groundbreaking-science

[groundbreaking-science]

Section 3-2: Amplification

Warning! The following section contains exercises that may cause exhaustion, fainting, dissociation, abreaction and cardiac arrest. No exercise should be undertaken without explicit permission from a medical practitioner, and mental health support may be required for exercise 3.2.5. The reader proceeds at their own risk.

Prerequisites: Exercises in 1.4, 2.1-5, 3.1. Additionally material from section 1.9 is referenced.

The first time my father sensed the Earth and his place in it, a soft dawn was breaking. He stood shaking and gasping for air atop the world's tallest tower, with a view rivalled only by God above. A thick carpet of cloud rolled out to the horizon far below him, the very real verdant lands of Yahhoi still present and visible in glimpses between breaks, and he felt relief.

He'd spent the night screaming in deepest pain and writhing on the indifferent marble floor. He'd flickered between life and death, battling the effects of a poison he'd chosen against all advice to imbibe. It was said that the poison would draw out the drinker's latent power - should the drinker survive the process. My father, at the still tender age of sixteen, was the fifteenth warrior to try and the very first to breathe in the morning's cool air.

In that new light he felt rather than saw life stirring, and he understood the interconnectedness of his own life with the Universe around him. For the first time he sensed a power through the ki-field: the overwhelming strength and evil intent of King Piccolo. With renewed certainty in his abilities my father set out to face down that evil, and the rest is literal history.

After enduring the poison my father obtained the ability to consciously interact with the ki field. Though he wouldn't learn to amplify his abilities with any measured and focused intent for a while, needing guidance from more divine or experienced sources and more powerful, urgent motivators, every one necessitating the honing of a particular element in efficiency or technique. My father's spiritual awakening was slow-going then, though that is not an insult to his effort - even the Monk among our ragtag band took decades to fully master his unlocked potential, and I know there are towering heights I could yet reach.

It is that endless struggle that ultimately gave me the confidence to include this chapter. My current proficiency and my promise to impart certain skills make the work seem simple, but I know I have reached this level with a genetic advantage and a range of thankfully unique life experiences. Yes, nefarious forces could use this chapter to escalate their havoc by orders of magnitude, but that is a highly unlikely outcome, as I'm sorry to say the majority of readers will never achieve a level of amplification that could cause any material damage. Instead I believed it more pressing to think of those curious individuals compelled to perform the "super" techniques covered in the rest of this chapter and beyond, and these skills require ki amplification to perform safely, if at all. And besides, it would never have been fair to keep from you a skill that is considered an Earthling technique at heart.

So whilst I am no God, nor a questionable feline apothecarist making my home amongst the clouds, I am able to employ more traditional teaching methods to improve your ki output with conscious intent, rather than resorting to cryptic life-and-death experiences. And so, in a more measured way, we begin to tie together many elements you have already explored.

Before we delve back into the ki field, I wish to return to the ki we already possess - genki - and the two elements that contribute to the total energy output: the charge (energy per particle) and the flow rate (particles per second). Increasing one or both of these will increase your total genki power output.

The easiest way to achieve a step-change in power output - although impossible for many - would be to utilising a transformation. Simply growing larger means more cells need to be governed, which requires more parcels of genki to be released. You can think of the size of the centre (and therefore the centre's hypothetical surface area) increasing along with the body. A larger surface area with the same flux (flow per unit area) gives a greater power output.

Namekians are able to physically grow in size and therefore power, as demonstrated by Piccolo (the Junior) at the 23rd Martial Arts tournament. This ability is a learnt skill and under conscious control. Saiyans can also grow to gigantic proportions taking on a more ape-like form as Oozaru. Whilst this is an innate transformation and so more accessible (for Saiyans with tails, at least), it requires the reflected sunlight of a full moon to induce, and the Oozaru form does not naturally have a rational mind. Mastery and use of the form is therefore restrictive.

Earthlings on the other hand aren't known for their strength-inducing transformations; the mysterious Shapeshifting Schools utilise magic and transformations in this manner do not appear to grant a power increase. The innate transformation magic of Giants, Manwolves and similar teratoidal folk does grant an increase in power, and zoomorphic people of larger frames will have a greater genki output than the average anthropoidal person, but anthropoidal Earthlings are not granted either of these advantages (by their very definition).

However, Earthlings of all kinds do have access to one technique that will raise the ki particle flow rate: the Kaioken. Against received wisdom I will detail this technique later, if only to emphasize the dangers of trying to learn this skill away from the healing properties of the Heavenly Realm. The technique involves warping the centre's surface, therefore increasing the surface area but preserving the effective volume, allowing more ki particles through. Performed with too much gusto this technique can tear the body apart cell-by-cell, so for those of us bound to the mortal realm, mastery of this technique could take a lifetime.

There is a trade-off to these size increases, however. The pool of ki particles in your centre depletes far faster when deviating from its natural surface area and size. If all particles are used up, you will be left without a way to draw on ki, and will have to rest for an hour to fully replenish.

A further way to boost power output and to much greater effect is to increase the ki particle's average charge. Again some species have access to physical transformations that can achieve this; Frieza's race being one, where various naturally armoured and therefore lower-energy consumption forms reduce the draw on the centre's ki (both in flow rate and charge), and these forms prevent the individual from overwhelming lower ki energy folk around them.

Saiyans have access to another transformation called "Super Saiyan", one that does not increase the size of the body, but does impact every cell, creating a greater demand for charge per particle on the centre. From the combined research of scientists across the Universe, including my own, we know the transformation requires a level of circulating so-called "S-cells" in the body. In brief (as this transformation will be detailed later), high levels of emotion in the body trigger the S-cells to release a message in ki to all cells, asking them to call for more ki in readiness, in turn triggering the centre to release more ki which manifests as a transformation with recognised stages.

The final way to boost your genki output is to use a different version of genki entirely. The Gods and other non-mortals appear to use their own version of ki that is functionally the same in nearly every way, though God ki is more powerful - the reason for which remains unclear. Curiously, God ki is undetectable by mortals unless they receive specific training. Given how parallel they are, I believe then God and mortal ki to be of different chirality.

Chirality is a concept we find in nature. It is woven into the very structure of our bodies, even. When we look at ourselves in the mirror, our mirror image has the same make-up as us - the same number of blemishes on our face and hairs on our head - but there is no way to spin you around to make you look exactly like your mirror image. You and your mirror twin will always be left-right flipped as "optical isomers" of each other. Similarly, some molecules can have exactly the same chemical formula, but the structure can be left-right flipped. In our bodies, one molecule we ingest can fit snugly into a receptor and work as intended, but the optical isomer will be completely ignored (or worse, cause unpredictable damage in the body).

Mortal and God ki then, with their dyadic relationship, can be thought of as chiral mirror images. Unlike chemical optical isomers however, mortals can learn to accept and use the chiral God ki, but it is not natural and so must be unlocked in some manner and developed.

3.2.1 Raising Yuuki With Kiai

Earthlings are Universally known for their ability to change their ki output without reliable access to transformation or divinely developed techniques. Their wide emotional range and social nature can be repurposed or redirected to drive that increase in power. For an instantaneous boost of genki, we can rely on our yuuki. If you recall section 1.9, yuuki (courage) is not a true form of ki but a mechanism of bolstering the flow rate, and comes from reducing fear to free up "effort" and ki-particles and therefore energy otherwise poised to react in a more animalistic fashion to the stressors before us.

Consider the question - "when we run from a bear, do we run because we're afraid? Or are we afraid because we run?" This truth is a mix of both. Calming the mind can calm the body, yes, but changing our physiological state can also affect very real change in our emotions too, which can in turn free up mental capacity for other purposes. Likewise, amping up the body can amp up the mind and ki in tandem.

In section 2.3 we discussed kiai, the guttural yell. We slowed our breathing, using the inward and outward breaths to create a rhythm that our ki synced to. When our core tightened to yell our ki flowed steadily with the breath, expelled with the kiai. Kiai also raises yuuki, as the steady, conscious breathing slows the heart rate, reducing the physical sensations we attach to fear and therefore fear itself, a calming feedback loop. We can then think of that freed energy as released in a short, sharp burst of "courage" instead.

To practise this, perform a push intent with and without kiai. Notice the increase in strength as ki becomes more dense when paired with kiai. Then repeat the exercise, this time explicitly utilising yuuki. Calm the body to begin with, and with the freed capacity of mind, genki should be easier to focus and kiai more effective, the rush of emotion with each kiai honing the intent rather than distracting from it. Practice these four states until you can sense the difference in power, both in quality and quantity. Throughout your practice keep in mind whether your yuuki is well-maintained or not. There is no need to be perfectly physically calm every practice, only to be able to note how calm to better estimate the strength of that day's intents.

3.2.2. Yuuki - Advanced Calming

Slowing one's breathing has the ability to start a soothing chain reaction through the body. But there is a shortcut - to hack our bodily ki intents themselves, intercepting the messages intended for the heart and other systems.

To learn though we must be quiet to begin with. Sit quietly, slow your breathing, and feel the subtle pulse of ki intent that ripples with your heartbeat. Not the ki itself, as that will be flowing through the body at a near constant, rippling with the breath and heartbeat, but the change in intent that drives the heartbeat. This ripple will track back to the upper-right of the heart (close to the body's centre-line) to the pacemaker cells which control the heart's contractions, and will spread from the pacemaker cells to the rest of the heart. These are the intents we must intercept.

Follow these ripples and imagine them slowing - I think of a soothe intent to envelope and slow the beat intent, and before long you'll feel your heartbeat begin to slow too. The other physical symptoms of fear will leave you as the mechanisms triggering them unwind, freeing your mind and therefore affording you yuuki to use for ki manipulation. With familiarity you'll be able to track these ripples when under huge mental and physical stress.

It should go without saying that upsetting homeostatic equilibrium is extremely dangerous. This technique should only be performed for a few seconds before you let the body drive itself again. I only ever use this technique as a kick to my system, like a full-body shiver to reset. Slowing the heart too much will leave you breathless, drop your blood pressure and cause you to faint. Playing too harshly with pacemaker cells directly could cause them to fall out of sync, triggering cardiac arrest.

The next question both the curious and antagonistic among you will ask is whether this same soothe intent will work on others to incapacitate them. The answer is yes but, thankfully, there is an inbuilt difficulty; these homeostatic intents written with a ki signature are so tightly bound to that person's subconscious that overriding the messages takes considerable skill. I know of one assassin using this method to trigger cardiac arrest, and the genki "injection" must be delivered with great, well-practised precision within close-range. Miss and the assassin is wide open for a counter. I do not recommend developing this technique both for the safety of others and your own.

3.2.3 Field Ki

Genki manipulation has its limits. We have a finite amount of genki (created from chemical (food) energy) and a finite number of ki particles to assign it too. So there is a maximum amount of genki that we can release in one instant and whilst substantial, it is most unsustainable.

Instead the most reliable, near limitless way to amplify ki is to increase the charge per particle by converting genki to field ki (banoki). In section 1.9 we discussed the ki field; how the ki field is a lower energy state consisting of a soup of decayed and garbled ki energy separated from us by a barrier of ki particles. In 2.2 we visited the surface of the ki field to read the ripples created by the ki of others. Now we will reach through that undulating surface to harness the ki energy beyond.

Find a comfortable and well-centred position. Lower yourself to the ki-field as when learning to read the ki-signatures of those outside of auratic contact (exercise 2.2.2). Feel the waves of others, those vibrations, and settle 'above' them. Remember, your spirit is tethered to this reality by its very existence, so it would take a deliberate act to cut that tie and fall in. I'd hope by now you would be familiar with this exercise and such visualisations would be of little use, but for now attend to the ripples to aid the next step.

Now, you must expend a little effort and genki. Let your mind follow your decaying genki down to the field and visualise yourself penetrating the waves' surface with a hollow reed of ki, finding your way between the surface of empty ki particles at the still spots between the waves. A through or part intent works well here. Your genki and the field ki energy will meet through the imagined reed. The link will feel tenuous at first, as both your effort and genki used in the process will render the exercise counterproductive in net ki, but do not fret - with a little practice you will break even and then excel.

