Jack left soon after his conversation with Dr. Pol En was done. He was given a few instructions before the visit was over, though.
The first instruction was to lay off with the working out. His body needed time to heal from this and working out would only make it worse. He was suggested to do so for at least the next 5 days.
His second instruction is to come back in five days for another look over, and to test his ability to use Chakra once more. Jack figured that any experiment worth doing is worth doing a couple more times, like the scientific method told you to do.
His third and final instruction was to not tell anybody about his Chakra until she gave him permission. Jack was doing this already, but decided to show her his acceptance anyway rather than voicing this.
As Jack was walking back to his host family’s home, he was a bit confused on what to do for the next few days. He had already agreed to not work out for the next few days, but that is something that takes up much of his time in the afternoon. What else was he supposed to do? Maybe he could study, get a GED or whatever is the equivalent in this world. It would definitely open up a lot of possibilities…
However, as Jack could see the roof of his new home, his eyes wandered to a nearby tree. He looked at the dying leaves holding on to their branches as much as they could, but they were falling all the same. ‘Looks like Fall has hit us already, I wonder if I can get some extra money raking up leaves all over town.’ Jack thought to himself.
As he looked at the tree, he saw one green leaf still up there. It had yet to die. But he could tell that it was losing the battle. The green and movement from the wind of this leaf caused something to dawn in his head. There was a way to train while not doing anything physical.
The Leaf Sticking Exercise from the academy from Naruto.
It was something those who went to the Ninja Academy in the Village Hidden in the Leaf did to learn basic Chakra Control. All they had to do was put a leaf up onto their forehead and stick it there using only chakra. They didn’t even have to run around while doing so or train their bodies, they just sat and kept trying to stick the leaf to their head.
Jack felt a smile stretched over his face as he realized that he now had a new avenue of training that wasn’t ‘pick big rock up’ or ‘chakra make man strong’ or ‘punch tree’. He could actually start down the path of creating his favorite technique of all fiction. The Rasengan, or Spiral Sphere in English.
The Rasengan is considered the ultimate chakra control technique when it comes to shaping chakra. You created a perfect sphere that rotated in all directions, allowing it to pierce, drill, and grind down anything that touches it.
However, the Rasengan is years away from what Jack is yet able to even try and train, so he wont go too in depth about it or how much of a genius its creator is, that being Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage, and Naruto’s dead dad.
Jack started to run to his new home before his body protested and he slowed down to a walk. His grin still on his face, but smaller now. He had to get used to his new pain for the next few days.
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Jack laid in his bed, depressed over his recent failure to try and do the Leaf Sticking Exercise.
He had gone to the backyard of the home to get some leaves and start training. Unfortunately, every time he tried with an already dead leaf, it seemed to turn into leaf dust. He kept trying for over an hour, since everyone had decided to go out for a movie at the nearby theatre. He couldn’t stop disintegrating dead leaves, though.
He decided to get a ladder and climb the tree to get some live leaves to practice instead, thinking that they could hold up better than dead ones. He found out that they could, actually, and tried to get as many as he could. The only problem was that there were only three ‘green’ leaves he could find on a single tree, yet one of them was so close to dying that it disintegrated upon his first try of sticking it to his forehead.
The other two? He had actually made some progress with his second leaf. He was capable of sticking it to his forehead for about a second, and learned how hard it was to make Chakra do something that wasn’t just enhancing his body. From what little he had understood about how to stick something to him, it required his Chakra to take a flowing shape in his mind. The Chakra would follow this ‘shape’ and then do… something to cause the leaf to stick to his forehead.
It took a lot of tries to even get his Chakra to focus only on his head and to only stick a leaf to his forehead. He only figured out that there was a ‘shape’ at all because he tried to understand how his Chakra was moving in the first place. This required all of his discoveries over the past few months to figure out how Chakra moved.
His first discovery was that his ‘Chakra’ probably wasn’t like the Chakra from Naruto, even though they both have similar properties like having a body and spiritual/mental components to it. They are also both created in the user’s body, and it isn’t external at all. It doesn’t come from breathing or through the skin like he had heard about Fairy Tail having as their power system. It was created and came from the body and mind/soul.
Although, maybe there is some natural energy like in Naruto that could be combined with one’s Chakra. However, considering the fact that Sage training can turn the user to stone if they don’t do it correctly, Jack wasn’t going to try all that hard.
Jack’s second discovery about his ‘Chakra’ was the fact that it didn’t flow throughout his body like a Chakra System does in Naruto. He seemed to have an extra sensitivity to his Chakra and tried to ‘feel’ if it was moving throughout his body in some way. As far as he could tell, though, his Chakra didn’t exist in the physical plane. Meaning that it didn’t flow through veins and arteries like a cardiovascular system, which kind of made sense.
