Disclaimer: the idea and characters of Dragon Ball are owned by Akira Toriyama. This is a simple non-profit fan parody.

Chapter 33 - To kill a monkey boy

Red Lizard Desert

"Another team to the east! Squad five, move to strengthen our defences there!"

Major Cobalt was a whirlwind of dazzling blue in the desert. Her hair had come undone at some point in the chaos, but for how much that should be bothering her, she didn't let it show. She ran and turned, barking orders, sometimes taking a shot with her own custom made rifle - a high calibre contraption that looked like a hybrid between a sniper rifle and a small artillery piece, and that most people's strength would have been barely enough to lift - and all through it, her hair would fan around and shine in the sun behind her. It would have made her a highly visible target too, if only she stayed still long enough for anyone to take that shot.

Yamcha peeked from the edge of the hole he'd been digging in the sand and spotted her instantly. They were communicating by earpiece radio, so that wasn't really necessary, he just appreciated the spectacle.

"How is the search going?!," shouted the woman, firing a shot that caused one of the Instrument's vehicles to disappear in a cloud of burning fuel and sand.

"Not as well as I would like," he replied. "Still nothing. Aren't our Dragon Radars supposed to be very precise?"

"They are. I imagine that the sand is interfering-" shot, run, roll behind cover, shot from above, "-with that."

"Imagine?"

She was breathing heavily, finally letting herself catch a bit of rest behind the limited safety offered by a few metallic crates. "I'm not an engineer. If you want more details, you should ask your friend Bulma."

"Yeah, except for that mess that I heard in the radio channel just minutes ago!," he replied. "What was that about? It sounded like they shot at her!"

"Seems to happen to a lot of us," said Cobalt. "I'm sure she'll be fine. She has Commander Black's trust, they would not harm her."

Cobalt bit her lip to say nothing more to the civilian. The entire episode had sounded like straight up mutiny to her; and her opinion of General Copper had hardly ever been high anyway. Right now, however, she would probably just shoot the man point blank if she were face to face. Superior or not, mutineers didn't deserve any better.

"Now go back to digging," she ordered. "The sooner we find the Dragon Ball, the sooner we can withdraw from this hellhole."

"Major!," shouted someone else in the channel. "Planes approaching, north-east!"

"Damn! What's the status of our anti-air guns?"

"Destroyed in the last attack, ma'am! We had to use them for cover when-"

"Ah, blast it!"

She jumped out, lifting her gun again. A light shiver coursed through her body as she activated her own HEP-II chip. She did not trust it or her body enough to tap into its full power - but she had learned that even a small amount was enough to give her focus, sharpen her sight, and slow down her perception of time and the world, just enough to take a particularly difficult shot. Through her rifle's scope, she saw the planes, a whole squadron of twelve bomber jets with their engines set for hovering, advancing on their position at the maximum speed allowed by that configuration, filled to the brim with incendiary ordnance. They'd likely been kept in reserve for the final blow, and sure enough, now they had no defence against them any more. Well, almost no defence.

She took her first shot. One of the planes exploded in red-hot debris, the flames fuelled by the chemicals inside the bombs it was carrying, with the others next to it moving almost immediately to dodge the rising fireball. She shifted her attention to the next one, shot again, but even with her empowered reflexes, she calculated, she could only take out another two before the remaining eight reached their position and brought ruin from above - and at that point they'd be too close to hit.

"Yamcha!," she shouted, "We need the Ball, now!"

He hesitated a moment, "Major, permission to try something a little crazier?"

"Try anything!," She took her third shot. One more, but the planes were almost there. "We're all dead and they've got the Dragon Balls in five minutes if we let them get here! Crazy is fine!"

"Ok, trying crazy now."

He jumped out of the hole, used the Dragon Radar in his visor to get a general sense of where the Dragon Ball ought to be with respect to him, then aimed somewhat higher than that. He thrust his hands forward, then pulled them back to his side. Oh, sure, he'd seen the trick used at the Tournament, and he'd then trained on his own to try and reproduce it, and he was quite sure he had it down. He managed to pull it off decently, say, half of the times he tried. But hanging everything on it in such a moment, still, was quite a bet.

"Kaaaame..."

He felt the familiar tingling in his arms, wrists, flowing all the way down to the tips of his fingers to then completely leave his body and start gathering into something - a warm, bright something he could feel before he even saw it, cradled in between his hands - and knew immediately this was one of the good times, the ones when it worked.

