Project Cloud


Chapter 3 — Mandatory Rescue

Pilaf had explained to everyone the entire situation from his own perspective to Bulma and the others not even 10 seconds after putting himself in the vulnerable position of making him and his peers known to the rest of Bulma's friends.

The Red Ribbon Army weren't the only ones out on the hunt for the Dragon Balls. The blue imp and his little gang had been back on the hunt ever since they had their wish stolen from them thanks to the salacious pig, Oolong. Pilaf, Mai, and Shuu held a specially constructed case where they've kept the only other Dragon Ball that the Red Ribbon have yet to get their hands on, as inside the Dragon Ball remains undetectable by any radar.

But Roshi and the others couldn't care less about the Dragon Ball at the current moment.

Goku's life was on the line.

Launch is the first to speak up after having everything spilled flat out on the table regarding Goku's current situation. "Well what the hell are we waiting for? We have to go out and rescue the little tyke!"

"How do we even know if he isn't dead already?" Bulma asks.

She received a certain look from everyone in the room, even Pilaf and his gang. Deep down everyone knew she made a fair point, but come on, this is Goku that they were talking about here. With or without help, Goku's managed to pull himself out of many things so for him to die at the hands of normal people? Impossible, but it wasn't far-fetched to them when it came to the Red Ribbon Army. Nonetheless, pessimism wasn't admissible, so to just try to move on with the unsolved conclusion of Goku being dead was an instant no-go.

Everyone was at a total loss. They knew of the Red Ribbon Army and where they were located, yet at the same time, the very site of the organization was a maze in itself. Going there looking for Goku without at least having some idea of where he could be would be a huge handicap for them.

A flash of light flickers over Roshi's head as an idea comes to him.

"While we may not know if he's dead or not, there is definitely someone out there who has this knowledge. Not only that, but she'll be able to pinpoint his exact location wherever he's being held up at."

Such a statement of course was meant with everyone asking how through their curious eyes. So the turtle hermit explains himself.

"Uranai Baba, the all seeing crone. She has the power to divine the location of any lost object or person."

"So let's go!" Shuu yells.

Krillin matches Shuu's energy by hopping right over to him in absolute agreement. As much as Krillin seemed to be irked by Goku in the past with his happy go lucky attitude, he would be a liar caught with his pants in ablaze if he were to ever say that he didn't like the guy. He didn't just see Goku as a rival, but a friend, too, and he'd be damned if he didn't at least try to help look for him.

"Well, all of you get ready," Bulma says as she grabs for the house phone. "I'll call Yamcha and try to explain everything to him as quickly as possible."

She tosses the capsule over to Launch, who catches it in stride as she's heading out the door.

Yep.

It was definitely a good time to have bad Launch on their side.

The whole time that they're flying through the sky, Bulma is staring right at Pilaf and his peers, mainly Pilaf though.

If a person's stare was capable of torturing the soul of the person being watched, then Pilaf and his entire crew would be reduced to ashes on the spot. Bulma looked so hard as she sat behind them that Pilaf felt literal burns on the back of his head through the cushioned seat of the copter they rode on. So far during the trip he had been keeping his mouth shut. He understood the history between them and knew better than to kick a dead horse.

Bulma's spiteful gaze didn't go unnoticed, though..

"Everything all right, Bulma?" Krillin asks her.

Bulma turns her head with a forced smile, speaking through her teeth. "Why, yes of course, Krillin! Why wouldn't I be!? HMMM?"

"You look like you want to tear their heads off," Turtle observes.

"Of course I do!" Bulma takes her anger out on the innocent turtle. "If it weren't for Goku turning into a giant monkey ape, we'd all be overcooked human food for their rabid dogs or whatever ugly pets they have!"

Her sudden outburst scares the living crap out of Pilaf, who actually dares patting his butt to make sure nothing disgusting fell out from behind. Bulma had all the power due to being seated directly in the back of them as there was literally nothing stopping her from putting a bullet right between the eyes. One shot and he wouldn't even know it happened.

He's just thankful to still be alive. Had they met under any other circumstances yet again, he feared that it wouldn't turn out so good from the very start.

Twiddling his thumbs, Pilaf asks Bulma if they can just let the past be the past.

He regretted opening his mouth as soon as he did.

Bulma leans over his seat, showing all her dentures with a burning smile of seemingly pure evil. "Well, I dunno! You three wouldn't come to us unless you had a personal agenda of your own, so I'm feelin' really sketchy witcha right now."

Pilaf's blue cheeks redden a bit. "I came to you about Goku out of the kindness of my heart! Besides, we ALL know how dangerous the Red Ribbon Army is. I wouldn't wish that type of punishment on even my worst enemy."

Bulma leans back and hums sarcastically as she rubs her chin. "Well I don't know. Would I prefer to get shot dead on the spot or baked like a rotisserie chicken? HMM, HARD TO PICK!"

