Warning: Some violence ahead.
Kinetics
Bulma worked with feverish inspiration, drafting, designing, and building as if possessed. Whatever it was her father kept inside that capsule, it had awakened something in her, something that had always been there and just needed the right channel for release. Two days. That was how long it took for her to finish her invention: the dragon radar.
And when she activated it, she instantly caught a signal! Well, three actually. The strongest came from "Somewhere to the north," she murmured, pressing down on the buttons to adjust for scope and breadth. Except she'd reached the very limits of her radar and North was all it would show. "Hmph, that one's too far away to get. Let's see about the a closer ones... hey where'd they go?"
Blue eyes narrowed irritably as the other two signals seemed to have disappeared. It took several seconds of button mashing until she realized the first signal was all but masking them.
"Okay, filter that signal out, limit the detection range within a couple hundred kilometers from here and... bingo!" After she determined which of the two remaining signal was coming from her father's capsule, the heiress got ready and packed her things.
She was going on an adventure!
Five days ago, Bulma had declared at the breakfast table that she was putting her internship at Capsule Corporation on hold to go on a month-long Scientific Expedition. Dr. Briefs was happy to hear his little girl was planning on remaining a little girl for a little longer, so he and his wife bade her good bye and wished her the best. They were confident in their daughter's tenacity and in the fact she brought enough encapsulated supplies to last a year around the world.
He hadn't heard from her since and didn't know where she was. Which was for the best. Because it meant, when the three-eyed man asked him for the whereabouts of his daughter, Dr. Briefs could honestly say he didn't know and would give no physical indications that he was lying.
The triclops still stabbed him anyway, missing the old inventor's heart by a fraction of an inch before asking his companion, "Is he telling the truth?"
"He is," the floating, deathly-white child nodded, eyes closed.
"Where did you move the Dragon Ball?" the three-eyed man softly demanded, drawing his arm back but leaving the blade embedded in Dr. Brief's chest.
"How can you be so sure I moved it, son?" the old man patiently smiled through the pain and the thin sheen of cold sweat forming.
"I can only sense faint echoes here," the child said.
"You can sense-"
"That he can," a mustached man with dark, braided hair said. The triclops and the child stepped back, bowing to their leader who sneered at the inventor, "So you can drop the whole ignorant professor act. If you want your daughter to live to see another day, you'll tell us where you've hidden the Dragon Ball."
"There's no need to resort to drinking lizard testicles. I know a specialist that can help you with that problem," Dr. Briefs said in between coughing up blood.
"Hilarious," Mustache droned and with practiced ease, broke one of the old inventor's arms. "Tell us where the Dragon Ball is."
"D-don't know what you mean," Dr. Briefs gasped, clutching at the fire in his arm.
"Tien."
"Yes, Master Tao." The triclops broke the other arm and didn't so much as bat an eye at the agonized scream that tore through Dr. Brief's throat.
"Come now, Doctor, I already did you a kindness in killing your wife quickly and painlessly. I was willing to grant you the same death but alas, you've forced my hand." Tao pointed at the weapon currently embedded in Dr. Brief's chest. "This particular wound isn't immediately fatal with the blade acting like a cork. But if I were to pull it out, you'd have about, oh, fifteen minutes before you bleed out. If you want to live, I suggest you tell us where you've hidden the Dragon Ball."
"No," Dr. Briefs gurgled, slumping boneless to his knees with both of his arms hanging useless at his sides.
"Stubborn fool." Tao smirked, smoothly pulled out the blade and absently tossed it to Tien as a veritable torrent of blood gushed forth. "No matter, I'm sure when we find your lovely daughter, she will prove to be useful my employers. If not in mind then in body."
Dr. Briefs froze for one chilling instant at the horror of his daughter being found by these men. But even as his blood soaked into his lab coat and the numbness of blood loss spread through his body, he knew he couldn't think as a father. He closed his eyes, hating himself even as he smiled ruefully, "You have no idea what my lovely daughter is capable of."
