## Act I: The Dirt of Kame House
The first week after Goku died did not feel like a great awakening or a call to legendary arms.
It felt exactly like standing in the thick, choking smoke of a house fire while the timber was still popping, looking around at a bunch of bleeding people, and asking them to start digging foundations for a stronger wall.
Kallard understood grief.
He carried the weight of it behind his ribs every single morning he woke up and checked his skin in the mirror.
Planet Vegeta had taught him the massive, freezing silence that settled over a sector after an entire civilization was cleared from the ledger.
The lawless port docks of the outer rim had taught him the practical, greasy reality of surviving that silence without letting his knuckles turn soft.
But Earth’s grief felt completely different from the cold ash of his birth world.
It was a hell of a lot smaller.
It was more intimate, caked in regular dust, and tucked into places he couldn’t easily avoid by walking out to the cargo bay.
Planet Vegeta had been a massive machine turning into a ball of burning space gravel all at once—an industrial horror too immense for a single teenager’s mind to hold properly.
Goku’s death was just one single body lying flat in a red dirt crater.
It was one single woman screaming her throat raw until her chest gave out, one small four-year-old child sobbing into the moss, and a small handful of regular friends standing around in their muddy boots, staring down at the grass because they couldn’t process the simple, terrifying truth that the one person they counted on to clear the road was completely gone.
That specific smallness made the weight a hell of a lot worse for Kallard’s spirit.
He could look straight into each person’s eyes across the clearing and map exactly where the shrapnel from the loss had landed.
Krillin kept trying to crack short, nervous jokes to keep the air lines clear, but his voice would drop its volume and fail halfway through every sentence, leaving him staring at his own fingers.
Master Roshi got quieter, his old back bending a little lower over his wooden staff as if the gravity of the planet had suddenly doubled its layout.
Bulma got sharper, her words coming out like bursts of plasma fire, as if keeping her temper white-hot could prevent the sadness from touching her skin.
The boy, Gohan, just looked like a child who had seen the gears of the world grind his father to pieces and didn’t possess the vocabulary to ask why the machine worked that way.
Piccolo pretended none of the blood mattered, leaning his tall green back against the rocks and watching the empty horizon with his teeth bared, looking exactly like a soldier who expected the next artillery shell to hit his bunker early just to spite his preparation logs.
Brakka, wisely, kept his wide mouth shut for the first few rotations.
The old four-eyed technician had seen enough planetary infrastructure collapse over his fifty cycles to know exactly when a piece of sarcastic mechanics was proper medicine, and when it was just noise taking up space in a crowded room.
Three days after the shootout in the canyon, they all gathered at Kame House.
Kallard had expected the location to feel completely ridiculous when he resolved the coordinates on his display.
It did.
It was an absolute design joke.
A tiny, square pink house with a red roof, sitting entirely alone on a patch of yellow sand in the absolute middle of a vast, glittering blue ocean.
The waves moved lazily under the afternoon sun, the palm trees swayed in the gentle tropical gale, and the local sea birds chirped from the rafters as if the entire planet hadn’t just been marked for a total liquidation pass by two elite Saiyan executioners who could turn a metropolitan city into a sheet of smoking black glass before breakfast.
The place was entirely absurd.
It was completely peaceful.
It was exactly the sort of simple, un-shielded home that a man like Goku would have called normal after a long shift.
Kallard stood near the water’s edge, his heavy combat boots sinking two inches into the wet sand, his long brown furry tail moving in a slow, careful circle behind his waist guard to balance his framework against the unfamiliar ocean wind.
Brakka sat on an iron fuel crate beside his shoulder, a small manual wrench clicking between his titanium fingers as he watched the local heroes argue near the front porch.
Bulma had Raditz’s scouter caked into her left palm, a thick technical notebook held tight under her right arm.
She had already taken the green plastic casing apart twice using her small pocket tools, put the copper pins back together once, and insulted the empire’s manufacturing standards at least six times since the speeder had landed.
“This entire device is completely disgusting,” she snapped out, her blue hair flying wild across her cheeks as she hit the manual toggle switch with her thumb.
Krillin blinked his eyes, leaning his small frame over her shoulder guard.
“Disgusting how, Bulma?
Like…
alien earwax caked into the speaker mesh disgusting, or evil space corporation trying to blow up our ears disgusting?”
“Both of them at the same time,” she said, her voice sharp enough to cut wood.
“Look at the internal logic wiring along this lower rail.
It’s compact, sure, but the solder joints are incredibly crude.
It’s efficient in the meanest, most industrial way possible.
It looks like someone designed this frame specifically to survive being slammed into a brick wall during a brawler match, but absolutely refused to make the interface user-friendly for a normal technician.
The logic loops are completely hostile.”
Brakka let out a short, gravelly *huff* through his nose, his lower pair of eyes narrowing as he adjusted his goggle straps.
Bulma turned her torso around instantly, her blue eyes locking onto the grease stains on his leather sleeve.
“What’s that sound supposed to mean, mechanic?
You got an engineering disagreement with my assessment?”
The old alien looked at the circuit drawings caked into her notebook pages, his gray ears twitching with a very small, reluctant drop of professional respect.
“That…
that analysis is actually not wrong for a primitive researcher, lady.
The Frieza Force tech squads don’t build their hardware to be serviced by the infantry grunts.
They build them to be thrown into the scrap heap the second the logic gate burns out so the core factories can sell another crate of units to the governors.
It’s a garbage philosophy.”
Bulma lifted her chin up, a tiny line of pride clearing her eyes.
“I know it’s a garbage philosophy.
That’s why I’m rewriting the whole receiver grid before the turn of the week.”
Kallard watched the exchange from his patch of sand and immediately realized that introducing Bulma Briefs to the interior of Brakka’s workshop bilge was either going to save the future of this solar system, or create a weaponized technical argument that would systematically level the foundations of West City.
It was a complete fifty-fifty calculation.
Master Roshi sat on a wooden lawn chair near the pink wall, his dark sunglasses completely hiding his eyes, but the heavy, unyielding slowness of his posture spoke of a deep-seated physical fatigue that his martial arts forms couldn’t hide.
Inside the small kitchen, Chi-Chi was sitting on a bench with Gohan, the boy refusing to let go of her dress fabric for a single second since the funeral transport had cleared the yard.
Ox-King stood outside the kitchen window, his massive eight-foot frame looking completely out of place against the pink paint, his large hands clenching and unclenching around his belt as if he wanted to hit a mountain but couldn’t locate a target that would balance his daughter’s ledger.
Piccolo stood fifty paces away from the rest of the group, his tall green frame cast in a solid purple shadow against the far edge of the reef, his arms crossed tightly over his chest guards as his heavy cape snapped in the salt wind.
He hadn’t stopped staring at the side of Kallard’s jaw since the *Wayfarer* had dropped its landing gear onto the island.
Kallard respected the hostility.
If a secondary warrior with a tail and an independent warship had dropped out of the clouds three rotations after a Saiyan grunt killed his best rival, he would have spent his shift tracking the stranger’s knuckles too.
Krillin walked across the sand dunes slowly, his hands rubbing the back of his bald head, his orange gi caked in dry canyon mud as he stopped three paces from Kallard’s line.
“So…
uh…
Kallard, right?
That’s the registry name you gave Piccolo down in the ditch?”
“Kallard is fine,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp.
“But the bounty brokers out in the deep lanes call you Ronin?” Krillin pressed, his eyes nervously cutting down to track the slow, rhythmic movement of the brown tail behind the kid’s boots.
“The guys down at the port ports?”
“Some of them do,” Kallard said plainly.
“When the contract requires a clean distance.”
“Do you prefer one over the other?
I don’t want to go triggering some kind of weird space warrior code by using the wrong vocabulary before we start the drill.”
Kallard paused, his dark eyes softening beneath his brow line as he looked down at the human martial artist.
The question was a hell of a lot more thoughtful and down-to-earth than he had expected from a fighter who had just spent his morning watching his childhood brother get drilled through the ribs.
“Kallard is fine, Krillin.
We’re not running an official deployment pass today.
You can leave the titles behind the fence.”
Krillin let out a short, breathy sigh, his shoulders dropping an inch.
“Okay.
Kallard.
Cool.
Great.
So…
not to be completely rude or anything, since you did help us clean up the rubble down in that crater…
but are you, like, way stronger than Raditz was?
Like…
on a completely separate ledger tier?”
“Yes,” Kallard said, his response immediate, flat, and entirely devoid of any brawler boasting.
“I can double his output parameters without opening my primary valves.”
Krillin swallowed hard, his throat clicking as his bald head turned slightly pale under the tropical sun.
“Okay.
Wow.
That was…
remarkably direct.
No soft phrasing at all.
My stomach is officially turning back into grease lines.”
Kallard pointed his callused thumb toward the far side of the reef where the Namekian was standing in the shadows.
“You shouldn’t be looking at my numbers, Krillin.
Look at his line.
So is he.”
Piccolo’s yellow brow clips sharpened instantly at the mention of his title, his dark pupils narrowing into two cold slits of light across the sand clearing.
Krillin looked between the giant green demon and the bearded Saiyan scrapper, his eyes wide.
“Piccolo?
You’re telling my ears that Piccolo is denser than that armored guy who kidnapped Gohan?”
“With the proper training rotation and enough discipline to clear the static?
Absolutely,” Kallard said, his voice level.
“Raditz was an exceptionally careless, lazy fighter, Krillin.
He spent his entire career relying on his raw genetic mass, the surprise elements of his tech, and the numbers displayed on his scouter lens.
He didn’t possess a single drop of experience when it came to fighting people who knew how to compress their energy signatures or coordinate their strikes as a single unit.
