For almost a full minute after the silver pod tore through the upper atmosphere and vanished into the dark void of space, nobody in the ruined valley said a word.
The desert did not know how to be completely quiet.
The wind still dragged long ribbons of gray smoke across the cracked clay floorboards, and small patches of fire still crackled where the high-pressure plasma blasts had melted solid stone into smooth green glass.
Dust rolled in thick waves through craters deep enough to swallow a neighborhood block.
Somewhere far off in the ridges, a massive slab of loosened granite finally lost its grip on the cliff face and collapsed into the canyon below with a dull, rumbling thud that shook the dirt beneath their boots.
But the people were entirely silent, and that was a hell of a lot worse than the noise.
Kallard stood right where the prince had left him, his whole body screaming under his tattered black and green armor plates.
His bare arms were shaking violently from the lingering strain of the last Galaxy Breaker, and a thin trail of gray smoke was still rising from his scorched white gloves.
His side ribs felt like someone had packed a handful of broken glass beneath his skin with every breath he took.
Behind his waist, his thick brown tail hung low against the clay, twitching with the leftover adrenaline of a beast that had almost torn its cage apart.
Goku lay flat on his back a few feet away, his chest heaving as he fought for oxygen.
One of his dark eyes was swollen half-closed, his orange uniform was ripped to shreds along his shoulder, and his muscles were visibly trembling from the brutal abuse of the three-times multiplier loop.
That was a lot of weight to carry, Goku said, his voice coming out as a weak, ragged rattle through his teeth.
Kallard looked down at him through his green visor tint, his knees feeling like loose hinges.
You almost let the fire burn your container to ash, brother.
Goku managed a tiny, exhausted line of a smile under his hair spikes.
Yeah, he whispered.
That happens sometimes when the shooting turns hot.
Kallard stared down at him, his face flat.
Goku blinked his good eye, his smile wavering.
What’s with the look, bandana guy?
I’m just beginning to understand exactly why your wife spends so much time running a panic loop over your schedule, Kallard muttered, his tail dropping into the sand.
Goku’s smile faded into a tiny, nervous grimace.
Oh, man, he sighed.
Don’t go reminding my ears about her kitchen megaphone right now.
My bones are already melting.
Then the small boy Gohan finally broke his silence.
Daddy, the child shrieked.
His small red boots tore away from the edge of the stone ridge, and he ran straight across the ruined basin, stumbling over the jagged clay fragments and the lips of the smoking craters.
Piccolo reached out his long green arm with a sudden reflex as if his claws might catch the boy’s collar, but he let his hand drop back down to his side sash before the fingers could close.
Gohan crashed straight into Goku’s side, wrapping his small arms around his father’s torso with a wild, desperate childhood embrace that was entirely not careful enough for the hero’s current condition.
Goku let let out a sharp, painful wheeze through his teeth, his eyes widening.
Gohan, buddy, the ribs are currently running a very delicate corporate profile right now.
The boy immediately pulled his mass back into a low kneel, his round face turning a bright shade of red as fresh tears flooded through his soot smudges.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Daddy!
I forgot your sashes were broken!
Goku slowly, painfully lifted his trembling right hand and rested his white-gloved fingers flat against his son’s messy purple hair crown.
It’s perfectly fine, kiddo.
The dad is still breathing out oxygen.
We cleared the fence.
You’re flatly not fine, Gohan sobbed, his small fists clenching his own knees.
You look exactly like a broken toy from the garbage sector.
Goku let let out a soft, wheezing laugh that turned into a sharp wince against his lungs.
Yeah, he murmured, his eye closing.
Your receivers have always been entirely too accurate for my own comfort, buddy.
You’re right about the math.
Kallard cut his eyes away from the family clearing, turning his back toward the far ridge.
It wasn’t because the domestic view was unpleasant to his focus, but because the raw human mass of it was entirely too heavy for his processing units to hold comfortably.
In his old life, he had monitored these exact people as a set of fictional character profiles printed onto ink pages or projected across flat glass screens.
But standing here in the real yellow clay, with copper blood soaking into the clover and a four-year-old child weeping over his father’s tattered uniform, the narrative fluff was completely gone.
This was a real family that had come within an inch of being permanently torn to pieces by a pair of deep-space monsters, and the execution of the victory had extracted a terrifying price from their company.
The cost was caked all over the grass.
Chiaotzu was gone from the board entirely.
Yamcha was currently running flat zero near a grave inside his crater.
And the crane student Tien was sitting in a slot that looked a hell of a lot worse than death.
Kallard’s boots dragged through the sand as he moved his mass toward the northern ridge.
Tien knelt right along the edge of Yamcha’s trench clearing, his chiseled stone face completely white from blood loss, his three eyes locked into a rigid, unblinking glare that looked like it belonged to a corpse.
His left arm was hanging down against his side sash.
No, that was a fraudulent piece of data analysis.
The arm wasn’t hanging there at all.
What remained of the limb hung from his shoulder blade.
The brutal impact of Nappa’s counter-strike and the terrifying energy backlash of the one-handed Tri-Beam had completely obliterated the bone and muscle tissue from a point three inches below the shoulder joint.
A massive amount of dark red blood had soaked his entire green gi down to the waist.
The jagged wound had been wrapped in a frantic hurry with a few strips of torn uniform cloth and some ki-burned fabric from his sash, but the makeshift insulation was leaking fluid across the stones.
The monk was maintaining his vertical posture through pure raw willpower alone, his valves clamped down to prevent his spirit from sliding into the dark room.
Krillin was established right alongside his knee, his small hands shaking violently as his fingers checked the pulse points along Yamcha’s charred neck mesh.
Yamcha, the short hero whispered, his voice cracking down the middle rail.
Hey, brother, talk plain to my receivers.
Don’t go running a failure pass on my watch.
Don’t you dare drop the handles today.
The wolf brawler did not deliver a single syllable of a brawler response back to his ears.
His broad chest cage moved up and down through the sand dust, but the movement pass was remarkably shallow.
It was barely a flicker on the screen, but it was just enough digits to keep his name active on the board for the afternoon watch.
Kallard took another step forward, and his own left leg suddenly gave way beneath his weight, his balance loop dropping to zero.
Piccolo appeared directly alongside his shoulder guard in less than a millisecond of a system pass, his long green hand locking tightly around the hybrid’s upper plate to catch his mass before his skull hit the clay slabs.
Don’t you go collapsing onto my turf yet, scrapper, the demon lord hissed low through his teeth, his own face covered in massive purple bruises, his left eye swollen shut beneath his tattered turban.
The work order isn’t completely closed.
Kallard breathed through the sharp iron sting in his ribs, his teeth bared.
I flatly wasn’t planning on dropping my struts in front of your lenses, old timer.
You’re an exceptionally terrible piece of a data liar, hybrid, the lord scowled, his grip remaining firm against his armor.
Everyone active in this company keeps delivering that exact same performance review to my desk lately, Kallard grunted, his visor flashing.
Piccolo’s single yellow eye cut across the sand lane to track the monk’s profile.
The three-eyed student is going to bleed his remaining current out into the dirt within five minutes of the clock if his valves aren’t sealed, scrapper.
His core is emptying.
Kallard reached his white glove up to tap the high-gain transponder switch on his headset casing, his voice gravelly.
Brakka.
Clear the gate.
The senior mechanic’s gruff voice returned through the static line in less than a breath.
My engines are already running a hot descent vector, kid.
Clear the airspace below.
The massive black hull of the Wayfarer violently decloaked directly above their helmets in a loud, crackling shimmer of displaced electromagnetic light fields, its heavy green-trimmed armor plates dropping down through the gray smoke clouds like a giant hunting bird clearing a ridge line.
The entire starboard side of the vessel was scorched black and dented from absorbing the peripheral blast waves of the prince’s rage fire, but the structural welds were holding firm.
The primary lower thrusters kicked out a massive horizontal gale of yellow sand dust across the basin floorboards as the silver landing struts dropped down to lock into the yellow clay bedrock.
The primary automatic cargo ramp hissed open before the pneumatic leveling pins had even finished settling into the dirt.
Brakka stormed straight down the metal walkway with all four of his muscular arms active, carrying a high-spec imperial trauma field kit that was nearly half the size of his own broad torso framework.
Right behind his grease aprons came Bulma Briefs.
Kallard’s heart let let out a sudden, violent jolt behind his chest guard.
She flatly, non-negotiably wasn’t supposed to be within ten parsecs of this ditch today.
The administrative protocol they had signed across the kitchen table explicitly stated that her station was to remain securely locked inside the underground bunker hill miles back from the trenches, completely safe from a secondary blast wave.
But the brilliant blue-haired girl had apparently decided that the concept of personal safety was nothing more than a casual suggestion written down on a piece of paper by a coward.
She ran straight down the iron ramp with a digital biometric medical scanner clutched tight in her left hand, her face completely pale, her long ponytail wind-whipped across her eyes, her pupils already scanning wild through the gray smoke to locate the worst pieces of tissue damage caked into the field.
Kallard took a single, halting pace toward her boots.
Bulma, what specific category of a management choice just driven your—
She violently pointed her copper scanner node straight at his nose clip without even slowing her stride by a single millimeter.
Do not you dare go opening your mouth clips to drop a single syllable of a lecture onto my desk today, Greenbean, she yelled through her hair strands, her voice shaking with an intense line of pure human fear.
Just stand perfectly still in your slot before I manual-turn the safety override onto your ears.
