Raditz certainly Took a Level in Badass.
Break Through the Limit
is a Dragon Ball fanfiction written by Captain Space.
Shortly after a much more drastic defeat in the 23rd World Martial Arts Tournament, Piccolo Jr. resolved to defeat Son Goku and trained far harder than he had done in Dragon Ball Z canon. The results are felt 5 years later when Raditz comes to Earth only to find himself outmatched by Piccolo.
The series of events that follow eventually lead to a Heel–Face Turn by Raditz and a new take on the DBZ universe.
The story was completed in 2012.
The tropes appearing in Break Through The Limit are
- The Abridged Series: Break Through the Limit Kai Abridged, posted at the end of each arc, written in script format.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Raditz's Katchin Sword and Tapion's Blade.
- Action Girl: As in canon, Android 18 and Videl, but also Break, her mother Launch, Chi-Chi, Pan and Marron.
- Action Mom: Though not a fighter per se, Chi-Chi is shown to have trained and learned how to fly in the Buu Saga and transfers her energy to Gohan along with the rest of her family during the God of Destruction Saga. Also, Launch.
- Adaptational Villainy: With Goku surviving the fight with Raditz, Piccolo doesn't get the chance to kidnap Gohan. Without Gohan to act as a positive influence, he maintains a villainous mindset. While he still teams up with the Z fighters against greater threats, he tries to kill Goku again during the Buu arc.
- A Day in the Limelight: Tien and Krillin have a couple chapters that focus on them near the end of the Countdown Saga.
- Gohan, Videl, Zarbon and Kuriza have a miniarc in the Countdown Saga.
- A Fate Worse Than Death: Nail, who's been completely absorbed into the Majin Piccolo psyche.
- Amazonian Beauty: Break takes after her mother in appearance, and in her ascended forms has been described as amazonian.
- The Atoner:
- One of the reasons Raditz doesn't wish to be revived. Alpha Shenron's reason for joining the heroes.
- After being freed from Cell, Eighteen and Seventeen go with Future Break to her time in order to help rebuild the world and make up for both their past transgressions and the actions of their alternate timeline selves.
- Blood Knight: Helios Shenron and the Warrior are this, maybe even more than the Saiyans. Alpha might also count.
- Calling the Old Man Out: During the events of the Fusion Reborn arc, Kuriza has the opportunity to do this with his father Frieza and his grandfather Cold over their arrogance and cruelty
- The Cavalry: The Hakaishin and Gohan, during the Shadow Dragon Saga in Even Further Beyond. This happens twice in the same fight, and Alpha Shenron mocks them for it.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Vegeta vs. Ginyu and Guldo, Gohan vs. Broly, Full Power Perfect Cell vs the Z Fighters before Break transformed, Super Buu vs the non-Saiyans, Beerus vs everyone who wasn't Gohan, The Sorcerer vs Kronos Shenron, and Raditz vs Entropy.
- A more comedic example would be any time Hercule tries to fight a Saiyan.
- Dead Guy Junior: Vegeta Jr., the son of Tarble who was named after his uncanny resemblance to his dead uncle.
- Door Stopper: Clocking at over 150 chapters and around 850,000 words, making it one of the longest DBZ stories ever.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: #17, who suddenly ended up minus one head in the future.
- Eldritch Abomination: Super Buu, described by Gohan as "the single greatest catastrophe to ever befall the planet Earth."
- The Shadow Dragon Saga has Tenebrion the Eternal, a being that consumes entire universes.
- Enemy Mine:
- Though Piccolo was an ally of the group against the Saiyans and Androids, he never reformed and even tried to kill Goku in the Buu Arc. However, he's forced to ally with the Z Fighters again when Majin Buu is more than he can handle.
- Raditz and Vegeta vs. Metal Frieza.
- Goku and Gohan with Vegeta and Broly (briefly) during the Countdown Saga.
- Cell joins the fight against Janemba.
- Evil Versus Evil: Turles and Slug constantly feud over two sides of the same planet.
- Fix Fic: When it comes to Hercule, definitely. He never gets to fight Cell (Raditz didn't allow any normal human to get close to the fighting ground) and makes a fool of himself in live TV by trying to beat Raditz to no avail. Said TV crew also record the Z-Fighters defeating Cell, and unlike canon, nobody believes his claims that the Z-Fighters and Cell's ki attacks are just smoke and mirrors. It culminates with him challenging Goku to a one on one fight, again, on live TV, which he obviously loses. This defeat is enough to break his huge ego, and sent him into an Heroic BSoD. However, Videl managed to snap him out of it, and he even begin to train to learn how to use ki attacks.
- For Want Of A Nail: The entire story began because Goku dodged one attack from Piccolo he didn't dodge in canon.
- Due to the events of the story, Piccolo and Vegeta are never reformed, Piccolo's personality is suppressed when Kami/Piccolo fuse with Nail, and Vegeta eventually dies in battle against Dr Raichi. As a result, Trunks is not a half-Saiyan, but rather the son of Bulma and Zarbon.
- Heel–Face Turn: Raditz, Zarbon, Kuriza and Dr. Myuu. Also, the remaining Shadow Dragons and Void's Majins, in the end.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Trunks commits a kamikaze attack on the Androids in order to let Break escape with the time machine.
