Senzu Magic (Complete)

Senzu Magic

Medium Quest

Requirement: Must have completed Korin's Tower.

Reward: 1,200 zeni and a Senzu Bean.

As miraculous as the legendary Senzu Beans are, it takes a lot of time and energy for Korin to grow them. Recently one of the bushes that produce the beans has withered and died. Korin has asked you to go into the Forest of Ancients and fetch him some spring water packed with rare minerals to help revive the planet. Beware, it is said the spring is guarded by a wicked beast...

“Alright, so you made it up the Tower. Congrats,” the little cat creature said in a somewhat half serious, half sarcastic way. “So whaddya want?” Korin looked at the small creature in front of him with an interested expression on his face, resting his two paws easily on the staff he carried.

Sairai shrugged. “Someone told me that some legendary martial arts master lived at the top of this thing, and I decided I’d check it out. To be honest, I don’t know if there’s really anything I want from this other than the experience itself.”

Korin once again had that thoughtful expression cross his face, almost as if he was reading the younger man’s mind. “You’re serious!” he said, falling over from the shock. “You really had no other reason for coming up here than to prove that you could and to meet me?! You’re some kinda person, kid.”

The Changeling again shrugged as he looked around the room, seeing plants with what he could only assume was some kind of bean growing on them. “What’re those?” he asked, pointing at the strange plants with a curious expression, one eyebrow raised and his eyes fixed on the object of his curiosity.

“Senzu plants. They grow a special kind of bean that can heal most injuries and have the same nutritional value as ten days’ worth of meals,” the creature said without batting an eyelash.

“You can’t be serious. A plant doesn’t have those kinds of healing effects. Even the rejuvenation tanks on my home planet take awhile to work at healing people. Something like that isn’t possible.”

Korin smiled softly for a moment before countering with a wicked retort, “I suppose you think people who have healing powers don’t exist either?”

Sairai paused for a moment, and then said, “Of course they do, but what’s that got to do with anything?”

“Simple, really. If a living, sentient being can have innate magical healing abilities, why can’t a plant? They are living things as well, you know.”

The Changeling’s eyes roved back and forth for a moment and he thought, If Frieza knew these things existed, there’s a chance he’d be willing to sack the entire planet for the chance to get his hands on the secret to growing these extraordinary plants.

“No, he wouldn’t come here for the Senzu plants. The Dragon Balls? Probably, but the plants, I rather doubt.”

“You can read my mind, can’t you?”

“Took you long enough to catch on, didn’t it? I know of Frieza, and your brother Hale. Terrible people, they are. I hope I never have the displeasure of meeting them, personally,” the smaller creature said, sitting down on the floor with his legs crossed.

“Speaking of, just what on Earth are the Dragon Balls?” Sairai asked, suddenly curious about items that were more valuable in the hands of a tyrant than magical beans that could supposedly cure any injury.

“Simple enough, if you gather all seven, you can make a wish. If the wish is within the power of the Eternal Dragon to grant, it will be made true.”

Sairai opened his mouth before Korin placed the end of his staff at the younger man’s lips. “Scream in my house and I’ll throw you off.”

“You’re telling me there are magical items that can grant any one wish?”

“Again, so long as the wish lies in the power of the dragon, it will be made true, yes. I’ve seen some evil people in their time come across the power of those artifacts. Sometimes I wish that the items had never come into existence, but they have been used for benevolent purposes as well, so I guess it balances out, doesn’t it?”

Sairai didn’t know whether to nod or shake his head. Artifacts of such power were rumored to exist throughout the universe, but still, to think that a set of items with that much power existed here on Earth, outside of the knowledge of most people who lived there. It was mind boggling.

“At any rate, it’s a good thing you happened across. You see, I’m something of a recluse, but one of my Senzu plants is dying and needs the water of a certain pool of water in the forest to the east to rejuvenate it. The plants are nearly impossible to grow, I fear, and they’re very picky about the minerals they use to grow. Would you mind helping an old man out?”

Sairai could do little more than nod. Since Korin had been so hospitable, if a little bit on the rude side, he figured it only fair to repay the favor with something as simple as a favor. Korin pointed him in the direction he needed to go before saying, “You might want to be careful, Sairai. Last news I’ve had is that the animals living in the forest have become feral. Some say it’s due to the influence of a certain malevolent beast that has made its home there.”

“I should have known that there’d be a catch…” the Changeling sighed as he turned to look out from Korin’s Tower. Looking down, he could see what appeared to be a great majority of the world. “Breathtaking,” he said.

Korin nodded before turning around to tend to the plants that were still growing.”Come back in time to save the plant and I’ll give you a special reward for all your hard work.”

Sairai couldn’t help but wonder what that reward was, and was immediately gifted with Korin’s staff smacking him in the back of the head.

“There’ll be enough time to talk about that when you get back, now hurry. The Senzu probably won’t make it till dawn tomorrow.”

