"I wonder if the others have run into the same problem?" Krillin deflated in his seat. He drew his knees in and tucked them into his chest, wrapping his arms around them. "I've got a bad feeling that it's only us. As if we're always the butt of a joke or something…"
"Come to think of it, Chayote's been in space a whole lot, right? Has she ever struggled to find the money for ship parts and repairs?" Yamcha scratched his head, leaning over the control panel as he tried to unravel the knot of the sum of their problems.
"I'm not sure if we can just ring her up and ask her, right?" Krillin looked up at his friend.
"I mean… She has a cell phone. Bulma made sure of that. She knows how to use it too. Chayote's called me and received calls before. Our ship's got top-of-the-line comms that Earth technology can provide…" Yamcha shrugged, pocketing his left hand while his right scratched the back of his head. The scarred martial artist winced, almost as if thinking about this issue further caused him physical pain.
"Then what's the problem?" Krillin squinted at Yamcha.
"I mean… Can you maybe call her? Things are a bit awkward between us after the break-up…" Yamcha's cheeks flushed with red and his mouth molded into a wavy and awkward smile while he turned his embarrassed eyes away.
"Ugh… Fine," Krillin turned around in his chair. "Ship, I want to call Chayote on her cell phone."
The monitor screen overhead that had been stuck displaying the general atmospheric conditions on the outside flickered. A single line representing the continuum of the electromagnetic waves racing their way to Earth the best they could. Less than eighty seconds later, Chayote's face, surrounded by static, popped up on the screen. Judging by the shifting view behind her and the uneasy breathing, she's been busy and, on an occasion, the image of Future Trunks blitzing past her could be made out.
"Oh, it's you guys…" Chayote mumbled.
"Is this a bad time?" Krillin wondered.
"Huh? We're on a bit of a rescue mission. Trunks and I are pulling people out of harm's way. We've got to move quickly before one of the Androids shows up. They might have Puri's Ki draining technology with them, so we're sort of hit-and-running at the moment. Not picking any fights, just rescuing people, mostly." Chayote explained. Shouts and grunts that belonged to many different people of different genders echoed on the horizon, and occasional flashes of light and resonating explosions interrupted the call with static and booming noise.
"Oh… Okay, I'll try to make it quick. Yamcha and I ran into a bit of a problem. We ran into a supernova and our ship's a bit rattled. We need parts, but we don't know where we can get any. Plus, even if we could, we don't have any space money on us. I mean, we don't even know what the space-money is, that's how short on it we are. Wouldn't even know what it looks like if someone handed it to us, really. We can't even train because gravity tech could rip the ship apart for good and leave us drifting in space," Krillin explained their situation.
"Oh, that's fine. Just ask the ship to find the nearest space station. Think of them like space's supermarkets. They're littered with lowlife looking to make a quick buck on repairing your ship. Watch out though, half of them will do wonders on repairs, the other half will rip the functional parts out and scatter with your cash instead. You've gotta have a sense for those things and have some presence with those thugs. They've got to have a sense they shouldn't mess with you." Chayote explained while outracing combined barrages of anti-air plasma bolts and shredding mini-guns and answering with devastating Ki blasts that decimated the automatons patrolling the streets of the converted towns.
"Yeah, okay… A space station, that much we sort of could've figured out. But what about the money? Where do we even get it from?" Krillin wondered.
"Listen… This is getting a bit crazy. I think they're about to focus their fire on civilians to try to lure us into the danger zone. We've got to focus on this. I'm gonna let you guys go. I'm sure you'll figure something out…" Chayote quickly ended the call, continuing her current rescue mission.
"This is hopeless…" Krillin collapsed in his chair. He had deflated to where he nearly slumped right out of his seat.
"Huh? You've got no cash?" an ogre-like alien selling ship parts and offering his tiny imp-goblins for repair service scratched his shriveled, bald head while rearing his blunt chompers.
"Yeah, we're just scoping out what our repairs would cost us, and we're trying to figure something out. Maybe we can work our debt off?" Krillin clapped his hands together.
