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If he were anyone else, the fact that the child in front of him so eclipsed him in strength would have left him in complete despair. But for him, the promise of such a strong body with so many years ahead left him salivating. All he had to do was find an opening, and all that power, that youth and vigor, was his.
And how little he would have to wait! The child was aggressively arrogant, and seemed more interested in toying with him than landing a finishing blow. The child bound him with some strange ki technique - he would be learning that one, how useful - and while it gloated, he incanted the words.
"Change now!"
There was a brilliant flash of light, a moment of brief disorientation, and then success. He was staring down at his old husk's terrified expression. He had been some strange grey alien whose most useful physical trait had been an incredibly low caloric requirement, and now he was bursting with the power of a Super Saiyan.
He flexed his new, tiny muscles, reveled in the strange, tingling fire of a Super Saiyan's ki. He would need to learn to master the form, the key to this body's power.
"Uhhh, what just happened?" said the child unintelligently.
"Isn't it obvious?"
The husk's face contorted with confusion, then comprehension.
"You're that guy our dads told us about that could switch bodies!" Their revelation came with new resolve, and the husk fell into a fighting stance.
Wait, there was something wrong here. Why was the child referring to itself with a plural pronoun? This was one body, one ki - he felt at the edges of this new body's energy. He had inhabited many bodies over his lifetime, and it had taught him a lot about the use and feel of different ki. And this one, underneath the sharp tang of Super Saiyan, was more like two separate signatures overlapping. A chord, where there should be a single note.
"Your body," he starts, "Is some kind of fusion?"
"Well, duh," said the children, "we're Gotenks."
Interesting. No wonder this body was especially powerful.
"And you've only got about 15 minutes before that fusion ends!" they yelled angrily.
His new body's single heart skipped a beat.
"Ends?"
"Yeah, fusion only lasts for thirty minutes, and we've been fighting for a while."
That was worrying, to say the least. He was now stuck in a body made from two bodies, two souls, two minds. A body that was due to split in two in a matter of minutes, and he only had one mind.
He did not want to find out what would happen to him if he remained for the split. He began to look around frantically for something, anything else alive enough to jump to. There was nothing, of course; the earlier fight had scared anything larger than an insect away.
"You might want to give us our body back."
Of course that was not an option, the children would kill him in that body easily, even after they separated. He flew off towards the nearest settlement.
"Wait!" they screeched after him, but he was already gone.
Precious seconds ticked by as he sped toward the city. He landed in front of the first human he saw and screamed the words as soon as they turned toward him.
"CHANGE NOW!"
There was the flash, the moment of disorientation. And then, relief, as he felt his new, weak body collapse to its knees.
In front of him the glow of Super Saiyan suddenly winked out, and there were two children's bodies in front of him. They stared, glassy-eyed, into nothing.
The husk touched down next to him, and it was clear something was wrong. It moved oddly, as if jerked around by unseen strings.
"You should have given us - given Gotenks back his body," it said.
He should have, he thought. He should have waited to swap over, not tried to steal the body of a child at all. This was the weakest body he'd had in years, and he couldn't even steal back his old one for fear of exactly what would happen.
Unable to fly, he ran.