Sairai shrugged his shoulder, gathered his ki, and took off from the tower, hoping that he would be in time to save the plant when he returned. Well, I have to admit, my life’s been anything but ordinary since I showed up on Earth. It’s not too bad, living here. So many secrets to learn, so much to do with my time. I like it here.

WC: 1,018

Sairai was beating himself over the head by the time he made it to the forest. The very plants, down to the smallest tree looked downright terrifying for a normal person. “There’s no way that this is going to turn out well for me, is it?” he asked to the forest. As if in response, the sounds of wild animals picked up around him, as if they could smell his fear.

“Relax, Sairai. There’s no reason to be scared of a place like this. This is nothing you haven’t gone through before, being outnumbered ten to one and still coming out on top. He thought back to his brother Hale, who had long been the bane of his existence, and used the anger he felt at merely seeing the man’s face to steel his resolve. “Hale wouldn’t be scared of something as small as this. I’m not about to let that pompous fool outdo me again.”

He continued to travel deeper into the forest, sure that he’d never come across this spring the little cat had told him about. “If this is some kind of fool’s errand, I will not be amused upon returning.”

Little by little, he began to hear the sound of trickling water. He hadn’t come across the spring that the old cat had been talking about, but he had found a stream. “I wonder if the stream has the same rare minerals that Korin was talking about. I doubt it. That would make things way too easy, and nothing I’ve done since landing on this planet has been easy.”

A strange, almost human howling sound came through the forest, and Sairai nearly jumped out of his skin, but when he turned around, in a ready stance, he didn’t see a single thing. Just a bunch of old, withered trees surrounded by what seemed to be a pitch black night. “It’s the middle of the day! Give me some light!” he shouted, only to have his voice bounce off the trees and wake up a nearby pack of wolves.

“Wonderful…” he muttered under his breath as he heard the beasts coming after him, hungry for meat upon awakening. Without missing a beat, the young man ran as fast as he could, following the stream to its source. The wolves finally began catching up with him, using the forest to their advantage.

Sairai tripped and fell over a protruding tree root, and fell to the ground, “Ow!” he gasped, his eyes squinting shut. Without a second to spare, the leader of the wolves was upon him, raking its claws across his bare flesh and trying to bite into him. Sairai kept one arm at the beast’s neck and tried to push it off, but the other wolves had already caught up and were also clawing and biting at him.

“Enough!” the Changeling roared, throwing the alpha wolf off and spinning to his feet, allowing his tail to crash into any nearby wolves that happened to be hungry. The alpha wolf was not that easy to convince to leave him alone though, and while the other wolves stood out of the way, watching, Sairai and the alpha squared off, eye to eye, just slowly circling one another. Finally, the wolf attacked, lunging for the small alien’s throat.

Without even trying, Sairai dodged the attack and hit the wolf on the back, knocking it to the ground while hopefully not breaking any of its bones. The wolf rolled over and prepared to lunge again, but picked up a distant noise and ran away, the rest of the pack leaving with it.

“What a bunch of pushovers,” the Changeling said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. That is, until he heard the growl of a large creature in the distance, followed by the sounds of breaking branches and the not so soft plodding of large feet. Sairai was immediately rooted to the spot, like one of the trees nearby, and couldn’t seem to move.

He finally worked up his nerve and climbed into the nearest tree, hoping to avoid whatever it was plodding through the forest at its own leisurely pace. He looked down at the ground in time to see a large black shadow come into view. When he finally saw it come into shape, he was surprised at what he saw. A large black bear, easily seven times the size of the young Changeling, was making its way through the forest at a very slow pace, sniffing the air, and apparently looking for something or someone. While it didn’t look particularly interested in the smells it had found up until that point, until it got to the spot where Sairai and the wolves had been fighting. It sniffed the ground for a bit before looking up into the trees and locking eyes with the young Changeling warrior.

The bear breathed a heavy sigh and continued on its way, not even bothering to look back at the smaller creature that it could have easily eaten if it had chosen to. After facing those giant lizards on that island, these mammalian beasts pose a challenge to me? What kind of sick and twisted forest is this? he asked himself, completely in shock at what he had just seen.

The Forest of the Ancients was giving him a run for its money. The primordial energies of the area were doing their work and making the beings that lived within the forest much stronger than they would be outside of it. Worse, the beast that had come to live in the forest, the one that was the source of the rumors that Korin had been hearing about, had been in the forest for quite a long time now, gathering much of that mystical energy into its own being, and becoming even stronger than it was when it almost killed the man who had gotten away to tell the story.

While Sairai didn’t know any of this, he knew that he would not only have to be careful, he would have to be downright untouchable.