"...haaame..."

He poured as much strength into it as possible, but did not tap into his own HEP-II chip for that. After all, power would not be what mattered the most here.

"...HAAAA!"

He pushed outwards, and the beam of bright blue energy bolted forward. Granted, nothing as impressive as what he'd seen at the Tournament, but quite the achievement, still, if he said so himself.

The energy blast hit the ground, and produced an explosion. Now, if it had hit rock or even more compact dirt, that would mostly have resulted in little more than a rather unimpressive crater. But the sand there was loose and light, and the explosion made it jet out into the sky, forming a cloud that covered the entire area in yellow dust and reduced everyone's line of sight to barely beyond their nose.

That was not good for piloting planes, of course. Neither were the vast amounts of sand that were now flowing into their engines, sucked in by the air intakes, mixing with the fuel, and completely destroying their turbines. The first two crashes were barely visible through all the sand.

"That wasn't a half bad idea," said the Major, running up to Yamcha. "But now they'll just fan out, raise their altitude, and start dropping their bombs anyway."

"Not if we don't let them," he replied. "Do you have a grenade?"

She handed one to him. "I think I know what you want to do. But even with your strength-"

"Strength isn't everything, Major."

He weighed the grenade in his hand, then pulled the pin, and took aim, listening to the engine noise alone to find his target. Then he tossed, in a perfect arc that ended precisely at the right time, in the right place. Another explosion was heard, and another plane crashed down.

"I also know how to play baseball!"

Cobalt side-eyed him. "I thought you were a hitter?"

"Well, I trained with pitching, too. They just didn't want the games to get even more boring, I guess, so they never fielded me in that role."

"All right," she took a deep breath. "Then we can do this. That's five out of twelve helicopters down now. But if you take care of the others, what about the Dragon Ball?"

"I tried to aim my wave earlier so that..." Yamcha trailed off, looking behind him, in the hole. "Ah, there! I was lucky! See that orange gleam?"

She did, and immediately sprinted into action. She slung the rifle across her shoulder. "Li, Heinz, with me!," she ordered. "We make a run for the Ball! Use your chips, but keep them at the lowest level for now!"

Two more soldiers ran to her side, and all three jumped forward, straight into the hole.

"Wait, I've got no ammo!," shouted Yamcha.

"There's a crate of grenades next to you," replied the Major, through the radio. "I expect a few strike-outs."

Muscle Tower military base (Instruments HQ)

"Well met," said Piano, a smile creeping on his beak, as he went to shake Tao Pai Pai's hand. "I hope the trip hasn't been too difficult? The weather has been nasty these last hours."

"Touching concern," replied the assassin. "I have arrived in time, have I not?"

The ptero chuckled. "Oh, sure, guess I was just curious. Riding on a pillar you tossed yourself is a... peculiar means of transportation that you use. I had heard it but could not believe it until I saw it with my own eyes."

Tao Pai Pai raised his eyebrows. "And why would you not believe it? Do you doubt my strength?"

"Oh, far from it. But having some experience with artillery, well, with the wind, the rotation of the Earth, and so many chaotic factors, one would think it impossible to aim a single throw so precisely from great distances."

Violin observed the encounter unperturbed, while Baba was downright horrified by how casual Piano was being. If half of what she'd heard about the assassin was true, they were all about to die for that insolence alone.

But they didn't, so her information must not have been all that accurate. Instead, the man smiled, somewhat pleased.

"Of course that's true," he said. "I use that method only in the first and last stretch, to impress the fools and the gullible. But I guess you're neither, so it's pointless to keep up the charade."

"Oh, you honour me. I swear I will not reveal your little secret."

Tao's stare at this promise was nonplussed. Like of course he would never expect anyone to even think about doing that.

"So," he asked, "as I was saying, I was promised another target. One of a more interesting sort."

He punctuated that by brushing off the only bit of Murasaki that had ended up splattering on his vest.

"And I have just the one," confirmed Piano. "He's very close. But if you don't mind, I would like you to withhold attacking him for now."

"By default, I carry out my assassinations as quickly as possible. However, if the client's needs require it, I do allow for some flexibility in the choice of time and place for the hit," replied Tao, going through what felt like a tried and tested script. "Though it will impact the tariff, as my time is valuable. And the maximum interval I allow for that is 24 hours."

"That is fine. It's going to be just a matter of minutes. What about payment?"