- Raditz sacrifices himself in the final battle with Cell to save Goku, after he's said he doesn't want to be wished back.
- Vegeta uses his life energy for the Final Flash that defeats Myuu-Broly.
- Janemba sacrificed himself to block an attack meant for the Silent. Keep in mind Janemba killed everyone in the Silent's universe and the Silent had wanted to kill him for millennia ever since.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Gohan when attempting to figure out his new Super Saiyan God powers.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite the major changes, the story still loosely follows the canon series. The heroes still go to Namek, the Androids are still created, Cell still becomes perfect, Majin Buu is still released, etc. The Cell Arc in particular is very similar to its canon counterpart until Gohan becomes a Super Saiyan 2 against Broly.
- Interspecies Romance: Launch and Raditz. Alpha Shenron and the Dreamer (which gets extra points for being lesbian too).
- Bulma and Zarbon.
- Jerkass Gods: Bills, the other Hakaishin, and Lord Entropy's army. Unlike in canon, Bills and all the other Hakaishin are not only called out on this, but they get a wake-up call when the Shadow Dragons make them victims for the first time in their lives.
- It didn't happen on-screen, but the Scholar is this even more than the other Hakaishin. When Janemba sent an avatar to her universe, she watched it kill her people until it ran out of energy and died, by which time half her universe was dead. She didn't care, and has never mentioned it on-screen to this day.
- Little Stowaway: Kuriza stows away on Paragus' ship during the Broly Arc.
- Missing Mom: Kuriza's mother has only been mentioned once, but there's no word if she's alive or dead.
- Moveset Clone: All three arcs of Even Further Beyond have villain groups with mostly elemental powers. Technically justified, since the first two groups were both Entropy's minions and Void admits he stole the motif from him, though that last bit seems like Space lampshading it.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Break, in her Ascended Super Saiyan form, does this when she holds off on killing Cell to allow him to absorb Android 18 and become Perfect Cell.
- No-One Could Have Survived That: Broly, who survives getting shot into space by Gohan.
- Original Character: Break, the daughter of Raditz and Launch, who is this universe's equivalent of Future Trunks. Trunks still exists, but he is now the son of Bulma and Zarbon.
- This gets taken up to eleven in Even Further Beyond, where all the villains and new supporting characters are OC's except Ozotto (who gets a serious makeover himself). This includes all the 15-20 or so Shadow Dragons, the twelve Hakaishin besides Bills, Entropy and his forces, Samsara, Void and his Majins. Yeesh. Despite this, they're all done fairly well and even the minor characters aren't just carbon copies of each other with a different power level.
- Ship Tease: Between Break and future Broly. The attraction is at least hinted on Break's side.
- Shout-Out: As the author is a fan of Dragon Ball Z Abridged, there's plenty of references to the series throughout the story.
- Sibling Rivalry: Goku and Raditz develop a friendly one while training and Freeza and Cooler maintain their rivalry/hatred from canon. Their rivalry comes to a climax when Cooler defeats Frieza on Namek.
- Smug Snake: In addition to all the examples from canon, Glacius Shenron fits the mold.
- Split-Personality Merge: Piccolo and Kami merge per usual but form a combined personality rather than making Piccolo the dominant personality. The combined Namek fuses with Nail in order to suppress the Piccolo part of the personality.
- The two sides of Launch's personality merge after Raditz dies against Cell.
- Super Mode: Raditz is the first to obtain Super Saiyan, followed shortly by Vegeta then Goku.
- Void absorbs the Majin's elements to become even more powerful, though this doesn't last very long..
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Most Enemy Mine situations result in this.
- Took a Level in Badass: Raditz is the obvious one, since he went from the weakest villain in Z to being able to beat Hakaishin like nothing.
- Launch, who trains herself into the strongest human, learns the Kaio-Ken and takes it up to a whole new level.
- Android Eighteen in the Buu Arc. In canon, she's a housewife who pretty much does nothing against Buu. In BTtL, she gets remade into a Super Android and though she's not quite as strong as a Super Saiyan 3, she's still one of the Z Fighters' best and gets some good hits in against Super Buu.
- As well as most of the human characters. Tien in particular is the only character who knows the Spirit Bomb. He deals the deciding blow against Alpha Shenron with a Universal Spirit Bomb, and he even manages to unlock that power on his own and get an Infinity Core, making him useful even at the very end of the series.
- Pan goes from being
The Scrappy to being a major character in Even Further Beyond, and she fights the final battle of the series against Void.
- The Unfought: Though the Z Fighters do briefly fight Frieza in his first and second forms, Frieza is literally torn from the battle by Cooler. The story skips over most of his fight with Cooler, and his third form doesn't appear at all. Raditz and Vegeta do later fight Metal Frieza however.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Katas Jr, the fusion of Piccolo and Kami, only lasts a single chapter before being defeated by Imperfect Cell and forced to merge with Nail.
- Worf Had the Flu: Gohan, who had already achieved Super Saiyan 2 in the fight with Broly, contracts Goku's heart disease right before the final battle with Cell and is out of commission for the entire fight.