If the Chakra system did exist in this world, then they should've picked it up way earlier thanks to the huge advancement of medical technology. CAT scans should’ve picked it up, considering x-rays picked up his usage of Chakra. This means that the Chakra is stored somewhere that can’t be seen in the physical world, like his soul.
Of course, Jack could be wrong about this and this is just his ‘isekai cheat’ that he’s seen so much in various fanfictions of Naruto self-inserts. He didn’t actually know what ‘isekai’ meant, but he assumed it meant something like portal stories or that one tree house series he read back in elementary and middle school. Jack doesn’t think that he has a cheat, since there’s so many myths and legends that speak of martial arts masters doing supernatural feats.
His third discovery was that doing certain exercises for a while caused a decrease in progress. Back when he first found out that the spicy chicken ramen bowl helped in increasing Jack’s focus and energy reserves, he tried to use it as much as possible in day-to-day life and almost ran out of money doing so.
Unfortunately, he soon found out that each subsequent use gave a little less of a jump in improvement as the last. Over the course of that month of gratuitous spending, Jack’s usage of Chakra improved dramatically, but he gained less and less progress at the end of the month.
He went from just a little less than 10 seconds of focus to bring up his Chakra enhancement technique, to 3 seconds, and he could use just the first few seconds of ‘The Entertainer’ to focus properly. He could use a sustained use of the technique for almost 50 seconds by the end of the first month, compared to when he started at around 12 seconds. His recovery speed of Chakra didn’t increase at all, taking the same amount of time to reach full from empty as it did before, which was around 10-15 minutes. However, the ‘strain’ he felt from such repetitive draining and filling was lesser and lesser to the point that Jack could no longer test how many times it takes to strain his Chakra to being unusable.
Jack made a huge amount of progress in that first month, but his second month of such gratuitous spending showed lesser progress.
The time it took to bring up his technique saw the most progress. It was pretty much instant so long as he focused on the first few notes of his song. His duration of the technique showed not so much progress. It went from 50 seconds to 100 seconds. Sure, it doubled, but it wasn’t the almost five-fold increase of his first month. His recovery speed saw the least amount of progress, considering it got to the point where he could no longer push it to its limit. He could feel the ‘strain’ lessening, but it was still very much there.
His third and last month saw the least amount of progress, with Jack starting to be more frugal to save up money. His- Jack didn’t want to just say ‘time it took to bring up a technique’ every time, so he was going to refer to it as casting speed. His casting speed had gotten better, with him no longer needing to bring up any thoughts of his song in order to ‘cast’ it. He just had to think about it and put some small focus on it, and he was stronger.
The duration has increased from 100 seconds to 160 seconds. This showed Jack that his technique and Chakra capacity was slowing in growth. His recovery speed had actually seemed to increase in the last month from 10-15 minutes to somewhere around 10-12 minutes. Alongside that, his ‘strain’ was lessening, but he hasn’t found that limit again. This might be the point where Jack has to make a decision on what to do with his schedule again. He might have to sacrifice his morning runs to train his Chakra.
What was Jack thinking about again? … Oh, right! Discoveries. The next discovery Jack made was about his Chakra Enhancement Technique. He could push it farther than its ‘basic’ mode. When Jack uses his technique, he just lets the Chakra flow through him naturally. He feels great, and doesn’t feel the slightest twinge of pain or strain.
His new level of the technique, however, has Jack focusing on strengthening himself. Not the natural strength that he was using before, but like an overclock. Pushing past the 100% limit of his technique to force his body to do more. It was what he used to lift that pallet of meat that the Tanaka family couldn’t get into the freezer.
The technique wasn’t all that great of a boost when it came to going past his limits. At most, it was a 50% boost. Yet, the downsides were something that caused him no end of pain. When the overclock is in use, it doesn’t just strain his Chakra more, it strained his body and mind. It ate his Chakra at a fast pace, giving him only about half a second of use when he first stumbled upon it 2 months ago and about 5 seconds nowadays.
Yet, as shown with the pallets, overusing it caused strain and damage to the body. His mind becomes sluggish and foggy, too. Both his body and mind required at least 24 hours to rest before he attempted it again. Last time he didn’t follow this, he gained the equivalent of a cramp all over his body and soul. Despite that, Jack still put it in his schedule to train in.
The experience still taught him something about Chakra. It could do more than his body and mind are not capable of doing. If used incorrectly, Chakra could kill him.
All of this led up to Jack’s final discovery. His lifting strength is completely different to his striking strength. Sure, he might be able to lift 500 pounds, but his strikes can splinter trees and leave his fist print behind. Jack, himself, felt only some pain, but he trained this out of himself by doing it over and over until his hands started to pulse with pain. This was only with his regular Chakra enhancement technique, and is something he’s been training for the last month or so.
