"If you get to thinking you're a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around." - Will Rogers

Aiken

"I ain't even going to talk to you," I said to Juunanagou, when he landed on one of the snowy cliffs up above me.

It was cold, up here where the radar machine that Son Goku's people had given me had told me to go. The mountains were craggy, sharp-stoned and icy, and the hard winds blew the snow in whirling white gusts. The dragon ball was here somewhere, under one of these drift snow dunes or hid among the piled stones, and all I had to do was just find it. It was the last of the bunch, that ball was. I was almost done, so I sure as hell didn't need him bugging me now.

"Why the hell not?" he demanded. When he stomped his foot a small avalanche of snow fell down from the cliff he was on, but I didn't give it or him more than a short glance. I was busy, clawing at the ice and cold stone where the radar machine told me to, overturning each rock carefully before putting it out of the way.

"Son Goku said: 'Don't start no more trouble.' And you aren't nothing but trouble, so I ain't even going to talk to you."

"Well, that makes you some special sort of ungrateful bitch, doesn't it? None of you droolers would have even put two an' two together, if I hadn't clued you in."

I paused, thinking that over hard, because it sounded like something that ought to be true, but I knew that it wasn't all true. Then I remembered why I was mad at him all over again, and got just as mad as I had been when I'd first worked it out. Mad enough to kill him dead, no doubt about it, or at least to want to try. "I guess that you didn't tell me about Uragiru to help out anyone - not my Mistress or me or anybody - but just because you were trying to start some trouble -"

"Now you're just being slanderous."

"And," I pressed on, because I wasn't going to let him use big words to throw me off this track, "I guess that you must have known everything you told me for a long time before you told it to me - I think you knew it even when my Mistress was still alive - but you didn't say nothing to no one, so I guess that I don't have a thing to thank you for."

"Sure am glad that you aren't talking to me," he said.

I snorted and went back to digging for the ball. I lifted up another rock that was the size of my head, and then a few more that were as big as my fists, and then there it was, nestled in among the smaller stones and the hard-packed snow. Round and shiny and glowing with its own soft light.

"Ball," I breathed, all full of awe just looking at it, the thing that was going to get my Mistress back for me. I went to take it, but suddenly Juunanagou's arm reached under my own, grabbing up the dragon ball before I could.

He stepped back as he straightened, holding the ball up, turning it in his hand, studying it thoughtfully. "I've never handled one of these before," he said. "It isn't as heavy as I'd have thought it'd be."

"You give that back," I growled at him, lowly. "You just give that ball back!"

"Do you think I could break it, if I tried?" He asked me speculatively. "I wonder if anything interesting would happen if I did…

"Oh, stop freaking out," he said, when he looked up from the ball. He made an annoyed frown at me. "Here - catch."

I snatched the ball out of the air when he threw it. Then I bought it down against my belly, where Uragiru's attack had left a gapping hole in the shell of my armor, and pressed both my hands over the ball to keep him from stealing it away again.

"So you're planning on wishing Frigid back, right?"

It was such a stupid question, that I figured that he'd only asked to make fun of me in some subtle way that I wasn't catching, but I answered, "And Frost, too. The Saiyajin said that I could have them both back, so him too."

"Who?" he said, but when I tried to tell him he waved the question away. "Never mind. What I wanted to ask was; 'Why?' Why even bother wishing her back?

"Here's what I'd do, if I were you," he went on. "I'd get myself something real nice. The Dragon can give immortality, you know."

"Don't you understand anything?" I said. "You're so stupid. You are really dumb."

"No, I think you've got that backwards," he told me. "I'm not the one who's acting like a goddamned toady."

I snorted at him again. "I am going to go get my Mistress back," I told him, and turning to head back to Son Goku's home, I left him behind.