Chapter Four
Rock and Phantoms
Bulma was true to her word. After an uneventful day – though Gohan hoped the chief hadn't simply abstained from calling out of regret for Videl's injury the day before – the two teens walked into Capsule Corp. to see the energetic scientist waiting for them in her lab. Vegeta was there as well, seemingly out of place at one of the computer stations, but his fingers were flying across the keyboard with speed and precision that could rival Bulma.
"Right on time, you two," the inventor greeted cheerfully. She brought out a watch from her pocket, almost identical to the one Videl already had from her.
"It's got your new outfit, all tailored and ready. This watch also has a better receiver and speakers for the link with police HQ. Your helmet has also been updated with new firmware and a few added gadgets that might be useful," she concluded. Not one for half measures was Bulma Briefs.
Videl clipped the new watch onto her wrist and handed the old one back. "Thanks a lot, Bulma." The raven-haired girl pressed the side button to activate the watch, and with a brief flash her outfit was replaced with her Saiyagirl costume. "I don't even notice the extra weight," she said, remembering Bulma's description of the new fabric from the previous day as she looked over the new suit.
"Didn't think you would," Bulma replied. "But now, the material is totally bulletproof, and, thanks to Mr. Personality over there," she said, jerking her head towards the sullen Saiyan in the corner, "we've determined that it's quite adept at reflecting energy blasts as well. Not that you need that for fighting common criminals, of course."
"If you ask me, nothing is worth looking like that," Vegeta said, without turning around.
Both women shot the Saiyan prince an automatic vicious glance. Gohan winced; he didn't even like those looks when he wasn't the target. Vegeta, however, was still typing away smugly. His banter with Bulma had become one of the mainstays of their relationship, and served as some inverted form of sweet-talk for the two. Videl, however, still chafed a bit when she was brought into the jokes. It got on Gohan's nerves as well, though even he didn't dare say anything to Vegeta. After all, the Saiyan prince's caustic wit was as permanent as Goku's childlike good humor.
"The bodysuit definitely feels different, though," Videl was saying. Her brow was furrowed as she flexed her arms and legs, trying a few punches and kicks as she got a feel for her new uniform.
Bulma looked thoughtful, cradling her chin in one hand. "I was worried about that. With the added density, the material might restrict your movement."
"It's not that bad. A little stiff, maybe, but nothing I can't get used to. It's better than a ricochet through the arm."
Bulma laughed. "Well, even with that suit, dodging bullets is still better than taking them."
"Yeah," Videl replied, activating the watch again to replace the costume with her more comfortable, and certainly less vocal, pair of blue jeans and a t-shirt.
Vegeta finished his business with the computer and walked over. "I trust you'll be able to design something more appropriate than that clown suit for me," he growled to Bulma.
"Hrmph. Just for that, I'll be sure to order an outfit in pink for you. After all, that color was so nice on you that day that Goku came back from his trip to Yardrat."
Vegeta's left eyebrow twitched. "Actually, I was thinking something in the same color as your hair," he said evenly.
"Really?"
"Of course. Wearing something like that would send any enemy running in terror."
Gohan thought the slap that followed might actually have stung.
-- --- --
After three days and three times that many rounds of set, detonate, and clear, luck had stayed with them. The tunnel was still standing.
"All right boys, let's get digging!" Foreman Duggin called. By now, any doubts about the wisdom of their plan had been washed away by the proximity of their goal. The workers set at the remaining few feet of rock with rabid enthusiasm, the thoughts of discovery and wealth driving them on. As they chipped away bit by bit, Director Patiens could almost liken the clinks of the picks to the clinks of coins, and with every inch of rock they went through, his smile widened. He had joined them for this, the final push into the cavern. He wanted to be here when they made history, and he could almost see the wondrous discoveries they were bound to make.
"Hey! I'm breakin' through here!" one of the workers called. With a powerful swing, the edge of the pick impacted the rock and then bit in deeply, a sure sign of the stone tunnel's end and the open chamber beyond. He removed the pick to a sudden rush of air past them into the hole, which lasted almost a minute. The foreman and director traded glances, then the former shrugged. The chamber had been closed off for countless years, who knew what had happened in that time? At least this meant the air inside wouldn't be toxic.
"Alright boys, let's make ourselves a door!"
Their excitement redoubled, the crew hacked at the rock like children tearing at the wrappings of a long-anticipated gift. Soon enough, they opened a hole big enough for a large man to walk through.