"Given the circumstances, I will come and collect it after the job is done. We can also discuss any further jobs then. To be clear, I trust you have no delusions about avoiding me, whether you want to be found or not. However, if you have another job ready and want to speed up the process-"

Tao tossed Piano a small plastic wrap. Inside, the ptero saw, was a brand new smartphone.

"It can only call one number, only once. Don't waste it."

"Very thorough." Piano chuckled and put the phone in his pocket. "On to the job's details, then. The target's name is Son Goku - you might know him as one of the finalists of this year's Tenkaichi Tournament."

A slight hint of distaste crossed Tao's expression.

"Or maybe not," hurried to add Piano. "Point is, he's quite the strong martial artist. He's been tearing through our forces like a knife through butter. And he has been stealing some valuable items from us. We'd like him terminated, and the items retrieved."

"I can handle the first part," said the assassin. "For the second, you will have to take care of it. I will separate him from the objects if you tell me how to identify them, but I do not run deliveries and errands."

The ptero nodded. "That can be done easily. He's just west of here, should be arriving right now at that massive central tower. Without him in the game, retrieving our things will be easy."

The Muscle Tower did, indeed, look like it was under attack. There was a thin column of smoke rising from its base.

"And you want me to wait?," asked the assassin.

"Yes, if you please. He's an hindrance and all, but right now, he's doing some much needed cleaning up."

The entire structure of Muscle Tower was true to the spirit of its monicker. It was a fortress that one would have thought belonged to another age of war - one of catapults and cauldrons full of boiling oil thrown down the battlements. A thick, gray almost cylindrical mass of stone, concrete, metal plates, and the occasional, thin slit from which a cannon peeked out, with only a slight conical slant as it rose towards the sky, only twice as tall as it was broad. The only part of it really denouncing it as a modern military structure was the large disc of an antenna protruding right from its roof, sending and receiving signals to some satellite.

Having cut through the thick of the Instrument's forces in a whole sector of the base without much resistance, the stragglers now left either routed or trying desperately to catch up with him without any proper strategy or organisation, Goku now stood at the base of the Tower, and looked up. He took the measure of it; it was almost too trivial to guess that he could find the upper echelon of the enemy, and the Dragon Ball, inside it, at the topmost floor, but the tower actually appeared as the first thing that could seriously pose a challenge to him. He went to touch the front door - a heavy set metal slab, sealed shut. As his hand approached it, he felt a tingling sensation in the tip of his fingers, and his hair raised slightly. He withdrew the hand; clearly, the door had been electrified, as a defence mechanism. He moved to evaluate the walls. They were made of blocks of stone, and looked solid and redundant enough that even if he punched a hole in one of them, the structure would not collapse on itself. It might be easier to simply shake one block free and slid it out, he mused; the cement keeping them together was certainly the weaker link. Except the entire structure was probably reinforced with metal bars.

His instincts warned him that something was incoming even before he could see or hear any sign consciously. He simply stepped to the side, and where he had stood until a moment before, a spray of half-melted snow splurted in the air. The machine gun at the first floor, rotated to point almost vertically towards the ground, was still smoking from its muzzle.

There would be no time to dig a hole or dislodge an entire block, then; not without being continuously slowed down and distracted by the defensive fire, and not before other reinforcements reached the Tower, forcing him to engage them again, and wearing him down little by little. Goku was already feeling a little short on breath, after all the effort it had taken to get there, defend himself, disable as many of the enemy forces as possible, and not kill anyone in the process. There was a limit to how much he could let the enemy get away with. His best bet was to be quick to get inside, quick to leave.

That only left one option. Goku ran off, a fair distance from the tower. He pulled his pole out of its scabbard, then started running towards the tower and pivoted the weapon against the ground - just as he ordered it to magically extend. The machine gun fire missed him as he darted upwards, pole vaulting instantaneously from the ground to a height of almost fifty metres - enough to reach two thirds of the total height of the tower. There was a bigger piece of artillery protruding out of one of the top floors there, and its embrasure was wider than most of the lower level ones. Wide enough for him to pass, if he was precise. He instantly whipped the pole back into its original length, using the sudden snap of momentum from its shortening to propel himself even faster towards the window. The cannon fired, but it was hopeless to hit a nimble little thing like him. He landed with one foot on the neck of the gun; swiftly stepped forward and sideways, fast enough for the hot metal to not even scorch his soles, and then cartwheeled along the barrel and inside the tower, ending the motion with a kick right in the middle of the very surprised face of the gunner, and sending him sprawling on the floor.