That’s the only reason Goku and Piccolo managed to break his guard lane.”
Krillin’s small face twisted up into a sudden, painful knot of memory at the sound of Goku’s name, his thumb catching the edge of his orange belt sash.
Kallard lowered his volume, his voice softening as his human soul took the handles.
“They paid an entirely offensive price to clear that invoice, Krillin.
My brother shouldn’t have been allowed to clear that gate.
But your friends still won the match.
Remember that part of the blueprint when the sand turns hot.”
## Act II: The Boundary of a Mother
Master Roshi stood up from his wooden chair slowly, his old joints letting out a dry, audible click that sounded like an engine block cooling down in a workshop.
He walked across the yellow sand dunes with a slow, measured step, his wooden cane tapping lightly against the coral stones near the water’s edge.
“That is precisely the structural defect inside our current layout, isn’t it, young man?” the old master said, his voice losing all of its usual dirty-old-man humor, leaving behind only the heavy tone of a teacher who had buried too many students over his cycles.
Everyone on the beach turned their faces around to track his line.
The old master stopped his boots near Krillin’s shoulder, his eyes hidden behind his red lenses.
“If the information you delivered down in that ditch is accurate, Kallard…
then the two executioners currently tracking our coordinates aren’t going to make the same tactical mistakes Raditz did.
They know about the existence of the wish orbs now.
They know this planet possesses a small community of martial artists who can suppress their numbers, and they know Goku died specifically to lock their vanguard in place.
They’ll be coming into our atmosphere caked in preparation.”
Kallard nodded his head once.
“Yes, master.
They will.
They won’t be looking to negotiate their margins when their pods touch down.”
Bulma crossed her arms over her notebook, her blue eyes sharp.
“And you’re entirely certain this data leaked because of those face devices?”
“The scouter transmitter is hard-wired straight into their central nervous system loops, Bulma,” Kallard explained, his fingers tracing the white scars on his forearm.
“The second Raditz’s heart rate started dropping toward the zero mark, the logic boards ran an automated upload pass.
Every word spoken within ten yards of his helmet cleared the gates.”
“Can we build a localized scrambling net to block the next transmission sequence?” she asked, her engineering mind already drafting a new project layout.
Kallard looked over at the old technician sitting on the fuel box.
Brakka shrugged his broad shoulders, his mechanical joints emitting a low whir.
“We can easily build a custom dampening cell to block future frequencies, lady…
provided your workshop has enough high-grade copper wire and some clean lithium cells to run the filters.
But the first data burst is already out in the wild lanes.
You can’t un-spill a bowl of protein soup once the grease hits the floor grates.”
Bulma frowned, her lips setting into a hard line.
“That is an absolutely terrible piece of metaphorical imagery, mechanic.”
“It was a mathematically perfect piece of metaphorical imagery, girl!” the old alien growled back, his white mane bristling.
“It explained the structural permanence of the leak!”
“It was soup!”
“You understood the parameters of the loss, didn’t you?”
“I understood that I hated your vocabulary!”
Kallard turned his face away toward the surf before he could let a genuine smile break across his beard trim.
Bulma caught the movement of his shoulder guards instantly, her blue eyes snapping onto his bare cheek.
“What’s that face supposed to mean, Ronin?” she demanded, pointing her screwdriver toward his chest guards.
“Nothing, Bulma,” Kallard said smoothly, his dark pupils steady.
“Just checking the water lines.”
“No, that was definitely a look.
You had a very specific, sarcastic little ‘I know something you don’t’ look clearing your eyes.
I’ve been tracking researchers for twenty years, I know the template.”
Brakka raised his titanium hand into the air, his fingers flexing.
“The kid possesses at least fifty separate look configurations, ma’am.
Most of them are completely stupid and indicate a total lack of internal data processing.
Don’t waste your battery life on his visor.”
Bulma pointed her tool straight at the old alien’s nose clip, a bright, genuine grin breaking through her dust marks.
“You…
old four-eyes…
I like your character parameters.
You can stay on the island.”
“The correct professional response, girl,” Brakka cackled, rubbing his blue-gray jaw.
Krillin stepped closer to Kallard’s side guard, his voice dropping into a small, terrified whisper.
“Kallard…
I’m telling you right now…
those two are going to be an absolute multi-faction nightmare if we lock them inside a laboratory together for more than twelve hours.
My house is going to be turned into a weaponized repair shop.”
“I know,” Kallard muttered, his tail lashing the sand.
“I’m already preparing the budget adjustments.”
Bulma’s eyes flicked back to his face, her head tilting at a sharp angle as her analytical look returned to her brow lines.
“You say that with a substantial amount of familiarity, space traveler.
You talk like you’ve spent the last ten years watching my father and me run a factory floorboard back in West City.”
Kallard froze internally for a fraction of a millisecond, his human memories sending a sharp warning ping through his cerebral cortex.
*Too fast.
Too familiar.
Tone it down, scrapper.
You haven’t even cleared the first week of the year yet.*
“I’ve cleared out a lot of high-end corporate engineering vaults across the rim lanes, Bulma,” Kallard said smoothly, forcing his voice into a dry, neutral business drone.
“I recognize the specific cadence of a senior researcher who knows how to handle her tools.
You talk like a master builder.
It’s an easy template to map.”
Bulma studied the line of his eyes through his green visor tint for two silent seconds, her screwdriver turning slowly between her fingers, before she let out a short, soft breath and looked back down at her technical notebook.
“Nice save, bounty boy.
Let’s see if your training form matches the quality of your vocabulary.”
He didn’t answer her.
It was, unfortunately, an exceptionally narrow save for his ledger.
Piccolo finally stepped his long green legs out from the purple shadow of the reef, his heavy white cape dragging through the dry sea grass as he came to a halt five paces from their line.
“Enough flirting with the primitive machinery, researchers,” the Namekian hissed out, his face dead flat.
“The afternoon shift is running down toward the zero mark.”
Bulma turned her body around instantly, her face turning red with fury.
“Excuse me?
Who the hell are you calling a primitive piece of machinery, you giant green eggplant?
I just spent my morning reverse-engineering an alien radio net to keep your skin from being vaporized next year!”
Piccolo completely ignored her shriek, his yellow eyes boring straight through Kallard’s visor line.
“You delivered a massive lecture down in that canyon regarding our structural survival metrics, Kallard.
You said my current martial arts forms weren’t caked in enough discipline to break the prince’s guard.
Talk plain about the method.
How do we start the drill?”
Kallard appreciated the immediate return to tactical reality.
He looked across the yellow sand dunes at the gathered group of Earth’s protectors—tracking the tense, wire-muscled frames of Tien and Chiaotzu standing near the water’s edge, Yamcha trying to look relaxed against a palm tree while his fingers kept checking his side holster, and Krillin waiting for a number.
“First major structural adjustment for the ledger,” Kallard said, his voice dropping into a low primal rumble that carried across the entire surf line.
“Every single individual standing on this beach…
stops training like they’re a solo fighter working a private room.”
Tien’s third eye narrowed into a tight point of white light, his broad shoulders locking into a rigid stance.
“What’s the meaning behind that phrase, Saiyan?
My style has been calibrated through years of isolation inside the mountain waterfalls.”
“That is exactly why your layout is going to get your friends executed next cycle, Tien,” Kallard said flatly, his dark eyes cutting across the sand.
“You all possess an immense amount of individual skill, but your techniques don’t overlap enough to clear a real military formation.
You fight as a collection of independent brawlers who occasionally shout advice to each other across a clearing.
That specific layout works fine when you’re clearing out a local demon clan or a corporate red ribbon army.
But it is a total system failure against a pair of Saiyan executioners.”
Yamcha frowned, his hand dropping from his pocket as he stepped off his tree trunk.
“We know how to run a teamwork pass, kid.
We cleared the Crane school together years ago.”
“No,” Kallard said, his voice absolute and devoid of any soft phrasing.
“You know how to run a friendship pass, Yamcha.
You know how to take turns hitting a target because your ego demands a clean look.
That is flatly not the same thing as battlefield coordination metrics.
If Nappa catches your waist guard in a brawler match, he isn’t going to wait for Krillin to finish his presentation before he breaks your neck marrow.
You need to learn how to operate as a single machine.”
## Act III: The Boundary of a Mother
Before Yamcha could launch into a furious verbal defense of his brawler speed, the front screen door of Kame House slid open with a sharp metallic *clack*.
Chi-Chi stepped out onto the wooden porch planks, her long black hair tied back with a blue cloth, her fingers locking tightly around Gohan’s small hand to drag his tiny four-year-old frame down the steps into the yellow sand clearing.
The boy looked incredibly small—too small to be standing anywhere near a collection of alien warships and scarred mercenaries.
His little face had that empty, completely exhausted look that children’s features developed whenever adults spent too many hours speaking over their heads as if a tactical blueprint could explain why their father’s heart had stopped beating.
Chi-Chi’s grip on his small wrist tightened until her knuckles turned a stark white color under the sun glare.
“You are not taking a single inch of my son’s flesh into your mountain ditch, green monster,” she said, her yellow eyes locking onto Piccolo’s face before anyone else could clear their throat.
Piccolo’s expression hardened into a wall of pure demonic pride, his purple cape snapping.
“The brat carries a massive amount of un-exploded current inside his cell walls, woman.
If his knuckles aren’t calibrated before the pods touch down…
his reading will be cleared from the charts anyway.”
“He is four years old!” she shrieked out, her voice cracking with a raw, bone-shattering line of maternal agony that made Krillin flinch back two paces.
“He doesn’t know how to handle a blaster, and he doesn’t know how to handle a war!
He needs to finish his primary grammar manifests!”