"Stand aside!" Patiens called, jostling through the crowd for a first look at their find. He reached the hole, turned on a powerful hand lamp, and looked through into the chamber beyond.
The room was cavernous, its edges vanishing into gloom beyond the reach of the light in Patiens' hand. Stalactites hung from the ceiling like a thousand glinting teeth, their mineral deposits shimmering as the light passed over them. As more men climbed through the opening and added to the cast of flashlights, more features began to take shape. The chamber was spherical, and organized into five distinct tiers. Like rows of seating at a stadium, four concentric platforms ringed the wall, with the tunnel opening onto the plane of the uppermost. The walls along each level were lined with countless alcoves. Sets of stairs, worn smooth by time, were spaced evenly to provide access between each stage.
The crew's excitement was palpable, but the men grew quiet as they came inside. Whispering ceased and breaths became hushed, for they stood amongst the dead. Every alcove on every level held a stone sarcophagus.
They began to spread out, stepping lightly through the chamber, and more details became visible. The tombs had two distinct styles, which became evident almost at once. The first and third levels were crafted of humble rock, rough and unadorned. They appeared to be carved from the same white sandstone that composed the entire chamber. The second and fourth tiers were far different, with coffins chiseled from a dozen different minerals. Onyx and obsidian, ebony and jet, they drank the light like thirsty beasts, the tombs all made of black.
Eyes so wide they were glittering like the niter on the walls, Director Patiens headed at once for the nearest set of steps, and from there straight towards the nearest tomb. It was the best he could have hoped for, after two months of setbacks and frustration. It was the find that would send him to a life of fame and fortune, as the leader of this great expedition. It was all he had dreamed of, and more. It was—
"Empty!" the director spluttered. As he stared down into the open sarcophagus, hope turned to panic in his eyes.
"You sound disappointed," said Foreman Duggin, and the note of disgust in his voice was plain.
"Where is the gold? The jewels?" Patiens cried, running from coffin to coffin. None of them were lidded, though all had stones shaped to cover them set beside. "Where are the artifacts, the sculptures? Where is all the treasure? Where, where, where!?"
"Where are the bones?" The whisper from Granny cut through the director's wails, and drew a few looks from among the more morbid men of the crew. He was right, though. It was not only Patiens' lamented valuables missing from the tombs, each and every one of the stone enclosures was unsealed, open, and empty.
Then someone saw the floor.
"Gods be good!" Takiir swore. He was pointing his flashlight at the lowest level of the chamber, the fifth tier which stretched beneath them across the cavern. The soft-spoken geologist's curse brought more light and eyes to bear, and they all saw at once what the tombs had originally drawn them away from. The bottom of the hollow was filled with skeletons.
However long they had been there, most of the bones had gone to dust, but there was enough left to know what they were, and that there had been many of them. They were lined along the outer edge, where the wall of the lowest platform was set six feet above the chamber floor.
"There must be hundreds of them," Duggin breathed. It would have been impossible to say for sure without exhaustive and detailed research, but no one would disagree with his estimate. You could not even tell where one corpse ended and another began, but the entire edge of the lowest tier was ringed with bones, bleached white with age.
"What's that?" another worker asked. His lamp was trained on the very center of the lower level, where a plinth stood, raised from the dust and dirt and stone. Something on it caught the light, and glimmered faintly.
There were only two stairways down to that level from the others, set at opposite ends of the cavern. Most of the crew did not move, unsettled by the sight of disinterred remains. Some men started making their way towards whichever set of steps was closest, and descended towards the lower level. Duggin reached the bottom first, and stepped gingerly around the bones. As he got closer to the podium, he saw what had caught the light. He came up short, and stared, then began to inch closer, one shuffling step at a time, like a man caught in a daze. Not from shock, or fear, or caution, but for wonder.
Upon the pedestal sat an orb. It was no larger than a fist, and at first it looked indistinguishable from the stone of the dais. But where it caught the light, the smooth surface seemed to shift, there black, now white, in twisting whorls of color as unblemished as they were distinct. The white was as pure as driven snow, and the black was as deep as a starless night. Here and there along their borders might have been patches of grey, but they seemed to twist and vanish as though they were no more than a trick of the light.
The men stared at it, transfixed. It even seemed as if the surface of the orb was slowly moving, as though some unseen hand were turning it upon its seat. Like a crystal ball filled with colored clouds, it never seemed to be still.
