“Korn! KORN!” Zerori called out to the emptiness that was her apartment in East City, the couple of bags in her hands flopping down to the ground as she sauntered inside. Once she’d flipped the lights on to get a good look at the place - having been basically run ragged for the past few weeks being basically everywhere else but home - her eyes would widen in abject horror as she took in the result of leaving her apartment in the hands of a 7 foot tall Saiyan male for 3 weeks.

Her floors were littered with trash, be it TV dinners, ramen boxes stacked at least TEN deep and looking like Korn had at least attempted to try and keep them cornered to a table. Keyword: attempted, because they looked like they’d LONG since migrated from the edge of the table to nearly the middle of the room. Her couch was equally littered with trash, but it seemed that a battle for the territory had been waged by the horrid amount of dirty clothes that Zerori could smell back near the front door.

Summarized: The place was an absolute wreck and Zerori had a feeling that even after it was cleaned, she’d be smelling the traumatic scent of dirty socks and week-old ramen for months to come. So, naturally, the next course of action was to calmly demand an explanation.

“KORN!!!” Zerori bellowed, throwing her head back for full effect.

The sound of something falling somewhere in her apartment, followed by the loud scramble of limbs was soon met with a yell of equal volume as her old flame from her high school years barreled into the living area, “What?! I heard you the first two times you YELLED me na-!” Stopping suddenly as Korn recognized who it was that had been yelling at him, his expression would look a bit shocked before he’d begin sweating a little. “You… You got stronger-” He tried to save, only for Zerori’s aura to begin bleeding into the surrounding area from her ire.

“Clean. This. Fucking. Place,” She snarled, punctuating each word slowly and with as much venom as possible before she stalked off in the direction of her bedroom. She was thankful he didn’t go in there. As an afterthought, Zerori called to him, “Get dressed, too! I’ve got some new ideas for attacks that I’ve been practicing and you just earned yourself the VIP spot as target practice!”

While Zerori looked through her things and made sure that her extra clothes were there and completely untouched, she could hear in the kitchen that Korn was gradually throwing things away in a trash can as he spoke, “Target practice? We’re going to train, then! You can throw anything you like at me!” H laghd, apparently thrilled to finally have some sort of action beyond baby-sitting her apartment. Zerori just rolled her eyes and began to change her clothes.

“Glad you’re excited about it. It feels like I’ve done nothing BUT training ever since that fucking train wreck of a tournament and I’m about ready to break my knees and call it a vacation!” And honestly, she really was tired of it all. Once she’d gotten her training gear on; just a casual set of her black spandex with her lucky red boots, Zerori stepped out of her room to see that Korn was almost finished with his task. She cocked an eyebrow up at his results before turning to him, allowing a small smirk to slide upon her lips. “Well now… consider me impressed.”

Korn looked up from the task at hand, a confused expression on his face before he looked around at the work he’d done and realized that he’d nearly filled up EIGHT industrial-size bags of trash in the span it took for Zerori to merely get dressed. He looked back at Zerori before giving a shrug. “... I want to train with you.”

Caught by the sentiment, the hybrid woman couldn’t help but stare for a moment before giving a scoff. “Alright, big guy, that’s enough of that for a day. Let’s go beat the shit out of each other,” She amicably saved before she walked over to her bags. “You’ve got until I get groceries put away before I’m leaving - with or without you.” Bags in hand, the sound of limbs scrambling along the floor was like music to her ears. She’d gotten through the second to last bag when Korn appeared around the corner and grinned at her.

“Beat you at your own game!”

Zerori looked up from her bags, a look of disgust and disbelief, “...Are you five?”

And just like that, Zerori successfully sucked the joy right out of Korn’s face, an impressive record if it didn’t make her feel like she’d just kicked a fucking puppy. Her expression hardened as she threw the last of the items in the refrigerator and growled, “Oh come ON then!” She groaned, getting up and grabbing her satchel with Korn hot on her heels. Once they were both out of the apartment, it was straight to the woods she and Korn had chosen as their proper stomping grounds for training.

…
..
.

Once they’d arrived at their chosen destination, Zerori landing easily while Korn landed more or less like a sack of bricks on pavement, she took a look around to see if anything had changed or if anyone had decided to lay claim to their area. “Hm… looks like it’s all clear. Don’t sense anyone, anyway,” She muttered, earning a look from Korn as he grimaced.

“I don’t know why you bother. If anyone was here, they’d soon vanish upon hearing us. Besides, they’d deserve it for deciding to make camp with so much damage to the area,” Korn reasoned, with surprisingly well-based logic.

