"Somebody, help!" Gohan yelled out after bursting back home with his grandmother in his hands. The sudden commotion made both the Ox-King and Chi-Chi run out to the kitchen and meet the frightened boy. Ox-King took the panting, semi-conscious Gine from little Gohan's hands while Chi-Chi fell down to examine her son.
"What happened, Gohan-chan? Are you hurt?" Chi-Chi said in a worried tone as he turned her boy around to inspect him for injuries, felt his temperature, and examine him for any signs of malady before Gohan could even muster up his answer.
"No. It's grandma. Something's wrong, she looked tired for a while and then she just collapsed…" Gohan replied.
"Oh, boy… She's burning up…" Ox-King scratched her back of his head, tilting his large, horned helmet to the right side awkwardly. This result required the large man to flip the Saiyan woman over his shoulder so he could fix his head accessory and see straight.
"She must be down with something. What could it be? Food poisoning?" Chi-Chi wondered, pressing her knuckles to her hips with a perturbed face. "Gohan-chan seems okay, if this is a virus of some sort, it may be too early for him to go down with it yet."
"I'm going to lay her down on the bed, someone should tell Bardock about it." Ox-King pointed out.
"Gohan-chan, your grandfather must be training with Goku-sa, as usual. I'm can't go talk to him myself, I need to prepare something to knock your grandma's temperature down a peg or two, she'll also want some warm water when she snaps out of this. Someone needs to stay with her and see if she needs anything." Chi-Chi placed her hand on Gohan's head after leaning down to his level.
"Okay, maybe I should drop by the Korin Tower for some Senzu? They can cure injuries, maybe they can cure illnesses too?" Gohan wondered.
"That's a brilliant idea, Gohan-chan!" Chi-Chi gasped. "But you shouldn't bother yourself with that. Let's let your father or grandfather take care of that. If this is contagious, you may have gotten it too. I've never seen a disease quite like this, so I won't risk my boy falling out of the sky and passing out all by himself over some wasteland. If your Ki drops to a dangerous low, we may not find you anymore. I want you within an arm's reach where I can see if the sickness hasn't caught on."
"Right!" Gohan nodded. "I'll go tell dad and grandpa then!"
"They shouldn't be far. Those two are always duking it out somewhere around Mt. Paozu…" Ox-King pointed out while stuffing himself through the doorway leading into the guestroom of the Son Family Home with Gine still in his hands.
"This could be bad… I've got a bad feeling about this…" Chi-Chi shook her head as her nose sunk down to the ground and her eyes became moist without there being anything that the woman could do to help herself.
"Don't worry, Gine is Goku's mother, right? She'll kick that disease's butt like nobody's business. Plus, doesn't that friend of Bulma's, Dr. Puri, or whatever, own a company of innovative medical technology? We can just ask her to place Gine in one of her facilities and treat her to the best medical care in the world." Ox-King tried to soothe his daughter's worries. Despite the best of intentions, the man's words just splashed at the wall of despair and just ran trickling down on it.
"W-What!? Gine is sick!?" Bardock froze in terror, his fist just a few inches short of Goku's face while Gohan's father stopped himself from landing some mean blows on his old man too. "Where is she?"
"She's back home. Mother is taking care of her for now. We've spoken about one of us going to Korin's Temple to get some Senzu. Since they treat injuries, maybe they should be able to treat sicknesses too?" Gohan mumbled out, prodding his two fingers, feeling both embarrassed by making wild theories like this when his grandmother's life was at stake and worried that something bad might happen.
"I see, that's Gohan for you, always thinking those things through…" Goku snickered, patting Gohan's head. "Sounds like an amazing idea. You should be with her, dad. I'm gonna go fly up to Korin's Tower in no time. I'll probably even stretch my Super Saiyan form for the first time in a while to make it that much faster…"
"No. You two go back home. It's unlikely that some Earthling sniffles can kill us pureblooded Saiyans as our immune systems are some of the most powerful in the universe. Though given how that bastard Frieza has already killed Gine once, we can't take any chances. It's my responsibility as her husband to do it. I won't let anyone else volunteer!" Bardock clenched his fist, seething in seriousness, unlike anything that Gohan had seen his grandfather display before. Even in his quirky lumberjack shirt, the man looked like he could've brought trouble with that expression and determined look on his face.