"Yeah, we're pretty strong, you know. We've even taken on Frieza himself!" Yamcha flexed his bicep, feeling it with his own free hand.
"Wait… You mean you guys had something to do with doing Frieza in?" the ogreish alien leaned forward in wonder.
"Well… We weren't the ones to beat him but… We defeated the Ginyu Special Squadron and we've helped our friend Goku beat Frieza!" Krillin nodded, feeling a golden vein pumping right before his eyes.
"That's right, we're good friends with the Saiyans. King Vegeta even lets us travel around his part of the universe with impunity…" Yamcha placed his hands on his hips, bursting into a proud and cartoonish fit of fake laughter.
"You mean it was because of you and your stupid revolt that the economy's been in the crapper!?" the alien grabbed four different tools using the entire quartet of his well-trained arms to take wild and wide swings at the duo who only danced and glided away from the incoming thrashing. "Back in the day there was only one currency most of the universe knew–the Freezers, now every planet's gotta have their own stupid cash and nobody knows what's anything's worth anymore! It's like we're living in a space stone age trading stuff again!"
"Uh-oh… This looks bad!" Krillin exclaimed, dodging the flurry of wide-arcing blows that smacked random passers-by caught in the attempted battery. "Yamcha, I think we better retreat…"
"Y-Yeah…" Yamcha nodded. The two moved fast as a flash, leaving not a flicker of their shapes behind for the angered locals to track. As much as the ship groaned to take off without the needed repairs, it was as if the desperate need for the duo to escape with their lives and dignities intact served and ignited the ship's fuel tank, giving it life all on its own.
"Wow… This was a complete jam," Krillin collapsed into the chair again, leaning on his hands as he sighed. "Who knew that making money was this tough even when you can tangle with the strongest in the universe? We don't even know what money we're supposed to make…"
"I mean… Without the repairs, we can still look for the Ultimate Dragon Balls. It's just that we won't be able to train that efficiently at the same time." Yamcha sighed, approaching the wall with a mechanical compartment and entering a code that opened a safe capsule up and revealed an orange marble with three black stars on it. "How are we supposed to master new techniques and impress everybody? I bet everyone's pushing their limits with gravity training. We'll be falling behind again."
"We can always do image training. It helped us train up on our trip to Planet Vegeta. It won't be as effective but will serve us in the meantime." Krillin shrugged.
Krillin glided around the Kamehameha wave, striding the World Martial Arts Tournament arena like a nimble insect as he thrust the back of his fist into Yamcha's face. Evading Yamcha's kick with a leaning jump back, the bald martial artist thrust his foot into Yamcha's chest through an opening before landing firmly on the ground and punting into the lower part of Yamcha's chin and sending him soaring through the Papaya Island skies.
Encased in an aura of King Kai's Fist, besides a fiery blaze adding an infernal aura around Krillin's King Kai Fist's scarlet shimmer and swelling to his skin, Krillin dashed straight up to his flinched sparring partner with a flying cross, then a roundhouse kick that sent rippled across Yamcha's ribs. With a deafening battle cry, Krillin drove his arms down in a double ax handle slam and sent Yamcha crashing into the martial arts arena.
Yamcha plunged straight through the tiles and drilled through the dirt all the way into the red-hot blood of the planet boiling underneath. The resulting shock wave of concentrated air pressure shot out as a booming pillar that split the clouds and roared out into open space as Earth's atmosphere proved to provide poor resistance to it. Rampant earthquakes rupturing and opening up fissures in all sides made the uneasy oceans swallow up the collapsing Papaya Island, dooming it to a watery grave.
"What the heck, Krillin!?" Yamcha crossed his arms after the two fighters stood up and returned to full awareness after their image-training session. "You went all-out on me and you completely disregarded my new, super-cool technique! It's as if I didn't exist at all!"
"You dumbass, how am I supposed to know what your technique looks like if I've never seen it before? During image training, we manifest our own opponents the way we've come to know them. We can make incredibly accurate representations of other people inside our minds if we've ever met and clashed with them, but we can't adapt techniques we've never seen before. Your old techniques and martial arts skill was all I had to go with and, quite frankly, you could use some sharpening up of that before moving on to exploring new techniques." Krillin shrugged with a proud look on his face. If he had a nose to scratch from all the exuding confidence, the bald martial artist would have surely done so, as he felt a phantom itch around that area despite lacking a nose.