The hybrid closed his jaw, his tail wrapping loose around his thigh plate.
He stood still.
Brakka roared out across the basin floorboards, his white mane bristling as his four hands cracked open the trauma casing.
Medical priority assessment for the ledger, boys!
The crane monk and the wolf bandit take the front slots!
The orange hero and the bandana kid claim the secondary rails!
If any single container active on this grass permanently stops processing oxygen cells during the next three minutes, your throats better scream the notification clearly to my receivers!
Krillin waved his small white glove frantically from the lip of the trench.
Over here, master mechanic!
Yamcha’s heart rate is active, but his lungs are running an absolute system failure pass!
The needles are dropping!
Bulma dropped down onto her bare knees right alongside the edge of the crater so fast her leather pants nearly slid three feet into the yellow clay dirt.
She passed her digital scanner node slowly and thoroughly over Yamcha’s scorched chest mesh, the machine immediately letting out a series of high-pitched electronic chirps and flashing an ugly shade of crimson data bars across the screen face.
Her face tightened up into a hard academic mask, her teeth clenching.
Multiple structural rib fractures down the center rail, deep-tissue plasma burns along the liver lining, massive internal fluid leakage, and a total collapse of the left lung chamber.
Her down-to-earth voice shook for half a second of a system drop, before her technical discipline clamped down on the line.
He’s still breathing, Krillin.
The container hasn’t emptied its account yet.
Our department can keep his heart rate active on the screen.
Help me lift the oxygen assist rail from the box.
Krillin’s eyes flooded with a massive wave of pure wet relief, his small hands wiping his face.
Okay…
okay…
that’s a good piece of data…
we can work with that…
the wolf stays on the list.
Across the clearing, Brakka reached Tien’s vertical knee posture and froze his four hands mid-air for a fraction of a millisecond as his yellow eyes took the real measure of the missing limb tissue.
Tien slowly, thoroughly lifted his third eye up to track the old alien’s face clips, his mouth flat.
Can your tools stop the drainage before the core shuts down, gray-blue?
The old four-armed technician clamped his jaw tight against his collar, his titanium fingers extracting a high-spec imperial pressure cauterization patch from the medical gel tray.
My department has been sealing high-caliber plasma tears and severed cargo limbs out in the rim ports since before your primary school manifests were printed onto the slates, monk.
I can stop the fluid drainage from clearing your accounts.
Tien caught the exact line of raw professional omission sitting right behind the mechanic’s gruff vocabulary.
His eyes dropped back down slowly to evaluate the ragged green shreds of fabric hanging where his left bicep should have been sitting.
I see the technical rating, master mechanic, the monk said softly.
The limb is off the inventory.
Kallard step his heavy boots closer to the clearing despite the tight warning pull of Piccolo’s claw against his shoulder guard guard.
Tien.
Keep your center anchored.
The crane practitioner flatly did not look up away from his shoulder ruin.
The vanguard monster Nappa systematically manual-liquidated the child Chiaotzu right in front of my lenses, Kallard.
His voice was nothing more than a dry rasp.
The small freak threw his entire container into the furnace, and my bare knuckles didn’t possess the velocity parameters required to break his hold or save the boy’s slot.
Kallard swallowed the dry iron salt caked behind his teeth, dropping his mass down into a low kneel straight in front of the monk’s knees, ignoring the sharp knifing agony that shot through his own side ribs.
I map the ledger lines clearly, Tien.
Nobody in this unit is running a fraud pass against your record today.
The monk’s third eye lifted its gaze back up, burning with a cold, hollow grief.
Kallard held his stare absolute.
Chiaotzu’s childhood sacrifice was the single absolute parameter that systematically disrupted Nappa’s wide-area artillery blast before the fire could dissolve the humans, Tien.
Your close-range Tri-Beam was the exact structural anchor that pinned his four-hundred-pound muscle mass into the ditch long enough for Piccolo to charge his main rail.
Yamcha’s high-speed intercept saved Gohan’s chest cage from a terminal blow.
Gohan’s raw genetic surge caved the monster’s rib guards down to the meat.
Krillin kept the perimeter angles wide open so the movement lines didn’t tangle, and the demon lord finished the opening pass with a clean drill shot.
His voice dropped into a lower register that caked the yellow clay in iron.
You and your crew systematically manual-liquidated an elite imperial vanguard executioner inside an open trench shootout today, monk.
Not the orange hero Kakarot.
Not my own transformation forms.
You and the human sashes cleared the invoice with your bare knuckles.
That’s the real data on the table.
Tien slowly closed his three eyes, his chiseled stone face finally twisting into a deep, agonizing knot of pure human expression.
It wasn’t a line of a primitive brawler weakness clearing his features—it was nothing more than the heavy door of a year’s worth of training discipline finally cracking open to let the grief of a brother’s death clear the valves.
Then why exactly does the victory feel exactly like a total system failure pass inside my chest cage, Kallard?
the monk whispered out small.
Kallard looked down at the scorched black circle of ash twenty yards back where the small child’s spark had vanished from the universe.
Because a real wartime victory always charges a terrifying line of interest on the final bill, Tien, the hybrid said softly, his glove resting flat against the monk’s knee.
The house doesn’t hand out a miracle pass without taking a piece of the architecture.
Tien let let out a single, long operational breath that came remarkably close to a sob behind his teeth.
Then senior mechanic Brakka violently pressed the imperial pressure cauterization stabilizer patch straight over the raw flesh of the shoulder joint ruin.
The monk’s whole skeletal framework let let out a sudden, violent muscular jerk, his teeth baring as a fresh wave of white heat caked his skin plates.
Keep your heels locked perfectly still into the clay, you stubborn human monk, Brakka growled out through his white mane, his four hands moving with a blurring precision to seal the major biological fluid vessels using a layer of synthetic med-gel foam.
My department is currently manual-fusing the primary arterial pipelines inside your tissue.
This specific section of the work order is going to deliver a hell of a lot of a physical burn cell activation to your receptors.
Hold the handles closed.
Tien’s white mouth clips tightened up into a straight flat line against his jaw bone.
The physical burn cell parameters…
were already fully active across my entire spreadsheet long before your ship cleared the clouds, gray-blue, the monk hissed out through his nose.
Just run the weld.
The old mechanic’s four yellow eye lenses softened down into a quiet line of an old scrapper’s empathy for a single dangerous second of the watch, before his professional focus took the controls back and he went down to the technical labor.
Across the other side of the basin clearing, Bulma Briefs was running her stabilized medical equipment loops with a terrifying, high-efficiency academic speed.
She slapped three separate capsule-expanded industrial monitoring terminals straight down into the yellow sand clover, barked out a rapid series of sharp operational instructions to Krillin regarding the manual pump valves, and used a portable high-pressure oxygen assist tube to force Yamcha’s damaged right lung tissue to continue processing air cells for his blood.
The wolf brawler’s dark eyelashes let out a very faint, microscopic flutter through the grease smudges.
Bulma leaned her blue hair ponytail down within two inches of his face plates, her voice dropping into a hard authoritative drone.
Yamcha.
Clear your receivers right now.
Keep your heart rate locked onto my monitor line.
Don’t you go dropping the handles on this deck.
The brawler’s pale lips let let out a tiny, micro-inch movement through his beard trim, but the raw biological current wasn’t dense enough to drop a single audible sound wave across the table.
Bulma’s blue eyes turned remarkably hard and stubborn beneath her spectacles.
No, sir, your account flatly, non-negotiably does not possess the legal clearance to run a funeral pass after executing a high-speed heroic intercept across my yard.
That specific category of a behavior pattern is an absolute piece of administrative manipulation, street bandit.
You stay vertical on my board.
Krillin let let out a short, broken piece of a human laugh from his throat that turned straight into a wet sob, his white glove wiping his nose smudges.
Yeah…
track the corporate policy, wolf boy…
the boss lady is running an audit pass against your file…
you better keep your pulse active.
Yamcha’s chest cage let let out a firm, deep hitching movement against the oxygen line.
The internal vitals were settling into a stable blue graph.
Still alive inside the slot.
Good.
Goku, lying twenty yards back onto his grass pads with the child Gohan still hovering anxious over his tattered shoulder sash, slowly and painfully attempted to manual-shift his broad weight up into a vertical sitting posture.
Piccolo’s head hair crown violently snapped around toward his rail, his single yellow eye flaring with an immense line of pure demonic menace.
Keep your tattered biological mass flat right down onto that dirt clover, you orange idiot brawler, the lord hissed out.
The valves are still leaking.
Goku looked completely, profoundly confused by the harshness of the command, his hand scratching his neck hair hair spikes.
But master Piccolo…
I was just attempting to execute a simple posture adjustment to check the status of the long-range—
The demon king’s scowl intensified by two full digits on the display, his claws clenching flat.
Do not you dare go dropping a single syllable of an argument onto my desk today, Kakarot.
The floorboards are closed.
Goku managed a tired sigh, dropping his broad shoulders flat right back down onto the grass pads with a quiet rattle of his teeth.
Okay, old timer.
The executive command is accepted for the afternoon shift.
The handles are loose.
Gohan sniffed his nose through his tears, looking up at his mother’s apron.
Mister Piccolo was exceptionally good at telling my daddy exactly what category of an operation pass to run while your ship was clearing the clouds, Mommy.
He held the handles firm.
The green demon lord violently turned his back around to face the far sandstone cliffs, his tattered white cape snapping through the wind gale.