Once the connection is established, you will need to gather field ki. Imagine the reed straw you've made growing roots, spreading through the endless sea of field ki below to efficiently fill the space. Imagine those fine tendrils reaching, your ki signature spilling out as genki converts to give a semblance of structure in the field ki. Then, suck that captured ki back through the reed, palming it into your very real hands. Retrieving the ki can be tricky - overextend and your fine genki root system will break, essentially wasting that genki as it breaks down far too fast. Spread too little and, whilst safe, some genki will be wasted, unable to touch field ki and convert. Take your time - the amplification will come. Aim to be able to repeat this cycle of reaching and capture as a smooth, continuous flow. When this convoluted process becomes second nature, amplification can be achieved with a simple boost or swell intent.

3.2.4 Storing and Moving Ki

At first, this mix of kis will be heavy and unwieldy to move between foci as your ki signature is weakened through the mass. The usually chatty and fast to react genki will take a while to send intents through the rest of the more neutral ki, the genki acting as lit touchpaper. The best way to manage this mass of ki is to maintain the "rootlike" structure of genki through the mass, enabling fast communication between genki and the furthest section of field ki.

To practice, focus genki between your hands and swell the mass. As you sense the energy convert, try to send the ball of ki from left to right between your hands. Notice how, as you continue to amplify (and at first even lose total ki energy during the conversion) this movement increases in difficulty, demonstrating that as the fraction of genki energy in the focussed ball lessens, it takes more time to propagate your intent from the ordered, ki-signature laden genki to the unstructured mass of field ki.

Notice too, that if you were to apply for example a push intent, the strength of the ability would falter at first, the genki now having to learn how to send out this particular intent as well as apply it to itself. You will be frustratingly back to those early days of learning the basic intents. With time and practice though your skill and dexterity with intents will return - and faster this time around. When you've matched your previous skill level across a variety of intents when using only a tenth or less of the genki usually required without field ki, you will be ready to move on.

In the heat of the moment more powerful techniques will require more ki than can be created instantaneously, necessitating you to charge up the ki intent. There is a fine balance to be had between adjusting your genki flow as and when you need it for amplification, versus letting your mind work on autopilot at a fixed conversion rate to over-produce ki. The former of course saves you energy, but the micro-management could make you slower to counter. It is therefore prudent to know how to amplify and store that ki for later. If charging and amplifying a specific attack, of course bring ki to the focus in question, but to be ready at a moment's notice to push, to explode upwards to fly and to guard, you will need to store ki in an aura.

The fundamentals of this particular technique were covered in exercise 2.4.5, but to recap, use your centre as a focus, but this time expel ki. The ki should surround you in an approximate sphere, ready to be gathered into external foci like hands or feet, to report back to you nearby danger, or to create a near-instantaneous barrier. Remember when charging to use a hold intent too, otherwise the genki, untasked, will degrade. This technique is named "aura-shoring". When performed at high ki energy densities, ki will spontaneously interact with the world, creating an impressive and intimidating visible glow around the body.

3.2.5 Raising Shouki

We don't only trade genki for field ki during amplification. We expend effort to maintain spiritual calmness, shouki. If yuuki is the calmness between mind and body, shouki is our self-assuredness, the calmness between mind and ki. The stronger our connection between mind and ki, the easier amplification becomes. As discussed in 1.9, disrupting this link by agitating an opponent through very incisive taunts will knock their power-level down considerably, as they will be unable to efficiently convert genki to field ki. Now we wish to raise our own shouki.

To do so we must get in contact with our spiritual selves - not necessarily in a religious manner, but to know and speak our own truth. For my father, his brush with death was enough for his young self to begin to attend to that spiritualness, but you do not need to go to such extremes.

Mindfulness, the ability to just be in the present, comes easier to some than others. Mindfulness is not the ability to empty the mind, for that can be frustrating to achieve as worries for the day pop in and out. Instead we must notice those thoughts, the emotional and physical feelings, and maintain curiosity toward them before setting them aside for the moment. This benign distance affords us the ability to take stock. Spending time attending to how genki moves through our body and the environment around us can also assist in this mindfulness process. It is a focus on the here and now, and is something we can do alongside other exercises.

Mindfulness however is not dissociation, where we disown thoughts and experiences as not happening or not our own as a defense mechanism. And that leads me to a warning. For individuals dealing with dissociation as a result of, for example, psychological trauma, forcing the mind back in the body can cause an abreaction and worsen your state of mind. If you find you have constant bad reactions to mindfulness, or exercises and martial arts that encourage this open state of mind, then please seek professional support before continuing further. I know of one individual who broke through life-long trauma through sheer force of will, but it took him decades and could have ended poorly. However, dealing with the emotional block monumentally improved his raw power through yuuki and shouki, so your mental health is worth working on in whatever capacity you can. I also speak from experience. Fluctuating shouki was a difficulty I had in my childhood, and it took a lot of self-compassion and support from family and friends to let go of the guilt a child can swallow when they do not know any better. Simple grounding exercises - feeling the earth between your toes, naming sounds, colours and smells in the world around you - can suffice to bolster shouki somewhat in the meanwhile, and was the technique I used until I could be truly still and in the moment.

I told you once that I made the fortuitous decision to sit cross legged over seiza for twenty hours of a twenty-five hour ceremony. This ceremony, to unlock my fullest potential, required me to keep very still at a time I wanted to do anything but; my friends and family were in grave danger, some even passing away in the meanwhile, and the god performing the magic did not come across as particularly competent. As the hours ticked by I felt no different, only frustrated and wrestling with all my concerns with little else to distract me. It was only as my anger boiled over that I felt the ease at which ki enveloped my clench fists, and I understood the power of stillness. Whilst I know the silent magic of the god played a more than substantial part in my increase in power, I know holding out hope for Earth while confronting myself and my fears during those endless hours did play some part in repairing and raising my shouki, and I am grateful for that time to reflect. I hope you can find this time, too.

With every possible type of amplification in your knowledge and the most accessible at your disposal, it is now time to relearn all techniques with field ki in the mix. I know, I know it feels a step backward, but trust me, this step is a huge leap forward, and will give you access to all the work following on. When - or if - you can amplify the strength of your techniques by a factor of two with only a tenth of the genki available, you will be ready to proceed to the next section on guarding.

next previous first contents ask?

[groundbreaking-science]

This might be a little oddly specific, but I've sort of been experimenting with manipulating Ki, trying to form it into a sort of "floating light." So far, I've been somewhat successful (I've been able to get it to cohere into a sphere) however, it's a little difficuly getting it to stay that way - it tends to either dissipate or blow up. (After the first time where I accidentally broke my windows and set off a car alarm, I decided to start practicing outside.)

Practicing outside, for those that can, is a very good idea - I’m sorry to hear you had to learn the hard way.

This is a very interesting twist on the techniques covered so far and I applaud you for your inventiveness! Blowing up will be related to the enthusiasm of the genki running the intent, the dissipation the uncertainty unravelling itself.

You will first need to apply a hold intent after what I presume is shine, from section 2.5. This is a kind of “pause”, a way to put a stopper in the genki’s intent to ensure nothing else gets added until you say so, and the intent will continue to run using the rest of the ki, assuming that set of commands was its entire purpose. This will also stop the genki inventing what to do next based off your emotions, like exploding with your excitement.

If your technique is running out even with a hold intent, then I’m afraid you will need to supply more fuel. There could be a way of setting up a mantra for yourself, maybe getitng into a habit of sending a little ki its way with every breath, a little like aura-shoring (covered in 2.4) but to that particular focus. With the latest chapter, adding in some amplification may prevent you from tiring before your appetite to read at night wanes.

I wish you every success in your invented technique!  --Son Gohan

[groundbreaking-science]

Any tips on dealing with the disorientation that comes with getting Ki-sense? It's amazing, but kind of overwhelming.

I’m guessing from the positive to neutral tone of your observations, you have not yet vomited. If that is the case, congratulations! If you have, then my commiserations.

I would read the accounts of another student going by the name of WestCityDunderHead (a moniker most inappropriate, I assure you) here [https://groundbreaking-science.com/post/176496532353/if-youre-having-trouble-22-x-post-from-pfn] and here [https://groundbreaking-science.com/post/173843142873/if-you-are-having-trouble-with-autoception]. 

For my own advice, I would go somewhere very still in life. If you can go out of town to a forest, or to remote solar or wind farms, and lay in the grass or dirt, approach the exercise slowly. At that distance the movement coming from a city will be in a fixed point at least, so you’ll be able to get your bearings. Do not try a boat as like the horizon, the ki will bob relative to you and still trigger sea sickness in those unfortunate enough to experience it.

Increase the time you’re actively ki sensing every day and your tolerance will also grow. But make note of your amazement now and remember to recall it in such times this new sense becomes mundane! -- Son Gohan

[groundbreaking-science]

Dear Prof. Son, I have many questions on Ki sensing, I have been attempting many weeks ago this same exercise. I live in a similar setting to Mt. Paozu (close to a river fall and a forest with a couple of inhabitants living close by). Early this morning when I heard noise outside, I tried not to look through the window to identify who these people were but I can't help. I sense the river fall is disturbing my sensing abilities during the practice. How can I center my focus? I am at chapter 1.6

Dear Student,  I am glad to hear that your studies are progressing even outside of the city. For other rural learners, please take both note and heart! Learning with very few people around is still possible. The environment can be a horrific distraction, I agree with you. The sound preventing you from keeping focus within, and I can imagine that when you move to later chapters, the ki of others will pass through your mind’s eye like a searchlight. I can imagine the ki from life in the waterfall would only add to that fizzing distraction. I mention mindfulness training in the newest section and this could be of benefit to you early - the ability to notice that you have been distracted, and then to place those thoughts to one side. It’s a way to notice when your distraction is frustrating you, too, and then address that frustration. Don’t beat yourself up, just accept that you are struggling that day and try again later. As for the waterfall itself - one way to remove the distraction is to immerse yourself in it, in this case quite literally. If the size allows it, go sit in the falls. The sound and life then will be all around you, and cancel out, the roar acting like a noise machine. The pressure of the water can be meditative, too. Give it a try. All the very best, 

-Son Gohan

[groundbreaking-science]

I did not understand how you can insert intent into ki and make it a photon. Could you please explain it to me?

The ki understands that it needs to push, and that “pushing” usually requires electromagnetic interaction (energy exchange) between two electrons mediated by a photon. So ki becomes that photon, behaving as though it has left an imaginary electron to interact with a very real one. In shine, too, ki needs to shine yellow so it will turn into a photon of the appropriate energy to do so. To change ki into a photon requires only thinking of the eventual outcome you want and the ki will find the physics required to make it happen. For more complicated intents like flight, a knowledge of e.g. some fluid dynamics to help the ki act efficiently wouldn’t go amiss, but the fundamentals of physics are seemingly understood. How ki knows that, I’m afraid I cannot say. There can be entire creatures made from ki indistinguishable at first glance from the original life form, the ki becoming bone and skin and memory, purely because it believes it should be able to do so, and so does. It’s a simple, and as magic, as that. --Son Gohan

[groundbreaking-science]

Son Gohan, do you have any clue as to how God-ki works? I heard that ki is mostly compressed but wouldn't that harm the body or at the very least be futile?

