Trunks blitzed in from the side, shooting his entire body in a straight-line flight and slamming into the side of a dinosaur's jaw, which knocked the colossal reptile out and down on its side with dazed eyes and flopped out tongue. Shaking her head from the relative excess, Videl swooped down and picked up the Dragon Ball placed inside of the dinosaur's nest alongside the reptile's eggs.
"You could've pulled your punches a little. If you killed that dinosaur, her children would've had nobody to take care of them and they could have died," Videl noted while the two were flying off. The young woman slipped the Dragon Ball into the sash and waved the orange starry marbles around, counting them down to five. Collecting the Dragon Balls was getting easier with the Destron monsters not getting in their way on each twist and turn. Normally, they were just lying around on random tough to reach locations.
Granted, some monks had placed the last one on the scales of a tall religious statue found inside of a temple of martial artists. Trunks looked all too excited to get into a wild brawl or to take part in an impromptu martial arts tournament for it, but Videl had a feeling she'd better take the reins on that one. Honoring the martial arts traditions, she beat all the monks fair and square, using her karate skills and the high-caliber martial arts taught to her by all her mentors.
Just as Vegeta was strutting to a Capsule Corps spaceship that usually took tourists on trips around space, he halted and turned around. He sensed a handful of familiar Ki signatures that made him sick and he had a feeling that they were headed this way and that his wife had something to do with their untimely appearance.
"Yo, Vegeta!" Goku saluted the King of Saiyans in his usual fashion. "Bulma said you were going off on a trip to take care of some business!"
"I am, and it's no business of yours, Kakarot! So you and your brat can turn around and high-tail it out of here!" Vegeta barked out, lashing out at the sudden appearance of Goku and Gohan on the front yard of his wife's company that he called his home during his stay on Earth.
"Aww, come on… Don't be that way, Vegeta," Goku shrugged with innocence gleaming off of his goofy face. "If you're off to fight some strong guys, we wanna come with! There's no way we're missing out on some action, especially if it involves saving the Earth or something…"
"You don't even know why I'm leaving, do you, you imbecile!?" Vegeta ground his teeth, losing all traces of cool at the oaf Earth-raised Saiyan. "You don't give a crap about the Earth! You just want to fight someone strong and get ahead of me! Well, it ain't happening, Kakarot!"
"I do care!" Goku shook his hands out in front of him in excuse. "It's just… Bulma went on talking about some Dokapon gas or whatever and I had no clue what she was talking about, but she said that they come in the shape of our old enemies, so it has to be good training!"
"Vegeta-san, please let us come with. We can be of some help to you. We even dropped by Korin Tower on our way here and snatched some Senzu," Gohan pointed at a small sash tied under his belt.
"Hmph… As if I'd ever need your revolting beans. For your information, this ship is equipped with state-of-the-art Saiyan military medical pods," Vegeta dismissed the so-called help and turned around to enter the ship and take off. Goku scratched his head with his right eyebrow raised up high. The King of Saiyans had a bad feeling in his gut when he couldn't sense those two dorks taking off on their merry way after he sent them off. They were up to something.
It was only when Vegeta interacted with the navigation system that he realized the coordinates were all scrambled and that he couldn't home in on the Destron signal. He slammed his fists down on the control panel and growled. Then, the super-elite closed his eyes and breathed in and out a few times. It was that defiant she-devil of his. Why she was so insistent that he took those two hicks to babysit them on this trip was beyond him.
With a slow and collected pace, refusing to admit defeat or that he even noticed Bulma's tampering with the navigation systems, Vegeta approached the mechanical door and opened it up. He extended the mechanical drawbridge down while trying to murder the two Earth-grown Saiyans with a mean stare. "Well, what are you two waiting for? Get in…" he grumbled.
