"Yeah," Daima started to say, the words almost leaving his mouth automatically. "Let's do it—"
He stopped.
Something inside him rebelled against the idea. A burning sensation in his chest, a primal rejection of the concept of STOPPING. Of stepping back. Of watching from the sidelines while someone else took the spotlight.
No, the feeling said. We're not done yet.
Beerus raised an eyebrow at Daima's hesitation. "Changed your mind already? That's disappointing. I thought you power scalers were supposed to be curious about—"
"I don't want to participate in the ritual."
The words came out before Daima could stop them. Everyone turned to stare at him—Regular Goku with confusion, Vegeta with surprise, Gohan with concern, and Beerus with renewed interest.
"Oh?" The God of Destruction's tail swished behind him. "And why not?"
Daima looked down at his small hands. The hands that had just been massive and crimson. The hands that had actually PUSHED Beerus back. The hands that contained power he had spent his entire previous life arguing about.
"Because I'm not finished," he said quietly.
"Not finished? I thought we established that you've reached your ceiling. Your evolved Super Saiyan 4 is impressive, but it can't match my full power. The math simply doesn't—"
"Screw the math."
Everyone went silent.
Daima looked up, and there was something different in his eyes now. Something that hadn't been there before—not when he was Derek Thompson arguing on Twitter, not when he first crashed into this world, not even during his systematic power scaling test against Beerus.
It was HUNGER.
"I spent my whole previous life calculating power levels," Daima continued, his voice growing stronger. "Making spreadsheets. Analyzing frame data. Arguing with strangers on the internet about fictional characters. And you know what? I was RIGHT. About everything. My calculations were ACCURATE."
He clenched his small fists.
"But being right isn't enough anymore. I didn't come back from the dead just to PROVE that Daima Goku was strong. I came back to BECOME strong. To push past every limit. To find out what's REALLY at the top."
His aura flickered—not the golden Super Saiyan glow, not the crimson Super Saiyan 4 blaze, but something else. Something deeper. Something that made everyone present take an involuntary step back.
"You said I reached my ceiling," Daima said, looking directly at Beerus. "But I know for a FACT that's not true. Because I've seen what Daima Goku can REALLY do when he stops holding back."
Whis's eyes widened slightly. "Oh my. His energy signature is fluctuating in a very unusual pattern. It's almost like he's accessing memories that haven't happened yet... or memories from a completely different timeline."
Beerus was no longer smiling. He was watching Daima with the intensity of a predator who had suddenly realized his prey might have fangs.
"What are you talking about, little one? What else can you do?"
Daima closed his eyes.
And he REMEMBERED.
The Demon Realm.
Three layers of reality stacked on top of each other like nightmarish wedding cakes. The First Demon Realm at the surface, relatively tame. The Second Demon Realm below, where the real monsters lived. And the Third Demon Realm at the bottom—a place of pure chaos and primordial destruction.
He remembered watching the scene on his laptop. Daima Goku, pushed to his absolute limit, facing an enemy that threatened everything. The desperation in his eyes. The determination that refused to break.
And then the Kamehameha.
Not just any Kamehameha. A Kamehameha that had pierced through the First Demon Realm, through the Second Demon Realm, through the Third Demon Realm. A single beam of concentrated power that had torn through THREE SEPARATE DIMENSIONAL LAYERS like they were tissue paper.
That was the moment Daima had died on his bedroom floor arguing about. That was the feat he had calculated and recalculated, trying to express its magnitude in terms the Super fanboys could understand.
And now that power was INSIDE him.
He just had to reach it.
"What's happening to him?" Krillin asked nervously, backing away as Daima's aura continued to fluctuate. "His power level is going crazy!"
"It's not going crazy," Whis corrected, his voice uncharacteristically serious. "It's SEARCHING. He's reaching for something inside himself—a power that exists but hasn't been awakened yet."
"How is that possible?" Gohan demanded. "You can't just... decide to unlock new power in the middle of a fight!"
