until she could focus on it again. She held his gaze and spoke slowly,

“What kind of tests do you need to run?”

The young warriors strength waivered up and down until it settled again as she listened to her host, nodding as she slowly started to understand what he was driving at…trying to consider what was running through her head and well…there really wasn’t a lot…it was easier to hold her power higher in battle, when her life was in danger but when nothing was happening she just felt…well…

“I’m just…calm…now…and…I'm disappointed. Disappointed that while others grow stronger I'm still stuck fighting for something that always seems out of my reach, almost like the universe is trying to hold me back, like there's some divine figure out there that doesn’t want me to reach whatever my full potential might be. I should be angry...but what's the point?”

As she spoke the strength she had been outputting began to slowly lessen, fading till she caught it at around half of what she was capable of…

“See…I can’t even..in a lab…hold what I have…”

Whatever power Korado was reading from her started to pulse, like someone was turning a light on and off, the battery slowly draining…

Jagaimo had never really been one to pay attention in classroom lessons, and there were only a few subjects where she would honestly take the time out of the day to read up on. Power control and Ki manipulation were not subjects she had ever done any study in…she had just done them. She was instructed and told and then just did the practices. She’d never had much trouble with copying or imitating the basics they had been shown back in the academy…but that was all physical, practical work. Now when the board came out, the young fighter resisted the urge to roll her eyes and instead stood focusing on what the Tuffle was saying, splitting her attention between holding her power steady and what was being explained to her.

The picture made her chuckle. To be referred to as a bottle with cracks wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever been called but it did visually highlight what was going wrong, or at least what might be going wrong. How they were going to fill the cracks was interesting and all but not the most interesting thing that Korado had said. Did he really think she was limiting what she was truly capable of because she didn’t think she was allowed to achieve what others could? Was he right? Did her own thoughts and approach stop her from reaching the heights that had plagued her thoughts for so long? She didn’t think she was defeatist…she always met the challenges she faced with what little strength that she had…

“So how do we fill the cracks? Its not like i’m a building you can just plaster over and plenty of instructors at the academy have tried to make me stronger with their training…no offense…but what's a Tuffle Scientist know about Saiyan strength?”

Jagaimo had moved closer to where the Tuffle was working on his board and examined him more closely with her eyes rather than her Ki sense, staring at him in a way that would have probably been considered rude in most cultures. She couldn’t quite tell what she saw but it wasn’t like any Tuffle she’d seen before. He was way too big… Her eyes moved to look into his,

“So you think I'm beating myself before I even start anything? Ok Dr Korado…how is me being honest about my weakness defeating me?”

Well that was a surprise. Jagaimo hadn’t been expecting to hear that her host was in fact a half breed Tuffle…crossed with a Saiyan no less. But then looking at him, she’d neve seen a Tuffle as big as he was so it stood to reason that there could well have been something else mixed in there. But a Saiyan? It did make her wonder how these things might happen, how people who were taught to dislike and distrust each other could end up producing children together. It was a strange universe and the longer she lived in it the more she was discovering this was very very true. At least Korado wasn’t promising some miracle cure all…he was at least smart enough to admit that it wasn’t going to be a perfect science but compared to what she had right now, some help was better than no help at all.

Train not like a Saiyan? How was that an answer? What other way was there to train except through combat and hard work? It was an intriguing idea but one that was almost alien to the young warrior. She’d heard of techniques like this from others before but had never considered that she would need to make use of them herself, she’d always considered herself a true Saiyan through and through…but to hear that she was defective in some way…shook her faith in ever getting any stronger…what if she was never the same as the others after this. The young woman's power waivered and began to fall again without her even realising as the thoughts played through her mind from his most recent words. She shook herself out of it when he mentioned something about a device, catching what was happening and closing her eyes for a moment to focus on herself, concentrating to bring her power back in line and helping creep slowly back up to its midpoint, letting out a slow breath and opening her eyes again.

“So this device would help with the leaks as such and help me keep the power from slipping away so easily?”

Jagaimo almost asked how this might work but decided against it, even if Korado explained it she was unlikely to understand what he meant…there was very little about science she understood and it wasn’t something they had ever spent much time trying to teach the new recruits as they came through the academy.

The Tuffle hybrid seemed confident that with a reinforced attitude and more self belief that she could overcome the limits she was coming up against. But the idea that she was imposing them on herself seemed odd at first but the longer she thought about it, the more sense it began to make. When she thought back over the times her power had slipped away from her it had been in a moment of doubt, or when things were against her and nothing seemed to work. It hadn’t made any sense at the time but now that it was being pointed out...maybe there was some truth in the idea…it couldn't hurt to try a different approach, but the doubts were still there, those thoughts that told her she was never going to be stronger than she was now, that it was all fruitless…But with the Tuffles help and a new way of training…maybe those demons could be banished.

Jagaimo looked at her host and gave an a smile in his direction, and then looked around his workshop at all the equipment lying around, shrugging her shoulders,

“Ok so say I believe you and this device can be built. What do you need me to do? I don’t even know how we’d start on something like that…do you even have all the parts here?”