In some part, yes. God can be a station, a title to be given in some cases, but it can also be a state of existence. Some Beings in this Universe have a different kind of ki that functions much the same as mortal ki. However, it’s completely undetectable by mortals. Its intents can certainly be felt, but ki signatures, curiously, cannot. There are molecules that behave like this, too. Some molecules can be produced that are chemically similar to ones produced by lifeforms, but the structure, the formation of the molecule, is different - there is no way you can pick up one molecule and spin it to look like the other, it is as though one molecule is a mirror image of the other. In the best case scenario, these synthetically produced molecules. These molecules are ‘chiral’, and are considered ‘stereoisomers’ of each other. In the best case, if we receive the “wrong” version of a molecule, receptors in the body won’t read the molecule at all because it is the wrong-shaped puzzle piece for the gap. At the worst it’ll kind of fit and be interpreted by the body incorrectly leading to ill effects - some medicines produced with a mix of stereoisomers have had to be recalled and produced only with the natural one. It is possible there are other life forms that have evolved “opposite” to us, and so require the mirror of the molecules we do to function, and eating each others’ food could be dangerous. God ki then can be thought to have a different “chirality” to mortal ki. They are mirrors, and so we need to learn to detect and sometimes even harness the other ki. Not many mortals have access to God ki (I can read it with difficulty), and Gods rarely bother with mortal ki as it is the weaker. As to why God ki has the upper hand, that remains unknown.  --- Ki is only ever under pressure with compression when effort or intent is imbued, otherwise it happily overlaps. Collapsing the centre to supress ki is difficult as it’s a lot of effort to make ki not leak against its nature, and compressing ki into a ball ready to push is tricky because the ki very much wants to push in tiny amounts in all directions. If you held that internally, that would cause damage to your body. If the former case, perpetually suppressing your ki would be mentally fatiguing at small levels and yes, if suppressed beyond what your body needs, permanent damage and very futile. I would not recommend hiding in this manner for a long time, but to relax to your natural ki flow. Best wishes,  -- Son Gohan

[groundbreaking-science]

Hello! I’m a martial artist who is branching out to more creative endeavors and I have been inspired by your work, and commitment to the (In My Opinion) very real Science of Ki Control. I would enjoy to do a Dramatized reading of this book for A potential YouTube Video. Credit Given where Credit is due of course. Thanks have have a very great day!

((Hey hey! Thank you for such a high compliment! You’re more than welcome to do a reading with credit given like you’ve said, it would be an honour! And I’d love to see/hear the finished work so please, send a link over if/when you’ve published. For full disclosure, I made sure the hard-science-y parts of the textbook draw heavily from real science but when applied to ki it’s made up, (and further massaged to fit Dragon Ball’s version of ki) but many of the exercises are drawn from a mix of mindfulness, qi-gong and a few science experiments on interoception, as well as plain old imagination :) I wish you the very best luck and hope you have a great day, too! )) 

[groundbreaking-science]

((Gotta say, really love what you're doing here! I'm fairly certain that if Ki was real, this would *definitely* help in learning how to use it.)) I must say, this book is particularly helpful and interesting. Some of the excercises are a little tricky, but overall, it's fairly doable. I do have to ask though, what exactly inspired you to publish this book in the first place?

((Haha thank you! I try out all the exercises myself to make sure there’s something tangible to roll with. Still holding out for my ki to kick in, because what self-respecting DB fan wouldn’t!)) I’m pleased you’re finding success, perseverance will help you perfect the work!

The textbook began as somewhat of a memoir -  just some notes I scribbled down at weekends with the aim to create a chronological story of my particularly strange life. Then postdoctoral life became a bee in my bonnet. My early work in biophysics frustrated me as I knew incorporating the science of ki would help simplify so many explanations of biological systems, but I felt restricted because I couldn’t risk my colleagues believing I was a crackpot. So I began to put more effort into the science papers accompanying the textbook, and weave deeper explanations into the memoir.

Then the final piece, the addition of instruction that necessitated the use of a textbook or guide: We, as a planet, are in a position that it really isn’t feasible for us to rely on the abilities of a few talented people for defence any longer. Although the number of Earthings with talent in ki has been growing in secret, there’s only so much that can be hidden without receiving public understanding and blessing. Empowering everyone seems, naively I admit, the simplest way to not be accused of elitism any more than we current deserve to be. The addition of other voices is my attempt to show that despite our hard-won abilities, we’re normal people and Earthlings ourselves, and truly, we have the best interests of the planet in mind. So it is a little of a PR exercise I admit, but for a good cause.

Thank you for question! --SG

[groundbreaking-science]

Hi. I've been trying to train with Ki attacks and techniques, and made some good headway. Although, I do have to ask... Is it normal for some of them to be so... Explosive?

May I first congratulate you on your tenacity in study; to be at a level you’re able to string a whole technique together is no mean feat!

There are a few areas to keep in mind when performing these techniques. From your wording I’m assuming you’re attempting to send ki somewhere to perform some purpose. From the intents we’ve already covered, I’m going to guess it’s push, although this advice is applicable to a number of intents.

Now. Explosivity may sneak in in one way. If you are forming the ki into a ball to direct the mass easier, the ball could simply be coming loose, ki heading in directions you did not intend. Related is the direction of the intent itself. Aiming push forward will push forward sure enough, and a push radiating from a point will push in all directions and ultimately explode. Using too much li in a messy push can result in damage in directions you did not anticipate, such as a backlash on your face. To mitigate this, start again with small genki levels until you can keep that ball tight, and the genki’s intent in step. Remember, as we amplify ki, a back reaction of just 1% on a push is going to injure you, so practice precision.

There’s also the “big pink elephant” phenomenon, which is, the more you try not to think of a“big pink elephant, the more one is going to dance without care inside your skull. Likewise, the more you fret over previous accidentally explosive attempts the more your ki will take that worry as your intent, and you’re going to get yourself into a loop. Take step back, a breath, and begin again, picturing the result you want, not the fear of what it could be. 

Finally - and please do not take this as a chide but an observation about how even our framing of concepts can affect intent - but you referred to the ki technique as an attack. For sure, these techniques can be used in that manner and I have countless times, but we often believe attacks are naturally damaging and flashy things. I hope that currently you are not using them as a true attack against another but are simply referring in a colloquial manner to an offensive move one would use in a martial art. Either way, a simple reframing of your work to one of deliberate movement and neutral meaning will strip any “bang” intent that’s snuck in. 

All the best with your continued studies, --Son Gohan

[groundbreaking-science]

As always, the PFN is abuzz with new approaches to exercises and guidance on parts folk found tricky. Always a pleasure to see forumers helping each other - Pan appreciates the chance to slack off, I’m sure!

If you are having Trouble-- 3.1 [x-post from pfn]

I think at this point everyone’s aware that my troubles started with attempting 3.1 before I was genuinely ready with 3.1 [see my posts on Push and ki detection.]. 

In any case, you all can learn from my (bad) experiences and my (not good) mistakes! 

#1: Fold is not push!

As Professor Son noted to me, if you attempt to fold by simply squeezing down, you will most likely (especially if you’re panicking– see DON’T PANIC) cause a reaction by which your center looks at the push, recognizes the push, and lacking a firm direction, simply pushes out in all directions at once! 

This will, at best, cause mild poltergeist activity, and at worst, blow out windows, or if you’re spectacularly unlucky or particularly dedicated up to this point, destroy furniture or your local wall. 

And while yes I’m sure that sounds impressive, you won’t like it when you have to sit at a broken table to eat rice out of your last bowl that isn’t in pieces, or you exhaust yourself with expending that much ki all at once– or worse, have to sit in a drafty apartment for weeks while your landlord drags his feet about fixing all the windows you blew out in a cold spring. 

And that’s if you’re lucky– your push might also, if you’re good enough at push and visualisation, push through your body. Such cuts are no fun. 

#2: If you are Impatient– Pinch Method

If twisting up your center doesn’t sound like a good time, try to keep the image in your head of pinching a balloon in its middle, like with a strong rubber band.. Now, yes, this means you’ll still have jelly squirting out the sides, and that’s fine, because then you take the two pinched halves– your intent still acting as a rubber band– and fold them over each other until they match, just like the written exercise. Then do it again, making more jelly donuts as you go. 

#3: if you are having trouble with endurance

Now this is one point where I think Professor Son didn’t get too into it, talking about the endpoint, but I’m going to stress it– 

Maintaining fold will exhaust your body. It will do it at fold-1. It will do it at fold-2. It will do it at fold-3. Learn to maintain fold through your exercise routine at Fold-1 before trying to do it at fold-2 before trying to do it at fold-3. 

Do NOT attempt to fold-0 and train the first time you fold-0! You will miss your warning signs and you will collapse. And if you’re on a treadmill it will ruin you– if you don’t have a spotter, you’re likely to smack your head into the hand-rail or get bounced by the treadmill’s own speed. You will give yourself a concussion, at best. If you do have a spotter, you will be lucky if they recognize the signs of an impending collapse and rescue you or get proper help. 

I cannot stress that enough: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EXERCISE AND FOLD-0 UNTIL YOU HAVE A GOOD UNDERSTANDING OF FOLD-0 ON ITS OWN. You can risk it with earlier folds, since they’re still feeding ki to your body, but void mode is its own beast. 

As an added bonus, the mental focus required for fold will really help you if you’ve been having trouble getting the focus together for more complicated combinations of shine or push or hold. 

#4: Pass is your friend. 

I mean it– learn to pass before you try and fold. Especially learn to accept Pass before you try to Fold. Pass as second-nature allows you to both reassure your autoceptive paths and makes the acceptance of Fold-0 much easier. 

#5: Be careful with Fold-0 if you have had dissociative experiences before. 

As much as I hate to say it, if you’ve had dissociative experiences before, Fold-0 can feel like… well, the unpleasant sort of dissociation, instead. It’s OK! If that starts to happen, it’s OK to snap back– at least for now. Get your head back to yourself, be more aware of yourself, and try again at least two days from now. 

don’t snap back and then try to fold-0 again. It’s more likely that a bad trip on fold-0 will lead to another bad trip shortly afterwards, and associating it like that in your head may cause a mental block or a lot of anguish. breathe. Let your center out. Feel yourself and come back to yourself. 

If you’ve already found a decent spot in learning autoception and ki sensing, use that place again for fold-0. You might weird a few people out when you suddenly drop, but being in place you know you’re decently safe, and also a place with a lot of concrete sensations, will allow you to avoid less pleasant dissociation if you’re not overwhelmed. 

That said, 

#6: DO NOT ATTEMPT FOLD-0 BEFORE OTHER FOLDS. 

See #5, #4, and #3 for why.

I’ll open the thread to questions now. 

[groundbreaking-science]

3: Amplification and Physicality - "The Potential of Earthlings"

"All of us here used to be enemies - I hated Goku in the beginning, too. But when there was a common enemy, we started to team up because we had to… And before we knew it, we became friends…"

This chapter is dedicated to my Uncle Krillin; the strongest - and bravest - full Earthling I know.

For many years Earth has been regarded as a useless planet. Aliens have known of and visited us over the millennia, only treating our home as an outpost, a hiding place, or a place of exile; their scanners reporting the planet as unworthy of investment. Earth does not have a remarkable concentration of tritium or oil, and barely any katchin ore to speak of. There’s no homogeneity in flora or fauna to make a large-scale farming project profitable, and our seasons swing to the point unprotected humans need to migrate to stay alive. Many civilisations thought it best to leave the chunk of slimy rock to the barely sentient creatures that called it home and move on to easier wins.

But they didn’t truly hear what their scanners screamed, that clear message hidden in the woeful statistics on geology and organic chemistry. Earth does not have a worthwhile abundance of one particular resource because we have a modest abundance of everything. Earth’s richness is in its diversity. Life on Earth is short-lived but hardier than elsewhere in the Universe because of the adaptability we require to cope.

The hostility of Earth’s ever-shifting environments created evolutionary pressures on mind as well as body. The ability to innovate in fields like construction and medicine enhanced our survivability far faster than any generation-to-generation chain of genetic mutations could, and so our society has learnt to greatly prize the traits of inventiveness, lateral thinking and the ability to dream. Combined with our isolation from the Universe at large, Earth has developed a series of unique technologies; from Capsule Corporation’s dyno capsules and time machine to the seemingly simple home comforts of boba and pizza. (In fact, Earthling cuisine is highly sought after. I hear ramen-runs are now made to Earth, with cups of dried noodles and flavour packets going for a fortune in the central galaxy’s curiosity stores.) Where once our planet was dismissed as a bubble of primordial scum, our potential Universal standing is rising, and Earth is on the cusp of being welcomed to the Galactic Commonwealth.

More nefarious entrepreneurial minds have other ideas, however. Why trade when you can own outright? Earth would be unprofitable when scoured of human life, true, but what if that Earthling creativity could instead be subjugated and utilised? Further, an Earthling's power level is minuscule, making our planet perfectly conquerable by the type of ‘real estate’ teams previously led by Freeza. I and my Saiyan-blooded friends and family are noted as far stronger and willing to help, but we have no guarantee that our potency will pass to our descendants. I have thirty years left in me to aid in planetary defence, my daughter not much more than fifty. The sharks are circling.

