Chapter 17: The woman who took apart his ship

## Act I: The Adorable Insult

Bulma Briefs took one single look at the *Wayfarer* and said the absolute worst possible combination of syllables Kallard had ever heard in his two lives.

“This ship is completely adorable.”Full novel: Dragon ball: Primal instinct — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠

Kallard stood frozen on the concrete floorboards of the hangar bay, his broad arms crossed tightly over his black chest armor, his fingers twitching against his green trim.

He stared at her profile through his visor as if her mouth had just experienced a total systemic processor failure.

Brakka froze halfway down the primary boarding ramp, his organic left hand holding a heavy, grease-covered hydraulic pressure coupling, his mechanical right arm locked mid-air like a crane whose main power line had been violently cut.

The old four-eyed technician looked exactly like a proud veteran merchant who had just had his ancestors, his entire tool workshop, and his favorite recipe for protein soup insulted inside the same sentence.

The *Wayfarer* sat resting in the middle of one of Capsule Corp’s private research hangars—a colossal, pristine white dome caked in polished metallic tiles that made the ship look remarkably out of place.

The black-and-green hull was deeply scored and gouged by dozens of old scars from deep-space bounty extractions, pirate rail-gun fire, close-quarters asteroid scrapes, half-successful stealth modifications, and a small handful of emergency landing incidents that Brakka still flatly refused to categorize as “crashes” inside the logbooks.

The ship’s lower stabilizers angled slightly downward in their rest position, their hydraulic fluid emitting a low, hot *hiss-hiss* as the sub-light engines slowly cooled down from their atmospheric entry burn.

The outer hull plating had been patched, welded, and reinforced with mismatched alloy sheets so many times over the last ten cycles that Kallard sometimes secretly thought the cutter was less an actual transport ship and more a flying multi-faction argument held together by pure spite and old engineering tags.

“Adorable” was not a single digit on the spreadsheet he would have utilized to describe their home.

The old mechanic descended the remaining steel ramp steps with a slow, deliberate click-clank of his boots, his wide mouth twisting into a flat line of pure, unadulterated professional outrage as his four eyes locked onto the blue-haired girl.

“Say that specific word to my ear clips one more time, little lady,” Brakka growled out low, his white hair mane bristling against his leather collar.

Bulma stood three paces from the nose cone, a thin digital research tablet held in her left hand, a heavy steel tool case resting loosely against her hip joint.

She didn’t display a single millimeter of survival fear as she looked up into the giant four-eyed alien’s face, her blue eyes wide with an absolute, unyielding scientific confidence.

“I said the ship is adorable, mechanic,” she repeated plainly, her voice sharp and down-to-earth as she stepped closer to the primary intake manifold.

Brakka’s upper pair of eyes narrowed into two tight points of yellow light, his mechanical joint letting out a sharp hydraulic whir.

“This specific infantry cutter has systematically outrun three full squadrons of border outlaws, an imperial Frieza Force patrol scout cruiser, four high-priced bounty execution details, one remarkably confused Galactic Patrolman who thinks his cape makes him fast, and a full-scale digital machine parasite that attempted to eat an entire asteroid colony in the outer rim lanes!”

Bulma walked right past his mechanical elbow without a single blink, her boots making a light snapping sound against the polished floorboards as she began to circle the lower belly of the ship.

“Uh-huh.

Sure it did, old man.”

“It has survived direct capital ship cannon fire, three interior ion storms that fried our primary navigation boards, a dozen bad docking bay entries managed by low-class port brokers, and the entire weight of this kid’s stupid, reckless brawler personality!” Brakka yelled back, gesturing his heavy wrench straight toward Kallard’s bandana line.

“Impressive maintenance record,” Bulma said casually, reaching out her thin hand to tap her bare knuckles flat against the side of the *Wayfarer’s* reinforced titanium thruster housing.

*CLINK.*

The metal threw off a dull, heavy ring that caked the space in silence.

“But look at the layout,” she continued, her finger tracing a crooked welding seam that Brakka had finished executing during their standby cycle near the moon.

“It’s compact, overmodified, intensely stubborn, heavily patched down the center rail, and clearly held together by a senior mechanic who loves the system entirely too much to admit that the factory’s original blueprints were completely flawed from the start.

It’s an absolute miracle of a junk pile.

So yes.

Adorable.”

Brakka stood vertical in the dirt for three heavy seconds, his wide mouth opening up to deliver a massive string of spaceport curse words, closing it flat, and opening it right back up again as his internal data loops ran an absolute error pass.

He turned his broad gray-blue face around slowly to look at Kallard, his shoulders dropping.

“Ronin.

I hate her.

I hate her whole genealogy sheet.”

Kallard didn’t uncross his arms, a small line of a genuine smirk breaking through his beard trim beneath his visor.

“No, you don’t, old man.

You’re just running hot.”

“I hate how quickly my processing units are forcing me to respect her reverse-engineering metrics, boy!” the technician spat out, his lower eyes dropping to track her tool case.

“That parameter is a hell of a lot worse for my ledger than an imperial extraction pass!

It’s a total loss of my professional dignity!”

Bulma smirked broadly without bothering to turn her head back around from her tablet screen.

“I heard that syllable, gray-blue.

My ears are perfectly calibrated.”

“You were structurally meant to hear it, lady!” Brakka muttered back, his fingers clicking against his tool belt loops as he marched toward a nearby workspace bench.

## Act II: The Kingdom of Domes

The central compound of Capsule Corp was completely, profoundly separate from any category of an industrial port facility Kallard had cleared across the outer systems of the rim.

That parameter was starting to turn into a substantial problem for his internal navigation logic.

He had caked the general layout of the facility into his head years ago, back when his soul inhabited a fragile human frame on a distant world where these structures were nothing more than clean ink lines drawn on a manga page.

In those old records, Capsule Corp was just a collection of round blue dome buildings, a repository for impossible tech configurations, the birthplace of Bulma’s legendary genius, and the home of an eccentric, cheerful family that somehow managed to live right at the absolute center of cosmic history without ever displaying a single drop of real, grounded respect for how entirely ridiculous their situation was.

But the real, tangible reality caked into the dirt of West City was a hell of a lot stranger than an old animation reel.

Capsule Corp felt less like a standard commercial manufacturing company and more like a full-scale independent kingdom of inventions that had formally declared a multi-quadrant war on normal architectural parameters.

Massive, interconnected rounded white and blue structures stretched across miles of a huge private compound, surrounded by perfectly manicured green lawns, high-energy research laboratories, enormous storage hangars, private automated speeder lanes, tropical greenhouse gardens, and open weapons testing fields that ran straight up to the city limits.

Large logistics droids rolled past their boots on smooth rubber tracks, carrying crates of compressed raw mineral materials.

Group details of human engineers wearing identical blue-and-white research uniforms stood around in the walkways, arguing over complex holographic circuit diagrams that floated in the air lines.

A small, floating automated delivery drone rocketed past a row of palm trees, its steering gyro letting out a sudden, high-pitched mechanical whine before it nearly slammed straight into a concrete light pole.

The machine paused mid-air, let out a short apology text in a remarkably pleasant, recorded female voice, and then immediately pivoted twenty degrees to the left to crash violently straight into the center of a wide stone fountain display.

Kallard watched the machine splash into the water grates, his dark pupils steady behind his green visor tint, and realized he liked the complete chaos of the layout almost immediately.

It possessed an immense amount of heart.

Brakka, on the other hand, distrusted the entire compound on pure, unyielding professional principle.

“The…

the whole facility is running on entirely too much un-shielded consumer luxury current, Ronin,” the old alien growled out low, his gray ears dropping low against his white mane.

“A port facility should smell clearly of industrial grease, boiling zinc, and low-voltage diesel oil line leaks.

This place smells like fresh flowers and high-priced floor wax.

It’s an absolute trap for a working scrapper.”

Dr.

Brief had met their boots at the primary hangar entrance doors, wearing a long, wrinkled white laboratory coat, a pair of ancient checkered house slippers caked in grass clippings, and a perpetually calm, completely unfazed smile that looked like it had survived three separate planetary wars without losing its alignment.

A small, sleek black cat with a bright gold collar—Scratch—sat motionless on his left shoulder guard like a senior logistics supervisor monitoring an invoice pass.

“So you’re the independent alien technician who ran the modifications on that sub-light drive core, then?” Dr.

Brief had said, his voice a slow, friendly chuckle as he took a long drag from a small wooden pipe, his eyes hidden behind a thick pair of round spectacles.

Brakka had stopped his clanking boots three paces from the old man’s slippers, his four eyes moving down to track the cat, then shifting slowly back up to evaluate the oil stains on the white lab coat collar.

“So you’re the local planetary genius who hard-wired the spatial compression loops into those tiny metal capsules, are you, old timer?”

Dr.

Brief had nodded his head cheerfully, his hand reaching up to scratch the black cat behind its pointed ears.

“Sometimes, traveler.

When the project lines aren’t running too slow on the drafting table.

It’s mostly just a hobby layout for the weekends.”

The two master builders had stood there in the center of the clean concrete floorboards, staring straight into each other’s eye sets for five long, silent seconds of pure, un-vetted analytical calculations, the wind from the cooling *Wayfarer* engines moving their hair lines.

Then, Dr.

Brief had taken the pipe out of his mouth, pointing the stem toward a heavy iron security door at the back of the bay.

“You want to clear your boots through my primary anti-gravity development room, mechanic?

I’ve got a three-stage compression coil spread across the bench that’s currently giving my technicians a substantial amount of feedback static along the rail.”

Brakka’s deep-seated professional suspicion had caved inward like a sheet of cheap tin armor under an artillery strike, all four of his eyes flaring bright with an immediate, white-hot engineering hunger.

“I…

I would flatly rather clear that room than collect an eighteen thousand credit bounty premium from a corporate marshal, old timer!

Lead the track!

Let’s check the wire terminals!”

And that was exactly how Kallard had lost his primary senior staff mechanic for nearly four hours of a daylight shift.

By the time he managed to track the old alien down again through the winding corridors of the third dome layer, Brakka and Dr.

