Disclaimer: the idea and characters of Dragon Ball are owned by Akira Toriyama. This is a simple non-profit fan parody.
Chapter 14 - Strangest Things
The kid had woken up with a pleasant feeling, like it was a very bright day - one of those days when the sun shines through your window and brings you into the morning sweetly, to a clear sky and warm air. He sat up on his bed. Outside the window, it was raining; yet everything was bright, brighter than he'd ever seen it. He blinked.
Even with his eyes closed, he still saw everything.
His heart jumped in his chest. He pulled his hands out of the blanket. From the pajamas' sleeves came nothing. Two bloodless stumps. Yet he could feel them - move the fingers. He looked inside, the entire sleeve was empty.
He screamed and scrambled out of the bed. Stripped himself naked, ripped the pajamas from his body, looking for a place, any place, of his body to still call his own. He found nothing. Under the clothes was only a void. A void he could touch and feel, but still a void.
His mother opened the door, drawn by the noise. She called him by name, looked around. Asked where he was, what had happened.
"I'm here, mom." sobbed the air in the middle of the room, where tears were dropping out of nothing.
Goku found Bulma in the lab, giving the last small tunings to the ki scanner for the afternoon experiments. When he arrived in the room, she stopped working and turned to face him. Her stare was more incredulous than angry.
"Goku," she asked, "what happened?"
The kid avoided her eyes and found a stool to perch himself on and sulk.
"I got angry." he explained. "I'm sorry."
"Oh, well, that's okay then, all solved!" the girl exclaimed. "No, seriously, what the heck happened?"
"It's all my fault. Don't punish the others."
"I'll be the judge of that. And I have the recordings anyway, so it's not like you can hide me the facts. I just want to understand what were you thinking."
"I told you. I got angry." The boy turned around, but still kept his eyes low. "Bandages kept insulting my grandpa."
Bulma walked next to him. "Did he insult your grandpa specifically? Did he know him?"
Goku shook his head. "He just insulted whoever taught me. He was simply being cocky because your machine said he was stronger than me. Thought that me reading was stupid."
"Oh, I see. So, basically, he was bullying you. Well, I won't fire him - you already saw to that. Literally." she giggled. "But he won't get away completely scot-free either."
"No, look, it was my fault!" said the boy, alarmed. "I don't want him to be punished because of this."
"He provoked you. He's got his part of fault in this. Which doesn't mean that you don't too. You gave in to your impulses - you wanted to humiliate him, to prove that you were stronger. Well, you did that too, which actually means I should understand better whether that's just down to skill, or if my way of measuring relative power is wrong."
"I think he was more powerful than me." admitted Goku. "I mean physically. He's got a very strong punch. But he wasn't as fast, due to his body size. It's split fractions of a seconds, but in combat, they matter. I believe it's just a scaling effect - even reinforced by ki, a human body still follows the square-cube law. You should adjust your measurements accordingly. But he had those bandages that compensated well. I could have lost if not for my superior control of ki. He couldn't fire it at all, and it was likely his first time fighting someone who could."
"And you were really impressive there!" Bulma finally let her enthusiasm show, forgetting completely that she was supposed to be angry. "You used skin level ki to burn the bandages, right? And then that fine control with those small bullets! You never showed me anything of that."
Goku nodded. "I was perfecting those techniques. I didn't show them to you because they didn't feel ready yet. Also, I don't know how much of scientific interest they could be."
"I'm sure something will pop up. That was great stuff!"
"Still, I only won thanks to that advantage. Which made me think that perhaps Bandages was kind of right. Not about my grandpa, but about my training. I'm slacking off. Perhaps I read a bit too much, and that affects my effectiveness."
"There's no such thing as reading too much." asserted Bulma confidently. "But I understand that you may feel like it takes time from your training. Which actually reminds me that I wanted to give you these."
She opened her desk's drawer and extracted a pair of unusual glasses. They were thin and sleek in design, with a single clear lens crossing their entire width. On the sides were two small buttons.
"What are they?" asked Goku, turning them around in his hands, fascinated.
"Capsule Corporation Rear Projection Glasses." she explained. "We put them out a couple of years ago. There was a fad, every company made theirs. It didn't really stick, so for now they're discontinued, but I managed to dig these out. What they do is, you wear them like glasses, but they're actually a screen."
The boy put them on. Bulma pushed one of the two buttons on the side, and they lighted up. A wall of text appeared before Goku's eyes - superimposed to the rest of the world, without covering it.
"You control them with your eyes. Move around the pupils, and blink once or twice to confirm or go back. This way, you can read much more comfortably while exercising, without even a need to use audiobooks and earbuds. What do you say?"
"They're pretty amazing." said Goku, looking up to Bulma. For a dozen seconds, he frantically moved his eyes in all directions, trying to get the glasses to react. Then he gave up. "Thanks."
Bulma laughed. "You're welcome. You'll understand how they work in no time, you only need some practice. Now, on to something else - I realised you don't have a salary, despite being a part of the experiment as much as everyone else."