"Okay, don't take too long, dad." Goku nodded. "Honestly, we'll probably just get in your mother's way, Gohan, but I want to be by mother's side right now and I know you do too."
Gohan nodded. The three split up with Goku and Gohan taking off toward the Son Family Home and Bardock blasting off to the whole other side of the world, all across the planet on the westmost part of the continent.
"Well, it took you a while…" Bulma pressed her knuckles to her hips. "The meeting's about to start and I thought you knew people rarely treat security personnel as integral participants to business meetings so usually people won't tolerate you being late, Chayote."
"Sorry, there was an emergency. Someone smashed the building's foundation and fried the electronics on the lower part of the building. There was no way to enter it from down there." Chayote bowed slightly in apology.
"I see…" Bulma sighed, knowing full-well what that was all about from the few snippets that Chayote relayed to her. "So that was what all that shaking was all about. I hope I don't need to reiterate to you again just how immensely important this meeting is to us, right? This is it. This is the big fight for us. Like when all of you faced off against Frieza, this is the corporate equivalent of that. I want you to act like it, okay?"
Chayote nodded her head vigorously.
"Alright, they're waiting for us. At least I can make it feel like we're making a power play here by making them wait…" Bulma sighed, sensing trouble somewhere deep in her gut.
"Ah, Bulma and the head of Chayote Security, isn't it?" Dr. Puri stood up from her seat at the eastern side of the meeting table to greet the entering party of Capsule Corps. She had two cohorts beside her, standing in solemn positions, just like they were security of her own. Though, strangely enough, Chayote didn't get a whiff of Ki from them, not even that which she'd get from an ordinary human. "Normally it would seem so strange that the head of security accompanies her client to a meeting all by herself, though, given how it's you, I'm sure that Bulma-senpai feels like the most well-guarded woman on the planet right now, rightfully so…"
"Really? What about you? You've brought just two people to protect you? You're one of the most influential people in business and your medical science department outshines even that of our own." Bulma let a light jab back in Dr. Puri's direction. Judging from the looks of it, every time that Dr. Puri referred to Bulma as "senpai", it irked the woman as if she had slid a knife under her skin and peeled it off as far as it went, exposing all the nerves underneath to the elements.
"Oh, Bulma-senpai, don't be silly. These aren't my guards. I've got nothing to fear from the woman that brought me up and introduced me to the corporate world, with all due respect. These are merely some protegees of my own. Hopefully, they'll split from under my wing and establish companies of their own soon enough, meet Lapis and Lazuli, you two." Dr. Puri stood up and pointed at her two companions standing behind her quietly, though donning that smug expression as if they knew everything about a situation while they considered those on the other side of the table to know nothing and be all-around harmless.
"Good day, Bulma-san, Chayote-san," Lazuli, a slender and gorgeous young woman, taller than average though having that signature complexion of a scientist that spent her entire days inside of a lab with shoulder-long silver hair parting over her left temple nodded her head submissively. Despite her formal address, the young woman kept her hands inside the pockets of her bubblegum-colored suit.
"Nice to meet you guys, looking forward to working with you," Lapis, a young man looking like a spitting image of Lazuli with just a slight advantage in height over her straight, shoulder-length black hair parting over his forehead pulled his hand out of his fern-colored suit to wave it over his head. His lively action mucked up his marmalade-colored tie, prompting the young adult to slip it back under his suit and correct it.
"They're a bit young, aren't they?" Bulma observed nonchalantly while setting up documents for the meeting.
"True, but their youth is also a priceless asset to Puri & Co. Sometimes it's as if they can sustain limitless crunch periods. That's the fire of youth for you, I suppose…" Dr. Puri shrugged. "In any case, haven't you started far younger than these two, Bulma-senpai?"