"Master Tao!" the small, floating boy suddenly squealed.
"What?" Tao snapped.
"I can sense the Dragon Ball!"
The inventor's head snapped up with a sudden surge of adrenaline, eyes wide in disbelief, and croaked out, "H-how is that possible?"
"Well? Where is it, Chiaotzu?"
Lavender brows knitted in confusion when the one called Chiaotzu pointed towards the mountains and declared, "Somewhere over there."
"Can't you be more specific?" Tao snarled but strode out with his arms folded behind him, all the while he muttered, "Of course you can't, if you could we wouldn't have to waste our time interrogating know-nothings."
The three left without sparing Dr. Briefs, or the corpse of his wife, a backward glance.
Bulma thought back to how the rumors and legends never really described what the Dragon Balls looked like. They were usually just referred to as cursed artifacts or spheres of total destruction. Vague and mysterious and useless as fuck when you were actually looking for them. She wasn't sure what she expected a Dragon Ball would look like. Maybe it was plated with scales, I mean why call it a Dragon Ball? Maybe they had their own unique texture and were the size of a bowling ball.
It was, she discovered, orange, glossy, and about the size of a baseball.
"This is it?" she snorted, unimpressed. It didn't look like it would curse anyone who found it. And when she touched it, there was no buzz of energy at all. Maybe she just imagined it the first time around. The sight of her father so distraught must have affected her more than she thought.
At least she had the validating experience of learning that her radar worked extremely well. She'd prepared for a month-long journey in search of the nearest Dragon Ball and she found it in three days. When the trip back home took only two days, Bulma, for a moment, seriously considered continuing on her quest. Because why stop at just one Dragon Ball? The legends said that the problem was when all the balls were gathered. And if the five stars in the small sphere she had in her satchel meant anything, she could gather at least two more without worry.
She brought her air-car to a halt on a bend of mountain road overlooking the sprawling grounds of Capsule Corporation. The blue-haired teenager got out to think over her options and leaned against the side of the car. It was tempting, very tempting because she still had so much supplies. But on the other hand, she wanted to study the Dragon Ball and she would need her lab for that.
Speaking of lab, she wondered what her parents were up to. From her vantage point she'd have no trouble sneaking a look. She brought out her binoculars, impishly grinning as she checked up on her parents. When the lawn proved empty, she increased the magnification and scanned the house, nearly dropping the binoculars when she saw her parents. Her mother had a hole where her heart should be and her father was on his knees with a knife sticking out of his chest!
Then she saw them. Two men with a red insignia embroidered on an armband. There was a sense of movement from the man with long, braided dark hair before the knife practically materialized in the tall, bald one's hands. She tasted bile in the back of her throat at the sight of all that blood. The pair turned towards –holy shit, was that a little kid? What the fuck? Peering closer it looked like the kid was... pointing right... at her...
Bulma lowered the binoculars for a second, brought them back up, and saw the three had vanished.
Some primal sense of self-preservation screamed at her to get the hell out of there. She scrambled into her air-car and drove off at full-throttle, taking the shortest possible route to Capsule Corporation.
"Momma! Poppa!" she cried out, spilling out of her vehicle while tears spilled from her eyes.
Her father was barely clinging to life when she knelt by his side, he was so cold and so weak. Kami there was so much blood.
"C-capsule in my c-coat li-lining," he wheezed.
"Poppa stop talking! Save your strength!" she sobbed. "I'll bring you and momma to the hospi-!"
"'S too late. T-take capsule. C-code is your birth-day. So-sorry, broke my promise sweet-heart."
"Don't say that, Poppa! Don't leave me!"
"N-not safe here. Go East. Mount Paozu. Find Son Go-" And he was gone.
A/N: Well... that escalated quickly. In my defense, Tien and Chiaotzu were originally bad guys in the Dragon Ball manga until Master Roshi and Goku beat some sense into them.