WC: 1,010
TWC: 2,028

Finally, the Changeling felt that the bear had finally wandered far enough away that he could safely crawl down from his tree and hit the ground again. A small smile played upon his lips as he considered things from the perspective of the animals. He was a stranger in their lands, and to top that off, he was also a possible source of nutrition for the day. He knew that he would not be same from the feral beasts as long as he didn’t appear to post a threat, so he decided to go ahead and flare his ki out to full strength. If they were determined to come after him in the hopes of making him a meal, they’d have to try a lot harder than they had been so far.

Now at full power, the Changeling closed his eyes for a moment to clear his head. He imagined water flowing over his body, carrying his worries, fears, and anxieties away with it, and when he opened his eyes, they were sharp and focused, the eyes of a man with a purpose and a goal, who would not stop until he succeeded or stopped breathing.

“I’ve let the forest run the show for long enough. I think it’s time I took these matters into my own hands,” he said, looking back at the stream he had been following. If he was a betting man, he’d say it was a good likelihood that the spring was at the end of this stream, or at the very least near to the source.

With a confident stride, he made his way upstream, his hands clasped tightly on the small of his back. He didn’t run into anymore of those monstrous mammals, but he did start to develop this deep sense of foreboding. At long last he made it to the spring. He approached the waters calmly, easily, hoping that for once he would be required to put his life on the line for something that seemed to be so simple.

Unfortunately, he was wrong. Without warning, a thick branch caught the warrior in his side, sending him careening into a nearby wall of rock. His body bit into the rock, causing it to crack open. Sairai nearly collapsed from the initial shock, but managed to use his ki to stop himself from falling and righted himself. “What is this?” he asked, a look of annoyance and pain on his face.

A large shadow, not quite as large as the bear, but close, flitted in and out of his peripheral vision, keeping itself just far enough out of site that he couldn’t tell what it was, but close enough to give him a deep sense of dread. Whatever it was, it was big, fast, and immensely strong.

Sairai, of course, had taken about as much as he could bear and flared his ki to his limit the second he caught the shadow of the creature again and flew into it at full speed, crashing through two trees and smashing the creature into a third. Splinters flew everywhere and the sounds of cracking and rustling leaves filled the air as Sairai held the beast in place with both hands while positioning his tail to pierce the thing’s flesh, but the creature reached out with an almost human arm and pushed the Changeling back, just far enough to escape from underneath him and step into the light.

What caught the Changeling by surprise was the fact that what he was looking at didn’t seem all that dangerous. It was a large wolf. Easily the size of most bears, but it was standing on its hind legs and seemed to have grown thumbs and manipulative hands like most sentient creatures had.

“You have got to be kid-“

The wolf creature lunged at the Changeling with surprising speed that nearly took his head off, but Sairai managed to dodge the oncoming assault, but only barely. “This thing is some kind of a monster. I really don’t have much of a choice here. I’m going to have to put you down, pup.”

The wolf merely snarled in return and came at him with a nasty set of claws. When the attack missed Sairai this time, blades of ki came out of the claws and bit into the warrior’s shoulder. Sairai looked at his shoulder then back at the beast with a shocked expression.

Without even thinking about it for another moment, the Changeling brought up his right hand and pointed a finger at the giant beast. He allowed his ki to flow openly through all his chakras, moving like a slow building wave, and then allowed it to crash down in a torrent and channeled the energy into and out of his index finger just a centimeter or two away from it and released the entire concentrated blast at the wolf with his race’s signature Death Beam attack.

The wolf howled in pain as the beam of energy pierced its heart and fell over, whimpering the entire time as Sairai stepped over the thing’s body. “I’m sorry, but you really left me no choice,” he said as he headed his way back down to the spring to collect the water. After he filled up on the water, he left the forest, making a beeline back to Korin’s Tower.

When he made it back, Korin greeted him with a smile. “You got the water, I see. Good, good. It’s not too late. The sun’s just gone down. We have until sunrise to see if it works. Encounter anything interesting while you were in there?”

“Yeah. A pack of savage wolves and an even more savage wolf monster. I had no choice but kill or be killed.”

Korin nodded as he poured about half the water into the dying plant’s pot. “Yes. Sometimes the choice between being killed and killing is a bit of a gray area. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. If it really was some kind of a monster, you did the world a favor by putting it down before it became too much of a threat.”

Sairai sighed and nodded. “I know. Sometimes it’s necessary, like for food or for survival. That doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with it, though.”

“Fair enough,” the cat said. He walked over to another of the Senzu plants and plucked a ripe bean off the plant and handed it to the young Changeling. “Take this as your reward. Use it wisely, though. These things aren’t exactly easy to grow, you know.”

“Thank you, Korin,” Sairai said, a smile on his face.

The little cat coughed lightly and said, “That’s Master Korin to you, you ungrateful little…” he started mumbling the rest of the words and the Changeling warrior couldn’t quite make them out, but he could tell they weren’t exactly flattering words.

With his job and his test of his own inner strength finished, Sairai decided it was time to leave for a time and went back to Master Roshi’s house. He did still have training to finish, after all.

WC: 1,182
TWC: 3,210