“The elite prince of our race isn’t going to check his primary grammar manifests before he turns his home into a sheet of black glass, lady!” Piccolo growled back, his claws curving into a strike brace.
“Power level numbers don’t care a single damn about a child’s age parameters!”
“No, they don’t!
But I do!” she wept out, her torso shaking violently beneath her blue dress as her grief reached its execution phase.
“I am his mother!
I am the one who handles his ledger!”
The atmospheric weight inside the small clearing turned incredibly thick and suffocating, the local martial artists locking their limbs up as the tension flared.
Kallard took three slow, deliberate steps across the sand dunes, his broad shoulders stepping directly into the path lane between Piccolo’s claws and the wooden porch steps before the Namekian could deliver a syllable that would lock the conversation into a permanent shootout.
“Chi-Chi,” he said quietly, his voice dropping into a low, grounded human register.
She glared at the green trim on his black armor plates through her tear-stained eyelashes, her breath coming in short, ragged wheezes.
“You…
you don’t get to clear your throat to speak to my ears like you know my family layout, space monkey.
You’re just another one of those long-tailed freaks who brought this murder to my husband’s doorstep.”
Kallard stopped his boots five paces from her line, his white-gloved hands open and visible at his side loops.
“You’re entirely, professionally right, ma’am,” he said softly, his dark eyes locking onto hers without a single drop of brawler defiance.
“I don’t know a single digit on your private family ledger.
I don’t carry that right today.”
The absolute flatness of the admission stopped her words clean for half a second, her jaw faltering as her anger lost its primary target.
Kallard dropped his massive six-foot frame down into a low, respectful crouch in the yellow sand, bringing his face down to match the level of Gohan’s small yellow pupils.
He didn’t try to close the distance loop, and he didn’t reach out his glove to touch the boy’s hair; he kept a clean four yards of open space between his chest armor and the porch stairs to ensure the kid’s internal sensing grid didn’t register an immediate threat response.
“I am flatly not here to play the part of an executioner who drags your son away from his blankets by force, Chi-Chi,” Kallard said, his voice a low, steady rumble that filled the quiet reef.
Piccolo let out a short, cynical scoff through his teeth from the shadows.
Kallard cut his dark pupils sideways, his green visor lens flashing with a sudden, freezing intensity that hit the Namekian’s face like a physical warning blow.
“I said exactly what I meant for the logbook, demon king.
Keep your mouth behind the fence line while I’m balancing the margins.”
Piccolo’s yellow brow clips narrowed into tight lines of light, but he kept his green frame vertical against the rock face, holding his tongue in check as he evaluated the kid’s mass.
Kallard turned his face back to focus on the human mother’s eyes.
“The two executioners currently tracking our coordinates aren’t going to care that Gohan is a four-year-old child when their pods hit the dirt, ma’am.
That is the infinite, un-uniformed cruelty of the machine we’re running against.
But if his knuckles are going to be trained for the field…
the rotation cannot be constructed entirely out of fear, isolation, and pain.
It has to be managed under a strict set of structural guidelines.
Proper food cells, regular sleep cycles, academic study manifests, rest rotations, and absolute safety parameters between the drills.”
Chi-Chi’s voice shook violently, a fresh line of purple fluid trickling from her bitten lower lip.
“And who’s going to be the master inspector who decides those guidelines, hunter?
Him?
The green monster who just helped drill a hole through my husband’s ribs?” She pointed her finger straight at Piccolo’s turban like the word itself was coated in a bitter grease.
Kallard shook his head once, his black spikes moving in the wind.
“No, ma’am.
None of us.
You.”
Piccolo’s head snapped around violently, his ears dropping low against his skull.
Bulma’s brows rose up toward her hairline, her technical notebook slipping an inch under her arm as she looked down at the crouched warrior.
“You’re his primary command manager, Chi-Chi,” Kallard said, his voice absolute and grounded.
“You’re his mother.
You possess the absolute right to know his exact coordinates every single day of the shift.
You possess the right to know what configuration his drills are running, and you possess the right to verify that his vital indicators are healthy.
But if you hide his frame behind a wall inside the house completely because you’re afraid of the smoke…
he won’t have a single tool left to protect his own skin when the danger finds his gate anyway.”
Chi-Chi’s face caved inward entirely, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as she broke down into a long, ragged sob that shook her whole frame.
“He…
he just lost his father, Ronin.
Goku’s gone.”
“I know,” Kallard whispered into the sand.
“You don’t know a damn thing about it!” she screamed out, the syllables cracking across the beach like a blaster discharge.
“You’re a space warrior!
You don’t have a home!”
Kallard went perfectly vertical and still in his crouch, his human soul flashing straight back to the sight of Planet Vegeta turning into a cloud of burning cinders—the image of Morga’s cold hands, the sound of the infant crying inside the transport cradle, and the complete, unyielding erasure of every single face he had ever passed in the streets.
His voice came out of his throat sounding incredibly small, quiet, and ancient.
“I know exactly what the pavement tastes like…
when someone with a larger number decides that the people you love don’t possess the right of way across the galaxy, ma’am.
I’ve been standing in that ash for ten years.”
Chi-Chi’s raw anger faltered completely, her hands dropping from her eyes as she tracked the deep, un-uniformed weariness caked into the young scrapper’s bearded face.
He wasn’t pushing her line—he was just standing there in the ditch alongside her grief, offering a wall to brace against.
That was the layout trick with a fresh loss: if you push the parameters too hard with a strategic speech, the target just builds a permanent wall to protect the wound.
You have to let the air settle first.
The boy, Gohan, peeked out from behind her blue dress fabric, his small yellow eyes blinking through his tears as he looked at the thick brown furry tail lashing out against the coral stones.
“Are…
are you a Saiyan warhound too, mister Kallard?”
Kallard managed a small, genuine nod of his head across the sand.
“Yeah, Gohan.
I carry the same biological template your father did.”
“Like my daddy?” the boy sniffed, his small hand wiping a grease mark from his chin.
Kallard looked out at the vast, blue, and completely un-shielded ocean line, his chest plates tightening up with a sudden ache.
“Your daddy was raised right here on this dirt, kid.
That specific environmental choice made his coordination a hell of a lot different from the rest of the pack.
He grew up with a clean spirit.”
Gohan looked down at his own small red boots, his voice a tiny whisper that barely cleared the wind.
“Are…
are you a bad monster?”
The question was so entirely plain, raw, and down-to-earth that it hit Kallard’s chest cage harder than any plasma net launcher ever could.
He answered the child with an absolute, un-vetted honesty behind his visor line.
“I’ve executed some exceptionally bad design choices across the outer ports over my cycles, Gohan.
I’ve caked my knuckles in a lot of red grease to survive the ditch.”
The boy’s yellow eyes widened into small circles through his tears.
“But I’m spending every single hour of my current shift trying my absolute best to write some good ones into the logbook now,” Kallard said softly, his glove tracing a line in the sand.
“That’s the current project layout.”
Gohan looked back down at the yellow coral stones, his small chest tensing up beneath his tunic fabric.
“My…
my daddy always told my ears…
that trying to fix the machine is the only part of the work that matters, mister.”
Kallard’s throat felt like it was coated in dry sand, his human memories locking up.
“That…
that sounds exactly like the kind of technical specification your father would write into a conversation, kid.
He knew how to run the handles.”
Piccolo turned his tall green face away toward the empty ocean horizon all at once, his teeth bared as he let out a low grunt through his nose.
*Interesting configuration,* Kallard’s mind analyzed.
*The demon king’s internal data loops are already starting to experience a slight transformation pass simply by standing near the child’s grief.*
Master Roshi stepped forward smoothly, his wooden cane tapping a slow, rhythmic beat against the sand grates to close the act.
“Perhaps…
there is a valid piece of custom technical compromise hidden within these parameters, my friends,” the old master said gently, his sunglasses reflecting the yellow sun.
“Gohan trains for the upcoming deployment pass, but his schedule isn’t run recklessly or caked in brutality.
He doesn’t stay out in the wilderness alone without proper food cells and rest hours to repair his muscles.
Piccolo can manage his physical coordination drills across the canyons; Kallard can keep his primitive Saiyan bloodline shifts from turning into a total systemic destruction pass; and Chi-Chi receives an automated progress manifest from the camp regularly to verify his parameters.”
Piccolo let out a raw, animalistic growl through his purple collar.
“I am a demon lord, old master!
I don’t send weekly letters or print out custom cargo manifests for a housewife!”
Bulma lifted Raditz’s green scouter casing into the air, her blue eyes flashing with a dangerous technical arrogance.
“You will if I hard-wire a long-range wireless transmitter main line straight into that purple turban of yours, you green oversized vegetable!
Don’t test my factory specs today!”
Piccolo glared at her like he wanted to turn her notebook into liquid slag with his eyes.
Bulma glared straight back through her ponytail without a single millimeter of hesitation line.
Brakka whispered from his fuel box, his gray ears twitching with absolute delight.
“She…
she is an absolutely magnificent piece of high-pressure research machinery, Ronin.
I am completely caked in love with her technical delivery.”
Kallard pretended to be completely deaf to the old mechanic’s remark, his eyes remaining fixed on the child’s face.
Chi-Chi looked down at her small son’s blue shoulders, her hands smoothing the fabric of his torn tunic.
The boy clutched her dress tightly, his small voice dropping into a breathless whimper.
“I…
I don’t wanna go brawling with the space guys, Mommy.
I want to stay inside the room with my books.”
Kallard’s chest plates tightened up with a sudden, heavy ache.
He chose his next set of words with an extreme, professional caution, letting his human heart take the steering column completely.