The difficult part was done. Now all that was left was getting the Ball.

He left the room, not even bothering to check if the door was unlocked - it was wood, so he simply passed through it like paper. He started running up the spiralling stairs of the building. He passed through a common room in which he found a few soldiers waiting for him - though clearly unprepared, as they could have had at best twenty seconds of notice to grab their weapons and ready themselves to defend their position with their lives. It didn't end up being necessary, of course; the scuffle was quick, one-sided, and quite bloodless. Most of them didn't even see what had hit them.

The spiral staircase ended before the final floor, and there was a much smaller one, adjacent to the outer wall, leading to a small antechamber. This had metal double doors, and Goku had to take some run up before slamming into it shoulder first. The metal bent and the door flew off its hinges, crashing down onto the floor with a hellish din. The empty doorway now framed Goku's figure as he walked in, amidst the gnashing of incredulous, angry Instruments leaders, and the sights of at least two dozen guns pointed at him.

"I'm here to take the Dragon Ball," said the boy. "Give it to me and I'll leave."

When the little bright dot reached the spot the overlaid map placed approximately at the position of the Muscle Tower, there was a cheer inside Colonel Silver's vehicle. The ki-tracking radars weren't too accurate at that distance, and weren't nearly sensitive enough to detect the individual soldiers Goku was without a doubt cutting through like a knife through butter, but the boy himself was still bright on their screens, and his signal loud and clear. They could see it wax and wane a bit following the flow of the battle, peaking at the moments of maximum exertion and then losing a bit of steam when he was catching his breath.

"All right, that was less than fifteen minutes!," shouted someone in the back. "Everyone pay up."

There were a few banknotes rustling, but not too much disappointed. After all, that was a bet that wasn't too bad to lose.

"Now he needs to get out of there though," mumbled Colonel Silver. "He'll have to spend some time inside, so when he comes out they'll have had time to reorganise-"

"What was that?," exclaimed another soldier next to him, pointing at the map.

"What? Where?"

"It's gone now," said the other, rubbing his eyes. "What the hell? I was sure I saw another bright dot. It showed up only for a moment, then it disappeared."

"There should be no one on their side strong enough to..." Colonel Silver trailed off. "How bright, soldier?"

"Well," he said, "brighter than the kid's."

Silver looked intently at the screen. There didn't seem to be anything else to see, but still, skilled fighters were supposed to be very good at suppressing their energy whenever they weren't using it. "Where did you see that dot?"

"Uh, around here. It says Training Field MT45."

The Colonel mulled on it for a while. It could have been a single disturbance. Or it could have not been, and that was a much more worrying prospect. If it wasn't, then Goku, even though he carried his own visor fitted with a similar detector, might not have noticed it. Even if he had, a single receiver lacked the ability to triangulate the signal precisely enough to judge its position. He could be taken by surprise by whatever this thing was.

They'd come up there. They'd fought and died. He was all right with acknowledging that Goku had the best shot at completing the mission on his own, painful as that was. But letting even him fail after all this was just not on the book.

"Brown, I'm leaving the command of the team to you," he said, coming to a decision. "Lead everyone south to re-join with Major Ocra's group, if possible, or support anyone else who needs it. Try to re-establish contact with Commander Black as soon as possible. See if you can contact him through phone, if everything else fails. We're following his orders first, not whatever madness is going on at HQ. Yellow, Lime, how do you feel about your mastery of your HEP-II chips?"

The two officers exchanged a nod and grinned. "Been itching to use 'em, Colonel."

"Well, what do you know," replied Silver, "I think I just found the perfect excuse to stretch a bit our legs."

Eastern Coast

The waters were cool and not too agitated; despite that, the ebb and flow of the ocean against the rocks of the sharp, vertical coastline wall caused some turbulence with ended up muddying them with sand. That made the search harder; however, it was far from impossible. On his side, Muten had a lot of experience as a swimmer - the turtle was not his symbol animal just for show, and for years he'd lived on a tiny island in the middle of the sea - and muscles and lungs well beyond those of the average man of his age. Or any age, really; considering also that the average man of his age was dead. So it only took a bit of shuffling rocks around and digging among the detritus of the rockslides which slowly disintegrated the coastline giving way to the sea to find the Dragon Ball, whose bright orange gleam was a dead giveaway. He only had to go up to get some more air once, and the world above had been full of fury and battle, with bullets flying left and right and explosions shaking the air, so he had quickly submerged again. Now he would come up, having completed his task, and hopefully with a chance to put an end to this whole mess once and for all.