Brief were standing side-by-side over an open, dismantled anti-gravity capsule engine manifold, their fingers covered in dark graphite lubricant as they spoke to each other in a rapid, completely incomprehensible technical language that sounded like two droids running a high-frequency cross-talk protocol.

The little black cat Scratch had migrated completely off the doctor’s coat to sit flat on top of Brakka’s primary mechanical shoulder joint, its tail purring against the titanium gears without a single drop of fear.

Bulma was standing five rungs up on a portable aluminum maintenance ladder directly above their helmets, a heavy socket spanner held in her gloved hand as she screamed down into the engine bay.

“You two old regulatory relic-hunters are completely overcomplicating the secondary stabilizer issue!

The voltage drop isn’t coming from the compression rail joint!

It’s an absolute baseline alignment error inside the primary software logic gate!

Short the terminal wire right now and let the loop clear!”

Kallard stood near the door frame, his hand resting loose against his belt utility loops as he listened to the shouting matches.

He didn’t understand the exact mathematical principles governing the capsule tech—his past life had been caked in simple literature and office spreadsheets, and his current life was caked in brawler survival metrics—but he understood enough from their cadence to realize that the planet Earth was flatly not a primitive backwater world.

Not in the ways that truly mattered for a long-range war ledger.

The planet was simply uneven in its development cycle.

That was a completely separate operational category.

The local populations hadn’t built grand interstellar star empires, they didn’t possess a fleet of planet-destroying dreadnought battleships, and they didn’t have a single scouter relay network monitoring their sky lanes.

But a twenty-year-old human girl could look at a piece of classified imperial military hardware she had never encountered before and start systematically insulting the factory layout within ten minutes of clearing the casing.

An old man in house slippers could disassemble a deep-space sub-light cutter drive within an afternoon and map out five separate engineering improvements that most mechanics in the outer port hubs would need three weeks of diagnostic scans just to approach safely.

The local capsule technology compressed physical matter across dimensional lines in a way that Kallard still privately refused to categorize as anything other than high-grade magical sorcery caked in corporate commercial branding.

The planet was completely behind the fence line when it came to the logistics of galactic warfare.

But in the raw, unrefined territory of pure human invention?

Earth was an exceptionally dangerous variable to drop into a cosmic board.

## Act III: The Blueprints of the Core

Bulma slid down the aluminum rails of the maintenance ladder with a fast, practiced fluidness, her boots landing lightly on the concrete floorboards directly in front of Kallard’s chest plates.

She wiped a fresh streak of dark engine oil across her cheek with her sleeve, her blue eyes wide as she held her tablet out toward his visor line.

“Your ship needs a complete suite of structural upgrades, bounty boy,” she said, her voice business-like.

Brakka barked out loudly from the interior of the engine bay, his four arms wrestling with a primary coolant pipe.

“Your face plates need a complete structural upgrade, research assistant!

Leave my manifold lines alone!”

Bulma turned her torso slightly to shout back over her shoulder without losing her aim on Kallard’s dark face.

“Your primary coolant lines are currently running on a specification sheet that’s older than my dad’s worst puns, gray-blue!

They’re an absolute biological hazard to the hangar deck!”

Dr.

Brief chuckled slowly from behind his spectacles, his fingers using a small file to clean a copper pin casing.

“Now, Bulma…

my puns are completely timeless assets for the company layout.

Everyone knows the inventory stays stable.”

The black cat Scratch let out a sharp meow from the old alien’s shoulder joint.

Bulma pointed her finger straight toward the fur.

“Thank you, Scratch!

At least the supervisor understands the parameters of a bad joke!

Someone around here has to maintain the standards!”

Kallard looked down at the blue lines flashing across her digital tablet screen, his voice a low, gravelly rasp beneath his mask.

“Talk plain about the metrics, Bulma.

What specific category of alterations are your father and you planning to write onto my ship’s slate?”

The brilliant blue-haired girl took a slow step closer to his armor, her finger swiping across the glass face to bring up a fresh row of architectural drawings caked in high-end Capsule Corp specifications.

“We’re looking to install a better multi-phase shield cycling array to manage high-caliber plasma fire, a set of improved atmosphere seal response valves along your cockpit seams, a much cleaner navigation interface board that doesn’t require a mechanic to scream at the dashboard to calculate a hyperdrive jump, an emergency automated medical backup tank caked into your lower cabin deck…

and a dedicated high-gravity training chamber if your account allows us to reinforce the primary support beams inside your lower cargo storage bay.”

Kallard went completely, structurally vertical in his boots, his dark pupils narrowing into two sharp needles of absolute, unadulterated focus behind his lens line.

His heart let out a sudden, heavy thud against his ribs.

*A gravity chamber.*

He looked at her face through his green tint, his voice dropping into a lower register.

“A gravity training room?

You’re designing that system inside my cargo bay?”

Bulma tapped her pen against the tablet glass, her blue eyes tracking his reaction with a sharp line of approval.

“You delivered a massive string of data during our camp fire conversation down in the desert basin, Kallard.

You said the biological structures of a Saiyan warrior are engineered to adapt and grow exponentially stronger whenever their muscles are forced to operate under harsher, higher-density atmospheric environmental conditions.”

“I told your ears that a heavy planetary gravity loop can help condition the body’s internal ki pathways if the training rotations are managed with an extreme amount of professional caution, Bulma,” Kallard said, his voice level.

“I didn’t say it was a safe toy to install inside a logistics cutter.”

“Same difference on the spreadsheet, brawler boy,” she said, her smirk returning to her lips.

“It is flatly, structurally not the same difference for my health logs, researcher.”

“Close enough for my development parameters,” she sniffed.

Brakka slid his broad gray-blue frame out from beneath the capsule engine bay using a small automated hover-creeper board, his four arms covered in black grease up to his shoulder joints as he sat up sharply.

“No!

Absolutely, profoundly, and non-negotiably no, Ronin!

Do not let this crazy blue-haired laboratory scrapper write that specific project code onto our maintenance logs!

The conversation is completely locked behind the fence!”

Kallard cut his dark pupils down to track the old mechanic’s line.

“What’s the calculation behind your panic today, old man?”

Brakka pointed a heavy titanium crescent wrench straight toward the kid’s chin, all four of his eyes wide with an absolute, serious paternal intensity.

“Do not go putting on that specific interested brawler face line for her tablet, boy!

That high-gravity chamber is precisely the location where common sense and structural logic go to get violently punched to death for the sake of a larger number!

She can build the dangerous thing, Kallard!

Her mind doesn’t possess a built-in safety regulator loop!

She’s going to turn our lower bilge into an absolute execution yard!”

Bulma crossed her broad arms over her chest, her jaw setting into a hard line of academic defiance.

“I can build the system to handle up to ten times Earth’s normal gravity baseline without a single drop of structural degradation along the primary hull plates, mechanic!

My calculations are flawless!”

“I know your calculations can build the monster room, lady!” the technician growled back, his white mane bristling as he stood up from his board.

“That is the absolute depth of my professional concern today!

She can build the execution chamber, Kallard!

Look at his eyes—he’s already calculating how many thousands of units he can pump into his muscles if he turns the gravity dial up until his bones turn to powder!”

Kallard tried his absolute best to force his facial muscles to remain flat and neutral behind his visor, but the sheer, undeniable reality of Brakka’s calculation made a small line of a smirk break through his lips anyway.

The old alien knew his internal brawler patterns entirely too well.

Space had turned his framework strong, sure, but his growth over the last ten cycles had been chaotic, un-shielded, and entirely dependent on surviving high-margin firefights and desperate canyon extractions inside the rim.

He had built his power level out of pure raw survival necessity rather than a structured, clinical training methodology.

A controlled, high-density gravity chamber installed straight into his own lower deck cabins…

would alter the geometry of his preparation completely.

And not just for his own knuckles.

When Kakarot finally cleared the gates of the next world and dropped back down into the living timeline…

a gravity training room would be exactly the category of an industrial monster machine he would use like a complete lunatic to build his *Kaioken* limits.

Piccolo could utilize the heavy air lines to push his demon endurance past its current thresholds.

The boy Gohan could train his muscle groups in safe, highly precise incremental steps without needing to be dragged into a freezing mountain wilderness by a demon lord who didn’t know how to write a letter.

Even the human martial artists—Krillin, Tien, Yamcha—could use the room to condition their bodies until their bones were dense enough to survive a direct blow from an imperial vanguard enforcers’ boot plate.

But he had to maintain an extreme amount of professional caution with the configuration.

Forcing too much potential current through a frozen framework too fast wouldn’t build a stronger warrior for the ledger—it would simply snap the internal container clean in half and leave behind a permanent line of system damage.

He had learned that specific lesson the hard way during his four-times limit break pass against Turles.

“What specific safety override systems are your father and you designing into the chamber logic, Bulma?” Kallard asked, his dark pupils steady behind his visor.

The blue-haired girl’s expression underwent an immediate, sharp shift from corporate defiance to a quiet, clinical line of professional approval.

It wasn’t the excited look of a kid who had just been given permission to build a dangerous toy—it was the deep, grounded respect of a master researcher who had resolved that the brawler standing across her table actually knew how to read a design manual.

The sudden softening of her blue eyes did something remarkably weird and hot to the center of Kallard’s chest cage, his pulse thudding against his collar.

“Three separate layers of automated shutdown overrides, Kallard,” she said softly, her finger swiping her tablet screen to bring up the wiring schematics.

“A manual physical kill-switch caked into the interior wall plates, a remote override console managed from my primary laboratory terminal on the outside, and a continuous biometric scanning net caked into the ceiling lights.

If your internal vital indicators, your heart rate, or your blood pressure cells spike past a dangerous survival threshold…

the anti-gravity core automatically cuts the potential current and drops the chamber baseline flat back down to one-G before your bone marrow can fracture.”

“Define the exact mathematical boundaries of a ‘safe survival threshold’ for a Saiyan warhound’s biology, Bulma,” Kallard said, leaning his arm against a hangar pillar.

“Our cell density doesn’t match a human’s baseline sheet.”