Hmph.
The orange brawler carries a completely brainless set of survival software behind his ribs.
Someone had to supervise the inventory before he ruined the yard.
Kallard managed a tiny line of a genuine smirk to clear his lips behind his chin bandana, his tail lashing a slow circle.
Then, a sudden, blinding line of a deep-tissue pain cell activation violently knifed its way straight through his lower left side ribs, and the smirk died instantly straight inside his throat ports as his visor went dark for a second.
Bulma Briefs collected the micro-inch muscle wince on the fly.
Of course her brilliant eyes collected the line.
Her head violently snapped around from Yamcha’s monitoring station to lock her blue eye lenses straight onto the hybrid’s chest guards.
You.
Kallard straightened his skeletal framework vertical by pure reflex, attempting to run a standard spaceport performance pass to clear her scanners.
That specific category of a management choice…
was an exceptionally bad piece of engineering logic for his bones.
The sudden muscular contraction caused his entire field of vision to flash into a brilliant sheet of blinding white static noise, his knees turning to sand.
Bulma stood up from her knees and marched her leather boots straight across the clay basin lane, her digital scanner node lifted in her left glove like a weapon.
Kallard.
Stand still.
I’re perfectly stable on my heels, Bulma, the hybrid muttered low, forcing his voice to maintain a gravelly brawler rasp.
Don’t run a line of a panic code over my—
*BEEP.*
She passed the electronic node straight across his green-trimmed chest plates without waiting for his mouth clips to finish the sentence, the machine immediately letting out a loud, continuous high-frequency scream of a system warning code that caked the airspace in red lights.
She stared straight down into the digital data readouts flaring across her tablet face for three heavy ticks of the clock.
Then she looked straight up into his green visor lens.
Then she cut her blue pupils back down to track the graph needles flaring across the glass.
Kallard, she said, her voice dropping into a dangerously quiet, down-to-earth whisper that froze the wind gale.
Senior technician Brakka called out across his shoulder sashes from Tien’s side rail, his four arms still busy with the med-gel tray.
Talk plain to my receivers, lady!
Is the bandana scrapper running a fraudulent data entry to your face clips again?
Give my ears the true numbers.
Bulma’s blue eye ridges narrowed until her lashes were touching her spectacles, her voice absolute.
The space monkey scrapper currently possesses four separate cracked rib plates along his left rail, a massive amount of high-density ki-channel static strain running through both of his bare arm structures, multiple deep-tissue muscle fiber tears from his shoulder sashes clear down to his glove loops, severe internal bruising across his liver lining, and his entire neurological central nervous system looks exactly like he just spent three hours attempting to execute a manual fistfight straight inside the core generator of an imperial power plant flag ship.
That’s the real inventory on my screen.
Brakka let let out a loud, thunderous snort of pure alien derision through his mustache clips.
So the runaway little idiot was running a total fraud pass against your workbench again, then.
The notation is updated for the logbook.
Kallard managed a tired sigh, his head dropping back against his collar mesh.
I can still maintain a vertical standing posture onto my leather soles without a machine assistance, Bulma.
The struts aren’t snapped down to the rail.
The brilliant blue-haired girl took a single step closer to his chest plate, close enough that his green visor tint could resolve the thick layer of wet human tears she was stubbornly refusing to let clear her eyelashes under the noon sun glare.
You delivered a solemn, signed personal promise straight onto my desk across that signal lab workbench forty-eight hours ago stating that your boots would manual-march back through my laboratory door frame alive when the shooting stopped, Greenbean, she whispered out, her fingers clenching her clipboard terminal until the plastic creaked.
I’re standing vertical right in front of your lenses at this very hour, Bulma, he said softly, his gravelly voice dropping its spaceport edge.
The contract was cleared.
You flatly, non-negotiably did *not* deliver a promise to my ears stating that your container would clear the sky gates as nothing more than a broken bowl of mashed battlefield soup, you uncultured space monkey!
she yelled back through her teeth, her shoulders shaking as she fought to keep her heart rate from flaring on the line.
Goku weakly raised a single white-gloved finger from his grass pads forty yards back, his dark eye blinking.
Soup?
Hey…
talk plain to my receivers, boss lady…
does the bandana scrapper carry a hot kitchen bowl of roasted pork noodle cells inside his utility pockets? New chapters come out on g.com first.
My stomach well is running flat zero near the empty marker right now.
Piccolo violently snapped his green snout around toward his rail, his single yellow eye burning like a plasma cannon.
Shut your uncultured brawler mouth clips flat against your collar sash right now, Kakarot!
The floorboards are locked!
Kallard looked down slowly into Bulma’s wide blue pupils, his hands resting loose against his sashes.
I’m here, Bulma.
The container clears the gate.
The specific line of her facial expression underwent a very small, remarkably soft transformation pass right then and there under the sun glare.
The academic anger didn’t entirely vanish off the spreadsheet, but the real, un-shielded human fear sitting right beneath her corporate armor cleared the filters for the afternoon watch.
For the current watch, she whispered out small, her hand dropping back to her side pocket loops.
The down-to-earth admission hit his internal focus with a hell of a lot more raw physical mass than a brawler punch could ever have managed to clear across a trench.
Kallard didn’t possess a single digit of a technical data response left hidden behind his teeth clips to balance that specific line on her sheet.
So, his soul executed something a hell of a lot more resource-heavy for his character file.
He stood perfectly still inside his slot, dropped his spaceport arguments into the dirt, and allowed her copper scanner node to run a secondary diagnostic pass across his bare scarred arms without dropping a single line of an objection across her desk.
Senior technician Brakka coordinated the final emergency evacuation sequence across the basin floorboards like a veteran deep-space infantry general who had spent three centuries managing high-casualty extraction phases with zero patience left hidden inside his grease rags.
Yamcha’s broken body mass was loaded straight through the primary automatic cargo doors of the Wayfarer first, his tattered uniform clothes cleared away by the automated medical droids before his bare chest was lowered gently flat straight inside the green fluid cells of the standard imperial healing chamber Brakka had personally welded into the port bay lines after the Veyruna scrapper jobs.
It was the exact same high-density regeneration model that had kept Kallard’s own biological cell walls from collapsing into ash after the Tree of Might shootout cycles ago.
Seeing the local wolf brawler’s broad scarred shoulders slowly submerge beneath the bubbling green chemical current caused the hybrid’s stomach walls to twist with a sudden wave of an old deep-space survival memory.
The heavy titanium airlock seals on the chamber clicked shut flat against the rubber rail.
Bulma Briefs stood vertical right alongside the glass viewport, her thin fingers monitoring the live vital indicators flaring across the digital display grid until the needles finally stabilized into a flat blue tracking arc.
Only then did her chest cage let let out a long, slow human breath of oxygen cells.
The crane student Tien flatly, non-negotiably refused to allow the four-armed technician to load his frame onto an anti-gravity stretcher assembly until the absolute, bone-chilling reality of Chiaotzu’s total absence finally caught up with his neurological circuits—his leg muscles completely running a system failure pass all at once, his knees turning to loose sand beneath his sash.
Brakka sedated his container with exactly zero ceremonies or signed permissions from the department.
The monk was going to drop a five-minute string of an uncultured crane school brawler argument onto my workspace if my glove didn’t pull the breaker switch on his valves, kid, the old mechanic growled out low as Krillin wiped the sand smudges from his bald head.
My department doesn’t run a debate committee while the fluid lines are leaking.
Krillin managed a short, broken line of a nod, his small hands clenching his belt sash as his eyes track the metal bay floor.
Yeah…
track the engineering priority, master mechanic.
He…
he was definitely going to drop an argument onto your desk.
The monk carries a hell of a lot of pride behind his collar.
Goku’s vertical mass was carefully loaded straight inside the secondary Capsule Corp medical transport craft, the child Gohan sitting perfectly still right alongside his stretcher mattress, his small childhood fingers clenching his father’s white glove with an absolute vice grip.
The domestic command manager Chi-Chi arrived straight onto the red sand basin clearing inside a separate corporate speeder aircraft before the primary transport could even clear its landing pins from the clay turf.
She ran straight down the metal walkway to her husband’s side first.
Then her hands checked her son’s purple hair crown.
Then her eyes collected the raw biological volume of the dark red blood cells caked across their uniform sashes.
All of it.
Her face went completely, profoundly white as a sheet of winter paper under her spectacles.
For one single, terrifying breath of the morning gale, Kallard genuinely thought her biological container was going to execute a total system collapse pass straight onto the clover blades.
Instead of dropping her mass to the sand, the human mother slowly, thoroughly turned her torso around to lock her spectacles straight onto the green skin mass of the demon king Piccolo.
The green lord’s skeletal framework instantly stiffened vertical inside his slot, his claws clenching his sash.
Gohan immediately step his small red boots straight between their two physical profiles, his tiny palms extended out wide to block the line.
Mom!
Hold your megaphone valves for a second!
Mister Piccolo was the exact strategic commander who kept my childhood container safe out in the wilderness tracks!
He cleared the invoices for my training sheets!
Chi-Chi’s spectacles completely frozen their alignment mid-air.
The green demon king looked exactly like his internal droids would have preferred to trade punches against the prince Vegeta’s eighteen-thousand peak form all over again today rather than remain vertical to process this specific category of a domestic dialogue pass across a mat.
The small boy grabbed his mother’s sleeve coat with a white-knuckle childhood grip.