When he emerged, however, the coast felt unusually quiet, compared to the previous time. He took almost a minute appraising the situation, sitting with crossed legs on the rocks at the feet of the coastline, and only at the end of that time he heard a gunshot - a single one. Shaking his head, he slid the Dragon Ball in his shirts' pocket and started climbing back up the rock wall speedily. It was barely a light exercise - the rock was almost vertical, sure, but it was irregular and offered plenty of footholds in the form of cracks and crevices to exploit, so going up for him was like a jog. Eventually, he reached the top and hauled himself up, took a look at the situation, and sighed.

Lots of soldiers in Red Ribbon uniforms, but their usual insignia scratched or ripped off, were running the place. Pointing their guns, they were rounding up everyone else, among which were many of those he'd met earlier, including Major Ocra, who, with gritted teeth and his hands behind his back, was being pushed towards a circle of other soldiers and officers. At a glance, Muten realised this was the entire group of HEP-II chip users, save for two. Some of them seemed quite beaten, and they had been rounded up around what looked like a cache of explosives.

"Howdy!," he announced himself, gleefully, waving a hand.

It was hard to tell whose stares were more disbelieving, the Instruments', or his own allies'. Major Ocra in particular seemed to be more upset than he was by the guns pointed at him.

"What in Hell are you doing here, old man?," he shouted. "Just run away!"

Muten looked around. The entire position had been overtaken by the enemy. The Red Ribbon's forces had been disarmed, and the Instruments outnumbered them. They manned the machine gun nests and were even bringing in some heavy armoured vehicles.

"I didn't see any reason to," he concluded. "What about you and your men? I thought you were supposed to be strong and all, with those new chips the scientist girl invented."

"Hey, hands up!," shouted one of the Instruments, waving his rifle towards Muten, who didn't pay much attention. "Do you have the Dragon Ball?"

Ocra gritted his teeth. "Two of my men died trying to use their HEP-II to its full potential to stop the tanks. After that we decided that perhaps saving our efforts so we could buy as much time as possible for you was the best course of action!"

The enemy pushing him looked in disbelief. "Wait, what? You just surrendered, we'll blow you all up if you-"

There was a whoosh and a shockwave that pushed him and a few more sitting on the ground. When they recovered, the explosives were not in the centre of the circle of captured enemies any more. In their place was standing Muten, cracking his neck.

"As I told you, Major, even though I'm a pretty good swimmer, my talents are still quite wasted in freediving. That's not my sport."

The other seven men instantly got up from their position. Ocra turned to his captor, and with a swift hand movement, he grabbed the barrel of his rifle, pushing it away. Before the surprised soldier could call the alarm, a quick punch to the face pushed half his skull's bones straight inside his brain, and he fell limp to the ground.

"How many can you take out?," asked Ocra.

"All of them, if it was just me," replied Muten. "But we need to get you and your boys out alive too, and make sure the Dragon Ball doesn't fall from my pants."

"Just put it in the damn shielded backpack! That's what they're for!," shouted the officer. "Fine, then we just punch a hole in their defences where they're at their weakest and make a run for it. West should be our better choice. Let's move inland."

Master Muten nodded, but he didn't obey about the Dragon Ball. Instead, he took off his backpack altogether, and along with it, his shirt. His muscles swelled and rippled, and his entire body lost the appearance of a frail old man's to become that of a bodybuilder. He pulled back his hands, in the starting pose for a Kame-hame-ha.

"Now you take cover for a few seconds," he said. "And you'll have your way out open."

"I think we can get closer."

"This is enough," said Tao Pai Pai, and like every time he said anything, that felt like a good point to put an end to the discussion.

Him, Piano, Violin, and Baba were sitting in a foxhole, the car parked next to them. Muscle Tower was a good deal closer, but still in the distance. Violin was stone faced as usual, leaning against the sandbags, an arm resting on her knee, the other clutching the bundle in which she'd wrapped Baba's crystal sphere. The witch stood next to her - she was short enough to not need to crouch for the bags to provide her cover - and fiddled nervously with her fingers, now and then sneaking a look at Violin's bundle. Tao Pai Pai, having decreed that they should stop, leaned back in a relaxed manner and started playing with a short, thin wooden shard he'd found on the ground. He twirled it at incredible speeds between his fingers, threw it with one hand and caught it with the other, or used to stab it the air. Looking at him, one got the uncomfortable feeling that each of those stabs would be in fact enough to pierce the average man's carotid. Piano, a lot more business-like, was peering out from the top of the cover, looking at the tower with a pair of binoculars.

