"Alright, Tarble, move it a little to the left! ...Yeah, like that. Now, set it down there, gently, and...yes! Nicely done!"
A man in his late 40s stood in the snow and gave a thumbs up at the floating young man who had just set down the last piece of the house they were constructing. Clad in a thick fur coat and a comically long fur cap to match, Tarble smiled as he returned the gesture before touching down to the ground. As a whole, he hadn't grown too much in the long years he'd lived with Peng and Sagi in Jingle Village-he stood perhaps 5 feet tall in height, and although it was clear that he exercised regularly, he was not particularly bulky. His spiky hair had remained largely the same shape as it had when he was a toddler-the first time Sagi gave him a haircut, it had simply grown back to its original length a week later and stayed there. Thus, it was largely left alone. Aside from this and the aforementioned flying, there was also the matter of Tarble's tail, which had grown along with him and stood flapping slightly in the mild breeze. After receiving more praise from the village workman, Tarble looked to his right to see a familiar figure sprinting through the snow to greet him.
"Tarble!" a young girl with red hair cried out happily, yet with a noticeable hint of excitement. Tarble laughed as he picked the girl up and spun her around a bit before setting her down. Somewhere off in the distance, Peng and Sagi looked after their daughter with bemusement.
"Aww, did you miss me already? I wasn't gone that long, you know," Tarble said jokingly. Suno grinned cheekily.
"Maybe. But more importantly-how do you do that?!" she yelled out excitedly, startling him slightly with her sheer intensity. Tarble chuckled.
"It would take a while to explain, and it would be a lot more boring than you'd think," Tarble replied, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Besides, your mom only agreed to me training you in martial arts on the condition that you don't learn stuff like that."
Suno's eyes widened. "You mean humans can do that too?!" she asked excitedly, to which Tarble chuckled again.
"I suspect a few of them can, yeah," Tarble replied. Outliers had to exist, even if everyone he'd met so far was nowhere near his power. And, of course, he knew from his memories that he was nowhere near the Saiyan elites in terms of power, which always confused him, since he also knew that his father was the king, and that his older brother was even stronger than him. When he was younger, he was always both excited and apprehensive about any bright light he saw in the sky, wondering if it was another Attack Ball sending another of his kind to Earth. He thought he'd seen one land some time after he did, but a neighbor with a penchant for astronomy explained that he had simply glimpsed a small meteor that had crashed not too far from the village. Even so, the thought still lingered in his mind. Pushing it aside for now, he focused on his sister's question. "Which is precisely why your mom doesn't want you getting any ideas," he replied, playfully ruffling her hair to her chagrin.
Sagi smiled sadly as she listened to the two of them. It was such a little thing, and yet she couldn't get it out of her mind. 'Your mom.' 'Ma.' He always used some other name for her. He never called her 'Sagi' or anything like that, but...he never just called her 'Mom,' either. It always made her a little sad to think about. He'd started calling Peng 'Daddy' in no time at all-no doubt influenced by how horrible this father of his was, sending an infant off to an alien planet to fight for his life. And yet, when it came to her, she always felt like a substitute for whatever queen lady had raised him out on that red planet somewhere. She had no doubt she was a kind woman and a loving mother, and yet...she couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy.
Tarble himself admitted that all he remembered of her was a single memory right before he left his homeworld. She had found him, nursed him to health, raised him as her own son, for 14 years...and yet that woman was still 'Mom' in his mind. Her? She was just 'Ma.' Close, perhaps, but, as Sagi could tell all too well, not the same. There was just something about that woman that she herself was missing, it seemed sometimes. Some hidden quality she couldn't hope to match for him to love her as his mother the way he loved her husband as his father. Sagi knew it was wrong to feel what she was feeling about her own son, but nevertheless, the interaction just chipped away at her a little more. Still, in the end, Suno and Tarble were happy. She concluded that that was more than enough.