“I can’t define the absolute numbers for the software logic gate until my machines run a full-scale biological passport scan through your framework, bounty boy,” she said, her blue eyes looking straight into his bare pupils.

“I need the core metrics.”

Brakka stood up to his full six-foot height all at once, his four arms locking into an absolute defensive cross brace in front of the kid’s armor plates.

“No!

Absolutely, profoundly, and non-negotiably no needles, no electronic scanner probes, and zero experimental human machinery touching a single hair on my idiot’s scalp until my own tools have systematically vetted every single digit of your software code, lady!

I refuse to run the risk!”

Kallard cut his dark pupils down to track the old mechanic’s massive gray shoulders, a dry smirk on his lips.

“Your idiot, grease goblin?

I don’t remember entering that specific title onto my asset registry logbook.”

Brakka paused mid-breath, his gray ears flaring bright pink through his white mane as his four eyes blinked in unison.

He cleared his throat with a loud, aggressive mechanical rasp, his face turning away toward the engine room doors.

“I…

I utilized the term in a strictly limited, professional asset management sense, you uncultured little brawler boy!

You’re a high-priced pieces of machinery that I’ve spent ten cycles maintaining with my own tools!

That configuration makes you my professional idiot!

The vocabulary is perfectly caked in logic!”

Bulma managed a very small, remarkably soft line of a genuine smile across her lips as she looked at the old alien’s bristling mane, her blue eyes turning back to track Kallard’s bare face.

“Fine, senior mechanic.

I can respect a worker’s boundaries.

You can stand right alongside my stool and supervise every single digit of the biometric scan pass myself when the time comes.

Does that balance your ledger parameters?”

Brakka squinted all four of his eyes down into narrow points of yellow light, his multi-jointed fingers clicking against his leather belt loops as he ran a calculation pass.

“You…

you surrendered your position on that protocol entirely too fast for a corporate researcher, lady.

There’s a hidden technical trap caked into your transaction.”

“I want access to the interior blueprints of that sub-light drive manifold caked inside your cutter bilge, old man,” she grinned broadly, her screwdriver pointing straight toward his nose clip.

“I know an absolute masterpiece of alien custom engineering when my gauges resolve the frequency.

Let’s trade the data lines.”

Brakka let out a long, thunderous roar of a laugh that shook the hangar dome rafters, his gray face completely losing its hostile mask as he extended his thick organic left hand toward her slim glove.

“I knew it!

An absolute data hunter caked in engineering greed!

I respect your character specs, girl!

Let’s go open up the primary terminal lines!”

Kallard looked between the two of them, his fingers hooking into his utility loops.

“Hold your sticks, master builders.

Let’s establish the boundaries of the workspace before the welding torches turn hot: you are flatly, structurally not taking my home apart piece by piece to clear your curiosity metrics, Bulma.”

Bulma turned her face back around to track his visor line, her brilliant blue eyes wide with an absolute, innocent amusement that made his chest plates turn hot.

“Not all at once, brawler boy.

I’m a certified professional.”

“No means zero panels, Bulma.”

“Can I open up a single auxiliary circuit box along the port-side wing rail?” she pleaded, her voice dropping into a soft, experimental register that didn’t have a single drop of corporate sarcasm left hidden inside its contours.

Brakka muttered from the creep board, “She already dismantled three of our primary stabilizer covers while you were clearing your boots through the garden walkways, kid.

The wires are completely exposed.”

Kallard turned his head around slowly to glare at her profile.

Bulma lifted her digital tablet in front of her face innocently, a bright, beautiful grin breaking through her ponytail strands.

“Science moves at a remarkably fast pace across this solar system, Kallard.

You’ve got to learn how to monitor the steering column.”

## Act IV: The Annoying Buzzers

The structural organization of their planetary defense training underwent a massive, high-pressure transformation pass once Capsule Corp committed its raw financial and technical resources to the ledger.

Before their arrival in West City, the initial desert basin sessions had been remarkably rough, un-vetted, and caked in a choking layer of deep-seated personal trauma that sat right behind everyone’s teeth.

Every single martial artist on the field was still carrying the raw shrapnel of Goku’s sudden execution entirely too close to the surface of their skin to clear the static lines from their coordination.

Krillin worked his muscles until his joints caked in rime, laughing entirely too loudly at his own short jokes to prevent the silence from dropping onto his chest.

Yamcha trained with sudden, brilliant flashes of raw brawler velocity, but his forms were caked in a thin layer of nervous, overcompensated bravado that was explicitly calculated to hide the fact that his fingers were shaking every time his eyes track Kallard’s bare brown tail lashing through the dust.

Tien attacked every single energy suppression drill like an absolute machine, his three eyes burning with a rigid, unyielding mental violence that assumed pure raw willpower alone could solve the tactical geometry of a cosmic invasion fleet.

The small white-skinned psychic Chiaotzu stayed locked within two inches of his shoulder guard at all times, quiet, motionless, and watchful like a small guard droid monitoring a perimeter line.

Piccolo had taken the boy Gohan completely away from the basin clearing for longer and longer stretches of the month, dragging his small boots through the deepest, coldest stone canyons of the northern wilderness to condition his muscles.

But to Kallard’s immense, quiet surprise…

the demon lord had actually kept his word to the maternal contract, systematically transmitting a series of short, blunt progress updates through the secure wireless radio net that Bulma had hard-wired straight into his turban lining.

The very first automated data burst from Piccolo’s frequency had been a single, unrefined sentence caked in static:

“`

The brat is alive.

His cell structures ate three full bowls of mountain meat cells.

Stop screaming across my transponder frequency.

“`

Chi-Chi had sat flat on her kitchen bench in the pink house, reading those specific syllables six consecutive times through her spectacles, crying a short line of wet tears into her apron, before she immediately manual-engaged her transmitter button to demand that the next data burst include a comprehensive breakdown of her baby’s daily sleep cycles and mattress conditions.

Piccolo’s secondary transmission burst cleared the gates four rotations later, the text sounding remarkably irritated:

“`

Alive.

Processed the meat.

Slept eight hours inside a dry stone cave.

Complained for forty minutes regarding his grammar homework sheets.

The container remains stable.

“`

Kallard had sat in the *Wayfarer’s* cockpit reading those lines and privately registered the transaction as a massive piece of structural progress for the demon king’s emotional alignment logs.

With Bulma and Dr.

Brief actively managing the logistical infrastructure of the camp, the daily training routines turned into an absolute clinical exercise in precision data tracking.

Bulma had designed a series of high-precision biological monitoring backpacks that caked straight onto the fighters’ orange sashes, her screens tracking their internal temperature variations, their heart rate shifts, and their active energy leak metrics in real-time.

Brakka had utilized his warehouse tools to construct a crate of custom, high-density gravity resistance weights that caked straight onto their wrists and ankles, the titanium alloys automatically adjusting their physical mass parameters to match the user’s suppression levels on the fly.

Dr.

Brief had personally overseen the construction of a dozen autonomous target tracking drones because he thought the entire concept of a planetary survival drill was “remarkably interesting work for a Tuesday morning shift.”

Master Roshi had migrated his camp stool straight out into the center of the training field lawn, his old hands resting flat across his wooden cane as he helped the human martial artists refine their absolute foundational physical fundamentals—because as the old master put it plainly to their ears, “No amount of advanced, fancy space-alien terror vocabulary can ever replace a clean, balanced piece of footwork when the floorboards start shaking under a fighter’s boots.”

Kallard agreed with the old man’s assessment completely. New chapters come out on g.com first.

One brilliant, dew-stained morning within an isolated training field dome caked into the back perimeter of the Capsule Corp compound, Kallard stood vertical in the grass across from Krillin, Yamcha, Tien, and Chiaotzu.

The sun was barely a thin sliver of yellow light clearing the eastern city towers, its glare turning the green blades of the grass into polished glass.

Kallard preferred to initiate his training shifts before the city noises turned hot.

Yamcha did flatly not share that specific scheduling preference for his muscle groups.

“Just so we enter the data into the logbook cleanly before the brawling starts, Ronin,” Yamcha grunted out low, his hands rubbing the sleep grit from his large eyes as he stretched his right shoulder guard in a wide circle.

“This…

this is explicitly the specific category of an exercise routine that’s designed to make our cell structures stronger for the year, right?

This isn’t another one of those multi-faction disaster drills where my framework ends up being punched straight into a terminal state of medical debt before the coffee turns cold?”

Kallard cut his dark pupils sideways to track the shaded research station twenty yards away, where Bulma was currently sitting flat on a metal stool behind three rows of diagnostic monitors, a steaming cup of dark liquid held between her fingers.

“Talk plain to my ear clips, Bulma.

What specific category of financial vocabulary is this scrapper using regarding ‘medical debt’ on this world?”

Bulma waved her thin hand casually across her display terminal screen, a bright grin breaking through her hair strands.

“Ignore the brawler’s mouth, Kallard!

He’s just running an overcompensated panic loop because his market value dropped during the tournament circuits!

Capsule Corp covers every single drop of your laboratory maintenance fees while you’re on my deck!”

Kallard turned his face back to focus on the line of fighters, his thick brown tail lashing out a clean circle through the dew-stained blades.

“You’re flatly not trading punches with my knuckles today, Yamcha.

Your chest plates are perfectly safe from my mass.”

Yamcha let out a long, ragged breath of pure relief, his shoulders dropping two inches as he relaxed his defensive stance.

“Oh, thank the gods.

The ledger is clean.”

“You’re systematically trading punches with each other while maintaining your internal energy pools at an absolute, un-vetted state of continuous suppression,” Kallard said, his voice a low primal rumble that caked the grass lane in iron.

Yamcha’s shoulders instantly un-relaxed back up into his neck marrow, his jaw setting into a hard line of pure, unadulterated system dread.

“The…

the suppression match again?

That’s easily the most exhausting shift caked into your manual, kid.”

Tien stepped his broad boots forward through the grass, his three eyes wide, cold, and caked in an absolute line of clinical focus.

“Talk plain about the tactical purpose behind the drill, Saiyan.

