Climbing the Sacred Tower! Commander Red Remembers!
Cyril Rosewood was sitting in a restaurant where he wouldn't normally be allowed but his father had been an oil baron so he'd inherited a lot of money. Combined that with the fortune he'd made from alternative energy sources like solar power and he could throw a lot of money to eat wherever he damn well pleased.
Despite that, he still felt a certain… emptiness. He needed to do something with his life. He wanted to write his name large across the wall of history. But he didn't know how. He was not a thinker, he paid thinkers. He did not have the body to be a great warrior. He had the intellect and the drive to be a king but no one would take him seriously with his condition.
So he had been miserably pushing a porterhouse around on a plate and having an existential crisis. That was when he came into his life.
He'd been a tall man. That alone had bothered him but the son was a giant. That infuriated him. They both had red hair, even if the son had that ridiculous mohawk. That put him at some small level of ease. Finding people like him even in the smallest ways was always a comfort.
"Adrian, see that we are not disturbed," the man had said as he sat down at the table of the man who was not yet Commander Red.
"Yes, Father," the boy had said before walking off. The man turned his attention back to Red.
"My name is Archimedes Gero," the man said as if that were supposed to mean anything. "You must be Cyril Rosewood." Gero leaned forward on the table and Rosewood had leaned away.
"I must be," Cyril had said as he sipped his glass of merlot, "So what the hell is it to you?" Gero had smiled then. It was a smile that looked straight into his bones.
"Do you know what I see when I look at you, Mr. Rosewood? It's not what you're thinking. A man such as myself looks beyond petty physical attributes. What I see is a man in desperate search of a destiny. A man who knows he is destined for greatness but does not know what that greatness might be." He sat back in his chair and folded his hands one over the other. "Cyril, how would you like to be the man who saves the human race?" Cyril had stopped and blinked at that. He rubbed his jaw and thought. "Cyril Rosewood: Savior of Humanity". It wasn't bad.
"Mr. Gero," Cyril had said as he produced a cigar from his breast pocket, "You had my curiosity," he put the cigar in his mouth and lit it, "But now you have my attention." He took a few puffs as Gero continued to speak.
"Yes, thank you. But it's Doctor Gero," he corrected. Cyril had shrugged at that and Gero had seemed irritated but pressed on. "Now I don't mean to be metaphorical when I say that you would save the human race. It is not a threat such as religious intolerance or famine or pestilence or war. No, the true threat to humanity…" he leaned forward again and gave a conspiratorial whisper, "Is aliens." Even now a part of Commander Red feels like he should have cut and run right there. He might have if Gero didn't have evidence. "I'm not some crackpot trying to take advantage of your vast fortune, Mr. Rosewood," Gero had assured him, "I have evidence." From seemingly nowhere, Gero had produced a folder and opened its contents in front of him. Cyril sifted through documents, star charts, eyewitness accounts, and photographs.
"What exactly am I looking at here?" he asked suspiciously as he tapped his finger against a particular photograph. It was a picture of a mountain with some… thing perched on top of it. It was oblong in nature with four spires pointing out from the front, one in the back, and four coming out of the bottom. It looked like some sort of insect.
"This is a satellite image I took several months ago of what could only be an alien spacecraft," Gero explained. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and gestured to certain areas of the craft. "Based on the erosion of the mountain itself the the growth of moss and calcification, I would wager that this craft landed on Earth over half a millennium ago." He pulled out another photograph and laid it on top of the first. This one was of a large crater somewhere out in the wilderness. There was an object in the crater but it was too small to make out the specifics of. "This satellite photograph was taken a little more than a decade ago. It is of a smaller craft, obviously." He took the documents and tucked them back into the folder as he spoke, "I know this is a lot of information to take in so suddenly so allow me to explain," he folded his hands and his expression was deadly serious. "At the absolute best, aliens have been living among the human race for nearly a thousand years, shaping our planet's history and culture to suit their needs. Ten years ago, they called for some sort of scout to inspect the planet. It may not be very long at all before this world is crawling with an alien menace that we have been psychologically, emotionally, and sociologically engineered to be incapable of dealing with. At the worst?" Gero took in a deep breath and paused for effect, "At the worst, the first half of that statement is still true but that scout isn't of their species. It's of an enemy. Before we know what to do, the Earth could very well become the battlefield of a cosmic war the likes of which we could not possibly imagine." When this conversation had started, Cyril had been sure the man was insane. Now he was drenched in a cold sweat and his hands were trembling as he reached for a handkerchief to wipe the sweat away.