He remembered that Karate Kid spin-off show, Cobra Kai, and how the students would strike posts until their hands hurt. Or maybe it was something else, either way, Jack realized that he was doing body exercises without learning the way of hitting. His last month was spent trying to correct this by using what little knowledge of boxing and kickboxing he had from his world.
He never learned it himself, but he tried to do what advice he could remember. Keep your thumb outside of your fist, keep both hands up to block hits, stay on the tips of your toes and bounce from each to stay mobile. That’s it. When he first tried to bounce, though, he accidentally jumped his entire height into the air. His highest ever jump was about one story of a building.
Either way, back to his failure when it comes to the leaf-sticking exercise. Jack was starting to learn what it takes to keep something sticking to him, when the wind blew past him and took both of his green leaves with it. Jack jumped up and tried to get one with his regular body enhancement technique, but felt his body freeze in pain and fell an entire story to the ground.
He took his battered body into the house, and laid in his bed. Which leads to now. Jack sulking about his failure today.
“Stupid wind.” He mumbled to himself. What was he supposed to do now!? That exercise was the only thing he can possibly think of to pass the next 5 days before he can get back to his regular training.
Jack felt his stomach rumble, and dragged himself out of bed to make himself a small snack in the kitchen. After looking through the cabinets and pantry, Jack decided to just make himself a ham sandwich with pepperjack cheese and toasted slices with butter and mayo in it. Give it some pepper and he made himself a good sandwich.
As he ate his sandwich in the kitchen, he looked around the room, trying to find anything that could relieve his newfound boredom. His eyes stopped on the fridge, seeing something that made his 5 brain cells work their hardest to make connections. He walked up to it and pulled something off of its surface.
It was a sticky note that was designed as a leaf. On it was a note from Disi to Larry about how they needed more milk and to pick it up. However, that was not what caused his mind to come to a revelation. Rather, it was the fact that the note was in the shape of a green leaf.
Jack quickly stuck the note back onto the fridge and kept his sandwich in his mouth. He went around the entire kitchen and its cabinets and drawers, searching for where the stack of leaf shape notes were. Every now and then, he would take a bit of his sandwich and chew as thoroughly as possible before swallowing.
Right when Jack had put the last of the sandwich in his mouth, he had finally found the stack. It was in a drawer that had other miscellaneous items like envelopes, scissors, glue, and pens/pencils. Jack took a few of the notes off the top of the stack, used the nearby scissors to cut off the sticky bits, and headed back to his room.
There, he tried his new idea, one you’ve probably already figured out. Yes, indeed, he managed to try and stick the note on his forehead for just half a second. Jack could feel his brain growing three sizes that day. Truly, his genius knew no bounds.
He spent the next few hours focusing completely on his new exercise. Eventually, however, he had to eat dinner with the returning family and go to bed.
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Jack sat with the family at breakfast, saying nothing and eating slowly. Larry, reading the morning newspaper, made a bit of a distressed hum. Jack looked up at him from the eggs, pancakes, bacon, and sausage on his plate. Larry’s brow furrowed with worry. “Anything the matter?” Jack tried to talk with a little bit of food in his mouth. Disi lectured, “Don’t talk with your mouth full!” Jack nodded and hummed an apology to her before saying it again after swallowing.
Larry looked up at Jack. His voice was a bit light, whether from awe, surprise, or concern was unclear. He said, “I don’t know… Capsule Corp have invented flying cars.” That immediately got everyone’s attention. “Flying cars!?” Tate exclaimed, his eyes shining in awe. Merci was right behind him, “Really? Really!?” she said with enthusiasm.
Irah was looking like he was told that he won a million dollars. “No way,” he said. He stood up from his chair and bent over the table to try to look at the article. “You serious!? … Oh my gosh, you are.” He said the last part in a whisper of awe. He pointed at a part of the newspaper that showed a car with no wheels hovering about the ground. “Look at that! They really did it!” Both Merci and Tate had already gotten out of their seats and walked around the table to look at it.
Disi and Jack were sitting in shock. Disi had her hand up to her chest to show her surprise. Meanwhile, Jack had completely frozen. His fork held a piece of pancake up to his mouth. Despite that, one could see his brain trying to process what he heard. Several seconds later, his brain had enough processing power to bite down on his now empty fork. The pancake fell off onto his plate, and his teeth now hurt from trying to bite metal.
The pain shocked him awake and he held his unoccupied hand up to his mouth. His eyes still stayed on Larry and his newspaper.