My spirit needs to map the structure.”

“Control under pressure, Tien,” Kallard said flatly.

“When an ordinary scrapper gets hit with a sudden wave of survival fear, raw anger, or brawler excitement inside a trench…

his natural biological instinct is to violently open his valves and dump his entire potential current out into his muscles all at once to execute a massive strike.

A high-spec imperial scouter drone absolutely loves that specific category of an un-refined energy flare.

It flashes a giant red indicator dot straight across the enemy’s face lens, telling their vanguard executioners exactly where to look, who to track across the brush, and who to kill first to break the unit’s morale before the real shooting even clears the gate.”

Krillin grimaced deeply, his small hand checking the balance of his gravity wrist weights.

“Well, isn’t that just a remarkably pleasant piece of spaceport bedtime imagery to drop onto our breakfast shift, Kallard.

My liver cells are officially vibrating with joy.”

“The manual is explicitly engineered to be useful for your survival logs, Krillin, not to deliver a comforting tune to your ears,” Kallard said, his voice neutral.

Yamcha lifted his right hand into the air slowly.

“Can the preparation year occasionally include a small digit that’s actually caked in fun for the crew, Ronin?

Just for the sake of our retention metrics?”

“Later,” Kallard said flatly.

Tien nodded his head once, his muscles locking into a rigid, balanced stance.

“Establish the rule sets for the exchange, Saiyan.”

“Half-speed physical coordination delivery only, martial artists,” Kallard commanded, his tail resting flat against the turf.

“Zero high-caliber killing shots allowed, and absolutely no large-scale energy blasts permitted to clear your knuckles.

If your internal energy pool spikes past a fifty-unit threshold because your brain cell panics or your ego demands a hard punch…

Bulma’s diagnostic monitor console will automatically trigger an automated acoustic buzzer net, and your frame drops straight out of the sparring lane to sit flat in the grass for five minutes of penalty time.”

Bulma lifted a small, silver remote control terminal into the air from her station, her blue eyes wide with a malicious scientific glee.

“I personally hard-wired the acoustic transmitter to emit an extra shrill, high-frequency industrial grinding screech, boys!

It’s an absolute masterpiece of an auditory nightmare!

My engineering hours were pristine!”

Krillin looked deeply worried as he aligned his boots.

“Why the hell would your mind design the buzzer to be extra annoying, Bulma?

What’s the metric?”

“Pure psychological motivation, bald boy!” she shouted back proudly through her ponytail strands.

“It forces your nervous system to stay disciplined!”

Brakka sat propped against a massive storage box beside her desk, a giant clay mug of his black moss tea held between all four of his hands as he let out a wide gear-toothed cackle.

“I personally oversaw the acoustic calibration pass myself, townspeople!

The sound waves are explicitly calculated to remove a scrapper’s liver lining if he lets his valves leak!

My coordination parameters were outstanding!”

Yamcha muttered low through his teeth, his fingers curving back into his signature Wolf Hurricane strike brace.

“Naturally, the old four-armed grease demon helped design the torture device.

The whole camp is caked in fraudulent management.”

## Act V: The Footwork of an Master

The initial round of the suppression match was an absolute, unmitigated disaster for their coordination logs.

Krillin executed the opening sequence remarkably well, compressing his internal ki pool down to a quiet, steady thirty-unit spark and moving his small frame across the grass blades with a slow, careful precision that kept his silhouette hidden from the sensors.

Yamcha attempted to run a high-speed blind feint attack around his blind flank, got completely, profoundly impatient when Krillin’s defensive footwork blocked his entry lane, and allowed his raw brawler frustration to violently flare his energy well right before he delivered a heavy roundhouse kick.

*BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ-SCREECH.*

The Capsule Corp monitor console let out an immediate, world-shattering, skull-crushing industrial grinding screech that caked the entire training dome in a wave of acoustic white noise.

A massive flock of local birds exploded out from the surrounding palm trees in a total panic loop, their wings clearing the sky lines at a frantic sprint.

Yamcha instantly clapped both of his gloved hands flat over his ear canals, his body dropping into a low crouch in the grass as his face turned a dark shade of yellowish-purple.

“What the hell is that mathematical abomination of a noise, Bulma?

My eardrums are completely caked in lead fluid!”

Bulma smiled sweetly from behind her monitors, her finger tapping the manual reset toggle switch with a sharp click.

“That specific frequency is called ‘Complete Tactical Failure,’ Yamcha!

Your five minutes of penalty rest time have officially opened on the ledger!

Go sit your loud boots down near the bench and think about your life choices!”

Krillin broke out into a genuine, loud roar of a laugh across the clearing, his hand pointing straight toward the fallen fighter’s crown hair strands.

“Oh, man, look at his hair spikes!

They completely dropped flat from the screech!

That is easily the best thing I’ve seen since—”

*BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ-SCREECH.*

The acoustic monster buzzer exploded into the air lines a fraction of a millisecond later, cutting off his cackling pass with an instantaneous hammer blow of sound.

Krillin’s jaw froze wide open, his small face turning a bright shade of pink as his eyes tracked the red indicator dot flaring across his own sash monitor.

“Wait…

what?

Why did my box go hot, Bulma?

I didn’t even lift my knuckles to throw a punch!”

“Your internal energy well spiked straight past eighty-five units because you let your stupid brawler brain laugh entirely too hard at your teammate’s misfortune, bald boy!” she yelled back through her megaphone clip.

“The software registers an emotional leak the exact same way it maps a brawler panic loop!

Your boots are officially benched for five minutes right alongside the wolf!

Move the layout!”

Tien was the first martial artist on the field who displayed the absolute capacity to hold his internal compression valves closed during an active combat exchange for more than thirty consecutive seconds.

His physical movements became remarkably smaller, sharper, and infinitely less dramatic than the traditional flash-heavy forms caked into his crane school manuals.

He dropped his mass low to the earth, his three eyes unblinking as his white-gloved fingers executed a series of tight, micro-inch defensive deflections that systematically parried Chiaotzu’s incoming psychic feints without letting a single spark of static current leak out into the grass blades.

The small white-skinned child matched his pacing surprisingly well, floating two inches above the turf lines and flickering in and out of the tracking grid like a quiet gray ghost whose wires were completely insulated from the radar.

Kallard stood motionless near the station dome pillar, his dark pupils steady as he monitored the physical displacement lines clearing the dome.

The human martial artists were flatly not Saiyans.

That parameter was a completely obvious, unyielding biological fact caked into the dirt of this world, but it carried an immense amount of weight for his long-range planning logbook.

They couldn’t rely on the genetic cheat codes caked into his own DNA layout—they didn’t possess a zenkai recovery loop that doubled their power level numbers every time they survived a near-terminal bone fracturing pass, they didn’t have a thick brown furry tail to balance their weight against a gravity shift, they didn’t have a monstrous Saiyan appetite that could convert ten pounds of raw meat into instant ki current, and they didn’t have access to a primitive beast rage form that could break the cage of a god’s discipline.

If they attempted to train their muscle groups using the exact same un-refined military parameters he had survived out in the rim…

their physical frames would simply fracture apart down the center rail long before the year hit the zero mark.

If they trained like common humans attempting to play the part of a bad, low-class imitation of a Saiyan soldier…

they would turn completely irrelevant to the ledger before the first pod even cleared the clouds.

So Kallard pushed their development down a completely separate set of track lines.

Krillin was given a strict, continuous rotation of high-velocity evasion drills, precision anatomical strike targeting passes, and a series of advanced kinetic energy shaping theories that his knuckles weren’t fully prepared to name as the *Destructo-Disc* yet, but the underlying arithmetic was being hard-wired straight into his muscle cells with every shift.

Tien was forced to run a brutal multi-angle attack timing matrix, an absolute system pass of breath compression control, and a series of heavy endurance conditioning blocks that left his broad shoulders caked in deep red friction burns—because the man’s absolute willpower parameters were turning into a substantial cause for professional concern for Kallard’s logbook.

He didn’t know how to release the handles.

Yamcha was given a dedicated course of highly controlled aggressive pacing drills, because his raw natural brawler instincts were remarkably fine, but his confidence lines had a terminal habit of moving five miles faster than his actual defensive guard lane could manage during a shootout.

Chiaotzu was systematically drilled in pure ki finesse training, fine-wire energy suppression loops, and tactical battlefield positioning parameters designed specifically to keep his narrow frame out of an enforcer’s primary line of sight.

Master Roshi watched the entire multi-layered training operation from his camp stool with a quiet, unyielding old master approval caked behind his dark red lenses, his fingers tracing the smooth wood face of his staff.

“You’re…

you’re flatly not attempting to turn these young human boys into a group of low-class imitations of your own space-alien lineage, are you, young warrior?” the old master said one afternoon shift, his voice a low, down-to-earth rumble that didn’t travel past their two stools.

Kallard stood vertical beside his shoulder, his broad arms crossed over his green-trimmed chest guards as his dark pupils track Krillin and Yamcha executing a highly synchronized double-flank attack pass against two fast moving capsule drones Bulma had built for the lane.

“No, master.

I’re not running that project design.

It would turn into a total loss of material.”

“Good piece of management, Kallard,” the old master said, nodding his head slowly as the wind moved his long white beard strands.

Kallard cut his dark eyes down to look at the old man’s profile.

“What’s the logical deduction behind that statement, Roshi?”

“The primary, deep-seated mistake of an old master…

is believing with an immense amount of ego that every single student who clears his dojo doorboards requires the exact same road map to reach his peak numbers,” Roshi said softly, his sunglasses reflecting the green grass blades.

“The primary, deep-seated mistake of a young warrior…

is believing with an immense amount of pride that the exact same rocky, burning road that hurt his own limbs during his childhood shift…

is the only layout that can ever make a fighter strong enough to survive the ditch.

You’ve managed to clear both of those design errors from your logbook, scrapper.

That’s a remarkably rare piece of wisdom for a twenty-eight cycle brawler.”

Kallard absorbed the weight of the old man’s vocabulary, his tail resting perfectly still against his leather boot guard as his mind track the phrase.