“You don’t enter the training basin because your spirit wants to find a brawler match, Gohan,” he said softly, his dark eyes locking onto the child’s face.
“You enter the basin specifically because one day…
the sky is going to open up anyway, and you’re going to need the tools to protect your mother, and your friends, and the people you love from being cleared off the map.
There is a massive technical distinction between being a killer who seeks out a fight, and a guardian who builds a wall to protect his home world.
Remember that line when the training turns cold.”
Gohan looked up through his wet eyelashes, his small fingers loosening their grip on her skirt.
“Will…
will the drills hurt my skin, mister Kallard?”
Piccolo opened his wide green mouth to deliver a brutal, old-school warrior lecture regarding the necessity of physical suffering.
Kallard cleared his throat loudly, cutting off the Namekian’s frequency before he could release the current.
“Yes, kid,” Kallard said flatly and honestly.
“The drills are going to hurt a hell of a lot before the year runs down to the zero mark.
Your muscles are going to turn sore, and your bones are going to experience a substantial amount of weight.”
The boy swallowed hard, his throat clicking against his collar.
“But not all categories of physical pain carry the same specification sheet inside a ditch, Gohan,” Kallard said gently, his white-gloved hand resting open on his knee.
“Some categories of pain are designed specifically to break your internal container and turn your spirit into scrap material.
Other categories of pain are designed to teach your cells how to survive the storm and make your knuckles harder to kill.
We’re going to spend this entire year making sure nobody on this island confuses those two design templates.
You have my word on that manual section.”
Piccolo stared down at the hybrid’s broad back, his yellow eyes wide with a strange, un-vetted silent calculations.
Finally, Chi-Chi slowly closed her large eyes, her head dropping forward against the wooden porch railing as her final breath of resistance cleared her lungs.
“One year,” she whispered out into the salt wind, the words sounding like a terminal invoice being signed.
The entire beach went completely dead silent all at once, the only sound being the waves hitting the reef.
“If these space monsters are dropping out of the clouds twelve months from now…
then my boy trains until the clocks turn red,” she wept softly, her fingers catching Gohan’s hair.
“But he studies his grammar manifests right along with his kicks.
And he eats three proper plates of hot food cells every single rotation shift, and he gets his full allocation of sleep hours to repair his bones.
And if my terminal screen logs a single indication that any of you green or black-armored space freaks left my baby starving out in a freezing mountain ditch…
I don’t care how many thousands of power units you display on your little face meters…
I will personally find a way to drag your corpses into a ravine with a shovel!
Do we understand the terms of the contract?”
Absolutely nobody on the beach laughed.
Nobody cracked a short joke or checked their slate.
Because the raw, un-shielded maternal intensity clearing her throat told every veteran fighter on that sand that she would absolutely execute the summary line if the margins were short.
Kallard dropped his chin down into a low, respectful warrior bow across the sand grates.
“The terms are perfectly fair, ma’am.
The parameters are entered into the logbook.”
Piccolo muttered a short string of a low, irritated demonic curse word under his purple collar.
“An absolutely ridiculous piece of domestic administrative labor for a combat unit.”
Chi-Chi snapped her head around instantly, her eyes bared like two blasters.
“What did you say to my ears, you overgrown green garden vegetable?”
Piccolo’s yellow eye ridge twitched violently with irritation, his boots sliding back an inch into the sea grass.
“You…
you will receive your automated wireless progress manifests on the turn of every seventh rotation shift, housewife.
The frequency is established.”
Krillin let out a long, ragged breath through his nose, his hand rubbing his bald head as if he had just survived a high-caliber anti-ship battery bombardment pass.
“Oh, thank the gods.
The layout didn’t turn into a total system destruction pass.
My blood pressure cells are completely fried.”
Bulma grinned broadly through her grease smudges, her screwdriver clicking against her technical notebook with a sharp metallic pop.
“Oh, you can count on that data burst, Chi-Chi!
I am personally building that tracking transmitter main line into his turban before the night watch clears!”
## Act IV: The Basin Camp
The actual training camp began two rotations later within the dry, cracked center of an enormous, three-hundred-mile-wide desert basin located thousands of miles far away from any major human civilian population centers.
It was a brutal, wind-scratched wasteland dominated by giant columns of red sandstone, deep jagged granite fractures, and endless fields of yellow dust—the perfect industrial workspace where an accidental energy explosion would do nothing more than offend a collection of local rocks.
Bulma and Brakka had systematically rigged a temporary technical laboratory camp along the northern floorboards of the basin, using a mixture of high-end Capsule Corp portable capsules, *Wayfarer* tool kits, and what Kallard highly suspected was Bulma’s bone-deep psychological necessity to prove to an alien mechanic that she could improve the specification sheet of anything she touched with her fingers.
She had deployed four large, circular silver capsules that popped open into fully insulated residential shelters, an automated water purification system cell, three rows of medical scanning screens, and an enormous folding workbench table that was currently completely covered in hundreds of copper wires, logic chips, and broken scouter components.
Brakka stood three paces from the workbench line, all four of his unblinking eyes wide as he stared at the tiny metal capsule shells sitting in her storage box, his mechanical arm making a low, rapid clicking sound as his gears turned.
“You…
you’re telling my processing units that your family factories fit a full-scale residential living dome, an automated cooling refrigerator, and a complete laboratory suite inside a single three-inch metal cylinder casing, lady?
That…
that is a completely fraudulent piece of spatial physics manipulation!
It’s an absolute pain in the mechanics’ logs!”
Bulma smirked broadly from her stool, her fingers moving with a fast precision to solder a wire rail onto a logic plate.
“A full residential dome, a high-density freezer module, a mountain bike, and if you keep staring at my kit with those four eyes looking completely impressed, old man…
maybe I can find a capsule small enough to fit your massive mechanical ego into the storage bin too.”
Brakka turned his broad face around slowly to look at Kallard, his gray ears flaring bright pink with a mixture of deep-seated professional irritation and absolute, unadulterated marvel.
“She…
she is an exceptionally dangerous category of research specialist, Ronin.
Her tools are completely out of bounds for a primitive planet.”
“I know, old man,” Kallard muttered, his tail lashing out a cloud of yellow dust as he checked the manual buckles on his green chest armor plates.
“I warned your ears about her spec sheet before we dropped the ramp.”
Bulma looked up from her soldering iron instantly, her blue eyes narrowing as her sharp technical look locked onto the young scrapper’s profile.
“There’s that specific ‘I know’ vocabulary clearing your throat again, bounty boy.
You’ve been doing that since the hour your black ship cleared the cloud deck.”
Kallard came to a smooth halt near the table edge, his dark pupils steady.
“You possess a remarkably observant set of scanning droids behind those brow lines, Bulma.
It’s an excellent asset for an engineer.”
“Yes, I do, scrapper,” she said, leaning her chin flat against her open palm as her screwdriver tapped a slow rhythm against the wood.
“So you can stop delivering those weird, cryptic little prophetic comments across my workspace.
I don’t run on your space schedule.”
Brakka split his wide mouth into a massive, gear-toothed cackle of pure amusement.
“An absolute masterpiece of a verbal shutdown sequence, lady!
The kid’s logic loops are completely short-circuited!
I’m officially registering that transaction as a highly successful maintenance pass!”
Kallard let out a long, tired sigh through his nose, his hand rubbing the back of his neck hair mane.
He was starting to think that bringing his crusty old mentor down to the same dirt patch as Bulma Briefs was the single most expensive mistake he had made since the day he left his capsule.
The gathered martial artists of Earth stood in a wide, circular clearing fifty yards away from the laboratory table, their boots shifting nervously against the hot sandstone grates.
Piccolo sat vertical on top of a sharp red pinnacle rock ten yards above their heads, his heavy white cape folded tightly around his green knees, his arms crossed over his chest guards as his yellow eyes tracked every single breath the child Gohan was drawing down in the dust.
The small boy was wearing a brand-new miniature orange martial arts gi Master Roshi had provided for his frame, his long purple hair tied back, his small limbs stretching awkwardly as he tried to copy Krillin’s warm-up drills.
Krillin was stretching his arms with a fast, nervous velocity, his bald head covered in beads of sweat from the desert heat.
Yamcha rolled his broad shoulders in a wide circle, attempting to project a casual, unyielding sense of brawler confidence to the clearing, though his dark eyes kept cutting down every three seconds to track the movement of Kallard’s bare brown tail lashing through the dirt.
Tien stood perfectly vertical and calm near a jagged granite fracture, his three eyes closed as his breathing fell into a slow, rhythmic cadence that cleared his spirit, while the small, white-skinned psychic Chiaotzu floated three feet motionless above his left shoulder guard like a quiet balloon.
Master Roshi sat flat on a weathered camp stool near the residential dome line, his old arms resting flat across his wooden staff as he prepared to observe the first official shift of the preparation year.
Kallard stepped out through the dust cloud, his combat boots making a heavy, structural thudding sound against the floorboards as he came to a stop in front of the line of fighters.
His thick brown furry tail was completely free of its leather binding straps now, curling slowly through the warm gale with a relaxed, unyielding naturalness.
He had made a terminal choice after his shootout with Turles inside the glass forest—he refused to turn his own heritage back into a hidden, wrapped costume for a coward, especially on a world where everyone already knew the direct biological configuration of his bloodline.
It felt right to let the limb move in the wind.
Bulma’s blue eyes kept flicking up from her workbench to track the movement of the thick fur across the sand dunes, a deep scientific curiosity battling against her basic sense of social politeness before she forced her focus back to her copper pins.
Kallard took a deep breath of the hot desert oxygen, his dark pupils locking straight onto Krillin’s face.
“All right, martial artists.
Let’s clear the first major design manual for the preparation year.
