Nowl-Ahn floats in a dark abyss. He doesn't know where he is or what is happening to him, but he knows that he has messed up badly. He should not have been in a meditative position when he finally started forcing his Smart Atoms to absorb the quantum background energy. He isn't fully conscious and hears strange pulsating sounds in the distance. He remembers the moment when all of it went terribly wrong. The moment he had been waiting for, which he had looked forward to in great anticipation. It took 15 years to get to that moment after he had started his mind-body connection training and tried to control his Smart Atoms. 15 years of training, while he also learned in the science division, from Barnuf and was beaten by Conquest.
*dum*
He stopped eating for months and held his breath for weeks, just to feel his Smart Atoms absorb quantum background energy. When the moment finally arrived, he lost his self-control and intelligence for a moment and absorbed too much. His mass increased drastically, and his body compressed under its own weight. Nowl-Ahn was used to pain by now. Constant fighting, disembowelments, broken bones and traumas were what he did daily. But nothing could have prepared him for the feeling of having his own spine accelerate downwards, crush into millions of pieces and the rest of his upper body following and turning his organs to bloody mist.
Thankfully, he passed out immediately.
*dum*
He was unwilling to die, unwilling to have a stupid mistake be his end and see all of his effort literally squashed to a pulp. He could feel anger rise up inside him, deep inside his soul—something he hadn't experienced in the past 33 years of his current life. It was very hard for Viltrumites to experience emotions except battle lust since they lived for such a long time.
*dum dum*
Nowl-Ahn remembers how anger was able to flood Invincible's system with adrenaline and give him a strength boost. But his endocrine glands were most likely gone by this point. But he was simply angry and refused to let his pathetically short life end here. Not when he had thousands of years ahead of him.
*dum dum dum*
He focuses on the pulsating sound, which reminds him of a beating heart, and holds on to that. He can tell that it is crucial and will lead him back, back out of this dark abyss and into the light, where his life, adventure, fights and maybe even a few people are waiting for him. He uses all of his theoretical and spiritual strength and holds on to the beating.
...
In the recovery room, Anissa was getting unnerved by the quickening beeps coming from the monitors. Almost two months had passed since she had come here, and now, for the first time, the machine had started to make a sound. She doesn't know what to do and runs out of the room, getting one of the medical practitioners.
"Something's happening. Tell me what's happening!" she commands.
The man walks into Nowl-Ahn's room and slowly walks to the monitor, checking his vital signs. Seeing them, he raises his eyebrows in surprise and then looks at Nowl-Ahn.
"Unbelievable..." he says.
"What?! What's happening?!" Anissa asks and is about to punch the man in anger, taking all of her bottled-up anxiety out on him.
"His heart has started to speed up," he tells her with a small smile.
"That's good, right?"
"Not only good, but incredible. His heart was badly damaged, and he shouldn't be alive right now. But if his heart is beating this fast, it's only a matter of time until he wakes up," the man says and nods as if he's impressed.
"Haa... haa..."
Anissa breathed as if a terrible weight had just left her shoulders. She hates what is happening to her because she doesn't understand it yet. She lies to herself simply because the notion of feelings for another isn't very Viltrumite. No Viltrumite marries or is together simply because of love or affection. It's usually about lust and procreation for the sake of producing strong offspring for the Viltrum Empire. So understandably, Anissa was confused.
Nowl-Ahn's great mental strength and his split-second decision-making have allowed him to come back. Just as he felt great amounts of pain, he used his new understanding unconsciously to make his Smart Atoms absorb the quantum background energy into his heart and brain, making them stronger in the last milliseconds and somewhat protecting them from damage. It didn't quite work as intended, but it was essential for him to survive right now and was the reason his heart was racing like a Formula 1 car. His health started to get better gradually, and since most of his body was still around, just flattened and crushed, it was possible to fix him back together gradually.
It took half a year until the moment arrived, and Nowl-Ahn finally opened his eyes.
"So you're awake."
Hearing a voice, Nowl-Ahn groggily tries to trace it back to the source. He finds Anissa standing at the side of his bed. He is surprised and tries to say something, but can't. Everything hurts, and his eyelids feel as if they weigh several thousand tons.
