Trial by Fire (Turtle Hermit Finale - Complete)

The Turtle Hermit Finale

Medium Quest

Requirement: Must have completed The Turtle Hermit Part III.

Reward: 1,000 zeni and Turtle Shell.

After defeating Master Roshi in hand to hand combat, he has decided to teach you the true meaning of ki control. He takes you deep into a volcano about to erupt and tells you to use your powers to survive the explosion and subsequent torrents of lava using your ki blasts.

Turtle Shell - Accessory - A thick weighted enchanted turtle shell that helps protect the wearer from harm. Increases endurance by +1,000 and reduces agility by 2% in combat. Boosts all XP gained from training by 8.

Sairai allowed his body to relax as the waves crashed around him, submerging him in salt water and then backing up into the sea. The day was quite relaxing and he could feel his body both regenerating and growing healthier just because of his relaxed state. His tail swished back and forth in the sand as his eyes continued to gaze up at the bright blue sky above. His mind wandered back to the days of his training in the PTO, where he had been put up against his brother more times than he cared to count.

The fire of ki blasters echoed in the background as Sairai and his team of new recruits crouched behind rocks on the field. His brother was on the other side, commanding a force of veteran troops. While it was not a fair match up in the least, they were at least prohibited from killing each other. That didn’t mean Hale wouldn’t make them wish they were dead, though.

Sairai knew his brother well. Hale wasn’t really the strategic type between the two brothers. In fact in their many games, Sairai would often come out on top due to his calm and collected outlook on things, which only further increased his brother’s annoyance with his soft heartedness.

He brought his head up and looked over the rocks to see his brother just levitating in the middle of the field, his finger pointed at the spot where Sairai’s troops were gathered in hiding. “Move out of the way!” Sairai yelled, and his troops immediately ducked and rolled out of the way as his brother’s Death Beam pierced through the wall of rock they had been using to protect themselves.

Sairai jumped up and over the rocks and ran at his brother, using his speed to his advantage. As he got up to his brother, he jumped up in the air and slammed his tail into his brother’s neck, sending him flying across the field and into the nearby wall, his eyes popping out of his skull a little as the wall cracked and shattered behind him.

The younger Changeling smiled slightly as he screamed out, “Take them all! If we can imprison them all, we’ll win the day!”

The older brother recovered from the shock of Sairai’s attack and immediately was upon him, and attempted to pummel him with all of his strength. Sairai dodged easily, a slight chuckle escaping his lips. “You might be stronger than me, Hale, but keep in mind, it is I who has the advantage of speed. You spend so much time building your physical strength that you are unable to keep up with my movements.”

Hale screamed and brought his hands up in an attempt to bash his brother’s skull in with a hammer blow. Sairai was prepared for this, as the older of the two was always easy to anger. He ducks beneath the blow and hit his hands and knees before swiping his tail under Hale’s legs. Hale immediately lost balance and began to fall, before Sairai came up with a knee right in the middle of his brother’s back, a wicked smile crossing his face.

The older Changeling cried out in anger and pain before he rolled of his brother’s knee and hit the floor. Sairai allowed his ki to flow freely for a moment before focusing it into a shining ball in front of his brother’s face. “You’ve lost. If I release this attack, you’ll die. Since we’re not allowed to kill one another, this means I’ve effectively eliminated the enemy commander.”

The simulation came to an end and the doors of the area opened as the military instructors walked in. They looked around and saw Sairai with his finger pointed at his older brother. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” two of them said in unison.

Sairai’s command force had already bound or beaten the other side into submission. “How did you manage to win against a vastly superior force like that?”

“Simple, really. My men respect me enough to fight for me with their full power without trying to stab me in the back the first chance they get, and to top it off, between Hale and myself, I’m the superior strategist.”

One of the teachers looked rather shocked at his words and brought up a mini computer before marking the exercise a failure. “We don’t operate on respect. We operate on fear. Get out.”

Sairai looked from face to face among the taciturn teachers that had been watching the match, and each one of them had a look of disappointment or outright anger upon their faces. “I said get out!”

