A shrill military instrumental blared from a speaker in the ceiling of the living quarters, waking Kotoro. A pleasant synthesized female voice notified him that the requested analysis had been completed and compiled into a summary report and that they would arrive within 30 minutes. Kotoro quickly rose and exited the room, approaching the main console on the bridge to read and evaluate possible hiding spots for a base camp.
The long range scanners had detected a large underground cavity that had been created by weathering action of an aquifer, which provided plenty of room for a near term expansion opportunity for a covert facility. The AIs also made note of a large structure situated out in the bay, anchored into a smallish bit of land surrounded by water. There were only 3 locations suitable for a long term embedding of the ship which would also be out of sight and provide the capacity for expansion due to being rocky instead of mostly sand or silt or high dunes.
After perusing the report, the location near a fairly large number of sunken seafaring vessels appeared to be the superior choice. It appeared to be an abandoned seaport and had plenty of solid rock close to the surface. Of the other locations, one was near a wooden structure with what appeared to be a seaside bazaar of sorts with various activity facilities and stalls situated next to the edge of the sand, and the other was near a boatyard of sorts that had a dock that appeared to still be in active service.
First thing to do would be to embed the ship. Parking in the shallows, Kotoro exited the Techne and set foot onto the shoreline, approaching the rocky area to the edge of the dunes. Forming thin and intensely hot blades using ki, Kotoro set to work carving a sizeable chunk of the surface rock out from the underlying structure, large enough that it would hold together and shaped in a way that it would support itself and appear seamless when placed back down. Lifting this heavy bit of terrain and setting it on the beach, kotoro then began carving an enormous cavity into the exposed stone, hurling the pieces well out to sea in a vector that ought to avoid impacting a location where anybody would be looking. When a sufficient volume had been excavated, Kotoro tapped his communicator.
"Epistēmē, are you available to assist? If you pilot the Techne into the cavity I've exposed here, I'll get it all covered and buried and none will be the wiser come morning."
"Duly noted. Operations commencing!" replied Epistēmē, with the Techne suddenly and rapdily rising up moving over and settling into the cavity.
As soon as the ship completed fitting itself into the carved out parking spot, Kotoro levitated the carved portions of the original surface back into place, cutting a covert entryway into the material and heating the edges to cause the rock to melt and fuse back onto to the underlying stone. Giving the area a heavy sand blasting and dusting left it looking entirely undisturbed. Kotoro re-entered the now hidden cavity, and made his way back into the Techne, heading into a dimensional pocket where a small engineering fabricator facility had been installed.
"Epistēmē can we set the fabrication equipment to produce a spy drone? We need to collect some intelligence on the local civilization. I would like to ensure that my initial contact with the locals is as free of undue conflict as I can manage. I've had my fill of hostile invasions for several lifetimes!" Kotoro exclaimed. "I like a good fight as much as the next Saiyajin, but dealing with a panicking civilization was annoying if you have no intention of destroying them."
"While I was running simulations on the scans we collected during yesterday's mishap, I spared a few cores and set them on the task of trying to make sense of the local EM transmission protocols. I've made some progress in being able to obtain what I think are probably reconstructions of the original transmissions, but my efforts have stalled a bit. I can find no languages in my entire database that help with comprehending the content of these messages. I have been able to figure out some transmissions that appear to be numeric in nature, but without a contextual reference, figuring out more will take a proper linguistic reconstruction. Give me a week or two and I should have something basic to work with. If you or the drone could find some writing to use as reference material it would help me along." Epistēmē explained.
"I've got some results to report from the simulations on our current situation." noted Epistēmē.
"Lay it on me." Kotoro said.
"There may have been additional dimensions to the multidimensional fabric of reality that our initial models weren't accounting for. We may have traveleed along one of those vectors that we weren't aware existed. Alternatively, the Cartesian sub spaces that the various physical universes occupy may lie along one or more quantized dimensions that we had previously thought to be continuous. Any transport along these vectors that didn't place us beyond at least one quantized unit along these axes would snap back into the nearest quantized location along our path of travel. Our displacements in the initial field tests simply weren't of sufficient quantity to snap us back into a different locale."
"Could you explain that again, but with less technical jargon?" Kotoro asked. He was an excellent study at engineering and building things, but didn't have sufficient educational background to comprehend the trans-dimensional models that the AI was alluding to.
"Sorry. The majority of simulated alternative hypotheses that contain a model that results in a situation such as ours were a result of either temporal displacement or landing in an entirely different universe, or less commonly, both." Epistēmē explained.