"I suppose I did." Bulma cleared her throat before slamming her hand on the pile of documents she had set up. "What about we begin this meeting then?"
"I'm sorry, Krillin, it's just that I'm so tough that I don't see how anything on this Earth could kill me anymore…" Yamcha shrugged with a goofy look on his face. "Any of us, really, for that matter. I mean it took the toughest guy in the entire universe to even beat us at this point and Goku showed that guy what's what, didn't he?"
"Aww, come on, Yamcha, you're loaded with cash and fame, why can't you just help an old friend out and buy some insurance, for old times' sake?" Krillin pinched his fingers just to show how tiny the favor that he asked of Yamcha would be for him, even though it would likely salvage Krillin's job. "Plus, can't you see how incredibly useful life insurance is to someone who fights and dies and can get brought back to life?"
"Sorry, Krillin. It's just that we don't really have anybody to fight anymore. Those days are over, we've all found ourselves something better to do. Even Tenshinhan opened up a martial arts school and left his old fighting days behind, and he was the most devoted out of us all. Say, Spinelette, you wouldn't really want to buy any life insurance from my friend here, would you?" Yamcha wondered.
"Yamcha-kuuun…" Spinelette whined while smothering herself to her date, trying to drag him away from this boring conversation to somewhere where they could indulge themselves in more of the life's sophisticated pleasures only available to one of the greatest living athletes and his girlfriend.
"No can do, Krillin, just look at it that way–I'm kind of doing you a favor by costing you your job. You should really just use your strength for way cooler things than just selling insurance. Just… Maybe stay out of baseball, that's kind of my thing. There's always soccer and basketball though…" Yamcha shrugged, chuckling with a faked, goofy laugh while he tried excusing himself from Krillin's pitch that was feeling miserable at this point.
"I'm way too short for basketball…" Krillin smacked his forehead and shook his head, taking off his Panama hat while he tried to wrap his mind around the fact that he'd be unemployed for the first time in years. Just as the bald insurance sales agent breathed some of his determination into his lungs and gazed up to Yamcha, about to declare that he won't go back to living in Kame House with Muten Roshi and that he'll sell that insurance at any cost, he realized Yamcha was gazing up at the sky.
"What the heck is that?" the successful oaf muttered.
"So beautiful… Sparkly…" Spinelette cheered, pumping her fist. More and more people began turning their eyes up to look at the sky, which prompted Krillin to turn around and look up as well. A field of static energy crackled with azure electricity over everyone's heads. Instead of the lightning striking with pure bolts, racing down to the ground, they all resonated across the skyline from the edges of the city toward a singular point.
"That's no ordinary thunderstorm…" Krillin muttered. "The skies are completely clear."
The singularity point to which the resonating electricity all flowed toward released a powerful humming noise that shattered windows in the surrounding block. Even the buildings of the plaza where the Capsule Corps was meeting Puri & Co shook inside their frames again. The resonance began sending wild shock waves before the colliding electrical forces boomed in a spherical discharge and left a pill-like rocket ship floating in the air with jets attached to its sides and five pointy legs sticking out of its sides.
"A spaceship?" Yamcha gasped. For a moment there he wondered if the peaceful life that has been treating him so well was at threat here but, after being able to sense just a single Ki signature inside, he calmed down somewhat.
"It didn't travel like any spaceship I've seen. It's like it just transported here from somewhere else instead of flying…" Krillin became more serious, clenching his fists by his sides as if preparing for a brawl.
"Huh? Look at that symbol there." Yamcha pointed at the floating, pill-shaped rocket ship. "That says Model No. "1 Capsule Corps", right?"
"It does!" Krillin gasped. "B-But how can that be? Bulma never told me about anything like this!"
"Maybe it's one of her newer models. She's been killing it at the space tourism business, after all, it's put the Capsule Corps ahead of the competition in the market once again." Yamcha crossed his arms, calming down and moving past that matter. "That's nothing unusual, it's just one of her tourist vessels returned for a resupply and refueling back to its hometown–West City."