He kept my sashes grease-fitted, Mom.
He manual-handed the rice ball containers to my fingers when the cold wind cleared the ridges.
He yelled a hell of a lot of rough demonic vocabulary words straight into my ear canals during the morning watches, sure…
but his claws saved my slot when the artillery shells came down from the cloud deck.
He held the fence line for your baby boy.
Chi-Chi looked slowly from her son’s tear-stained spectacles straight up to track the giant green scowl caked behind Piccolo’s high turban fabric.
Her thin lips pressed flat together into a tight, unyielding line of a housewife’s discipline.
Then, she bowed her head crown once toward his boots.
It wasn’t a massive, theatrical display pass of a marketplace courtesy, and it was barely a micro-inch of a physical alignment shift on the turf.
But the demon king’s single yellow eye collected the exact value of the transaction.
His dark pupils widened by a fraction of a digit behind his brow slits.
The human mother’s voice trembled with an intense line of pure un-shielded maternal feeling as she looked back up.
I…
I deliver a formal administrative thank you straight to your department’s ledger for protecting the survival slot of my single sweet baby boy across the winter, demon lord.
The house acknowledges the invoice.
Piccolo violently cut his yellow eye lens away toward the far sandstone cliffs, his white cape snapping through the sand dust.
Hmph.
My department simply required the brat’s biological potential current to remain alive inside the ditch to balance the multi-faction defense grid next month, woman.
The data sheet had zero room left hidden inside its margins to handle a casualty file for a child.
Don’t go dropping a line of your marketplace fluff onto my deck.
Kallard, Krillin, and the boy Gohan all stared straight into his green jaw line with an absolute, unblinked marvel clearing their visor lenses.
The demon lord let out a sharp, angry click of his teeth, his arms crossing tighter over his chest.
And…
and the brat turned out to be remarkably, frustratingly useful across the centerline rail when the real shooting opened early this morning, the lord growled out low.
He cleared his assigned workspace fine for a four-cycle asset.
The manual records the notation.
Gohan split his soot-smudged face into a wide, beautiful childhood smile through his tears, his hand clenching his sash.
Chi-Chi narrowed her eye ridges beneath her spectacles, but this time the alignment was a hell of a lot softer, warmer, and caked in a quiet line of an ordinary human appreciation.
You…
you spacesuit martial artists are all completely, profoundly impossible assets for a sane domestic household checkbook to manage, she whispered out softly, her fingers smoothing her apron.
Goku managed a weak, highly amused thumbs-up sign to clear the side edge of his stretcher frame, his dark eye blinking through the gauze.
That’s the exact definition of my brawler crew data sheet, Chi-Chi.
We keep the layout interesting for the neighborhood.
The human mother violently burst straight into a fresh column of hot wet tears and smacked his bare bruised arm structure with her rolled-up kitchen schedule papers.
Goku let let out a sharp, terrified brawler yelp through his grates, his hair spikes twitching.
Chi-Chi!
Hold the fire valves!
The biological container is currently caked in level-eight muscle strain cells!
The alignment is sensitive!
Outstanding piece of a domestic discipline pass, manager, Bulma Briefs muttered low from her workstation tray, her pen clicking.
Honestly, the manual records the transaction as completely fair for his record.
The ruined yellow clay basin slowly emptied its parameters of life cells over the next hour of the watch.
But before their boots cleared the final gate of the field, Krillin slowly and thoroughly walked his small frame back over to track the exact scorched black circle of clay where the small white child Chiaotzu had vanished from the universe.
The crane student Tien was securely sedated inside the ship’s bunk.
His muscles flatly couldn’t execute the collection pass today.
So the short temple student cleared the workspace for his brother’s ledger.
He dropped his small frame low into a deep crouch in the sand dust, his white gloves reaching out to harvest a tiny, single fragment of white cotton cloth that was completely burned black along its outer geometric edges.
It was nothing more than a broken scrap of Chiaotzu’s signature uniform sash fabric.
Krillin held the tattered cotton scrap tightly inside both of his shaking gloves for a long long minute of the afternoon watch, his vertical frame perfectly still against the wind gale.
Kallard stood silent two paces behind his shoulder shadow, his tail resting quiet in the dirt clover.
The bald hero spoke his mind without bothering to turn his dark pupils around to track the hybrid’s visor lens.
We…
we spent six grueling months grinding our bone marrow raw in the dirt below the gravity lamps, space teacher, the short man whispered out, his shoulders starting to vibrate under his gi.
We ran every single coordination loop exactly according to your manual specs.
I know the time logs you logged into the hangar sheets, brother, Kallard said softly, his voice a gravelly brawler rasp.
We did everything a hell of a lot better, smarter, and more disciplined than the old tournament accounts ever recorded for our school, Krillin sobbed out, his fists closing over the white fabric.
We kept our handles closed in the brush.
Yes, Krillin, you flatly did, the hybrid agreed honestly, his green visor flashing under the sun glare.
The performance was pristine.
And the small white kid…
still ended his story files as nothing more than a cloud of gray ash caked inside a backwater ditch anyway, the hero shrieked out, his whole chest cage collapsing into a ragged human sob.
The software still ran an error pass against his survival slot.
Kallard slowly closed his dark green eyelids beneath his bandana, a deep quiet weight settling behind his ribs.
Yes, brother, he whispered.
The line hit the zero marker anyway.
Krillin’s broad shoulders shook violently under the wind pressure, his face dropping toward the sand.
Then talk plain to my receivers before my boots clear the gate, Kallard…
what specific line of a corporate profit was our department supposed to harvest from all that grueling manual labor across the winter?
What was the absolute point of building the wall if the boy still hits the grave?
Kallard could have easily manual-extracted the standard, comforting historical data lines from his transmigrated database to clear the bald hero’s frequency today.
He could have told his ears that the civilian casualty count across the metropolitan grids was currently sitting at zero, that the wolf brawler Yamcha had successfully cleared the atmosphere boundaries alive, that the monster Nappa had been permanently dissolved from the asset sheets, and that the prince Vegeta’s eighteen-thousand peak rating had been violently driven off the pavement.
All of those digits were completely, mathematically true on the spreadsheet.
None of them carried enough human heart to balance the bill for a brother’s missing face.
So, the independent scrapper Kallard delivered the harder, deeper, and truer line of business logic down to his receivers.
The absolute point of building the discipline wall inside your marrow, Krillin…
is that the small white child got to consciously, intentionally choose exactly what category of an asset his life cells bought for this planet’s ledger before his valves went cold, the hybrid said softly, his white glove resting firm and heavy against the short hero’s trembling shoulder sash.
He flatly didn’t hit the grave like a helpless piece of cattle tissue caught inside an imperial harvest mill.
Krillin slowly turned his tear-stained face clips forty-five degrees around to track his visor.
Kallard locked his eyes straight into his dark pupils.
The monster Nappa was manual-opening his primary high-pressure fire valves to liquidate this entire unit inside the brush, brother.
Chiaotzu’s choice violently clamped those valves shut from the inside rail.
He cracked his plate armor open to the bone.
He changed the physical geometry of the layout.
He bought your knuckles the exact three seconds of the clock required for Piccolo to drill the slot.
His gravelly voice softened down into an absolute down-to-earth whisper caked in heart.
The boy mattered a hell of a lot to the safety logs of this world long before his body mass met the fire cells, Krillin.
He signed his own name to the final invoice.
Don’t you go dropping his notation from the master file.
Krillin’s bald face completely crumpled into a final, quiet wave of pure human tears, his small fingers clenching the tattered white cloth fragment tightly against his chest vest.
Kallard kept his heavy glove planted firm against his green sash, anchoring his mass against the wind gale.
The short temple hero flatly did not pull away from the contact for a single breath of the afternoon watch.
Later that same evening, inside the private corporate medical wing of the Capsule Corp central dome structure, the workspace had transformed into a highly complex, high-pressure military war room caked in hospital beds and monitoring gear.
The wolf brawler Yamcha had floated flat straight inside the Wayfarer’s green chemical regeneration current for seven consecutive hours of the clock before Bulma Briefs manual-approved his transfer back onto a standard intensive care mattress unit.
The high-spec imperial med-gel fluid had successfully stabilized the worst of his internal fluid leakage and fused his fractured rib rails back down to a safe baseline profile, but his cerebral circuits remained completely locked behind an unconscious resting loop.
Alive inside his skin plates.
That specific vocabulary syllable became a solid down-to-earth anchor text that every single human active in the room continuously repeated across their transponders to keep their panic lines from turning hot.
The crane monk Tien cleared his sedation protocols and opened his three eyes two hours after the primary surgical droids had closed his file.
He stood perfectly vertical in his thoughts, his dark pupils tracking the exact pocket of space where his left arm structure had dropped off the inventory list below his shoulder blade joint.
Bulma Briefs stood vertical right alongside the edge of his white mattress frame, her technical clipboard clutched loose against her hip coat, her brilliant mouth completely quiet for once in her life.
Tien stared straight down into the empty white sheet for five long miles of the clock without dropping a single syllable of a brawler speech onto the wood.
Then, his jaw bone clicked flat against his collar, his third eye cutting straight across the table lane to lock into her blue pupils.
Can your family’s engineering facilities manual-manufacture an artificial cybernetic replacement limb to clear that empty slot on my spreadsheet, daughter?
Bulma blinked her blue eyelashes twice all at once, her face freezing.