"Di-.. you... he...re?" Nowl-Ahn tries to say.
"Yes. I made sure they gave you some treatment. Now that you're getting better, I'll leave. I have training to get back to."
After saying this, Anissa nods and leaves the room. Outside the room, away from his eyes, she sighs deeply and shakes her head. Nowl-Ahn, meanwhile, is confused but doesn't think about it for now. He survived, and that's all that matters. He will make sure to recuperate back to 120% and not train until that happens, but as soon as he walks out of the building, he will continue. He has broken through the limit, and this will have given him a substantial boost in strength. He has fallen into a Saiyan-like mindset, always wanting to train and grow stronger, now that he has found a way to train effectively.
.
After waiting for another month, it is finally time. Nowl-Ahn is back home in his garden and looks at the ground, where a lot of traces of dried blood are still covering the ground. He can't help but smile seeing his idiotic failure and success all in one. He had reached and surpassed a threshold, and in the future, he would surely remember this moment of his life as the one that changed everything. Without bothering any longer, he starts to stretch his body. After over half a year of being unable to train, he felt stiff. He flies into the sky and makes his way to a remote location on Viltrum. There aren't many of those, but some small spots still exist. He doesn't need a lot of space, only enough to lie flat on the ground.
After doing that, Nowl-Ahn remembers the feeling he had when he nearly killed himself. He feels the quantum background energy and makes his Smart Atoms absorb it slowly. He continues until he starts to feel an effect. His body mass increases, and therefore his weight does too. He continues to have his Smart Atoms absorb more and more quantum background energy, increasing his mass and making it harder and harder to move. After he reached roughly 10 times his usual weight, which is approximately 2,000 kg, or 4400 pounds. The ground hasn't cracked yet, but as he tries to move normally, he can't. He uses more strength until he finds the amount of force he needs to move. At first, he just raises his arms as high as possible. It feels very unusual and strange to him. He can lift just about 60'000 tons at 33 years of age, which is not as impressive as it might sound.
He starts to move his body and stands up. The ground doesn't crack or break under his current weight, but that is a peanut compared to what he'll do in due time. He walks around in a circle, simply getting used to this feeling and focusing on having his Smart Atoms keep their current state. That's the beauty of Smart Atoms, their 'memory' and unwillingness to change. Nowl-Ahn walks around and then slowly rises into the air, not too far, just enough to leave the ground. It takes much more effort to do this than before, which is perfect in his mind. Dealing with something that is harder than it was before means he will grow, and that's what this is all about.
Having had enough of the 'introductory' level, Nowl-Ahn gets on the ground. He takes a normal push-up position and then forces his Smart Atoms to absorb more quantum background energy. This is how he will train from now on, using callisthenics, until he can manually manipulate the Smart Atoms of different materials. His weight increases more and more, proportionally to his mass.
12 times his weight, 15 times... 28 times... 40 times... 62 times... 100 times...
The ground has started to crack under him. But Nowl-Ahn doesn't stop there. He can do a bench press at roughly 60'000 tons of weight, so he needs to go higher and higher.
120 times... 150 times... 200 times... and finally 300 times his normal weight.
He starts his training. He does one push-up, but realises that the ground won't hold and he is slowly sinking further and further, so he has to stop that. So what does he do? He simply forces his massively heavy body to fly.
...
Easier said than done, though. He has never flown at that weight. Flying is so much harder right now, and he understands that he again needs to take it one step at a time. He releases all the quantum background energy again and only goes to 50 times his normal weight. The ground can withstand that, and that will give him time to get used to such weight while flying. He clenches his jaw and all of his muscles as hard as he can, trying to rise a millimetre into the air. He doesn't give up until he finally manages the smallest of distances into the air.
*BOOM*
"Haaa... haaa... oh shit... haaa... that's hard..."
That small amount of 'flight' already took enormous amounts of strength to do. A very, very big smile makes its way on Nowl-Ahn's face. He has found his way forward. His very own Saiyan Gravity Chamber training starts now.
.