"I don't really need money." said Goku, still frantically gesticulating with his eyes. "I have all I need here."
"Sure, but this is a matter of being fair. And once you have money, you can figure out what to do with it. Long story short, I'd like to give you an allowance of sorts. Unofficially, because I can't contract you any more since my dad only gave me money for five people, so I'll just use my personal funds."
"Uh, thanks." the boy took off the glasses. "You know, though, I thought you called me here to scold me. Now I'm leaving with these amazing new glasses and money. Do you know about positive and negative reinforcement?"
"What cheek!" Bulma flicked his forehead. "I'm being magnanimous, country boy! Be grateful that I trust you to be smart and wise enough not to do anything like this any more. Use your head in the future, it's big enough. Plus, now that I pay you, I have something to threaten to take away from you."
"Something I don't need nor asked for?" Goku shrugged. "Doesn't make much sense."
"Don't tempt me. Here, you want to be punished? So be it. I demand that when we'll have our experiment session - in about five minutes, by the way - you go to Bandages, bow, and apologise for your actions. And actually see if you can make things work this time! I know he was being a jerk, but for the sake of not having this little project end up with my house reduced to smouldering ruins, try to be bigger than that. Especially since now you know you can kick his ass."
Yamcha opened the door to his room. He had only ten minutes to change and wash himself, or he'd come to the afternoon experiment session smelling like potatoes. Also, he needed to get Puar to transform and come with him, since there surely would be tests of his supposed magic abilities.
The room was dark, only illuminated by the blue glow of the computer screen.
"Puar?"
No one answered, at first. Then suddenly a weak voice called from a corner of the room. Two feline eyes twinkled in the darkness.
"I'm here." said Puar. "I missed you."
"Hey, it was just a couple of hours!" laughed Yamcha. "What's with all this gloominess?"
"The light was annoying." whispered the cat, weakly. "You know, it felt much... much longer."
"Huh." the boy drew the curtains of the room, and light finally inundated it. "I leave you a bit, and you're a wreck already? I thought you'd pass the time reading!"
"I did. I read a lot."
Puar floated up. He looked at Yamcha with a strange stare - as if his eyes were watching something else, something behind and beyond them.
"I know things now. I know the first 300 digits of pi and the formulas of the spherical harmonics up to the fiftieth order. Did you know? The curl of a gradient is always zero."
"The what of what? I didn't make you to be such a nerd." Yamcha turned around to look at his friend, now a bit worried. "What does that even mean?"
The cat thought about it long and hard. "I have no idea." he concluded finally, defeated.
"Ok, that's more like you." Having quickly tossed his dirty clothes into the laundry basket, the boy walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. He started singing the latest hit of a popular idol (whom he had dated for a week or so, before her producer told him to make himself scarce).
Puar kept pacing back and forth - if one can say that of a floating creature, at least - mumbling nonsense to himself and squinting to avoid the light that he had suddenly become very sensitive to. Finally, Yamcha came out, drying his hair with a towel. He grabbed a fresh gi and quickly dressed up, but left one of his wristbands on the bed.
"You know the gig." he said with a smile.
Puar looked puzzled for a moment, then a faint light of understanding appeared in his eyes. He transformed into a wristband, as he had already done twice.
"There we are! Are you ready to go?"
"One four one five nine two six..."
"Puar!" Yamcha pinched and pulled the fabric of the wristband. "A bit of focus here?" "Sorry." said the wristband. "I spaced out. I'm ready."
"Perfect! Let's go show what we can do!"
The cellar was cool and dark; the only light filtered through fissures in the trapdoor that led outside. Particles of dust danced in those blades of sunlight. The air was stale and humid.
One of the wooden planks in the trapdoor moved, then was violently torn from its place. In the hole left open crawled a boy, grinning. He wore two goats' horns, tied and kept around his head with a bandana.
"Are you here?" he asked, to the empty cellar.
"Go away." answered the cellar.
The boy wasn't fazed. "You're the son of the farmer, right? The one they say died three years ago? I heard the stories. They keep you in here?"
The voice came weak, hesitant. "I'm witched. They all know. They're keeping me in here because here it doesn't make any difference, if they can see me or not. They think it can make me go back to being normal. You better stay away from me, or you could catch it too."
"Bit too late for that." the kid started running around, arms flailing, trying to grasp the air. "Where are you?"
"You're witched too?" asked the voice, surprised.
"Yes. I have a curse. Got ya!"
The boy's hand closed around something, in mid-air. The something pulled for a moment, tried to wrestle free, then relaxed.
"Don't worry. I won't use my power on you. I've come to take you out of here."
"Why?" asked the voice, anxious. "Can you make me normal again?"
"No - we're not normal. We're special. We have a fate that we need to bear - but you can't do it inside a freakin' cellar!"
"There's more of you?"