"He's definitely inside," he said. "Any minute now."

Tao Pai Pai didn't acknowledge that, and kept up with his little exercise. Now, however, he had Violin's stare on him. She was looking at him with piercing, resentful eyes.

One of the assassin's fingers flicked, the others not raising to meet it. The little wooden shard darted through the air like a bullet towards the woman. She raised her metal arm, but couldn't match the projectile's speed. The wood chipped and grazed the side of her hand, and eventually stuck itself in the sand bags behind her, one centimetre away from her ear.

"You missed," spat Violin.

"I never miss," replied Tao, calmly. "You're sorely mistaken if you believe I would just kill anyone who looks at me the wrong way. I am a professional. My services are not that cheap. Exceptionally, I might take entertainment in addition to money, but trust me, you wouldn't be able to provide either."

"A professional." the soldier scoffed. "You're not even taking this task remotely seriously. That boy is no joke."

"Violin, don't-" ordered Piano, but he was cut off by the assassin.

"It's all right. We need to pass some time, after all." His eyes shifted subtly to Violin's artificial arm and hand. "Let me guess. He took your limb, and now you resent me for being on the verge of taking even your revenge from you? The chance to prove that you, yourself, are not so weak? Am I right?"

She didn't answer, but her shiver of anger made that unnecessary.

"For one so obsessed with strength, you should learn to recognise it and respect it, girl. Especially when it's in front of you."

"I respect it more than the likes of you," rebutted Violin, this time daring to look Tao straight in the eyes. "You would submit yourself to the weak for the right price. If you cared about giving the world to the strong like we do, you would fight by our side no matter what."

"How quaint, this youthful idealism. But time has a way to distil one's view of the world to its essence, and I've had a lot of it to mull such issues. The truth is just, we're both killers."

He got up, walked right to Violin, and all without showing any emotion, extended his hand towards her face. She reflexively rolled to the side, putting her arm up to protect herself. But the assassin's fingers only looked for the wooden shard, still stuck in the sand bags, grabbed it, and wrestled it free. A thin rivulet of sand spilled out of the hole left open.

"But my services are expensive," concluded Tao, "and you got duped in giving away yours for free."

"You-" growled Violin, but right then, Piano, who was back to his lookout duty, shouted, "He's out!"

Tao Pai Pai did not jump or run. He simply disappeared. There was a hiss, and Violin found herself staring angrily only at a slight swirl of dust and sand, lifted by the eddies left behind in the air as he left.

After the fierce battle, the control room was hardly recognisable. Most of the screens and furniture around had been smashed or riddled with bullet holes. Glass shards and ripped or burned paper covered the floor, and from a broken window the wind was pushing snow and ice inside, and one half of the room was gradually being covered in fine white.

Amidst the wreckage was the upper echelon of the Instruments almost in its entirety. Groaning and pained, holding their broken limbs, tamponing bleeding wounds, or in some cases, passed out, but all alive, except for one - who had been shot by friendly fire in the first confusing moments. Others had been hit that way, but no one lethally. Drum, the old commander of the base, was whining in a corner, one kneecap destroyed by a bullet. Cymbal, the large ptero who most had acted like he owned the place, was barely breathing, trying to recover from an especially painful gut punch. Goku had done his best to not inflict any deadly damage - when one soldier had tried to pull on him the same suicide attack with a grenade that had been used at the Tenkaichi, he had even managed to destroy the grenade so quickly and precisely it didn't have time to explode. But he had had very little choice on what kind of wounds to inflict otherwise. Even against such weak enemies, at close quarters and outnumbered so badly, he did need to make sure when they went down, they wouldn't just get up again and re-join the fight. As a result, some of them wouldn't get up again for a very long time. Some never would for the rest of their life.

Goku bagged the Dragon Ball in his backpack, right next to the other, causing it to disappear from all radars that could detect it.

"You..." gasped Cymbal, trying to drag himself to grab his ankle. "You...!"

"I'm sorry," said Goku, turning around. "Please stop pursuing this foolish idea of bringing back Piccolo, and I will not have to fight you again."

"You're... sorry? You little...!"

