A/N: Hey everyone! Thanks for the reviews last chapter. Sorry if this is a little late. I've been distracted by Arcane season 2, lol.

Chapter 6: A Lesson in Power

There wasn't much Videl could do for the rest of the day other than rest in her room, which was fine since she wasn't in the mood to do much of anything. Her brain felt clogged with too much information. She still hadn't fully absorbed the confrontation with the Scar Town thugs that morning, and everything else she'd learned since then threatened to pulverize her mind into mush.

Erasa and Maisy dropped by for an afternoon snack and tea, and that was about as much socialization as Videl could handle. They'd been worried about her after hearing stories from the other stalk gatherers about the attack. But seeing her healthy and unharmed put them at ease.

When they left, it was still a few hours before dinner would be served at the cafeteria. Videl lounged in bed, thinking about Gohan, about Scar Town, about Endy Vora. Had the gang leader made it back home already? He'd jumped from the copter with only a parachute. He wouldn't have been able to go back to Scar Town so quickly on foot. Unless he'd hitched a ride in the badlands or had been in possession of capsulized vehicles.

Videl wished she had followed Gohan to Scar Town, but that would be overstepping her role. She was just a stalk gatherer. Even with the fire spirit research, she was just a helper. She wasn't some official emissary or ambassador the Ox Prince could take to negotiate with other politicians. In any case, it would be a terrible idea. If she had gone with him and people had recognized her, Gohan's reputation would be severely diminished. Nobody would take him seriously.

She snatched her laptop from her desk and searched up Scar Town. Not many people paid attention to the small, impoverished settlement, but these days, anything interesting had a high chance of ending up as a scoop on someone's blog or a clip on someone's video channel. And a young, handsome prince of a recovering kingdom delivering a warning to its troublemaking neighbour was nothing if not interesting.

Her hunch was right.

The first result that showed up on the page was a 40-second clip of Gohan entering the gang-infested town. It was captured by a bystander amidst a crowd of onlookers who paused everything they were doing to gaze at the prince. And he did look quite princely, even in the shadows of the walls of the canyon that boxed in the town, shading it in colours of evening instead of afternoon. The horns on his helmet and the sash of ox fur declared exactly who he was, and though Videl knew that he had some trepidations going into Scar Town, none of that showed in his expression now. His shoulders were relaxed, his chin up, and the slightest smile played on his lips.

Another clip showed Gohan much farther into the town than the previous one, and a few tough-looking men tried to block his path. But he shoved them away without much effort, even though they ended up skidding several feet from where he stood. The others glowered at him, but didn't have the courage to go near.

"Is Vora in there?" Gohan's voice said as he walked off-screen, and the video ended as if the person recording hastily hid their phone.

Back on the results page, Videl clicked on the next relevant video she saw. This one was longer, four minutes, and it was shot inside a shabby room with mold-stained walls, cracked ceiling, and a concrete floor riddled with dust bunnies. It contrasted sharply with the occupants of the room, who were clean-shaven, well-dressed men and women sitting on plastic chairs by the walls. The camera panned to a tidy wooden desk with a golden serpent paperweight. Endy Vora Jr. sat behind it, his feet up on the table, crossed at the ankles. Videl was surprised to see he made it back so fast.

Gohan stood over him, arms crossed but with the same soft smile on his lips. They were conversing in polite tones, despite the heavy words they were exchanging.

"I don't do well being threatened, Ox," Endy Vora Jr. said. "I think it's a bit cheeky for you to come strolling into my house, yapping about how you're gonna do this and that the next time we attack Paozu, when we never did."

"My servant saw you this morning during the attack." Gohan lifted a shoulder in a shrug.

"Then she must be mistaken. Injured people do tend to hallucinate sometimes."

Gohan picked up the gold paperweight, pretending to inspect it. "And how did you know it was a 'she'? And that she got injured?"

Ooh, caught in a lie. Good job, Gohan. That was the kind of verbal slip that Videl used to trick her opponents into all the time when she was a crime fighter. He was handling this much better than she thought he would.

"Look, Vora, I'm not here to waste both of our time. We're trying to deal with Frypan's fire as best as we can, and harassing my kingdom is just distracting us from doing exactly that. So you have a choice. Allow us to concentrate on putting out the fire or stall us indefinitely with your attacks." Gohan placed the paperweight back down.

"Your best? You call that your best?" Vora chuckled. "Ox, it's been two years. I say, you're dragging your feet. You don't really care. Not when you're miles away in a different mountain breathing clean air and eating good food. Well, the rest of us don't have the same luxury of just getting up and leaving. Look, if you're as serious as you say, then give me a guarantee. I want the fires of Frypan smothered for good in four weeks."

"I don't really believe you're in a position to give me a deadline here."

The gang-leader laughed. "Do they really call you an ox? I don't see an ox, just a serpent. You're trying to slither out of making a promise. So I'm right, aren't I? You're never going to take this seriously."

"Stop attacking Paozu," Gohan said sternly. "I'm serious about that. Next time, you won't even get within five kilometers of our mountain."

The video stopped abruptly. Videl refreshed the search page, but although there were a few more hits than before, they were all just regurgitating the same clips. As the afternoon gave way to evening, she dozed a bit on the bed, occasionally checking for newer content. She found a short blog post written by Ed Torr, and despite herself, she clicked on it.