"I knew you'd come around, Vegeta!" Goku jumped up and shot his fist out into the sky while clapping his feet like some piece of equine livestock. "If you asked me, it ain't fair that you'd be getting to hog all this fighting to yourself anyway…"
"Well, nobody's asking you about anything so shut it, Kakarot!" Vegeta oozed irritation while being left helpless and at the complete mercy of the machinations of his devious wife. Honestly, being forced to share a ride to a different part of the galaxy alongside Kakarot may have been the worst stunt she pulled on him. The fact that she thought he needed that goon to ensure his safety was disparaging. Was he not the Super Saiyan beyond all Super Saiyans? Whatever rundown loser messed with Earth by filtering his stupid gas down here would've had to answer to him and having Kakarot around only fouled Vegeta's mood, so Bulma only sealed his fate with these antics of hers.
A controlled stream of super-heated gas burst out from underneath the spaceship and sent the vessel up into a controlled hover. Then, the blazing stream intensified and shot it off into open space in a mere blink, leaving just a burning trail of spaceship fuel and rippling airwaves in the wake of the shooting spaceship. Vegeta, Goku and Gohan took off to Dark Planet, ready to put a stop to all this Destron Gas pumping and save the Earth once and for all.
The wooden turning door leading inside of a saloon trembled and let in a broad-shouldered and bald-headed martial artist with the curious feature of a closed third eye stuck to his forehead. The contrast between a dark evening and the dimly lit saloon made Tenshinhan's entry hard to see, so it wasn't until the lightning cracked behind him that Tenshinhan became illuminated to the rowdy clientele of the establishment who, upon measuring the martial artist up, decided that he wasn't someone who could've been bullied around and had them returning to their cards or their drinks.
With a slow yet methodical and unwavering step, Tenshinhan approached the bar and looked around. A boar-man with curved and fearsome tusks and strawberry-blond mane and mutton chops, wearing a black shirt paired up with denim jacket and trousers, turned to Tenshinhan with a mean scowl and forced a snort through his snout.
"What are you looking at, cue tip?" the anthropomorphic boar snorted out. To signify the immediate threat of his intentions, the giant stack of muscle, tusks and fur pulled off of the bar and approached Tenshinhan, eclipsing the seated martial artist nearly two-times despite the latter's already bulky size.
"This is a misunderstanding, sir," Tenshinhan replied after closing his eyes and turning away from the looming bruiser. "You seem to operate under the misconception that I was looking at you. In reality, I was looking for my friend who contacted me and invited me here, to this location, of all places. Now, you are standing in front of me and obstructing my view of the seats. Please, move."
The boar-man squeaked and swiped his arms to grab Tenshinhan off his seat and slam him onto the bar, then maybe drag him across and really wash his face in all the shattered glass and spilt drinks for good measure. Given the type of people this location welcomed with open arms, the three-eyed wimp was lucky that the anthropomorphic boar didn't skin him alive where he sat and wore him as a vest until bullet holes inevitably ruined the man-skin outfit.
Despite the gory details flashing through the dirty mind of the bully, his grab ended up only swiping through thin air as Tenshinhan was no longer where the boar-man last had sight of him after the swipe concluded. The baffled ruffian began scratching his head, wondering where the bald-headed chicken had gone and if he had dreamed of him because of a significant amount of whiskey pumping through his system at the moment. Based on the pale faces and dropped jaws of the rest of the cravens in this facility, that was not the case.
"Never mind," Tenshinhan's calm voice came from behind the anthropomorphic boar. Shaking in his boots and unable to wrap his head around how this dastard may have gotten behind him so quickly, the jolted bandit began slowly turning around to confirm Tenshinhan's location. "I'll move and look myself," the three-eyed martial artist finished his sentence.
"H-Hey!" the boar-man forced a whiny snort out through the snout. He wanted to taunt the oddball newbie that walked into the well-known den of rowdy blowouts grisly bouts alike and attracted the clientele of known criminals looking for what they considered a good time and wanted hoodlums looking for a place to lie low as the rundown town the bar saloon was in offered no law enforcement and little in terms of structure and administration of any kind except for that which the owners of the establishment felt necessary to provide by themselves.