"Can't you?" Whis glanced at Regular Goku meaningfully. "I seem to recall a certain Saiyan who does exactly that on a regular basis."
Regular Goku scratched his head. "I mean, yeah, I guess I do that sometimes. Usually when my friends are in danger or something."
"Your counterpart," Whis continued, nodding toward Daima, "seems to be doing it through sheer REFUSAL to accept his limits. It's a different trigger, but the principle is the same. The Saiyan body responds to extreme stimuli by evolving to meet the challenge."
"But there IS no extreme stimuli right now," Vegeta pointed out. "Beerus isn't even attacking him. He's just standing there having some kind of... power tantrum!"
"Incorrect." Whis smiled. "The stimuli isn't physical—it's philosophical. This young Saiyan dedicated his entire existence to proving something. And now he's facing the possibility that his proof wasn't complete. That there's MORE he could be, MORE he could achieve. For someone whose entire identity was built on being RIGHT about power scaling..."
"That's an existential crisis," Piccolo finished quietly. "He's not just trying to get stronger. He's trying to validate his entire reason for existing."
Beerus listened to this analysis with growing fascination. "So he's powering up through sheer stubbornness and philosophical angst? That's either the stupidest thing I've ever heard or the most interesting."
"With Saiyans, it's usually both," Whis replied.
Deep inside himself, Daima was falling.
Not physically—his body still stood motionless in the ruins of Bulma's party—but mentally, spiritually, he was plummeting through layers of his own existence.
He fell through his memories as Derek Thompson—the arguments, the calculations, the lonely nights staring at screens. He fell through his brief experiences as Daima Goku—the crash landing, the transformations, the fight with Beerus.
And then he fell DEEPER.
Into memories that weren't his.
He saw a young boy with a monkey tail, landing on Earth in a space pod.
He saw that boy growing up, training, fighting, dying, being resurrected.
He saw the boy become a man, reach Super Saiyan, defeat Frieza.
He saw the man face Cell, face Buu, face gods and angels and universal threats.
But these weren't Super Goku's memories. They were DIFFERENT. Twisted slightly, like a song played in a different key.
He saw a wish. Demon Realm Dragon Balls. A body shrunk to childhood.
He saw journeys through impossible dimensions. Battles against foes that defied logic.
He saw power growing, evolving, pushing past every conceivable limit.
And then he saw THE MOMENT.
Daima Goku, small but unbroken, facing destruction on a scale that dwarfed anything Derek Thompson had ever calculated.
His enemies thought they had won. Thought the tiny Saiyan had nothing left. Thought the three realms would fall and reality itself would collapse.
They were wrong.
Daima Goku cupped his hands at his side. Drew upon every scrap of power he had ever possessed. Drew upon the primal Saiyan essence that Super Saiyan 4 represented. Drew upon something BEYOND—a transcendence that came from refusing to accept defeat.
"Ka..."
The First Demon Realm trembled.
"Me..."
The Second Demon Realm cracked.
"Ha..."
The Third Demon Realm screamed.
"Me..."
Reality itself held its breath.
"HAAAAAAA!"
And a beam of pure, absolute power shot forth—not just through space, but through DIMENSIONS. Through the layers of reality that separated the three realms. Through barriers that weren't supposed to be breakable.
One attack. Three dimensions. Complete and total annihilation of everything in its path.
THAT was the power of Daima Goku at his peak.
THAT was what Derek Thompson had died defending.
And now...
Daima's eyes snapped open.
They weren't golden. They weren't teal. They weren't even the gold-red of Super Saiyan 4.
They were WHITE.
Pure, blazing, absolute WHITE.
"WHAT THE—" Vegeta's shout was cut off as a shockwave of power exploded outward from Daima's small form.
His body wasn't transforming in any conventional sense. He was still child-sized. His hair was still black. He wasn't sprouting fur or gaining muscle mass or any of the usual Saiyan power-up indicators.
But his AURA—
His aura was something none of them had ever seen before.
It started as white at the core, matching his eyes. Then it shifted through the entire spectrum—blue, gold, red, silver—cycling through every transformation he had ever achieved. And then it settled into something NEW.