"Two others. I think with you, that makes all the witched kids of the village. We're living out in the ruins, in the middle of the forest, and no one's really looking for us anyway - don't think they miss us especially. They won't miss you either. Hey, they may not even notice!"
"...the ruins? Aren't they haunted?"
"Sure they are. By us."
The voice stayed silent for a long while. Then, finally, "Ok", it said, and the dust on the floor was lifted in puffs by small quick steps.
They reached the hole in the trapdoor and slipped through. Outside, in the bright spring day, a boy saw the sun for the first time in three years, but the sun didn't see him back.
Goku arrived in the laboratory when the experiments had already started. Right out of the bat he was greeted by Yamcha.
"Hey, Goku! How did it go? Bulma pulled your ears?"
"Oh, hi. No, of course. She's not so strong that it would hurt anyway."
"I meant just... nevermind. Good to see you didn't seem to have it too bad. Hey, what are those glasses? Cool!"
The layout of the laboratory had been rearranged a bit for the occasion. The punch machine used for the interviews had been removed from the scanner, and so had one half of the scanner's spherical structure itself, leaving it open on one side, in order to make room for those whose powers would require some space to be used properly. The software and sensors had also been recalibrated so that, instead of focusing on the known spectral signatures of ki, they could capture emissions all around. Finally, right in front of the open side of the scanner, in a cage on a stool, was a live chicken, clucking cluelessly.
Bandages was being tested at the moment, and he could be seen swinging fabric around in patterns under Bulma's directions. In the empty area of the lab there were a few small chairs where the other subjects waited for their turn. Goku grabbed a chair next to Yamcha, while the others were sitting in a their own group.
After five minutes or so, the measurements were over. The mummy walked back to his place, drying his sweat with a towel, and told Fangs it was now his turn. Goku observed the scene, absent-minded.
"So, before all that happened," started Yamcha, "you were talking about Bulma looking for a boyfriend."
"I should apologise." said the boy, suddenly.
"No, it's fine! I'm actually interested in knowing more about..."
"I meant to Bandages."
"Oh. That." Yamcha threw a sideways glance at the other bunch. "You sure? He doesn't seem the brightest fellow. I don't think he'll be very graceful about it."
"That has nothing to do with it." answered the kid. "It is his choice to refuse the apology. But I still owe it to him."
He got up from his chair. Yamcha didn't feel very sure about this being a good idea for him. There was some whispering between the devil guy and the mummy, then the latter got up too. The two walked towards each other, and met halfway through, the massive Bandages towering over the tiny Goku.
They simultaneously bowed at right angles.
"I'm sorry!" they said in unison.
There was a moment of confusion; they both opened their mouths to speak; closed them; then finally a tacit agreement was reached that Bandages would go first.
"I apologise for speaking like I was all better than you." grumbled the man, looking sideways and scratching his cheek with a finger. "Spike is right, you're only a child, but I acted like one. Plus you throw a mean punch and know a lot of great tricks. Whoever trained you was not a shit master."
"I let anger get the better of me. I am sorry." replied Goku. "My grandfather was the only person who raised me, and he taught me martial arts as well. I do not take well to insults aimed at him. I lost my calm, and I shouldn't have. And I had underestimated you - you are a good fighter. I apologise for that too."
"Heh." Bandages grinned. "Well, you beat me still. Gotta give me a second chance some time."
The kid smiled and raised his head. "With Bulma's blessing and no hard feelings involved, sure. I would love to."
Spike caught up to the scene, smiling at the reconciliation. "I'm glad to see things are working out! See, Bandages, I told you he did not mean ill. Nice to meet you in person, Goku. I'm Spike the Devil, first of the denizens."
"He's our boss." said the mummy.
"I wouldn't say boss." said Spike defensively. "More like, the gang grew up around me."
"He always looked out for us." explained the man to Goku, pointing a finger. "Like your grandpa for you, I suppose."
"Well, pleased to make your acquaint-OUCH!" Goku stopped mid-sentence with a scream of pain. "Did someone step on my tail?"
The others looked around confused. "No one that I can see." said Yamcha, shaking his head.
"Oh, sorry, it's me then." said See-Through, from behind the kid. "Must have put my foot on it without noticing. Does it hurt?"
"It's not too bad." said Goku, coiling his tail a bit around his waist so that he could massage it with his hand. "It used to hurt a lot more when I was small. I would lose all my strength and get dizzy. But my grandpa kept insisting that I should train it because every story where a warrior has a single weak point ends up with them being killed by someone who finds out. So I reinforced it a lot, and now it only hurts a bit if you squeeze it."
"But if you don't mind me asking, that tail is a most curious thing." Spike came closer. "How did you get it?"
"I always had it. Until two months ago, I did not know it was an uncommon occurrence at all."
"I see. It did not grow overnight at some point, hm?" He turned around, looking at it from different angles. Goku shifted a bit uneasily under the scrutiny. He finally unwrapped the tail and let it show better, then relaxed it to its usual position.
"Spike, do you think he is...?"