Lesson number one: True Energy Suppression.”
Yamcha frowned, his lips twisting as he dropped his arms back down to his belt loop.
“We already know how to drop our battle power down to a lower tier, kid.
Goku taught our ears how to power down our muscles years ago during the tournament circuits.
It’s an old baseline skill for our school.”
“No, Yamcha,” Kallard said flatly, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that cut through the wind.
“You know how to relax your physical muscles after a heavy workout pass.
That is flatly, structurally not the same thing as an intentional energy compression loop.
When your frame ‘powers down,’ your ki well is still leaking a steady, continuous trail of static current out into the ambient atmosphere lines.
A high-spec imperial scouter drone can resolve that trail from orbit long before your boots clear the ridge.”
Tien’s three eyes snapped open simultaneously, his white pupils locking straight onto the young Saiyan’s armor plates with a sudden, intense sharpness.
Kallard reached down with his hand, pointing a single finger straight toward his own bare chest.
“An imperial scouter reads active biological density variations through the atmosphere, martial artists.
If an enemy soldier relies entirely on his face device to map his workspace…
you can turn his technology into an absolute lie.
Not by using a mechanical jamming cell, and not by delivering a false speech.
You lie straight to his machine using the container of your own body.”
Krillin raised his right hand into the air slowly, his brow furrowing with a practical curiosity.
“So…
talk plain about the math, Kallard.
How the hell do we force our energy wells to tell a lie to a space computer?”
Brakka let out a short, cackling grunt from his workbench stool, his titanium finger clicking against his wrench.
“Finally…
a student down in this ditch who possesses the common engineering sense to ask for the blueprint parameters before he starts swinging his knuckles!
I’m registering that bald boy as a valid processor!”
## Act V: The Suppression Drill
Kallard took a slow breath, his feet planting wide against the red sandstone grates of the basin.
“Watch the current lines,” he whispered.
He reached deep down into his abdominal base past his suppressed eight hundred unit spark, opening the internal stone door of his energy pool by a fraction of an inch to allow his raw output to climb straight back up toward his three thousand combat baseline.
*FLASH.*
A sudden, massive wall of bright green ki aura snapped alive around his heavy combat boots with a deafening, concussive roar of pressure that tore through the center of the clearing.
The loose sand dunes and the white rock fragments within ten yards of his frame were instantly launched ten feet into the air, the extreme localized atmospheric pressure caking the entire basin floorboards with a heavy, suffocating current that made Krillin’s chest guards groan as his lungs were starved of air.
Bulma’s digital monitoring screens over at the workbench table let out a sudden, high-pitched electronic scream of warning, the green lines spiking straight up past the maximum tracking parameters.
Then…
Kallard shut the valve down.
He didn’t drop the volume slowly, and he didn’t run a standard decompression pass.
He utilized the exact backward engineering method he had stolen from Sable Korr and refined through his Yardrat focus stone—he forced his mind to contract the iron cage around the fire with a white-knuckle grip of pure cerebral discipline, folding his active ki signature back inward until every single drop of the energy was sealed behind a thick wall of internal mass.
The green aura cloud snuffed out in less than a hundredth of a millisecond.
The flying sand fragments dropped flat back into the dirt grates with a soft rustling sound, and the entire basin went completely, terrifyingly silent lines.
Yamcha blinked his large eyes twice, his head moving from side to side as his internal sensing grid ran an error loop.
“I…
I can barely resolve a single spark of your presence anymore, Kallard.
It feels like you just completely stepped out of the universe lines.”
Kallard nodded his head once, his breathing remaining perfectly smooth and level beneath his chest plates.
“That is the technical goal for the drill, Yamcha.
Absolute flat zero potential.
To an imperial scouter pass…
your body doesn’t look like a dangerous seven thousand parsec combatant.
It looks like nothing more than an ordinary rock or a dead piece of timber sitting in a ditch.
You turn into a ghost on their screens.”
He let his energy flare back into life for a single brief heartbeat—just enough to rattle the sandstone pinnacles above Piccolo’s head with a sharp mechanical vibration—before locking the iron cage tight once more.
The boy Gohan let out a small, amazed gasp from his clearing, his yellow eyes wide as he looked at the lack of a green light around the warrior’s gloves.
“Control, martial artists,” Kallard said, his voice absolute.
“Not just raw physical muscle mass.
Let’s see your frames run the compression sequence.”
Tien took a deep step forward through the dust, his broad hands open as his alignment locked into a high-tier stance.
“Teach our spirits how to build the cage, Saiyan.
We’re clearing the pavement tonight.”
That was exactly the category of down-to-earth, worker response Kallard had been grinding his bones to hear from the group.
They spent the next six uninterrupted hours failing the drill completely.
Krillin got closest to resolving the compression line first, which didn’t surprise Kallard’s internal mind for a single second.
The small bald martial artist was an intensely practical, realistic fighter who didn’t possess a massive mountain of genetic ego to manage—he listened to the technical advice, he mapped the physical sensations of his ki well with a clean focus, and he adapted his muscles quickly because he knew the lesson carried an immediate survival value for his ledger.
Within three hours, he managed to drop his leaking static current down to a steady, quiet fifty-unit spark that barely threw a line on Bulma’s monitor screen.
Tien understood the underlying theoretical arithmetic of the compression sequence fastest of all, his three eyes tracking the movement of the energy waves with absolute clarity.
But his martial arts training had been calibrated through a very rigid, unyielding discipline that attempted to *force* the energy into submission using raw mental violence.
Every time he tried to slam the iron cage doors shut around his ki well…
his energy would flare back out against the bars with a loud concussive *pop*, throwing his balance off completely.
Yamcha absolutely hated the mechanical stillness required for the drill, his muscles twitching with a constant, restless impatience as the hot desert gale caked his hair in yellow dust.
He kept losing his grip on his valves within forty seconds, his active power rating flaring back up to its standard baseline every time his concentration drifted toward the laboratory table.
He only started to show a true improvement after Kallard dropped down into a low crouch beside his hip guard, comparing the suppression loop to a silent predatory wolf waiting motionless inside a thick thicket for the perfect geometric alignment before releasing the strike line.
The small psychic Chiaotzu possessed an immense amount of natural finesse, his internal energy pathways moving with a smooth liquidity that allowed him to drop his output with ease.
But his psychic abilities caked his ki in a very distinct, high-frequency electromagnetic texture that left a visible trail of gray noise on Brakka’s diagnostic meters even when his raw power numbers were completely flat.
The boy Gohan was an absolute engineering nightmare to manage across the clearing.
One single microsecond, his small four-year-old framework would turn completely invisible to Kallard’s sensing needle, his output dropping straight down to absolute zero potential by pure blind instinct.
The very next second, a small desert lizard would scramble out from beneath a red rock near his boots, his small frame would let out a panicked jump of surprise…
and his unrefined biological power level would instantly spike straight past three thousand units of raw concussive current, launching a massive wave of yellow dust twenty feet into the air lines.
Piccolo sat vertical on his sharp pinnacle rock through the entire six-hour shift, his arms crossed over his chest guards as he pretended to be completely completely indifferent to the sloppy brawler performance below his boots.
But Kallard’s sharp dark eyes caught the microscopic movements of the Namekian’s green fingers through the fabric of his cape—the demon king was actively, systematically replicating the exact internal compression loops Kallard was describing to the humans, his cold energy signature dropping down by three inches with every single pass.
He was learning the tools straight from the rafters.
## Act VI: The Night and the Scars
Near the hour of dusk, after the red sun had completely dipped behind the basin walls to plunge the desert into a cool, indigo twilight lines, Piccolo dropped down from his pinnacle rock with a silent fluidness, his heavy white boots landing two paces from Kallard’s left shoulder guard.
The other human martial artists were currently resting their exhausted frames around a small campfire forty yards away, Krillin attempting to suppress his spark down to a single digit while Yamcha kept making hideous facial contortions to break his focus lane.
“You’re spending a substantial amount of your maintenance hours teaching these weak human brutes a collection of dirty space port tricks, Kallard,” the Namekian hissed out low, his yellow eyes tracking the slow movement of the kid’s tail through the sand.
“They’re called functional survival tools, Piccolo,” Kallard said plainly, his fingers unbuckling his green shoulder guards to let his chest mesh breathe in the cool air lines.
“Tricks,” the demon king repeated, his green lips curling into a hard sneer.
“A real warrior doesn’t hide his potential current behind an iron fence line like a thief inside a shop.
He forces his enemy to experience the absolute mass of his blast point-blank.”
“And that specific category of proud military philosophy is exactly why your brother Goku is currently clearing a ledger line in the next world while my brother Raditz’s armored corpse is rotting in a ditch, Piccolo,” Kallard said, his voice a low primal rumble that had zero soft phrasing left hidden inside its contours.
“You can call them tricks all you want from the safety of your pinnacle rock, demon lord.
But those tricks are the only reason my skin is still attached to my bone marrow after ten years of running the rim lanes without an imperial fleet to back my play.
Weakness is an absolute operational metric in this galaxy.
Piccolo turned his tall green head slowly around, his yellow eyes locking straight into the kid’s face.
“You…
you genuinely believe these small human insects can become dense enough to alter the margins next year?”
“Yes,” Kallard said, his response immediate and absolute.
“They are weak.”
“They are exceptionally weak compared to what’s coming down the track, Piccolo,” Kallard said, his voice flat as iron.
“I won’t deliver a soft lie to your ears to make the evening taste better.
Base to base, Nappa can clear out Krillin, Yamcha, and Tien in less than three minutes of a brawler match without even opening his primary valves.
But being weak on a balance sheet doesn’t automatically translate to being completely useless in a ditch.