After what seemed like an eternity of staring into the discordant mists, Director Patiens shouldered in amongst them. He opened his mouth to say something, but whatever it was the words died in his throat sight of the orb. After one long, slow blink, he reached out towards it. The world seemed to move in slow motion as his fingertips inched closer. Finally, he touched it.
His mind seemed to explode with color, so bright that for an instant he was blind. Then the colors became shapes, and the shapes became things, a million thoughts and a million images, flashing past his eyes faster than he could hope to comprehend. He saw the familiar faces of people he knew he'd never met, and a blinding tour of recognizable places he knew he had never seen. His thoughts whipped about as though caught in a sudden storm, a mental tempest of plains, hills, mountains, valleys, rivers, roads, cities, homes, families, people, faces, and eyes, eyes, the eyes! He saw them looking back at him, and he knew. He knew them, and they knew him, and both knew he did not belong. The eyes were staring, and he heard them shouting, and he saw them looking down, until suddenly they were the eyes of his crew, the men with him beneath the mountain, in the cavern with the tombs. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and realized that he was lying on the floor, held down in the dirt by firm hands.
"Wha—who—where?"
The men around him relaxed, letting out sighs of relief. "Good to have you back, boss," Foreman Duggin said. "You had us worried."
"But I… I was reaching… And then… Then I saw… I just touched it…" Patiens rambled.
"Yeah… and you started screaming. We pulled you away, but you were struggling, thrashing around. You nearly knocked Granny out cold with a kick, and we had to hold you down to keep you from hurting yourself."
"I... I don't… There's nothing, not any of it. Just... a feeling… like I was... It was…" he shook his head. "I don't know."
"Well, you're fine now sir. Let's get you back outside." The director seemed on the verge of protesting when the foreman raised a hand to stop him. "We'll get something rigged to get that orb out of here… without anyone else touching it. We've gotten this far, there's no sense leaving empty handed, and it looks to be the only thing small enough to move just yet."
Patiens nodded. All of a sudden he felt exhausted, and for some reason so very… sad. He let two of the workers help him up, leaning heavily on their shoulders as they led him out of the chamber.
The remaining crewmen brought in a pair of metal tubes and a heavy burlap sheet, and after a bit of careful prodding managed to get the orb off the pedestal, wrapped, and rigged into a makeshift litter. Two men carried it as gingerly as a wounded man, or perhaps some incredibly sensitive explosives. They held it from the very edges of the poles, and no one walked beside it, hesitant to get anywhere near the wrapped orb lest they suffer the same frightening experience of their director.
A proper historical find would not have been moved so quickly, but this dig was not so much an expedition as it was an excavation. They were interested in history and antiquities only so far as what would serve their sponsors best on display in a museum. The workers might have been appalled at what was little better than a case of grave robbing in the name of science, had any of the men been hired to be considerate of such things. But none of them had been, and so to them it was just a job well done. If any of their consciences were troubled, they would tell themselves that no one was like to benefit from anything buried and forgotten, and so why not take what they found to where it could be studied and appreciated and seen by children on their school field trips?
Though there were archaeologists within the crew, their job was not examination or preservation of finds, but instead to ensure their proper care and transport. After packaging the orb inside a wooden crate crammed with generous amounts of straw and shredded paper, it was loaded into a pickup truck and sent off into the arid night. The miners and geologists watched the truck drive off with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity, wondering what it was they had discovered in the depths of the Earth.
Not one of them considered that sometimes, such things are best left alone.
-- --- --
In the same forest clearing, the same cloaked figure jerked out of his meditation. He had felt it again, that strange sense of distant ki. The same hollow feeling, but it had been stronger this time. Not greatly so, but enough that now he was sure that it had not been a single power, but instead many small ones. So… unnatural. It was as if, for the briefest of moments, innumerable new people had come alive, only to vanish again without a trace.
Once was an oddity. Twice was a mystery… perhaps even a concern. With this little blue planet, one could never be too careful. With a soft rustle of fabric the figure rose into the night sky, flying off to have a chat with a boy whose name was god.
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*A/N* - Sorry this one took so long. I had to re-write quite a bit of it, where some of the smaller changes from earlier chapters began to converge again. I think it's better for it, in the end.
Oh, and the last paragraph has a bit of poetic license. Just in case anyone is confused, "Kami" means "god" in English, and Piccolo is on his way to Dende.
Next chapter: Old Shark, New Teeth
