## Act I: The Coiled Spring
Six months after the dirt settled over Raditz’s grave, the planet Earth completely stopped feeling like a peaceful sanctuary.
It still looked perfectly normal from the outside.
That was the truly cruel part of the calculation.
The vast blue ocean surrounding Kame House still glittered like a field of cut diamonds under the midday sun.
West City still buzzed with its usual high-octane consumer traffic—a continuous stream of hover-bikes, commercial speeders, local gossip, and corporate office workers complaining about the length of their lunch breaks along the pavement.
The manicured lawns inside the Capsule Corp compound remained entirely too bright and green.
Mrs.
Brief still wandered through the laboratory walkways with a cheerful smile, offering trays of sweet baked snacks and tea to battle-hardened mercenaries who possessed the individual current to shatter a mountain range with their bare knuckles.
Dr.
Brief still treated high-spec imperial military technology like a simple weekend crossword puzzle that just happened to carry slightly better wiring than the local consumer appliances.
But Kallard could feel the real, structural shift caked into the atmosphere now.
Earth was systematically holding its breath, waiting for the fuse to hit the powder.
The other fighters felt the weight of the countdown too, even if their human receivers didn’t possess the exact historical data sheets he carried behind his visor.
* **Krillin** smiled a hell of a lot less easily during the morning breaks, his fingers constantly checking the straps of his gravity weights.
* **Yamcha** had taken to staying out on the reinforced sparring mats for hours after everyone else had shut down their valves, his shadow boxing turning aggressive, sharp, and silent under the stars.
* **Tien** had grown remarkably sharper, harder, and quieter—an impressive technical achievement given that the crane student hadn’t exactly initiated his residency on the lawn as a festival of human warmth.
* **Chiaotzu** tracked his movements like a silent shadow, but the small psychic had initiated his own independent training loops, mastering the precise art of compressing his unique energy signature completely inside Tien’s larger, denser current before slipping out like an invisible blade during a simulated ambush drill.
The child, Gohan, had undergone the most significant transformation pass of all.
He was still a four-year-old kid at the end of the day.
Kallard forced his own mind to check that specific parameter every single time the boy’s unrefined potential leaked out during a drill, causing the local air pressure to drop and the hangar walls to rattle.
Gohan still loved listening to old master stories, packing his jaw with Chi-Chi’s rice balls, taking long afternoon naps under the palm trees, and asking regular childhood questions that made the adults around him either smile or face an immediate internal panic loop.
But there was a new, solid line of a grounded steadiness sitting right beneath his natural fear now.
Piccolo had carved a substantial amount of that physical resilience into his bones through the freezing mountain trials.
Chi-Chi had fiercely preserved his soft human heart through pure, unyielding maternal force.
And Kallard had spent his entire shift trying his absolute best to stand directly between those two extreme layout parameters before either one managed to devour the child’s identity completely.
The coordination was working.
Mostly.
The problem caked into Kallard’s spirit was that “mostly” was flatly not a metric that won a cosmic shootout against the elite vanguard of the Frieza Force.
## Act II: Twenty-Two Gs
Inside the central operations bay of the Capsule Corp gravity hangar, the Mark Three prototype hummed with a deep, bone-clicking structural frequency that turned the air thick.
Kallard stood vertical right in the dead center of the silver room, his boots discarded, his bare feet planted wide against the reinforced titanium floor tiles under the immense load of **twenty times Earth’s normal gravity baseline**.
His black training pants were completely soaked in sweat, clinging tight to his thighs.
His broad arms hung loose at his sides, his white-gloved hands slowly clenching and unclenching to keep the circulation from freezing under the pressure.
The deep, blackened, branching white scars he had carried away from the Veyruna clearing still ran like dark, jagged lightning lines from his wrists straight up to his shoulder joints—slightly raised against his skin, permanent system score marks that even the high-end imperial healing tanks hadn’t possessed the data to clear off his sheet.
Under the heavy load of the twenty-G field, the damaged tissue burned with a faint, deep-seated ache, as if his nerve cells were actively remembering the terminal strain of the *Galaxy Breaker* long before his muscles could clear the slot.
Outside the thick three-inch observation window pane, Bulma Briefs stood vertical at the primary control desk console, flanked by Brakka and her father.
The yellow halogen light lines from her monitors reflected her face cleanly over the dark silhouette of Kallard’s broad torso through the glass.
Her blue hair was tied back in a messy ponytail, her rubber safety goggles resting loosely on her forehead, a graphite pencil tucked behind her ear as her blue pupils narrowed in intense technical focus.
Brakka kept both his organic left hand and his heavy titanium mechanical fingers resting within two inches of the primary manual cutoff valve lever.
The old alien scrapper flatly did not trust the internal mechanics of the room.
He trusted Bulma’s absolute engineering genius completely—and that specific parameter was precisely why his processing units refused to trust the safety margins of the machine without a hand on the brake.
“`
[GRAVITY CHAMBER STATUS: MARK III]
Current Load: 20G (Stable)
Subject Vitals: Heart Rate 142 BPM | Core Temp: Stable
Energy Leakage: 0.04% (Compressed)
“`
“Vitals are holding perfectly steady along the baseline, Greenbean,” Bulma’s down-to-earth voice cleared the interior intercom speaker mesh, crisp and clean.
“Heart rate is elevated but thoroughly controlled within your race’s standard exertion parameters.
The muscle strain indicators are reading high, but it’s flatly not dangerous to your skeletal framework yet.”
Brakka leaned his broad gray-blue face closer to a secondary diagnostic display, his gray ears flaring.
“The kid’s internal ki well is continuously pushing outward against the boundaries of the distortion field, lady.
His core current is running hot.”
Bulma managed a short nod, her pencil scratching a row of numbers into her ledger.
“I track the distortion line, mechanic.
It’s like his biological structure refuses to accept the mechanical weight of the room and keeps trying to execute a continuous, unconscious physical argument against the gravity grid.”
Kallard cut his dark pupils toward the green tint of the observation window, his voice a low, gravelly brawler rasp that cleared the speaker lines without an effort.
“My receivers can hear every single syllable your throat is dropping onto the logbook, researchers.”
Bulma manual-engaged her primary microphone switch with a sharp click of her thumb, her lips setting into a beautifully sarcastic grin.
“Good, scrapper boy.
Then tell your stubborn biological container to stop running a difficult coordination loop against my power grids.”
“My body is registered as an infantry Saiyan asset, Bulma,” Kallard muttered back, his tail lashing a slow circle against the silver floor tiles.
“The adaptation programs are hard-wired into the marrow.
They don’t take a verbal command.”
“Then go tell it to drop its numbers in Saiyan,” she jeered back through her ponytail strands, her blue eyes wide.
Kallard came remarkably close to letting a genuine smile break through his beard trim beneath his bandana.
Brakka growled low through his nose clips, his mechanical fingers clicking against the emergency lever.
“Do not go encouraging his lineage traits across my frequency, capsule lady!
The kid’s framework already carries an offensive amount of genetic brawler ego without your office providing a catering service for his pride!”
Dr.
Brief stood relaxed just behind her stool, his wrinkled hands gently stroking the sleek black fur of the cat Scratch, who sat motionless on his lab coat shoulder like a quiet, small supervisor monitoring an invoice pass.
“Fascinating layout,” the old man murmured cheerfully through his pipe stem.
“The anti-gravity stabilization coils aren’t simply applying an external kinetic weight to his skin plates, daughter.
His internal energy output is actively generating microscopic pressure anomalies along the floorboards in direct response to the load.
It’s almost as if his race possesses a secondary, entirely invisible muscular system manufactured out of pure raw current.”
Bulma’s blue eyes flared bright with an immediate line of pure academic delight, her fingers snapping against her tablet.
“Yes!
Exactly, Dad!
That’s the exact structural parameter I’ve been trying to map onto the spreadsheet for three weeks!”
Brakka grunted heavily, shifting his goggle straps.