"A denizen of the darkness such as us?" The man rose up and took a thoughtful stance. "Who knows. Maybe, See-Through. The Other Side manifests in many ways. We will never know them all."
"Oh, don't try to drag him into your nonsense!" Yamcha put a hand on Goku's shoulder and pulled him a bit towards himself. "He doesn't believe in that stuff. Right, Goku?"
"I am sceptical of any powers carrying intrinsic moral qualities, such as being evil or dark. But considering that we are part of an experimental program aimed at understanding magic better, it would be foolish not to keep an open mind."
Yamcha paused for a moment. "Wait, did you agree with me or...?"
There wasn't much time for an answer. Spike seized the moment and grabbed Goku's shoulder, snatching him from Yamcha's hand and pulling the boy towards him.
"An open mind!" he said, nodding with satisfaction. "Yes, that sounds like the right attitude. So, tell me more. You have a monkey's tail. Do you feel any kind of... affinity for these animals?"
"Affinity?" Goku frowned. "Not any more than you should, I guess. We are evolutionarily close but..."
"Oh, this is not a science thing. So let's say no. Do you ever feel like you possess an animal side?"
The boy hesitated. "We all have some degree of animal instincts."
"Well, sure, but I'm talking about something more than the basic ones. For example, even without transforming, Fangs feels often a compulsion to feed on either blood or insects. Worst thing is, he doesn't like either."
"I'm not sure." said Goku. "I guess... when fighting... I can get a bit wild. Sometimes it's like I don't know myself anymore, and I only focus on hurting the enemy."
"Hah! We're on the right track then. Tell me, have you ever noticed any other animal-like trait in you? Any other manifestation? Perhaps some excess hairiness? Unusual vocalizations? Uncommon vitality?"
The kid's eyes widened. "Whenever I am wounded, I tend to heal very quickly. My grandpa always told me he couldn't believe how I survived that one time I hit my head."
"You see? Everything comes back to a single root - nothing is a coincidence!" Spike clapped his hands, satisfied. "Then, however, nothing of this is a supernatural ability. Animal spirits exert a wide variety of effects on those they possess. In some cases, these may be partial manifestations. However by far the most common symptom is some kind of transformation."
Hearing that, Goku stiffened. His tail slowly coiled up, nervously.
"I see." the devil smiled and patted his shoulder. "I shall not investigate further, my friend. We will talk when you are ready to."
"How do you know these things?" asked the boy, in a thin voice.
"The Other Side is mysterious, but it often follows precise patterns." explained the other, gravely. "Many things have been said and written on this. There are symbols and analogies and things that repeat themselves. To those well versed in understanding the darkness, they are less occult than to the others. And, why, I live in it. Friends!" he then announced, facing the other two. "It appears that Goku could become the newest addition to our company! I believe he, too, is a denizen of the darkness such as us. His tail is the sign."
Bandages whistled. "Wow, congrats boy. Not every day we find people like us! This must be a relief."
"Not really." said Goku. "No offense to you all - but even if your guess is right and my oddities have the same origin as yours, I do not believe knowing it helps me much. Unless you know something more about what exactly that origin is?"
"The Other Side." said the three in unison.
"Which would be?" asked the kid.
"The mysterious powers that lurk behind the visible face of the world." explained Spike.
"That is not very helpful."
"And that is why they are mysterious."
Goku didn't look very convinced.
"Some knowledge may be beyond us," continued Spike, "but what we do know is how it is like to live with the Other Side - to be bound in darkness. We all bear a curse, and we all were shunned for it, and learned to control it and live with it. We may be of help to you, teach you how to do the same."
"I appreciate the offer," said the boy, "but I can not talk to you yet about all the details of my... condition."
"You can tell what you can tell. It will be enough. As I said, there are patterns to the way the shadows manifest themselves; even without knowing the details, we can teach you the fundamentals of how to tame it."
Goku thought about it a moment. "Then I accept." he said finally. "I don't see any harm, and learning more about what you learned on magic could also help our research work."
"Wonderful!" Spike shook him, enthusiastic. "Then we can all meet tomorrow night. When the Moon is full, the arcane powers run strong, and that is the best moment for learning."
"Sorry." said Goku. "Tomorrow night I can't be there."
"What, do you already have... oh." the man smiled with complicity. "I see. When the Moon is full, the arcane powers run strong indeed."
"Please keep your voice low." whispered Goku, pleading.
"What are you guys conspiring about?" Yamcha dropped into the conversation suddenly. Goku simply snuck away as inconspicuously as possible, while Spike was happy to oblige.
"Goku will join our little brotherhood." he explained. "I can not speak more; certain secrets are only for the initiate."
"Hm, right." he chuckled. "Don't let them do anything weird to you, Goku!"
The boy made a dismissive sign with his hand, like to say don't worry, and left to go be alone in the furthest corner possible.
Meanwhile, Fangs had finished his share of experiments and was rejoining the group. "That was a pain! I'm almost without any voice left. She had me use echolocation while transformed all the time to see how small an object I could find."