But there is hope. Our first encounter with a Saiyan - on the same day my father and I found out our extraterrestrial heritage - also taught us a useful fact. Whilst able to both manipulate ki with intent and raise his genki somewhat, the Saiyan relied entirely on his scouter (his heads-up-display eyepiece) to find ki users. What’s more, he judged his chances in a fight purely on our reported ki output at rest. He thought he was sure to defeat us. A terrified and briefly overpowered child headbutting his solar plexus taught him otherwise.

Whilst Saiyans were never renowned for their general knowledge, they do have impeccable intuition for battle. My Uncle Raditz believing he had the upper hand wasn’t bravado but a fair assumption based on previous experience. As such, a competition of strength based purely on scouter readout was just as valid as a full-on brawl. When our own little band ventured out into the galaxy we found the same attitude - along with a reliance on technological augmentation or genki-boosting techniques like transformations. Most other species of human were unable to sense, amplify, or suppress their ki.

You see, the elemental diversity in the very rock we stand on and the climate we swim through is built into our peerless creativity. Earthlings may not have the most magic, the longest memories, the rawest strength or the greatest genki, but dear God have Earthlings learnt to overcome their natural shortcomings to literally punch above their weight. Never underestimate the value of being underestimated, I say, as time and time again a fall from hubris has been in our favour.

Knowledge of us is spreading now - whispers of the amplification technique have reached elite warriors and a multitude of planets are developing their own takes in dojo equivalents and (regretfully) military facilities around the galaxy. But it remains that Earthlings are currently the species with the greatest capacity to use field ki. Any chancing shark wishing to do you harm will still have to judge your strength on scant knowledge. They will be wary, fearing a sharp punt on the nose or even irreparable damage to their gills.

It is with this context firmly in mind we proceed to the third chapter where we cement the basics of genki amplification, field ki manipulation and appling ki to raw physicality - the techniques that form your unique planetary heritage.

3.1: Suppression

Warning - The following section contains exercises that could cause hypothermic-like symptoms, fainting, and with great incompetence, death. The reader proceeds at their own risk.

Prerequisite reading and exercises: 1.4 (on centring, posture and breath), 1.6 (on vibrations and oscillations), 2.1-2.3.

The technique of suppression is front and centre in this first section because I believe it to be of utmost importance. I hope many readers will want to take the skills I’m teaching into planetary defence, and with that hope comes a frustrating truth - most Earthlings will need a lifetime of dedication to reach the power levels needed to tackle the very strongest threats.

As of writing, the enemies we face rival the powers of Gods; in some cases they are Gods. Our strongest fighter cannot hold a candle to them, being fifty times weaker even at their maximum. I am over a thousand times out. Any tactical advantage we as a planet can bring to the fight needs to be seized upon, including knowing when to run and how to hide to live to fight another day. I hope to all that is sacred in the Universe that with dedication and technique development skilled indigenous Earthlings will reach those heights without off-planet assistance. But until you are ready, suppression, rather than amplification, should be your first thought.

Now that I’ve sufficiently terrified you with the truth of the situation we find ourselves in, let us begin.

Ki, if you recall, has two components: a ki particle acting as a vehicle and an (average) ki energy assigned to the particle. Suppressing your overall genki will require a reduction in both or one of those outputs. But the most fundamental processes in the body are not easily fooled. The centre knows the body needs a consistent level of ki to function and will therefore endeavour to assign a minimum level of genki to the particle, only dipping below that minimum as the centre depletes. Instead we must change the number of particles leaving the centre - the flow. The body resists change in this, too; those with the keenest memories will recall that the number of ki particles leaving the centre per unit area, the flux, is a constant (at least in my model). So whilst we can’t stem the flow of ki easily, we have one more variable available to us - the surface area of the centre.

In reality your centre has no physical surface, being a point in your body from which ki emanates. How then, can we change properties of something that doesn’t exist? The processes that govern ki are peculiar in that a ki-user’s intention is understood and interpreted in good faith. The very act of picturing the centre as having attributes like a changing surface seems to map well onto whatever unknown law of the Universe governs ki particle flow.

Picturing the centre as a ball as we did way back in 1.4 will now pay dividends. If you can imagine squashing down the ball-like centre, you can reduce the hypothetical surface area, in turn triggering a reduction in flow and therefore ki overall. This does not come for free - from 1.8 we know that changes in ki output take effort, a mental strength and concentration which is not limitless. Despite the inherent difficulties, there is a helpful trick of the imagination we can use to see out the technique.

3.1.1 Folding the Centre

Sit comfortably, steady the breath, calm your mind and attend to your ki flow - a process that should be second nature by now. If not, I implore you to return to section 1.4 to save yourself wasted effort here. Now, picture a hollow ball, like a perfectly spherical balloon. Let the ball settle over your centre until they’re aligned. Breathe and shift your body until your imagination is able to project that ball in a steady position, until your centre and the ball become one.

Then - and this is the neat trick - imagine twisting the ball in half, as you can a balloon. You’ll be picturing two smaller balls sitting side by side (or one on top of the other). Finally, imagine one ball passing into the other and edges overlapping until you're left with the one ball. The number of ki particles you produce will drop in an instant.

Drop by what? Well, curiously, that depends on your imagery. A naive view would see creating two balls as a halving and so output would drop by a factor of two. A more mathematical treatment would show that the surface area of a ball will drop to a quarter when the radius is halved. Someone more vividly-minded picturing how the air in the balloon increases in pressure and stretches the skin when twisted may believe the value somewhere in between. You may have yet another completely different intuitive take, some more realistically correct than others, but remember it is your expectation and imagination creating the intention.

My point is, there will be a way to visualise this change in centre such that the image is simple to hold in your mind and simple enough to repeat. A repetitive halving (or quartering) is a simple concept to picture. A nuanced sliding scale of centre size is not. These easy-to-visualise states act akin to harmonics, the stable states we discussed in 1.8 and 1.6. With practice your centre will understand your intention and play along - with the caveat that it is ever-ready to pop back to a more natural state of rest.

If you are fortunate enough to be learning with a partner, they should be able to detect your drop in ki as a drop in auratic pressure, the ki in your aura fading as what remains is summoned back to your body to help keep you ticking. At a quarter to a half ki you probably won't feel any ill effects for a long while. If you're sensitive to the moods of others, maybe you'll find your ability to detect those changes a little stunted - given your aura has less energy available for that social contact - but otherwise you'll be safe.

Should you succeed in this fractioning, the first danger you will encounter is “snapback”. In the case of ki, what goes down must come up, and the moment your concentration slips your centre will take the cue to relax and snap back to its original flow rate. The return is usually accompanied by an extra pulse to cleanse your body of foreign ki which can have unintended consequences. If you are performing a delicate technique with reduced ki, for example, the effort you're putting into finessing the fine intent will blow outward and overwork, sometimes obliterating your target. Startling someone is one way to induce these dangerous results; eliciting any strong emotion is another. At this early stage, where you don't quite have a handle on techniques, I recommend either working without your centre being manipulated or releasing every technique before relaxing your centre, lest you blind, burn, or otherwise maim yourself.

Even with this two-stage release there can be repercussions. Remember - genki keeps your body in step too, and would have compensated the best it could with the reduced flow.  During release  there will be a momentary overcompensation in your homeostatic functions because of this coping mechanism. Maybe your heart skips a beat, you flush in temperature, you experience a dizziness or a moment of nausea, all due to the overcorrection and subsequent swing to normality. Further, remember genki performs social functions, and thus your sensation of warmness or hostility towards others may spike when returning. Even those without trained ki-sense may detect this abrupt shift and become unsettled.

3.1.2 Folding to Infinity

When you can reliably hold the first reduction in flow, repeat the fractionation process. You’ll need an increase in effort to do so, to the point you may feel like you’re back at square one, but stick with the expectation and imagination processes. The second drop will soon lock into place. Once you’re comfortable, repeat ad nauseum. Remember to also practice the release from each stage.

Two to four folds in your aura will deplete and your body will require more genki than it’s being fed. Your body will register that you’re not making the wisest choice and so the effort required to fold will skyrocket, just as if you were twisting a balloon and feeling that tense resistance grow.

Pan has told me that this is the point she sees even the most attuned students making a rookie error by holding their breath. Now - ki will leave the centre with you breathing or not, but as we know ki is encouraged away from the centre by forms of flow. By holding the breath, genki builds and stagnates inside that imaginary ball you've created and sneakily runs its functions, hoping to give you the impression that genki is not leaving your imagined centre as you willed. But don't be fooled! If you find yourself suddenly dizzy with others saying how red in the face you are, then you best take a breath.

Folding will fractionate genki until the drop in ki pressure each time will be difficult to discern. To remove that last detectable spark of life you will have to imagine your centre vanishing to nothing, and genki fading out with it. This is far easier said than to perform. At small enough sizes the degree of folding makes the tension the centre is under excruciating. That final vanishing will take a further burst of effort.

At this final collapse any lingering wisps of ki will be quickly expended by your ki-hungry body. You will become a void in the world and the background ki will flood in. The usual ripples your ki-signature generates on the ki-field will dissipate and your unique rhythm will be undetectable in ki-sense.

To push this exercise further look to perform this suppression during exercise and particularly while anxious, as this will be the physical and emotional state in which the ability becomes of paramount importance. Speed, then, is another aspect to work on. As the effort required to reduce your ki flow decreases, so will your need to invoke powerful imagery to achieve the same results.

To the outside observer, the extinguishing of ki is an instantaneous or staggered collapse in the world, those elicited memories making up someone’s ki-signature popping away from thought. Even those who are not actively training their ki-sense will feel a lack of presence. For those who have read ki as a “sixth sense” for their entire lives, witnessing a living being without ki is anywhere from mind-boggling to outright disgusting. Pan describes the sight as a stomach-churning unease, like seeing a headless body somehow walking and talking, and is a feeling you never fully get over.

A note on absolute suppression

There is an added danger here: ki-starvation. Genki is required by the body to maintain allostasis. Going without will eventually force your body out of sync and allostatic processes will begin to break down. The body knows the seriousness of this predicament and so will reverse as many flows as possible, attempting to drag ki back to your vital organs. Blood will be lost from the extremities in this process which leads to a condition much like hypothermia. If you stubbornly continue to suppress despite the warning signs, blood will eventually be lost from the head too, leading to hypoxic symptoms such as reduced oxygenation of brain cells, confusion, and finally unconsciousness. At that point you will not have the awareness to control your genki and your flow will snap back, consciousness returning soon after. In almost all cases unconsciousness will occur long before the body begins to break down and so you may believe there is no keen danger here. But if the reason for your suppression was to hide, snapback could lead to your discovery and subsequent death.

In summary, those very first signs of ki starvation are similar to hypothermia and important to act upon.

The hierarchical symptoms of ki-starvation are - - Paled skin - Muscle weakness or stiffness - Spontaneous to sustained shivering - Slurred speech, mumbling or teeth chattering - Impaired coordination - Slowed breathing - Confusion - Drowsiness - Weakened pulse - Loss of consciousness

Unlike in true hypothermia, the symptoms of ki-starvation cannot be remedied by warming the body, although rubbing your hands together or applying layers so your body needs to cool itself by forcing blood to the extremities and skin again can alleviate symptoms for a time.

3.1.3 Tolerating Ki-Starvation

Building endurance to this uncomfortable state therefore is a worthwhile skill to develop. To practise, lower your ki to zero for minutes at a time and observe your body. Stop when the symptoms begin to manifest to a strength that keeps you from holding a conversation. Then leave practice of suppression for at least a day to enable your recovery. Eventually you will build your tolerance from minutes to hours. Two hours of suppression while running on a treadmill and upon release performing memorised kata forms part of the minimum requirements Pan insists upon for those looking towards Heroing and front-line planetary defence. This isn’t an arbitrary choice of test. Many of our battles last less than two hours and we’ll ask those with talent but lower power levels to lie in wait, ready to deal with threats tangential to the main adversaries.

Completing the technique of suppression needs one final puzzle piece. This element is such a guarded secret that we officially kept it from our own children, but in the interest of a full education I am now going to share the secret with you. If you are training your children - which despite me warning you to refrain from I am sure a significant fraction of adults are - you may want to keep this tip from them to preserve your own sanity.