“You said it to my ears with a hell of a lot more random hand-waving and screaming, girl.”
“It was highly precise, scientific hand-waving, old man!” she sniffed.
Inside the silver container, Kallard slowly bent his knees two inches deeper into the slot, his bare toes locking into the seams of the titanium floorboards.
The immense weight of the twenty-G field pressed harder against his lower spine, forcing his vertebrae to settle with an audible click.
He began to move his limbs through his foundational forms.
A slow, mechanical centerline punch.
A deliberate, low-gravity forward step.
An axial torso turn that forced his hips to carry the displacement.
A controlled, short-range defensive leg sweep.
A cross forearm block executed against empty air lines.
There was absolutely nothing fast, flashy, or impressive about the performance for an audience on the outside to watch.
That was the entire tactical point of the conditioning drill.
At twenty times Earth’s normal weight, a fighter’s brawler ego turned into an exceptionally expensive piece of system liability.
Every single micro-inch of physical movement had to be perfectly honest, grounded, and caked in raw foundational technique.
Any wasted motion, any loose posture flare, or any sloppy stance alignment instantly drained his oxygen reserves and converted the current into pure localized muscular pain.
The massive generators beneath the floorboards let out a deep, thunderous hum that vibrated straight through his heels.
Bulma adjusted the master dial rail by a fraction of an inch, her eyes fixed wide on the vital indicators.
“Taking the room output up to twenty-two Gs, Kallard.”
Brakka snapped his head around instantly, his upper pair of eyes flaring bright yellow with an immediate line of professional outrage.
“No!
Absolutely not, lady!
The safety buffers are maxed out for the shift!”
Kallard didn’t lift his eyes from his knuckles, his voice flat as iron through the microphone line.
“Execute the command, Bulma.
Run the current.”
Brakka marched his boots straight up to the glass pane, his thick organic fist hammering against the reinforced structure with a loud *thud*.
“Kallard!
Listen to my throat clips, you stubborn little idiot!
Your ledger parameters are running too close to the red line!”
“I am perfectly stable in the slot, old man,” Kallard said plainly, his breathing remaining deep, steady, and thoroughly anchored behind his ribs.
“You are always perfectly stable and caked in data logic until suddenly your framework turns completely horizontal, expensive, and requires my tools to spend three weeks pumping med-gel into your lung valves, boy!” the technician growled, his white mane bristling.
Bulma’s thin fingers hovered motionless two inches above the master digital control rail, her blue eyelashes blinking once as she hesitating over the input keys.
She looked straight through the green tint of the three-inch pane, her eyes locking onto the dark depth of the kid’s pupils.
He didn’t clear his throat to deliver a frantic strategic speech through the mic.
He didn’t have to write the text out on the slate.
She read the absolute, unyielding necessity sitting behind his brow clips anyway.
It was a strange, dangerous category of a communication frequency that had been clearing their receivers entirely too often over the last month of the preparation year.
Bulma let out a short, quiet breath, her jaw setting into a firm line as her hand manual-slid the digital rail forward through the slot.
The Mark Three gravity room let out a sudden, high-pitched mechanical whine as the power grids locked into the **twenty-twoG multiplier**.
## Act III: Touching the Edge
The sudden, brutal atmospheric displacement hit Kallard’s broad shoulders like a massive slab of solid red sandstone dropped straight out of a mountain sky.
The extreme kinetic pressure forced his bare knees to cave inward by an inch before his Saiyan muscle groups could calculate the adjustment, his long brown furry tail free behind his waist tightening up into a rigid, horizontal anchor line against the floorboards to stabilize his framework.
His breathing turned into a slow, heavy, and thoroughly deliberate operational cycle deep within his chest cage.
He took one slow, agonizing step forward through the lead air lines.
Then he dragged his rear heel up to clear the secondary slot.
Good.
The parameters were entered correctly.
There was an intense line of burning pain caked into his lower thighs, sure, and his vertebrae were under an offensive display of physical strain, yes—but every single digit of the load was still completely controlled by his internal mind.
Then, with a slow, white-knuckle contraction of his cerebral focus, Kallard reached deep down into the locked back room of his energy pool, crack open the iron door of his well by a fraction of a millimeter, and allowed his soul to touch the absolute boundary line of his green ancestral current.
*The Primal Instinct well.*
He didn’t execute a full-scale trigger pass, and he didn’t allow the aura to explode out into the room.
He simply brushed the outer edge of the fire.
An instantaneous, vibrant flash of deep emerald-green light flickered bright behind his dark pupils, his muscle fibers expanding with a sudden, monstrous influx of raw physical mass.
Bulma’s diagnostic monitor needles immediately let let out a frantic electronic scream of warning, the green lines spiking straight up toward the top margins of the tracking grid.
“Kallard!” she barked straight into the megaphone clip, her voice cracking with an immediate line of pure tactical panic.
“The software is running an error loop!
Abort the current right now!”
“I am flatly not activating the transformation pass, Bulma,” Kallard growled out low through his teeth, his bare torso vibrating with a strange, high-frequency kinetic resonance that caused the fire foam nozzles on the ceiling to rattle.
“The container is holding steady.”
Brakka’s gravelly voice violently cut straight through the secondary speaker net, his mechanical fingers clenching the emergency lever until the steel creaked.
“Your personal brawler definition of ‘not activating’ is an absolute piece of fraudulent engineering data, boy!
The sensors are completely fried!
Touch less of that green fire before your cell walls fracture clean down the center rail!”
“I’re simply checking the reaction metrics of the current under a high-density atmospheric load, old man,” Kallard said, his teeth bared as he forced the green light behind his eyelids to stay tightly caged behind his focus.
“Touch less of it, I said!” the technician roared back.
Kallard ignored the shouting frequencies clearing the glass, focusing every single digit of his human mind inward onto the iron cage.
The *Primal Instinct* form wasn’t just a simple power transformation sheet that a warrior could flip like a common consumer light switch—it was an absolute, raw psychological pressure.
A predatory, primitive hunger.
An ancient, unyielding line of low-class Saiyan military violence that had been violently twisted by his transmigrated human soul into a unique combat path that only his own knuckles possessed the database to navigate safely.
The current amplified his physical output numbers by a massive multiplier, sure, but that amplification pass was nothing more than the crude, brute-heavy section of the manual.
The real, systemic danger caked into the form…
was the absolute primal impulse that flooded his cerebral pathways the second the green light cleared his valves.
* **Move faster.**
* **Hit harder.**
* **Isolate the target.**
* **Shatter the guard lane.**
* **Liquidate the threat.**
* **Do not stop turning the knuckles until the pavement is completely clear of a baseline signature.**
He took a deep, steady breath of the twenty-twoG oxygen cells, forcing his human heart to take the handles with a white-knuckle grip of pure modern discipline.
Not today.
Not inside this laboratory dome.
And flatly, non-negotiably not in front of her blue eyes.
The deep emerald glow behind his pupils held its ground for three more seconds of a heavy vibration, before it slowly, systematically faded back down into the dark well of his baseline spark, leaving his eyes their ordinary dark brown color.
Bulma’s slender shoulders dropped downward by a full two inches behind her control terminal, a long, ragged breath clearing her throat as her hands left the console face.
She had been holding her breath inside her lungs for the entire length of the sequence.
Kallard track the micro-inch movement of her chest plates through the glass window.
That specific realization caused his brawler mind to drop the experimental state completely, his hands falling flat back to his side sashes.
“End the test pass, Bulma,” he said quietly.
“The inventory is logged.”
## Act IV: Horizontal and Expensive
Bulma didn’t waste a single millisecond delivering a sarcastic technical commentary across the radio net—she instantly slammed her palm flat against the primary manual shutdown override button on her console face with a sharp, echoing *smack*.
The massive anti-gravity generators beneath the silver floorboards let out a long, dying mechanical whine as the field parameters dropped down in safe, rhythmic incremental stages, returning the interior atmosphere of the Mark Three prototype flat back down to one-G normal potential.