“Did…

did your lips just formally categorize my framework as being young, old master?”

Roshi split his wrinkled mouth into a wide, cheerful line of an open smile.

“I am an exceptionally, profoundly old piece of human machinery, Kallard.

From where my boots are resting…

your whole lineage looks like a fresh batch of oil that hasn’t even cleared the primary filters yet.”

“Fair numbers rating, old timer,” Kallard said quietly.

Directly across the lawn clearing, Yamcha attempted to execute a high-speed leap over the top of an advancing target drone, completely mistimed his landing vectors due to his gravity ankle weights, and rolled violently through the grass blades in a cloud of yellow dust.

*BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ-SCREECH.*

The Capsule Corp failure buzzer screamed out into the sky lines with a deafening screech of its gears.

Yamcha let out a long, painful groan from the center of his dirt patch, his legs tangled up in his sash fabric.

“I absolutely, deep-seatedly hate that goddamn sound, Bulma!

It’s an absolute violation of my human rights!”

Bulma lifted her megaphone clip from her desk, her blue eyes wide with amusement as she shouted across the lane.

“Then stop letting your internal energy pool flare back up to its maximum rating every single time your boots lose their balance on the turf, you big dramatic wolf!

The machine doesn’t lie!”

“I don’t run a panic loop, lady!

My coordination was perfect!”

*BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ-SCREECH.*

The acoustic buzzer let out a short, sharp mechanical pop of sound right above his hair spikes.

Krillin pointed his finger straight toward the grass, his bald head vibrating with laughter as his own sash monitor remained safely flat inside the blue.

“Look at the screen line!

The monitor says otherwise, brother!

Go sit your boots back down on the benches!

Your five minutes just opened up again!”

Kallard came remarkably close to letting a genuine, loud laugh clear his own throat at the absolute comedy of the presentation.

Then, his primitive Saiyan sensing needle suddenly let out a sharp, freezing vibration deep behind his rib plates, his whole framework locking up into an absolute combat brace before his ears could even resolve a single sound through the air lines.

Piccolo had officially cleared the northern mountain perimeters to check the inventory of the camp.

## Act VI: The Weight of Adaptability

The localized atmospheric pressure inside the training field dome underwent an immediate, jar-clicking displacement before any of the human martial artists could even resolve the shift on their biological monitors.

Piccolo descended straight out of the upper cloud deck with a silent, heavy fluidness, his massive white cape dragging through the wind as he landed flat on his boots in the center of the grass lane, his long green arms cradling the small frame of Gohan against his purple chest vest.

The boy looked remarkably tired, his face caked in a thick layer of red mountain dust and dry granite rime, his miniature orange gi torn across the left knee rail—but his cell walls throw off a steady, warm, and thoroughly healthy biological current that indicated his stomach had been packed with three proper plates of hot food cells before the flight began.

That parameter was a monumental piece of progress for the ledger.

His small limbs were heavily weathered, but his framework didn’t possess a single drop of un-vetted structural damage.

His yellow eyes still carried the deep, heavy sadness of a child who had buried his father three weeks ago, but the wild, erratic panic loop that had broken his coordination down in the canyon clearing had been completely replaced by a tight, quiet focus that sat behind his teeth like an iron spring.

Kallard stepped his boots forward through the grass blades to meet their line, his tail lashing out a slow circle through the dew.

Gohan’s pale face brightened up with a sudden, genuine spark of a childhood smile the second his yellow pupils resolved the green trim on the hybrid’s black chest armor.

“Mister Kallard!” he called out, his small boots hitting the grass as Piccolo dropped him down onto the turf.

Piccolo’s green face instantly twisted into a deep, aggressive demonic scowl under his heavy turban casing, his claws curving back into his belt loop.

“Don’t you go letting your throat deliver a single syllable caked in brawler excitement to that space scrapper, you soft little brat!

Your stance is completely sloppy!

Focus your toes!”

Gohan instantly dropped his chin back into his orange collar fabric, his facial muscles resetting into a less excited, highly disciplined martial arts profile that copied the Namekian’s posture perfectly.

Kallard stopped his boots three paces from their line, his dark pupils looking down into the demon lord’s face.

“Are you genuinely running that category of an administrative policy inside your mountain camp, Piccolo?

The kid’s allowed to be happy to see his crew after a long rotation shift.”

Piccolo turned his tall green head slowly away toward the residential domes, letting out a short, cynical *hnph* through his nose.

“I am running a military preparation unit for a cosmic shootout, Saiyan traveler, not an emotional consumer holiday clinic for house pets.

The brat’s happiness metrics are completely irrelevant to my progress logs.”

Kallard dropped his massive six-foot frame down into a low, comfortable crouch in front of the child’s small red boots, his hand resting loose against his knee guard.

“How’s the training layout treating your cell structures, Gohan?

Talk plain to my ears.”

The small boy hesitated for a fraction of a millisecond, his eyes nervously cutting sideways to check the alignment of the giant green demon’s cape before his chin lifted up.

“It’s…

it’s exceptionally hard labor out in the stone ridges, mister Kallard.

The wind is incredibly cold at night.”

Kallard managed a small, genuine nod of respect across the turf.

“An honest, down-to-earth assessment, kid.

That’s the correct way to write the entry.

What else is clearing your gauges?”

“The…

the mountain pathways are remarkably scary when the shadow drones start flying,” Gohan whispered out low, his fingers clutching his orange sash fabric.

“And…

and mister Piccolo says my face clips have a terminal habit of crying entirely too many drops of soft water when the gravity weights turn hot.”

Piccolo let let out a raw, aggressive grunt through his teeth from the rafter shadows.

“The brat speaks the absolute truth for the ledger, Kallard!

He lets his valves leak every single time his knees hit the granite grates!

He’s an absolute disaster for a warrior lineage!”

Kallard lifted his eyes up slowly to lock straight into the demon king’s pupils, his voice dropping into a low primal rumble that caked the grass lane in iron.

“Does…

does his frame keep pushing his boots forward through the snowdrifts after the water clears his eyelids, Piccolo?

Talk plain about the execution metrics.”

The Namekian’s green jaw clicked flat against his collar, his dark pupils narrowing into two sharp slits of light as his arms crossed tightly over his chest guards.

He stood vertical in the grass for three long seconds of pure silence, before he let out a short, reluctant grunt through his nose clips.

“The…

the brat doesn’t drop the handles once his tears are wiped from his lenses, Saiyan.

He returns to his combat stance within forty seconds of a brawler fracture.

He clears the pavement.”

Kallard turned his face back down to focus straight on the child’s yellow pupils, his white-gloved hand resting flat against his miniature shoulder guard with a deep, un-yielding warmth.

“Then your development parameters are running perfectly fine on my spreadsheet, Gohan.

A warrior who knows how to keep his boots moving forward through the middle of his own tears…

is ten times harder to kill than an arrogant brute who thinks he’s too proud to feel the sting of the sand.

Don’t let anyone clear that line from your design manual.”

Gohan’s small eyes widened into wide circles through his purple hair crown, a fresh wave of absolute, unadulterated childhood confidence locking straight into his spirit as he nodded his head hard against his chest.

“Yes, mister Kallard!

The entrance is entered!”

Piccolo didn’t deliver a single syllable of a verbal contradiction to the hybrid’s statement, though his yellow brow clips flared bright with an irritated demonic static as he marched his tall frame toward the far edge of the sparring lawn, his purple cape snapping through the wind.

Later that afternoon shift, after the human martial artists had completed their suppression drills, Kallard and Piccolo stepped out into the absolute center of the training field dome to spar with each other for the very first time since their ships had docked on Earth.

There was zero high-caliber killing intent caked into their muscle groups, no full-scale energy blasts permitted to clear their knuckles, and absolutely no opening of the green ancestral *Primal Instinct* wells allowed to distort the radar line.

It was an absolute, clinical exercise in pure raw martial arts technique, physical coordination speed, and the logistics of close-quarters adaptability.

Piccolo initiated the transaction first with a blinding, predatory fluidness that defied his massive seven-foot frame weight.

His long green right arm violently extended forward across ten yards of open space like a rubberized hydraulic winch cable, his claws snapping out in a whip-like horizontal strike aimed straight for the kid’s neck armor plates.

Kallard executed a fast, thirty-degree diagonal shift to allow the arm to clear his guard lane, but Piccolo’s multi-jointed wrist joint bent at a sharp, unnatural mid-strike angle all at once, his heavy knuckles catching the lower edge of Kallard’s green shoulder guard with a solid metallic *clank*.

Kallard stumbled back half a step through the grass blades, a sudden line of a genuine, wide smile breaking across his bearded face as his dark pupils track the arm retracting back into its socket.

“An exceptionally fine, creative piece of biological alignment manipulation, demon lord.

The velocity was outstanding.”

Piccolo’s yellow eyes narrowed into two freezing points of demonic pride, his boots sliding into a heavy crane stance.

“Don’t you go delivering your cheap, condescending spaceport praise to my ears, Saiyan traveler!

My knuckles are caked in centuries of war logic!

Secure your guard lane!”

*FLASH.*

The Namekian vanished from the grass lines entirely, his speed leaving a purple static blur on Bulma’s diagnostic screens.

Kallard executed a fast pivot on his heel, his left forearm guard rising up in a high block just as a massive purple boot plate cleared the smoke to slam straight into his guard lane.

The immense kinetic force of the kick drove Kallard’s broad body forty feet across the lawn clearing, his heavy boots caking two long dirt trenches through the grass before he brought his weight back to a dead halt.

Piccolo rocketed straight through the path of the dust wave, his limbs transforming into a complete, overlapping torrent of high-speed combination strikes—a heavy left elbow strike caving toward the chest guards, a rapid right knee block aiming for the ribs, a long extended-arm feint designed to break the visor alignment, and a low, sweeping leg kick caked in concussive current.

Kallard managed to systematically parry and block the first three structural strikes using his tight, long-range bounty-hunter discipline, but the low demon sweep caught the edge of his left boot guard plate perfectly on the fly.