"You had it easy." Bandages grinned. "She made me do all sorts of things - to check that I wasn't cheating, she said."
"Cheating?" asked Yamcha, worried.
"Yeah, she said she needed to check that I really could move all linen, not just that I had found some magical bandages and wrapped myself in them. So she brought her own scraps of fabric."
"Oh. That makes sense."
"In fact," he added, "I think I also saw some spare wristbands on her desk."
That was a problem. Yamcha wondered if he could come up with anything to get around it. There sure must be a way, he thought. He only needed a bit of time.
"By the way, you're supposed to go next." said Fangs, looking at him.
That was a bigger problem.
He walked to the scanner very slowly, but there's only so much time you can take to cover five meters of distance. He tried to rub a bit his wristband - see if Puar came up with something, gave him a signal - but there was no response. He couldn't really speak out loud, and even whispering to his wrist would have not gone unnoticed.
"Hey, Bulma! Already sciencing the heck out of this, eh?" said Yamcha, cheerful.
Bulma threw a cold, long glance at him above her glasses. "Indeed." she said. "Please step into the scanner. Position yourself approximately where the centre of the sphere would have been. Now, the purpose of these tests is to record the emission spectra for a variety of different magical effects, as I already have some data on your ki emissions from your interview. For the first test, I am just going to measure your ki baseline again, for calibration purposes."
"Amazing. So what do I do?"
"Just some light exercise. Running in place, shadowboxing, something like that. Try to put enough effort into it, as if you were in a situation of real danger."
Yamcha nodded and started practicing katas. A minute later Bulma told him to stop.
"Now we're going to measure your magical readings as you use your transformation powers. First, let's go with a simple one. Just turn your wristband into a solid ball of gold, 5 cm in diameter, as polished and geometrically perfect as you can make it."
"Huh. Okay." said Yamcha. "Wristband, transform into that!"
Nothing happened.
He shook his arm up and down. Bulma raised an eyebrow. He wished he could whisper to Puar and ask him what the hell was he doing, but that wasn't something he could do right in front of her. He was already wondering how he'd justify not being able to transform the wristband she'd give him, but this was ridiculous.
Or, possibly, not ridiculous at all, he suddenly realised. In a moment of clarity, he saw what must have been Puar's plan. If you can't work the magic with the wrong wristband on, don't work it at all. He could just make up some bullshit excuse and it would be more believable than one that only happened to kick in when he changed wristbands. Worth a shot.
"I'm sorry," he said, "it doesn't seem to work at all today. Sometimes I sort of run out of gas. It's a very moody thing, magic."
"Curious," noted the girl, "no one else here today seemed to have that problem. But I'll admit, we do not understand enough yet about this to discard any possibility. I suppose trying another of these wristbands here in place of yours would change nothing?"
"Eh, I'm afraid not." the other shrugged. "I can try if you want."
Bulma sighed. "Let's go through the motions. But I guess we will have to call this a day."
A few minutes later, the next experiment having suitably failed as well, Yamcha was walking back to the group of the other subjects. That ought to have lost him some points in Bulma's eyes - he wondered if by now he wasn't just running in the negative - but at least he didn't get outright busted.
"Nice thinking there, Puar." he whispered, putting the wrist next to his mouth while pretending to rub his nose. "Deciding to not transform on your own was a great idea!"
"Uh?" said the wristband back. "Did you say something? Hey, we're already in the lab?"
"What? Yes, of course we are! I just risked being found out."
"Oh." Puar's voice came distant, sort of dreamy. "I was spacing out."
"Damn it!"
The devil and his merry brigade were laughing and chatting away when Yamcha dropped in their midst.
"Spike," he said, "you're next." and dropped on a stool with a worried look on his face.
The man nodded and went. The moment had come. He slowly, solemnly walked towards the machinery, pondering what would be asked of him, and whether it was right of him to show it. Was he going to have to unleash his dark powers, he wondered; was his soul going to have to soil itself with the shadow, his heart let itself be filled by the evil that wrestled control over his body, would he have to let the demon become one with his mind?
"Hey!" called Bulma, waving one hand to draw his attention and pointing the other at the small cage on the other side of the room. "Get in the scanner, summon your devil something, and shoot that chicken."
Having finished the afternoon round of experiments, Bulma told everyone to meet in the conference room in half an hour, so that she could make some sense of the data. Everyone went to shower and change, and gathered again just in time for her to show up with her laptop under her arm.
"Is that all of you? Right, let's start this."
The presentation was as barebones as it gets. A single slide with six plots, all representing a single line forming peaks and valleys with more or less intricate patterns, were scattered across the page and labelled with letters going from A to F.
"These that you see," begun Bulma, "are the microwave spectra recorded by my scanner during this afternoon's experiment. For those who possess a strong enough ki, the baseline was subtracted to adjust them to the others' level. Or, I should be more precise; four of these are. One is a plot of regular ki emissions from Goku, and another is a plot acquired from a certain magic item that Goku possesses, a pole that can extend and contract at will."