Kallard, standing three paces back against the dark corner of the laboratory wall with a thick layer of white cotton bandage wraps caked around his cracked rib plates and his bare arms, lifted his green visor lens to track the transaction.
Senior technician Brakka leaned his broad blue-gray chest framework forward straight inside his industrial workshop chair, his four hands clenching his knees as his yellow eye lenses sharpened.
The brilliant blue-haired girl’s expression slowly, thoroughly underwent a total transformation pass right there under the halogen lamps.
The academic grief caked behind her spectacles vanished down the middle rail, completely replaced by an absolute, white-hot line of pure corporate development purpose.
Yes, crane monk, she said flatly, her voice dropping into a clean business drone that carried zero hesitation.
My department can build the replacement struts for your chassis.
Tien held her gaze absolute.
I require an operational combat asset to clear my brawler forms across a mat, researcher.
I flatly possess zero use for a decorative piece of a consumer plastic showroom furniture caked onto my shoulder blade.
Bulma let out a sharp, proud snort of pure academic derision through her nose, though her blue eyes remained remarkably wet behind her lashes.
Please.
Run an inventory check through my family’s patent history records before you drop that category of an insult onto my workbench, monk.
I’m flatly, non-negotiably not in the business of building a twenty-pound paperweight to hang from a martial artist’s sash.
Brakka cleared his gravelly throat with a loud, gear-toothed clatter from his tool box, his upper left mechanical hand pointing straight at her nose clip.
If your department is currently preparing to draft a set of high-spec blueprint files for an independent combat prosthetic assembly designed to process a high-density ki current under load, lady…
my old workshop droids claim the exclusive right to supervise the calibration passes!
Your brilliant human brain cells carry entirely too much reckless development speed for a high-pressure military line!
Bulma violently turned her torso around on her heel to glare straight into his white hair mane, her pen tapping her clipboard face with a furious velocity.
Excuse your uncultured spaceport manners, master mechanic?
What specific category of an administrative override did your four arms just drop onto my table?
You possess an exceptional amount of a raw academic genius, girl, but your safety margins are completely loose in the joints!
the old alien growled back, his four hands waving his cleaning cloths all at once.
My receivers have been replacing shattered titanium arm units and exploded servo arrays since before your grandfather’s checkbook cleared its first corporate loan!
I carry the veteran specification logs for limbs that violently detonate down the center rail when the user attempts to run an improper energy calibration pass during a shootout!
Tien cut his three eyes slowly between the two high-spec industrial research directors, his face flat as stone against his pillow.
Will the cybernetic replacement asset help my bare knuckles damage a planetary invader across an open trench line next month?
Bulma and Brakka violently snapped their faces around to lock their eyes straight onto his mattress at the exact same microsecond of a system pass, their throats delivering the exact same syllable in a loud paired roar.
Yes!
Then they violently turned right back around to glare straight into each other’s hair strands, their teeth bared.
Tien slowly closed his three eyes, his head dropping back down to the cloth.
Then run your department arguments through the high-speed processors as fast as your droids can clear the files, managers.
My knuckles require the hardware warm before the sky gates turn open again.
Kallard managed a very faint, quiet line of a real smirk to clear his mouth clips behind his bandages.
Tien collected the tiny vibration of his laughter from the corner of the dark room, his face remaining solemn and grounded in his grief.
Chiaotzu’s registration file?
The entire high-spec medical wing went completely, profoundly dead silent all at once, the hum of the monitoring droids running loud through the air lines.
Krillin, seated onto a wooden stool near the window frame, quietly lifted his small white gloves to reveal the tattered, heat-charred white fragment of the boy’s signature uniform sash resting flat against his palms.
Tien track the white cloth fragment for three heavy seconds of the watch.
He flatly did not drop a single line of a human tear cell onto his green sheets.
Not then.
He slowly and thoroughly reached his single remaining right hand out across the mattress rail, his fingers open.
Krillin step his boots forward and gently manual-handed the tattered cotton fragment straight into his glove loops.
The monk held the burned white sash tightly against the center of his bare chest guards, turned his chiseled stone profile flat away from the room lights, and locked his jaws flat against his collar.
Absolutely nobody active in the company dropped a single syllable of a brawler speech onto the wood.
And flatly, non-negotiably nobody should have cleared their throat clips at that hour.
Later that same evening, the independent scrapper Kallard found his vertical six-foot framework standing alone out onto the wide panoramic roof platform of the Capsule Corp central dome structure.
His internal software logs explicitly stated that his physical mass should have been resting flat right down inside a private medical bunk unit under a med-gel tray.
Bulma Briefs had delivered that exact administrative directive to his ear canals twelve separate times over the course of the afternoon watch.
Senior technician Brakka had backed her company policy with three separate verbal threats involving high-caliber wrench casters and wheel mounts.
Even the old pipe-smoking director Dr.
Brief had walked past his station, adjusted his four safety spectacles, and casually noted that lying down flat onto a padded mattress framework was a highly reasonable piece of a scientific behavior pass for a biological container that had just fistfought an eighteen-thousand peak prince.
Kallard had levelly agreed with every single line of their data entry.
Then his heavy leather boots had manual-marched themselves straight up the concrete stairwells to clear the roof gate anyway.
The late evening sun was slowly executing its final descent vector over the sprawling municipal towers of West City, the deep orange solar light catching the curved blue glass of the corporate dome structures and turning the entire metropolitan grid into a massive golden asset sheet under the clouds.
The civilian city moved lazy and quiet below his railings, thousands of ordinary human commuters driving their speeder cars through the street lanes completely unaware of how close their local civilization had come to never tracking another evening sun line on their calendars.
The automatic sliding iron door frame behind his shoulder guards hissed open with a sharp release of its pneumatic seals.
He flatly didn’t require his internal sensing needle to run a tracking pass across the doorway space to know exactly which character profile had cleared the threshold.
Bulma Briefs step her leather boots out onto the concrete platform, her long blue ponytail moving through the cool evening gale, her thin fingers carrying two steaming porcelain cups of a hot kitchen beverage.
Before your uncultured spaceport throat attempts to file a formal data objection across my desk, Greenbean…
this is actual natural green tea cells harvested straight from my mother’s personal pantry tray, she said flatly, her voice dropping into a quiet down-to-earth whisper.
The master mechanic Brakka didn’t get a single digit of his grease rags near the water lines.
The specification is pristine.
Kallard reached his white glove out to accept the porcelain cup from her fingers, his dark green eyes steady behind his visor.
Thank you for the nutrition allocation, Bulma.
The temperature is checked.
She step her slender frame vertical right alongside his left elbow guard guard rail, her hands resting flat against the cold steel of the perimeter banister as they both watch the city lights pulse through the twilight.
They processed the quiet evening wind in a comfortable builder silence for three miles of the clock.
Then Bulma cut her blue eyes sideways to track his visor.
Yamcha’s internal metrics have officially stabilized into the green bracket on the primary tracking display, Kallard.
He’re processing his oxygen cells fine.
The hybrid managed a slow, heavy line of a nod against his neck wraps.
Good piece of data entry, researcher.
The wolf brawler carries a durable container behind his sashes.
Tien’s primary surgical fusion pass went exactly according to the maximum specification limits our droids could clear for his tissue layout, she continued, her pen clicking loose inside her pocket coat.
His core is rebuilding.
Good, the hybrid whispered out low.
The orange brawler Kakarot is somehow already manual-demanding a full twelve-ton distribution pass of a fresh kitchen catering supply straight to his mattress tray from the nurses, she managed a short, highly amused little laugh through her teeth.
He’re running a total raid loop through our department’s food bins before his bandages have even dried.
That sounds exactly like the standard operational profile written into his genetic race manual, Bulma, Kallard grunted out through his bandana.
His stomach well operates on a completely separate commercial bracket from a normal human scale.
The boy Gohan is currently locked behind a deep resting loop right alongside his stretcher mesh, holding his glove loops, she said softly, her blue hair shifting through the wind.
His mother Chi-Chi finally managed to stop dropping her high-pressure megaphone shouts onto the staff long enough to let her own human eye cells run a clean line of tears into her apron.
Kallard’s white glove tightened its grip around the porcelain rim of his tea cup until the ceramic let let out a tiny dry creak against his leather palm.
And…
and the small psychic kid Chiaotzu is flatly, permanently still gone off our asset registry spreadsheet tonight, Bulma.
The slot is completely empty.
Her brilliant blue eye lenses softened down into a quiet line of an un-shielded human tenderness as she looked at his face scars, her voice dropping.
Yes, Greenbean.
The boy’re off the board.
He slowly closed his dark green pupils behind his mask, a deep quiet weight caking his lung valves.
I manual-conditioned their bones for a full six months of a calendar rotation under the high-pressure lamps, Bulma.
I wrote the strategy manuals straight onto their sheets with my own voice.
You systematically helped their containers survive a terminal liquidation pass from an imperial vanguard division, Kallard, she said flatly, her hand planting firm against the steel rail.
You cleared the pavement for their world.
Not for every single name caked onto the unit manifest, Bulma, the hybrid whispered out low, his gravelly brawler rasp caked in heart.
The small white freak still hit the grave.
She step her leather boots one inch closer to his left shoulder guard plate, her blue eyes drilling straight through his green tint with an absolute, unyielding academic accuracy that left zero slack on the table.
Kallard.
Look at my receivers right now.
He opened his dark green eyes back up to lock into her face lines.