His balance loop broke apart down the center rail, his broad frame hitting the grass floorboards with a heavy structural *thud*, his gray cloak flying wild over his head.

He executed a clean tactical roll through the loose dirt, popped straight back up onto his combat boots five yards away, and broke out into a genuine, loud, and thoroughly down-to-earth roar of a laugh that filled the entire training dome rafters.

The watching human martial artists stood frozen along the bench line, their large eyes wide with an absolute, unblinking marvel as they track the exchange.

Krillin swallowed hard, his voice dropping into a terrified whisper near Roshi’s ear clip.

“Hey…

old master…

talk plain to my ears: is that space scrapper actually, deep-seatedly *enjoying* the sensation of having his skull caved into the sod by a demon king?

His brain cells are completely out of bounds.”

Master Roshi nodded his old head slowly, his hands resting flat across his staff wood.

“The…

the biological heritage of a Saiyan warhound, my young friend.

Their cell structures don’t view a physical blow as an insult or a loss—they process the trauma as a magnificent, high-octane text sheet designed to teach their muscles how to adapt to the next shift.

It’s a terrifying template for a fighter.”

Yamcha grimaced deeply, his hand clenching his sash.

“Yeah…

that specific analysis tracks perfectly with everything Goku used to do during the tournament circuits.

They’re an absolute race of brawler lunatics.”

Kallard launched his broad body straight back into the lane with a fast *Flash Trigger* pulse, his combat style turning significantly rougher, denser, and more direct than the fluid, hyper-artistic martial arts forms Kakarot would eventually display across the timeline chronicles.

His ten cycles of surviving the low-margin backwater ports of the rim had taught his knuckles a single, absolute priority rule: isolate the enemy’s primary terminal hubs as fast as humanly possible, shatter their guard lane with a high-density compact strike, and close the invoice before the second shift can turn hot.

He drove his weight straight down into Piccolo’s centerline space, his short, mechanical left-and-right hooks striking the Namekian’s crossed forearm blocks with the dense, bone-clicking sound of an industrial pneumatic riveting hammer caking an iron plate.

He forced the tall demon lord to stay locked inside a defensive container, systematically stripping away his capacity to extend his limbs or calculate a long-range energy feint.

Piccolo adapted to the high-pressure compression matrix with a terrifying, veteran fluidness.

He deliberately gave three yards of ground to clear his alignment, dropped his torso low beneath a heavy right hook, and unleashed a short, highly concentrated concussive blast of orange ki fire straight into the grass blades directly beneath Kallard’s boot soles.

*BOOM.*

The localized dirt explosion launched Kallard’s broad frame ten feet straight up into the air lines, his balance loop breaking apart mid-flight.

Piccolo was already waiting directly above his hair crown, his green hands clasped tightly together into a massive double-fist hammer block that rocketed downward with a force explicitly calculated to bury the hybrid’s broad shoulders six feet deep into the concrete dome foundations.

Kallard twisted his torso mid-air with an absolute, white-knuckle contraction of his core muscles, his right hand pointing two fingers straight toward the center of the Namekian’s descending wrist joint point-blank.

“Static Buster!” he roared out.

A tiny, marble-sized pellet of green-white survival energy shot from his index fingers, the high-frequency kinetic vibrations within the pulse detonating mid-air straight against the demon lord’s muscle control lines.

The close-range electrical discharge short-circuited the nervous loops caked into Piccolo’s forearms for a fraction of a millisecond, his massive double-hammer strike losing its structural alignment and veering three inches off-target to hit empty air lines.

Kallard slipped smoothly through the open guard lane, executed a clean low-gravity axial roll across the Namekian’s shoulder guards, and landed flat back onto his combat boots on the grass floorboards with a clean click of his iron heels.

Piccolo landed five yards away, his breath coming in short plumes of white vapor as he held his right hand up into the light, his green fingers tingling and twitching violently from the residual static gray noise of the disruption pulse.

He stared at his skin with an absolute, un-vetted warrior marvel caked into his features, his green mouth twisting into a sharp line.

“What…

what specific category of a rotten, underhanded spaceport technical trick did your knuckles just dump into my wrist joint, Kallard?

The current inside my arm is completely caked in static.”

Kallard uncoupled his green chest guards, a wide down-to-earth grin breaking through his beard trim as he wiped a small line of fresh red blood from his lower lip with his glove.

“That specific calculation is an independent piece of custom electronic disruption code caked straight into my lineage forms, demon lord.

It’s an absolute lifesaver when a big scrapper is trying to break your chest plates.”

Piccolo’s yellow eye ridge twitched violently with an immediate, deep-seated professional delight that completely shattered his cold demonic mask for a single breath of the gale.

He flexed his green claws until the static cleared the rail, his body dropping back down into a low predatory brawler brace.

“An exceptionally fine, dangerous piece of custom technical hardware, Saiyan traveler!

Let’s go run the simulation pass again!

Secure your handles!”

They sparred through the lanes until the red sun of Earth had completely dipped behind the western metropolis towers, leaving both of their frameworks heavily bruised, caked in yellow dust, and quietly, profoundly satisfied with the quality of the labor line.

The child Gohan sat flat on his wool blanket near the station bench, his yellow eyes wide with an absolute, unblinking marvel as he track the green-and-purple afterimages clearing the turf.

“You…

you two master warriors are remarkably, incredibly strong across the board, mister Kallard,” the boy whispered out low, his chest tensing.

Piccolo folded his heavy white cape back around his broad green shoulders, his face returning to its dead flat cynical mask as he let let out a low grunt through his nose.

“An entirely obvious, primitive observation, brat.

Our numbers are caked in history.”

Kallard reached down into his utility loop, using a clean cloth to wipe the dirt smudges from his visor lens before he looked into the boy’s face.

“The raw physical strength numbers aren’t the primary operational lesson caked into this field today, Gohan.

Don’t go let your logbook get confused by the display.”

The small boy frowned, his hair spikes moving in the wind.

“Then…

talk plain to my ears, mister.

What’s the real blueprint parameter we’re supposed to be mapping?”

Kallard pointed his white-gloved finger straight toward the tall green demon king standing near the hangar doors.

“Look at her line, kid: he adapts his forms to match the geometry of the ditch in less than a breath.

That’s why his guard lane stays stable.”

Piccolo cut his yellow eyes sideways to track the hybrid’s profile, a silent, complex calculation clearing his thoughts.

Kallard pointed his thumb straight back toward the scuffed green trim on his own black chest plates.

“Look at my line, Gohan: I survive the hammer blow because I know how to build a cage around my power well when the blast hits my skin.

That’s called structural endurance.”

Then, the bearded Saiyan scrapper extended his open palm straight toward the center of the child’s small orange gi sash, his dark pupils steady.

“Your unique project layout for the preparation year…

is to systematically learn how to hard-wire both of those operational specifications straight into your own cells simultaneously, Gohan.

That’s the work sheet.”

## Act VII: Coffee on the Hangar Floor

Late that evening shift, after the laboratory dome lights had been manual-shut down to plunge the Capsule Corp compound into a deep, silent indigo shadow caked in frost, Bulma Briefs found Kallard alone inside the primary research hangar bay.

The young warrior was currently sliding his broad frame flat onto his back beneath the low belly of the *Wayfarer*, his heavy combat boots sticking straight out from under the landing struts as both of his gloved hands held a massive, eighty-pound reinforced titanium armor patch panel flat against the ship’s lower cargo frame.

Inside the dark engine bay above his forehead, Brakka’s gravelly voice was echoing through the steel bulkheads, screaming a frantic torrent of erratic mechanical instructions while a shower of brilliant yellow welding sparks rained down across Kallard’s matte-black chest plates like a local meteor shower.

Bulma walked into the hangar dome carrying a small, thermal utility box caked in her company branding, two steaming ceramic mugs held between her fingers as her boots made a light clicking sound against the polished concrete floorboards.

She came to a smooth halt near the ship’s landing gear, her blue hair loose over her shoulders as she looked down at his boots.

“You know, scrapper boy,” she said, her down-to-earth voice filling the quiet dome space with a comfortable warmth.

“Most civilian logistics companies on this planet utilize an automated hydraulic lift assembly to hold an eighty-pound alloy plate flat against a hull rail during a repair shift.

It’s a standard safety protocol caked into our code.”

Kallard didn’t lower his arms an inch, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that echoed out from beneath the dark steel belly of the cutter.

“My biological framework is the primary automated hydraulic lift assembly caked into this star lane, Bulma.

My maintenance hours don’t require an electricity bill from your father’s office.”

Brakka’s gravelly voice let let out a loud, aggressive cackle from deep inside the interior manifold core plates above their heads.

“Do not go delivering a single syllable of a compliment to his ear clips regarding his lifting capacity, capsule lady!

The kid’s ego parameters are completely unstable!

If you encourage his brawler brain…

he will systematically add the phrase ‘Certified Heavy Hoist Assembly’ to his personal identity sheet and refuse to utilize a proper crane tool for the rest of the cycle!

Hand me the coil spanner wrench right now, lift boy!”

Bulma dropped her thermal utility box flat onto a nearby wooden storage crate, crouching her slender frame low down onto the cold hangar floorboards directly alongside Kallard’s boot soles, her blue eyes wide with an absolute amusement.

“Did…

did your stomach cells manage to pack a single plate of real food current into your system before the night shift turned cold, bounty boy?”

“No, Bulma,” Kallard muttered out, his muscles tensing as he adjusted his grip on the heavy plate casing.

“The ledger lines were too crowded to clear a rest loop.”

“Does your ridiculous space-alien warhound bloodline ever allow your mouth clips to deliver a syllable resembling a ‘yes’ to that specific category of an inventory question, scrapper?” she asked, her voice dropping into a softer, more experimental register as she reached her hand out to slide a heavy steel support jack straight beneath the armor patch panel, locking the safety pin into place with a sharp mechanical click to relieve the weight from his arms.

Kallard slid his broad frame smoothly out from beneath the low belly of the *Wayfarer*, sitting his torso straight up on the polished concrete floorboards as his hand reached up to slide his green visor up into his hair crown lines.