The sudden lift of the twenty-two-ton pressure weight made Kallard’s biological frame feel completely, ridiculously light, his bare feet nearly lifting off the titanium tiles as his muscle memory adjusted to the standard environment.
He rolled his broad shoulders in a wide circle to clear the rime from his joints, stepping his boots straight out through the sliding silver airlock door as the pneumatic seals hissed open.
Bulma Briefs was already waiting vertical on the concrete walkway directly in front of his path lane, a thick white maintenance towel held firmly in her hand, her blue eyes bared like two high-caliber blasters through her hair strands.
The towel was flatly a hell of a lot safer for his ledger than the specific configuration of the look clearing her brow clips today.
Kallard reached out his hand, accepting the cloth into his glove with a quiet rasp.
“Thanks for the catering, Bulma.
The cooling cycle was correct.”
She crossed her broad arms tightly over her chest coat, her jaw setting into a hard line of pure, unyielding corporate anger.
“What exactly was that little stunt supposed to mean for our engineering logs, Kallard?”
“Standard combat conditioning, ma’am,” he said plainly, using the towel to wipe the thick layer of sweat from his bearded chin.
“That flatly, structurally was *not* a standard piece of combat conditioning, you stubborn space monkey!” she snapped out, her voice dropping into a low, fierce register that cut through the hangar quiet.
“That was you explicitly testing the boundaries of that scary green energy form inside my prototype development room—after your own mouth delivered a solemn verbal promise to my father and me three rotations ago stating that you wouldn’t open those valves on our deck!”
“I delivered a promise to your office stating that I wouldn’t *activate* the transformation pass inside the hangar, Bulma,” Kallard said smoothly, his dark pupils steady as he looked down into her face.
“I maintained absolute control over the valves through the entire load test.
The cage never opened.”
“Kallard!” she shrieked out, her ponytail flying.
“Don’t you go running that ridiculous semantic lawyer vocabulary across my desk today!
You know exactly what my receivers are talking about!”
Brakka let let out a short, immensely satisfied cackling grunt from his storage crate, all four of his eyes wide with a triumphant professional joy as he lifted his oil can into the air.
“Don’t look at my mechanical joint for assistance, boy!
My processing units are currently enjoying the absolute luxury of being on the mathematically correct side of a tactical argument for once in this preparation year!
The capsule lady has completely caked your brawler mouth in a corner!”
Kallard cut his dark eyes sideways to glare straight through the old technician’s visor, before he turned his focus back to look into the girl’s face.
Bulma took a slow step closer to his armor plates, her voice dropping its sharp corporate edge completely to reveal that deep, raw maternal worry that sat right behind her ponytail.
“You explicitly delivered a line of data to my ears during our first laboratory shift stating that the specific genetic form damages your internal container if your mind pushes the current wrong, Kallard.
You said the *Galaxy Breaker* nearly tore your bone marrow clean out of your skin ports on Veyruna.”
“It carries a substantial amount of operational risk for my framework, yes,” he whispered out low.
“And you consciously, intentionally chose to push that exact same dangerous current straight against the boundaries of an un-tested prototype gravity distortion field that hasn’t even cleared its primary safety certification pass yet?”
“Controlled structural exposure, Bulma,” he said levelly.
“The muscles need to map the resistance.”
“Those are nothing more than exceptionally fancy spaceport mercenary words for ‘doing something completely stupid at a remarkably slow pace,’ Greenbean!” she spat out, her blue eyes wide through her eyelashes.
Kallard opened his wide mouth to deliver a highly precise, well-vetted strategic explanation pulled straight from his deep-space survival manuals—before his human soul took an inventory check of the genuine fear sitting behind her blue pupils and shut his jaw flat against his collar without delivering a single syllable.
Brakka pointed his thick titanium knuckle straight toward the kid’s nose clip, a wide gear-toothed cackle clearing his blue-gray face.
“Track the line right there, lady!
The kid’s jaw clips just executed a total dead halt!
That specific parameter means his internal systems formally register the fact that your mouth is completely correct regarding his stupidity!
The brawler has zero data left to upload!”
Bulma pointed her copper screwdriver straight back toward the old alien’s nose clip without losing her lock on Kallard’s face.
“Thank you for the engineering verification, senior mechanic!
Your maintenance logs are approved!”
“You are entirely welcome for the diagnostic pass, girl!” the technician growled back, rubbing his ears.
“I absolutely, deep-seatedly hate how much my systems agree with your mouth today!
It’s a total hazard to my old-school pride!”
## Act V: The Anatomy of a Threat
Kallard let let out a long, tired sigh through his nose, his hand rubbing the towel across his short neck hair mane before he dropped the cloth loose over a laboratory railing.
“I…
I systematically require my mind to understand exactly how that green current reacts whenever my cell structures are forced to operate under a high-density atmospheric distortion loop, Bulma,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, grounded human register that filled the quiet hangar dome.
“The baseline metrics have to be mapped before the pods clear the sky.”
Bulma’s fierce facial lines softened by a fraction of an inch, her blue eyes tracking the crooked white lines of the Veyruna scars covering his arm plates, though she kept her arms crossed tight against her winter coat fabric.
“I know the numbers have to be mapped, Kallard.
My brain cells can read the spreadsheet perfectly fine.
But your account doesn’t carry the legal right to turn your own biological container into a catastrophic laboratory accident on my deck just because your spirit is running an internal panic loop regarding next year.”
The entire research hangar dome went completely, profoundly quiet all at once, the only sound being the slow, rhythmic *hiss-cooling* of the Mark Three generators beneath the floor grates.
Kallard lowered his glove loops down to his side sashes, his face bare under the halogen lights.
He looked straight into her blue pupils, his voice dropping into an absolute, un-vetted down-to-earth honesty that had zero spaceport brawler armor left to wear.
“I…
I am completely, profoundly terrified of what’s coming down the track next year, Bulma.
The logbook is running black.”
Brakka went perfectly vertical and still on his iron box, his four eyes blinking in unison as his manual tools stopped their clicking pass.
Bulma’s face underwent an immediate transformation pass, her blue lips parting slightly as the raw mass of the admission cleared her guard lane without a single warning ping from her corporate defenses.
Kallard turned his broad torso around slowly to look through the colossal panoramic viewscreen windows of the research hangar bay, his dark pupils tracking the endless, beautiful expanse of Earth’s blue atmosphere hanging peaceful above the West City towers.
“There are two superior executioners currently moving along the eastern hyperspace lanes to finish my brother’s liquidation pass, Bulma.
Let’s enter the raw numbers onto the table cleanly: Raditz was nothing more than a lazy, low-class infantry discard compared to the structural mass of the vanguard details currently tracking our coordinate line.”
He paused, his jaw clenching tight as the memory of the old manga chapters and the animation reels he carried from his past human life flashed bright behind his eyes.
“One of them…
Nappa…
is an absolute mountain of a veteran military brute whose entire career has been caked in the summary liquidation of entire planetary populations before breakfast,” Kallard whispered out low into the quiet bay.
But the secondary asset…
the prince…
he is a completely separate category of a cosmic disaster, Bulma.
He is dangerous.
He is ten times smarter than his brawler muscles look whenever his temper turns white-hot across a trench.
He is caked in an ancient, unyielding line of royal genetic pride that forces his mind to execute some exceptionally bad, short-tempered strategic decisions during a brawler match—but his raw biological power level is so completely, monstrously dense that those bad design choices still systematically turn entire metropolitan civilizations into sheets of smoking black glass before his boots even clear the sector gates.”
Bulma studied the line of his jaw clips through her hair strands, her voice quiet.
“You…
you use that specific word ‘prince’ and ‘reputation’ with a substantial amount of historical detail, Kallard.
You talk like you’ve spent the last ten years tracking their private cargo manifests across the galaxy.”
