Chapter 3: Yajirobe's Niece

It's been a day since I departed from the abandoned West City. I ran all night and walked all day. According to the dragon radar I was about a third of the way to the four star dragon ball. I've been keeping the one star ball in my shirt, resting on my belt. The radar stayed clutched in my hand. I was right on the edge of the mountain range. It was going to get dark in about three hours and I was hungry. I was told that my Grandpa Goku had quite the appetite, so I'm glad I didn't inherit that or else I'd be starving more than I was.

I walked around a mountain and on the other side saw a house. It wasn't made of wood or anything and didn't look very aged, so I figured that it must have been produced by a capsule. I was surprised; since Capsule Corp got destroyed you couldn't find a whole lot of capsule-produced houses very often anymore. I ran up to it and knocked on the door. No answer. I opened the door and walked in. It was slightly dark inside, only lit up by the sunlight coming in through the windows. The light switch was right by the door. I flipped it on and a couple lights lit up the room. Only a couple, though. Some lights only lit up half way, while others didn't even light up at all, so overall the room was dimly lit, but lit up well enough to see. It looks like someone's first apartment. Just two rooms: a bathroom and a living room/ kitchen. There was an old brown couch with a fairly clean blanket and an old television set on the other side of the room. The kitchen had a small square table with two chairs and a refrigerator. There wasn't an oven or stove. I guess the former owner of this house liked to cook food using a fire. The entire house had a sort of musty odor, but I wasn't bothered too much by this. I opened the refrigerator and searched it. There was preserved meat—looked like a little piece of steak and some fish, along with some apples with a couple brown spots on them.

I cooked up both the steak and the fish with a fire that I created in about five minutes using the stick-drilling technique. Once I finished eating those I ate two apples, carefully eating around the brown spots. Following that I decided to rest my eyes for a couple minutes on the old couch before resuming my walk, but I ended up falling asleep altogether.

The next I woke up I found myself tied to a chair. I looked up to find a girl about my age holding a sword to my neck. She had long brown hair and was wearing a gray t-shirt underneath a red and black striped flannel with black sweatpants and sneakers.

"Who are you?" she asked in a serious tone.

"My name is Kakarot. What's yours?" I asked in a somewhat playful way.

"Karina."

"And I'm guessing this is your house, correct?" I asked.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry. It's just that by the looks of it, inside and out, it looked like nobody lived here. I'm just passing by. I saw your house, and I was hungry. Like I said it looked like no one lived here so I kinda just let myself in. My greatest apologies," I explained. Karina stood there for a minute looking at me.

She raised her sword in the air and swung down.

To my surprise she didn't cut me. She cut the rope that restrained me to the chair. I got up and stretched.

"And for the record I could've gotten out of that anytime I wanted," I told told her. She smiled and put her sword back in its scabbard.

"So what's your story, Kakarot? Actually start off with your name. What kind of name is that?" she asked.

"It's a Saiyan name. Have you ever heard of the Saiyans?" I asked her. She nodded. "Well actually I'm named after the greatest Saiyan that ever existed, also known as the earth's greatest defender, my Grandpa Goku. His Saiyan name was Kakarot, and his earth name was Goku, so Kakarot's what my parents named me, and I don't know if you noticed, but I have the tiniest bit of Saiyan in me," I say, pointing to my tail.

"Goku. I've heard that name before. People have always told me that he was just a story, but I have proof that it's not just a story. This sword here was passed down through many generations from my Great Uncle Yajirobe," she said, handing me the sword. It had weight to it. The blade was as sharp as the day it had been made it seems. The handle was black with orange diamonds on it, and the grip was excellent.

"Yeah, I remember Yajirobe. He helped aid my Grandpa as a kid when he had to defeat the demon King Piccolo," I said, "so you're his neice, huh? That's neat. I'm so glad that there's someone out there that doesn't think that the stories are just myths. Speaking of which, I also have an item that proves that they're not just myths," I take out the dragon ball and hand it to her.

"Is this a dragon ball?" she asked. I nodded, "this is beautiful. To be honest, these dragon balls were the only part about the stories that I didn't believe. So once you gather all seven of them, you're able to summon a dragon and make any wish you want?"

"That's how the stories go. Once my grandpa left the earth the dragon balls disappeared with him. The dragon told everyone that the dragon balls would return once society was able to live without them. That's why they were created: so that society never had to use them, and was only to be used as a last resort, but people began to use it for world domination. They were all stopped by my grandpa, though. I don't know when they came back, I just know that they're back. I don't even know one hundred percent if it works. I've never tried it before. Sure hope it does, though," I said.

"How'd you find it?" she asked.

"With this," I said as I held out the pocket watch-sized radar, "It's a dragon radar. It was created by Capsule Corp in order to find the dragon balls with ease."

"How does it work?"

"It detects the energy that's produced by the dragon balls and displays it with little yellow dots on this screen. I'm actually headed towards that dragon ball right there. See that yellow dot with the four beside it? That means it's the four star ball I'm after," I say as I point to the screen.

"You're running there? That must take days," she said, "You know, I have a capsule with a motorcycle in it. I can give you a ride tomorrow morning and we'd get there before the afternoon."

"That would be fantastic. Thank you," I said, smiling. This was the first friend I've made so far this journey.

"Also, if you don't mind me asking, what are you wishing for?" she asked.

"I'm going to wish my family back to life. Remember that massive earthquake we had a while ago? Well it destroyed my house and I'm the only survivor, so I want to wish my parents and brother and sister back to life," I explained.

"That's sweet. You have a good heart, Kakarot," she said.

"Thank you."

"Hey, speaking of that earthquake, did you feel a strong power level when it hit?"