The two siblings laughed and joked for a few moments more before Tarble's ears, always having been slightly more sensitive than a human's, picked up something approaching the village. Turning to the right, he registered the curious sight just as those closest to the edge of the village were beginning to back away in terror. There was no mistaking it-a tank, emblazoned with a red ribbon holding the letters "R R" in white font, rolled forward along the snow, not seeming to be impeded in the slightest. Flanking it, Tarble could see later, were a handful of men armed with a variety of firearms, all wearing the same uniform with the same symbol emblazoned over their right breasts. As both the soldiers and the tank rolled up to a stop in the center of the village, a plumpier soldier who clearly spent more time behind a desk than in combat hailed the village.
"Greetings!" the man called out to the village's inhabitants. "I am Captain Indigo of the Red Ribbon Army! By order of General White, all able-bodied men shall devote themselves to the task of combing the surrounding area for an object of great value to us! The women, children, and the infirm will set about preparing their homes for the use and comfort of our soldiers! Failure on the part of any member of this village to comply with regulations will bring death upon as many of you as we choose! Do you understand the terms of this arrangement?"
His proclamation was met with a mixture of indignation and nervousness by the spectators, Tarble's family included. After a moment, however, Tarble looked back at them with a determined look they hadn't often seen from the boy. He then looked over to their village chief with a look which said "Just go along with it. I have a plan." The chief nodded and held up his hands in surrender.
"We understand. Just give us all a few moments to prepare some necessities."
Captain Indigo paused for a moment before nodding. "This is acceptable. You will have ten minutes!" And just like that, everyone in the village retreated into their homes. The soldiers moved to follow after them to ensure they actually were making preparations to leave, but no sooner had the first ones began to disperse when they ran straight into Tarble, who seemed to move to them in the blink of an eye. Just as the soldiers all paused to wonder at this, the doors locked, and the soldiers were left outside facing down this short teenager.
"I am not a violent person, and I recognize that you soldiers may not necessarily have the same motives as your superiors," Tarble said calmly. "So...I'm giving you one chance to avoid what's going to happen next. Defy your orders, drop your weapons, and leave this organization of yours forever, and I will not consider you my enemy."
The soldier directly in front of him seemed unnerved for a second, but laughed heartily. "Oh yeah? And just what do you think you're going to do against us, you short little freak?" he asked. "Don't you get it? Nobody stops the Red Ribbon Army! Not any of the peasants we've come across, not the Royal Army...and certainly not you," he finished with a sneer. Contrary to what he was expecting from the boy, Tarble simply sighed in resignation.
"Very well," he said, before vanishing in the blink of an eye, to the soldiers' astonishment. Before they could even begin to look for him, he reappeared directly behind the man he had spoken to, knocking him out with a swift chop to the back of his head. His fellow soldiers turned around, only for a second to be met with a similar result. At long last, a third soldier, being right next to the second, caught Tarble directly in the face with a shot from his shotgun. To his horror, however, Tarble looked relatively unfazed, blinking a few times to get the dust out of his eyes. This soldier, too, found himself swiftly dispatched.
Captain Indigo looked on in apprehension as Tarble suddenly appeared closer, taking out soldiers left and right faster than he could see. He hurriedly turned to the soldier manning the tank. "Don't just sit there, you imbecile! Fire!" Before he could comply, however, Tarble appeared and sliced off the tank's cannon with a palm strike, leaving it to fall to the ground before the soldier could load it. He then looked up at the man while Captain Indigo stood silently, awed by his power.
"Get out," he said simply, to which the soldier swiftly complied as he looked into Tarble's eyes, and garnered an idea of what he was going to do. Tarble bent down onto his knees and picked up the tank from its front end with both hands, lifting it off of the ground with some slight exertion. He then lifted off into the air with the power of flight. When he was a good distance above the village, he began to spin, swinging the tank around several rotations before finally throwing it off into the distance, towards a nearby mountain which he knew to be barren, where it promptly exploded on impact in a fiery display. Captain Indigo and the soldiers who remained conscious looked up at the floating monkey boy with mortal terror evident in their eyes. He looked down to address the captain, specifically.