During suppression the body is starved of the genki required to regulate normal function. In most situations however, there is a ready replacement available - the wandering auras of other life forms. We learnt in 2.5 how to pass and how this is a progression of a natural social ability. It is possible then to suppress your own genki and let your body absorb the genki of others. Your desperate body will enable pass and draw that much needed generic instruction from any scraps of friendly genki it can find.

Anyone searching for someone suppressing their genki should learn to look for those little eddies that indicate life and flow, but this time as a subtle depression in the background of ki as the ki is re-purposed. The ripples, though, are at least an order of magnitude fainter than a ki-signature would be and take time and patience to find. Using this searching technique is thankfully nigh-on impossible in the heat of battle, but worth-while when you need to find - and sneak up on - mischief makers.

And that’s why we deliberately neglected to instruct our children fully for a number of years. Teaching Goten, Trunks, Marron, Papayaman, Pan and Bra how to suppress their ki was imperative - anyone looking for us to cause trouble would hone in on them and, as rambunctious as those kids in aggregate were and remain, they would not be able to handle themselves against some of the more dangerous threats in the Universe. But a child that can fully camouflage themselves in ki can also camouflage themselves against their parents too, and whilst we did not care to know exactly what they were doing at all hours (children do need their privacy after all), detecting kids attempting to sneak out was as simple as waiting for their vanishing ki and honing in on the child-shaped hole. Pan and Bra eventually pooled their knowledge and worked out the trick to letting in ambient ki ("turning see through", they said) at age 11 and ten respectively. Trunks and Goten, well…

Pink House (my home) in Satan City, January Age 797 with Trunks and Goten.

Trunks: I can’t believe I’m admitting this on camera… Let’s get the record straight - for those that quote this story back at me, anyway. I’m a man of Science, but from an early age I was convinced beyond all reason that my father had psychic powers. I mean, I did believe in magic and still do, I know magic users personally. But my father? I was an idiot.

Gohan: He’s not the gifted type?

Trunks: You tell me, you’ve known him longer. As far as I know he wouldn’t spot a spiritual awakening if it was doused in hoi sin, dancing naked on a table and spoiling for a fight.

Goten: I believed your theory for a long time, too. Only thing that made sense as a kid.

Trunks: Exactly. So, why? Well, we learned to hide our ki early. Dad taught both of us.

Gohan: I was surprised he was so keen to teach you suppression over more powerful moves. I should have known he wouldn't have been forthcoming with the full knowledge.

Trunks: Right. As soon as we’d mastered suppression at what - Four? Five? I barely remember learning - we thought we'd have the upper-hand against our parents, that we could escape whatever mess we'd made and no one could pin it on us.

Gohan: And that wasn’t your experience.

Trunks: Ha, pretty much. Dad could still hunt me down, no matter where I ran off to. Didn’t matter how sneaky I’d try to  be, how careful I was slowly lowering and raising back my ki, he'd always catch me and throw me in the Gravity Chamber. It drove me crazy. One particularly bug-eyed afternoon I scanned my entire body thinking Mom had jabbed me with a tracker chip in my sleep. Goten refused to help look for the scar.

Goten: Yeah, because by then I’d grown out of it - figured it was a coincidence. But full credit to you, bro, you stuck to your loopy guns on the magic thing.

Trunks: And you’re still not helping.

Gohan: How’d Vegeta let you down gently?

Trunks: So, not long after my 18th birthday, Dad noticed Bra had gone AWOL and dragged me along on the recovery mission, all to finally demonstrate what I'd been missing. That a small child - or anyone, really - who suppresses their ki carelessly leaves a person-shaped ki-hole in the world, unless they completely let background ki flow through them. It was so painfully obvious I can’t believe we hadn’t noticed. I was such an idiot. Dad laughed for a solid week. Thought it was the funniest joke he's ever told, and definitely the longest. I can't believe you all kept it from us, not knowing could have got us killed.

Gohan: Then armed with this potentially life-saving technique, what did you do?

Trunks: Used it against Bra at every opportunity, of course. It was great to be the magic one for a change, and we drove her and Pan just as crazy.

Goten: Sure, this is a sweet story of a man showing he has a sense of humour and all, but it doesn’t explain Mom. Now she’s a psychic. She says she can’t sense ki, but when she’s fuming she just knows, you know? She could track down your lifeless body from the other side of the world just to rail on you for having the nuts to die before you did the dishes.

3.1.4 Restricting Pass

To become part of the proverbial furniture you will need to switch off the reception of pass. Now, pass usually doesn’t suck up ki as you mosey around - from loved-ones yes, but your body will want to ignore foreign ki for the most part to prevent any intra-body miscommunication. Usually there’s work involved in learning how to receive ki. When you’re low on energy, though, the body is less concerned with the risks of incorrect ki-signatures and will do what it can to stay alive. In this extreme you have to work to stop the process. Think of yourself as a transparency, an emptiness, a statue that does not require life force. Restricting pass is not rejecting ki. Rejecting with thoughts of mistrust, threat and alienness will set up a guard (which we shall cover soon) and make you a literal black hole against ki, the opposite of your intention. Instead let go and feel that ki pass you by. The hypothermic-like ki-starvation response will subtly worsen, which is another counter-intuitive sign that you are on the right track. Ideally, a partner in the form of a practised ki reader will ensure you are performing this part of the suppression correctly.

3.1.5 Amping Pass

Logically then you can do the complete opposite. Consciously increasing the level at which you’re absorbing ambient ki will both continue to hide your ki-signature and extend the time you can remain suppressed. A scouter won’t look for negative ki spots, and a ki-senser scanning long distances for your ki-signature will not be able to discern that tiny eddy, so in particular circumstances this modification to the technique is perfectly sensible. To perform, relax as when detecting ki and let the surrounding ki wash over you. Now smile. You won’t need to do this every time, but a friendly face helps immensely when learning. You’re attempting to welcome the ki around you, to let it understand that you’re present and happy to be worked with. Should the ambient ki trust you as friendly enough it will take to your body’s instruction. Using this foreign ki, particularly when using none of your own, is a dissociative sensation - you’re connected to the world around you and yet feel like your body is not quite yours. You can grow accustomed to this with practice.

Suppression will always be the first nuanced technique I recommend students learn due to its life-saving potential. Although, as always, I hope you never find yourself in a situation where suppression is required.

In the next section we will be learning the second of the Earthling techniques, amplification - both in genki and field ki. These are techniques you will need to perform should your cover be blown, and are the techniques that form the backbone of the rest of the chapter.

next previous first contents ask?

[groundbreaking-science]

What Not To Do: 2.5 [x-post from PFN]

Since most of my recent notoriety came from learning how to amplify and do push intents a little too exuberantly, I think that any “If You Have Trouble” lecture from me would be more than a little disingenuous. 

Instead, I think I’m going to do two things: I’m going to open the floor to questions, and I’m also going to state the mistakes I made because I was a little overenthusiastic. 

There’s one thing I will advise, going forward: If you’re serious about the Earth Defense stuff (you know who you are), learn how to throw a punch. I mean it. Experience can get you a good way, and having a good base isn’t bad, but if you aren’t intimately familiar with how you’re going to move, you will eventually use a push intent on your own body in a way that does not move it along the natural lines and you will break something. LEARN HOW TO THROW A PUNCH BEFORE TRYING THAT SHIT.

With that said, let’s mosey, and in no particular order: 

2.5.3-4: push

– do not focus a push intent going outside anywhere inside your body.

I honestly can’t stress this enough. At the very least, you’ll end up like me, and have four incredibly swollen fingertips to explain away at work (pro tip: messing up with a hammer is a good excuse, but don’t expect it to hold if you keep screwing up). At worst, you’ll cut yourself open, break your own bones, or turn yourself into pavement pizza as you skid around your local street or alleyway without any real control. 

– do not throw intents directly at friends or enemies. 

Even a little bit of momentum in the wrong place can be devastating. Put some yuuki and/or emotion behind it and things can go badly fast. Depending on the severity it can get you an assault or GBH charge. Do not. There’s a reason Professor Son has you start on plastic and glass bottles. honor it. 

– do not panic. 

No, seriously. If you’ve been mastering 2.2 like you’ve been doing, chances are that you’ve probably discovered someone a lot stronger than you in the immediate vicinity, maybe even while you’re working. An overwhelming force can trigger your fight/flight response and change your attitudes towards the work. Do not panic. If you panic and take the first response of curling yourself up, you’ll probably do what I did, focus your power inwards, create an omnidirectional push intent, and probably cause a bunch of poltergeist activity, at best. I guarantee you, 90% of major powers in the area do not care about you, so calm down, take a breath, and continue what you were doing. Your neighbors– and windows– will thank you.

– Do not attempt to push bowling balls. 

Seriously. seriously. Stop doing this, guys. It’s a neat party trick to levitate it for like 5 seconds but after that you’re spent and you will have a falling bowling ball to deal with. and that’s if you can even lift it. stop lifting bowling balls. 

2.5.1-2 – Pass

– do not pass to yourself.

Can you do it? Yes. It’s absolutely possible, actually, and is the primary way the body distributes ki to check in on itself and report back to the center and the brain. Pass can, technically, even be given to injured body parts, encouraging them to heal just a little bit faster long-term; especially for things like late-onset muscle soreness. However, most of the time to do this you’re going to take from other autoceptive ki paths, and probably mess yourself up a little bit. And that’s if you don’t mess up and start a deleterious positive feedback loop which can murder your cells (see 1.3-1.6). 

– do not pass to someone unaware of ki. 

Seriously, they’re not likely to catch it, and if they do, it’ll cause an overflow of the center and lead to a deleterious negative feedback loop (see 1.3-1.6). be careful with this stuff. 

2.5.5 – Hold

– Do not use hold as a storage bank. 

Hold is more like a funnel with limited flow rate, or a capacitor, than it is a battery. If you attempt to use it like the latter, it will happily drain slowly over time, leave you drained, and leave you not getting why the ki you were holding on to for a special occasion is gone now. 

—-

… Eh, that’s enough for now, though I’m sure there will be plenty of people in the thread ready to share their own misfortunes about these three, the reliable bicycle of ki use– and like a bicycle, capable of doing yourself quite a bit of damage if you’re not ready. 

I’ll open the thread to questions, now. 

[groundbreaking-science]

If You’re Having Trouble: 2.4

Wow, this is super late! And I would normally apologize for that, but honestly I’m just glad to be alive. 

So! 

Let me start with the basic thing that I had the most trouble with: 

IF YOU ARE HAVING TROUBLE WITH MOTION/FOCUS NOTATION

In fact this is understandable. Like reading music, it’s something new and entirely different than most languages that are available to the common person. 

however, what I’ve found best is to write out “scales” – Don’t worry about techniques for now. In fact, don’t worry about getting everything super super accurate right now. 

Make a simple, fluid motion, and then write down the description of that in the notation. Mark the “notes” that you performed, trying to keep it to as steady a duration as possible. 

Do this for as many limbs as you can manage to do, physically. This will get you more used to the idea of thinking about the notation in terms of physical motions instead of just a huge pile of little squiggles on a page. 

Similarly, I’m going to assume you’ve gotten at least some practice with autoception and ki sensing. If you don’t, you’re really going to have trouble with this stuff, so please, please, please! go get your practice in! In fact, I’m going to put it point blank: 2.1-2.3 are fundamental and you should be doing them daily if you can. 

And the reason for that? Is this: You’re going to do those exercises, and fully honestly, without cheating and looking at Professor Son’s notations of the exercises or Son Pan’s, you’re going to write down what happened in those exercises on the ki clef and the body clef.

Yes, this includes my alternate suggestions for 2.1-2.3. Those are different methods and they will have different notations! Ki splitting in particular! 

Now I said you’re not after accurate portrayal. What you are after is accurate notation. This will take a few weeks to learn, at the very least, and will help hone your autoception if that’s out of whack. 

Now, on to the actual exercises. 

2.4.1. and 2.4.2– If you’re having trouble getting from the hands to the focus proper, what I tend to do is curl in my fingers juuuust a little bit, so that instead of pointing at each other, they’re pointing at where you want the focus. This requires that you focus directly on, well, your focus point. 

If you’re having trouble with gates, I’ve found that a warm-up helps. Rotate your arms gently, enough to get the ki stirring within the shoulders, but don’t go very fast– try and keep the motion as much to the ki as possible. The idea here is to have a little more ki already flowing through your arms when you try and make your focus, and is especially helpful if you prefer a rotation type as opposed to a pressure-type… But it’s pretty useful no matter what focus style you prefer. 