A deep, burning VIOLET.
Not Beerus's purple. Something different. Something that seemed to vibrate at a frequency that made the very air around him sing with barely contained power.
"Whis," Beerus said slowly, his casual demeanor completely gone. "What am I looking at?"
"I... don't entirely know, my Lord." Whis's perpetual smile had faded into an expression of genuine uncertainty. "His energy signature has transcended normal parameters. It's no longer purely Saiyan. It's no longer even purely mortal. It's become something... else."
"Else? That's not an answer!"
"I know. And that's precisely what makes this so fascinating."
Daima looked at his hands. They were glowing faintly, violet light emanating from his skin like he had become a living star. He felt... everything. Every molecule of air. Every life force on the planet. Every gravitational pull of every celestial body in the solar system.
And beneath all of that, he felt POWER.
Not borrowed power. Not inherited power. Not power given to him by cosmic entities or Dragon Ball wishes.
HIS power.
The power of someone who had believed so absolutely, so completely, so STUBBORNLY that even death couldn't stop him.
"I remember now," Daima said, and his voice had changed too. It was layered, harmonic, as if multiple versions of himself were speaking in unison. "I remember what Daima Goku could really do. What he did when everything was on the line. What he proved to everyone who ever doubted him."
He looked up at Beerus, and the God of Destruction actually took a step back.
Not from fear. From RECOGNITION.
"That energy," Beerus breathed. "It's not God Ki. It's not Ultra Instinct. It's not any form of divine power I've ever encountered. But it's... EQUAL. Somehow, impossibly, it's equal to divine energy while being something entirely different."
"Three realms," Daima said quietly.
"What?"
"In the Demon Realm—in MY Demon Realm—there are three layers of reality. The First Realm, where mortal demons live. The Second Realm, where the true horrors dwell. And the Third Realm, where existence itself becomes unstable."
He cupped his hands at his side, and the Z-Fighters collectively gasped.
They all recognized that stance.
"At my peak, Daima Goku fired a Kamehameha that pierced through all three realms simultaneously. One attack that traveled through three separate dimensions. One beam of power that ignored the barriers between realities."
Energy began gathering between his palms. Violet at first, then shifting through every color, then settling into a blinding white that hurt to look at directly.
"I don't know if I can do that here. I don't know if this dimension's physics will even ALLOW that kind of attack. But I know one thing for certain."
He locked eyes with Beerus.
"You said I reached my ceiling. You said my evolved Super Saiyan 4 couldn't match your full power. You said the math didn't work out."
His voice rose with each word, the power between his hands growing, the very fabric of reality beginning to strain under the pressure.
"WELL SCREW YOUR MATH AND SCREW YOUR CEILING!"
"KAAAAAA..."
The ground beneath Daima's feet cratered instantly, cracks spreading outward for hundreds of meters.
"MEEEEEEE..."
The sky above began to darken, clouds swirling into an unnatural vortex centered directly over his position.
"HAAAAAA..."
Every window in West City shattered simultaneously. Car alarms went off across the entire metropolitan area. Seismographs around the world began registering impossible readings.
"MEEEEEEE..."
Beerus's expression shifted from recognition to something approaching alarm. "Whis. Barrier. NOW."
"Already on it, my Lord!"
Whis slammed his staff into the ground, and a massive dome of divine energy surrounded the entire Capsule Corporation compound. Multiple layers of protection, designed to contain attacks that could destroy planets.
It might not be enough.
Inside the barrier, Regular Goku was staring at his dimensional counterpart with an expression of pure, unadulterated awe.
"That's... that's the most powerful Kamehameha I've ever FELT," he breathed. "And he hasn't even fired it yet!"
"Get behind something!" Piccolo shouted, grabbing Goten and Trunks and diving behind a reinforced wall.
Vegeta didn't move. He stood transfixed, watching Daima charge his attack, his Saiyan pride warring with his tactical sense.