"She isn't here. That's odd… Why would she go through so much trouble to invite me here and then not show up?" Tenshinhan sighed and closed his eyes. Then he turned around with a solemn look that made the boar-man's heart turn to stone and sank it to his heels. "You wouldn't know anything about what may have happened to her, would you?" he asked, looking the boar straight in the eyes. No matter how little he wanted it, when Tenshinhan's third eye opened and seemingly peered straight through the soul of the anthropomorphic hog, he squeaked and jumped up, aghast.
"M-Me? N-No… I… I don't know who you're talking about…" the muscle head shook his furry humanoid hands out in front of him with a sweaty snout and a miserable expression that invited only pity. Even if this dirtbag may have done a lot of other dirty things throughout his life, one thing Tenshinhan felt certain of was that he didn't, or rather couldn't, hurt Launch.
"Never mind. It's not like any of you could ever lay a hand on her and live to tell the tale. Forget you ever saw me," Tenshinhan grumbled, approaching the board with wanted posters that had a few ruffians throwing darts at it. With a single swing of his hand, Tenshinhan pinched the airborne darts out of thin air and then pinpointed a familiar to him picture amongst dozens of posters providing targets to the scoundrels using wanted posters for points in their dart game instead of a proper board.
With the sheet in hand, Tenshinhan approached the handful of questionable personalities playing this dart game and showed them the poster with an old picture of Launch and a massive sum of money offered for her head.
"Have any of you seen this woman? I'm looking for her…" Tenshinhan asked with a serious tone that suggested he was not to be trifled with. By then, he had shown these men and bipedal animals that he wasn't fooling around. Despite his serious attitude, all of them burst into a peal of laughter.
"Oh, really…!?" one of them yelled out, still struggling to ward off manic laughter. "So is most of the Eastern Continent! Launch is a wanted fugitive all around the world!"
"Next thing this guy's gonna say is that he's got a date with Hasky!" a bandit with a pink mohawk and futuristic glasses joked around his crew, making his fellows explode with laughter again. Realizing that he would not beat any information out of these runts, Tenshinhan was about to leave. He was a calm and collected man most of the time, but it surprised him to realize just how close he had gotten to snapping just now.
"Hey, strong and silent type, wait up!" a rhinoceros-man with a piss-colored sleeveless wife-beater cleaning out a beer glass snorted out, making Tenshinhan stop in between the open doors and turn his head around. With the rhino-man gesturing for him to approach the bar, Tenshinhan complied and sat back down on the bar stool.
"These guys are messing around. They figure you're a bounty hunter or something, so they'll never sell Launch out. She's a goddamn legend around these parts. This is her favorite bar, though sometimes she makes me wish it wasn't…" the rhino-man proved himself surprisingly talkative for someone as bulky and intimidating to look at as him. Then again, it must've taken nothing less than the likes of this guy to keep all of those outlaws in line when drinking and spending time here.
"I'm no bounty hunter. I'm her… Friend," Tenshinhan said, hesitating on the last part for a few seconds.
"Yeah, I know. She couldn't shut up about tagging you on a date. That gal gets pretty loud and open when she gets something to drink. Though by now she's spent more than enough time here for me to have seen one of her… "Episodes"…" the anthropomorphic bartender put the beer glass down and filled it up. Just as Tenshinhan prepared to refuse politely, the bartender emptied it himself as easily as it'd have taken a lesser man to merely sip from it.
"You've seen her change forms?" Tenshinhan specified.
"Yep. That's what happened now," the bartender nodded. "Funny thing is, when she changes bodies, she gets sober again. It used to get me excited and think she'll just get drunk again, but that blue-haired Launch tends to just run off screaming when she wakes up here. Must not be the right kinda gal for this place, huh?"
"Hmm… If she changed forms, then it might be vain looking for her. In her gentle form, Launch is impossible to track by her Ki signature and even in her rowdy form, her Ki is barely higher than that of most people," Tenshinhan sighed, finding the bartender surprisingly easy to spill his guts to.
"Won't lie, I've got no clue what you're yapping about…" the rhino-man shrugged. "But if it helps ya at all, this time the blue-haired Launch didn't run off. This time, she asked to make a phone call. She went all jittery and chatty with someone on the phone and asked a few guys for a ride."