Things Heat Up at the Base of Frypan was the headline. It referenced the three short videos that Videl had already watched, but Torr had inevitably added his own spin to them. "Is the Ox Kingdom planning to wage a war against this quaint little town hiding in a fissure in the rocks? There is no doubt it will win, but it won't gain much. In this writer's opinion, they're far better off nourishing the restaurant business."

War. They were far from that, weren't they? It was just like Ed Torr to play up the conflict. Even the comments section was lacklustre. Only one person had something to say, and it summed up pretty much everything she thought about Ed Torr. "Some lame fearmongering you got here"," it read, with a yawning emoji.

-o-

The next day dawned grey and overcast with the promise of a cool drizzle. The hallway lanterns leading to the Ox Prince's room remained lit against the gloom. Videl wondered briefly if she should be a little more circumspect in her visit, but she hoped her newfound social credit would at least prevent any more malicious gossip from spreading. From what Erasa had told her, nobody actually believed she was cavorting with the prince; he was way too straitlaced to cavort with anybody, apparently. People were just senselessly repeating that rumour out of entertainment.

And if she were to help Gohan settle things once and for all with Frypan, maybe she would no longer be at the mercy of whatever hearsay was making its rounds in the palace watercooler.

The prince's door was ajar when she arrived. Still, she knocked at its gilded edge.

Gohan peered at her from behind it and grinned. "Great, you're here! We can start."

She stepped in his room and found the glass table laden with breakfast items: poached eggs drizzled in yellow sauce, slices of ham and bacon, fillets of grilled salmon, steamed vegetables, fried potatoes, bowls of fluffy rice. A matching set of tea kettle and cups sat on a tray, a wisp of steam coming from the mouth of the kettle.

"Please, help yourself." Gohan handed her a plate, then began piling some food on his own.

Videl settled down on one of the surrounding chairs, and she took a bit of the eggs and the vegetables. She had half a mind to ask how his meeting went with Vora yesterday, wanting to hear his version of the events she'd seen from the video clips, but she didn't want to distract from the main purpose of this meeting. She would have to ask him later.

"So, chi." He devoured an entire chunk of salmon before continuing, "Like I mentioned yesterday, it is energy that resides in all living things, and it's possible to harness it and control it. There are many things that it can help you do if you know how to wield it correctly. Energy blasts are just a subset of controlled manipulation of chi, and there are many different types of energy blasts. Following so far?"

Videl nodded. "But what I don't get is if everyone has this chi, why aren't more people blasting away at each other?"

"It takes great skill to manipulate chi. And most people don't know about it, don't know that it can even be controlled." He poured some tea into a cup. "And maybe that's not such a bad thing. Like you said, if people were more aware, there would be a great deal more destruction. However, there are other things controlling chi can let you do: for example, spreading an aura of a certain emotion, like I did at court, sensing other people who are using a large amount of chi, boosting your own strength and stamina, moving at inhuman speeds, flying—"

"Flying?"

"Yup, flying."

"I don't believe you." People, flying? If any human had figured out a way to fly, they would have immediately milked all the money from others who would have wanted to learn. It was every child's dream to fly. Roaming the skies, untethered from the earth, was one of the most common fantasies out there for those who weren't afraid of heights. Why hadn't this secret been unearthed long ago?

Gohan placed his teacup and plate down, and stood up. He stepped away from the couches, and like one of those magician assistants in a traveling town fair, his body lifted several inches from the floor. Videl dropped her chopsticks, and they rolled over the edge of the glass table and fell to the floor. She didn't pick them up. She stared and stared and stared, thinking she was going to catch a subtle glimpse of a thread-thin harness somewhere, but she didn't, and that wouldn't make sense anyway; a thread-thin harness wouldn't be able to hold up the prince's weight.

The Ox Prince landed back on the floor. "Flying," he stated one more time as if to underscore his point.

Videl pinched the bridge of her nose. Then her temples, and then her entire forehead. "Why even hire stalk gatherers, then?" she asked, her voice taut with frustration. "If you can control chi so well that you can fly, and quite possibly, have boosted strength, why hire people who can easily die from a fall to harvest the stalks on the mountain tops?"

"Back when support dried up from Grandpa and mother discovered that she can make food out of the stalks, that was how we'd done things. I gathered them myself. But when she started to make a business out of it, and the Ox Kingdom started to flourish again, it was just better optics to hire other people."

Videl sighed. Of course, once the restaurant got popular, people would be curious about the process of harvesting the stalk. Telling everyone that her teenage son flew up to the mountains and gathered the giant stalks by himself wasn't exactly the kind of sophisticated image the princess would want to show.

"And then Grandpa started taking me under his wing, and mother thought I was better off concentrating on princely duties."

"You know how helpful it would have been yesterday if I'd known how to fly?" Videl said. Yes, she had managed to land almost safely, but she'd been so depleted of strength, she'd been unable to dodge the falling debris. If she'd known how to fly, she could have landed far away from the wreckage. "In fact, do you know how much the world can use all these things I learned the past week? Things like the senzu bean? Nimbus?"

Gohan sat down and steepled his fingers. A shadow of a line formed between his brows. "You see them as helpful, because that's the kind of person you are, