After I unleashed the new technique that I'd created on the spot to deal with Slug's Explosion Fists, it became completely apparent that I was the better fighter. Even his crazy, self-destructive technique only ended up giving me a few bruises and a mild sunburn.
Slug knew it, I knew it. He couldn't break my guard.
Quickly, the fight became extremely lopsided. I beat the evil Namekian without reservation.
BOOM! For the fiftieth time in a row, I blasted the Namekian into the ground, then raised my hand to follow up with an energy blast by habit.
…Wait, habit?
My eyes widened, the blast dying on the tip of my finger as the realization suddenly hit me like a freight train. For nearly an hour, the evil Namekian had been lulling me into a monotonous pattern.
I liked patterns… but not when fighting. In battle, predictability was death… but why?
I'd already blasted him through the ship, in order to stop the whole 'metal blocking the sun' thing, even though it'd been at the cost of damaging that precious technology. As a result, the metal was already beginning to fall to the ground in droplets, reduced back to liquid form without the ship supporting it.
That'd also had the side-effect of making the ship very clearly inoperable, so he couldn't escape the planet anymore, even if he somehow managed to get me off his back long enough to try, which was also almost impossible.
So, then… why was Slug blasting back toward me, even though he knew that I'd just beat him bloody and toss him back into the ground again?
Clearly, he was trying to lull me into complacency. But… if he couldn't escape, then the question was why? No matter what, I'd already seen through everything that Slug could offer. He wouldn't create a hole in my defense just by lulling the combat into a pattern like that.
I kicked him aside as I thought… then I realized something.
I'd repeatedly beaten the Namekian bloody. He'd lost several dozens of limbs, been beaten bloody, I'd blown him up, put holes in him, everything. I'd not thought much of it up until now, but…
That wasn't normal Namekian regeneration.
Though the team hadn't exactly been exposed to much in the way of regeneration during our time on Namek, all those years ago, I remembered the basics from my extra knowledge, courtesy of my past life.
In the series, the limitations of Piccolo's regeneration had been clearly identified. He could regenerate just about anything, so long as his brain was undamaged, but it took a portion of his aura.
To put it another way, if canon Piccolo, no matter what level of power, took the damage that Slug had over the course of this battle, he'd have long ago shaved his ki level all the way down to the point of permanent death. But… Slug's energy level was still touching on the Hundred Million class, while my own power level had dropped from the exertion. I was still notably stronger, but the more effort I put into beating the Namekian warlord, the faster the gap closed.
The pieces clicked into place, one after another.
Slug, Guru, and OG 'Kami-Piccolo' were the only three known, born Super-Namekians in the entire Seventh Universe.
Of them, in the movie, I was pretty sure Slug had been killed with a Spirit Bomb, Guru had died twice, both times essentially of old age, and Kami-Piccolo had split himself.
Everything that he'd considered positive, such as the desire to become Kami and protect the Earth, and the wisdom to be cautious and patient, had gone to Kami, who, while he could fight, took on most Dragon Clan properties, while King Piccolo got everything considered 'impure' or 'negative', such as the desire to be seen and acknowledged as the strongest, the desire to, specifically, be acknowledged by humanity, which, at least partially, manifested as resentment toward the fact that he was fundamentally not human, and didn't fit in anywhere, and the natural 'pride' or 'aggression' of the warrior clan.
The result of that split were essentially two broken halves of one single personality. An overly cautious, mostly Dragon-Clan Kami with the desire to protect the planet, but none of the 'reason' or 'drive' behind it, and little actual interest or care concerning the people he was trying to protect, beyond the simple, ambiguous 'protect' goal, and an overly aggressive, supremely driven, mostly Warrior-Clan King Piccolo with the desire to be acknowledged, but no real greater purpose or ideology, making it empty and, essentially pointless.
As a result of that, they'd collectively lost quite a bit. Kami-Piccolo's power level was likely somewhere between 50,000-500,000, but both 'parts' were only around 500, two full 'levels' lower, and neither had the mindset necessary to allow one to grow any stronger by training, either. It only made sense that other abilities, such as the healing factor, had been lost or nerfed as well, during the split.
And then Piccolo Jr was born. Though he inherited his father's life force, he had his own, full, Warrior Clan soul. Even when he'd assimilated Kami, 'completing' himself, that'd basically just been assimilating the remaining fragments of his father's life force. It hadn't actually altered his nature as a warrior-clan Namekian, so there was a reason, theoretically, that his fundamental biology would've still stayed markedly different from the original Kami-Piccolo's, on the deepest level.
So… Super-Namekians had super-regenerative capabilities, then… like Dende's abilities, capable of healing anything almost instantly, but applied to oneself?
In that case, then Slug's regeneration was only slightly inferior to that of Majin Buu's.
Obviously, he was trying to wear me out… and it was working, slowly but surely. Eventually, if things kept going like this, Slug's raw power would eventually overshadow my own, as I grew fatigued and he just regenerated.
…That meant that I was in trouble. I was screwed in a battle of attrition. That meant that my only real chance of defeating Slug was with a single, all-out attack… But Slug was strong. I couldn't pull something capable of killing him in a single hit out of my pocket like that. I needed time… Nearly thirty seconds, at least… but I was the only one on the planet who could even exchange blows with someone on this level, with Pepper pregnant and Tater not being able to use the Blutz Light Generation technique required for Blutz Overdrive.