Larry read a few lines out loud. “‘Capsule Corp has announced that the teaser from three months ago was about a new project that they were finalizing the results over. Doctor Briefs told news interviewers that he has been researching hover and flight technology for the past three years. Today, he managed to create a personal flying vehicle that uses only electricity with no propellers or jet engines. Doctor Briefs demonstrated this new technology to the interviewers, and they were allowed to take video and photo proof of this demonstration. If readers wish to view the video, ZNN will be running the recording tonight at 6 PM.
“‘When asked about how he made such a breakthrough, Doctor Briefs attributed it to his 4-year-old daughter, Bulma Briefs, for his breakthrough. Doctor Briefs says that the new line of flying vehicles and hover cars should come out in 3 years. The hovercar will cost just as much as a regular car at an estimated 1,500,000 Zeni, while the personal flying vehicle should cost an estimated 15,000,000 Zeni, pending setbacks such as deals no longer falling through and construction slowing on the new factories.’” Larry just closed his paper and set it on the table. He rubbed his entire face with both hands.
The children, on the other hand, were ecstatic. Merci and Tate were loudly talking about how they wanted to see it. Tate was also saying stuff like “changing the economic scene” and “mechanical engineering and spaceflight shall never be the same” like the 12-year-old nerd he was.
Irah was talking about how he wants to get one to try and get some ladies. “I’ll be the coolest kid in town- no, the region, if I can get the car.” Irah’s face was showing how his fantasies were playing out. Disi, meanwhile, was consoling her distraught husband. Jack could kind of get it. This new transportation method was going to get rid of many train companies if everyone could get these vehicles. Larry, who was fiercely loyal to the idea of trains as a whole, was devastated by this news.
Jack, however, wasn’t focusing on any of that. You see, he was focused on a certain picture in the newspaper. A picture of a slightly hunched back man with graying, purple-tinted hair, a very attractive young blonde wife whose eyes seemed to be permanently squinted shut, and both holding two little girls, one in their arms and another by just hugging her.
The one held in the mother’s arms was around 16 years old. She had blonde hair, and dark eyes. She was simply hugging her mother with a big smile on her face. The lines underneath the picture told him who these two people were. The mother’s name was Bikini (how!?) and the daughter’s name is Tights.
The father was holding a four year old girl in his arms. She had very blue hair, dark eyes, and an innocent, yet smug face. In her hands was some kind of mechanical contraption. The line underneath the picture showed their names. Dr. Trunks Brief and his daughter Bulma Brief.
Jack stared at the photo and names. His 5 brain cells, which were tired from yesterday’s revelations and brainstorming, worked hard once again as he felt something tingle on the tip of his tongue.
That 4 year old girl. His mind was reaching out for some kind of answer, when it seemed to have finally caught something.
The houses in pictures of the 4 Major Cities. North, South, East, West. They all had hemispheres for buildings. In fact, every time he has seen a picture of a building in the newspaper that wasn’t from Maya Village, they all looked like igloos.
Capsule Corp, known for making the Capsules that could store so much in a tiny vessel, had the daughter of the founder named Bulma Brief.
The myths and legends talked about a Demon King named Piccolo and a Hermit called the Turtle Hermit. He was rumored to be the strongest man alive today, even though he was also mentioned in a legend over 300 years ago.
Finally, something that he heard, but didn’t think too much about. The World Martial Arts Tournament. Held every 5 years, and takes on all comers. He saw a picture of the arena in the newspaper that declared a guy named Chappa as the winner. He didn’t think much of it even though it tickled his brain with how familiar it is.
All of this combined into something that made his hands minorly shake a little. He quickly devoured the entire meal on his plate before standing up and washing the dish. “What’s got you so raring to go?” Irah asked him, already returning to eating his breakfast.
“I- Uh, gotta look something up.” Jack explained to them. He put on his new jacket due to how chilly it was getting outside. “I’ll be back after work. You know where to find me if you need anything.” And off Jack went, out the door at 7:00 in the morning. Where did he go?
To the library.
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Jack had spent an entire two hours here. Searching the History and Myths sections to find what he was looking for. He found it. He wished he hadn’t.
There, on the table in front of him, was a book about various legends. One of them talked about how God had decided to protect Humanity from a dragon. The dragon was said to be so large that it could wrap around the world ten times and still have some length to spare. He defeated it and split its power into seven different balls. These golden balls had stars on them, and, when brought together, could summon back the dragon. If they did so, the dragon would fulfill one wish. Any wish.
Jack already knew the name of these balls, and what they could do, long before he ever opened the book. He knew it long before he entered this world. It wasn’t a big part of his life, like the show Naruto was, but he saw a few episodes of the OG and its sequel. Most of what he knew came from Fanfiction, really. Still, to think he ended up here, of all places.
A world that was known to him as Dragon Ball.
AN: Sorry about the delay of this update. Dealing with an infected cyst and life really knocks it outta you. Anyways, next chapter will be a collection of different POVs.