Wrathful Reunion

“You won’t grow up and overcome things like this if all you do is blame yourself, this applies to the both of you.” Nero said firmly but fairly, as cross as he was with Dion he figured that the guy probably also felt like shit about this debacle for his own reasons. “They don’t have to. They would only clash if you let them.” Nero looked upward slightly. “Reach out for what signs of strength are beyond both of them.” He said, holding a hand upwards too. “And grab a hold of them. Take them as yours, make your own, and break your limits.” Nero encouraged, looking back to Zhalla. “My birth father said this to me, when I was two. I can still remember hearing it as crisp and clear as it first was.”

After all was said and done, the both of them had some time to process or re-process the tragic memory from Zhalla’s past. Nero kept his now softer gaze on Zhalla. When she spoke, his eyes flickered into that gold once again and his hair began to sway once more. “If you cannot, then do not. You will not lose me.” Getting thwacked around wasn’t so bad, and eventually training to control Oozaru or the Wrathful state would lead to injury, but that was nothing next to death. “Listen to me Zhalla. You can do this.” Nero leaned in and gave Zhalla a little kiss on the forehead. “I love you.” For a fraction of a second, Nero’s swaying hair became a slightly brighter brown, but all of these odd effects faded away eventually once more. “Hopefully at least that can get through your thick beautiful skull.” Nero snickered, giving Zhalla a little goofy half arm squeeze hug.

As far as promises went, by now Zhalla probably knew well enough what sort of thing he was going to say in response. “Well, think about it like this, how could I not? After seeing the pain it caused you, that it still causes you, how could I look away? I would be a failure as a Saiyan, a man, a failure of a person if I did that. Either way, you have my word. I’ll defend myself and snap you out of it immediately as soon as I even sense a hint of trouble. I was going to say that much myself, so it seems we’re on the same page there.” Nero paid attention to what Zhalla was trying to do and moved to assist her in at least sitting up more comfortably. “Hang on, lemme call Nocti, they should be free by now.” Nero looked off into the distance and sure enough, a few moments later that familiar fluffy white cloud would be rocket-zooping through the air straight towards the two of them, coming to a silent yet comical ‘screeching halt’ right beside Zhalla. Nocti floated upwards and floated around Zhalla’s head for a moment before chirping and gently nudging her face. “Nocti’s glad that you’re safe, just by the way.”

Confusing or not, Zhalla was stuck with Nero’s dopey ass. Not that she was complaining. Reciprocating the same feeling of love, she shoved herself forward and got her arms around Nero for a more proper hug to the best of her abilities. Luckily for her, Nero was quite stable given his current output of strength despite being the smaller of the two so all that really happened was he half-stepped one foot backwards to accommodate. Nero playfully booped Zhalla on the nose. “Haha, you caught the feelings. Like I told you countless times before, you’re just as sweet as you are fierce. Get used to it, you beautiful dumbass.”

Nero continued checking Zhalla’s injuries and moved to provide medical attention for her while they made further conversation. “Yeah, that’s what I said.” Nero raised a brow. “I defend myself first, snap you out of any wild state second. Me first, you second.” He gestured to himself then to her to further his point. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I brought you out of it just a bit ago too. I’ve gained the ability to bring people to their senses, I’m not sure when that happened, but it just came to me.” There was more to it, but he was also making sure to explore his full capabilities. Of course, he would explain what he knew should Zhalla choose to ask. “There’d be no point in me trying to do that if I don’t defend myself first, you feel me?” Nero understood what she was getting at, but he wasn’t going to let her do this alone anymore.

Soon enough, Zhalla made an attempt at standing, failing miserably. She tried her best, it was admirable, but she was at her limit. At the very least she could get better with time. Just as she began to fall, Nero extended his power of telekinesis to Zhalla, trying to stabilise her, maybe even lift her up gently closer over to him. “Not so fast, Sunshine. There’s no sense in getting yourself injured even more.” It was kind of similar to when they fought for the first time, he had insisted that she took it easy then, and he was doing similarly now. “You will rise soon, but not yet. Let the moonlight take it from here.” He added with a wink.