He looked down at the steaming ceramic mug she extended toward his fingers, his nose clips sniffing the rising vapor with an immediate wave of deep-seated spaceport suspicion.

“What specific category of a chemical compound did your laboratory brew into this vessel, Bulma?

It smells completely separate from the old man’s moss scrapings.”

Bulma smiled beautifully through her grease smudges, her blue eyes tracking his face.

“That specific fluid is called fresh roasted premium coffee cells, Kallard.

It contains an immense amount of high-grade human survival current designed explicitly to clear the static lines from a researcher’s brain after a twelve-hour soldering pass.

Unlike whatever garbage drilling lubricant your four-eyed grease demon forces your throat to swallow out in the rim…

this compound is completely caked in luxury.

Take a swallow pass.”

Brakka yelled out loudly from the interior manifold hatch, his wrench clicking against a pipe rail.

“My custom mountain herbal tea formulas are explicitly calculated to build an independent brawler’s internal character specs, lady!

They remove the weak residential tissue from a scrapper’s liver lining!”

Bulma turned her face up to shout back through the hangar rafters with a sharp, lightning-fast line of her corporate sarcasm.

“Your custom herbal formulas are a certified biological weapons threat to the municipal water rights of West City, gray-blue!

They remove a scrapper’s internal organs clean off his spreadsheet!

Keep your oil pipe shut while I’re delivering the catering!”

Kallard took a slow, highly cautious sip from the brim of the ceramic cup, the rich, hot bitter liquid clearing the rime from his tongue in less than a microsecond.

His dark pupils instantly widened into wide circles of pure, unadulterated biological marvel, his chest plates relaxing completely as the warmth flooded his core.

He looked down at the cup as if the ceramic were caked in pure ancient magic.

“This…

this compound is remarkably, incredibly fine engineering, Bulma.

The baseline data is pristine.”

“Wow,” she jeered back softly, her blue eyes wide as she sat herself flat down onto the cold concrete floorboards right beside his knee guard, her long legs crossed casually beneath her canvas tunic as if billionaire genius heiresses spent their midnight hours sitting in the grease smudges of a hangar floor every single day of the week.

“High-caliber professional praise from the legendary Space Batman of the rim lanes.

I’re going to have to enter that parameter into my company archives tonight.”

Kallard blinked his dark eyes twice, his brow furrowing as he took a secondary swallow pass.

“Space…

Space what?

I don’t remember that specific call sign clearing a single transponder registry in the outer quadrants, ma’am.”

“Never mind the title block, brawler boy,” she laughed out brightly, her ponytail shifting across her shoulder blades.

“It’s an independent research project I’m currently workshopping for your uniform sheet.

Open up the utility box.”

He reached out his glove, lifting the latch on the thermal box to reveal a massive, beautifully arranged plate of real human food cells—a mountain of steaming white rice, thick cuts of slow-roasted mountain meat caked in a rich, savory brown sauce, and fresh green agricultural vegetables that throw off a clean scent of wet soil and rain.

His primitive Saiyan stomach well let out a sudden, thunderous, and thoroughly deafening roar of pure biological hunger that echoed through the empty hangar dome rafters like a hyperdrive cavitation loop running out of bounds.

Kallard felt an immediate, white-hot line of pure ancestral embarrassment flare bright across his bare face, his hand frantically sliding his visor back down to hide his pupils as his teeth clenched.

“That…

that specific acoustic displacement was completely involuntary, Bulma.

The logic loops ran an error pass.”

“I figured the numbers were running a bit short behind your chest plates, scrapper,” she grinned broadly, her hand reaching out to place a clean pair of wooden chopsticks straight into his glove loop.

“You’ve been executing heavy kinetic coordination drills since the first light cleared the towers.

Your container needs the fuel current.”

He didn’t waste a single millisecond delivering a secondary brawler speech, his fingers using the wooden tools with a fast, practiced velocity to pack the meat and rice cells straight into his jaw line.

Bulma watched his pacing with a quiet, unyielding softness caked behind her blue eyelashes for three long miles of the meal, her own ceramic cup resting warm between her palms before she cleared her throat low, her voice dropping into a down-to-earth register that lost all of its usual corporate sarcasm.

“You…

you never once delivered an honest line of data to my ears during our basin camp fire conversations regarding the real, structural reason why your ship didn’t choose to clear the atmospheric gates of this planet five years sooner, Kallard,” she whispered out quietly into the frost wind.

Kallard’s chewing motion slowed down to an instantaneous dead halt, his dark pupils narrowing beneath his visor as his human soul took the steering handles with a white-knuckle grip of pure discipline.

There it was—the one single, absolute boundary line line clearing her lips.

Her question wasn’t caked in a marshal’s professional suspicion, and it didn’t carry a single drop of an accusing tone; it was just a simple, raw, and thoroughly human curiosity from a friend who wanted to map the real dimensions of his ghost.

He swallowed the meat cells slowly, his face remaining neutral.

“I…

I flatly didn’t possess the exact navigation keys to locate your solar system across the tracking maps for a long time, Bulma.

The quadrant maps out in the deep lanes are caked in too much static gray noise.”

“Is that the absolute truth for the ledger, brawler boy?” she asked, her head tilting at a sharp angle as her blue eyes bore straight into his visor tint.

“Earth is caked in water, oxygen, and a massive amount of high-density radio current.

A master tracking cutter like the *Wayfarer* should have resolved our beacon frequency from three parsecs out if your sensors were active.”

Kallard looked down at the empty wooden food box caked in his gloves, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly brawler rasp that sounded remarkably old.

“The planet Earth doesn’t occupy a single line of an important asset registry sheet across the wider mapping boards of the empire, Bulma.

To a standard Frieza Force logistics scout or a professional border broker…

this entire solar system looks like nothing more than an un-shielded, primitive backwater rock caked in moss that isn’t worth the fuel cells required to drop a landing gear.”

Bulma lifted her chin up instantly, her blue eyes flashing bright with a fierce, immediate line of pure planetary pride on behalf of her world.

“Well, then every single one of those long-range space brokers is running on an absolute system failure layout, Ronin!

Our technology is ten times cleaner than that garbage green scouter caked on my workbench!”

“The machine parameters are going to turn remarkably important across the quadrants very soon, Bulma,” Kallard said quietly, his eyes fixed on the concrete smudges.

“The wider star lanes are going to learn exactly how dense your family’s invention specs are before the turn of the next cycle.”

She studied the profile of his bearded face through the yellow halogen glare, her fingers slowly tracing a circuit seam along her tablet frame as she accepted the tactical evasion pass without pushing her line any further into the dark wells of his brain.

“For the record, scrapper boy…

that specific line of vocabulary sounded remarkably, incredibly suspicious to my research receivers again.”

“I am actively, systematically attempting to optimize my public relations metrics across this world, ma’am,” Kallard managed a small line of a dry smirk.

“The transformation pass is currently experiencing a small layout delay.”

“You’re running the simulation pass exceptionally poorly, bounty boy,” she jeered back softly, her shoulder leaning back against the wooden storage crate frame, her long blue ponytail catching the yellow light lines.

“So…

before your ship cleared the atmospheric docks of this rock…

you were just…

out there?

Running the empty spaces between the stars all by your solo lonesome?”

“Yeah,” Kallard whispered out low, his fingers tracing the white scars caked across his wrists.

“Just running the tracks.

Clearing the contracts.

Keeping my tail wrapped behind the fence.”

“Alone?”

“For the first three standard cycles after the sky on Vegeta caught fire, yes,” he said flatly.

“It was a very low-margin workspace.

My container ran hot.”

Her brilliant blue eyes moved slowly across the hangar floorboards to track the massive, scarred green stabilization wings of the cutter resting above their helmets.

“And then…

the old four-eyed grease goblin cleared your gate?”

Kallard managed a real, quiet nod of his head through the dark, his voice softening as his human memories track the old road.

“The old bastard found my framework caked in sand and blood inside a ditch after an emergency landing pass went completely out of bounds on a frozen mining moon, Bulma.

I was registered as a high-priced pieces of scrap iron with a collection of imperial cuffs caked onto my wrists.

He used his heavy titanium crescent wrench to violently shatter the chains off my bone marrow, told my ears I was an absolute non-profit piece of muscle-brained garbage that was taking up space on his workshop floorboards, and then spent the next seven cycles teaching my boots how to walk like a real survivor across the rim lanes.

He gave my knuckles a clean ledger line when the whole universe wanted to wipe my registry off the board.”

Inside the dark interior of the open engine bay above their helmets, the constant *click-clack* of Brakka’s manual tuning tools suddenly went completely, profoundly dead silent for one single, frozen breath of the desert night wind—before the old alien immediately initiated a twice-as-loud, aggressive hammering pass against a structural pipe rail to hide the sudden softening of his gray ears.

Bulma smiled beautifully through her grease smudges, her blue eyes wrinkling up with a deep, un-shielded human understanding as she listened to the hammering above.

“He…

he flatly operates as your real, structural family across the stars, doesn’t he, Kallard?”

“Yeah, Bulma,” Kallard said, his voice a low, absolute rumble that had zero brawler armor left to wear.

“He’s the only real family code my ledger has caked into the system today.”

The blue-haired girl looked down at her checkered slippers, her tone dropping its sharp corporate edge completely as she reached out her thin hand to place it flat against the scuffed green armor plate caked onto his knee guard.

“And…

and the birth world, Kallard?

Planet Vegeta?

Were your boots active on the dirt the day the red sky caught fire?”

Kallard closed the lid on his thermal box with a slow, careful precision that kept his fingers from shaking, his dark pupils looking straight through the panoramic viewscreen doors of the hangar bay toward the quiet stars above West City.

“I cleared the atmospheric docks of our birth world exactly twenty-four hours before the execution code was finalized by the core fleet, Bulma.

I was standing in the market streets watching the children practice their brawler stances before breakfast while the generals were filing their paperwork logs.”

He didn’t mention a single digit regarding the transmigration anomaly caked into his cerebral cortex.

He didn’t mention a single word regarding his knowledge of the comic book scripts or the animation reels he carried from his old human life.