"W-what do we…" he started to say before he cleared his throat. He pounded a fist on the table and tried to put some authority back in his voice, "We've got to do something, damn it!" he said boldly. "What's your plan, Archimedes? Whatever it is, I'll pool all my resources into it! We can save humanity!" Gero smiled and looked visibly relieved.
"I knew I could count on a man of your principles, Cyril. I've tried talking to everyone. I was even granted an audience with the King himself! But they all laughed at me, the simpletons…" his face darkened and his hands balled into fists. Then his rage vanished as quickly as it came and he continued, "You, Cyril, you are a man of conviction! A man of destiny!" He leaned forward with a glint in his eyes. "Here is what we will do."
Then Gero laid it all out so perfectly. It was all so sensible. To build a grand army, the Red Ribbon Army. Trained to be absolutely ruthless, an army that did not care about ethics or "rules of war". An army that would not mediate, would not keep peace. An army of only the strongest and most strong-willed people on the planet. An army that could not be stopped. They would put an end to religious and cultural squabbles by force. To put the focus of mankind on preparation for the coming alien menace. However, even the army itself had only been the start.
"Human beings," Gero had explained, "Are such a frail and weak race. We are slow. We lack strength. We have no great powers. But I will make us better." So a certain portion of funds had been set aside for Gero to begin his research and development towards full cyborgification. To show his conviction and dedication to the cause, Commander Red had been the first person in the army to undergo the procedure when he'd had a new cybernetic eye placed to replace the one he'd lost in an energy plant explosion years before.
Then Adrian had died and everything had gone to pot. The boy had been a field medic and died in the line of fire during a conflict with Royal military. Gero had been despondent for weeks. He didn't answer calls and he didn't send in any progress reports. Red had gone to the effort of actually seeing Gero in person to shake him out of his funk.
"He was such a good boy," Gero had moaned in a drunken stupor, "He was gentle and bright. He was no fighter! I shouldn't have let him go. But he wanted to help! He… he believed in our cause!" That had been the last time Red had seen Gero in person, leaving him a sobbing wreck in his lab. But just as quickly as the melancholy had come, it had passed. Gero threw himself back into his work with a manic energy. Something about "not letting his son die for nothing" or something. Red hadn't been paying much attention. He had his own motive: the Dragon Balls. He'd heard about The Eternal Dragon being summoned almost two years ago and had dedicated a few select task forces to seeking them out. He knew of their fantastic power from stories and was filled with a desperate desire now that he knew they were real. Once he'd made his wish, no one would ever look down on Commander Red again.
A sudden shaking on his shoulder woke Commander Red and brought him back the the present. He blearily blinked his one eye and looked up to see Officer Black looking down at him.
"Our Radar detects that Tao Pai Pai has been successful," he said as he handed Commander Red a sheet of paper. "This is a printout of the latest map reading from our Radar based upon his last location." Commander Red looked at the map and frowned. He tapped three circles on the map with his index finger.
"This is no good," he said with clear disappointment. "There should have been four Dragon Balls on the girl!" He picked up his phone and dialed with great apprehension.
OoOoOoO
Once they were emotionally stable enough for the task, Suno and Upa began to dig graves for Bora and Goku. They started with Bora's because he was the far larger of the two. Even between the two of them, the grave wasn't especially deep. Half of the labor had been moving Bora's massive frame into the hole between the two of them.
"So whatcha guys doing?" Goku asked them suddenly.
"Burying Papa," Upa said sullenly without thinking. "After this we have to bury…" he stopped as he and Suno turned around and stared at Goku. She waved and then Suno tackled Goku and laughed even as she cried.
"Goku!" she shouted jubilantly before shoving her lightly, "Stop doing that! You're going to give me a heart attack!" Goku grinned as Suno hugged her again. "But how did you survive?" she asked. "That beam hit you right in the chest!" Goku looked down at the hole in her shirt and pulled out her Four Star ball.
