The badlands arena is a scooped-out bowl of red rock with a crowd already ringing the top of it, and Caulifla is standing in the middle with her hands on her hips when the three of you come down the ramp.

She clocks Goku and stops dead.

"Whoa— hold on. Hold on." She points, arm straight out. "What is that? What happened to you?"

Kale is half a step behind her and has gone very still, eyes wide, mouth slightly open.

Caulifla circles in, looking her up and down like she's inspecting a strange machine. "You've got— there's two of those on your chest. Air balloons. When did that happen?" She squints. "Does that make you slower? Because that's a lot of extra weight to be carrying around in a fight."

Goku looks down at herself. Genuinely looks, like she's checking a pocket for keys.

"Huh. Yeah, those are new." She pats her own chest once, experimentally, then shrugs. "Doesn't feel slower. Feels fine."

"Fine isn't an answer."

"It's a good answer!" Goku grins and then turns, remembering you're there, and gestures at the two of them with her thumb. "Oh— right. This is Caulifla, she runs the badlands. And that's Kale." A beat. "They're both really strong."

Caulifla's head comes round. "You brought someone?"

"Yeah! He's with us."

"With you how?"

Goku opens her mouth. Closes it. Looks at you, then back at Caulifla, and it's very clear she has not thought about this for one second.

"they're... from Universe 7," she says, which is true and answers nothing.

Kale, quietly, from behind: "Caulifla. The chest thing."

"Right. Yes." Caulifla snaps her fingers and points at Goku again. "Spar with me. Now. I want to know if the balloons cost you anything."

Then she swings the finger round to you, without pausing. "You too. Both of you, at once. Let's see what U7 actually brought." She jerks her chin back at Kale. "Kale, you're in. Get down here."

Kale makes a small startled sound. "Me? Against both of them?"

"Against both of them." Caulifla rolls her shoulders out, already grinning. "Come on. If they're worth anything, two on two is fair."

Champa's temple is pale and impossible and the table under the open sky is already covered in food. Champa is at one end of it with his belly up against the edge, working through a plate of something, and he's been laughing since you arrived.

"—and the best part," he says, mouth full, gesturing at Beerus with a fork, "the best part is that it wasn't even a proper wish. Some mortal fumbled it. You got caught in a clerical error."

Beerus is on the other side with her arms folded and her tail flicking. "It was a deliberate wish."

"It was a wish made by someone who didn't think it through, and you were standing in it." Champa cackles. "Centuries of being the scary one and you get taken out by a paperwork mistake."

"Champa."

"Eat something, sister. You look thin. Thinner."

Further down the table, Whis and Vados have their heads together and are entirely ignoring the argument.

"It's the weight," Whis is saying, turning her staff idly. "You'd think it would be the height, but it's the weight. Everything leans forward now."

"Mm. I'd have thought the reach would suffer more." Vados sips something. "Does it?"

"Only at the wrist. One adapts."

"One does." Vados' eyes slide down the table and land on you, and her smile sharpens by a degree. "Champa. You've got a mortal."

Champa stops chewing. Looks at you properly for the first time, ears going up.

"So I have." He sets the fork down. "Beerus. Why is there a mortal at my table?"

"they're from U7," Beerus says, flat, still sulking. "They are on the delegation."

"That's not an answer.." Champa leans forward over the plate, and his eyes narrow with the particular interest of someone who has just found a new thing to be smug about. "What are they here for? You don't bring a mortal to a Destroyer's table unless there here for something."

The hideout is a hollowed-out rock shelf with a fire pit in the middle and a roof of lashed tarpaulin, and it's been fine all evening until it very suddenly isn't.

Kale has been quiet for a while. Not shy-quiet. Wrong-quiet. She's sitting with her knees up and her eyes fixed on Caulifla, who has spent the last twenty minutes talking at you and only you — leaning into your shoulder, elbowing you, laughing at her own jokes.

Caulifla puts a hand flat on your chest to make a point about something.

Kale's jaw tightens. Her hair lifts.

"Caulifla."

"—and then he says—"

"Caulifla."

The fire pit gutters sideways. Kale's hair goes green and spikes out in a mane, muscle swelling across her shoulders and thighs, her irises washing out to blank white. The tarpaulin snaps. A crate of somebody's dinner goes over.