The boy had known he still had a gun on his person - he just did not think him in a shape good enough to grab it. But with a single burst of anger-fuelled adrenaline, Cymbal seemed to suddenly forget all of his pain, and grab the weapon, raising it against his enemy. To him, it must have been an extreme, last ditch effort to surprise Goku. To Goku himself, it might as well have been in slow motion.

The ptero screamed in pain again as a quick kick hit his hand and sent the gun flying. One of the fingers that was holding it now bent the wrong way.

"Please," repeated Goku, "stop."

He walked out, ignoring the curses and insults screamed behind him. He walked down the ordinary way, through the stairs, which meant going through a few more soldiers at the lower floors. Some were stupid enough to try and resist, but most just moved aside and let him pass, appropriately terrified. Strength was the central tenet of their creed, after all. Perhaps an overwhelming display of it could well make them aware of just how misguided they were.

The air outside the tower felt cool and refreshing after that much effort. It probably was icy, but after all that, his body was still warm from the exercise. He expected to have to do something like it again to pull out of the base, but with some luck, now the path would be clear.

"Goku!"

He turned, surprised to hear his name when for most of the past half an hour he'd just been called various expletives. Running towards him were some familiar figures, wrapped in fur-trimmed uniforms.

"Colonel Silver?"

The officer and his following stopped right in front of him, slightly short of breath. "You did it, huh?," said Silver, grinning. "You got the Ball?"

"Safe in my backpack," replied the boy. "Why are you here? I said I wanted to do this alone."

"Oh, stop acting all cool. We came to warn you. We saw a ki signal. Might have been a mistake, but it looked like someone strong had arrived in the area. Guess you wouldn't notice with all the fighting you must have been involved in."

"I didn't even use the ki radar," admitted Goku. He touched up the side of his display with a finger. "Let me check."

And he suddenly froze.

"Colonel," he said hurriedly, taking a defensive pose, "get out of here. Now."

"What? Goku, do you mean-"

Something hit them. Something landed in front of them like a meteor slamming into the ground, spraying an explosion of snow all around. Something shook the ground, and then the something moved again, so fast it was impossible to even see anything beyond a mere glimpse, a flash, a detail.

The flapping of a pink robe.

"Not my target."

The voice had not even finished speaking its decree when Sergeant Lime felt the violent pressure of a palm strike on his chest and was sent flying. The man tumbled into the snow tens of metres away, too far to get back into the fight because at the speed at which it was going, there would be no fight any more by the time he was back.

"Activate your HEP-II chips!," shouted Colonel Silver, "Maximum safe power!"

A braid whipping the air with a supersonic snap.

"Not my target."

A punch hit only the air and was met with an invisible kick. Another body tumbled into the air, tossed out of range.

"Colonel, withdraw!" shouted Goku, darting towards him. Silver barely had a chance to turn to look at him, his attention drawn by the scream, and then-

A grimace, a moustache, hands connecting for a throw.

"Not my target."

For a single moment, he did use all of the strength the chip allowed him to. Silver was sure of that, and the pain in all his muscles for days afterwards would tell him that he had indeed pushed himself to the limit. Yet it had been completely pointless. If anything, all his strength had been used against him - the flow of his movements redirected, turning a ferocious leap that was supposed to lead to kicking his opponent straight in the chin into a graceless tumble that saw him end with his butt in the snow.

"Colonel!"

"You."

Goku felt a shiver. The voice was cold, sure, just like the fingers that now extended to strike at his vital spots, temporal bone and carotid. He had less than one tenth of a second to react, and the distinct impression that the hits would be strong enough to overcome all of his defences if they reached their target.

"STICK, GET LONGER!"

Still in his scabbard, the Nyoibo suddenly extended, and having been secured at an angle on his back, in doing so it hit the opponent straight under his chin. The assassin lost his aim but didn't flinch - instead, he used the momentum to complete a perfect backward jump, grabbing the pole in the movement and tossing it away casually, and after landing one meter back, legs contracted, he used the position as a springboard to launch himself forward towards the now disarmed Goku.

The boy launched a spinning kick, right to left, and at the same time, extended his left arm, and while the kick missed, the left strap of the backpack he kept the Dragon Balls in slid free, and his rotation allowed him to grab the right one, and charge a toss...

"Colonel!," he shouted, "grab it!"