Nero puffed out his chest, proud of himself. “And I don’t regret it whatsoever. Nice try Zhalla, nice try.” Despite her protests against medical attention, Nero would persist. It wasn’t easy, but he could manage, maybe. “I mean I can do that too. It won’t be my first resort, but anyway, should I ever do that I’ll keep an eye on you so nobody gets close enough to get in trouble. I’ll figure something out.” Nero shrugged. There were a lot of elements at play here. He could use his duplication technique to great effect in that regard, actually. He’ll leave that one as a bit of a surprise though, he figured that Zhalla would have a humorous reaction to seeing multiples of Nero all doing some dumb dance.

“I couldn’t really tell you much, but since my powers kept growing, I think my pace unlocked a bunch of my potential. Some on purpose, some on accident.” Nero also found a strange orb with Tabor’s help a while ago that seemed to help, but that was a whole other story that would take too long to tell. Nero made a note to tell Zhalla about the orb sometime though. “Basically, I reached out to you and brought you back to what you’re supposed to be— in control.” Nero took a breath and extended his purifying energy outward once again, it first swirled around him before ballooning outward, blanketing the little forest and some distance out of it’s borders. “It was this, but specifically directed towards you.” With another breath, Nero absorbed all of that energy back into himself. “Its coming to me so naturally now compared to when I first discovered it. I think I’m almost at some kind of limit break again. Anyway, that’s what I did.”

Zhalla, despite all her bravado, had gone and made a rookie mistake. Getting up from a seated position far too fast, especially after having sustained such injuries was a recipe for disaster. Nero sighed as Zhalla went out like a light. “You^uuu_uu idiot.” At least now it was easier to patch her up. He didn’t promise that he wouldn’t, so he dared instead.

“I could indeed say that, because you did in fact do that.” Nero telepathically sent a finger guns gesture to Zhalla, since he was mostly keeping her propped up or trying to look at her wounds despite her weak protests against being patched up. “You can be assured that I’ve got everything in mind. I’m not going to mess around, you got that?” Nero didn’t need to negotiate any further as far as he was concerned. He was already set on what he was going to do, help Zhalla control her power, simple as that.

“I can even amplify it quite a lot, is what I’ve found. You should go check out the Northern Scar sometime. Why? No reason.” Nero winked. What was he going on about? Did he manage to discover something out there? “No, I don’t think its any of my vibes. Or maybe it is, but it certainly isn’t just that. There’s more to it, I know there is.” He couldn’t say that he was relaxed all of the time, he had his own bouts of fierce attitude and explosive emotions— which themselves were controlled, as wild as they also happened to be.

Eventually, Zhalla would wake to even more of her injuries tended to and assessed. Now, Nero had a head start on it without Zhalla to fidget and be stubborn about it all. “Hey, I didn’t promise anything saying that I wouldn’t patch you up.” Nocti supported Zhalla by fanning out and growing a bit more to account for how big she was. That way, Zhalla was able to move comfortably (or more accurately, as comfortably as she could manage).

Still, Nero kept at it, he would do his best to continue tending to Zhalla. It would take a bit more time before he finished up here given the extent of the injuries, but he knew what he was doing and she was no longer trying to shoo him away from doing so. “But, you’ll get up eventually, remember. That’s just how you work.” Nero shrugged. “You don’t need to worry about the jacket, I can fix it too.”

Nero was just thankful that Zhalla was at least not entirely hostile to the idea of her training her transformations. What some might think to be a small step, it was in truth a pretty big one for her considering the traumas behind what she had experienced. In the end, steps forward were still steps forward.

“Yeah, the Northern Scar. Outer Plait specifically. Be there or be square.” Nero winked. Zhalla said she didn’t know the way though, so he supposed he could just show her sometime instead. “Then it’s a date~ I’ll show you sometime.”

Regarding this otherworldly strange power of his, Nero gave it some thought. “I think it has to do with my mother. My birth mother, her people— the Garouan. It feels closer to that side of me.” He was still kind of processing that too. It was clear enough to him that he had a lot of potential and certain things just happened to bring it out of him. “I also found an odd artefact a while ago, I can show you it later too, there’s a whole entire story tied to it that just deserves its own time to shine, so it can wait.”