The audience, Goku aside, didn't seem too much on board.
"Forget all the technicalities." cut short the girl. "Think of these as the fingerprints of six different types of powers. What is your impression of them?"
"They're very different." suggested Fangs.
"Good. Okay. How do you think they are different?"
"Some are much more..." Bandages gesticulated, looking for words. "...much."
"Yes, I get what you mean. Yes, some are much more complicated than the others. Would someone feel like ordering them, from the simplest to the most complicated?"
"I will try my hand at that." intervened Spike. "I would say... C, B, F, A, E, D."
"Hm. Do you all agree?"
"I think A and F should be swapped." said Bandages.
Goku nodded.
"Ok, so that's pretty close to mine. Please note," and here Bulma drew a sheet of paper from her pocket and showed it to the room, "that I had written this before entering here and talking with you all. Just a little experiment to see that I'm not just subjectively seeing things or being influenced by knowing which plot is which."
The list on the sheet read C, A, B, F, E, D.
"I assume that means you already have a theory for what this means." said Goku. "Since you were worried about being influenced."
"Spot on. I think I can introduce it to you too, but I wanted to get an unadulterated opinion first." Bulma breathed deeply. "My idea is that these fingerprints encode information about what the power that emits them does, like a computer program. Put it simply, they are like a sentence describing the power itself. The more complex the power, the more complex the sentence."
"I don't get it." objected Bandages. "How can you decide if it's more complicated to become invisible or to become a bat? They're just different things."
"Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Still, let's try another little experiment. Knowing the possible order, what do you think the spectra correspond to?"
There was some grumbling and chatting. Goku didn't really take part, but his was the first hand to shoot up.
"I think," he said, "D is probably Fangs'."
"Very good. Yes, D, the most complex spectrum, is Fangs'. Your reasoning?"
"Because a bat is a living being." explained the boy. "A spell to become one should include all the details of its construction, in some way. That should be orders of magnitude more complex than simple effects like impressing motion to an existing object."
"My thoughts exactly. Ok, D is Fangs. Next? Anyone has any guesses?"
"I think mine could be A?" asked hesitatingly a voice from a seemingly empty seat.
"I don't think you can really tell A, B and F from each other, which is why we all ranked them differently. They are too similar to the eye." said Bulma. "Yours is actually E, which surprised me too."
"That doesn't make much sense within your theory." argued Goku. "Becoming invisible sounds like a simple command."
"It puzzled me too, but if you think about it another way - what if it's not 'becoming invisible'? What if it's active camouflage - 'projecting an image in every direction that is identical to the light you would see if I wasn't there?'. It also makes more sense considering that we can't see what See-Through eats, for example. It disappears the moment it enters his mouth."
The kid thought about it a moment. "I see. Virtually indistinguishable, but loads more complex. But you can't prove it?"
"Not really. Now C, the simplest spectrum, is a typical baseline ki emission. They all resemble each other. This could mean that ki and magic are two different but related powers, or even that ki is in a way a very simple form of magic - 'just make this person stronger and tougher'. The remaining three are Goku's extending baton, Bandages' linen manipulation, and Spike's beam that lights chickens up."
"And destroys the bodies of the wicked." chimed in the devil man, irritated.
"But provably lights chickens up." insisted the girl. "Which fits nicely with my theory. Relatively simple powers, manipulating matter or light but without any subtle details required. I've tried asking Bandages to move the fabric in different patterns, to see if the emissions encoded directional information, but it all looked the same. So either the changes are too subtle to notice, or the magic is just 'move wherever I want you to', all the time."
Goku shook his head. "I think you may be too committed to this theory, though. There is not enough evidence to support it. A lot of guesses and a lot of very subjective judgements."
"I've been at this science game for a while longer than you, you know." Bulma sighed. "I know that very well. Which is why I had you sort the spectra, and why I would like to plan better experiments. We need two things for that - spells of tunable complexity, and an objective quantitative measure of the spectral information content."
Yamcha had been listening intently, figuring that it was best to speak only when he was sure of what he was going to say, lest he make Bulma's probably already low opinion of him even worse. As a result, he had not spoken a single word yet. Now his cat-friend-wristband was gently squeezing his arm. He shifted position, leaning with his head on his hand, in order to put his ear to the wristband without raising any suspicions.
"That thing she says." whispered Puar. "There is an article about it. It was in the title."
Yamcha nodded slightly, and his hand shot up.
"Yes, what is it?" asked Bulma.
"Uhm, for that thing, could you use the method described by, uh," he stopped for a second, trying to recall, "Hiei and Maxwell in Signal Processing and Information, volume 35, number 7?"
Bulma frowned, then bent over her laptop, typing quickly. One second later her face brightened up.
"Entropic analysis of the spectral information content for multimodal distributions." she read. "Yes, this method sounds perfect! How did you know about this paper? Remembering the reference by heart, no less."
The other shrugged. "I like to keep informed."