"Would we be able to navigate back?" Kotoro asked.
"Ordinarily yes, if the only problem were a previously unknown set of vectors. However, those ...things that we saw appear to have severely torn and reshaped the fabric of multidimensional space around this planet across all multidimensional space-time. There are so many moving parts involved, that it makes conventional NP-Complete algorithms look simple. It is beyond our science at the moment. Perhaps there might be some information in what we recorded about the distortions as we passed through them that might enable a traceback, but I've no idea how long any such analytical algorithm would take to complete, or if the result would even be accurate. We're essentially flying blind here." the AI added.
"Shit. Retain that analysis as a high priority task in the long term, but shelve it for now, we have more immediate concerns. One upside of this is even if King Cold noticed our departure, there is absolutely no chance he'll be able to follow us here. I doubt he'd want to even if he could." Kotoro said, reeling from the scope of the problem before them. He had no idea how long it would take them to get back, or if it was even realistically achievable. In the effort to get away to provide a hope of salvation for his people, he may have entirely robbed them of his aid to escape their predicament.
The fabricator ceased whirring and a chime sounded, indicating the completion of the spy drone. It was small enough to fit into the palm of his hand, so he carried it to the outside of the ship and set it alight. It immediately cloaked and began hovering and headed into the city eager to begin observing the local populace under the direction of Epistēmē.
Kotoro headed back into the Techne, entering the dimensional pocket where he had set up his training equipment. He was having trouble coping with the current situation, and when the Saiyajin didn't know what to do, heavy training helped calm his mind and provide clarity. He dialed his Ki restraint devices up to their maximum suppresion and began an intense multiple hour training session, while the spy drone continued to observe the events occurring within the local settlement, waiting for sunrise to begin its assigned task to observe the local culture and intellectually advanced species perform their routine daily tasks.
Come morning, several of the machines were in ruins, and the Ki restraint devices were overheated and sparking. The walls of the room were glowing and/or scorched in several places, and Kotoro had fallen asleep while trying to meditate in center of the ruined space, deep tracks and gouges having been dug into the floor when he had pounded the floor in rage and frustration.
[BEGIN Author Aside #1]
My Choices Regarding Canonical Content
[Worm]
Worm's universe cluster may end up being a slight AU if I feel something needs adjustment, but all changes I enact will be variations using standard canon as the presumed default unless otherwise specified. As things progress it may turn into progressively more and more AU, not merely due to "butterflies everywhere" syndrome. Characters may end up with powers who didn't have them in canon and vice versa. Its been quite some time since I read Worm and I have not yet read Ward, but if I do something out of touch with canon, feel free to ask me if it was deliberate. I'd rather stick to canon, with respect to how the universe and characters work, except where I have deliberately chosen to change things.
The story begins ~2008, but there is going to be some rapid time progression between several key events leading up to Worm's original starting date. There will be more detail to this revealed in the actual story itself.
[DragonBall ]
As for my story's DragonBall universe, it is going to be irrevocably AU in several respects. I will use the motivations of the characters to map out what changes I think the butterflies will cause, but they're going to be significant. Kakarot will still be sent to Earth by Gine and Bardock, but there will be several key changes due to the presence of the OC and his family.
GT is non canon. With that in mind, Tuffles don't exist, at least not in the form and with associations to events mentioned in games/media related to GT. (i.e. planet Vegeta undoubtedly had some kind of civilization already living there when the saiyajins arrived, but we now have no basis for the saiyajin/Tuffle conflict/war, so it didn't happen.) DragonBall Super content is relevant, and anything retroactively introduced as having happened prior to the butterflies is canonical, but obviously the main events of DBS are so far down the line that all you can see are butterflies. There is no point in speculating this early as to what that would look like if the fic even survives that long. We're operating from a significantly pre-DragonBall starting point here.
For lack of in-canon explanation for how old King Vegeta III was at the time of his demise, I am deciding by author fiat that he was approximately 40, meaning he would have been born ~ Age 697, making him a bit older than Nappa. The OC was born circa Age 719. According to my attempts to research a timeline, King Cold annexed Planet Vegeta in Age 731, making my OC around 12 years old at the time the story begins.