"You seem to be a fan of ultimatums," he began snidely. "Here's mine-leave this place, all of you, and do not threaten my family, or my people again! If I see that infernal symbol over the horizon once more, I will not stop with one single squadron. I will travel far and wide to every single outpost, every single command center, every single encampment. I will lay waste to your war machines, and take apart every weapon your soldiers possess. And I will ensure that every soldier in your armies knows the meaning of pain. I will dismantle your entire organization. Do you understand?"
Captain Indigo and the others nodded wordlessly before Tarble suddenly disappeared once more, rapidly flitting about among the soldiers. Before anyone could ascertain what exactly was happening, all of their weapons had been ripped out of their hands along with their sidearms, leaving Tarble floating in the air above them once more, with a stack of weapons in his arms. He promptly allowed some ki to flow through both of his hands, incinerating the assorted weapons in a small plume of blue energy. With nothing left to defend themselves with, the conscious soldiers scrambled to pick up their comrades before running away through the snow, en route to their base of operations. Tarble watched them flee until they disappeared over the horizon, then touched back down to earth.
"They're gone!" he called out. "It's safe to come out!" With that, the villagers slowly began to exit their homes, several of them offering their thanks to Tarble for protecting them from these hostile invaders.
"Do you think they'll be coming back?" Suno asked her brother worriedly. Tarble chuckled as he ruffled her hair again.
"I'm not sure-I think I scared them pretty good back there. But, if they do, I'll just beat them up again!" he said with a smile, comforting his sister. Suno smiled as she looked up at Tarble.
"I hope I'll be as tough as you one day, big brother," she replied warmly, to which he chuckled.
"I'm sure you will be, Sunshine," he replied happily, yet he could see a shift in his parents' demeanor which reflected his own inner turmoil. Even with the impression he had left upon their minds...he knew in his gut that this was hardly the last they would see of this 'Red Ribbon Army.'
"And then he was just moving about all over the place and he cut up the tank with his bare hands and he lifted it up into the air and threw it into a mountain and then he vaporized our guns with a plume of plasma coming right out of his hands and-!"
Captain Indigo was slapped across the face by the somewhat short, yet nevertheless imposing figure of General White.
"Damn it, man! Pull yourself together!" he shouted at his subordinate, cowing him into submission. "Now...from the beginning."
When Captain Indigo finally managed to get through his report on the strange boy, General White sighed as he sat back in his chair, puffing a cigar. To his right, Ninja Murasaki, ever the faithful aide, stood by his side, listening to what his commander had to say.
"Floating monkey children shooting energy out of their hands," he remarked before chuckling. "I really have heard everything."
"If you doubt the good captain's word, General-"
"Oh, no, I'm wholly convinced this kid he's talking about exists. I mean, hell, half of our army is made up of animal-people. A monkey-person isn't too far off. As for the energy blasts, I hear Tao does stuff like that, and once you embrace humans shooting energy blasts from their hands-honestly, how far-fetched is flying by that point?" he asked the ninja, who slowly nodded. White's blunt logic made sense.
"Well, then, what would you suggest we do?"
White raised his eyebrows quizzically, as if Murasaki had asked a dumb question. "Kill the brat. What else?"
Murasaki blanched somewhat at the proposition. "Would it be wise to engage our resources in this manner? He has pledged not to interfere with us provided we leave his little hamlet alone."
White shook his head. "We don't have enough men to comb the area by Commander Red's timetable. We need the people of that village. Besides, what reason do we have to trust this kid? For all we know, he's preparing to attack us right as we speak!" The general turned towards the window, looking out over the foreboding landscape. "No. This kid is a loose cannon we can't permit, and he needs to be dealt with now."
The ninja nodded slowly, his apprehension evident. "Who do you recommend we send?"
White thought it over. "The monster can't survive in the cold, but the Major and the android the good doctor has built for us were designed to continue functioning in such an environment for extended periods. We'll send them, as well as you and your brothers. Between all seven of you, I have no doubt that you'll be able to put this pest down before he gets too bothersome."
Ninja Murasaki gulped at the idea of facing such a warrior as Captain Indigo described in combat, yet nodded anyway. "As you command, general. I will assemble the team personally."
White grunted in satisfaction, and Murasaki left the room to make his preparations while White looked back out the window, looking off in the direction of the village. "A shame we can't find a way to use that brat. With powers like that...we'd be even more invincible."