“I know their lineage specifications by their reputation out in the deep hubs, Bulma,” Kallard said smoothly, forcing his voice into a neutral business drone to cover his tracks.
“That is a completely safe parameter for your receivers to map today.
Mostly.”
Brakka watched the side of the kid’s face with a very sharp, highly complex calculation clearing his gray ears, but the old mechanic kept his wide mouth shut flat against his collar.
“If my knuckles misjudge the absolute density of their guard lanes by a single micro-inch when their pods clear the cloud deck next year, Bulma…
every single living face sitting around that kitchen dinner table tonight is going to be systematically wiped off the asset registry logbook within the first five minutes of the exchange,” Kallard whispered, his dark pupils steady.
“The whole inventory turns into ash.
That’s the math I’re running against.”
Bulma’s down-to-earth voice quieted down into an absolute whisper, her long coat shifting in the wind gale.
“You…
you keep delivering that specific strategic lecture to our ears like the entire weight of this planetary defense wall is written exclusively onto your personal account tab, Ronin.
Like you’re the only scrapper standing in the dirt.”
“My boots carry the long tail, Bulma,” he said levelly.
“The liability is mutual.”
“But your forms act like you’re the sole command manager responsible for clearing the invoice before the world breaks apart!” she said, her blue eyes wide as she stepped her boots within a single foot of his chest guards, her face beautiful through her soot smudges.
“We’ve got Piccolo out in the ridges, we’ve got Krillin and Tien grinding their muscles raw on the lawn, we’ve got my father and me building the transmitter arrays…
you don’t get to run your shift like a lonely space ghost who doesn’t have a single partner holding the steering handles alongside his knuckles anymore, Kallard!
The layout doesn’t permit that solo crap on my deck!”
Kallard looked down straight into her blue pupils, his breath freezing deep inside his throat cage.
There were three other human technical assistants active inside the observation room, a gray-blue alien technician sitting on a box, an old master researcher smoking a pipe, and several automated target droids rolling past their heels between their sashes—but for one single, long breath of the midnight wind…
the colossal hangar bay felt remarkably, incredibly narrow, as if the universe had shrunk down down to the space between their two sashes.
## Act VI: Operation Bad Reception
Dr.
Brief cleared his old throat with a very gentle, highly deliberate mechanical rasp from behind his spectacles, his slippers clicking against the floorboards as he stood up from his chair, the black cat Scratch remaining perfectly perched across his white coat collar like an independent judge.
“Well, my friends…
I believe I’ll go check on the stabilization coil.”
Brakka immediately turned.
“I checked it this morning.”
Dr.
Brief smiled.
“Then we’ll check it again somewhere else.”
Brakka looked between him and Bulma and Kallard.
“Oh.
Subtle.”
Dr.
Brief walked away cheerfully.
Brakka grumbled but followed.
Scratch meowed as they left.
Bulma and Kallard remained by the chamber.
For a while, neither spoke.
Then Bulma said, “You know, when I was little, I used to think being smart meant I could fix anything.”
Kallard leaned back against the chamber frame.
“What changed?”
“I got older.
Built more things.
Broke more things.
Met Goku.” She smiled faintly, but sadness sat under it.
“Learned some problems don’t care how smart you are.”
Kallard nodded.
“Yeah.”
“But that doesn’t mean you stop trying.” She looked up at him.
“It means you let other people help before the problem crushes you.”
He smiled slightly.
“That sounded practiced.”
“It was.
I tell myself versions of it when I’m about to do something reckless.”
“Does it work?”
“Almost never.”
He laughed.
She smiled, then reached toward his arm.
This time, she paused before touching the scars.
He noticed.
“You can.”
Her fingers brushed the edge of one scar, light as a question.
“They still hurt?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did the healing tank fail?”
“No.
It healed what it could.”
“And the rest?”
“Stayed.”
Bulma’s thumb traced a jagged line near his forearm.
“Reminder?”
“That’s what Brakka calls them.”
“What do you call them?”
Kallard thought for a moment.
“Proof that winning wrong still costs you.”
Bulma looked up at him.
“That’s a very you answer.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means poetic, grim, and annoyingly responsible.”
He tilted his head.
“You make responsible sound like an insult.”
“It can be.
Depends how dramatic you are while doing it.”
He smiled.
She smiled back.
Then the lab alarm screamed.
Bulma jerked away, immediately all business.
Kallard’s body shifted into readiness before thought finished.
Brakka’s voice came over the hangar speakers.
“Control room.
Now.”
They ran.
## Act VII: The Lying Machine
The central command bridge deck of Capsule Corp was an absolute layout of high-octane technical chaos, though managed under a hell of a lot better lighting parameters than a standard deep-space port hub.
Bulma Briefs cleared the threshold first at a full sprint, her boots sliding into her primary executive master console chair so fast that a junior technical assistant had to violently jump three feet to the left to avoid having his spreadsheet folder run down by her wheels.
Her thin fingers immediately initiated a high-velocity typing sequence across the primary keys, her blue pupils wide as she brought up the main telemetry maps.
Brakka stood vertical directly alongside the primary long-range signal analyzer console, all four of his yellow eyes wide as his titanium mechanical fingers adjusted the frequency filters.
Dr.
Brief was already in position near the center rail, his spectacles reflecting the scrolling red lines of code, his pipe unlit between his teeth as his black cat Scratch let let out a soft warning growl from his shoulder.
Across the massive ten-foot holographic projection screen floating in the center of the air lines, rows of unrefined imperial military code characters were scrolling rapidly right alongside a jagged green waveform data reading.
Raditz’s dismantled face scouter module lay connection flat to three independent Capsule Corp high-gain signal tracking towers through a thick, ugly, and thoroughly custom-built copper adapter junction box that Brakka had finished welding during his night watch—the old alien had spent forty minutes calling the Earth’s local electrical components “exceptionally adorable little consumer toys that possess a substantial amount of unearned corporate ambition.”
Bulma’s hands flew across her terminal like a pair of high-speed sorting droids, her face turning white under the screen glare.
“Talk plain to my receivers, Brakka!
What specific category of an atmospheric displacement just triggered the master alarm grid?”
The old technician pointed his thick organic left hand straight toward a sharp spike flaring across the green waveform display.
“A long-range, high-frequency scouter registration ping, lady!
The logic boards just cleared the input gate!”
Kallard’s biological blood felt like it dropped ten degrees in temperature beneath his black training mesh, his dark green pupils locking onto the scrolling imperial characters.
“Define the origin point coordinates of the ping, old man.
Did the frequency clear our local jamming net?”
“The transmission originated from deep space, Ronin,” Brakka growled low, his gray ears dropping низко against his collar.
“It’s exceptionally faint, caked in static, and doesn’t carry a single line of an active audio conversation channel.
It’s an automated system handshake sequence.
A paired network locator protocol.
The long-haired idiot’s scouter board automatically tried to execute an upload confirmation response loop before our localized scrambling net could strangle the current rail.”
Bulma manual-swiped her finger across the glass face to bring up the translated text file.
“So…
to maintain absolute data accuracy on our table…
this isn’t Raditz’s device actively transmitting a fresh data burst outward toward the star lanes today?”
“No, daughter,” Dr.
Brief said softly, his pipe stem pointing toward the screen lines.
“Something exceptionally dense, massive, and thoroughly active out in the deep void…
just reached its technical fingers straight across the light years to pat the casing of this ear module.
They’re checking the status of the inventory.”
Kallard stared at the green lines with an unblinking focus.
It was the unmistakable signature layout of the imperial Frieza Force military routing protocols—a long-range sub-light data handshake caked in a massive time delay loop.
Two independent, high-velocity biological signatures, moving as a single paired unit through the empty spaces between the stars.
The entire colossal command room seemed to shrink down down to the width of a single coffin slot all at once.
“Calculate the exact distance parameters clearing our sky lines, Bulma,” Kallard said, his voice flat as a steel anvil.
“Give me the closest engineering number your terminal can resolve.”