There has been no word on precisely when the initial scouter scope technology seen in the DBS Broly movie was introduced. Via author fiat I will impose that the tech already existed when they were annexed and it was announced immediately, with the introduction / shipments to begin arriving after a month or two. (Given that the upgrade of scouter tech from the scope to the headset happened during events that took place in Age 732, it wouldn't make sense for the scopes to not have been in use for a while already, at least by King Cold's forces.) I will willingly update/change this to match canon in fresh content if it ever reveals more information that contradicts my original fiat decision.
I have introduced elements related to my OC's family building on an idea that has been bouncing around in my skull since high school (I graduated from H.S. in 2003 to put that in perspective). The OC is a "half-breed" (there are reasons for the quotes there speculate away), but the other half isn't earthling. I plan to go into more details via interludes as the story reveals more of these AU elements.
Co-Existence of both multiverse clusters and consequences of this
The entities did notice the earths in the various DB universes within their local multi-verse cluster, but they stayed well away from messing with universes where beings like the gods of destruction and Zeno were both present AND paying attention. Their interference with the multidimensional space around all earths is still there though, resulting in the events of the first chapter.
Laws of Nature, Physics, Biology, powers, KI, etc. don't work differently between the various earth-bearing universes that exist within their own Cartesian coordinate space. Earthlings from worm can in principle learn to use KI and bypass normal human limitations; its just that nobody in recorded history had ever done so to a degree whether they could do so demonstrably and repeatedly on command (perhaps with exceptions regarding those with entity-granted powers, but nobody would recognize it as anything different from run of the mill power-related bullshit).
There is nothing in principle preventing a trigger event from happening to anybody from any of the DragonBall universes who happens to end up on one of the Worm-cluster Earths. The idea that only humans who already have a Corona Pollentia as a youth can trigger is only half-correct. In principle the Corona Pollentia and Gemma could develop during the trigger at the same time, and result in an all-at-once brain development. The reason this doesn't generally happen is that the entities have ample time to use pre-cog to sift through humans likely to produce interesting data and preemptively assign shards to them. The humans of Worm simply don't know enough about how any of this works, and they were working from incomplete data.
The OC has absolutely no knowledge of any of the techniques or meta-information of DragonBall canon that he would not have been exposed to as a matter of course during his life on Planet Vegeta. He doesn't know the dragon balls exist. He would know of the artificial moon technique, and would have training in control of his oozaru form, and he would have heard of the legends of the super saiyajin as much as Vegeta had, but thats about it. He will also know various things relevant to his other parent's background, though as he has never been to her planet, this is all through conversation, reading, and instruction rather than direct experience.
By courtesy of hacking the Galactic Patrol databases, the OC will have had some knowledge of the culture and languages used on DragonBall Earth's, but due to typical Toriyama bullshit, most sapient races speak a common language, but there is absolutely no sense in thinking that a saiyajin would be able to speak any language present on Earth Bet right out of the gate. His laziness only extends so far.
Story Plans
As for my plans for the story, I don't want to spoil it for you unduly. I do have an over-arching idea of some key things which I want the story to touch on, but its a bit like navigation in that "traffic" may redirect or delay things. How the end result and journey turn out depends on how the story plays out, and I haven't planned all the minute details, as I prefer those to flow from the narrative as I write and edit. Its possible the butterflies may disrupt some of the early stations of Worm canon, but the butterflies in Worm's case will start slow before turning into an infestation rather rapidly later on. (certain events are absolutely going to change, because there is absolutely no way the OC won't be doing something about them).
There WILL be what are effectively flash-back interludes at varying intervals explaining who & what the OC is and how he came to exist and revealing some of the impact he and his family had on events prior to his departure. You will only be provided with as much knowledge as the characters involved possess until I deem it sensible to discuss or explain it in an author aside. After these interludes catch up to my first chapter, they'll begin to reveal the butterflies that are happening whilst the OC is involved in happenings in the Worm universe.
Closing
If you would like to do beta reading and editing I'm game. I've never done this kind of thing before, so it'll be a new process. We could use FF's built in feature for that if you're authorized, but otherwise if you mention it in a review and give me a way of getting in touch.
I plan to publish this to SpaceBattles when I'm several chapters in and feel there is sufficient content to merit doing so. I suspect some readers may not like this site as much as a forum-style site due to lesser author interactivity and lack of running commentary from other readers, while others prefer the cleaner story-only interface of FF, so I figure... why not both?. My username on SB and many other platforms is KotoroShinoto, Kotoro, or some other derivation thereof. Despite the shared name, the character is NOT intended to be a self insert.
[END Author Aside #1]