Sairai shrugged and left the room, a slight smile on his lips. As the door closed behind him, he got the last word, “Regardless of what you may think, just remember this. The ‘soft-hearted’ Changeling beat your system. It’s flawed.”

After the doors slid closed behind him, he left for his parent’s house. He had a lot of planning to do before he left the planet.

Sairai broke from his reverie as he sensed his master had finally woken up and was approaching him with what was to be his final test. Sairai had almost completely mastered the Turtle Hermit’s martial arts style. He could feel it. He was far beyond the level he had been when he faced Hale the year previously. He wondered silently for a moment if his brother had become as powerful as he had in the time since they last say each other.

Master Roshi sat down next to his student on the beach and put his hand on his shoulder. “Lost in thought, are we?” The Changeling looked up at the old human with a distant smile on his face and nodded. “Well, it’s time to come back to the present, my dear pupil. Your final test is about to begin.”

Sairai stood and flared his ki out, sending the wet sand stuck to him flying off in all directions. “Well then, what are we waiting for?”

WC: 1,011

Sairai stood at the foot of a volcano, his master three steps ahead of him. “What are we doing at the foot of an active volcano?” he asked, his voice conveying a certain tone of worry. Roshi didn’t respond immediately, instead letting his student sweat it out.

“It’s simple, really. Your power have advanced to a point where I’m comfortable giving you this one last bit of training. Survive it and I’ll consider you having completed your training and you’ll be a master of the Turtle Hermit Style of martial arts.”

Immediately the younger being caught the word survive. “This is going to be something really dangerous, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, and no. Your powers have improved to a point where I think you’ll be more than ready to face a force of nature. Think back to your lightning dodging training and you’ll be on the right track, though you won’t be dodging the volcano. You’ll be taking on the lava from this giant rock with your ki and your ki alone. If you can survive the imminent eruption without getting fried in the process, you’ll not only become more powerful, but you’ll also have a respect for the power it requires to survive in a world of people trying to outright kill you.”

The ground beneath them began to tremble and Roshi smiled slightly as he turned around to look at his student. “Alright, Sairai, you’re ready to begin. Fly up the mountain and stay above the crater until the eruption ends. You can move around if you have to, but if you leave the rim, you fail.”

The Changeling sighed and closed his blue eyes for a moment before readying himself mentally for the challenge ahead. He breathed deep and let his power flow through his body for a few moments.

Roshi smiled and said, “You probably want to go up to full power to do this, and yes, that includes taking on that transformation you learned. “

Sairai immediately looked taken aback by his words. “Yes, I know about your transformation. After all, you let out quite a bit of ki the first time you achieved that form. Since then you’ve kept it under wraps, but I can only assume that much of an increase in power means you can achieve a form very different from your current one.”

Sairai spoke up, “There’s no way you could have known just from my ki. You’ve been spying on me.”

“Well, yes… sort of,” the old master admitted. “I won’t tell you how I know, only that I do. It’s important that you don’t hold back for this trial. You’re going to be tested to the full extent of your power, don’t let the fact that this is a mere force of nature let you think that you can get by without effort.”

Sairai nodded and focused on his ki, looking deep within and unlocking his chakras, allowing his full energy to spike. He forced his energy output above and beyond his normal maximum and could feel the bones and muscles of his small body straining with the effort. As they strained, they grew in size. Sairai screamed out, gnashing his teeth together from the strain, and finally collapsed to both knees as he felt his power exponentially increase from the transformation.

He opened his eyes, the ice blue orbs focusing quickly. He stood slowly and let himself feel the power coursing through his body. “This could get quite addicting,” he said, a small smile on his face as he looked down at his master.

“I would imagine so. Not only has your size more than doubled, but your power is increased as well. Your power has grown to a level that surpasses even my own with this form. If you’re capable of such a transformation, why didn’t you use it at the tournament?”

“I couldn’t. I was only able to achieve this form fairly recently, though my race is known to have at least two other further forms.”

Roshi seemed to be in shock at those words. “You can transform further than this?” he asked, his sunglasses hiding the look of awe in his eyes.