He didn’t drop the name of Beerus, and he didn’t deliver the biography of Bardock to her receivers.

Not tonight.

Maybe not ever until the whole board cleared its static lines.

“I wasn’t born with an elite registry number caked into my database sheet, Bulma,” Kallard whispered out low, his voice ancient.

“I was just a low-class discard whose framework wasn’t considered special by their military manual standards.

Then…

the empire called the warhounds back to the kennel for a massive assembly pass.

Something caked deep inside my primitive biological senses told my gears that the transaction was completely fraudulent.

I manual-engaged the launch switch on an independent transport capsule and cleared the sector boundaries before the furnace turned white.”

Bulma’s blue eyes softened into a beautiful, unyielding line of pure human empathy that had zero corporate judgment left hidden inside its contours, her thin hand resting warm against his green armor patch.

“Did…

did your capsule leave a lot of your people behind the fence line when the launch hatch closed, Kallard?”

Kallard closed his fingers tight around his ceramic coffee mug, his jaw setting tight as the memory of Morga’s cold hands and the crying infant inside the transport cradle flashed bright across his thoughts.

“Yes, Bulma,” he whispered out into the frost wind.

“I left every single face I had ever read across the streets caked in that ash.

The whole inventory was cleared in less than ten seconds of a fleet pass.”

The brilliant blue-haired heiress looked down at her own tool pouch, her voice dropping into a quiet, grounded rumble that filled the dark space.

“That…

that specific structural parameters is exactly why your knuckles train like an absolute machine inside my dome every single day of the week, isn’t it, scrapper?

You’re trying to build a wall around this planet.”

“That is one single digit on the spreadsheet, ma’am,” Kallard said plainly.

“Talk plain about the rest of the ledger then, bounty boy.

What are the secondary specifications clearing your receivers?”

He turned his broad torso around slowly to lock his dark pupils straight into her blue eyes, his face bare beneath the yellow light lines.

“Because I’ve spent ten cycles watching exactly what high-caliber powerful entities do to an un-shielded civilian population when there isn’t a single disciplined fighter standing in the trench to check their guard lane, Bulma.

Because I’ve been entirely too weak, too small, and too caked in survival fear before to balance the margins.

Because the two superior executioners currently moving along the tracking lanes to finish my brother’s deployment aren’t going to negotiate their profit margins when their pods hit the dirt.

And…

and because if my boots are going to be living on the crust of this beautiful blue world…

even if the project layout is entirely temporary…

I possess an absolute, structural responsibility to use every single drop of mass caked into my cells to help your friends defend the threshold.”

Bulma went perfectly vertical and still against her storage crate for a long, heavy breath of the wind, her blue eyes tracking the vocabulary clearing his lips before her brow clips furrowed.

“Temporarily, scrapper boy?” she whispered out low.

“That’s the call sign you’re writing onto your passport slate?”

Kallard looked away from her face, his dark pupils fixed back onto the concrete floorboards as the word hung heavy inside the dark hangar space.

He had utilized the phrase automatically—out of pure, decade-long spaceport habit.

The bounty hunter Ronin didn’t plant his landing struts deep enough into the soil for an enemy scanner drone to dig up his roots; he cleared the contract, packed his fuel cells, and moved his wings out into the dark empty spaces before the local marshal could verify his uniform seals.

That was the only layout that kept a ghost alive inside a lawless quadrant.

But the dirt of this planet Earth was already pulling at his internal navigation steering handles with an immense, unyielding gravity loop that had absolutely nothing to do with the numbers caked into Bulma’s tablet schematics.

The pink house sitting alone in the middle of the blue surf lines.

The high-energy laboratory domes caked in consumer luxury current.

Gohan’s quiet, down-to-earth childhood questions regarding his bad design choices.

Piccolo’s brutal, cold demon honesty clearing the rafters.

Krillin’s frantic, nervous little jokes clearing the static from the basin campfire.

Master Roshi’s ancient master wisdom caked into the footwork drills.

Bulma’s premium roasted coffee cells warming his chest plates.

Bulma.

He looked back up at her profile, his voice dropping into a small whisper.

“I…

I flatly don’t possess the exact data lines to answer that calculation tonight, Bulma.

The navigation column is un-verified.”

The blue-haired girl managed a very small, remarkably soft line of a genuine smile across her lips, her hand sliding off his armor plate to tap her tablet casing with a light, comfortable click.

“Well, scrapper boy,” she said, her voice lighter but caked in a deep, beautiful human seriousness that had zero corporate sarcasm left.

“While your little brawler brain cells are spending the next twelve months trying to calculate the absolute numbers for that navigation column…

you can stop pretending across my table that your spirit completely hates being active on our deck.”

Kallard glanced sideways at her ponytail strands through his visor.

“I am flatly not running a fraudulent performance pass regarding this world, ma’am.”

“Yes, you are, bounty boy!

I’ve been tracking your lenses through my diagnostic monitors for a week!

You get this exceptionally distinct, quiet look clearing your eyes every single time Krillin or Yamcha break out into a loud laugh across the grass clearing!”

“What specific look configuration did your droids resolve clearing my face clips, researcher?”

“Like your system is completely, profoundly surprised to discover that the sound of a regular human laugh is actually allowed to clear the air lines inside a brawler camp without an imperial blaster firing a warning shot, Kallard,” she whispered out softly, her blue eyes wide through the twilight frost.

The structural accuracy of the observation hit Kallard’s internal chest cage with a sudden, bone-clicking mass that caked his tongue in silence.

He didn’t deliver a single syllable of a brawler response across the table, his fingers locking tight around his ceramic mug as the wind moved through the dome doors.

Bulma’s voice softened down into an absolute whisper, her fingers reaching up to adjust a hair strand behind her pointed ear clip.

“You…

you don’t always have to play the part of the lonely, hardened space warhound who survived an explosion in his past world, Kallard.

The manual doesn’t enforce that specification sheet twenty-four hours a day.”

He looked back into her blue eyes, his muscles vertical.

She smiled slightly through her engine smudges, her face beautiful.

“You’re allowed to just play the part of a regular working scrapper who’s sitting flat on my hangar floorboards eating my father’s slow-roasted meat cells while the coils cool down.

The ledger can balance that layout perfectly fine.”

For the first time since his launch capsule had opened its hatch lines inside Brakka’s workshop ravine ten long cycles ago…

Kallard flatly didn’t possess a single, careful, pre-programmed spaceport answer ready to clear his lips.

He simply reached his chopsticks back down into the thermal box casing, took a massive secondary bite of the rice and savory brown sauce, and let the fuel currents clear his chest.

Bulma grinned beautifully across the wood face, her ponytail shifting as she took a slow swallow of her own coffee.

“Is the baseline flavor profile approved by the senior lifting assembly, scrapper boy?”

Kallard nodded his flame-shaped hair crown crown hard against his collar plates, his visor sliding up.

“The engineering data is completely flawless, Bulma.

The taste specs are pristine.”

“See there, space monkey?

The planet Earth possesses a substantial amount of operational advantages for your ledger lines.

You just have to learn how to monitor the gauges.”

He looked straight into her blue pupils through the yellow light lines, his voice dropping into a low, grounded human rumble that filled the quiet hangar.

“Yeah, Bulma,” he whispered out softly.

“The planet carries some remarkably fine advantages across the board.

The transaction is entered.”

For one single, long, and thoroughly un-scripted breath of the desert night wind…

neither of the two master builders turned their faces away from each’s line of sight, the green navigation dots of the *Wayfarer* reflecting across their skin like tiny emerald stars caked into the dark.

Then, the old four-eyed technician’s gravelly voice violently exploded out from the interior manifold hatch doors above their helmets, a heavy steel spanner wrench clanking loudly against an iron support beam with a sharp hydraulic ring.

“If you two young consumer brawler assets are completely finished turning my primary repair hangar bay into an emotionally sticky pieces of residential luxury tissue…

someone hand my lower mechanical arm the high-frequency coil spanner wrench right now before my coolant joints turn stiff!”

Bulma slowly closed her large blue eyes, her head dropping forward against her tablet frame as she let let out a long, ragged sigh of absolute, unadulterated frustration.

“I…

I was genuinely, deep-seatedly on the verge of writing another exceptionally nice sentence onto his slate, Kallard.

The old bastard’s timing is a total system violation.”

Kallard reached his white-gloved hand out to grab the heavy steel wrench tool from the concrete floorboards beside his boot loops, extending the iron shaft straight up into the open engine hatch line with a dry smirk breaking through his beard trim.

“The old goblin’s timing is caked in absolute professional safety metrics, ma’am.

It’s a hell of a lot less dangerous for my internal focus lines when the workspace stays loud.”

Bulma broke out into another sudden, bright, and thoroughly beautiful laugh that shook her ponytail strands, her fingers grabbing her digital tablet notebook as she stood back up from the concrete floorboards.

And Kallard…

against every single cold, careful, and thoroughly un-uniformed survival rule he had recorded inside his deep-space logbook over a decade of running the dark lanes alone…

let out a genuine, easy laugh right along with her frequency.

Outside the thick white dome structures of the hangar bay, the beautiful blue planet Earth turned slowly beneath a vast, open, and completely peaceful night sky caked in thousands of clean white stars.

Far away within the frozen, unmapped void of the deep eastern star lanes, the two white spherical Saiyan transport pods continued their relentless, high-velocity journey through the hyperspace corridors—but for right now, inside the warm heart of Capsule Corp, beneath the massive green belly of an old infantry cutter that had carried his spirit through years of pure, caked loneliness…

Kallard sat flat in the dust alongside a brilliant human girl whom his soul had once known only as an ink line on a page, and was now beginning to map as a real, tangible, and thoroughly beautiful living person in the dirt.

He flatly hadn’t planned for a single digit of this specific layout pass when his landing gear cleared the clouds.

He hadn’t planned for any part of this blue world’s music to touch his wire terminals.

And maybe…

his human heart analyzed through the dark…

that exact absence of a pre-programmed script was the only metric that made the shift feel completely real.