The blue-haired girl ran the mathematical decay algorithms through her Capsule Corp processor faster than an ordinary human accountant could blink his eyes, her lips trembling slightly as the final calculation flashed blue across her screen.
“It’s…
it’s completely out of bounds to give you a flawless spatial coordinate marker based on a single faint static burst, Kallard…
but tracking the velocity projection lines and the signal degradation margins…” She swallowed hard, her hand clenching her pencil until the graphite cracked.
“They’re flatly coming down the track, Greenbean.
They’re still several months out from clearing our atmospheric gates…
but their steering handles are locked straight onto our dirt.
There’s zero drift on their trajectory.”
Kallard managed a single, quiet nod of his head through the dark, his face bare under the red warning lights.
He had known the absolute timeline since the first rotation his soul cleared the breathing tank logs.
He had caked the parameters into his brain cells years ago.
But knowing a historical script inside your memories, and seeing the cold, tangible electronic proof of a predatory military handshake flaring red across a modern research terminal…
were two completely separate categories of an operational strain.
Bulma turned her torso around slowly in her chair to look straight into his visor lens, her blue eyes wide.
“You’re…
you’re flatly not surprised by a single digit on this display screen today, are you, scrapper boy?”
*Careful, hunter.
Keep the steering column steady.*
Kallard didn’t deliver a single line of a fraudulent performance pass to her receivers, his voice level.
“I spent the last six months deep-seatedly hoping that my internal database was running on a broken calculation loop regarding their velocity, Bulma.
The logbook is simply verifying the reality today.”
The blue-haired heiress accepted the text without pushing her question any deeper into his brain wells, her fingers turning back to track the scrolling code lines.
Brakka’s upper eyes remained fixed wide against the analyzer waveform.
“Can our department build a high-gain long-range antenna rail to actively listen to their interior squad conversation channels, lady?”
Bulma shook her head once, her ponytail moving through the red light.
“Not clearly, mechanic.
The static gray noise between the sectors is entirely too thick for a low-power receiver like this scouter to clear the data loops.
Maybe…
maybe if their pods manual-engage a high-caliber transmission burst as they approach our orbital perimeters…
my towers can harvest the data packets.
But for right now, the line is dark.”
“Don’t go inviting that category of a high-power current pass straight toward our sky lanes, girl,” Brakka muttered low through his teeth.
“My tools prefer the enemy deaf.”
Kallard took a slow step closer to the central holographic display table, his white-gloved hand reaching down to point a single finger straight toward the blinking red adapter casing.
“If our laboratory can’t block their long-range system handshakes completely without inviting immediate suspicion from their navigation computers…
can we systematically learn how to feed their receivers a mountain of bad biological data?”
## Act VIII: Operation Bad Reception
Bulma turned her face around slowly on her stool, her blue eyebrows rising up toward her hair line with a sudden, intense curiosity.
Brakka’s gray-blue face underwent an immediate, highly complex mechanical calculation pass, his wide mouth splitting into a sharp line.
Dr.
Brief managed a very small, remarkably calm smile from behind his spectacle frames, his unlit pipe turning between his fingers.
Bulma leaned her upper body forward over her console desk, her blue eyes wide.
“Talk plain about the architecture, bounty boy.
What specific category of a ‘bad data’ layout is your brawler brain cell drafting for the spreadsheet?”
“Nothing so completely out of bounds that it causes their navigation droids to suspect a fraudulent transmission net and alter their flight plan, Bulma,” Kallard explained plainly, his voice a low primal rumble that filled the command bridge.
“If those two executioners are coming down the track specifically to harvest the Dragon Balls and secure their own immortality registry…
they flatly aren’t going to abandon a twelve-month deep-space journey simply because the local scouter pings look a bit odd on their screens.
But if our laboratory can systematically confuse their power level readings…
make the biological infrastructure of the planet Earth look completely inconsistent, unstable, and caked in data errors…”
Bulma finished the engineering calculation loop for his throat in less than a breath, her blue eyes lighting up with a sudden, dangerous line of pure market-shattering technical arrogance.
“Then those two space conquerors are going to clear our atmospheric gates caked in an offensive amount of unearned brawler confidence, Greenbean!
They’ll step out of their pods expecting nothing more than a broken backwater junk pile!”
Brakka nodded his broad head hard against his collar, his titanium fingers clicking.
“Or they clear the landing zone with a hell of a lot less tactical preparation caked into their muscle groups!
It’s an absolute masterpiece of an ambush layout!”
Kallard managed a real nod.
“Maybe both parameters hit the table simultaneously, master builders.
That’s the goal for the workshop.”
Bulma’s thin fingers immediately initiated a massive, high-speed project layout sequence across her screens, her ponytail flying wild as her corporate genius took the handles completely.
“I can work with that specific configuration of a lie layout, brawler boy!
Operation Bad Reception is officially open on the company ledger lines!
Let’s go build the distortion codes!”
Brakka looked at her rapid typing velocity with a mixture of deep-seated professional pride and pure, unadulterated system horror.
“Of course your crazy blue-haired mind can build the lying machine, lady!
Your engineering greed is completely out of bounds for a peaceful planet!”
Kallard stepped his boots two paces back from the main console rail, allowing the master builders and the senior founder to move their tools straight into the development phase without his brawler mass taking up space in the slot.
He watched them transform the command bridge from a standard technical alarm station into a high-caliber weapon system in less than five minutes of a daylight shift.
That exact parameter was precisely why his internal mind never once underestimated the raw, unyielding survival potential of the local human race.
You give these down-to-earth people a single piece of broken alien hardware, a clear strategic warning sheet, and a master researcher with a screwdriver…
and they will systematically learn how to turn their own primitive fear into a multi-faction electronic death trap for an empire.
Bulma track the micro-inch movement of his shoulder guards toward the doorway without looking away from her scrolling screens, her megaphone clip held ready.
“What’s the calculation clearing your visor now, scrapper boy?”
“Nothing, Bulma,” Kallard said smoothly, his tail resting loose.
“Just checking the water lines.”
She pointed her pencil straight toward his nose clip without losing her aim on her code lines.
“Is that a suspicious, cryptic little ‘I know a prophecy’ nothing clearing your throat, Ronin, or an impressed piece of asset validation for my department?”
“Impressed, ma’am,” Kallard said flatly and honestly, a genuine smile breaking through his lips.
“The engineering is pristine.”
That specific syllable caused a beautiful, deep line of a genuine smile to break straight through her ponytail strands, her blue eyes flashing under the green screen glare.
“Good piece of data entry, Greenbean.
Keep your receivers tuned to my channel.”
## Act IX: The Tail and the Moon
The development of the false-signal distortion project turned into an absolute, hyper-fixated obsession for Bulma Briefs over the course of the following thirty rotation shifts.
She spent her days and nights locked inside the signal lab, her workspace caked in hundreds of empty porcelain coffee mugs that resembled a collection of defeated soldiers standing around a broken trench line.
The basic strategic layout was beautifully simple in its theory, but an absolute structural nightmare to execute across the hardware rails.
Raditz’s scouter had already successfully transmitted enough raw biological data packets during the canyon duel to guarantee that Vegeta and Nappa were moving down the line.
They couldn’t un-spill that bowl of soup off the spreadsheet.
But if the incoming executioners manual-engaged a secondary long-range network ping to verify the target zone…
Bulma and Brakka’s false transmitter loop would automatically let the device answer the handshake with a thoroughly corrupted, heavily scrambled row of data entries.
They flatly didn’t dump total nonsensical noise into the star lanes—total system nonsense would immediately invite a senior navigation droid to run an audit pass and alert the prince to a technical trap.
Instead, they systematically manufactured a series of deep-seated biological inconsistencies across the tracking grid.
* Active power signatures flaring into life at a thousand units, and then completely vanishing from the radar lines a fraction of a millisecond later.
* Localized regional energy spikes that looked exactly like a series of natural environmental thermal volcanic anomalies rather than a disciplined martial arts formation.