“I will be able to if I continue to refine my power. It’s not exactly easy, forcing your body into a shape outside of its original form. It’s quite painful in fact,” the Changeling responded, rubbing his neck. “The pain doesn’t last long, but without the determination and power to push through it, we wouldn’t be able to continue advancing our transformations. I’m afraid my power is not high enough yet to be able to achieve the next form, though I wish I was. It would be a huge help against something as fearsome as a molten rock spewing mountain.”

Roshi nodded and motioned for him to head up to the mountain. He went up the mountain with a fire in his heart. This trial by fire would prove to be hard to overcome, but Sairai was confident that his power would be enough to pull it off. A small smile crept across his lips as he thought about it. This was the end of his training with Master Roshi, and he’d barely been training for a few months. This was going to be the shining jewel of his life, the day he graduated as a master of the Turtle Hermit Style.

WC: 899
TWC: 1,910

The heat was intense. If Sairai’s power had been any lower, there was a chance he’d have been burned alive. “Thank you, Master,” he said under his breath. Roshi’s advice to go to his full power had probably ended up saving his life, since the outright toughness of his body had been increased, and burns were now much less likely to occur.

The boiling pit of lava beneath him seemed almost ready to spill over the top, and Sairai hoped and prayed that was all it would do. However, his hopes were soon dashed as bubbles began to form on the top of the molten rock, and then started popping, causing plumes of smoke and lava to rise high into the air before splashing back down into the pool below.

“If this is only the start, I’d hate to see what this volcano would do once it finally erupts,” he said to himself. He then shook his head and said, “I should really stop talking to myself so much. People will start to think I’m crazy.”

Of course, this little joke got him to chuckling, and he nearly missed having his tail singed by a plume of lava. Scowling, he turned around and pushed his energy out of his arm violently, unleashing a rather large ki blast and pushed the lava back down into the volcano.

“Well, that’s was so-“

Suddenly, sulfuric gas began to leak rise up in black columns of smoke, causing the air to become increasingly inhospitable. The Changeling looked down at the fountains of red hot liquid below and gulped.

“This is going to be a lot harder than I thought…”

As if on cue, the mountain began to crumble and erupt in earnest. Ki volley after ki volley went out from his hands as he tried to combat the rising and falling lava, but little did he realize his ki blasts were actually causing the lava to become more unstable, more dangerous. That much energy being fired into the mouth of a volcano at once wasn’t fighting it back, it was actually causing a chain reaction that would cause the large mountain to explode outward and possibly destroy miles of land.

The lava continued to climb and Sairai finally decided to meet it head on. Extending his grasp with his telekinetic powers, he began to push the molten rock over the cusp of the rim, and kept it as far away from himself as possible.

He cringed as more lava began to come up behind him, and with a single wave of his unused hand blew it out of the other side of the rim. He had not come this far to be fried alive, not even by a natural force that few beings in the universe would have the power to combat. He hoped sincerely that he was counted among this number.

Something strange began to happen, then. Storm clouds began to gather overhead, though they were being held back by the sheer strength of the heat coming off of the volcano below. Of course, being the master strategist that he was, this gave Sairai an idea. He had used the storm clouds to channel energy on accident before when he was training his speed by dodging lightning, so perhaps he could use his ki to purposely channel lightning, use his ki to redirect it, and force the skies above to open up with a torrent of rain.

If there’s even a chance I can pull this off, is could help me immensely in fighting off this eruption, at least enough so that I gain a small edge. Use one force of nature to even the odds against another.

He allowed his ki to flare out as large as it would go, and just like during the last storm, his body became a living conductor for the electricity contained within the clouds, though this time he opened the chakras along his arms and released the blast that hit him through his hands, aimed right back at the cloud.

As the energy reentered the cloud from whence it came, the cracking sound of thunder came once more, splitting the young man’s ears, and rain began to fall, fighting back to sulfur fumes and the lava below.

“And now I have a fighting chance!” the Changeling screamed in victory. He unleashed a volley of ki blasts upon the lava below, smashing that which did come up against the rim of the volcano. As the rain began to pick up in ferocity, the lava seemed to cool off slightly before turning back into heated stone. His plan was working. As unlikely as it was, the plan he had come up with to keep himself alive was actually working. It was an absolutely amazing display.