It was then that Pilaf really realized it was best to keep his trap shut. He didn't even know why he had to open his damn mouth in the first place.

"What's in the past is in the past," Roshi reminds Bulma. "Right now our main focus is finding Goku to bring him back safe and sound."

"The old pervert is right," Launch backs Roshi up. Removing one hand from the wheel as she's driving, she reaches into her lap and pulls out an Uzi. "And if they try something, then the dog can be put down, the blue midget can be turned pale and grey, and the pretty little lady won't have to be so pretty anymore." She looks at the three through the reflection of the glass. "Capiche?"

They all nod, showing that they very much understand exactly what she meant.


After getting the call from Bulma about Goku getting captured about the Red Ribbon Army, the look of distraught plastered on Yamcha's face brought the attention of Puar and Oolong directly to him. Both asked what was going on. He didn't hold back anything that Bulma had told him over the phone. Bulma's parents also just so happened to be in the vicinity as well as he explained everything he was told, quoting his girlfriend word by word as accurately as he possibly could.

Oolong nor Puar knew what to say about the matter, simply because they were so shocked by the news. It was bad enough that Goku would even dare trying to face the Red Ribbon Army, but being captured by them? That was death sentence 101.

A slight pause ensues from Panchy, as if she doesn't even know what or how to respond. But the words soon quickly come together, though not before that signature ditzy smile of hers.

"Oh, sure he'll be fine!" Panchy coos. "With his appetite, he'll be kicked out before ya know it."

"Heh, aint that the truth," Dr. Briefs chuckles.

Both Puar and Oolong fall over to the floor.

Yamcha wouldn't be surprised if Panchy knew very little about the Red Ribbon Army, but someone of Dr. Brief's caliber sure as hell had to have vast knowledge regarding their organization and the unrivaled manpower that came along with it. The fact that Dr. Briefs agreed with his wife on that idiotic notion in itself and went back to drinking his coffee with his smoke as he walked the animals of Capsule Corp left him completely dumbfounded.

"No wonder Bulma has lots of mental issues," was all Yamcha could mutter under his breath as they carried on with their day like normal.

Speaking of the devil, Bulma barges right through the door. Her eyes lock onto Yamcha and not even a nanosecond after making eye-contact, she tells him, "We don't have time to waste! Let's go — now!"

"Why off in such a hurry?" Panchy asks as she raises a plate of chocolate cookies and other deserts. "Lunch was just made!"

"We just don't have time for it, mom!"

For as intelligent as Bulma was, whenever she got around her parents, she acted like more of a teenager than any other female Yamcha's laid eyes on in the city ever since he moved in with her.

"The young ones are always so quick to go at it like rabbits," Dr. Briefs cackles. "Boy, I remember those days…"

Bulma's face gets as red as a tomato, her lid on the verge of just popping. Though realizing that this wasn't the time or the place to scold her parents for their casual indecency as per usual, she just grabs Yamcha by his wrist and leaves the house. Puar and Oolong are both quick to follow.

As soon as the four enter the copter just outside, Oolong screams, "Bloody mercy!"

Pilaf, Mai, and Shuu look at the three newcomers with subtle grins. They were probably the last faces they expected to see at a moment like this.

Yamcha shows just how mild-manner he wasn't raised to be as he points over to the three, asking everyone just what in the hell they are doing here.

Bulma, twiddling her thumbs, laughs nervously, explaining that she forgot to mention that some old friends were tagging along.

"Old friends!?" Oolong screeches. "OLD FRIENDS!?" He walks up right where the three are seated and points toward them like a teacher would a chalkboard in front a shitload of students. "These assholes tried to kill us!"

Launch aims her gun right for Oolong and tells the little pig to pipe down. Just based off the simple matter that if it weren't for them, then none of them would even be aware that Goku's in trouble in the first place.

Oolong, in a cold sweat, backs up into the very back of the copter where one seat was placed. "Ay, ay, all's good over here. I just hope these cronies aren't up to anything, is all."

"I promise that we aren't," Pilaf tells him.

Immediately thinking about recent events, Bulma and Yamcha both cross their arms and go "MHMMMM", totally not buying their bullshit.


Baba's place was good looking with a very old fashioned elegance. Her little palace appeared as if it was set in some dark time where witchcraft was at an all time high, infamously looked down upon. Her palace was in a desert in the middle of nowhere, making it also seem that she was hiding out from an angry mob trying to kill her for her divine gifts.

Things seemed a bit weird at first, particularly to Yamcha, whenever the guys waiting in line before them happened to be either big buff men or bald, calm, stern individuals. They were either the muscular brawny wrestling type or the agile, technical type.

Both fit the categories of fighting, so his intuition told him that there was some of that involved.