She comes up off the ground and she's bigger, and she is not looking at Caulifla any more. She's looking at you.

Cabba is on her feet in an instant, plating catching the firelight, hands out. "Kale— Kale, it's me, it's Cabba—"

Kale roars and swings. Cabba gets her arms up and takes it and goes skidding back through the dirt.

"She's not listening!" Cabba yells, planting her boots. "Caulifla, she's not listening to me!"

"Yeah, I can see that." Caulifla steps in front of you, rolling her shoulder. "Kale. Kale, hey. Look at me."

Kale looks at her for about a second and a half, then her head swings back to you, and the whole shelf shakes when she plants a foot.

Cabba scrambles back into line beside Caulifla, breathing hard. "If she starts throwing the big ones the roof goes. We've got maybe two minutes before this whole shelf comes down."

"Then we don't give her two minutes." Caulifla glances back at you, quick and sharp. "You. She's got a problem with you specifically. So you're going to have to be the one who fixes it."

The spring is deep and steaming, cut into the rock behind Champa's temple, and Vados is floating cross-legged a foot above the water with a cup of tea that isn't steaming at all. She hasn't stopped watching the two Saiyans since they got in.

Kale is in the water to her chin with her knees up and her face already red. Caulifla is beside you with her towel loose at her waist and her legs spread wide under the surface, and she's been working up to something for a minute.

"Right. New idea." She turns her head to you. "Vados says we're on a break. Fine. But breaks are boring."

She leans in, close, voice dropping.

"Battle of endurance. You and me. Kale's in too — she wants to see if you can handle both of us at once."

Kale makes a small strangled noise. "I— she volunteered me."

"I did." Caulifla doesn't look away from you. "No stopping, no tapping out. Whoever lasts longest wins."

Vados takes a sip. "Whoever lasts longest," she agrees, pleasantly. "Though I'd say the winner is rather obvious already, and it isn't either of you."

Caulifla ignores her. Her hand finds your knee under the water.

"So. Yes or no?"

Vados' room is high in the temple and open to the sky on one side, the whole canyon laid out below in permanent orange dusk. There's no furniture in it but the bed, and the bed is enormous.

She's standing at the edge of it when you come in, staff in hand, and she doesn't turn around straight away.

"You're unique, you know." She says it lightly, the way she says everything. "There's one of you in either universe. That's not a thing you can say about many people."

She turns. The staff goes down against the wall with a soft click.

"Which means I can't train you the way I'd train a Saiyan. They need to be hit until they stop being stupid about it." She undoes the sash at her waist, unhurried. "You need something with more... finesse."

The robe comes off her shoulders and goes to the floor. The cuirass follows it. She steps out of the heels and leaves them where they fall, and then she's naked and entirely unbothered about it — long pale blue limbs, the halo ring still turning slowly at her throat, a body that has been exactly this shape for longer than Sadala has had cities.

She sits on the edge of the bed and leans back on her hands.

"The question is whether you can handle it. My form of training." Her head tilts. "Most can't. They get about four minutes in and start making promises."

She lifts one hand and curls a finger.

"Come here and find out."

The room is quiet, the only sound coming from the window where the orange dusk of Sadala stretches out over the red rocks. You're sitting on the edge of the bed when Goku walks in, looking a bit lost.

She's wearing an oversized white shirt that belongs to you, the hem hanging down to her mid-thighs, leaving her legs completely bare. Her hair is a mess, sticking up in all directions, and she's sitting on the bed with her knees drawn up, looking at you with wide, curious eyes.

"Hey," she says, bouncing slightly on the mattress. "I'm bored. Training's done, and Vados said I should rest, but I don't know what to do."

She shifts closer, her legs pressing against yours, and tilts her head. "Hey, uh... what's a 'mouth present'? Chichi used to do that to me when I was a man, and I was wondering if I could try it on you? Is that... is that okay?"

She says it with the same innocent curiosity she uses to ask about food or fighting, completely unaware of the implication. Her cheeks are slightly flushed, and she's looking at you with a mix of excitement and confusion.

"So... what do you think? Can I try it?"