"You just let the gentle Launch take off with some of these lowlifes!?" Tenshinhan's eyes shot wide open and he slammed his fist down, causing a ruckus that silenced the regular clientele for a few blinks before they returned to their ordinary bawling.
"I couldn't care less, honestly, though when one of these guys teased her and asked her for her name, all of them went silent and acted like she owned them or something. I think they all took her for the legendary Launch the bandit so I don't think any of them will try any funny business. My guess is, they took her wherever she wanted to go and offered her their bikes just so she didn't waste 'em…" the bartender shrugged before serving a random mash of alcoholic beverages to some rando so drunk that he couldn't even ask for a drink, he just snapped his fingers incessantly until the bartender sprayed just about anything that came to his mind and filled a glass, then slid it across the bar for the unfortunate soul wasting his liver away.
"I see. Could you give me the number that Launch was calling?" Tenshinhan wondered.
"Paying customers only," the bartender shook his head.
"There…" Tenshinhan slammed a handful of wrinkled bills down onto the counter. Some of his savings he made running a relatively famous martial arts dojo, known because a finalist of the World Martial Arts Tournament was running it. "And this is for letting me use your phone," Tenshinhan added while adding another Zeni bill on top.
The rhinoceros-man leaned down and pulled out a notebook, scribbling down a number on it and then gestured to where the phone in the bar was. Tenshinhan tore the paper off and approached the phone. He waited for a little while before hearing a familiar feminine voice on the other end.
"I'm guessing that I'm supposed to know you if you're calling me on my personal number, speak," Bulma demanded boldly, which made Tenshinhan freeze up for a bit before talking.
"Bulma-san, this is Tenshinhan. I'd like to find out whom this number I found out belongs to. I'm looking for Launch, she scheduled a meeting with me and then she sneezed and vanished. I just want to make sure she's okay," Tenshinhan explained his situation in as few words as he could.
"Well, well… Ten-san…" Bulma teased him, making Tenshinhan raise the tone of his voice and blush slightly even though he hadn't had a lick to drink.
"Bulma-san!" Tenshinhan barked out.
"Alright, alright, what's the number, I'll check if we've got it on the Capsule Corps registry. Given how we're a world-renowned corporation, it's unlikely that this person hasn't bought as much as a capsule from us," Bulma waved it off with elevated mood from the realization that she was helping Tenshinhan with his dating problems. Of all people, he might have been the last one that Bulma would've pegged for a romantic type.
Tenshinhan recounted the number to Bulma, sometimes having to repeat bits and pieces of it because of the clamorous mood swings, quickly escalating and even swifter to die down bar fights and trashy music blaring all over the place. If he had used a jet to get here, he'd have called Bulma from it. While Tenshinhan used to turn his nose up at the thought of using technology to travel and fly around, he now had a very clear reason it was sometimes a good idea.
"Ten-san… That number… It's from Mt. Paozu. I believe Gine-san once called us on it. It's Bardock's household," Bulma replied with a somewhat worried hint to her tone.
"Ah, I see. Bardock wouldn't let anything bad happen to Launch," Tenshinhan sighed in relief. "Though it's odd that she would call him. I wasn't aware that they were friends. I should track Bardock's Ki and confirm that Launch is okay, just in case."
"Right…" Bulma said. She had a hidden desire to ask something of Tenshinhan but, something that was very much unlike her, forced it down under. "I was glad to be of help. We should really all get together some time, all of us. Just like old times."
"If you don't hate traditional north-western cuisine and high altitudes, you're all more than welcome in my dojo," Tenshinhan smiled and nodded in gratitude, upholding manners even when Bulma couldn't really see him doing so.
At last, he was getting somewhere. Now if only Bardock could confirm that Launch was okay, Tenshinhan could return to his duties of tending to his dojo. Coming here and taking Launch up on her offer may have been a bad idea, but now that Tenshinhan took her up on it, he owed to see that no harm comes to Launch out of it, at the very least.