"HAHA! I MISSED THIS SO MUCH!" Pepper laughed joyously, knocking a large ki blast aside with a kick, her loose gi fluttering around her body with the effect of the motion.
"You say that every time, Pepper! It's getting OLD!" The thin white sheet of light covering Tater's skin fluttered for a moment as his foot connected squarely with Pepper's raised arm guard.
The thin white sheet of light covering Pepper's body didn't respond to the exertion at all, staying perfectly even as she calmly flipped her arm under Tater's leg and redirected the recoil from his kick in order to effortlessly toss him over her shoulder.
"Give her a BREAK!" Pepper's brain barely had time to give her a sudden 'OH, GOD!' warning before a bright light suddenly appeared, spearing directly through where her head should have been.
Pepper, having managed to duck at the very last instant, with a speed that defied conventional physics, grabbed the side of her head in annoyance.
A few strands of white-blonde hair came away in her fingers. "Dude! Learn to control that before you kill someone!" She complained to Lynn, watching the hair float away through her fingers in the zero-gravity environment, slowly losing its luster and returning to its original black color now that it was detached from her head.
"I wouldn't have to if you just got stronger!" Lynn joked in reply, her form flickering with incredible speed that she couldn't quite properly control just yet.
"Oh, sounds like someone's getting full of herself! Just because you got a new power doesn't mean you can control it!" Pepper taunted, flashing into close combat with Lynn at insane speeds by creating a foothold out of ki and using the Hyper-Motion technique.
Lynn snarled, her Saiyan blood roaring at the younger girl's challenge. Their limbs blurred into an exchange of fists, a fight for dominance between the two women, no-holds-barred.
To Lynn, Pepper's fastest, most powerful attacks felt slow and weak. The power difference between them wasn't a small number, but rather something so absurd that it honestly should've been absolute. She'd had nearly nine months since she'd finally managed to break the barrier and become the first to unlock the actual Super Saiyan form, and she hadn't wasted that time at all.
But it'd been around the same time since Pepper had given birth and begun training once more, with a renewed passion.
Lynn may have figured out the basics of SSJ, but Pepper had completely and totally mastered SSJP, and the latter's natural talent completely outstripped the former, anyway.
While Lynn's power level fluttered between 200 and 300 million, swirling around her base SSJ power level that lived somewhere around 250 million, Pepper had total control of her SSJP ki. Every single one of Pepper's attacks contained significantlymore energy than her baseline power level that fell somewhere just under 160 million would normally show, hitting somewhere above 200 million.
Lynn was faster, but Pepper was better.
The power difference helped. Even though every single time she moved, Pepper's arm was right there, the younger woman having already predicted it, Lynn was still fast enough to break past Pepper's guard anyways, about half of the time.
The bruises piled up rapidly on both of them.
Then, a giant rock blasted between them, forcibly breaking them apart. "Catapult Bomber!" The rock that Tater had kicked at the girls forced them apart. The Catapult Bomber's explosion forcibly shifted their attention from each other to the massive Saiyan.
The girls reacted simultaneously. While they weren't deliberately working together, their teamwork was naturally seamless from years of polish.
Lynn tossed a Horizon Disc at Tater, grabbing his attention and probing his response simultaneously, while Pepper closed in.
Tater tanked the disc with his forearm, focusing more on the more immediate threat: Pepper closing the distance, streaking through space like a missile.
He braced himself for impact, preparing to counter, hard and decisive.
Pepper swung her leg, instantly transferring all of her momentum into a single blow. "Blitz Explosion!"
BANG!
The rock drifting directly beside Tater's body exploded into fine fragments of dust. The shockwave from the force hit Tater's guard like a gentle breeze.
BOOM! Only for Lynn's elbow to slam directly into the floating titan's back with pinpoint accuracy.
Tater instantly began regretting the idea that he could draw both girls' attention at the same time, as he flew through space, spitting up a combination of phlegm and blood as he reoriented himself.
A little disoriented from the rather extreme pain in his back, Tater managed to unsteadily take flight, the two girls close behind, wrestling each other for the lead spot in the pursuit.
…
Ever since Tarble's battle with the powerful Namekian, Slug, each of the Saiyans had broken through to the next level in their own ways, reaching new heights of power.
For Lynn, that was breaking past 'False Super Saiyan' into the real thing, with golden-blonde hair and deep teal-colored eyes.
More visually stunning and notably stronger than SSJP, there were only two downsides to Lynn's new form. The strain, and the fact that it was far less natural, and thus more difficult, to control than SSJP was.
She'd made real progress, though. Since learning the new transformation, Lynn's power level had actually quadrupled, bringing her raw power, even in her base state, past even Pepper's.
She was still just barely in the beginning stages of mastery over the form, though. It was incredibly draining, and she couldn't hold it for a particularly long time, either. It drained her stamina rather impressively.
For Pepper, she'd simply mastered SSJP completely, using the Blutz Overdrive technique that Tarble had developed. Her current form was the equivalent of SSJP Full-Power, and multiplied her base power level by somewhere just between 40 and 50 times.
Though her power level hadn't exactly declined much during her pregnancy, acclimating to the form had the effect of bringing her base power all the way up slightly past where Tarble had been ten months ago. For her, it'd essentially been entirely rote work, little to no real effort required.
Just the natural conclusion to finally being able to train again.
As for Tater, he still wasn't exactly as strong as the girls yet. While, after seven months of dedicated instruction, he'd finally learned to mostly stabilize a Power Ball, the Blutz-Light Generation technique required to deliberately control the generation of Blutz Waves enough to actually overcharge the SSJP state was significantly more complex. He was far from being able to do it.
So, Tarble had come to a different solution. Technical assistance. He designed a machine capable of projecting a field of Blutz Wave energy around the user's body, allowing Tater to properly overcharge his transformation.
Tater had managed to master SSJP's full power with almost insulting ease. Unfortunately, the energy field that allowed it had a tendency to fluctuate under pressure, and his raw power and overall control were both slightly worse than Pepper's.
He wasn't something that the girls could instantly dismiss, though, and his raw power output had brought him up to the point where he'd be able to reliably beat the Tarble who'd fought Slug ten months ago, in his transformed state, and put up a pretty even fight in his base form.
…That did not mean that he could take on both Pepper and Lynn simultaneously, though, if they both targeted him at once.