You will feel it physically when the ki is collected in your hands, but not yet focused. Don’t mistake it! make sure it’s all the way out. 

2.4.3– I’ll be honest, I’ve been using enhanced jumps and running the whole time. It’s… Both a natural thought to try it, and dangerous if you just decide to shove it all down there and throw your weight around! You’re going to bounce a lot higher per stride than a normal jump unless you do it just right– and it helps to understand that most of the time, you’re relying as much on friction against your surface as anything else. Push too hard, you overcome the amount friction can keep you on the surface, and you skid. 

This is unpleasant, and to be avoided unless you’re very confident in your protective gear (or your ki’s ability to push back) versus whatever pavement is attempting to grind down your body. 

In short: take it slow. 

In fact, I’m going to suggest that you put that autoception and ki-sense to use! Walk around and try and get a feel for how ki moves through your legs when you’re walking and running if you’re going to be trying 2.4.3. As before, after performing this exercise, be sure to write down the notation of what you did. Those notation drills are important! Don’t skimp on them. 

This also helps fix more firmly in your mind how you want the ki to move and what the natural flow is, especially as you unhitch your breath. 

2.4.4.– Being super honest here, go to karaoke. Sing metal. Go full ham on the tongue thing. This allows you to practice that stuff in plain sight. As always, after you’re done with the exercise, use the notation as accurately as you can!

Sadly, I don’t have a tail or other prehensile appendages, so I don’t have any more advice for you than Professor Son does. Take it slow, exercise caution, and don’t panic.

[groundbreaking-science]

If You’re Having Trouble: 2.3

Hey everyone! I’m still in the process of moving, but I have internet for a few minutes, and am reading up on the latest chapter of GS.

As usual, my problems stem from a shortened attention span, so I hit a hitching point in the process when we’re starting to unhitch our genki. 

Once again I’m going to take you through ways that can help, that will be slower, and a little more advanced, but since they force you to pay attention to their methods, they will also allow you to waken even if you’re having trouble with other things. 

Sadly, I have no real excellent advice for 2.3.5 and 2.3.6. Those of you who have been paying attention from the beginning will know exactly why– I rather got ahead of us in hitting those goalposts. Yes, this is where you can start accidentally blowing out windows. Don’t make a habit of it, I had a massive draft in my apartment for weeks while the landlord grumbled and shuffled their feet. 

And, relatedly, I skipped 2.3.2 entirely in favor of going straight to Karaoke, because standing in front of a mirror to say “batman rings his batphone” sound piece by sound piece over and over for 20 minutes bored me nearly to tears the first time I did it. I don’t pride myself on yuuki, but getting over problems like that has always been a matter of diving in, to me. I’m already an idiot in public, so of course, your mileage will vary.

I’m going to agree with Professor Son that one breath is absolutely necessary for later exercises and that three breaths is pushing it. 

Statistics show that in a normal fight, three breaths (about fifteen seconds) is longer than 80% of them. When both combatants have ki-control for reinforcement, defense, and attack, it can sometimes drag on– one has only to see accounts of World Martial Arts Tournaments or rare audio recordings to understand this- the speeds involved are so blinding that taking longer than a breath in most cases is not recommended. 

2.3.1 - Steadying the breath

While this exercise is absolutely the one I do most often– still do in concert with .5 and .6!– That is absolutely because it can be done while sitting still. Most of my coworkers can’t sense ki, so it’s a simple matter for me to do those three exercises without making people worry.

The important thing to remember here is that ki is supposed to flow. And it will. Constantly. Trying to directly arrest it, trying to freeze it still, will produce a sensation not unlike holding your breath– because, well, you kind of are. Pay attention, but don’t try to stop it. 

If you’re having trouble concentrating on it, I can actually suggest a bit of something from East City and environs. While I can’t recommend the self-proclaimed “Supreme Ultimate Boxing” for direct attack, I can say that slow, careful motions can also help point out flows and pools of ki– albeit not on the main throat-center-sacral axis. Instead, you’ll probably see a lot of axial flow. 

Note to practitioners of SUB– once again, no, your previous practice doesn’t get you a pass here, for the same reason your previous practice didn’t in working with autoception! It’s the difference between juggling and combat juggling– suddenly there are a lot more clubs in the air! 

2.3.3 – Unhitching your genki

This, however, is absolutely essential before going on to try ki-influenced karaoke. 

Work carefully! Without proper autoception you could do some pretty terrible things to yourself if you’re not careful. It’s going to be slow at first. If it helps, use voiced dipthongs. “ng” and Ma” are my particular favorites– the latter because I’ve always had some sympathy for the Devil. 

2.3.4 – Karaoke

Seriously, this is fun as hell, even if alone. My personal favorite song is “JUDGEMENT”, which is also pretty midrange. 

Don’t get too caught up in the song, pick something you remember but can almost sing in the background. 

Stand firm! No one in the room is a pro, I guarantee it. 

Bum songs off your friends– such as you’ll continue to have them if you’re really that bad (chances are you’re better than you think)– if you’re really hard up for cash. 

[groundbreaking-science]

2.6 - First Light: Shine

Warning! The following section contains exercises that may cause burns, damage to vision and irradiation. The author is not liable and the reader proceeds at their own risk.

Prerequisites: exercises in 1.4 and throughout chapter 2. In addition, material in 1.6 and 1.7 is referenced.

I left the story of the Cell Games at a conventional point. The evil had been vanquished, there was a hero of sorts ready to collect the spoils and the world was rejoicing. Neat and tidy. But real-life is a mess, and after every story that messy life must go on.

That afternoon, as Mr Satan posed for cameras and collected his accolades, out of the spotlight my friends and I gathered ourselves and limped home. I flew back to the mountains - alone.

My solitary return did not go unnoticed. There on the veranda I had to break the news to Mom that Dad had died to save us all, and he was put into that predicament by my own recklessness. Mom collapsed on the spot. She heaved sobs into my shoulder, clinging my still-torn gi. In that moment I was her strongest connection to him. I could do no more than try and comfort her the way she would have me - by petting her head, telling her everything was okay even if it wasn’t, and hoping she’d come round.

The trees’ shadows grew long before she had strength enough to hold me tight and remember to reassure me in kind. She was right, he had made his own decision to treat this death as his final and I was not the cause. But the depth of her grief said otherwise. Loss is a funny thing. For my family and friends, loss of a loved one can be temporary, but the moment hurts as keenly. For Dad to make the decision to stay dead indefinitely, to hear his reasoning for doing so in his own words before his final goodbye… in some ways was harder to understand than if there was simply the expected empty silence.

The next day was declared a worldwide public holiday. West City, too, became a wall of noise and colour, although Capsule Corp was notably muted in its display of reverie. The little energy we mustered for celebration was for Trunks - a thank you and goodbye - with some of the day as a memorial service to my father. I pushed to keep that portion short. I knew wishing for others to grieve with me would be tantamount to an admission of my guilt-ridden devastation, so I kept my longing deep.

Even with constant love and reassurance from family and our friends, many years passed before I accepted that I was not responsible for shattering Mom that day. Dad had flitted in and out of my life growing up, but he always returned to us to be by our side. Now he couldn’t. My little brother was on the way, and me, Mom and Grandfather would have to be all the small family he had. At first we were scared what would happen should a new menace surface, but very quickly - too quickly some would say - we relaxed. I threw myself into my studies, trying to learn all I could about the world I had worked so hard to save. That went a long way to providing me what solace I needed and would give me a taste for the career I love to this day.

Time marched on. Little Goten went from crying to babbling to non-stop chit-chattering and tugging on my writing arm at all hours to go play with him and so, sensing the valued distraction but distraction nonetheless, when I hit the right age Mom suggested I attend Orange (now Satan) City’s main high school. Making friends my own age sounded wise in principle - I’d never kept in touch with those fleeting friends I had made other than a Namekian named Dende - but I was nervous. Would I score high enough to get in? Would I fit in with non-martial artists? Would my life’s history be uncovered?

As is typical of me I visited the school and got into hot water twice before my real attendance.

The first time was for the entrance examinations. Coming from out of district, my tests took place on a Saturday. The six were brutal in schedule, one after the other with lunch in-between. Mom was insistent on travelling with me, and whilst I tried to argue with her on grounds that I could navigate a city I’d flown over many times just fine, I eventually caved. In truth I’d never quite believed her (or anyone else for that matter) that I was a smart kid (at least smart enough to pass these tests) and her presence on the ride over calmed me. I could read her nerves but her reassurances weren’t lies. She believed that I could pass at least.

Orange Star High surprised me in its familiarity. Despite never having stepped foot in a school before, I’d read books and comics set in them, and Orange Star High was a picture-perfect representation of one. There were lockers, water fountains, places to change your shoes, signs above each classroom door and long, discoloured shadows on notice boards where class rankings must have been posted the semester before. I didn’t feel as out of place as I expected to and that settled me just in time for the long slog.

To cut a long day short, my Mom’s careful balancing of tutoring and letting me explore the world’s knowledge at my own frantic pace paid off. I finished every exam with time to spare and was given permission to leave the final one early, an opportunity I gladly took, much to the chagrin of my fellow testees.

True to her word that she would busy herself, Mom was not where I’d waved her goodbye. My ki-sense pointed to her browsing the mall two streets back. I took a moment to stretch and breathe in on the steps bathed in sunlight - before a flash of silver caught my attention.

A switch blade.

I saw enough of the possessor before he disappeared into the sidewalk’s crowds, jacket on and hood up even in the afternoon’s warmth. His intent was trained on a young woman laden with bags.

My feet carried me before my tired brain had a chance to intervene.

He grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her into an alley, the tight throng of distracted pedestrians masking her silent panic to everyone but me. I followed and only then in cold shock realised I had no concrete plan.

He pressed the knife to her neck. She closed her eyes and whimpered. I had to defuse the situation of course, but a selfish part of me feared for myself. I hadn’t even started school, yet I was risking exposure? I needed to hide my identity. I grabbed the first idea I could.

I concentrated my bubbling anger, forcing it to a frisson on my back. Gold light exploded over me. The Super Saiyan transformation. Blue eyes, blond hair and a mean glare doesn’t sound much of a disguise I admit, but it was all I had to hand and was remarkably effective.

I snatched the blade.

Disarmed before he could fully register my presence, the mugger’s anger dissolved to a primal fear, cemented when I squeezed the knife, the blade as pliant as butter. The switch mechanism snapped. The blade and handle tinkling to the floor became the only sound in the alley. Knowing he was outmatched, he ran. The woman let out a belated strangled yell.

Not wanting to risk misunderstanding I jumped to the apartment building roof faster than she could follow. From on high I watched her tentatively rejoin the crowd and find her way to a meter maid, the mugger long gone.

Assuming her safe I left to find Mom, letting my appearance snap back to normal but my heart still pounding and rattled by my boldness. I had, in the middle of the day, in the middle of town, mere metres from a crowd, transformed. And it had felt the right thing to do.

For someone who claims she can’t read ki, my mother sure is accurate with her hunches. She chalked up her suspicion over my mood to me nervous about the exam results. I barely avoided having to admit my recklessness, and vowed to not let my soft-heart cloud my judgement again.

I did not keep my word.

The second time I visited Satan City was for registration. I had (“of course”, according to everyone else) passed the entrance examinations with flying colours; my high score in science had even stood until they changed the exam style some ten years or so ago. I travelled alone this time. After all, a high school student shouldn’t need their mother holding their hand. This ended up being a very wise decision as no sooner as I’d landed in that same alleyway, screams erupted from the street. An old man stood frozen to a crosswalk, wide-eyed, watching helplessly as an out-of-control truck careened towards him.

Without conscious thought I transformed. It gave me the speed I needed to bring the truck to a screeching stop mere centimetres from the fear-stricken man, my fingers twisting the metal of the grill despite my gentle efforts. The truck persisted, then slumped back onto its tires with a short groan. I fled in the following silence.

The rescue took three seconds at the very most but a whole street of people saw me that time. I had to hope that their distraction helping both the gentleman and clearly ill driver would make them doubt my existence, though I knew the deep gouges my heels made in the asphalt could not be waved away as pure imagination.