* Dozens of corrupted references to the wish orbs buried deep beneath fields of synthetic radio static gray noise.
* Raditz’s final biological indicator logs scrambled, distorted, and caked in artificial data errors that suggested his ear module had simply sustained a fatal piece of physical impact damage during a rough landing pass.
And a small handful of carefully framed, highly inconsistent false hints regarding a series of unstable, moonlight-related structural transformations caked into the atmosphere.
That final, dangerous digit on the spreadsheet had been Kallard’s personal design suggestion, delivered to the table with an extreme amount of professional caution during a midnight break.
“My brother Raditz may have explicitly mentioned the existence of our race’s long tails to his squad channel before his heart rate hit the zero mark, Bulma,” Kallard said levelly, his hands resting loose on his knee guards as they sat around the workbench. This story is hosted at novelping . com.
Bulma frowned deeply, her pencil pausing mid-line.
“So what if he did, scrapper?
It’s just a thick piece of brown fur attached to your spine sashes.
It’s an adorable limb, but it flatly doesn’t alter your market value.”
Kallard hesitated for a fraction of a millisecond, his dark pupils narrowing behind his visor as his mind calculated the risk parameters.
Then he decided the information was absolutely, structurally necessary to preserve their skin slots next year.
“The biological cell structures inside a Saiyan warrior’s tail are engineered to execute a massive, catastrophic transformation pass whenever their dark pupils track the specific visual light frequencies thrown off by a full, un-shielded planetary moon, Bulma.”
The entire laboratory room went completely, profoundly dead silent all at once, the wind from the courtyard moving the blueprints with a soft rustling sound.
Yamcha, who had been sitting flat on a nearby storage box drinking a cup of fresh mountain water, slowly and thoroughly lowered his vessel down to his knee guard, his face turning a dark shade of pure brawler dread.
“Talk plain to my ear clips, Ronin…
what specific category of a ‘catastrophic transformation’ are your lips dropping onto our breakfast shift today?”
Kallard looked straight across the workbench toward the far corner of the bay.
The child Gohan was flatly not present inside the laboratory dome clearing tonight, currently sleeping soundly under his mother’s written grammar blankets inside the residential capsule shelter.
Good.
The inventory was safe from his small ears.
“A Saiyan warrior who retains his biological tail limb can systematically transform his entire body mass into a colossal, hundred-foot-tall Great Ape beast under a full moon, Yamcha,” Kallard said, his voice a low, gravelly brawler rasp that had zero soft phrasing left.
“The transformation multi-packs his baseline combat power level number by an immediate **ten-times multiplier**.
His skin plates turn as dense as iron hull plating, his physical muscle mass can crush a metropolitan sector in less than three steps of his boots, and his primitive mind completely loses its capacity to manage its own rational control loops—returning straight back down to a state of absolute, un-shielded ancestral brawler violence unless his knuckles have been trained through an elite military squad manual since his birth cycle.”
Krillin’s face turned a stark, powdery white color under the halogen light lines, his hand frantically rubbing his bald head.
“Wait…
hold your steering handles for a single second, Kallard…
Goku…
Goku possessed a thick brown furry tail exactly like yours when he was a little kid running through the wilderness tracks with Bulma.
He used to wave it around all the time before it got pulled off.”
Master Roshi became completely, profoundly motionless on his camp stool, his hands locking around the wood of his staff as an old, dark memory line cleared his red lenses.
Bulma Briefs’ blue eyes widened into two massive circles of pure, horrified historical data resolution, her tablet slipping an inch against her fingers as her mind connected twenty years of un-explained childhood disasters down the center rail.
“Oh…
oh my god,” she whispered out low into her coat collar fabric, her chest tightening.
“The…
the giant monster monkey that violently crushed my capsule car into scrap metal down in the mountain valleys when we were teenagers…
the beast that completely leveled the tournament arena walls years ago during the world finals…”
Kallard kept his dark eyes flat and neutral, his voice level.
“I’d strongly advise your department to treat the presence of a full planetary moon as an absolute terminal battlefield risk factor when the pods touch down, martial artists.
The math doesn’t lie.”
Master Roshi slowly and thoroughly took his dark sunglasses off his wrinkled nose bridge, revealing his small, ancient human eyes to the laboratory lights for the first time in months.
“I…
I systematically utilized the absolute maximum output of my full-power *Kamehameha* beam to violently turn your planet’s moon into a cloud of smoking space gravel years ago during the tournament finals specifically to break that monkey transformation pass, young man,” the old master said softly, his voice caked in an ancient down-to-earth dignity.
“The baseline logic was the only layout left to save my student’s skin.”
Brakka stared straight into the old master’s wrinkled face clips for three long seconds, all four of his yellow eyes wide with an absolute, unadulterated engineering marvel.
“You…
you’re delivering a line of data to my processing units stating that your primitive human body mass manual-generated a raw energy current dense enough to completely, structurally erase a full-scale planetary satellite body clear off the sector orbital tracking maps, old timer?
Without a capital ship rail-gun array?”
Roshi managed a short, tired wave of his hand through the smoke.
“It was an exceptionally long, resource-heavy piece of a martial arts shift, alien friend.
My back muscles required three weeks of hot herbal liniment to repair the system strain afterward.”
Brakka turned his broad gray-blue face around slowly to look at Kallard, his gray ears flaring bright pink with absolute delight.
“Ronin…
you systematically dragged my tools to a primitive backwater mud ball where the senior human retirement population can casually blast a full moon off the spreadsheet whenever their students run a bad baseline loop!
This planet’s customer review profile is completely out of bounds!
I’m registering the master as a certified heavy demolition asset!”
Kallard managed a tiny, dry line of a smirk breaking through his beard trim.
“The…
the administrative files are verified, old man.
Earth has some remarkably fine legacy specifications caked into the dirt.”
## Act VI: The Elite Trick
Bulma recovered her analytical engineering balance first, her fingers frantically typing a new script layout into Operation Bad Reception.
“So…
to maintain the parameters of the combat manual cleanly, Greenbean…
if these two incoming space executioners still retain their biological tail limbs…”
“They possess the absolute capacity to execute that ten-G Great Ape transformation pass the second their boots clear the landing zone, Bulma,” Kallard said flatly.
“And what about your own account, scrapper boy?” she asked, her blue eyes narrowing into a sharp line as she track the slow horizontal movement of the thick brown fur lashing behind his waist sash guard.
“Your limb is completely free in the wind.
Are my towers going to have to manage a hundred-foot-tall Space Batman running amok inside our courtyard if the clouds clear next year?”
Kallard cut his dark pupils sideways to meet her gaze, his voice absolute.
“I’re spent the last ten cycles of my life learning exactly how to build an iron cage around the beast I already am inside my baseline form, Bulma.
I flatly, non-negotiably refuse to hand the steering column of my container over to a primitive genetic monster program unless my knuckles run out of every single secondary survival option caked into the manual.
The valve stays locked.”
“Can your forms execute the transformation loop if the contract requires the mass?” she pressed, her pen hovering.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said plainly.
“The biology is complete.”
“But your mind won’t open that gate?”
“No.”
“Because?”
He looked away from her blue eyes, his dark pupils fixed back onto the concrete floorboards.
“Because I caked my own hands in entirely too much raw, un-vetted ancestral destruction when my pride took the handles during my childhood shift on Vegeta, Bulma.
A warrior who relies on a monster form to clear his invoices…
is nothing more than a slave to his own genetic layout.
I prefer my choices conscious.”
Bulma’s face softened down into an absolute line of quiet respect, her thin fingers gently tapping the side of her glass terminal face.
Krillin swallowed hard, his throat clicking against his collar sash.
“So…
talk plain about the tactical response plan, Kallard: how do our bare knuckles stop a hundred-foot-tall space monkey from caving our chest plates inward if they execute the pass?”
Kallard pointed his finger straight toward the circuit drawings.