While Zerori wanted to argue and give Korn the typical slap down because it was a kind of their dynamic, she was reminded that not only did Korn have his moments but she kind of owed him some form of reward for cleaning her apartment (of his mess) so quickly. “Just this once… yes. You’re right,” She huffed dramatically before reaching for her bag and pulling out a small round object. “Let’s just hope they’re smart enough to get the hint after a few blasts,” She chuckled, pressing a few buttons on the object before throwing it in the air.

Just as it was about to hit the ground, instead of smashing into the grass it would stop suddenly before floating upwards in the air. A drone. “Alright!” This thing is going to record our workout AND it can function as a neat little training buddy,” Zerori proudly announced.

Korn approached it carefully before poking at it, “How will it help us train?”

Suddenly, as it spooked, the little machine would turn on Korn and blast him with a barely painful laser blast - eliciting a positively adorable yelp from the Saiyan. Zerori snorted.

“You’re an idiot. C’mon, we haven’t got all day!... Well, actually we do but I want to eat at SOME point after we’re done here!” And with that, Zerori threw away her satchel bag and didn’t waste any time getting into a stance. Korn, in return, seemed to adopt his own although it looked more like a boxer’s stance than anything. She didn’t mind, used to his less than finessed fighting style and ready for anything that he was going to throw at her. Her intent was to use him as a means to practice a technique she’d been developing ever since coming back from Hell and meeting… well, her mother.

To say that she was an inspiration wouldn’t have been giving the woman that birthed her enough credit, even if Zerori was still rather sore about her leaving to begin with. However, that was a story for another time. In the here and now, all Zerori wanted to do was try this technique of hers out and see if she couldn’t improve upon it.

-getting the beat the shit out of Korn was just an added bonus!

“RAUGH!” Korn roared, closing the distance between the two of them with a powerful right swing, aimed to try and clock Zerori right across the cheek. Unfortunately, with the differences in their power, Zerori was able to easily escape the attempt with a well-time roll and a series of backflips to gain some distance from him. “Still acrobating around?!” He yelled, grinding to a halt along the ground.

Zerori laughed as she landed on her feet, retaking her stance with fluidic grace, “Who, me? Nah, just making sure I don’t get my jaw broken too soon. I like to enjoy the action and lemme tell ya-” Korn watched as her power began to rise, her cerulean eyes flaring red before she finished, “-a good warm-up never failed to get me all FIRED UP!” And now it would be Zerori who was on the offensive, yet she did something quite different this time.

Instead of rushing headlong into the battle like she typically tended to do, Zerori would take a step back and suck in a breath. Korn looked on in confusion, never having seen her do this before, and actually waited - curious to see what she was going to do.

He didn’t have to wait long, Zerori releasing a sudden expulsion of what he could only describe as very hot, very dark flames that raced towards him and something deep in his gut was saying NOT to get hit with that stuff! Struggling with his weight and muscle mass, the large lumbering Saiyan would force himself to run and eventually lunge across the ground into a rather messy roll before finally managing to recover and look back to see… just devastation.Absolute devastation of the area that Zerori had managed to paint with her black flaming attack.

The grass - of what was left of it - was a mess of quickly burning flames that ate and ate what it could. It looked to leave nothing behind by a husk of dark charcoal like remnants, and even when that was all that it left behind - it ate still. He looked on, horrified at the thought of what would have happened to him had that actually touched him. He looked away from the flames back to Zerori, noticing that she wasn’t horrified at all with what she had done. In fact-

With a sudden howl of laughter, Zerori threw her arms up, “Did you SEE that?! And it’s-!... still going, damn. Will it ever stop?!” So enthralled with the success of her technique that Zerori didn’t take notice that the attack she’d used was slowly ravaging the completely grassy area and it was actually gaining power and speed at an alarming rate. Zerori approached the flames, throwing caution to the wind, before seeming to take verbal note of everything that was happening with mad-scientist-like intrigue. “It’s using my magic as a means to feed itself on life around it, like… like some kind of parasite. Or maybe it’s naturally just attracted to life? Fuck, it could be anything! Damn, and it’s so small, too-”

Korn was at a loss for words but he had to do something. Anything or risk their training place to be destroyed irreparably, “Zerori-” He tried, approaching her. He was sure that the training had been stopped for now because she was being a creepy nerd but he had to shake some sense in her, “Zerori-!” He yelled again, almost upon her as she rambled on. With a final yell for her name on his tongue, Korn had reached a hand out to try and grasp her shoulder when suddenly he was feeling an incredibly powerful pain burst to life against his chest.

