Owen Puck

"I appreciate that you two have decided to come on as hired help. It is surprising, considering your other ventures."

"No," Tien told his employer, "it is not a problem at all. Our students can train by themselves now, so we still have spare time for farming. Isn't that right, Chaotzu?"

"Right!" Chaotzu said happily.

After the defeat of Majin Buu, Tien shinhan and Chaotzu took up farming. Not only was this a way to earn a living for themselves, but farming also added to their own training, little by little. It was even a part of the training that Tien's New Crane School practiced, especially for newcomers.

"So do not worry about us, Mr. Puck," Tien spoke, "we are still fine being hired out as farmers."

"That's a relief," Owen Puck replied, "I'm glad I'm not taking away much of your time. I am really interested in seeing you two at work."

"Is that so? I'm not surprised; since Gohan published his book, we have been in even higher-"

Tien's eyes widened as he sensed a familiar Ki close by, and he looked in the direction of a nearby forest. "Hm, what's wrong?" Owen asked.

"Why is Goku coming here?" Tien asked.

"EH!? GOKU, YOU SAY!?"

"Huh? Tien Shinhan and Chaotzu?" Goku had also sensed both of his friends' Ki.

"The martial arts teachers at the New Crane School?" Bard stated, having heard of the two teachers. "Ah, that's right; my grandpa said he planned to hire the two to help out at his farm. To be honest, it is more of a scientific interest on his part."

The group soon saw light up ahead as they came near the edge of the forest. "'A scientific interest', you say," Pan inquired as they came out of the forest. "Why would your grandfather…?"

"HEY! SON GOKU!"

"Eh!?" Goku was startled as he saw the middle-aged man quickly running up to him from the nearby house, an excited look on his face. Once he got up close, he promptly grabbed Goku's hand and began to shake it fervently.

"Amazing! I did not expect to meet you in person for quite some time! My name is Owen Puck, and I am so happy to see you!"

"H-hey, Grandpa, don't act so excited!" Bard quickly pleaded. "Honestly, you are acting like a child meeting his idol!"

"Puck…" Pan muttered, trying to recall where she heard that name before. "Wait, you mean THE Owen Puck, the creator of Space Age Incorporated?"

"Yep," Owen said happily, "I am that man." He looked over and saw his grandson, Bard. "Bard, what are you doing here?"

Pan, Uub and Goku fell down from disbelief. "You only noticed me just now!?" Bard pleaded.

Owen Puck was the creator of an up and coming corporation named Space Age Incorporated that worked closely with the World Government. He made frontline news six years ago with the development of the Space Expansion Attachment (SEA) that worked the inverse to Dr. Brief's capsules; as the Dynocaps Capsules shrunk objects down into capsules for compact and easy transportation, the SEA created a pocket dimension within an enclosed space, leading to objects with the SEA attachment being much bigger on the inside than on the outside.

"It is surprisingly a lot like the Room of Spirit and Time", Bulma once told Pan after a business meeting with Puck, "but it is much smaller in scale. It basically takes the same application used by my Father and applies it in the inverse – making objects bigger on the inside rather than storing objects in a pocket dimension inside the Capsules."

Owen wanted to enter into collaboration with Bulma in order to expand his business ventures and become partners with the Capsule Corporation. In the initial stages, they tried to apply SEA onto a Capsule device directly to combine the two technologies. As it was a test to see if the two technologies were compatible, the experiment was done on a Space Age Inc. Exo-Station in the upper reaches of the atmosphere by Instant Tele-control Robots.

An investigation a week later revealed the Exo-Station was sucked into an empty pocket dimension by the attempt.

With the initial experiment a failure, Bulma and Owen reached a safer solution: the SEA would be an attachment for a special new line of Capsule Products designed to be compatible with it, and would have a special fail-safe to prevent the product from returning to Capsule form if the SEA was still attached. So far, it was used as an attachment for the Capsule House, storage containers, and a variety of Capsule vehicles, each priced at double the standard model.