"I guess Grandpa was looking out for me!" she said as her grin grew wider. Then it faded away as suddenly as it appeared and Goku sighed. She slumped forward and put her hands on her knees and looked… sad.
"Goku?" Suno asked. "Are you okay?" Goku shook her head. "What's wrong?"
"I just…" Goku squeezed her knees and chewed her lip, "I don't know what to do! He's so much stronger and faster! I can't let him get away with this but I don't know how to beat him! I don't even know if Master Roshi could beat him." Suno looked down at Goku's hands. They… they were shaking.
"Goku," she asked softly, "Are you afraid?" Goku nodded slowly. Something about that scared her even more than anything Tao Pai Pai himself had done. If Goku could be afraid then what chance did any of them have?
"Hey!" Upa said suddenly. The two of them whipped their heads around to see the young boy angrily wiping tears from his eyes. "Climb the tower!" he said while pointing at Korin Tower as if he was accusing it of something. "You'll get stronger if you get all the way to the top, remember?" He balled his fists and glared at them. "My papa died for you. If one of you doesn't climb the tower, I will!" Suno and Goku stared up at the tower.
"It's worth a shot," Suno muttered with a shrug. Goku nodded and leaped up high into the air to latch onto the tower. She needed less than a second to get her bearings before she scrambled up the tower and vanished out of sight.
OoOoOoO
Goku ran up and up Korin Tower in a blur. She wasn't looking up or down as she climbed but she was sure she had to be halfway up! She took a second to catch her breath and looked up. The top of the tower didn't look any closer. She decided that she must have just been climbing slow and risked a look down. The ground was dizzyingly far away and she could see clouds. The world below was endless green with streaks of blue rivers. Which was nice to look at while she was flying on Nimbus but Nimbus wasn't there. She could call for it but she knew that would be cheating. Goku took a deep breath and looked back up before she started climbing.
Even when climbing as fast as she could, it took a long time. She started to get sleepy when the sun went down so she took a nap. When the sunrise first broke over the horizon, she woke back up and took a minute to enjoy the view. She climbed and climbed and it just went on forever. Her muscles hurt and she was getting hungry and she was tired again. But she couldn't let herself stop. She had to beat Tao Pai Pai! The sun was high in the sky and she finally started to see something. Was this the top of the tower? She put on an extra burst of speed in excitement.
OoOoOoO
Tao Pai Pai had returned to the town where he had killed one fool and hospitalized the other to get a new suit made. He was holding a photograph up for the tailor and scowling at him intensely.
"I… I think I can do that in a week," the tailor stammered out as he sweat profusely. He was a bronze-skinned man with a thick mustachio. Tao leaned on the counter and put the slightest pressure on the wood. A spiderweb of cracks burst onto the surface under his fingertips.
"You have. Three. Days." he said sternly. He wasn't going to spend a week walking around in his underwear like some kind of voyeur. He had his dignity to consider. The man nodded with vigorous terror as Tao Pai Pai's phone rang. Pulling it from… somewhere, he saw that it was Commander Red and answered. "I trust you have already wired the money to my account? I assure you that the girl is quite dead," he said with a practiced arrogance. He propped the phone between shoulder and ear and picked at the nails of one hand with one of the tailor's sewing needles, having plucked it out of the man's shirt.
"I'm not wiring you anything yet!" the commander snapped. It was at that moment that Tao regretted that he had never learned the ability to kill people with his mind.
"And why not?" he asked icily. He smirked to himself as he heard a tremulous stammer in the other man's voice before he spoke again.
"You only found three Dragon Balls! The girl should have had four on her person!" Tao scoffed.
"I am a mercenary," he scolded. "Not a treasure hunter. Send some of your footsoldiers to do it. I did the work I was paid for."
"You will be paid when you have brought me all four balls!" Commander Red blustered. Tao sighed. If nothing else, he had to admire the man's fortitude.
"Very well," Tao relented. "I will go and find the fourth ball. It will take three days. But if I have to kill her again, I'm charging double." He hung up befor Commander Red could say anything else and smirked to himself. It was good to be bad.