If a weak fighter knows how to suppress his signature to execute a clean blindfeint ambush loop, or if he knows how to coordinate his strike timing with your best technique…
he can buy your knuckles the exact microsecond of open guard lane you need to put a drill beam through the prince’s heart marrow.
That’s the math of the workspace.”
The Namekian growled low in his throat, his multi-jointed arms tightening over his chest as he evaluated the unyielding wall of logic caked into the hybrid’s posture.
“You…
you talk like a warrior who wasn’t born with an elite registry number caked into his lineage charts, space traveler.
Your coordination has the greasy smell of a worker who had to build his tools from scrap material.”
Kallard let out a short, hollow rasp through his teeth, his dark pupils fixed on the glittering white stars above the basin rim.
“I was registered as a low-class discard inside the breeding tank logs of Planet Vegeta, Piccolo.
In our race’s old command structures…
that rank meant you were mathematically caked into a destiny of being sent to a remote perimeter world to die clearing the local population for a governor’s budget allowance.
The generals believed the numbers on the slate were absolute.
They were completely, profoundly wrong about the machine’s capabilities.”
Piccolo looked down at the child Gohan, who had fallen fast asleep on a small wool blanket near the camp fire line, his small hand still clutching Chi-Chi’s written reading manifest sheet.
“And what about the brat?
His potential current is completely erratic.”
“He carries a massive amount of unrefined mass behind his ribs, Piccolo,” Kallard said softly, his voice dropping its brawler edge.
“But he also carries a terminal load of pure child’s fear.
You can’t run a standard infantry drill pass through his framework without checking the gauges first.”
“I know the size of his fear, hybrid,” the Namekian muttered, his yellow eyes narrowing.
“Then train both of them simultaneously, demon king,” Kallard said, turning his face to look straight into the lord’s eyes.
“Don’t go trying to beat the fear out of his muscles using raw violence and starvation inside a gulag shaft.
That specific training methodology doesn’t build a courageous protector for the ledger—it just cracks the internal structural stability of his container and leaves behind a permanent line of psychological damage.
Teach him how to coordinate his strikes *while* his heart rate is running hot.
Let him see that you’re a wall he can brace against when the sky turns red.”
For a long, heavy minute, Piccolo didn’t deliver a single syllable of a response, the cool desert wind moving his purple fabric with a slow whistling sound through the sandstone pillars.
Then, the demon lord let out a low grunt through his nose, his green body turning back toward the far ridge line lines.
“You…
you talk like a scrapper who experienced a substantial amount of that structural container damage himself during his childhood shift, Kallard.”
Kallard looked down at the deep, blackened branching white scars covering his forearms from the wrists straight up to his green armor joints—the permanent score marks left behind by the *Galaxy Breaker’s* limit-break four-times output pass inside the Veyruna clearing.
“I caked my own framework in an offensive amount of permanent system damage because I let my pride do the steering during a rough shift, Piccolo.
I’m spending this entire year ensuring the brat doesn’t have to pay that same invoice.”
The Namekian didn’t ask a single secondary question across the frequency.
He simply stepped his boots into the dark brush, vanishing back into the shadows of the sandstone pinnacle rocks with a silent fluidness that left the air lines clear.
## Act VII: The Archaeology of the Heart
At the hour of midnight, after the camp fire had completely died down into a small pile of glowing red charcoal embers, Bulma Briefs was still sitting flat on her wooden stool at the folding laboratory table, her blue hair tied back tightly in a messy ponytail as her fingers used her tiny tweezers to adjust a copper wire rail inside Raditz’s dismantled scouter module.
Brakka was sitting flat on his iron fuel box directly across from her line, a tiny manual oil can clicking between his titanium fingers as he helped her monitor the voltage degradation lines across her diagnostic screen.
The two of them had spent the last four hours locked into an intense, uninterrupted technical argument regarding the proper mathematical resistor values for an alien circuit array, their regular down-to-earth vocabulary sounding remarkably like a pair of old battlefield engineers who had just located a shared hobby inside a ditch.
Kallard stepped his combat boots slowly through the yellow dust dunes, his gray canvas cloak pulled tight over his shoulder guards to break the chill of the desert night wind as he stopped beside her workbench clearing.
“That specific configuration of a smile on your face lines worries my budget account completely, Bulma.
The electronics look exceptionally rude tonight.”
Bulma didn’t lift her blue eyes up from her magnifying lens for a single second, her tweezers executing a micro-inch adjustment along a copper lead wire.
“Good, scrapper boy.
It flatly should terrify your budget lines.
Your brother’s little face computer is an absolute piece of un-refined corporate garbage.
The internal programming language uses a completely ridiculous base-twelve system logic loop that makes absolutely zero sense for a human researcher.”
“My brother’s tech?” Kallard smirked out low, his tail lashing a soft circle behind his boots.
“I’re pretty sure I formally registered my name as being independent of the imperial command structures three rotations ago, ma’am.”
“You’re the closest living alien warhound standing within five parsecs of my laboratory table, congratulations, Ronin,” she jeered back, her blue eyes flashing with a bright, sarcastic arrogance as she hit the manual toggle switch with her tool.
“That technical parameter makes your account structurally responsible for every single piece of alien junk caked into my inventory.
Sit your broad shoulders down on that crate and talk plain to my ears about these transmitter valves.”
Brakka pointed his thick titanium thumb straight at her forehead clip, all four of his eyes wide with pure, unadulterated professional delight.
“That…
that is exactly the line of logical deduction I delivered to his ears three minutes ago, lady!
The kid’s framework is completely caked in financial liability!
Your processing speeds are magnificent!”
Kallard sat his broad body down heavily onto an empty wooden storage box across from her stool, his long tail wrapping securely around the base bolts as he leaned his forearms against the table edge.
The scouter lay spread across the clean wood face like a collection of broken alien jewelry—the cracked green silicon lens, the dented plastic ear mounting hooks, the tiny audio speaker diaphragms, and the high-frequency signal compression cell all caked in tiny grease smudges.
Bulma pointed her copper screwdriver straight toward the Signal unit core.
“This specific valve rail right here…
you’re entirely certain it ran an automated broadcast pass during the canyon duel?”
“The imperial infantry manuals explicitly mandate a permanent upload cycle during a high-tier biological displacement, Bulma,” Kallard explained plainly, his voice dropping into a low, quiet down-to-earth register.
“The second Raditz’s scouter resolved Piccolo’s combat power jumping past the twelve hundred mark…
the logic boards committed the file to the long-range sector satellite net.
It’s an automatic protocol designed to preserve the tactical data for the next vanguard detail.”
“How far across the star lanes does that transmission vector travel before the lag clears?” she asked, her pen writing a row of calculations into her technical notebook.
“It depends entirely on the alignment of the nearest regional relay towers and whether his paired division partners were actively monitoring the squad frequency line, ma’am,” Kallard said.
“I can’t deliver a flawless mathematical coordinate set to your ears because the deep lanes are caked in too much static gray noise.
I’re giving you the closest engineering guess my account possesses.”
Bulma dropped her tweezers flat onto the wood face, her blue eyes slowly lifting up to lock straight into his bare face through the yellow halogen light lines of the camp dome.
A soft, analytical expression of quiet curiosity touched her brow lines, her voice dropping its sharp, sarcastic corporate edge completely.
“You…
you use that word ‘likely’ and ‘engineering guess’ a hell of a lot across my table, Kallard.
I actually, deep-seatedly appreciate that specific parameter about your vocabulary.”
Kallard blinked his dark eyes once through the light, his muscles tensing up slightly beneath his tunic.
“What’s the meaning behind that phrase, Bulma?”
“Most of the martial arts boys who clear my father’s workshop docks spend their entire shift running a massive bluffing pass whenever they run into an engineering question they don’t possess the data for,” she said softly, her ponytail shifting in the wind.
“Yamcha, Krillin…
even Goku…
they just puff out their chests, bare their teeth, and pretend the machine is perfectly simple because their brawler egos refuse to admit that a database can be out of bounds for their knuckles.
But you…
you stand in the red dirt and say ‘I don’t know the absolute number’ right along with the best of our field researchers.
It’s an exceptionally clean piece of character design.”
Brakka barked out a sudden, thunderous cackle of pure amusement from his fuel box, his manual oil can clicking loudly.
“The kid only runs an honest inventory check because I spent three standard cycles slamming a heavy titanium crescent wrench across his face shield every time his brawler mouth attempted to deliver a piece of un-verified data to my ledger lines, lady!
His accuracy was earned through a substantial amount of bone-shattering physical training labor!”
Kallard looked mildly, structurally offended across the table, his tail lashing out a cloud of dust.
“I run an exceptionally precise bluff pass whenever a corporate slave trader is pointing a high-caliber anti-ship rail gun straight at my cockpit glass, old man.
That is a completely separate operational category designed for survival.”
“An entirely acceptable, certified business strategy for the outer ports, bounty boy,” Bulma laughed out, her tone sudden, bright, and completely unfair to his internal focus lines.
Kallard found himself staring straight into the brilliant blue depth of her pupils for one single, long second too many, his human soul catching the reflection of her smile against the dark glass of the camp monitors.
A sudden, dangerous warmth flared behind his chest plates that had absolutely nothing to do with his Saiyan ki well or his *Primal Instinct* form—it was a simple, grounded, and thoroughly human recognition of the incredible living heart sitting across his tools.
Bulma caught the line of his sight instantly, her blue eyelashes blinking once as a tiny shade of pink cleared her cheeks under the yellow halogen bulb glare, her screwdriver freezing between her fingers.
“What’s the technical displacement clearing those eyes of yours now, Ronin?” she asked, her voice dropping into a softer, more experimental cadence that didn’t possess a single drop of corporate sarcasm.