Her face was remarkably tired, covered in thin faint streaks of black soot and gray exhaust noise from spending ten consecutive hours holding a group of broken human lives together with nothing more than her family’s medical machines and her own stubborn willpower.
You flatly, non-negotiably do *not* possess the legal administrative authority to take an exclusive personal ownership loop over every single death caked into this planet’s history logs simply because your knuckles helped their sashes build a wall inside a ditch, space monkey.
That’s a completely fraudulent piece of an accounting logic.
I know the structural lines of the sentence, Bulma, he muttered, cutting his eyes away toward the streets.
No, scrapper boy, your mouth simply says the word ‘know’ to my ear clips whenever your brain cells have successfully mapped the vocabulary and your internal focus is already preparing a deliberate management choice to completely ignore the instruction, she snapped back proudly, her ponytail tossing.
I’ve learned your interface.
The hybrid managed a short, dry line of a laugh to clear his chest plates, his tail lashing a slow wave near her boot.
You’ve caked entirely too many hours into monitoring my software profile lately, researcher.
Chiaotzu consciously, intentionally made his own executive choice out in that yellow clay sand basin today, Kallard, she said softly, her voice dropping into a gentle human register.
Yamcha made his own choice when his leg engines flushed the current.
Tien signed his own name to his ditch parameters.
Your department didn’t force a single one of their gloves to sign the contract.
They backing your slots because their own hearts wanted to hold the yard.
I cleared the long-range warning to their doorsteps across the clover, he whispered.
You cleared a clean piece of an industrial preparation to their knuckles before the fire hit their houses, Greenbean, she corrected levelly, her fingers touching his tattered sleeve.
Don’t go rewriting the manifest.
He looked back out over the endless golden sea of the West City light lines, his jaw tensing as the twilight faded down into the zero marker.
I…
I consciously, intentionally chose to let the prince Vegeta clear the atmosphere gates alive inside his pod today, Bulma.
The file was released by my own glove.
The blue-haired heiress went completely, profoundly dead silent right alongside his brawler mass.
The single absolute, heavy piece of a strategic liability data line that had been sitting quiet between their two sashes since the iron spherical capsule had first manual-blasted its rocket fire into the sky lanes.
Finally, she took a slow breath of the evening oxygen, her blue eyes tracking the golden lights below.
Why exactly did your mouth clips deliver that specific clearance order across the field, Kallard?
He had fully expected a massive wave of an academic anger to clear her throat clips today.
He would have easily, levelly accepted a sharp line of a corporate reprimand from her family name—hell, part of his cynical scrapper heart would have welcomed the penalty pass as a clean piece of a system balance for his ledger.
Instead, her down-to-earth voice carried nothing more than a deep, honest exhaustion and a genuine human confusion regarding his roadmap.
Kallard looked down slowly straight inside the dark green fluid of his porcelain tea cup.
Because…
because executing the summary biological liquidation pass through his skin plates while his container was lying broken at the bottom of a clay ditch…
would have been an exceptionally easy, low-cost piece of a brawler labor for my knuckles to finalize in that microsecond, Bulma.
The choice required zero strategy.
The girl’s blue eye ridges furrowed into a tight line of pure technical suspicion.
That specific parameter flatly, non-negotiably isn’t a valid engineering reason to refuse a clean liquidation pass against a cosmic pirate, scrapper boy.
The manual usually mandates the kill.
No, ma’am, it flatly doesn’t when the workspace layout carries a wider set of tracking variables, the hybrid whispered out low, his voice a gravelly brawler rasp caked in iron.
The prince Vegeta possesses twenty cycles of high-spec imperial military database codes stored secure behind his skull plates, Bulma.
He knows the absolute layout of Frieza’s primary fleet strength.
He maps their supply routes.
He knows their combat divisions, their technological weapon specs, and the exact spatial location of cosmic threats that this primitive human planet doesn’t even possess the baseline scientific vocabulary to monitor on a tracking screen today.
If his white boots hit a grave down in that sand basin…
all of that high-end intelligence data is permanently scrubbed off our spreadsheet before the real shootout opens next year.
Bulma’s blue eyes sharpened into two tight needles of pure academic focus across the steel rail.
That…
that specific category of a long-range strategic asset allocation accounts for half of the math on your desk, Greenbean.
Talk plain about the secondary fraction sitting behind your teeth clips.
Don’t run a data filter on my receivers.
Kallard drew a single slow operational breath of the winter wind, his tail locking straight behind his boots.
He…
he is also flatly, non-negotiably one of the last three remaining full-blooded biological survivors of my entire ancestral warrior race left breathing out oxygen inside the living galaxy charts, Bulma.
The lineage is running flat zero all over the sector maps.
The brilliant blue-haired girl didn’t drop a single digit of a sarcastic response across the platform, her mouth closing flat.
That specific ancestral parameter should flatly, structurally carry a net rating of zero on a sane battlefield evaluation sheet after the monstrous atrocities his white boots caked across our grass today, he continued, his white-gloved knuckles clenching the banister until the steel groaned under his mass.
I fully register the absolute numbers on his record, Bulma.
The prince cleared his launch pod coordinates down to this location explicitly to turn your entire family empire into a cloud of smoking charcoal scrap metal.
He manual-dissolved his own squad partner like an old broken wrench because his enforcer’s guard lane buckled by three inches.
He would have gladly, laughingly caved your own father’s skull framework inward if his boots had cleared the hangar gates first.
But the lineage digit still carries a heavy weight inside your internal processing units anyway, she whispered out softly, her blue pupils wide.
Yes, he admitted flatly, his gravelly voice dropping down down into the concrete floorboards.
The parameter holds.
Because your independent scrapper soul is running a massive, high-pressure line of a deep-space isolation loop behind your visor?
The question flatly wasn’t delivered across the table as a cruel tournament heckle to mock his class—and that specific piece of down-to-earth human heart was precisely why the syllables cut a hell of a lot deeper straight through his armor plates than the prince’s plasma hooks had managed.
Kallard cut his dark green eyes slowly around to lock straight into her blue eyelashes under the golden city glare.
I…
I was carrying that specific category of a deep-space isolation loop behind my filters for ten cycles of a vacuum drift, Bulma, he said softly, his voice caked in heart.
The account was remarkably dark.
Bulma’s soft facial expression underwent another beautiful, un-shielded transformation pass beneath her ponytail hair strands.
He cut his eyes back down to track the urban street lines below.
Maybe…
maybe some primitive, uncultured piece of my ancestral brawler soul flatly refused to watch the entire historical chronicle of the Saiyan race close out its final pages as nothing more than a collection of brainless pirate monsters and smoking black biological corpses caked inside a backwater dirt basin, Bulma.
I’re betting my own credits that the container can download an update before the clock hits zero.
And the prince Vegeta?
she asked quietly.
He flatly, non-negotiably isn’t a completely broken piece of engineering tissue that sits entirely beyond a system restructuring pass, Bulma, the hybrid whispered.
The software can be updated.
Your receivers don’t possess a single line of an absolute mathematical certainty to guarantee that specific optimization pass will ever clear his filters, Greenbean, she said, her mouth tightening into a hard stubborn line.
You’re gambling our skin slots on a loose code.
No, ma’am, I flatly don’t carry a single drop of a certainty regarding his future trajectory, Kallard said honestly, his green visor flashing.
The database carries zero canonical guarantees today.
That was the single, un-shielded truth of his transmigrated soul framework.
This wasn’t a pre-printed manga line anymore, and it wasn’t a standard pre-recorded animation reel running a locked script.
This was a real, living world built out from the raw choices of living people down in the dirt clover.
I know exactly what category of an imperial executioner he plays on the board at this hour, Bulma, Kallard growled out low.
I also deep-seatedly map exactly what category of a bone-shattering structural trauma an empire flagship system inflicts onto a group of little children who are raised straight inside its execution cages from the day their umbilical sashes are cleared by the droids.
That specific data line flatly, non-negotiably does not excuse a single drop of the blood caked across his boots today—but it provides a clean engineering explanation for the exact shape of the wound sitting behind his sashes.
Bulma Briefs stared straight into his bearded jaw line for three heavy seconds of the twilight, her clipboard clutched tight against her coat.
You…
you are a completely, frustratingly compassionate piece of character design for a raw spacesuit bounty hunter who carries the legal authorization to punch a three-inch hole straight through a solid granite mountain ridge, scrapper boy.
The configuration runs an error loop through my expectations.
I’ve manual-cleared multiple liquidation invoices against living targets out in the rim ports before my wings ever cleared your atmosphere gates, Bulma, he said flatly, his tone dropping down into an iron register.
My gloves aren’t clear of the stains.
I know the records caked behind your ship, she whispered.
And…
and my own knuckles might be completely, functionally forced to execute the summary biological liquidation pass through the prince’s throat plates myself one day down the line if his software refuses the update and his boots target your house again, he growled out low, his white scars throbbing.
I’ll drop the hammer without a single millisecond of a system hesitation line if the contract demands the shield.
I know your department carries the shield, Kallard, she said softly.
The quiet wind gale stretched its length across the panoramic platform rails for five miles of the clock.
Then, Bulma Briefs slowly, thoroughly took a single step closer to his tattered armor flank and leaned her slender human shoulder gently flat against his left side guards.
She executed the movement pass with an extreme amount of an engineering caution, leaving a wide two-inch margin of slack to avoid dropping a single line of pressure against his cracked rib plates.