"Is it?" Krillin scratched his head after taking his hat off. "How come there's only one Ki signature inside of it? It doesn't look too large either. There's no way that Bulma could make any money by taking a single person all the way across the universe in such a new model. Bulma's a lot of things but a wasteful businesswoman she is not."
"You're worrying too much…" Yamcha waved his hand, gently trying to lead Spinelette alongside him further toward the city where they could have some proper date-related activities. "What, do you think Frieza has finally shown up after all those years? In a Capsule Corps spaceship no less?"
"Look, it's setting down." Spinelette pointed at the rocket ship as it descended slowly until its pointy legs let a comfortable thud and amortized its landing nice and proper. The ship had landed a fair distance away, all the way in the middle of a nearby part, so it was tough to make many of the details out of it.
The glass dome over the rocket ship slid off, revealing a single man that didn't look like either Frieza or Vegeta, which did soothe Krillin a little. Still, this peculiar youth with a well-honed body and a blue Capsule Corps jacket wasn't someone whom anyone from the Dragon Team knew, and he felt far too powerful to have remained a mystery for so long. The enigmatic youth leaped out from his rocket ship in a single bound, his long, straight, lavender-colored hair reaching farther down his shoulders ruffled in the air, revealing a few black patches across the young man's face where his hair normally covered it up. Something resembling half of a mask with a red magenta-colored vizor where the youth's right eye would have been.
Without saying a word or acknowledging anyone around him, marveling at the young man's weathered yet daunting appearance from the sidelines or fleeing out from his way in terror, the man began a methodical stroll toward the plaza skyscraper. It was only now when this curious traveler had shown himself in a full display that Krillin and Yamcha noticed the fact that he had a massive sword sheathed behind his back and a hefty firearm hanging by his side with a chunky handle, a large belt for shells that seemed to be filled with innovative, prismatic capsules and a short, hole-ridden barrel the thickness of a human arm. The chunky, yet short, gun dangled on the man's side as he approached his destination.
"Whoa there, buddy." Krillin extended his hands. "You should wait up a little. The place is closed, actually. A friend of ours messed up the control panel, and the place is a bit locked down at the moment, sorry."
"Move out of my way if you want to live." The young man muttered in an intimidating tone that scolded Krillin off of his way like hot water.
"Hey, that's not very nice!" Yamcha crossed his arms over his chest. "Krillin's just looking out for you, man. You waltz into that building with packing all that heat and our gal's Chayote's gonna send you packing the way you came. She's in charge of security here, you know…"
The man approached the door and tried interacting with the panel, but the out-of-order message prompt didn't feel merciful to this person just because he was so mysterious and frightening. The man lowered his hand; it twitched once. With a silver-colored flash, an X-shaped slash decorated the steel door while it crumbled and set off a deafening alarm.
"Wait up now!" Krillin yelled out. "Who are you, why are you here, and why are you just wrecking the building willy-nilly?"
Ignoring the baldy's questions completely, the man ducked and weaved around the advances of Chayote Security agents and knocked them out with little care for their lives, snapping the backs and necks of those he struck, moving in a blink, impossible to perceive to the vision of an ordinary human, punching right through the final agent's chest and pulling his blood-soaked forearm out as he advanced toward the elevator.
"Krillin, those were Chayote's men. This guy's clearly trouble!" Yamcha ground his teeth.
"Yeah…" Krillin nodded. "I wish I had bought some of my own insurance though, just in case…" he lamented before the two charged right at the traveler who moved with lagged, mechanical and precise motions as he removed the large shotgun from his hip and channeled a short-range Ki blast through its barrel, blasting the elevator shaft wide open and devastating it thoroughly before he noticed Krillin and Yamcha challenging him.
Whoever this enigmatic man from the pill-shaped rocket ship was, and whatever his business with Capsule Corps was, he was about to meet the first and some of the strongest lines of Earth's defense.