All throughout the day, Tarble was left with a foreboding premonition that the Red Ribbon Army would return after all, in greater numbers than before, and catch him unawares. Thus, it came to no surprise that Tarble decided to stay out on a hill overlooking the village after Suno and many of the other villagers had gone to bed, intent upon keeping watch should the Red Ribbon Army plan an attack in the dead of night. For some time, all was quiet, until at last, around midnight, Tarble thought he saw something in the light of his fire: a large figure with a long head and a face which seemed to look similar to the description of a monster Tarble had read about in a novel once. Before he could move to investigate, he found himself trapped by a large gloved hand.
The figure who had snuck up on him promptly lifted him overhead by one arm and slammed him into the rock face, leaving him disoriented as the figure didn't release his grip. Seeing that his target was still alive, the figure then threw him far off into another mountain not too far away, which Tarble was too distracted to stop with the power of flight, crashing into the rock face. Clearing himself away from the rubble with a ki blast, Tarble got a closer look at his adversary: what looked like a large, muscular man with red hair and sunglasses, who looked back at him with an unmoving expression of disapproval. Suddenly, his mouth opened wide, and he fired off a missile at the Saiyan prince, who promptly vaporized it with a ki blast. From this, Tarble easily concluded that this adversary of his was not human, and very likely some sort of mechanical creation solely programmed to deliver death and destruction. Thus, Tarble held no particular regard for holding back against the android, flying over to him at top speed and powering up to maximum in order to cut off his head with a palm strike. In one swift motion, Major Metallitron's head fell to the ground, leaving the rest of him functioning only for a short period before deactivating permanently.
A small yelp of surprise gave away Ninja Murasaki's position, who promptly threw down a smoke bomb to distract the boy while he and his brothers swarmed him all at once. To their horror, Tarble casually dodged all of their attacks before sending out a kiai in all directions, knocking them all backwards and leaving Murasaki's brothers barely conscious. Frozen in fear, Murasaki called out to their last hope.
"Android 8! Get over here!"
Hearing his name with his enhanced auditory systems, the android complied, leaping into the air from his position in the village square and landing in front of Tarble with a loud thud. He looked up at Tarble and waved politely.
"Hello!" he said, leaving Tarble...confused, to say the least.
"Uh...hello?" he said hesitatingly, before asking the blunt question that came to mind. "Aren't you supposed to be trying to kill me?"
Before Android 8 could respond, Murasaki cut in. "Yes! That is exactly what you are supposed to be doing! Now do it!"
Android 8 looked to Murasaki with some hesitation before shaking his head. "But I don't want to kill him."
Murasaki looked at him wordlessly, anger clouding his mind. "W-what do you mean?! You're a killing machine! Killing is your sole purpose!"
Android 8 looked at the ninja, puzzled. "Dr. Gero said that I don't have a purpose. Further, since I do not wish to kill, I find it illogical that killing would be my purpose."
This reasoning only served to infuriate the ninja even more. "Ugh, fine! Just punch him or something, I don't care!"
Android 8 paused for a second. "Are you a bad person?" he asked Tarble, to which Murasaki facepalmed.
"No," Tarble replied, still puzzled by the whole situation.
Android 8 nodded. "If he's not a bad person, I don't want to punch him, either," he told Murasaki. Murasaki cut in angrily.
"Of course he'd tell you he isn't a bad person, you idiot! He's about to be punched!"
"Is he a bad person?" Android 8 asked the ninja, to which he yelled angrily.
"He's a target, and he needs to die!"
Android 8 paused, thinking for a second, before answering. "In my experience, most of your 'targets' are good people. So, the balance of probability dictates that this person is someone who I don't want to punch."