Kallard forced his gaze to cut sideways across the desert clearing, tracking the dim orange glow of the dying camp fire embers where Krillin was snoring loudly near a canvas sleeping bag.
“You’re…
you’re flatly not the specific category of a character template I had drafted inside my head before my ship cleared the atmospheric docks of this world, Bulma,” he whispered out quietly into the night wind.
The blue-haired heiress tilted her head at a sharp angle, her magnifying lens sliding an inch across the schematic paper as a sudden line of genuine curiosity locked onto his jaw.
“Oh?
Talk plain about the ledger, space traveler.
What exactly did your little spaceport database predict my spec sheet would look like when your boots hit the dirt?”
*Careful, scrapper.
Close the valves right now,* his human mind commanded, a sudden cold line of sweat running down his neck marrow.
He couldn’t go dropping a single syllable regarding the old manga volumes or the television screens he had read in his past life—he couldn’t tell her ears that he had expected a spoiled, hyper-fixated rich genius girl who spent her cycles screaming about her hair trim and screaming at a green monkey child inside a capsule car.
He couldn’t tell her that he knew her as the legendary first friend of the savior, the future mother of the timeline’s last hope, the woman who would one day stand two inches away from the teeth of full-scale planetary gods and scream her head raw without a single drop of fear caked into her voice.
He had to let the future stay behind the fence line.
He had to let her be a real, living, and completely un-scripted person sitting across his wooden workbench.
“I expected an exceptionally brilliant, loud, and thoroughly unyielding laboratory mind, Bulma,” Kallard said softly, his dark eyes turning back to look straight into her pupils with an absolute, un-vetted honesty.
“I didn’t expect to locate a heart that knew how to deliver a piece of genuine human kindness to a group of bleeding space ghosts who just dropped out of the stars into her backyard.
That’s a remarkably rare piece of engineering across this galaxy.”
Bulma went completely, structurally frozen on her wooden stool for two heavy breaths of the desert wind, her blue eyes wide as the raw mass of the compliment cleared her guard lane without a single warning ping from her defenses.
She looked down at the green plastic pieces of the scouter module caked in her palm, her thin fingers nervously fiddling with a tiny copper capacitor pins to hide the sudden, rapid acceleration of her heart rate indicators.
“I’m…
I’m flatly not always a kind research asset across the spreadsheet, Kallard,” she whispered out low, her voice dropping into her shirt collar fabric.
“Ask any of the logistics boys down at Capsule Corp—I possess a terminal template for a short temper, and I can be exceptionally selfish with my workshop layout when my project lines turn hot.”
“Every single working mechanic in this quadrant carries a terminal loading loop for a short temper when the grease hits the valves, ma’am,” Kallard said, a tiny smirk breaking through his beard trim.
“I caked my own visor in an offensive display of bad language during the Turles shootout last week.
It’s an approved operational trait for the senior staff.”
“I noticed the size of your temper during the canyon conversation, scrapper,” she jeered back softly, her blue eyes cutting back up to catch his smile through her ponytail strands, her face lines softening into a beautiful, un-vetted line of an open smile that didn’t have a single drop of armor left to wear.
“And you have a habit of running a massive, high-pressure execution pass through the air lines whenever a green eggplant attempts to cross your guard,” Kallard laughed out quietly.
“He called my family’s capsule technology a primitive piece of machinery, Ronin!
The protocol required an immediate high-caliber military retaliation pass to protect our market value!”
“The target was completely neutralized on the first exchange, ma’am.
Your delivery metrics were outstanding.”
Bulma tried her absolute best to force her lips back into a serious, professional laboratory sneer, but the sheer down-to-earth warmth of the moment broke her alignment completely, a short, bright, and thoroughly beautiful laugh escaping her throat to fill the quiet desert night clearing.
Kallard found himself tracking the sound of her laughter with a deep, un-exploded piece of peace that had been completely starved of expression since the day the red sky of Vegeta caught fire.
For the first time since his landing struts had caked the dirt of Earth…
the horizon felt remarkably easy to manage.
She leaned her broad shoulders back against her stool frame, her blue eyes studying the deep white branching scars caked into his bare forearm skin with a quiet, analytical softness.
“You…
you actually know how to listen to a person’s voice across a table, Kallard,” she whispered out low, her voice serious.
Kallard blinked his eyes once.
“What’s the calculation behind that phrase, Bulma?”
“Most of the martial arts boys who clear my circle spend their entire shift hearing the first half of my sentence, deciding within five parsecs that I’m just being a bossy, irritating civilian girl who doesn’t understand the glory of a brawler match, and tune my frequency out completely until a secondary fuel valve explodes across their workshop floorboards,” she said, her fingers tracing a circuit line in her notebook.
“They treat my mind like an auxiliary accessory code designed to pack their ration bags and fix their tracking radars.
But you…
your dark eyes follow the copper pins right along with my tweezers.
You treat my database like it possesses the absolute right of way across the pavement.”
“An engineer who refuses to monitor the data lines of a master researcher during a transformation phase…
is nothing more than a low-class piece of scrap iron waiting for a reclamation yard, Bulma,” Kallard said plainly, his voice absolute.
“You understand a substantial amount of cosmic logic that my knuckles can’t even sketch into the sand dunes.
Listening to your frequency is the only practical, useful choice my account can write on the slate tonight.”
The blue-haired heiress looked down at her small pocket tools, a quiet, un-vetted line of awareness clearing her brow as a small, invisible spark of a future connection finished locking into their shared matrix.
It wasn’t a standard, cheap piece of spaceport flirtation language line—it was a deep, grounded recognition of two master builders who had located a matching set of tracks inside a very dark and dangerous ditch.
Kallard felt the sudden physical transformation pass flaring through his internal senses, and his primitive brawler instinct immediately screamed at his gears to execute a high-speed tactical retreat back toward the safety of an asteroid field, an imperial firefight, or a high-gravity training bay corridor.
Those spaces were a hell of a lot simpler to manage with a left hook than the look clearing her face tonight.
Bulma saved his framework from a total system collapse by reaching down to slide her magnifying lens back over the scouter lens plates, her sharp corporate tone returning to her lips with a quick, professional click of her tongue.
“Well!
Great!
Keep your internal receivers locked onto my frequency then, bounty boy!
I am the senior command manager of this laboratory camp, and my schematics have a permanent habit of being mathematically correct on the first pass!”
Brakka shouted out loudly from across the dark residential dome clearing, his mechanical hand waving a fresh oil pipe through the night air lines.
“She…
she is completely right about the calculations, Ronin!
Her processing speed is pristine!
Stop wasting her battery life with your stupid brawler face and go check the auxiliary generator coils down in the ditch!”
Bulma turned her torso around instantly, her face wide with an open grin as she shouted back through the dark.
“Thank you for the verification, senior mechanic!
Your maintenance hours are formally approved for a bonus ration pouch tonight!”
Kallard broke out into a genuine, loud, and thoroughly down-to-earth roar of a laugh that shook his broad chest plates, his long brown tail lashing out a massive cloud of yellow dust as he stood up from his storage crate to stretch his sore back muscles.
For the first time in ten long cycles of running the empty spaces between the stars…
the laugh felt completely easy to clear from his throat.
The blue world was starting to write some remarkably fine code into his biography.
## Act VIII: The Moon and the Tea
At the hour of two in the morning, after the laboratory table lights had been manual-shut down to plunge the desert basin into a deep, silent indigo shadow caked in frost, Kallard stood entirely alone along the sharp northern lip of the sandstone canyon walls, his boots planted wide against the cold rock face.
Directly above his forehead, hanging bright and motionless against the black velvet void of the sky, was Earth’s moon.
The circular silver marble threw off a beautiful, clean white light that caked the desert sandstone in long gray shadows.
But to a warrior caked in the genetic heritage of Planet Vegeta…
that silver ball was easily the most dangerous, terrifyingly volatile piece of tactical machinery operating in the local solar system.
It carried an absolute biological execution code that could systematically rip the cerebral control lines clean out of his nervous system if his dark pupils track the light frequencies for too many un-shielded seconds.
His thick brown furry tail moved in a slow, careful horizontal wave behind his lower spine, its tip dragging lightly through the sand grates to help his muscles balance his framework against the dropping midnight temperature.
Brakka’s heavy maintenance boots made a slow, rhythmic clicking sound against the granite rocks behind his shoulder, the old four-eyed technician walking out from the shadow of the residential domes carrying two steaming clay mugs of a hot fluid.
He stopped his broad frame two paces from the kid’s arm guard, extending one of the clay cups toward his leather glove loop with a low, gravelly rasp.
Kallard reached out his fingers, carefully accepting the warm clay vessel into his palm, the heat clearing the rime from his knuckles.
“What specific chemical compound did your workshop pump into this vessel, grease goblin?”
“A standard batch of local mountain herbal tea leaves, kid,” the old alien growled out low, his lower pair of eyes checking the baseline gauges on his wrist screen.
Kallard took a slow, experimental sip from the brim, his bearded jaw twisting up into a sharp knot of profound physical disgust.
“This…
this compound tastes exactly like an independent mixture of industrial drilling lubricant, old battery acid, and boiled moss scrapings, old man.
Your recipe logs are completely fraudulent.”
“It is a mathematically perfect piece of organic mountain agriculture, you uncultured little brawler boy!” Brakka snapped back instantly, his titanium fingers clicking against his own cup as he took a deep swallow.
“It contains an immense amount of high-density iron nutrients designed specifically to repair your caved-in rib muscles after a six-hour suppression pass!
Drink the current or I’ll charge your personal allowance account triple for the catering labor!”