"What was that!?" Yamcha ground his teeth and clenched his fists, stepping up to Krillin ready to transport their quarrel into a real-life fight. "You should feel lucky that our ship wouldn't even come close to handling our fight because my new technique would decimate you."
"If you can't use that technique when it counts–it's a stupid technique and you still need to work on it." Krillin crossed his arms with a teasing pout. "I don't care how cool it is, it needs to be reliable and effective, too. Can't you just focus on polishing and improving your old techniques for now?"
"Tsk…" Yamcha shook in frustration. "But it's such a cool-looking technique… Damn it!"
Yamcha struck a high-pose, straightening his back and leaning out of the way of Krillin's dashing punch to his middle section. The martial artist lashed back at his opponent with a back-handed smack across Krillin's cheek that threw his opponent off-guard and flinched him. Riding the wave of his success, Yamcha tripped Krillin with a sweep to the back of his legs and jumped up while spinning around with both his arms positioned like the jaws of a lashing wolf.
Rolling in mid-air, Yamcha kicked at the back of Krillin's head, smashing him into the World Martial Arts Tournament arena hard enough for Krillin's whole body to bounce off the ground with a gruesome thud. Yamcha was quick to vanish back on the ground and raise his right hand up as his left clutched around his wrist. The scarred martial artist produced a golden ball of energy around his hand that shimmered with rays of light in all directions.
"Spirit Ball!" Yamcha yelled out, flinging the energy sphere hurling toward Krillin, who rolled back on his feet and dashed back to try to outrun the sphere. Yamcha raised his two fingers up, directing the ball to take it into the air. Krillin's eyes followed the sphere, but missed Yamcha, vanishing and flickering directly behind him with a kick.
The kick to his back sent Krillin hurling straight toward the airborne Spirit Ball. The bald martial artist erected his hands, softening the collision as Yamcha had manipulated his Spirit Ball to race toward his airborne sparring partner as well. Krillin rolled backward, kicking the Spirit Ball aside, but Yamcha didn't let up, commanding the ball to keep on with the pursuit and reel right back at Krillin.
When Krillin weaved his hands together for an ax handle slam and knocked the Spirit Ball flying into the atmosphere, Yamcha relinquished control over his Spirit Ball and undid it. Confused by the sudden vanishing of his sparring partner's fighting spirit, Krillin ceased the image-training session too.
"What's the matter, Yamcha?" Krillin wondered. "You just stopped training all of a sudden…"
"It's what we spoke about earlier and that thing you did…" Yamcha brought it up.
"Yeah, I can tell your Spirit Ball's been improving during our training. I think focusing on polishing up your old techniques was the right call, Yamcha. It's not a desperation case at all, it's genuinely a good direction for your training," Krillin replied.
"Maybe, but… When you knocked my Spirit Ball away like that it… Well… It just reminded me of baseball and… I remembered that thing that guy from the Ginyu Special Squadron told me when he fought. He said that he was also a baseball ace." Yamcha said while reminiscing his time facing Jeice in the Planet Vegeta meat processing plant. "That means that somewhere outside in the galaxy they're also playing baseball, just like us back on Earth."
"Baseball?" Krillin's left eye twitched. "What about baseball?"
"Don't you get it? Baseball's an enormous deal! Even back on Earth, it's a multi-million dollar business that set me up for life in just the couple of years I've been doing it. I've helped Chayote jump-start her own company and alongside Bulma, I've supported her through the early foibles with just my pocket cash." Yamcha tried to explain it to Krillin.
"Yeah, but baseball's making you loads of Zeni. Your Earthling Zeni won't be any good out in space…" Krillin scratched his head, still looking baffled.