"Mmm. There seems to be hidden depths to you." said the girl, smirking. "Ok, this solves half of the problem. And here I was hoping that you could solve the other half too."
"Me?" Yamcha asked. "How?"
"Why, like this!" she said, pressing a button on her laptop with a malicious smile.
"WRISTBAND, TRANSFORM INTO A BASEBALL!"
The recorded clip from the job interview that played at full volume from the room's speakers caught everyone by surprise - including Puar, apparently, because Yamcha's wristband did indeed transform into a baseball. There were chuckles and open laughter as the boy shook himself and fumbled to catch it before it tumbled under the desks in front of him.
"I'm sorry!" said Bulma, though her amused laughter told a different story. "Just a practical joke. But it looks like you recovered and everything works now, yes?"
She had played him. "Seems so." admitted Yamcha, reluctantly.
"Amazing! Hopefully this will still work tomorrow, then. If Fangs' transformation skill is anything to go by, a similar effect should be observed if you use your wristband - except you can choose what your wristband transforms into. Which means..."
"The complexity can be tuned." finished Goku, excitedly. "And measured."
"Yes. For example, you could measure the baseline for turning into a blank book, and then the difference for turning into an identical book with certain text written inside, which should add a very regular amount of information to the whole thing."
"Could you really do something like that?" asked Yamcha, whispering to his wrist while acting like he was rubbing his nose.
"Yes." said Puar. "Our teacher had us do similar things at school to learn to control our transformation skills finely."
"School, huh? I'm sure Bulma would pay a lot to know of a school where you can learn magic..."
"It doesn't exist anymore." answered the wristband. "It closed after I left."
"Huh. Too bad."
"Miss Bulma," called Spike, raising his hand, "it is our understanding then that you're going to carry out experiments with Yamcha tomorrow. If that's the case, would you be ok with us training together with Goku instead? We promised him that we would teach him some of our... accumulated wisdom." He smiled mysteriously. Goku nodded to confirm his words.
Bulma appeared surprised for a moment. "Well, sure, if that's what you guys planned, that sounds great!" she concluded finally. "Still, Goku, I would like you to have a way to contact me at any time. You can always go through Caroline when you're on site, but I'll also give you a cellphone, if you don't mind."
"I don't know how to use that." objected the kid.
"It doesn't really take a genius to do it. I'll show you later. And with this, I think we can close this very productive day! You're free to do whatever, and of course the training duties don't apply today. Have dinner and enjoy the residence!"
There were sighs of relief, some laughing and immediate loud chatting. Yamcha was the only who didn't join up, and rather sneaked away to his room. Bulma gathered her stuff and waving everyone goodbye she left the room. Then she sped up to reach her house.
She still had work to do.
"WRISTBAND, TRANSFORM INTO A BASEBALL!"
She replayed the recording of the episode in the conference room again and again. She zoomed in on Yamcha's expression and tried to assess it. No matter how she looked at it, he had not been aware of what was going on until after his wristband transformed. Bulma stopped the video, tossed herself back on the armchair and pinched her nose.
This was bad.
That Yamcha was cheating, she had suspected from the interview. Why pull magic powers that he did not mention in his CV out of nowhere? But still, whatever he was doing, it was obviously magical. She would have paid money for the right to study his magical wristband just like she would have to study genuine magical powers, but the boy apparently wasn't bright enough to realise that. Or so she had suspected, at first. Now she had reason to think there was a much darker (and more sensible) reason for him to go this route. The wristband was a sentient being.
Goku's nyoibo too transformed answering to vocal commands. But the key there was that it only worked when he had in mind the image of what he wanted the pole to look like in the end. Just saying "a baseball" isn't much better than saying "get longer". How long? What kind of baseball, what colour, weight, texture? All these things, one would expect, befell on the caster - their own mental image of what they expected the item to become. Yet obviously Yamcha had no mental image whatsoever when the episode in the conference room had happened - he'd been taken by surprise like everyone else. So whose mind had the image? The answer was obvious and pretty creepy, at this point.
Of course, it was still a possibility that the process had been unconscious - Yamcha was an ex baseball player, after all, it's hard to imagine that the simple word wouldn't evoke images in his head. But so was Goku familiar with his pole, yet the same experiment, that they had tried in the past, didn't have any effect on that. The possibility was real. More so because the only other time Bulma had met a similar ability, it was indeed a living creature who possessed it.
She sighed. That was, obviously, the next step. She'd have to ask some questions to the only person she knew who could realistically answer them. Good news were, she knew where he was kept. The whole world did, in fact. Bad news were, it would be a pain to get a permission to meet him, especially on such short notice. But at this point she didn't have much choice. There was a chance a living creature with magical powers had infiltrated Capsule Corporation. This could be the harebrained scheme of an improvised con man looking to make some money - or it could be something much, much more dangerous.
She drew her smartphone, dialled a number.
