From Rhode's perspective, Aira's departure had been a masterstroke of social engineering—entirely intentional on his part.
He shook his head, dismissing further speculation about her mood or potential shopping-related disasters. She probably won't blow up the mall this time... probably.
After finding Dr. Brief to report the Gravity Chamber's demise (and receiving a promise of a quick, upgraded repair), Rhode found himself with rare, unstructured time. He sought out a quiet, open courtyard within the Capsule Corp grounds.
With a thought, he summoned the silvery portal to his Hyperbolic Time Chamber and stepped through.
His destination within the timeless void wasn't for training. He soon stood before the object of his latest intellectual obsession: the semi-finished Time Machine acquired from Dr. Mashirito.
It was an unimpressive sight—a weathered, spherical contraption that looked more like a forgotten boiler than a device to cheat causality. Yet, within its crude shell lay a power that flirted with the divine: localized temporal stasis.
He'd only heard of its fifty-second freeze. Now, with time to spare, he intended to experience it firsthand.
Following the operating procedures he'd memorized from Mashirito's notes, Rhode entered the sphere and initiated the sequence.
**Buzz~**
A vibration, more felt in the soul than heard by the ears, emanated from the machine. An invisible wave of absolute stillness pulsed outward at a speed beyond physics.
"Has it already stopped?" Rhode murmured. He pushed open the hatch and stepped out, then exited the Time Chamber's portal entirely, emerging back into the sunny Capsule Corp courtyard.
The scene that met him was surreal. The world was a photograph. Birds hung motionless mid-air. A gardener's spray of water was frozen in a perfect, glittering arc. The very air felt thick, dead. He leapt upwards, confirming his suspicion—the entire Capsule Corporation complex, and vast swathes of West City beyond its walls, were locked in a perfect, silent pause.
Hmm?
His enhanced sight picked out a familiar limousine just pulling out of the main gates. He descended, landing softly beside it.
Inside, Mrs. Brief and Bulma were captured in animated conversation, their faces frozen in smiles. And there was Aira, sandwiched between them, her expression one of profound, petulant bewilderment. Even her formidable power offered no resistance. She was as still as the others.
Curious, Rhode reached out and gently pinched Aira's cheek. No reaction. Not even a flicker in her eyes. Her consciousness, it seemed, was suspended as well.
Interesting. If she was affected, then he likely would be too, unless his power dwarfed the machine's effect by an order of magnitude.
Leaving the frozen tableau, Rhode shot into the sky again, a golden streak against the motionless blue. In a heartbeat, he reached the boundary of the effect—a clean, invisible line where frozen city gave way to normal, bustling life. The sphere of influence covered nearly half of West City. And this was with the machine operating inside the Time Chamber, its effect diluted through the spatial gate. Its raw, direct power would be far greater.
Satisfied with the test, he returned to the courtyard portal just as the fifty-second mark approached.
Time resumed with a subtle, inaudible click. The birds completed their frozen arcs, the water fell, the sounds of the city rushed back in. The limousine continued smoothly down the road, its occupants none the wiser.
Aira did not come storming back. The test was conclusive.
A new, thrilling idea took root. If the machine could affect even Aira... could it affect him?
Only one way to know.
He re-entered the Time Chamber and sealed the portal. This time, he used his Multi-Form technique. A clone of himself entered the Time Machine and initiated the sequence once more.
**Buzz~**
The main Rhode, standing outside the sphere, braced himself. The wave hit.
His body locked. Not just his limbs, but the very flow of energy within him seemed to sludge to a halt. More disorienting was his mind. Thought itself became a laborious, glacial crawl. A simple deduction felt like wading through cement. The fifty seconds subjectively stretched into an agonizing eternity of muffled, slow-motion awareness.
Then, freedom. The clone in the machine shut it down.
As sensation and swift thought flooded back, Rhode's heart wasn't filled with trepidation, but with blazing, electrifying anticipation. This wasn't just a weapon. It was a key. A key to understanding time itself, and perhaps, to unlocking a power that could operate within its frozen flow. The research had just gotten infinitely more fascinating.
The echo of temporal stasis still lingered in the depths of his consciousness, a strange, sluggish aftertaste to his thoughts. The power to stop time was not something he understood, but he had felt its edges. Most crucially, he had remained aware within the freeze. That meant it was a state he could study, a sensation he could, through brutal repetition, learn to dissect and perhaps even replicate. But brute force experimentation was the last step, not the first.
He needed the map before he could walk the road. Dr. Mashirito's notes were a treasure, but they were a single explorer's journal. He needed the combined archives of cosmic science. The Dragon Balls. He would wish for the complete, refined theories of spacetime. He recalled whispers—other universes among the twelve had allegedly cracked time travel. That knowledge was out there. And while he was making wishes... the problem of mortality. Solving that would unlock the Time Chamber's true potential, allowing him to compound years of training without sacrificing his lifespan. He could ascend through pure, relentless accumulation.
Plan set, he returned to the immediate grind. His clone activated the Time Machine once more. He endured the fifty-second eternity, his mind straining against the glacial pace of its own thoughts, searching for patterns in the stillness. He repeated the process until a deep, psychic fatigue warned him to stop.
Exiting the Time Chamber, the mundane reality of Capsule Corp felt surreal. He remembered—Namek's dragon was still dormant. Fine. He would build his own foundation first. He retreated to his room, burying himself in Mashirito's equations and his own burgeoning hypotheses, the symbols and concepts becoming a world unto themselves.
He lost track of time, immersed in the flow of causality and paradox, until the sound of the front door broke his concentration. He sensed Aira's ki, but it was... different. Lighter, somehow. Curiosity pulled him from his work.
Stepping into the living room, he stopped.
The Aira before him was transformed. The sleek, functional battle suit was gone. In its place was an elegant, knee-length blue dress. Stylish high heels replaced her boots. A delicate purse hung from her arm, and she was laden with the glossy bags of West City's finest stores.
Catching his gaze, a blush instantly stained her cheeks. "Mrs. Brief is... a force of nature," she muttered, her attempt at a scoff undercut by her flustered expression. "All this is completely impractical!" Without another word, she turned and hurried into her room, leaving a faint scent of perfume and bewildered silence in her wake.
Rhode blinked. I didn't even say anything.
Minutes later, she returned, once again clad in her simple blue battle suit, her face a mask of composed neutrality. The air held a tinge of awkwardness she clearly intended to ignore.
It was she who broke the silence, her warrior's instincts cutting through the unspoken moment. "Rhode," she said, her eyes sharpening as she focused on the anomaly she'd sensed earlier, the one that had pulled her from thoughts of retail warfare. "Your ki vanished for a while. Were you in the Time Chamber?"
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