“Isolate the limb and sever the tail marrow completely on the first exchange, Krillin.
That parameter drops their power level numbers straight back down to their standard baseline instantly.
If the tail is too well-protected inside their guard lane…
destroy or block the visual path line of the moon body entirely.
Blind their eye lenses with a high-intensity solar flare feint.
Force their combat coordination underground into a deep stone cavern or a narrow canyon trench where their massive volume turns into a physical liability against the walls.
And…
and stay completely alert to prevent them from manual-generating an artificial moonlight field if their vanguard units happen to carry the elite training codes.”
Piccolo, who had remained perfectly vertical and silent inside the darkest corner of the signal laboratory doorway frame for the entire length of the technical conversation, suddenly stepped his long green legs straight into the light lines, his yellow eyes wide.
“Artificial moonlight?
Talk plain to my ears about that phrase, hybrid traveler.
How does a brawler’s muscle mass manufacture a planetary satellite out of empty air?”
Kallard cursed his own brawler throat internally for a fraction of a millisecond.
*Too much data cleared?
No.
It’s an acceptable boundary for a deep-space bounty hunter’s database.*
“An elite-tier Saiyan officer who understands the precise chemical composition of the atmosphere…
can systematically mix a high-density pocket of his own compressed ki current with the local oxygen cells, Piccolo,” Kallard explained levelly, his dark green eyes meeting the demon lord’s gaze.
“The resulting energy reaction manufactures a temporary, marble-sized sphere of pure raw artificial white light that perfectly replicates the exact threshold of **seventeen million zeno-units of blutz waves** required to trigger the biological transformation loop inside our race’s cell walls.
It’s an old military cheat code designed for clearing out target worlds that don’t possess a natural moon satellite.”
Piccolo’s green brow clips narrowed into tight lines of pure demonic calculations, his claws curving into a tight clenching pass against his purple chest guard.
“Elites,” the demon lord hissed out low through his white teeth.
“A race of absolute engineering monsters.”
The entire laboratory room absorbed the weight of the description, the air lines turning heavy and thick with the reminder that Nappa was merely the brute-heavy vanguard detail of the invoice—and the prince Vegeta was a hell of a lot worse for their survival margins than a broken scouter could ever display on a screen.
The preparation year was officially entering its heaviest, most industrial phase down on the spreadsheet, and the time for a soft brawler holiday pass had completely run out to zero.
## Act X: The Rock-Heavy Body
Far away within the frozen, unmapped void of the afterlife star lanes, an orange martial arts warrior named Goku was currently flat on his face in the green grass turf of a tiny green planetary marble, his limbs tangled up in his orange gi sash as his chest wheezed to extract oxygen under the immense load of **ten times Earth’s normal gravity baseline**.
King Kai sat relaxed on the rear bumper of his tiny automated capsule speeder car, a wide cheerful grin splitting his blue face clips as his long antennae ridges twitched with pure, unadulterated amusement through the air lines.
“No, no, no, my young dead brawler asset!
The little brown monkey Bubbles is flatly not running on a fraudulent speed cheat code across this lawn today!
Your own technical footwork velocity is simply completely, profoundly too slow to clear the slot inside my yard!
The ledger is running short!”
Goku managed a short, ragged line of a genuine brawler laugh through his teeth, his fingers clenching the green blades of the grass with a white-knuckle grip of pure excited discipline as he forced his heavy vertical torso back up into a low crane stance.
“Man…
this…
this high-density lead air line is easily the finest, most incredible piece of a martial arts training yard my boots have ever cleared, King Kai!” he gasped out happily, the sweat dripping off his black hair spikes.
“My entire biological framework feels exactly like someone packed fifty pounds of heavy river rocks straight inside my muscle cells before breakfast!”
The portly blue master warrior adjusted his dark sunglasses with his thumb, his antennae flaring with curiosity.
“That specific description is flatly not considered a standard consumer compliment for an afternoon workout pass inside my sector division, Goku.
Most dead souls prefer their spiritual forms a hell of a lot lighter when they clear the customs gates.”
Goku pushed his feet wide against the turf, his dark pupils wide with an absolute, un-vetted brawler hunger that had zero fear caked into its contours.
“If my knuckles spend the next six months learning exactly how to run a full-speed sliding dash through this heavy rock yard, master…
my muscle mass is going to turn ten times denser than my numbers allowed down in the canyon ditch!
I’ll be able to clear the prince’s guard lane in less than a breath of the gale when the transport pods hit the grass!”
King Kai studied the absolute, unyielding line of cheerful human resilience caked into the young hero’s posture, his smile softening by an inch as he took a slow sip from a clay mug.
“You…
you possess a remarkably peculiar, thoroughly down-to-earth category of a cheerful spirit for an asset who currently carries a funeral transport halo hovering right above his hair clips, young man.
Most soldiers spend their shift screaming about the grave.”
Goku split his pale face into a wide, beautiful childhood grin, his boots snapping back into a low brawler brace as his eyes locked onto the monkey Bubbles scrambling through the palm trees.
“I’ve got an exceptionally fine collection of childhood brothers, a beautiful screaming wife, and a small four-year-old son waiting vertical down on that blue dirt patch for my boots to clear the road lane, old timer.
The contract mandates a perfect delivery.”
He paused mid-breath, his fingers scratching the back of his neck mane thoughtfully as an old deep-space memory line cleared his receivers.
“And…
and plus…
there’s a certain new, long-tailed Saiyan scrapper named Kallard active on our lawn now, master,” Goku laughed out brightly, his eyes flashing.
“The bandana guy dropped his black warship straight out of the clouds the exact microsecond my heart rate hit the zero mark down in that crater.
His energy pool felt remarkably, incredibly strong—like a giant mountain furnace locked behind a clean sheet of granite stone—but his spirit didn’t throw off a single digit of an imperial pirate’s malice.
My brawler heart knows how to read the text sheet.
I flatly can’t afford to let my own knuckles turn soft on your deck while a stranger is managing the defense logs for my family.”
King Kai’s long antennae ridges suddenly went completely, profoundly motionless in the air lines, his blue face clips turning a dark shade of pure solemn cosmic calculation as he lowered his clay mug to his knee.
Goku track the sudden systemic freeze caked into the master’s posture.
“What’s the calculation clearing your receivers now, old timer?
Did my vocabulary run an error pass?”
The blue master warrior looked out across the tiny green perimeter fence of his planet, his dark sunglasses reflecting the endless, glittering yellow loops of Snake Way spinning through the dark velvet void of the afterlife sky.
“Another living biological Saiyan lineage survivor actively operating inside the Earth’s municipal borders, Goku…
that parameter is a completely massive, unmapped variable to drop onto the cosmic spreadsheet.”
“Is…
is that specific calling card choice considered a bad omen for our defense wall, King Kai?” Goku asked, his head tilting.
The master adjusted his formal robes with a quiet rasp, his voice dropping into a low register that carried the weight of a galaxy’s balance logs.
“That specific calculation depends entirely, professionally on what kind of a man that long-tailed scrapper chooses to be when the red smoke clears the gate, young fighter.
A Saiyan who knows how to build an iron cage around his own beast…
can either turn into the strongest shield a world can ever brace its bones against…
or the single most terrifying category of a tyrant executioner the quadrant has ever recorded inside its history archives.”
Goku split his face into a massive, unyielding brawler smile, his boots launching his frame into a high-speed sprint across the grass blades to chase the monkey’s tail.
“Then I guess my account is going to have to sprint a hell of a lot faster down that yellow brick road to drop back down into the living timeline and find out his real spec sheet myself, old master!
Secure the handles!
Let’s go open up the next valve!”
## Act XI: The Recalibration of the Dark
Back down in the dark dirt of the planet Earth, late on a freezing midnight watch, Kallard stepped his heavy combat boots slowly through the sliding security doorboards of the secondary Capsule Corp signal laboratory bay.