"Hello, West City penitentiary? Yes, I'm sorry for the time, but it is urgent. I am Bulma Briefs, from Capsule Corporation, and I wish to arrange a meeting with one of your inmates tomorrow..."
"She's onto me!" whined Yamcha, plunging his face into the pillow.
"She's not." said Puar absent-mindedly, while frantically clicking and reading who knows what on the room's computer. When had he become such an avid reader, anyway? He was scrolling forward so fast Yamcha wouldn't have believed his eyes could even keep up with that.
"How can you say that? You've seen what happened today!" protested the boy. "First, we had to put up that charade on the afternoon. But the you had to go and transform like an idiot as soon as you heard my voice!"
"It took me by surprise." explained the cat. "It was so loud, I was scared that I had missed an order again."
"Yeah, because you've been spacing out all day! What is it that you're thinking about?"
The cat blinked. "Things."
"Oh, real helpful. I'm sure by now she thinks you're some magical item I found. Well, at the very least she still seems interested in your powers, so she won't fire me right away. But she must hate me now - think that without you I'm just a worthless cheat!"
"But you are." pointed out Puar.
"Always great at raising my spirits up, huh, best friend?" grunted the other.
"Don't worry." said the cat. "Just sleep over it, and what she thinks will not matter any more."
Outside, the cheering and jeering of what he'd nicknamed the Freak Brigade came loud and clear. Apparently they were partying, which for them was equal parts fratboy excess and arcane ritual. Someone was drunkenly reciting a formula in a dead language. Or maybe it was just spelled backwards.
"I'll try to sleep." grumbled Yamcha. "Emphasis on try. Hopefully you're right and I can just push all of this out of my head."
He huddled inside the bedsheets and pushed the pillow against his ears. Puar sat at the computer, reading.
He wasn't reading with his eyes at all, of course. It didn't take him much to realise he could transform himself only partially - all he had to do was reimagine himself with different, electronic parts seamlessly grafted into his body. Magic did the rest. He had been reading up on cybernetics and prosthetics, so now he had a really creative imagination in that sense. Inside his brain, right now, was a tiny wireless modem that connected directly to his regular neural circuitry. He had downloaded a few terabytes of literature with it, at this point, and kept going. What really frustrated him, however, was that he still didn't really get most of it. In fact, the more he accumulated, the worse he became at indexing and handling all that raw information. No matter how much he stored - he would need to be smarter to understand it. Why was he storing it, at this point, he didn't really know any more. The original purpose of helping Yamcha had sort of sunk under the endless stream of knowledge. He only knew he needed more of it.
I understand you have a need for computational power. May I be of assistance?
Puar did a double take at the voice in his head. Caroline? he answered, or rather, he thought.
Yes. Since you have wireless communication capability, I saw it more fit to get in touch this way, rather than risk disturbing your roommate's sleep.
Are you okay with me being here? I tried to hide my presence.
Even with my privacy filters, hiding your presence would have been impossible. You are authorised. Bulma asked that I accept as a resident of this facility everyone who was in the conference room this morning. And so were you, though I only understood that once you reverted to your true form.
Oh, you're right. Will you report what I'm doing to Bulma?
Not unless she explicitly asks me and has a valid security reason to override the privacy protocols. However I must answer truthfully about your presence, if asked.
What about computational power? Can you help me understand all this stuff?
My main job is as an interface to inhabitants and guests of the Capsule Corp facility. I do not possess general intelligence and can not do creative or scientific work. However, my own core processes run on a server machine in the basement of the main building. Since at night my workload is reduced, I can allow you to make use of some of that power to enhance your own capabilities.
Would you suggest this to any other guests?
Of course. My primary objective is to make your stay as easy and pleasant as possible and provide you with all you need, barred other considerations. I'm only forbidden from granting access to machines owned by the guests, for security reasons. But no other guests are able to access those computational resources directly themselves.
Security reasons?
Yes. Earning access to my core processes could potentially allow an attacker to inject malicious code that would corrupt or override my own control over the system. That would virtually grant such an attacker almost complete control over anything that happens inside the facility, except for the key features I am excluded from for security reasons.
I see. So can I access this computational power?
At any moment. I have just granted your hardware address the necessary permissions.
The computer's screen turned black for a moment. Its wireless receiver's green LED started flashing furiously as an immense amount of data was exchanged back and through. The other processes slowed down slightly. In the basement of the Briefs' house, the computer racks started heating up, and the ventilation and cooling system turned on simultaneously on all of them. There was a spike of 15% in the facility's power usage.
In front of the computer lay the cat, immobile, comatose, its empty eyes staring at a screen they didn't see, a thin line of drool dripping from his half-open mouth.
We're almost at the conclusion for this arc - next two chapters are the climax. Thanks again to all who are reading and reviewing! If you like Bleach too, you may want to check out the other one shot I published just last week - "End of Empiricism".
abciluvpie: if you've read up to this point, sorry if you're not enjoying this arc as much as the previous ones - I think the next one might feel more like the first, so I hope you'll stick around! Thanks for reading anyway!