"Impossible," he whispered. "That power level... it's beyond anything I've ever sensed. Beyond Super Saiyan 3. Beyond Super Saiyan God. Beyond..."
He couldn't finish the sentence because he didn't have words for what he was feeling.
Daima's entire body was glowing now. The violet aura had been consumed by the white light of his charging attack, making him look like a small star that had decided to take human form.
This is it, he thought through the overwhelming sensation of power coursing through him. This is what I died for. This is what I was reborn for. This is the moment where I prove, once and for all, that Daima Goku—
That I—
Can match the GODS.
He thrust his hands forward.
"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
The beam that erupted from Daima's palms wasn't a normal Kamehameha.
Normal Kamehamehas were blue. They were concentrated ki attacks that could level mountains and destroy planets.
This was WHITE. Pure, blinding, absolute white. And it didn't just travel through space—it traveled through DIMENSIONS.
Whis's barrier shattered like glass.
Not slowly, not dramatically—INSTANTLY. One moment there was a divine energy dome protecting everything inside. The next moment there was nothing but the beam, screaming across reality with a sound like the universe itself was tearing apart.
Beerus moved.
For the first time since arriving on Earth, the God of Destruction moved with genuine urgency. His hands came up, purple energy blazing, as he attempted to deflect the incoming attack.
The beam hit his palms.
And PUSHED.
"WHAT—" Beerus's feet dug trenches in the ground as he was forced backward. His aura flared to maximum, every ounce of divine power he possessed being channeled into stopping this impossible attack. "—IS THIS?!"
"FULL POWER!" Daima screamed, his voice cracking with the strain. "THIS IS MY FULL POWER! THE POWER THAT CAN PIERCE THREE REALMS!"
The beam intensified.
Beerus slid back further.
And then something unprecedented happened.
Behind the God of Destruction, reality CRACKED. A fissure appeared in the empty air—a tear in the fabric of the dimension itself. Through the crack, impossible colors bled into the normal world. Glimpses of other realms, other realities, other dimensions.
The Kamehameha wasn't just powerful.
It was BREAKING THROUGH.
"WHIS!" Beerus shouted, genuine strain in his voice for the first time. "IS THIS—"
"YES, MY LORD!" Whis responded, his usual composure shattered by what he was witnessing. "HIS ATTACK IS ACTUALLY PIERCING THE DIMENSIONAL BARRIERS! IF THIS CONTINUES, IT COULD TEAR HOLES THROUGH MULTIPLE REALMS OF EXISTENCE!"
"THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE! MORTALS CAN'T—"
"APPARENTLY THIS ONE CAN!"
Regular Goku had pressed himself against the ground, shielding his face from the blinding light but peeking through his fingers with an expression of childlike wonder.
"He's doing it," Goku breathed. "He's actually DOING it. He's making BEERUS struggle!"
Vegeta was on his knees, not from the shockwave but from the sheer WEIGHT of what he was feeling. His Saiyan senses were overloading, trying to process a power level that shouldn't exist.
"This is... this is what a Saiyan can become?" he whispered. "This is what awaits at the peak of our potential?"
Gohan had his arm around Videl, shielding her pregnant form from the dimensional turbulence that was shaking everything around them.
"Dad's counterpart," he said quietly, "might actually be as strong as he claimed."
Back at the center of the chaos, Daima was burning. Not metaphorically—LITERALLY. His body wasn't designed to handle this level of output, even with its enhanced Daima Goku biology. He could feel his cells screaming in protest, his muscles tearing, his very existence straining against the limits of what flesh could contain.
But he didn't stop.
MORE, he demanded of himself. MORE! I didn't die defending this power just to fall short now!
SHOW THEM!
SHOW EVERYONE WHO EVER DOUBTED!
SHOW THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE THAT DAIMA GOKU—
—SOLOS!
The beam EXPLODED with one final surge of power.
And for one impossible moment, it actually drove Beerus back. The God of Destruction's feet left the ground, his divine energy faltering, his eyes widening with something that might have been genuine surprise.
Then the moment passed.