Before Murasaki could say anything else, Tarble moved to hit him with a second kiai, only to find himself yanked to the ground. Tarble at first moved to respond to this annoyance, only to find himself suddenly weakening. It felt as if his own ki was closing itself off from him, like a drain that's been plugged shut. A quick glance found what he'd suspected confirmed: one of the brothers, having just regained consciousness along with two others, had tried to pull him to the ground by his tail, and continued holding onto it once he realized its effect on him. Tarble struggled to fight back against it, but couldn't summon any ki with which to fire a kiai or ki blast, and soon found his head swimming with nausea in addition to this loss of power. Tarble was utterly helpless, a fact immediately taken advantage of by the other brothers, who began attacking him with their kunai and leaving him with several significant injuries, including a kunai straight into his shoulder.
Realizing that the brother's hold on his tail allowed him to be injured, Android 8 leapt into action, kicking the fifth brother in the head and knocking him out cold while causing him to release his grip. Tarble shuddered as his ki came back to him and he blew everyone away with a kiai once more. Android 8 remained by his side, ready to defend the weakened Tarble from the Red Ribbon ninjas' assault. This action only served to enrage Murasaki, who swiftly pulled out a remote control of some kind.
"You will soon regret your actions, traitor!" he proclaimed as he moved to push the button, only for Tarble to pierce the remote control with a ki blast at the last moment. Frightened by the rapid attack, Murasaki began to retreat, holding Tarble's attention a few seconds longer than it should've. He realized this error all too quickly, as he soon heard a button press down from behind him.
"They all had remotes-" he thought quickly before Android 8 exploded in a massive plume of..."Ki?" Tarble thought before he was consumed by the blast, sending him flying into the rocks. Ironically, Tarble blowing the ninja away with a kiai saved them, leaving them barely out of the blast radius. Tarble looked up groggily at Murasaki as he put his foot down upon Tarble's loose tail, triggering his weakness once more while he held a sword in front of Tarble's face with his left hand. He seemed to come close to killing him, before reconsidering the idea.
"With such an easily exploited weakness...you may yet be of use," Murasaki remarked, just before he hit Tarble in the head with the hilt of his sword, forcing the boy to rapidly drift into unconsciousness.
When he woke, he was tied down to a surgical bench, and looked around the room with an intense feeling of nausea. His hand had evidently been bandaged up while he was out, along with his other injuries. He only became conscious of the strange clamping sensation at the tip of his tail a moment later, and put two and two together. In his head, he cursed his father-the one thing his memories didn't seem to have included, and it nearly kills him! He also couldn't take away all of the blame-how nobody had figured out this weakness in his tail for 14 years was a question for after he broke out of the Red Ribbon Army's base. While he mulled over a potential escape plan, a middle aged man, perhaps in his 50s, with a flowing moustache and dressed in a lab coat walked up to him and stuck a syringe into his arm, taking a blood sample.
"So many curious things about you. To have defeated the Major so easily..." he remarked idly. "I can't wait to take a closer look at what makes you tick." With that, he was gone, leaving Tarble alone for a moment before another old man walked in, this one considerably more muscular and flanked by several of Murasaki's brothers.
"Well, then...we meet at last," General White began. "Name's General White. I run this place. And you are?"
Tarble refused to answer, plagued by nausea and defiant against his captors.
"Hm. I see. Well, it was a pointless question, anyway. I already know the answer. I simply wanted to see how much you were willing to fess up."
Tarble continued looking at him impassively, although he began to worry. White sensed this and continued speaking, a sneer forming across his face.
"That red-haired brat was begging for her 'big brother' to rescue her."
Tarble strained against the restraints as much as he could in his condition, very nearly reaching White's face.
"If you hurt so much as a hair on her head, I will make you regret it!" he shouted. White laughed heartily.
"Ah, splendid! Just the reaction I wanted! Well, don't worry, Tarble-as long as you cooperate, she and her mommy won't be harmed. I have them here along with that idiot chief of yours, to make sure your people don't try to follow your example." Tarble growled as he considered White's statement.
"What do you want?" he asked angrily. White chuckled.
"Why, you, of course! I boast some of the mightiest warriors and machines in the entire army, and you decimated all of them without much effort at all! If it weren't for that weakness of yours, you could've been a big problem! That kind of strength has its uses to people like me."
Tarble scoffed. "And I assume you have this clamp here to ensure that I cooperate?" White smiled and nodded.