He was also thrown back with such force that it was only until his back was slammed against the ground, knocking the air from his lungs, did he realize that he’d be struck. He looked up, astonished, as he caught the last movement of Zerori as she looked positively monstrous with smoke coming out of her mouth. It was at that moment that the realization finally struck that he was on FIRE!

Belatedly, Korn let loose an agonized scream and began the frenzied attempt to roll along the ground to put out the fire that burned the skin on his chest. He could feel it burning hotter and hotter yet nothing he did seemed to be able to put it out.

A distance away, lost in the mystery of the fire she’d shot at Korn, Zerori’s expression would look shocked, hateful but also curious as to what exactly she had done. The reaction was instant, without any preamble and it was only belated seconds later did Zerori realize what she had done. Her eyes widened as she gasped a sharp intake of breath before a violently coughing fit would overtake her. Her lungs burned for some reason and while she was still REALLY curious as to why that was - her friend was literally almost burning to death and she was to blame.

“F-KOFF-fuck! What the h-hah -Hell do I do-?!” Zerori hissed between fits of coughing, looking up from the ground to Korn as he writhed in agony - every second possibly being his last. There had to be a way for her to stop the flames from eating away at him. It was magic! There had to be a way to somehow… cut off the feed of magic the flames were taking in.

Gathering her wits about her, Zerori recalled the words of her mother as she warned her about the effectiveness of this technique. Though it lacked the punch of power that her all-or-nothing attacks were usually comprised of - these flames burned eternally. It took either the will of the ‘fire-bearer’ or a special potion to prevent it’s spread. Well, that left Zerori with only the former option.

When her throat finally didn’t feel like it was made of sandpaper, Zerori rushed over to Korn and held her hands out like she was going to try and pat him down. Which… was actually exactly what she was going to do. That was intention enough to put them out, right?! “Fuck, fuck - look, just let me-!” She managed to pat him just a little bit here and there but when she’d touched a rather nasty area, she would suddenly find herself (justifiably) thrown back from the swing of a punch right against her nose.

With a groan, she landed along the ground and brought a hand up to her face a moment more to nurse what felt like a broken nose, ‘Damnit!” She hissed, seeing Korn go right back to writhing along the ground before the panic, guilt and rage built up enough in Zerori to finally explode and she roared, “ENOUGH!” Her power flared to dangerously high levels, higher than anything she’d ever managed, before it lowered in an instant and with it - a burst of wind that instantly put out the flames she’d created. She heaved for breath, looking around to see that the destruction she’d caused around with her first set of flames had finally come to a stop… but too little too late.

What had been a beautiful set of grassy plains with the occasional tree here and there was no bereft of any trees at all in the span of at least a hundred feet and the path the flames had taken made the ground look, smell and likely feel like it had died a miserable and painful death. Finally horrified at what she’d done, Zerori turned her attention to Korn - ignoring the blood running down her face - before getting back to her feet in a panic, “Korn! Shit - are you alive?!”

Sliding to a stop along the ground, Zerori kept one arm up to defend herself in case he might be angry enough to finally want to try and kill her, and used the other to try and turn his body around. At some point, he’d tried to snuff the flames out by grinding his chest against the ground and it was his stillness that terrified her the most. When she managed to push him onto his back without resistance, Zerori would lurch back away from him in disgusted modification. What have I done…

Blackened and bleeding profusely, Zerori could almost see the muscle through the skin that had been burned away. She was surprised she couldn’t see bone with how deep the skin and muscles had been torn away and she held a hand up to her face as the smell of burnt skin finally hit her nose. This technique, though she’d only wanted to test it, had made her lose herself in the power of it’s torturous force. She looked up at Korn’s face, worried that she would see the expression of an angry man that was betrayed. Yet, all she was a tired and uncertain look of desperation as Korn sucked in breath after breath from his screaming.”K-Korn, I- I didn’t mean to do this, I- Fuck, we gotta get you to a hospital or something!”

Korn groaned, obviously not liking that idea. “I’ll… be fine. Just get me… some of that vodka… stuff,” He struggled to say, earning a look from Zerori before she scoffed at him and shook her head.

“Nearly burned alive by my flames and you still have humor enough to crack a joke… heh, fine. I’ll do it myself. Just,” She swallowed, looking back at his seeping wound before trying to swallow down a gag at the look and smell of it. “Please try not to scream, okay?” Using her magic once more, though significantly drained (likely from using her new technique twice), she would produce a few items to try and treat him. Including a bottle of vodka for his various pains that were only going to get worse.

She looked back at him, a piteous look on her face, before she finally started to treat his wounds. “I-I.. I’m sorry…”