Puck affectionately called them "clown vehicles".

"Sorry, but I thought you were still off training," Owen told his grandson. "I didn't expect you back for a while." He then looked at Pan and Uub. "I certainly didn't expect you to bring company, either."

Goku replied. "You might already know," he pointed toward Uub, "but this Uub, my student…" then he gestured to Pan "and my granddaughter, Pan. Your son invited all of us here."

"Yes, I do remember those names from the 28th Budokai..."

"Goku, what are you doing here?"

Goku looked past Owen to see Tien and Chaotzu coming up from behind. "Oh, there you are. It has been so long, hasn't it?"

"Over ten years, Son Goku," Tien replied, "not since what happened with Shenlong that time."

"What time is he talking about," Bard asked Pan as the three old friends began to discuss how their lives had been.

Pan began to recount the story. "A long time ago," she began, "there was wish made to bring someone back to life...someone terrible."

"Someone was brought back from the dead…" Bard could hardly believe what Pan was saying, but he did hear his grandfather recount times when people had been brought back from the dead mysteriously, and the name "Shenlong" had come up in those accounts.

Owen was listening to Pan. "Was it the Dragon Balls?"

The Z-Fighters snapped to attention at the mention of the Dragon Balls…artifacts long since gone. "Puck…How do you know so much about us?" Tien glared at Puck. "How do you even know about the Dragon Balls?"

Owen simply smiled. "I saw Goku…I saw him at the 21st Budokai Tenkaichi."

"That was so long ago…" Goku commented.

"It feels like yesterday to me. As a young child, I looked up to Dr. Briefs and Capsule Corporation and wanted to become a great inventor like him when I was older. I did not much care for martial arts at the time, but my father took me to see the 21st Budokai Tenkaichi.

"I was amazed at the strength of some of the martial artists there…" He looked at Goku. "Particularly two young fighters called Krillin and Son Goku, children the same age as me yet stronger than most fully grown men. I was astonished that they could be so strong – then again I saw that most of the audience was also surprised.

"Then I saw it. In the finals of that tournament, I saw the Kamehameha."

"Did you now?" Goku said. He could not explain it, but it made him feel happy that he had inspired Owen back then. "I'm surprised you could still remember that so clearly."

"You turned into a giant ape and Roshi blew up the Moon," Owen said flatly, "how could I not forget?"

"You must have forgotten something," Goku's brow furrowed, "because I fought Jackie Chun at the tournament, not Master Roshi."

Owen's body clenched in disbelief. "JACKIE CHUN WAS ROSHI!"

"I can attest to what he is saying," Tien interjected, "I learnt of that from Shin during the 22nd Budokai."

"EH?! NO WAY!"

"You mean the old man never told you," Owen muttered under his breath. "Well, better decades later than never."

"It makes so much sense," Goku spoke in awe. "The Kamehameha; how he knew Grandpa Gohan. His disguise was perfect!"

"It was just A WIG!"

Owen sighed. "Anyway, after what I saw at the 21st Budokai, I became interested in learning what it all was and what it meant. What was that power, where was it drawn from, what uses could it be applied to beyond fighting, and how it could be manipulated. The Thunder Shock Surprise was something I was especially interested in, and seeing the Dodon-Pa confirmed one of my theories about that energy: it could be shaped to have properties of elements in nature, such as lightning and fire.

"But," Owen suddenly said, "Since you want to know how I know about the Dragon Balls, I will explain this now. After the 22nd Budokai, it made the news that various martial artists who participated in the tournament were being killed, and it just as suddenly made the news that they had all come back to life somehow. There had to be something to it, so over the years I searched for an answer and came across the folktale of the Dragon Balls. Considering the things I saw at the Budokai, I could not think of a more proper explanation. After all, many folktales have their basis in some form of truth."

"After the 23rd Budokai, I lost track of you and your friends, and finally settled down and had a family…" Owen looked at Bard and smiled. "At that point, I had also started to establish Space Age Incorporated, and one of my first designs was a device created to detect the energies that I saw used at the Budokai."