Beerus ROARED, his aura exploding to a level he hadn't used in millennia. Purple energy engulfed him completely, transforming him from a casual cat-like figure into a being of pure divine destruction.
He thrust both hands forward, and the white beam began to slow. Then stop. Then reverse.
Daima felt his attack begin to be pushed back toward him. His power output was dropping, his reserves depleting, his temporary transcendence fading.
No... NO! I was so close! I actually pushed him back! I actually—
Beerus's counterforce reached him.
The collision created an explosion that would have destroyed the planet if Whis hadn't desperately thrown up another barrier at the last second. Even contained, the blast wave flattened everything within the dome, leaving a perfect crater where Bulma's birthday party had once stood.
When the light faded, two figures remained standing.
Beerus was breathing hard, his robes completely destroyed, his fur matted with sweat and dust. But he was SMILING.
And Daima...
Daima was on his knees, his child-sized body trembling, his aura completely gone. The white-eyed, violet-aura transcendence had faded, leaving him looking like nothing more than a small, exhausted Goku.
But he was still CONSCIOUS.
Still ALIVE.
Still REFUSING to fall completely.
"You..." Beerus started, then stopped. He laughed—a genuine, delighted laugh that echoed across the devastated landscape. "You actually made me use seventy percent of my power. SEVENTY PERCENT. Do you have any idea how long it's been since anyone forced me to go that high?"
Daima looked up, his vision blurry, his body screaming for rest.
"Did... did I prove it?" he managed to ask. "Was the power scaling... accurate?"
Beerus stared at him for a long moment.
Then he threw his head back and laughed even harder.
"You just fired an attack that literally CRACKED DIMENSIONAL BARRIERS, forced a God of Destruction to use most of his power, and your first question is whether your CALCULATIONS were correct?!"
"It's... important to me..."
"You're INSANE. Absolutely, completely, wonderfully insane." Beerus wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. "Yes, little power scaler. Your scaling was accurate. That form you achieved—whatever it was—put you on the level of divine beings. Not quite Destroyer level, but close. Closer than any mortal has any right to be."
Daima smiled.
And then he collapsed face-first into the dirt, completely unconscious.
Silence fell over the devastated battlefield.
Then Regular Goku's voice broke through:
"THAT WAS THE COOLEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN! I WANT TO LEARN HOW TO DO THAT!"
Vegeta's response was to simply stare at the unconscious Daima with an expression of existential crisis.
Whis floated down from where he had been maintaining the barrier, his usual composure slowly returning.
"Well," he said, examining the dimensional cracks that were slowly healing in the air above them. "That was certainly unexpected. Lord Beerus, I believe the Super Saiyan God ritual may need to wait while we attend to our young dimension-piercing friend."
Beerus nodded, walking over to Daima's unconscious form. He nudged the small Saiyan with his foot, almost gently.
"He's got potential," the God of Destruction admitted. "Ridiculous amounts of potential. If he can learn to access that power without nearly killing himself in the process..."
He looked up at Regular Goku, who was practically vibrating with excitement.
"Your counterpart is interesting. I want to see how you compare." His eyes gleamed. "But first, let's see if the Super Saiyan God ritual can produce something equally entertaining. Who knows—maybe having witnessed THAT will inspire your own transcendence."
Regular Goku nodded eagerly, but his eyes kept drifting to his unconscious dimensional counterpart.
"Hey, Beerus? When he wakes up... can we fight? Please? I've never wanted to fight someone so badly in my life!"
"Let's see if he survives first. That attack took everything he had and then some."
"He'll survive," Goku said with absolute confidence. "He's ME, after all. And I never give up."
As the Z-Fighters began to regroup and the Super Saiyan God ritual preparations resumed, one thought echoed through everyone's mind:
The dimensional newcomer had just changed EVERYTHING.
Lying unconscious in the crater he had created, Daima's face twitched into a small smile.
I did it, his fading consciousness whispered. I actually proved it.
Daima Goku... solos.
Now let's see what else this world has to offer.