But seeing two elegant looking elderly people walking out talking about some stone that he had lost. While they didn't look like their muscles were big like the rest of the guys, it was made quite obvious that their pockets were.

So while Yamcha started to think maybe it wasn't all about fighting, hearing the screams and yells of all the men inside her palace sure as hell brought him back to his first thought. Seeing them coming out in band-aids, crutches, swollen eyes and lips, told not just Yamcha all that he needed to know, but everyone else.

Either you needed skills as a fighter to get what you wanted here.

Or that cash.

Once Roshi and the others finally enter the palace, Baba, the old lady, is there to greet them Kindly, though of course with a pinch of sass.

"My, my...aren't you all sooo young." She rolls her eyes at Roshi just as she trails off the last word of the sentence.

Roshi clears his throat fixes his shades to non-verbally communicate that he most definitely caught that.

"We need help finding a friend," Bulma says as she steps up to Baba.

"That's a simple task," Baba answers. "I trust that you have 10 million zeni?"

The mouths of Pilaf, Mai, and Shuu drop to the floor. Despite their own luxuries, they weren't even sure they managed to come across just a fourth of that amount of money, even with all the crazy stunts that they've pulled off over the years.

"Bulma is rich," Oolong points out. "Heck, she should have twice that much on her allowance."

"I'm not that spoiled!"

Bulma then tells Baba that she doesn't have the money right on her as of this moment but promises that she can pay her after. Bulma went as far as clapping her hands together and getting on her knees just so that Baba could find the goodness within her heart to accept this seemingly untrustworthy deal.

There were many times where Bulma would punch Goku, knock him upside the head, or even shoot at him because of his natural ignorance and stupidity growing up by himself in the country with very little to no human contact over the years. But on the flip side, he was still a very sweet boy and charismatic, albeit in his own odd little way. She looked at Goku like a big sister, so for her to plead Baba to help them really showed just how much Bulma loved the kid.

But Bulma was begging for virtually nothing. Baba, being able to also see into the future, was already well aware that Bulma would pay her back in some way or another. She agrees to do so without a moment's hesitation.

Just as she hops off her floating crystal ball to begin the divine search, she is interrupted by someone from afar.

"I would also love to know the whereabouts of my grandson."

22 eyes are placed onto a man who could rival Roshi in age, it would seem. Though the halo hovering over his head suggested that he wasn't aging any longer.

It didn't take long for Roshi and the others to click together who this person was — especially Roshi. The turtle hermit is the first one to call out his name - Yamcha being a close second.

"It's the greatest martial artist to ever live!" Yamcha fangirls.

"Greatest dead martial artist," Roshi corrects him, throwing a bit of friendly shade over to his former pupil.

Under any other circumstance, Gohan would have laughed at the harmless banter, but this wasn't the time for jokes now. With his hands behind his back, he approaches his master cooly, though the aura surrounding his soul is very intense and Roshi felt it all about in the air. Gohan greets his former master with a bow almost even with Roshi's.

"While I don't know exactly what's going on, I do have an understanding that it's not good. I can feel it and I, too, wish to seek out answers."

Baba, who's waving her hands around the magic ball, turns over and tells them to pay attention so that they can find out.


The best way to tell if someone spent a lot of their time on a computer doing a lot of research was by looking at them type.

Gero was one of the people who could look directly at the screen as his fingers moved precisely wherever he wanted them to, clicking the exact numbers or letters that he desired. Hell, he could do it with his eyes closed and not have a single error, or even watch a television show simultaneously as he worked with no problem.

He did a lot of programming when it came to his work.

Especially his work regarding cyborgs and androids and the whole nine yards of projects that he has going on.

Unlike when Son Goku was first brought in, strapped down on his back, the kid is now strapped to the same chair, yet this time lying directly on his stomach, completely knocked out. He was snoring like a baby so it was quite evident that Gero didn't have to resort to any shock treatment to get him to sleep. Instead, he had been giving the kid small doses of anesthesia so that his procedures could go on interrupted and without any pushback.

The amount that Gero had been giving Goku for the past three days would be more than enough to kill a horse, yet here he was, still breathing and living. It was a definite testament to how durable this kid's body was, which was just something else Gero saw as a blessing from the All Mighty Kami himself.

Black was having a hard time looking at the kid, much more of a hard time getting into detail about it whenever he reported to Commander Red because of how much the procedures had been grossing him out. It'd seem quite paradoxical given that Black has taken his fair share of lives, doing many atrocities, but to just treat the body like a lab rat wasn't his thing and it showed by the disgusted faces he made whenever Gero or the robots he used got their hands dirty.

He couldn't dare to look at Goku's back being cut wide open and held by steel arms with robotic machines constantly looking over and implanting new elements inside the boy's body.

And he thought that going into the back of the head was bad.

So far, this one took the cake.

