Growing Pains
is a Dragon Ball/The DCU crossover Self-Insert Fic starring Califa, a Saiyan warrior who wakes up on final approach to the planet 'Earth' with some extra memories in her head. Rather than carry out her mission, she decides living by her own rules would be much more fun...only to discover that this Earth was not the one she was expecting...
It can also be read here and here.
Growing Pains contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Califa's father has repeatedly sent her off on suicide missions because of her lower class power-level at birth.
- Ambiguous Innocence: Invoked by Califa, who likes to pretend she doesn't completely understand Earth culture.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: Califa loves to be on the offense, so she frequently sends barrages of attacks at her opponents.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Oozaru reveal at the end of the Imperium Invasion was a shock to everyone present.
- Badass Adorable: She can level cities but she also looks and acts like a very adorable child.
- Beam-O-War: For a brief moment Califa and a state-of-the-art military robot do this but to Califa's immense disappointment the pilot of the robot isn't interested in a beam struggle and cuts his laser off.
- Blood Knight: Saiyan's to a T and Califa is no exception.
- Crocodile Tears: One of Califa's three secret techniques and how she got Batman to agree to train her in martial arts.
- Did Not Think This Through: While Califa didn't particularly mind being forced to fight off the military's latest giant robot (she enjoyed it actually) just to ask Lois Lane how she can contact Superman she is soon told the only way they know how is to... kidnap Lois Lane. Which she is then basically peer pressured into doing because it would be too awkward to have fought the robot and then just leave.
- The Dreaded: The Imperium Freak Out upon learning that Califa is a Saiyan, which they refer to as "one of the Great Destroyers".
- Glad He's On Our Side: Wonder Woman's reaction when she sees Califa use the Kamehameha Wave for the first time when she uses it to puncture a powerful alien forcefield, fortress, mountain and the backs of all those things.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Califa frequently massively limits her level of power so that she can get actual decent fights in, its easier to count the number of times she uses her full power than those she hasn't.
- Superman is infamous for this and does it against Califa in their fights quite frequently.
- I Thought Everyone Could Do That: While learning tai-chi from Batman, Califa tried teaching him and Robin Ki control but its such an inherent thing for her that no apparent progress is made. Batman did learn how to hide his ki though.
- Look What I Can Do Now!: Frequently Califa will reveal a newly reverse-engineered technique to everyone else's surprise. The Kamehameha Wave, Solar Flare and Ki Sensing being her biggest ones thus far.
- Naïve Newcomer: A significant portion of the comedy of the fic is Califa playing this up. She's far more integrated with Earth culture than she lets on but its so much funnier to her when people don't realize that.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Califa styles herself as a villain but frequently finds herself doing a lot of good and very little actual villainy instead.
- She tries to rob a bank but stops an actual bank-robbery which would have cost quite a bit more than the couple thousand she took.
- She helped Hawkgirl take down a villain during her second bank-robbery attempt and forgot to actually take the money with her because she got distracted by having a really good fight against Hawkgirl.
- She, accidentally, kidnaps Lois Lane and during that time stops another heist by HIVE agents and Mammoth thinking they were government agents sent after her.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: After the Imperium Invasion the world is legitimately shaken and changes are had, to the superhero community and the governments of the world. It leads to the formation of the Justice League and further super-weapon tech development.
- Sealed Evil in a Can:Subverted. After Circe was able to finally release the mirror, a tall figure appears instead of Caulifa.
- Shock Wave Stomp: Mammoth tries to use this in his fight against Califa but as she demonstrates its a pointless move against her because she can fly.
- Shooting Superman: Downplayed somewhat. Yes the criminals still shoot at Califa and other super-tough characters but guns are much more powerful in this universe and they do actually still sting somewhat for her right now. Combine that with laser weaponry being widely diverse in their levels of power and mooks firing at Califa while typically pointless is never truly danger free.
- Time Skip: A two-year one occurs soon after Califa agrees to go to Themyscira for training.
- Ungovernable Galaxy: It's eventually revealed that the part of space Saiyans supposedly hail from in the DC universe is a quarantined off section that the Green Lantern Corps try to intercept all travel in and out of because the Saiyans were too dangerous to police like other civilizations.
- Worthy Opponent: Superman is seen as this by Califa.
- Wrong Assumption: When asked about the planets she claims to have conquered, Califa lists off one of them where she 'had to hide until she got bigger'. At the time Batman thought she was a scared child who hid in fear for months if not years before she could kill everyone on the planet she was on. When he sees her transform into an Oozaru for the first time, he realizes his mistake.