Kallard managed a tiny, quiet smirk beneath his lip visor line, his shoulders dropping as the hot fluid warmed his stomach core.
They stood together in an absolute, comfortable engineering silence for five long miles of space, their four eyes watching the cold wilderness of the stars spinning above the basin rim.
Then, the old technician cleared his throat with a sharp mechanical rasp, his upper pair of eyes cutting sideways to track the green reflection clearing the kid’s profile.
“You…
you possess a substantial amount of deep-seated personal affection for that blue-haired capsule lady sitting down at the laboratory table, don’t you, bandana boy?”
Kallard nearly choked on his next swallow of the moss tea, his chest plates tightening up with an immediate operational panic as his tail lashed out against a sandstone block with a loud metallic *thud*.
“I…
I possess an immense amount of professional engineering respect for her reverse-engineering metrics, Brakka!
That was the only parameter I entered into the logs!”
“That is flatly, structurally not the specific category of a transaction line I was accusing your eyes of running down in that clearing, you muscle-brained little scrapper!” the old man cackled out low, his gray ears flaring bright pink through the dark.
“I’ve been monitoring your internal sensing needle for ten cycles, boy!
You look down at her tweezers like she’s the one who personally invented the concept of planetary gravity loops, and then spent her afternoon insulting the blueprint specifications just to keep your attention line hot!”
Kallard kept his dark pupils fixed wide against the silver face of the moon, his teeth grinding together until his jaw bones ached.
“I didn’t clear the atmospheric gates of this world to go tracking a personal relationship loop across the spreadsheet, old man.
That project is completely out of bounds for my ledger.”
“No one standing on this ridge accused your stupid brain cells of intentionally drafting an emotional layout plan beforehand, kid,” Brakka muttered softly, his goggle lenses reflecting the white starlight.
“You don’t possess enough organizational capacity to clear a common warehouse layout beforehand, let alone a feelings pass.
But the current is flowing through your wire terminals anyway.
You can’t ignore the displacement meters.”
Kallard let out a long, ragged breath through his nose, his hand tightening around the clay mug until the raw pottery grain creaked under his physical mass.
“The…
the whole situation is completely, profoundly complicated caked behind the fence line, Brakka,” he whispered out low into the frost wind.
“Yeah, boy,” the old alien growled out gently, his mechanical forearm making a quiet whirring sound as he crossed his limbs.
“Living biological people usually carry an offensive amount of structural complications inside their database lines.
That’s why I prefer working on a dry hyperdrive manifold—a copper valve doesn’t start crying or baring its teeth when your adjustments turn tight.”
“She was Goku’s very first childhood friend clearing the tracks on this world, Brakka,” Kallard said, his voice dropping into an ancient, tired brawler rasp that had zero soft phrasing left.
“Every single martial artist sleeping down in those canvas tents is currently carrying a terminal load of pure, un-shielded grief for an orange brother who got drilled through the heart marrow three days ago.
I am nothing more than a complete stranger who dropped out of the stars into their canyon—a space hunter who carries the exact same long tail and the exact same biological template as the monster who kidnapped their boy and brought the execution pods to their gates.
They barely trust my knuckles to clear the pavement during a daylight drill.”
He paused, his fingers tracing the ancient geometric lines of the green jade stone wind charm hidden beneath his tunic lining.
“And…
and I carry a massive database of hidden historical timeline logs inside my head that I can’t deliver to their ears without short-circuiting their entire spirit, old man,” Kallard whispered, his eyes narrowing.
“I know exactly who dies on Namek, I know which city gets vaporized by the android systems, and I know how many thousands of parsecs of blood are waiting down the track.
Walking through their kitchen quarters pretending I’m just a normal scrapper…
feels like a massive piece of fraudulent engineering.”
Brakka stood perfectly vertical against the frost wind for a long, heavy minute, his unblinking eyes evaluating the deep-seated emotional structural fatigue caked into the young Saiyan’s broad back.
Then, the old four-eyed technician reached out his heavy mechanical arm, his titanium knuckles delivering a single, firm, and thoroughly solid thump straight across the center of Kallard’s green armor shoulder guard with a sharp hydraulic ring of his joint.
“Then don’t you go wasting your processing speeds attempting to live your shift inside a written future script that hasn’t even cleared the factory gates yet, Kallard,” the old mechanic growled out low, his gravelly voice absolute and caked in a bone-deep paternal wisdom.
“If your brawler brain cells are too terrified of the prophecy logs to look at her face…
then shut the database window down completely and focus your boots exclusively on the person who’s currently sitting across your wooden table tonight.
Use who you are right now in the dirt.
Not the ghost you survived on Vegeta, and certainly not the legend you’re terrified of failing on Earth.
Just you.
A useful, stubborn scrapper carrying a wrench.”
Kallard turned his face slowly around to track the old man’s profile, a tiny, faint line of a genuine smile breaking through his beard trim.
“That…
that specific line of tactical philosophy sounds remarkably like a piece of data you delivered to my ears years ago, old man.
Back when I woke up with my wrists caked in iron cuffs inside your workshop ravine.”
“I am an elderly certified senior technician, you uncultured little scrapper!” Brakka cackled out loudly, his gray ears twitching with pride as he marched his broad frame back toward the residential dome companionway.
“I possess the absolute legal right to repeat my favorite pieces of operational advice whenever my account requires a clean look!
Now finish your battery acid tea and clear off this ridge before the frost turns mean on my joints!”
Kallard watched the old alien’s leather coat vanish back into the shadows of the silver capsule shelters, the heavy iron hatch sliding shut behind his heels with a final pneumatic *thud-lock* that left the air lines clear.
## Act IX: The Year to Bleed
Kallard turned his face back around to look straight into the vast, open, and completely un-shielded star field spinning above the blue planet’s horizon.
Twelve months.
The preparation year was officially entering its execution phase down on the spreadsheet, and the size of the task waiting for his knuckles was entirely, profoundly monumental.
He had a single year to make Krillin’s body mass fast enough to dodge an elite executioner’s blade.
He had a year to make Tien’s three eyes sharp enough to resolve an invisible energy feint mid-flight.
He had a year to keep Yamcha from mistaking a short burst of brawler confidence for an actual piece of structural durability before his chest plates caved inward.
He had a year to help the four-year-old child Gohan survive the terrifying weight of his own ancestral power level without letting his internal container crack open to reveal a broken spirit.
He had a year to push Piccolo’s demonic pride past its boundaries without turning every single training conversation into a full-scale regional shootout.
He had a single, short year to turn a collection of independent, soft-hearted human martial artists into a single, unyielding, and thoroughly caked defensive combat machine that could hold the gate when the sky opened up to drop the prince’s pod into the dirt.
Twelve months sounded like an immense amount of time to an ordinary civilian laborer running a regular shift.
But to a warrior who had watched the Frieza Force clear out an entire system in less than ten seconds of a fleet pass…
the year felt like nothing more than a single, breathless microsecond that was ticking down toward a terminal zero potential.
He couldn’t rely on the safety lines of the old canon script anymore.
His landing gear had already altered the alignment of the board simply by touching down on the beach—he had pushed Piccolo’s parameters, he had hard-wired a long-range wireless net into the laboratory camp, and he had caked his own tail into the wind stones’ path line.
The future was a wide-open, un-shielded canyon pit tonight, and if his knuckles got lazy or his discipline dropped for a single shift…
the good people sleeping down in those canvas shelters would be turned into a cloud of white ash before the turn of the afternoon.
Kallard slowly closed his eyes beneath the starlight, his right hand contracting into a heavy, unyielding fist that popped his knuckles like a series of small blaster discharges through the frost.
He wasn’t going to deliver a single word of prophecy to their ears.
He wasn’t going to cheat their individual choices into pre-programmed shapes they hadn’t selected through their own sweat.
But he was going to grind their bones through the sandstone basin until their cell walls remembered the absolute notation keys of survival.
He would nudge their parameters, he would warn their receivers with an extreme professional caution, and he would make their frameworks a hell of a lot harder to kill with every single rotation shift that cleared the clock.
And maybe…
somewhere in the middle of all that red smoke and hot sand…
he would finally discover exactly what kind of a man the blue planet Earth could make out of a low-class Saiyan ghost who had finally dropped his mask into the dirt.
Brakka bumped the side of the iron airlock door panel from across the dark camp clearing, his voice a low gravelly rasp through the radio net.
“Get your boots inside the hatch lines and go to sleep, kid.
The morning shift turns hot in exactly four hours.”
Kallard opened his dark pupils, his eyes looking straight into the white glare of the moon one final time before he turned his back on the stars, his boots moving smoothly down the sandstone path toward the residential dome.
“In a single minute, Dad,” he whispered out to the wind.
“The line is entered.”
“Your minutes are an absolute piece of fraudulent engineering data, boy!” the old technician growled back through the speaker mesh.
“The oil gauges don’t lie!”
Kallard managed a real, quiet laugh through his beard trim as the heavy silver capsule door slid shut behind his tattered cloak with a final pneumatic *thud-lock*, sealing the cabin tight against the desert frost.
Far beyond the blue-and-white atmosphere layers of the planet Earth, floating deep within the frozen, unmapped silence of the eastern hyperspace lanes, two small white spherical transport pods were currently spinning slowly around their primary coordination gyros, their automatic steering systems locked onto a single, remote radial coordinate point.
But down in the dark dirt of the basin…
the campfire embers were quiet, the researchers were resting across their spreadsheets, and for the first time in ten long cycles of surviving the fire…
the Saiyan bounty hunter Ronin wasn’t running the dark lanes alone.
He had a family holding the handles alongside his knuckles, and the pavement was officially open for work.