"Unbelievable…!" Gero mutters, just loud enough to catch Black's attention. The second-in-command removes his back from the wall in a corner of the laboratory and places down his cup of coffee to walk closer to Gero, at least wanting to understand his science a little bit. "The boy's physiological development is so synonymous to that of a human, yet at the same time...so divergent."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Black asks him.

"Let's find out…"

Gero's eyes move from his computer for a split second to pick up a little glass tube with some blood in it. By opening the tube and pouring it into a little hole that ejected out the computer like a disc, said hole shut and the blood tests were being run.

All of what was popping up in the computer showed up as N/A, which stunned the hell out of Gero as Black only did as much as raise an eyebrow in confusion.

"I have literally every type of blood in my computer's database, even the ones that the regular person doesn't know anything about!"

Like a hormonal teenager about to have his first kiss, Gero begins typing on the computer like an excited lad. Going back over the cellular structure in Goku's body, he makes a mental note of it being similar in function to a regular person on Earth, yet the design being way different.

He clicks a few more and types in a few more words.

All of it is just too much for Black to actually keep up with, but he looks on as if he's on the same pace as the doctor.

"He doesn't even possess the same amount of chromosomes as any Earthling is supposed to!" Gero yells in a mixture of excitement and shock.

"Now I'm not the biggest genius -"

"You're not a genius at all," Gero cuts him off honestly.

"True," Black agrees, "but I'm educated enough to know that not having a certain amount of chromosomes isn't normal."

Gero leans back in his chair and rests his hands behind his thick, grey hair. Chuckling, he asks Black if he knows what this means.

Black shrugs and asks, "What?"


"HE'S AN ALIEN!?"

Everyone but Gohan and Baba seemed to be shocked by this very fact of Son Goku potentially being a live extraterrestrial creature of a different planet.

"I've always had a feeling he was something very different than all of us, but I never found myself with a definite answer," Gohan explains himself.

"That sure hell explains a lot, then!" Pilaf exclaims.

"Like why he can transform into a giant monkey ape," Mai adds.

"Ditto," Gohan says. "See, master, I never told you the entire story. All I ever told you was that I found a young child in the woods and took him in as my own. Sure, he was a little rowdy before he bumped his head but his attitude wasn't something I couldn't fix on my own, ya know?"

"Right," Roshi nods his head.

"What I didn't tell you was that I found him coming from a little ship he had landed in nearby. He wore these weird clothes, which I hid away a long time ago. Whenever I first approached him nine years ago, the boy's first instinct was to attack me. He caught me off guard and actually got a few good licks on me. Had I been any normal joe, I'd be -"

"Dead," Yamcha finishes for him.

"Precisely so," Gohan clears his throat. The very thought of a mere child killing a full grown adult male or female effortlessly by sheer brute strength alone wasn't a thought that he very much found comforting.

"If Son Goku is an alien, which would explain his talents, then this could only make matters worse," Bulma bites her lip. "If they successfully experiment Son Goku into one of their monstrous creations, then we can kiss normal world good-bye forever."

"Good point," Baba comments.

"This is why we have to go save him," Gohan reminds everyone.

"Are you sure you'll be able to get the task done in time?" Baba asks Gohan. "You can only spend a total of 24 hours on Earth and you've already spent more than half that time with me."

With a tightened fist, Gohan sternly reassured Baba that he would make it in time. Any person with a lack of comprehension would have mistook Son Gohan's slightly heightened and lower pitched voice as a sign of disrespect, but he meant it in the most respectful way possible and everyone there was aware of this.

To picture themselves in his shoes, having someone they were to take in and care for but subjugated to a guinea pig would be the worst kind of pain, especially if they weren't able to do anything about it. Gohan is dead and is on borrowed time so this may be the last time he gets to see his grandson again for years.

He had to make it count.

Launch checked the magazine on her Uzi prior to placing it back in and cocking her weapon. "Let's get this show on the road, then."

Roshi walked a bit closer to Gohan and asked the elder if he was truly ready for this. He knew better than to doubt Son Gohan's discipline when it came to focus, but this was an entirely different level of dilemma here. As far as he knew, Gohan never went through anything like this before, so the father-son relationship dynamic kind of took control when he asked this question.

"I assure you that I won't lose focus, Muten Roshi. If it boils down to it being the deciding factor between my grandson getting to live a fulfilling life or not, I WILL NOT lose focus. That's not a promise — it's my word."

There was a tension with Roshi and Gohan, though nothing negative at all. The weight of the matter was setting heavily upon them and though things initially seemed hopeless, the fact that they had two elite caliber Martial Artists on their side with extra help meant that their chances of coming out successful had increased ten-fold.

They had to save Son Goku.


Thanks WhamBam for the guest review. I am glad that you believe me to be writing Gero in-character. It's something I stress out on a lot and I hope I continue to not fail you. Hope you've liked this chapter as well. Next will come soon!