- Two years later -
.
*BOOOM*
*BOOOOOM*
Anissa's fist smashes into Nowl-Ahn's face. She uses all of her strength, but the damn face of Nowl-Ahn just doesn't want to move for some reason. Punching him is like punching an entire mountain, and when she does manage to do that, he moves backwards through the air as one, without his head bending back or to the sides. Anissa is angry, very angry and annoyed. Angry, annoyed and frustrated, in many different ways.
She doesn't know what happened in the last two years after Nowl-Ahn had recovered. She had gone on her first mission to help conquer a planet for the Viltrum Empire and was away. When she returned, having felt great longing for Viltrum, for some reason, she naturally challenged Nowl-Ahn. She was surprised to see him after the short absence. He was no longer the same man she had seen clinging to his life. He had grown a bit in all directions. He looked like he had put on weight, but not fat, all muscle. Seeing him meditate on the ground again, with his upper body exposed, made Anissa lose her train of thought.
And then they started fighting.
At least Anissa did. Nowl-Ahn tried not to hurt her too much. He hadn't stopped his training and had trained to increase the length he could increase his mass at a time. Surprisingly, it took a lot of mental focus at first. After his Smart Atoms grew used to it, though, it was as easy as pie. After a year of training, he could also do it in his sleep. Although he didn't sleep, it was more of a deep meditation. He did everything under massive amounts of weight and used his ability to fly to stop himself from crashing into the ground. It had multiple effects on him, and it would become clear soon.
*BOOOM*
Anissa punches Nowl-Ahn again, and he takes the hit. He punches her in the stomach, making sure to pull his strength somewhat and not impale her.
"Stop holding back!!" she shouts and punches him in the face as hard as she can.
She is frustrated beyond compare and tries to go beyond her current strength to push Nowl-Ahn to be serious. But she has understood that she won't reach his level ever. Initially, she thought she was simply younger than he was, but his growth didn't slow down, not in the slightest. In fact, it seemed that it had grown exponentially in the two years she wasn't there to fight him.
*BOOOM BOOM*
She grabs him by the throat, and they crash to the ground.
"Fight me seriously! Do I mean so little to you?!"
*BOOOM*
She punches him in the face, cratering the ground further and pushing Nowl-Ahn down. She looks angry and hurt for some reason. Nowl-Ahn is confused a bit, but then remembers her great pride. He catches her fist and punches her into the sky.
*BOOOOM*
She turns around wildly as she shoots upwards. Before she manages to control herself, he arrives before her and punishes her further. They move higher and higher into the air, since Nowl-Ahn doesn't want to cause more damage to the property than necessary. His fist lands in her side, followed by another hook to her face. Her head is hit from left to right and back again, giving her what she wanted. He gives her a moment of respite, which she uses to wipe away the blood on her face and look at him.
The air seems to change as the two look at one another. The anger in Anissa's eyes makes way for something else. Nowl-Ahn has never seen it from Anissa, but he can relate to it for some reason. They fly circles around one another, never looking away and keeping their eyes locked with the other. As they do that, they move closer until they finally are within reach...
*Bang*
Their bodies crash into one another as they embrace. The growing emotions, which have been building pressure just beneath the surface, now burst forth explosively. Anissa crashes her mouth onto Nowl-Ahn's as if she tried to suck the life out of him. Her legs wrap around his waist, and his arms do the same, pressing their bodies against one another, in heat that surpasses the stars. They fall to the ground, with Anissa on top, and it is just about to reach the ripping-clothes-off-body stage, as loud alarms sound through the entirety of planet Viltrum.
*BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP*
The alarm is known to every Viltrumite. It sounds only in the greatest of emergencies, so something terrible must have happened. Anissa and Nowl-Ahn separate their faces by a very small distance and look into each other's eyes while breathing heavily. Neither is willing, but duty is still an important part of both their lives. With a final passionate kiss, they separate and fly into the sky, trying to find out what happened.
_______________________________________
Well, there you have it. Please don't say anything. I don't like how I wrote that, but it is what it is. I really tried to make this fit with their characters, but I'm not sure.