And that would have been a false step, of course, warning his opponent that way, because Tao Pai Pai's attention immediately shifted to Goku's right hand, to the backpack that was now leaving it, and he launched himself forward to try and grab it, but of course, that too was all part of the plan, as now Goku's left hand was pointing a finger at where the enemy had to be, and from it fired a short burst of ki spheres, like machine gun bullets, aimed at eyes, neck, temple, and every other weak spot he could think of, fast and charged with as much energy as he could muster in such a short time.

And he would have even believed that his opponents had fallen for it. But when the blasts hit, he realised that was not it, and felt something he had never felt perhaps ever in his life. The assassin had let the blows hit him. He had not cared to dodge them because they were not enough to harm him. Instead, they just smashed ineffectually against his skin, and exploded into sparks.

Goku's heart missed a beat as the unknown emotion jolted through his body. This was the strongest enemy he'd ever fought, and he was trying in earnest to kill him.

Tao's left hand grabbed the backpack. With a flick of his wrist in a different direction, he immediately tossed it again, this time somewhere far, back behind the enemy lines, in the eastern part of the base. Far in that area, one could already see the Instruments soldiers reorganising, reforming their fire groups and preparing to strike back. But Goku would not be there to fight them, and recover the Dragon Balls, as long as he was busy fighting this man. Now he was getting used to his movements - he had never had to fight someone so skilled since the Tenkaichi, and perhaps, this one was even stronger than his grandfather. But he could still see them. He could dodge, barely. When the next hit came, to his left, Goku was not there to meet it any more. But he did not retaliate; instead, he stepped back, gaining some distance. He could see a path to life, but not one to victory.

There was an almost imperceptible twitch in the enemy's expression. The corners of his mouth raised by one fraction of a millimetre, perhaps. Then he dove forward, cornered Goku with a quick one-two of punches, and readied him to be the target of a single kick. Goku was well aware of what was going on, and yet could do nothing to avoid it. The kick would hit him straight in the chest, and would crush ribs, lung and heart alike, unless he did something.

He could not dodge, he had no leverage.

He could not parry, his arms would just break and then the rest would follow.

The enemy's foot left the ground, and Goku jumped. He pushed off his legs, thrust out his arms, and with a shout, fired energy from both his hands. The enemy aptly shifted sideways, avoiding to be hit; but that was not the objective. Together with the jump, the beams propelled the boy, gave him some speed backwards. They also temporarily blinded Tao, and threw off his aim. When the kick landed, it was not as precise as it should have been, and thanks to the relative motion between it and Goku's body, it did not hit as hard. Instead, it propelled him even further, and Goku's body, ribs cracked but still in one piece, was flung away into the distance, towards the north. His foot still raised, Tao Pai Pai allowed himself one second to admire the move, the snap decision that had saved his victim's life for a little longer. Then he jumped in pursuit, vanishing instantly to the sight of untrained eyes.

With great effort, Colonel Silver got up, and one of his soldiers that were still standing had to help him walk. In silence, they observed the scene of the short but violent bout. Silver had his man lead him to where Goku's Nyoibo had fallen. He grabbed the pole, that had now returned to its regular length, and observed it for a long time, turning it into his hands.

"Colonel," said the soldier propping him up, "we have contacts to the east. They'll be here soon. What do we do?"

"What can we do? We lost," he said, with a hoarse, tired voice. "Let's retreat, rejoin our group and go help the other teams. And let's bring this thing with us, at least."

He looked north, to where the snow was still fiercer, and a vast conifer forest stretched across the horizon.

"For when he comes back."

I've been faster with this chapter. The holidays allowed me to relax and focus a bit more, but it also helps that now it's where things are really heating up. The final scene of this chapter has long been in my mind, pretty much since the inception of this fanfic. I always thought Tao Pai Pai was awesome and scary in the original story, and wanted to convey that here as well. He's not exactly the same character, but I want him to feel just as threatening. He isn't a man to be trifled with.

Thanks for all the reads! I've actually been surprised to find out that this story isn't number one in favourites/follows on the Dragon Ball section on any more - it's been passed probably some time ago by "Legend of the Monkey God", a new and very long one shot which frankly I'd also advice you all to go read if you enjoy my story, because it's a lot of fun too in ways similar to this one (mostly: Bulma being more awesome than in the source material, and Goku being smarter).

story absorber commented last time that I update really slowly. To which I can only say... yeah. I mostly do. I don't do it if I can help it, but hey, shit happens.

Thanks again and I hope to see you again soon! The new chapter is going swiftly so I hope for another quick update next time.