"That's right. And don't think you can remove it, either-the good doctor, mad as he is, made sure to design it so that it couldn't possibly be removed, whether by your fancy energy blasts or sheer strength. Your every action will be monitored by a highly sophisticated security system designed by the good doctor. The slightest hint of disloyalty or the intention of escaping will be met with the immediate deaths of your mother and sister, as well as the village chief. You have no choice but to submit to us...or you'll be left powerless as you hear your family die from the monitors. Got it?"
Tarble bit down the fury building up in his head, and nodded angrily. White chuckled, and gestured for his men to release Tarble and cart him off. Tarble, as expected, gave no resistance. "Not now," he thought. "Not yet." However, before he left, he turned to face White, stopping in his tracks. White looked at him with amusement.
"Yes?" he asked merrily.
"...You killed a good man," Tarble replied simply. "I'm going to make sure you pay for that, and all of your other crimes."
White simply smiled wider before his guards dragged Tarble up the stairs to the third floor, the room which would become his prison under the Red Ribbon Army's care.
For over a month, not much changed. Tarble was given food at regular intervals, which he ate when he couldn't stand the hunger any longer. He had free reign of the third floor room, insofar as he didn't attempt to escape its confines, and for most of his time, he trained, being sure not to accidentally damage any of White's equipment in the process in order to ensure his family were kept safe. Tarble was at least relieved that his captors kept their end of White's black bargain, as it gave him time to think about his situation.
One thing he noticed about the clamp on his tail was that sitting a certain way clamped it down; thus, he made sure to sit for brief intervals, doing everything in his power not to give away his weakness by sitting in his chair with his head in his arms, hiding his drooping eyes and nausea from sight and making it look like he was napping. When he was confident that he wasn't being scrutinized on this point, he shifted tactics, favoring meditation instead, drastically increasing the amount of time he spent with his tail clamped. In this manner, the nausea he felt slowly began to decline as he got used to the sensation, learning how to safeguard more of his ki from the tail's effect little by little. Every day was spent in the effort to grow stronger and overcome his weakness, until he could save his family. But, alas, the nausea still had not faded, so for the time being, Tarble was left to wait.
"Soon," he thought. "Soon...I will get my chance."
That very afternoon, a plane sailed through the sky on a collision course, its robotic pilot evidently having shut down from cold which it was not accustomed to. The boy inside, having reacted to the situation too late, could do nothing as it crashed into the snow, decimating the plane and its pilot and leaving its occupant unconscious. An hour later, while wandering on her own search for this mysterious spherical object her people's captors were so intent upon finding, a young girl found the boy in the wreckage and pulled him free. Realizing he was nearly frozen from the cold, she slowly began the task of dragging him to her house. However, before she could begin to do so, she let out a cry of shock. This boy, who had just randomly crash landed just outside of Jingle Village, had the same long brown tail as her village's favorite resident. After getting over her initial surprise, she was left with more questions than answers, and resolved to ask the strange boy all of them once she brought him back to her home.
After half an hour's walk through the bitter cold, Son Goku was brought into Jingle Village.
Annnd done! I know I said it'd be a while, but honestly, after reading some really good DBZ fanfics(shout out to Cerric's Strength of Many and SSVCloud's Tales of the Monkey Queen), I just really wanted to expand upon this story a bit. Think of this as kind of the second half of the introductory prologue, where Tarble's story is expanded and brought into the broader events of Dragon Ball's story. So now, the two monkey boys will meet each other at last!
Anyway, time for some responses!
Secret says:
"I'm liking it so far. Did you decide who to pair him with? I can't wait to read the next chapter"
Thanks! Unfortunately, that's a pretty major spoiler, so I'll hold off on that for now. You'll probably be able to guess soon enough, though.
Lord Martiya says:
"Well, the Red Ribbon is in for quite the surprise in a few years..."
Can I just say your timing on this was perfection?
Also, idk about precise power levels, but I think I've got a decent idea where Tarble should be for events that I want him to take part in. So, I'm not going to give any numbers, but the strength relationship will be obvious.
Anyway, with all that said, thank you all for reading, I hope you all have a fantastic day, and take care.