"Yeah, but if I sign up for a major galactic league–I'll be getting some form of space currency and heaps of it. A baseball season lasts around six to seven months. That'll leave us with plenty of time to rake in the dough for repairs. Once I sign a contract, I'll get enough money to repair our ship and we can resume our serious training!" Yamcha tried to hammer it down into Krillin's head. "We were wrong to try and invent the wheel again on how to make more money. We've always had the talent for making money by doing what we do best–play some wicked baseball!"
"I thought we were the best at martial arts…" Krillin squinted at his friend.
"True, true… That's just semantics, man." Yamcha waved it off, looking high on his own genius idea.
"But the Ultimate Dragon Balls…" Krillin still had his doubts.
"We've already found one! Maybe we'll have some more time after we repair our ship to find another one, if not, the others can do the rest. I'm sure that all of us won't run into the same problem!" Yamcha explained.
A crowd roared in a surge of synchronized sonic stupefaction as a plasma bat lashed out with an electric hum while hitting a containment sphere with a tiny star reactor rustling inside it and powering the ball of galactic baseball up. Yamcha lowered the beak of his hat as he took yet another ball out of the atmosphere and no matter how many players tried to soar in pursuit of it–they'd be too late.
Galactic baseball was very much different from Earth's in the sense that most catchers and other players could fly and therefore Yamcha actually needed to take the ball not just out of the stadium but actually out the entire station's atmosphere and into an open space that was littered with discarded space junk from vessels parking to see a game of galactic baseball as well as all the flickering containers of tiny star reactors that Yamcha had knocked it out of the station.
"And he does it again! Sometimes it feels like this man has beaten baseball itself. As if baseball was a video game and this man just beat it. This Earthling that popped out of nowhere this season just knocked yet another ball out of the arena and out of this artificial atmosphere. I'd say they don't pay our players enough to chase balls into outer space, but I'd be lying if I said that. I mean, have you even seen what they pay these guys, Broccoli?"
"I sure have. My sources from the Ghidorian Aces say that this incredible Earthling has signed an exclusive, one-season contract. It's mind-boggling! I mean, every team around would pull out their every tooth and eat their own tentacles to sign this guy up. His salary in the next season would have skyrocketed compared to the already impressive scraps he makes now as an unknown name, Jakkin. I mean, he's a universal talent too: he can either pitch or slug, depending on what his team needs and he knocks it out of the bounds each and every time!"
"Yamcha may have been an unknown when he started. Now the fans of galactic baseball across the entire universe will know Yamcha's name! I mean, here we've got a guy that pitches better than Jeice from the Red Magmas and slugs better than Salza from the Fuchsia Blades. Both unparalleled talents from the Little League at their time who never broke into the professional scene but would have shifted the entire sport had they done so. Well, here we got a guy that's even better than that!"
"You can say that again!"
Yamcha strut confidently back to his team. A Babarian ran up to him and lifted the ace up in the air, swinging him over his head in joy. Krillin vaulted over the fences and walked out into the stadium with his hands inside his pockets, looking at Yamcha with genuine joy for his friend and an application for a talent that Krillin thought of as laughable before.
"It took some getting used to. I can let loose a bit more with these guys than I can with ordinary humans. Most of these guys are as tough as some of the Frieza Army thugs, but it's nothing that the Galactic Ace Yamcha can't handle…" Yamcha smirked, looking confident as ever.
"I hope you keep that confidence when we have to fight the Artificial Humans," Krillin sighed without dropping his own smile of joy for his friend's success. "At least money definitely won't be a problem anymore."
"I'm glad you came, Krillin," Yamcha took off his cap and waved it for the audience before returning his attention back to his friend. "I thought you said that the games are boring because you always know who's going to win."
"Oh, they are. I just wanted to let you know that guy you ordered repairs from is finally finished. We can pick up where we left on our gravity training again," Krillin said.
"Great!" Yamcha pumped his fist.
"Any chance you can weasel your way out of that contract?" Krillin wondered.
"No way! If I'd try doing that, they'd start throwing fines at me and we'd not only be back to square one but we'd be in massive debt too," Yamcha brushed that suggestion off.
"Right, well… It's only a couple more months. The ship's here and we can keep up on our training anytime. We can spare that." Krillin nodded to himself as the two friends fist-bumped each other on their way out of the field.