Chapter 11: The Syndicate: First Meeting
We landed in the Mojave Desert, hundreds of miles from any civilization. It was a barren savannah; low vegetation and rocky hills dominated the landscape and the heat radiated up off the ground. A hot, light breeze blew a tumbleweed across the land in front of us. It was quiet. Gohan pulled out the radar and turned it on.
"Ok, it should be to the right of us, so spread out in this direction," he pointed to his right, "and let's find it and leave."
"Hell yeah," we all yelled. We walked through the desert for about 10 minutes. I thought, "I'm glad we got the radar, 'cause this would suck dealing with this heat." Something didn't feel right, but I couldn't put my finger on what. It felt like we weren't alone in the desert. Then I heard Calvin about 15 meters ahead of me.
"GUYS, I FOUND IT!" We all ran to his location. He was pointing directly in front of him, and sure enough, there was the Dragonball, sitting on top of a rock. We all celebrated that we found it, but something felt off. I thought, "The location is inconspicuous, but why would it be perfectly on top of a rock?" We were the only things moving in the area, but it felt still. Like the world around us was waiting for us to do something. "I don't like this, this has to be," Calvin piped back up.
"Alright, I should go get it!" I looked at him as he started to run and yelled.
"Wait, hold on, I got a bad feeling about this." Everyone looked at me, and Calvin froze.
"Chris, what do you mean? We're the only one's out here. Nothing else is moving."
"I know...but why would a Dragonball be perfectly on top of a rock in the middle of desert? In front of the rock, or on the ground, or even in a hole would be more plausible." I turned to Gohan, "Yo, don't the Dragonballs shoot off and drop in random directions?"
"Yeah they do."
"Then how likely, out of all the places, would it be that this Dragonball lands perfectly on that rock. I think that someone placed it there." Calvin looked at me and the others and then looked at the Dragonball.
"Look, you might be overthinking this a little too much. I'm pretty sure we're fine, so I'm just going to go get it." He ran down to the ball and picked it up. He looked at it, then he looked around to see if anything was coming.
"See, we're all good here!" Then he heard a beeping sound. He looked behind him on the rock to see a pack of C4, which blew up in his face, destroying the rock and making a small crater in the ground. Dust flew into the air. We all ran down there in a hurry to see if Calvin and the Dragonball were ok.
"Calvin, you ok?!" I heard a small grunt coming from my right. Calvin started standing up, wiping his eyes and clothes of all the dust. Thomas yelled.
"Is the Dragonball ok?"
"Yeah, I'm fine, thanks for checking. Yeah, the Dragonball is ok." Then, we felt something approaching, like a big cluster of energy coming toward us. I looked at Calvin with an 'I told you so' look. The dust cleared enough to show that there were about 10 people flying towards us, each of them very strong. They landed on the ground, surrounding us. They all were wearing dark red tops, with black pants. The two biggest guys were as strong as Mingerti. We all got in a circle. The biggest guy, looked about 6'2", stepped forward and started to talk.
"Well, well, what do we have here, boys? Some kids trying to steal our Dragonball." The rest of them snickered. Being surrounded by these thugs, it felt like we walked into a lion's den. I decided to try and talk our way out of the situation.
"Look, we don't want any trouble."
"You should've thought about that before you took the ball, boy. So, if you want to leave with your lives, I suggest you kids give us the ball." The thugs started getting a little closer, intimidating us. The presumed leader looked at us, trying to get a read on us, when he noticed Gohan.
"Well look who it is, it's Gohan. So this is where you've been for all this time." Gohan looked at the leader in confusion and anger. The second biggest guy chimed in.
"I knew you went rouge after we couldn't track you anymore." We all looked at Gohan in shock. Gohan looked even angrier.
"You put a chip in my brain and forced me to kill people!" The leader interrupted him.
"Whatever, you're nothing but a failure anyway. You failed to kill anyone that could stand in our way. But there's a silver lining. After all this time, you brought the targets to us." The leader looked at all of us when he said that. "So give us the Dragonball, and maybe you'll live." Once he said that, no amount of talking was going to help us now. We knew nothing about them, except that they couldn't have the Dragonballs. So I charged at one of the subordinates on the left and punched him in the face with a right cross. He dropped to the ground unconscious, surprising the other subordinates. I turned to the leader and pointed.
"We won't let you get the Dragonball. You're leaving empty handed today!"
"On this day, the Syndicate will take over the world, and no one is going to stop us!" All of them starting powering up, shaking the land around us. Everyone except me, Gohan, and the 2 strongest thugs stayed. The others all started clashing all over the desert sky and land. Gohan powered up into an Ascended Saiyan, and I powered up into a Super Saiyan. I looked at Gohan.
"You take the leader, I'll take the other guy." Gohan nodded. The leader smiled maliciously.
"Once you all are dead, the world is ours. I won't let you stand in my way anymore."
AN: Hey, everyone. Sorry I took so long making any new content for this story. I actually lost my notes for this until now so I hit a big writer's block. I got really busy with school and work, so I couldn't put all my attention into the story like I wanted. Hopefully, I got a consistent enough schedule so I can update this more regularly. As always, thanks for reading my content and please support the official releases.