"In other words, a Scouter…" Goku added. It had been a long time since he thought about the Scouters the Saiyans and Frieza's men used to measure power levels.

"When East City was erased from the Earth's face, the device immediately detected the surge in energy, and I sent a team to investigate with permission from the World Army. We found two capsule-like vehicles in the wreckage. While one flew away, we procured the other…" He folded his arms and contemplated the event. "But it exploded for some reason shortly after we started investigating it, and I could only scavenge what technology I could from the remains…"

He noticed Goku scratching his head nervously, and looked over in consternation. "Would I be right in assuming that your group had something to do with that?"

Goku chuckled nervously. "Sorry, but Bulma accidentally made it self-destruct…"

Owen cast his eyes skyward. "Kami, give me patience. But even with that thing blown up, I tried to make a functional drive out of it, though I had to go through a lot of trial and error. I worked and continually failed for over a decade until…"

Owen's eyes widened, as if he caught himself about to say something. Everyone around him noticed this. "…But I'm getting ahead of myself," he spoke, side-stepping his slip of the tongue. "What technology I was successful in adapting was…"

As Owen continued speaking, Pan looked over at Bard to see his eyes cast down to the earth, not paying attention to his grandfather's tale. Bard, was what your grandfather almost said something very important…?

"…Which I used in the creation of my Exo-Stations. During this time, my daughter Breia – Bard's mother – took an interest in martial arts after looking at some of my old notes. Sadly, she could not effectively replicate the techniques I wrote about, and stuck to conventional martial arts.

"So went life, and then that creature Cell appeared, and later announced the Cell Games. When the broadcast aired, although you all looked different from before, especially Goku, I was happy to see you all again, and amazed once more at your power. After that…"

"You met that man, didn't you?" Goku interjected.

Owen froze. "What do you mean?"

"Just now, you mentioned that your daughter could not replicate the techniques we use," Goku explained, "and you were talking about how you could not replicate the Space Pod's drive from the remains you had. Bard told me that he learnt what he knows from his father, so he could not have learnt anything from Breia, and I assume that he might have something to do with what you were mentioning about the spaceship's drive."

"I apologize for interrupting you, but I think it needs to be asked: who is Bard's father?"

Pan saw that Bard looked ashamed of himself. "I'm sorry, Grandpa. I was just happy to actually interact with more people who were like me."

Owen looked at his grandson, and sighed. "Well, you would have found out anyway, so I guess this is the best time to tell you about him."

"Roughly twenty years ago, a spaceship crashed near my estate. When I went to investigate, I found a young boy inside and brought him to my house to tend to his wounds. I had it covered up because I did not want anyone to know about who I had found in the ship. When the boy came to, he had quite the temper, and he could not speak the common tongue of Earth. I took it upon myself to teach him the language of Earth, and eventually learnt his name."

Owen paused, and drew in a breath.

"The boy's name was Kanto, Bard's father, and he said he was from a race of aliens called Saiyans."

A Lava Planet in the East Galaxy

"Y-you want me to what?!" Malaka screamed.

"Do not make me repeat myself," Kanto threated, holding Malaka over a river of lava. "You will tell me the locations of the remaining bases the World Trade Organization has hidden throughout the four galaxies. Agree to this, and I will spare your life."

"Y-yet you will destroy all the others!" Malaka protested. "Why? It's been decades! Why do you still want revenge for your people, the Saiyans, when Frieza and his father are dead?"

Kanto smiled. "You seem to know a lot about my intentions."

Malaka could feel his feet getting hot. "An S.O.S. from one of our bases 13 years ago told us you wanted vengeance – vengeance against the Arcosians, Master Frieza's race!"

It was true that was once Kanto's goal - to take revenge on Frieza's people for what happened to his home.

But that had changed...except for one thing.

"My goals are more specific than that. There is one individual in particular that I am looking for."

"Y-you mean…!"

Kanto stopped smiling. "Where…Is…Cooler?"