Kallard went completely, profoundly motion-locked inside his front slot, his breath catching tight behind his lungs as the hot scent of her kitchen green tea cells cleared his visor.
Bulma…
what specific category of an administration pass is your—
Shut your uncultured spaceport mouth clips flat right now, Greenbean, she whispered out softly, her blue hair spikes resting quiet against the green trim of his plate armor.
Just let the terminal receivers process the evening watch without a text loop.
He closed his jaw clips flat against his collar bandana, his thumbs hooking loose into his belt utility slots as the endless neon corporate light lines of West City clicked on one by one across the dark purple grid below their boots.
After a long minute of the watch had cleared the logbook, she spoke her mind into his jacket fabric, her voice soft.
I’m still running a massive line of an administrative corporate anger against your account for letting that royal executioner clear the landing zone today, Kallard.
The file is registered as a heavy system liability.
I know the figures are running red on your desk, Bulma, he whispered.
I’m also…
remarkably glad that your internal processing units are the exact category of a human soul that was forced to execute an immense amount of an agonizing internal survival struggle before your white glove pulled the clearance switch on his pod, she whispered out, her fingers clenching her cup tight.
If that specific line of a down-to-earth statement makes a single digit of a structural sense to your receivers.
The layout clears the filters perfectly fine, researcher, the hybrid said softly, his dark green eyes turning warm behind his mask as his hand moved down to rest its glove loop right alongside her thin fingers against the cold steel of the banister.
It clears the board pristine.
Outstanding, she whispered.
Keep the handles steady.
They stood vertical right alongside the concrete perimeter edge until the final golden line of the evening sun had completely, profoundly disappeared straight off the western sector tracking charts into the empty dark.
The next morning watch, the real primary infrastructure problem of the timeline officially cleared the front gates of the dome.
The old planetary guardian Kami cleared the entry portals of the Capsule Corp central research wing flanked right alongside the silent, motion-locked frame of Mr.
Popo, their long robes dragging through the sterile white tile lanes.
The green demon king Piccolo was already active inside the center slot of the room, standing perfectly vertical right inside the frame of the medical wing doorway like his internal sensing droids had been manual-summoned to the location by pure biological warrior reflex.
Goku sat perfectly upright straight in the middle of his white mattress sheets, his hands actively navigating through a massive ceramic bowl of hot roasted rice cells that was nearly the exact same cubic volume as his own upper torso framework, while his wife Chi-Chi stood vertical right alongside his elbow rail, dropping an intense line of a housewife’s glare straight into his hair crown while her wooden spoon continuously loaded three fresh pounds of kitchen catering straight onto his plate anyway.
The small boy Gohan was locked behind a quiet childhood sleep loop inside a leather armchair near his flank, his short legs tucked.
Krillin was established five yards back near Tien’s mattress clearing.
Yamcha remained completely unconscious inside his monitoring bay.
Bulma Briefs, senior technician Brakka, the old director Dr.
Brief, master Roshi, and the independent hunter Kallard all gathered their boots into a single tight paired circle as the old Namekian guardian stepped over the threshold line.
The old master’s wrinkled face was completely caked in a heavy, solemn line of a grave planetary crisis report.
The small white-skinned child asset Chiaotzu flatly, non-negotiably cannot be restored back to the living side of the registry columns by the wish sorcery of Earth’s Dragon Balls, Kami said plainly, his voice rolling low across the white tiles.
The ancient software code enforces a strict single-revival restriction policy per container file.
The account is permanently locked against a secondary pass.
Tien’s single remaining dark eye slowly, thoroughly closed its lens against his pillow fabric, his jaw clenching.
Krillin’s white glove tightened its grip around the tattered cotton fragment of the boy’s white sash until his knuckles turned a powdery pink color.
Our department had already mapped that specific piece of a technical system layout before your boots cleared the entryway, guardian, the old master Roshi said quietly through his white beard, his wooden staff resting steady against his sash.
The rules of the orange school were recorded cycles ago.
Kami slowly lifted his dark pupils to track the green skin mass of the demon lord Piccolo standing in the doorway lane.
Piccolo’s stoic, proud brawler expression flatly did not shift a single digit on the display face.
But Kallard’s green visor lens collected the precise micro-inch contraction of his green jaw joint clenching tight behind his collar vest.
The old planetary guardian continued his speech layout, his voice remaining calm, smooth, and grounded in an absolute down-to-earth permanence.
However…
to maintain an accurate business horizon for your unit…
there may be a secondary alternative route left hidden inside the deep space charts to clear the invoice.
Bulma Briefs’ blue hair head crown violently lifted up from her technical logbook in less than a breath of the gale, her blue eyes flaring bright.
What specific category of an alternative navigation route are your lips dropping onto my desk, old timer?
Kallard remained perfectly silent and still against the back wall, his tail resting quiet against his boot plate.
Careful now.
Keep the handles closed.
Do not go dropping a single piece of your transmigrated future data onto their sheets before the local characters clear the logic gates themselves.
Let their own droids reach the coordinate checkpoint on the paper.
Kami locked his yellow eyes straight into the demon lord’s single open pupil.
The…
the green biological container architecture caked behind your skin plates, Piccolo…
and the ancient genetic mass caked behind my own robes…
are flatly, structurally not native products of this planet Earth originally.
We clear our migration history from a completely separate sector of the deep galaxy charts.
The entire sterile laboratory wing went completely, profoundly dead still all at once, the hum of the monitoring screens dropping down to zero.
Piccolo’s yellow eye ridges narrowed into two tight needles of pure aggressive brawler suspicion, his claws clenching his tattered purple sash until the cloth creaked.
What specific category of a fraudulent fairy tale line is your mouth trying to drop onto my ledger today, old man?
My lineage belongs to the demon king clan.
Kami’s voice remained perfectly smooth, level, and caked in a quiet ancestral heart.
Our genetic blood cells belong exclusively to the Namekian race, Piccolo.
Or rather…
to speak with absolute historical data accuracy before the team…
you and my own container once occupied the exact same unified biological framework cycles ago.
We were a single Namekian warrior asset before the high-pressure spiritual currents of this planet violently split our software down the middle rail, dividing the good corporate development files from the dark demonic brawler code.
The green lord stared straight across the white floor tiles at his counterpart, his mouth completely frozen open as his internal processing units ran an absolute, unprecedented system error pass that shattered his old biography files.
Bulma Briefs whispered out low through her teeth, her pen dropping flat to her desk tray.
Namekian…
a whole separate alien planet tracking registry.
Krillin cut his dark pupils slowly around forty-five degrees to lock his gaze straight onto Kallard’s green visor casing.
Hey…
space teacher…
your own mouth clips casually delivered that exact same technical syllable across our desert campfire logs six months ago during the scouter calibration pass.
You mentioned the green skin lineage.
Kallard managed a single, quiet line of a nod against his bandage wraps, his voice a low gravelly rasp.
My long-range deep-space bounty networks had recorded a few ancient pirate legends regarding a high-spec race of green skin magicians active out in the deep outer rim sectors, Krillin.
The data entry was unverified on my terminal back then, but the shape matches the guardian’s description perfectly.
Kami continued his explanation pass, his wooden staff tapping the tile.
If the ancestral home world of Planet Namek is still actively processing oxygen cells out in the deep charting lanes today, daughter…
and if its surviving native population still maintains a secondary set of wish-granting spheres similar to our local artifacts…
their ancient namekian software codes may possess the legal authority to completely restore a life account that our local Earth droids don’t carry the clearance to touch.
Tien slowly, thoroughly manual-opened his single dark eye lens against the pillow, his jaw setting flat as iron.
The child Chiaotzu, he whispered out low.
The boy can clear the grave.
The old planetary guardian nodded his bald head once.
And the wolf brawler Yamcha, if his internal vital graphs run into an unexpected system degradation pass next week.
And any secondary warrior asset this unit requires to balance the spreadsheet after next year’s war opens.
Bulma Briefs was already active behind her master console desk in less than a fraction of a millisecond of a system pass, her fingers violently flying over the keyboard rails to manual-engage her high-spec stellar navigation droids.
Do our tracking stations possess the exact spatial coordinate keys to map the vector straight to Planet Namek right now, guardian?
Give my navigation grid the digits!
Kami slowly, sorrowfully dropped his yellow eye lenses straight down toward his leather slippers.
My personal memory files were completely caked in a massive line of a localized data wipe during my infant landing phase, daughter.
I flatly, non-negotiably don’t carry a single digit of the geographic coordinate matrix left active on my terminal face today.
The map is completely blank.
The entire high-spec medical wing sank straight back down into a heavy sheet of absolute system disappointment, Krillin’s head dropping back down to his knees.
Then senior staff technician Brakka slowly and thoroughly cleared his gravelly, gear-toothed throat clips from his workshop chair, all four of his yellow eyes narrowing as he adjusted the white mane of his hair crown.
My old department droids might carry a fraction of the migration logs left active inside the scrapper files, lady.
Every single face active inside the paired circle violently snapped its alignment straight around to lock its eyes onto his grease aprons at the exact same microsecond of a system pass.
Brakka looked thoroughly annoyed that the concept of a down-to-earth human hope had consciously, intentionally chosen his own grumpy profile to operate as its primary delivery method across the table today.
I flatly don’t carry the exact high-spec imperial coordinate keys to lock your auto-pilot rails onto their main capital port docks today, girl, the old four-armed alien growled out, his mechanical hand flexing near his belt.