He finally decided he had finally had enough of this and raised one hand above his head, summoning forth all of his energy into the point directly above his index finger. This time, instead of the little ball of light that would eventually turn into a beam of ki, a large ball of cackling blue-black energy formed above his head. The signature planet killing maneuver taught to the entire Changeling race, the Death Ball, was hoisted high in the air, though Sairai had no intention of using it toward such an endeavor.

He tossed the Death Ball downward into the rim of the volcano, and just as it was about to hit the boiling lake below, Sairai pierced through it with a Death Beam, piercing through it and causing it to instantly explode. He watched with a smile on his face as the explosion reached out and up, clouding the entire volcano with its blast. The blast was well contained, though, never spilling over the rim of the volcano beneath.

Rocks began to crumble from on top of the rim and collapsed into the deep pool below. After a time, the crumbling finally managed to bury the entire pit of lava underneath a plethora of rubble and broken rocks. While the volcano was sure to erupt at some point in the future, this day had been won by the Changeling, and there was little that nature could do about it.

He levitated slowly down the side of the mountain before touching the ground and went looking for Master Roshi.

WC: 1,056
TWC: 2,966

Roshi was waiting for him, of course, sitting outside of the tree line surrounding the volcano. When Sairai arrived, Roshi motioned for him to take a seat and sat down beside him. “Well, seems you’ve done it, and blocked off the mountain from erupting for quite a few years to come. I’d say good job, but I really wasn’t expecting anything less. However, I am curious, how did you pull it off?”

Sairai balanced a small ball of ki on his finger and said, “Well, to be honest, I have a few skills I was taught before coming down to Earth. Some of them are quite powerful, and up until recently I haven’t been able to use them to their full strength, so have kept my knowledge of these skills in reserve, you might say.”

Roshi pondered for a moment before responding. “You used some kind of advanced skill to sink the entire outer rim into the volcano? Sounds like one heck of a powerful attack, possibly as powerful, if not more so, than the Kamehameha wave that I teach most of my students.”

The Changeling nodded. “It is possibly the second most powerful move my people have ever developed. The most powerful… well, let’s just say I’m glad I don’t know it or I’d be tempted to use it at this point.”

They sat in silence for a few moments before Roshi stood up and motioned for the younger man to do the same. “Alright, as promised…” He removed the turtle shell from his back and handed it to the man before him. “You’re now a master of the Turtle Hermit Style. Congratulations, Sairai! I can honestly say you’re one of the quickest students I’ve ever taught, mentally and physically.”

Sairai smiled and took the turtle shell in one hand, before falling to the ground under the unexpected weight. “Good gods! How do you wear this thing everywhere you go?!”

The old master smiled and cracked his neck before standing upright for the first time since the martial arts tournament where he pretended to be another person. “You want the short answer, or the long one? Heh. They’re both the same. Years of practice. I’ve worn one of those things every day for most of my entire life.”

A look of comprehension came across the Changeling’s face as he looked at the being before him with an increased respect. He had known that the master hadn’t taken it off since they had met, but to carry it on his back for so many years… His physical abilities must have soared, and to think that he had been wearing it since before the young Changeling had even been a thought, much less a child.

“Despite your speed, it looks like your strength could use a little bit of work, though. If you ever want a few refresher courses, you know where to find me. Until then, see ya!” Roshi said as he disappeared from view, supposedly back to Kame House, but knowing the perverted old man, now that he had seen himself in a better light for the first time in months, he was likely off to get some extracurricular activities out of the way, maybe find himself a bar and some pretty girls to ogle.

The Changeling smiled at the thought as he hoisted the shell over his back and walked away. The old man had been one of the best people he had ever met. He was wise, a little eccentric, and never afraid to tell someone what he really thought. Now that the lessons were over, Sairai had to admit, he was going to miss the bald little man, a man who had treated him more like a son than any of his family back on Frieza #79 ever would have thought to.

WC: 636
TWC: 3,602