I stowed my green jacket in my bag for the rest of the visit. The ink hardly had time to dry on my school paperwork before I high-tailed it out of there.

You might say then that these two incidents were my first foray into heroism, marking the true beginnings of The Great Saiyaman. I’m not so sure. In both cases I left the scene as soon as the obvious risk to life was averted, but there was still grave danger - the mugger could have come back, the truck driver could have needed a short flight to the ER. Perhaps with such lofty hindsight I expect too much of myself, though I’d like to think any aspiring Heroes reading this belaboured story will do better than I did and stay the course.

The next appearance of the Super Saiyan (or Golden Fighter as he’d been named, unbeknownst to me) was on my first day of school proper. I’d fallen behind schedule by landing too far from school, feeling that alleyway to be cursed. On my suspiciously athletic run through the streets to class, a commotion caught my eye.

A car screamed around a corner on two wheels, police in pursuit. Pedestrians dived for cover. Loose cash fluttered to the ground.

A bank heist, a real-life bank heist, and a serious risk to life at that.

I knew I’d have to do something. One routine transformation, a whiplash-inducing stop for the getaway car, bullets safely disposed of then I was back on my way. I barely broke my stride. My disguise was working - no one seemed to care, I was perfectly safe.

What I did not count on, however, was Videl.  

I wish I could say our first meeting had a spark, a Cupid’s arrow to our hearts or a red string’s tension pulling our destinies closer. I wish I could tell you a romantic story starting with me full of coy confidence and her the taken damsel that worked its way to a steady crescendo, or each of us taking a passionate disliking to the other over a misunderstanding of circumstance and falling in love suddenly, accidentally. Those would have made tidy stories to tell. But if there’s one constant thread in my life, it’s this: whilst the end of every life-chapter has at the very least a quiet joy, the process of getting to that sweet ending is pure, convoluted torture for everyone involved.

In truth I’d say Videl and I met four times.

The first time was in passing on that very day. She’d arrived a moment too late to see the Golden Fighter in action and accosted me, quizzing me as a bystander. Meanwhile I was in the process of sneaking from the scene with all the subtlety of the bank robbers I’d laid flat. I feigned ignorance and was fortunate enough that her ire at missing the show meant she paid me no heed and I could scamper away.

My first impression of her? Only the sigh of relief that this boisterous and intimidating girl drew more attention to herself than me.

So you see, not much of a spark to speak of.

Our second meeting and first real introduction was less than an hour later. We have Videl’s old, now mutual friend to thank for that. Erasa, the social butterfly and romantic fiend, was the first person to formally welcome me into our class by pulling little lost me into the empty seat beside her. Flagrantly ignoring the class that was being led from below, she introduced herself and her friends, including Videl. It was only then I found out that the young lady searching for the block of the Golden Fighter to knock clean off was Mr Satan’s daughter - the man who had taken credit, limelight and burden for my defeat of Cell. And it was also then I learnt the Golden Fighter was already a local celebrity. Whilst she recognised me from the crimescene that morning, Videl (thankfully) dismissed me as too great a goober to be the Hero. This defence has saved me an offensive number of times, actually.

Beyond my initial shock at her parentage, I didn’t pay Videl much heed beyond steering clear of her suspicions, either. My first day of school was such a mess that I was preoccupied up to the eyeballs with other worries. The teachers had singled me out as having the highest entry scores and as such I was an officially-sanctioned target. By the end of first period they’d found out I supposedly commuted for ten hours every day, lived in the mountain district (my subtle accent that pops out when stressed probably didn’t help me here) and was wearing the same clothes as the now infamous Golden Fighter. All that was saving my heritage and feats from exposure was the colour of my hair, natural knack for social awkwardness being mistaken for a lack of physical prowess, and the ubiquitous dimwittedness of teenagers (I include my young self in that - like I said, I was never subtle).

And slow to piece together the puzzle they were. After lunch I played baseball for the first time. In my eagerness to win social points I jumped a good ten metres to make a catch. Mom warning me to act normally was all well and good but I didn’t truly understand what normal was. When you use ki all the time those amplifications are as easy as breathing. Even after limiting myself my performance was impressive and I was invited to every after-school sports club you can dream up. Thankfully my ‘long commute’ made declining participation reasonable and, after a hard day that my identity barely escaped intact from, I could finally relax.

So there we go. The first time Videl heard of me she wanted to flatten me. The first time she saw me she treated me with casual indifference. And both times I was terrified of her. Soulmates.

That near-disastrous first day brings me to my third meeting with Videl, and the origin story I wanted to tell you. You see, I knew I had to retire the Golden Fighter - that day had been too close for comfort and even the most self-absorbed of teenagers would have done the math eventually; Videl got close enough during our introduction. But I also knew I wouldn’t be able to resist getting myself in heroic trouble again, leaving me and my family exposed.

So I did what all my friends and family do when they have a tricky problem with no obvious solution: pay a visit to Auntie Bulma and hope she can engineer you out of the hole.

In retrospect I’m sure she would have much preferred to tackle the “possible trouble with a girl” she assumed I was having at first, but at that stage even I wasn’t aware of the problem brewing there. Still, she offered to help and her solution to the Golden Fighter was simple: to jerry-rig a prototype device she’d been working on, the capsule watch. Not the standard discrete-capsule-inside-watch that you all know, but a specific design that threads the shrinking matrix throughout fabric and default targets to the wearer’s form, rematerialising over the wearer’s body. In short, it was an instantaneous costume, one I could pop on and off to fight crime in a moment.

The Great Saiyaman’s name was my idea but it was Bulma who designed his look. To this day I’m impressed she managed to pull the outfit together in one afternoon. I very much consider myself indebted to her for the success of The Great Saiyaman and all who follow. That chunky watch is not much different to the slim-line version Heroes and Shadows wear today - though theirs are discreetly hidden in jewellery and other accessories. Here’s an inside scoop for you: those outfits don’t replace my current clothes but shrink over them. Wearing the costume is atrocious in the heat, and what do we experience a lot of in Satan City? I have many-a-time begrudgingly hit that button when in full suit, (yes, with tie and suit jacket) and have waddled my way across the city to deal with some shoe down or another. Contrary to popular belief, there was never a meaner stand-in for me, I was just perpetually tired and sweaty on those days and therefore not in the mood to give many chances. Give a man a break, and offer your friendly neighbourhood Hero or Shadow a drink.

Bulma’s disguise worked well. Within days the Golden Fighter was consigned to history and The Great Saiyaman garnered admirers and nervous detractors alike. Kids loved the look (well, Goten did - he was six) and the Hero even got a movie, my cameo in which was sadly cut out. My stuntwork on the Age 780 loose-reboot is front and centre, at least!

The Great Saiyaman gave me the breathing space I desperately needed to work out the kind of adult I wanted to be. Though my absolute secret wouldn’t last long and at the time I cursed by luck for that, being unmasked turned out to be the best thing to ever happened to me. You see, the disguise worked perfectly against everyone, except the one person it needed to. The one person beside myself and family who had unwittingly the most to lose. Videl.

I spent half of my first expedition as a Hero catching up with Videl in a vain attempt to save her. I’ll admit I was underestimating her; I feared both that she’d been given the title of Crimefighter purely due to her father’s massaged achievements, and that she was in more danger than she realised, luck and sheer bravado carrying her safely through any previous skirmishes.

(NB in truth this was my second outing, but I don’t count the reckless drivers I put to right. They had no taste in Hero names and spread the wrong one so I’m going to rewrite history if you don’t mind.)

When I reached the scene she was more than holding her own, knocking down two men twice her size with admirable efficiency and methodical style.

I’d like to state for the record that I did play my part by saving her from a stray bullet, though she maintains she only got into that predicament because I was a bumbling distraction. We’ll have to agree to disagree. Still, we rallied and captured the fleeing robbers before they had chance to cause more trouble. Working together the task was simple. A quick success, I thought, one that would lead to future professional collaborations.

But despite my very best efforts to play the mysterious Hero, Videl rumbled me, and that was the third time we met.

Perhaps she recognised my voice, or maybe her ki sense was more developed than I believed and her ‘intuition’ clued her in. Either way, within thirty seconds of interrogation she’d tricked me into explaining how I’d snuck out of class, thus undoing my night’s hard work developing a cryptic Hero’s persona. I had the dance down pat and everything.

Auntie Bulma was right when she said I can be all brain and no sense at times.

What was worse, Videl hadn’t only seen me leaping about in a costume. I’d used enough of my abilities to both shock and intrigue Videl, and unfortunately she knew from our very brief interactions that I could be a bit of a push-over.

You see, one of Videl’s greatest traits is her tenacity. If she has an idea, or a goal, or any nebulous vision that she deems technically achievable, however low the probability, she will have no qualms pursuing her desires. In this case - Videl wished to learn to fly.

Nowadays she’s sweeter and more subtle than she was when we were in our teens - then being as blunt as the broad side of a tree-trunk to the face. I’d wager that anyone who’s worked with her on one of her many altruistic projects wouldn’t feel as though they’d been guided by her. In fact, many come away with the impression that they were the brains and muscle of the entire outfit. After watching my wife work the floor of a charity auction, it’s plain to see she inherited her father’s charisma with a stark upgrade in finesse. If my wife wants something, she will bend wills and even reality to get it.

I said to you a long time ago that my first student was Videl and I trained her all backwards. Let me elucidate. The choice to train Videl backwards was less a conscious choice and more the mad scrabbling of a boy attempting to save his own neck.

When she discovered I was due to compete in the Tenkaichi Budokai, she saw only one path to prove herself. I was to teach her how to fly, and then I was to fight her in the upcoming tournament. This was not up for discussion. She dangled my identity and family’s safety over the precipice with casual indifference and I had to yield to her. Yes, my first student blackmailed me into giving up my secrets. That may sound horrific to you. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened more often, really. But I forgave her. She’d grown up in the limelight and saw the attention at worst an irritation but with overall great benefits, so why wouldn’t I learn to like the same? At that point she didn’t know my last and greatest secret either, and one that I was desperate to keep from the daughter of the man who took credit for my victory. I could not in good conscience allow her to find out that I was the Golden Fighter, a Super Saiyan and therefore the young boy in the Cell Games. Her father’s success back then was predicated on a lie and I did not want to be the one to drive a wedge between them, or cause the world, her world at least, to be laid to ruin with one tiny admission. So I lied through omission again.

The upside of competing in the Tenkaichi Budokai was skipping school. You wouldn’t think I of all people would have taken so easily to the idea, but with the stress of keeping The Great Saiyaman secret and behaving like a normal human, absconding  to work from home with a stack of books was far easier - just like old times. I don’t think I could have managed my time at school juggling all that and a hot-headed Videl waiting for one misstep before blurting out my identity.

Goten was convinced that my silly foray into public school was over by then, a two week flight of fancy and I was back for good to play with him all day. My mother, despite being a stickler for academic focus, is also an extremely practical woman. She saw the benefits of the prize money that our family could sweep, so let him train. Even my father was able to attend nominally for the day - yes, that surprised us all, too.

I had to recondition myself and train Goten in that time, though I found his skills suspiciously well-honed. Not only had he been roughhousing with Trunk,s but our mother had been teaching him forms both as a reward for completing his homeschooling and for his own protection. Given that, I was confident our family could at least put in a good showing against the others. All I’d need were a few days alone with him.

But those few days were cut short by the arrival of Videl.

Videl was indeed serious about me teaching her how to fly, so much so she’d broken into the school administration office and dug out my address. Did I mention there was a five hour jetcar flight between Mount Paozu and Satan City to boot? Like I said, she chases what she wants and sinks her teeth into it until all protestations are subdued. I was the dead deer in her jaws. She chewed my ear off for leaving school to train, assuming I was ditching her. And because of that accidental transgression I was coerced into making up post-haste. So, having no time to teach the nuances of sensing ki and everything else you, dear reader, have had to learn, I had to go straight to flight.

I was an extremely fortunate teacher, however. Videl had trained her body hard her entire life and was already honed in mind enough that her ki flowed strongly, her power far greater than her father’s. This observation made a weird sort of sense. Like many people she watched the Cell Games and that day learnt the “great feats” her father was capable of. Since she idolised him and wanted to make him proud, she’d spent her time striving for those dizzying heights, hoping one day she could be a worthy successor. That one lie spurred Videl on so much that by her mid-teens she had already surpassed her father.