Nero ignored the profanities and complaints from Zhalla and chose to respond to her question about fixing her jacket. “Given your maxed out guns?” Nero began, flexing one of his free arms. “Probably totally disintegrated. But again, don’t worry, I can ask one of my tailor friends to recreate identical material with magic then I’ll patch it up.”

Zhalla soon became curious about Nero’s scars. It had occurred to him that he never really... Talked about them? To anyone, in fact, except for his family, who were around to witness most of them occur. “Oh, these? Well—” Nero began, looking at some of his scars before laughing a bit at himself for what he was about to say. “I wasn’t always as measured as I am now. I was kind of a little shit sometimes— yanno how that goes. Heart in the right place, brain lagging way far behind.” Still, Nero smiled. “I regret none of them, though.” He gestured toward the scars on his face and head with his eyes. “I’m proud of those ones the most.”

“Yeah, a date. A date to the Outer Plait, with hand holding and all that cute stuff.” Nero spoke boldly, knowing full well that it would just fluster Zhalla even more, but he was definitely serious. “So, does that sound good?” He asked, just to confirm.

“Sort of? Some idiot Shinjin— not Ward, he’s alright now— but they couldn’t see past their hands so to speak, and decided to try some shit, ended up cursing my brother and this power reacted to that. I think it was always in me, I could have learned about it myself without any sort of trigger too, probably.” Nero paused for a moment. He had given it some thought, so it made sense to make his theory known. “To explain in an abridged way— I think its linked to how Garouan culture places a lot of value on the truth. Truth of the universe, truth of self, just the truth of all things. This is like that, distilled into a power that brings people to their truth, inside and out.” Applied to Zhalla and the Oozaru or Wrathful states, Nero guessed that it meant she would be focused, determined, and in control. “I’m serious though, We’d be here for far too long if I went into it!” Nero chuckled.

Nero of course recalled Zhalla’s inexperience with Oozaru and the Wrathful state, so he would happily give her some perspective and answer her questions. “Yeah, see, your clothes obviously fit you normally. The thing is— in this instance with the Wrathful state, a lot of the time a Saiyan will noticeably increase in size. Usually this wouldn’t be much of a problem if your clothes have that expansion technology worked into them...” In this case, Zhalla’s jacket couldn’t take the pressure of her bulking up so much, not fully anyway. “With Oozaru, its... Worse. You’d grow to about fifteen meters, or more like twenty or so meters given how tall you are normally. Yanno, proportions and all that.” In this case, without the proper technology integrated into one’s clothes, they’d just get shredded to pieces. “So I think I’d also set up your clothes to accommodate for you changing sizes like that.”

Apparently, Zhalla thought Nero’s scars were rather interesting. Well, it wasn’t like she could reliably do much except talk, so why not find things to talk about? Unfortunately for her, Nero was good at doing things and talking at the same time! “I was, hmm... Eleven, I think. Pankaa was just born, maybe only a few days old. Some shithead with a giant mace thought they could have a go at Pankaa and mum. Long story short they couldn’t. I wasted ‘em on the spot, full tilt. Headbutted that loser through one of their swings, shattering their weapon and then their ribcage.” Nero explained with a bright smile on his face. “Scared the absolute shit out of them and their cronies, they never tried causing trouble ever again.”

Zhalla’s curiosity regarding Nocti was cute too, and Nero saw no reason to not answer. “Telepathy mostly, but I’ve learned the language of the Nimbus too. Telepathy is just easier by comparison— our vocal chords aren’t really good enough to speak the language of the Nimbus too well, basically.” Nocti chirped to confirm. “I was about five when I first met Nocti on a school field trip, actually. I heard them from a distance, so I wandered off and found them inside a cave they couldn’t quite get out of without help. Sure, my teachers told me off, but like, worth it.” Nero snorted. “Nocti is a friend, our quirky little fluffy friend! Everyone loves ‘em. Chime and Pankaa don’t have Nimbus companions themselves yet, but I’ve been thinking of taking them on a journey to find one just for them.”