But my independent tracking networks recorded a few ancient migration records, some old refugee route maps from the border wars, and a couple of high-spec Frieza Force sector charts I harvested from a scuttled infantry cutter parsecs ago.
My ears monitored a few independent spaceport trader stories back in the rim ports regarding a deep green agrarian world sitting out in an uncharted sector that carried an unusual high-density water signature and zero line of a strategic industrial or imperial mineral value for the tyrant’s logging firms.
The name on the scrapper slate read Namek.
Bulma Briefs’ blue eyes violently lit up into two brilliant stars of pure academic triumph behind her safety spectacles, her pen slamming down onto the desk.
That’s a hell of a lot more than enough raw data to initiate a primary triangulation loop across my console desks, master mechanic!
We can work with that file!
The old director Dr.
Brief split his face into a wide, cheerful line of a quiet scientific smile, his hand adjusting his spectacles.
If our department pairs the Wayfarer’s deep-space long-range navigation logging drives straight alongside the guardian’s ancient namekian memory fragment waveforms, daughter…
our tracking stations can easily manual-triangulate the exact spatial sector geometry within three days of a processing shift.
The math is completely clean.
Bulma violently pointed her plastic pen node straight across the laboratory lane to lock her blue eye lenses dead flat straight onto Kallard’s green visor casing.
And that specific technical coordination process means your broad boots are officially drafted straight onto the research crew too, Greenbean!
Kallard blinked his dark green pupils once behind his mask.
My account?
What specific category of an operational task are your lips writing onto my schedule today, researcher?
Your uncultured spaceport throat explicitly admitted to my ear clips two minutes ago that your bounty hunter networks had monitored multiple ancient legends regarding the green skin magicians out in the rim ports, scrapper boy!
she yelled out through her ponytail hair strands, her blue eyes wide.
You are going to sit your broad shoulders straight down onto my signal lab workbench and manual-extract every single spatial route, rumor, trader diary, and drunk spaceport bounty hunter story your brain cells recorded over ten cycles of a vacuum drift until my navigation screen runs green!
That’s an absolute corporate work order from the management department!
Kallard managed a single, slow line of a real smirk to break through his beard trim beneath his bandana, his thumbs hooking loose into his belt sashes as his tail wrapped relaxed around his heel.
The executive directive is officially entered onto the sheet, boss lady.
Opening the extraction file.
My receivers are warm for the project.
Brakka let let out a long, quiet gravelly mutter through his mustache clips as his four arms folded tight over his leather apron.
And so begins another completely, profoundly terrible long-range trip out into the garbage sectors of the deep void with a crew of uncultured local brawlers.
My tool kits are already running an insurance audit pass against the hull plates.
Goku split his face into a wide, high-octane childhood brawler grin through his facial bandages, his dark eye flashing bright as his hand shoved another massive mountain of rice cells straight through his jaw grates.
A full-scale journey out into the deep empty space lanes to track down a planet of green skin martial arts magicians, huh?
Man…
that specific category of an adventure manifest sounds exactly like a hell of a lot of fun to train my knuckles against across the parsecs!
The domestic command manager Chi-Chi violently slammed both of her hands down straight onto the reinforced steel mattress rail with a deafening *CLANG* that rattled his rice bowl, her spectacles flaring white under the lamps.
You…
you full-blooded orange brawler asset…
your tattered biological container is flatly, non-negotiably *not* clearing the front gate of this city dome to run a single mile of an independent space cruise vacation anywhere out in the dark void this year, Goku!
The household command manager flatly denies the clearance keys!
Goku went completely, profoundly vertical and motion-locked in his mattress slot, his wooden spoon frozen two inches from his mouth clips as his hair spikes dropped by an inch.
But…
but Chi-Chi…
my public relations voice flatly wasn’t stating that my boots were preparing to launch their speeders through the hangar roof at this very hour, honey.
I’re just running a basic verbal analysis on the track.
Your uncultured brawler brain cells were consciously, intentionally calculating the exact fuel velocity metrics required to clear the atmosphere boundaries long before your mouth clips dropped the syllables onto the floorboards, you crazy orange farmer!
she shrieked out through her spectacles, her hands planting firm against her hips.
I can hear the engine current flaring behind your teeth!
The short temple hero Krillin managed a quiet, highly amused little grimace through his bandages forty yards back, his hand hiding his mouth.
Yeah…
track the data line cleanly right there, brother…
the housewife’s receivers have successfully caked your interface in a corner.
Your internal mind was definitely calculating a space flight budget layout for the muscles.
He’re entirely obsessed with a fresh mat.
The green demon king Piccolo remained perfectly vertical and silent inside his doorway slot, his single yellow eye tracking the entire domestic circus layout with a cold, unblinked sheet of pure clinical warrior observation.
The old guardian Kami slowly step his robes over to lock his gaze straight onto the lord’s green profile.
Your department carries multiple serious questions regarding your ancestral identity profile left hidden behind your chest guards at this hour, don’t you, Piccolo?
The database is running a heavy volume of gray noise.
The demon lord’s green mouth clips twisted into an absolute, razor-sharp line of an aggressive demonic scowl that ignored the air lines entirely, his claws clenching his tattered purple sash until the leather groaned down to the rail.
My internal focus possesses an immense, non-profit volume of high-pressure data inquiries regarding the architecture of my cell walls today, old man, the lord hissed out low through his teeth.
The old history files are completely running a fraud pass.
Kami managed a single, slow, and thoroughly solemn nod of his head crown against his high collar fabric.
Then you clear your boots straight up to the upper lookout terminal benches to run a full diagnostic exchange pass through my receivers before the next long-range stellar navigation journey opens its gates for the unit, Namekian.
The manuals are open for your slot.
Kallard slowly, thoroughly ran his dark green eyes all the way around the perimeter layout of the crowded white laboratory wing, a long deep quiet operational breath of oxygen clearing his lung valves as his tail settled loose against the floor tiles.
There it was.
The primary strategic pivot point of the universe was officially clearing the tracking rails on his screen.
* **The Saiyan Saga** chronicle was officially closed out, dead and buried in the yellow clay badlands.
* **The Namek Campaign** development project was actively throwing its power switches to clear the gate.
* **The small child Chiaotzu** was temporarily off the active asset registry spreadsheet.
* **The wolf brawler Yamcha** was deeply caked in a critical system recovery loop inside his capsule tank, broken but alive on the board.
* **The crane practitioner Tien** was permanently transformed down to his marrow, his left arm missing from the inventory but his warrior spirit hones into a razor-thin tactical edge.
* **The prince Vegeta** had successfully cleared the orbital perimeter boundaries alive inside his launch pod, escaping through the velvet dark parsecs back to the core trading hubs to run a full Zenkai restoration pass.
* **The orange hero Kakarot** was fully alive inside the living timeline, his muscles warm for the next shift.
* **The demon lord Piccolo** was finally learning the exact technological origin specifications of his genetic race manual.
* **And the brilliant blue-haired girl Bulma Briefs** was already active behind her workbench blueprint sheets, building the absolute physical infrastructure of the future world with her own bare fingers.
And right in the absolute center of the entire multi-faction paired formation…
the independent scrapper Kallard stood vertical onto his heavy leather combat boots, no longer an outside rim port alien scrapper hiding his tail beneath a deep-space port cloak, and flatly clear of a single drop of his old human isolation loop.
He was a trusted vanguard officer of the home team now.
He signed the manifest with his heart.
The long-range strategic path line ahead of their sashes had successfully shifted its geometry.
Inside the old canonical timeline archives his soul had recorded cycles ago, the deep-space flight straight to Planet Namek had been nothing more than a desperate, low-resource panic run executed after a total planetary military devastation pass had wiped out half the roster.
Down here in the real dirt clover…
the upcoming journey across the parsecs was still a highly desperate, high-stakes piece of an emergency mission to rescue a fallen brother’s face, sure.
But it was also being executed as a tightly synchronized, highly disciplined piece of long-range corporate military strategy.
A full-scale industrial preparation year was caked behind their knuckles.
They possessed a hell of a lot wider pool of active brawler assets active on the spreadsheet, a significantly stronger, better-conditioned planetary defense wall standing vertical onto their heels, and a high-spec black imperial infantry warship warming up its primary engine cores along the hangar docks.
And somewhere far out in the dark velvet void of the deep galaxy charts, sitting secure behind the high-caliber rail-gun arrays of his planetary liquidation flagship flagship cruiser…
the genetic monster Frieza was waiting for his invoice to open.
Kallard’s white-gloved fingers slowly, thoroughly clenched together into two heavy iron fists against his utility sashes, the white branching network of his old Veyruna scars letting out a sharp deep-tissue throbbing line of pure cell memory from wrist to shoulder blade joint.
The tyrant Frieza had once casually manual-engaged his own flagship flagship laser rail-gun to fire a high-caliber tracking shot straight into the bilge of a fleeing low-class child’s launch pod forty cycles ago for nothing more than his own short-tempered planetary amusement.
Years down the line of the chronicle…
that same monstrous tyrant was going to lift his ruby eye lenses straight across the green grass fields of Planet Namek to collect the exact architecture of Kallard’s visor face clearing the smoke clouds, and his database was going to violently calculate the recovery file.
The independent scrapper Kallard intended to ensure with the absolute totality of his human soul…
that the monster’s processing units never possessed the legal clearance to forget the name of Ronin ever again before his heart stopped beating.