My intention had been to fit in two weeks of solid training with my brother. Despite Goten’s terrifying progress with Mom he couldn’t fly. Imagine that! The kid had puzzled out the knack of the super saiyan transformation and yet had not quite worked out the ki control required for flight. I guess this speaks to the motivating power of stories with children, plus Goten’s backwards-yet-ultimately-successful way of doing most things. That talent he got from Dad, I’m sure.

Thankfully then Goten took very little prompting, given he had otherwise perfect ki control. I even had to tell him to slow down and buzz off as Videl was getting snappy, her pride taking a beating; she was not used to struggling in martial arts. After enough failure to obliterate anyone’s confidence, I managed to convince her to sit still and learn a few basics. Whilst I did not have the words I have now, I muddled through, teaching her the exact intent that I will now teach you.

2.6.1 - Shine

That afternoon we sat facing each other. I spoke to her of the life all around us, how energy flows within us and in the carpet of lush mountain grass unrolling beneath us to the horizons and mountains - how I could sense that life, and she would be able to too, if she took the time to listen. I needed to show her ki was real, that she too possessed it, and to do that she had to physically see it. So, I put my palms together, took that breath, and drew my ki to a focus between my hands. Then I thought of sudden understandings, the first rays of dawn, the first breath of a newborn, announcing my own presence to a room, stars, light streaming through windows chasing back shadows and the Sun appearing from behind a cloud -  the mobile of ideas that in my mind support the intent to shine.

The ki transformed to visible photons - just enough to see in the daylight, and Videl’s face, both literally and metaphorically, lit up. She inspected the light, shuffling close enough to touch, although her nose would have passed straight through.

I recommend you get that close, too. See shine’s shape and how the light pulsates with the wavering intent, how that communicates back to you and you hear its whisper. There’s no shame in marvelling at truly seeing your ki for the first time (or rather, such a direct effect of it) and you should take every moment to relish it.

Videl set to work, and she tripped through all the faults we’ve covered so far together (holding the breath, subconscious tensing, ki frantically clinging to its original purpose) but eventually a jewel of light appeared between her shaking hands, flickered in surprise and confusion at its manifestation, then as suddenly as the light blossomed it blinked out of existence. Videl near-collapsed through the effort, but she’d done it.

Her shining eyes, the pride swelling in them… for me that memory is as crisp as the present reality. At that exact moment I felt that same pure pride in her as her teacher.

That first session went remarkably smoothly. In another reality it may not have done. You may think shine a benign ability. And it is, if it behaves itself. Whether it does or not is less to do with runaway accidents and more a reflection of your ability to control your curiosity.

Intents are just that. Your intention. If you intend to make a soft glow and hold that confidence you will. But a slip of thought when straining your mind can overcharge the intent, making a flash grenade. If your mind treads lightly and sticks to topic then shine will come to life without you having to know the exact wavelength of light or quantity of energy required.

Given both intents work on a similar principle (conjuring photons to interact with light), then like push, shine can have similar difficulties when focusing the intent. And like push, curiosity can get the better of some users. I did think about shying away from listing these possibilities, but I believe it more prudent to flag them and the consequences of not heeding my warnings.

The visible section of the light spectrum is only a very narrow band. Other wavelengths are available; radio and microwaves at longer wavelengths (lower energies), and UV and X-ray at shorter wavelengths (higher energies). In fact a shine intent created with the Sun in mind will create a blackbody shine, meaning there will not be one pure colour but a mix of many wavelengths, some extending into the infrared and UV in very low quantities, exactly like the Sun. One has to add the idea of ‘purity’ to narrow the band of colour. If you can make a vibrant green I’ll be very impressed.

Within that simplicity lies a danger. Creating high energy photons isn’t without consequence. Go too high, even by double the energy, you’ll be creating UV photons and give yourself sunburn. Go too low, think the light too faint and pump up the quantity of photons, and you may hurt yourself with infrared light.

Get even sillier and increase the energy per photon by orders of magnitude and you’ll create X-ray and gamma radiation. Note, do not think radiating yourself with this light will help you develop ‘superpowers’. Practising with this textbook is what will help you develop ‘superpowers’. All shineing high energy light on yourself will do is cause cancerous mutations.

I know, I know. Playing with such power is tempting. Thankfully, I believe anyone interested in eventually using their newfound abilities to conjure a gamma radiation torch for their macabre amusement would have long killed themselves off by attempting the stunts in the next chapter.

Applying a direction to the light much like push can both spare you energy and accidentally blind someone, so be mindful of the intensity of light you’re creating in these circumstances. Stick to an omni-directional shine until you’re confident gauging the strength. Although, a laser shine can be useful. I have a feeling I will soon be strong-armed into demonstrating my abilities at work, and when I eventually relent to pressure I have decided to create my own laser pointer for use in lectures. A well-controlled laser can be fun with pets, too - I know the cats (and old dinos) at Capsule Corp got a good run-out with a flick of our fingers!

But I’m off track again. I have a story to finish.

I’m not sure when I began to fall for Videl. It would be neat of me to say I fell in exactly that moment, as the breeze trailed through the long grass, with Videl’s deliberate breaths and determined muttering, her brow, temples and chest shining with the effort. In reality I only observed those things in passing, overcome with admiration only. If you would have told me then and there that I was to marry this girl I would have been beyond confused and mightily embarrassed. Given the difficult situation she’d put me in, I was more continually baffled by her sheer force of will. If I did find that as attractive as I do now, well, my frontal lobes were certainly not informed.

Videl has since admitted that she fell for me first, that she wanted to impress me by both taking to my teaching quickly and catching my eye. I wouldn’t have noticed her prettied appearance if she’d kicked me in the head (which she has done many times) and my lack of social prowess at that age compounded matters. Still, reminding her she’s a softie at heart is a fun tease.

Whilst Videl graduated from my cobbled-together classes we never fulfilled the second of her demands by having a one-on-one at the Tournament. I even attended as the Great Saiyaman, by then our public personas known acquaintances. Sadly, Videl was by all appearances gravely injured by an unscrupulous competitor, the damage’s extent made worse by her stubbornness - she refused to throw in the towel even as her bones shattered. I had to be held back to prevent me interfering with the match. So I do know her feelings towards me were reciprocated by then, even if I denied them at the time.

And that day became the fourth and final time we met.

The unpleasant individual who nearly took Videl’s life was part of a larger, far more formidable group. These outright villains were targeting me, my family and friends, then set their sights on the entire world. We had to abandon the tournament to try and save everyone from the horrors they promised would befall the planet. The Potential Apocalypse was not televised this time. I’m glad no one remembers witnessing it.

Videl wanted to take a stand too, but was unable to keep up on the journey. She knew then she wouldn’t stand a chance.

Then the moment I’d been fearing for so long came and went.

She asked, ever so quietly, whether I was the golden fighter. I steeled myself, knowing this to be the end of our growing friendship. I thought a full stadium had seen me transform so there was no point hiding it. I tried to apologise for lying but she stopped me, asking if my friends and family were the ones at the Cell Games, and whether that made me the little boy, whether we were the ones to kill Cell instead of her father.

My heart was in my throat. I couldn’t choke out an explanation.

But my breath was caught more by the way she looked at me.

Not in shock or fear that a mere child would have been capable of such a feat, or anger at my lies, but only a relieved peace as the final puzzle piece clicked into place.

Despite having confirmation that her father was for all intents and purposes a sham, she, above all, was proud of me.

She sent me off with good luck, a ‘keep safe’ and ‘hurry back’. And I did indeed return to her.

She says it was then she decided to date me, as though I wouldn’t have had a choice in the matter. And I really didn’t, but I didn’t complain. Even with The Great Saiyaman’s identity in tatters, looking back to that day and many more after in those verdant meadows around Mt Paozu, I don’t think I’d have life any other way. 

In the next chapter we will begin to amplify genki to enhance the basic ingredients, and develop the supers - super-strength, super-stoicity and super-speed.

next previous first contents ask?

[groundbreaking-science]

You mentioned it's possible to identify health issues and even mitigate them using ki control. Would it be possible to detect heart attacks like that? Have you or any of your family members ever had any experience with it? Is it reliable?

Good morning!

Health issues of particular sorts, yes. One wouldn’t be able to listen to ki and get a diagnostic read out as good as a lab, but the broad strokes are there - the messages contained within the flow of genki would indicate which part of the body is struggling to return to homeostatic equilibrium, for example. So one could use ki-reading to detect heart issues like coronary heart disease (CHD) before a major blood vessel is clogged and a heart attack occurs, yes. Again, an ECG (heartbeat monitor) would be more objective in its assessment of cardiac health. I can see that in certain regions however, using ki sense to check ones health would be gentler on the wallet. 

If a heart attack is caused by heart muscle dying from a burst blood vessel and the ensuing clot as with CHD, then there’s not much ki-work can do to reverse that damage, I’m afraid. Ki-reading can detect any weakening and abnormal heartbeats, helping you distinguish between heartburn and a heart attack so you can call an ambulance with confidence. I hope you can take solace in that, at least.

Whilst ki-based healing magic could reverse damage caused by CHD, it cannot solve issues like the Cardiac Tamponade Virus (CTV). The virus first causes pericarditis, inflammation of the fluid sac the heart sits in. The first signs are tiredness, seeming restriction of the breath and chest pain. Unlike other viruses that cause pericarditis, CTV rapidly triggers cardiac tamponade;  a build up of fluid in this sac so great that the heart is restricted in its beating, blood pressure dropping with the weakened beat. In far too many untreated cases this is fatal. It is particularly ugly as the body’s immune response to the virus, the inflammation which is causing the restriction in the first place, can be stronger in some otherwise fit patients, meaning they’re more likely to die.

When the virus first reared its head my father was one of the first to catch it and it did nearly take his life - that was only prevented by the retrovirals given to us by Trunks from the future timeline. Thankfully the retrovirals were developed in our timeline too, and modern medicine can do what magic can’t.

The final area that ki-use can help with (I thought I’d end on a hopeful note) is during cardiac arrest or arrhythmia that isn’t caused by structural damage to the heart or brainstem. There is one advanced technique that can forcefully rewrite the genki governing the heartbeat. The heartbeat is marshalled by pacemakers, nerves firing to make heart muscle cells contract as a wave across the heart. Genki can tinker with these pacemakers or switch them off all together, causing the heart muscle cells to contract out of rhythm and the heart to not beat. This is cardiac arrest. One can imagine how precise this attack would need to be to get past the target’s defences against foreign ki and specifically throw the heart’s pacemaker cells off. It is the ugly side of the pass intent, for sure.

However, cardiac arrest can sometimes be successfully treated with a defibrillator. When faced with this heart-stopping opponent, it dawned on my father he would be unable to counter the attacker, so instead he should try the next best thing - undoing the attack’s effect. The problem? How could he restart his heart when he’d be clinically dead? His wild answer - to pass a ball of his own pure genki to himself, throwing it to the sky just before his heart was hit and the beat disrupted. He fell instantly unconscious, his heart stuck in spasm… until his untainted genki returned, restored equilibrium, and his heartbeat recovered. A very specific, self-administered rouse that can be performed on other people should they fall into cardiac arrest, too (although, as your ki-signature will be different, it is tricky).

Just a note on this last point. Try not to get into a situation where you need to self-defibrillate - it’s quite upsetting for your children, particularly when they weren’t aware of your plan!

I hope you won’t ever need to use this information,

–Gohan 

[groundbreaking-science]

Wow I just read your 2.5 and I gotta say I love it! I cannot wait for the next one. When will it be? :) Oh and thank you for this manuscript!

(( Thank you so much! It legit means so much to hear from you! Going to pace myself and put a stamp of 15th September on it  -  –> scratch that, got a couple of paid illustration commissions sprung on me (one of them ironically for research the textbook was based off of) so will be later! Click link to see updates–>! You can check on progress here. I want it accompanied by something else since it’s the last section in the chapter and whoops! Accidentally on purpose hinted at something there. ))

((Edit like a year later - that hinted at thing is still in the works LOL maybe at the end of chapter 3, whenever that happens(!)))