Bulma Briefs was fast asleep properly right at her workbench terminal desk, her vertical torso completely dropped forward to allow her blue hair strands to spread loose across her crossed forearm guards.
Her thin fingers were still lightly clenching the casing of a small copper screwdriver tool, a fresh streak of dark engine grease visible along the soft skin of her right cheek bone.
A dozen empty porcelain coffee mugs surrounded her keyboard layout like a collection of broken spaceport infantry grunts who had been systematically caked in a total systemic failure pass.
The digital monitoring models for Operation Bad Reception were still running on the main screen above her head, casting a beautiful, soft emerald-blue light across her sleeping profile.
Kallard stood perfectly motionless inside the dark doorway slot for three heavy breaths of the wind gale, his dark green pupils tracking the quiet, peaceful rise and fall of her shoulders beneath the halogen lines.
He stepped his boots forward through the dust grates with a completely silent, low-gravity fluidness, reached out his white-gloved hand to grab a thick wool camp blanket from a nearby storage chair, and quietly, thoroughly draped the fabric straight over her bare shoulders to break the chill of the frost.
The blue-haired girl stirred slightly beneath the wool, her eyelashes blinking once as her head lifted an inch from her circuit blueprints, her voice a tiny, slurred down-to-earth whimper caked in pure exhaustion.
“Not…
flatly not asleep inside the office room today, scrapper boy…
my droids are perfectly active…”
“The data is entirely obvious to my receivers, Bulma,” Kallard said softly, his voice a low gravelly rasp that filled the quiet lab space.
“Your system is completely shut down.”
“Just…
just manual-executing a high-precision recalibration pass along my primary eyelid components, Greenbean,” she mumbled out sleepily, her ponytail shifting across the desk wood.
“It’s a highly advanced laboratory development technique for our department.”
“An exceptionally fine piece of professional fraudulent engineering data, ma’am,” Kallard managed a small line of a dry smirk breaking through his lips.
“Go clear your boots through the residential cabin hatch.”
She didn’t move her torso an inch, her head dropping back flat against her folded arms as the emerald-blue light lines from her monitors played across her face.
“Kallard?” she whispered out low into the cloth.
He stopped his heels two paces from the door rail, his tail resting still against his leg guard.
“What specific calculation requires an invoice check before the watch clears, Bulma?”
“Do…
do your brawler brain cells genuinely believe that this false-signal distortion machine is going to buy our knuckles a real tactical advantage when the pods hit the dirt next year?
Talk honest to my ears.”
Kallard looked up at the flashing blue lines of the Frieza Force routing code displayed across the screen, his face serious beneath his bandana.
“I think…
I think the lying machine carries the absolute capacity to buy our defense wall one single, massive strategic mistake from their vanguard executioners, Bulma,” he whispered out quietly into the frost wind.
“It buys our knuckles a single open guard lane.
And out in the middle of a high-caliber shootout…
a single mistake from a prince…
is the only tool a scrapper needs to close the ledger for good.”
The blue-haired girl managed a very small, remarkably faint line of a beautiful childhood smile through her ponytail strands, her eyes half-closed.
“Good piece of data validation, scrapper boy.
I deep-seatedly enjoy the concept of a weaponized corporate mistake.
It suits our company layout perfectly fine.”
“So do I, ma’am,” he said softly.
“It’s a pristine design.”
She lifted her head by an inch, her blue pupils wide as she looked straight through the dark to track the vertical alignment of his broad armor shoulder guards standing near the threshold line.
“You…
you always maintain a very specific, highly defensive posture near the exit panels every single time your boots clear a room inside my father’s house, Kallard.
You stand like an independent transport capsule that’s currently idling on a three-second launch timer, waiting to drop its gear and clear the sector boundaries the second the conversation hits a static drop.”
The raw, un-vetted structural accuracy of the domestic observation hit Kallard’s internal chest cage with a sudden, bone-clicking mass that caked his tongue in absolute silence.
He didn’t deliver a single syllable of a brawler response across the table grates, his fingers clenching tight against his utility loops.
“Even…
even during the afternoon shifts when your forms are staying flat on our lawn for the drills…
your eyes are continuously tracking the sky lanes, checking the window frames, and mapping out five separate emergency exit tracks before your boots even say hello to the crew,” she whispered out low, her voice caked in a soft, un-shielded human tenderness that didn’t have a single millimeter of corporate armor left to wear.
“That’s an exceptionally lonely habit to carry behind your sashes, Greenbean.”
Kallard looked down at the concrete floorboard smudges, his voice dropping into an ancient brawler rasp that carried the weight of ten cycles of surviving the open stars alone.
“An old deep-space port habit that was hard-wired into my system components parsecs ago out in the rim lanes, Bulma.
A ghost who forgets to keep his eyes locked onto the primary exit tracks…
is a ghost whose registration file gets permanently cleared from the spreadsheet by a marshal’s rail gun before his next fuel check clears the gate.”
The blue-haired heiress sat her vertical torso up slightly beneath her wool blanket, her blue eyes wide through the yellow halogen light lines as she looked straight into his dark green pupils.
“You’re…
you’re perfectly allowed to carry your old spaceport habits behind your sashes while your landing struts are caked in our dirt, Kallard.
I won’t run an audit pass against your biography files today.
But…
but maybe your mind can occasionally deliver a clear corporate memo to those old ghosts stating that they don’t possess the absolute legal right to make every single execution choice for your life anymore.
The ledger can afford to let you breath in the clearing.”
The absolute, down-to-earth human wisdom clearing her lips while her brain cells were half-asleep was completely, profoundly unfair to his internal combat discipline, his heart thudding violently against his ribs.
Kallard looked down at her beautiful, soot-stained face for three long seconds of the midnight gale, before his human soul took the handles completely.
“I…
I am actively, systematically attempting my absolute best to write that specific code pass onto my slate every single morning I clear the blankets, Bulma,” he whispered out small into the quiet lab.
“The transformation pass is experiencing a slight optimization pass tonight.”
“I know, scrapper boy,” she said softly, her blue eyelashes blinking once as she gave the exact same down-to-earth syllables straight back to his receivers that his own throat had utilized to anchor her grief down in the desert basin.
It wasn’t a standard piece of spaceport flirtation language line—it was a deep, grounded, and thoroughly beautiful human recognition of two master builders who had chosen to stand vertical inside the exact same trench.
“My receivers can map the progress perfectly fine.
I’ll stay right here flat on my stool until your boots manual-march themselves back to your cabin bunk.”
Kallard managed a real, quiet line of a genuine smile through his beard trim, his broad shoulder guards leaning comfortable back against the steel door frame as his tail settled loose across the gravel.
“You’re an exceptionally bossy, high-pressure piece of administrative labor to manage across a workbench table, researcher.”
“Practical, brawler boy,” she grinned back sleepily, her head dropping back flat against her folded arms.
“The engineering is non-negotiable.”
“Greenbean,” she murmured out low, her voice dissolving straight back down into a quiet, rhythmic childhood sleep cycle as the wool blanket warmed her shoulders.
Kallard remained perfectly vertical in the slot, his dark green eyes tracking the green navigation dots of Operation Bad Reception flashing across her computer screens like tiny emerald stars caked into the dark.
He didn’t clear his boots from the doorway panel for the rest of the midnight watch, his framework acting as a silent, unyielding wall that kept the cold winter wind from touching her blankets.
He flatly hadn’t planned for a single digit of this blue world’s music to alter his navigation column when his ship dropped out of the stars.
He hadn’t planned for a real human heart to take the steering handles of his lonely biography sheet down in the dirt.
And as the first faint sliver of a beautiful gold Earth dawn began to clear the eastern city towers, the young Saiyan scrapper Ronin fully resolved behind his teeth that the planet Earth was flatly, absolutely no longer just the place where the story initiated its canonical timeline layers.
It was officially turning into the only home he never wanted to leave behind the fence line.
And the pavement was open for the long haul.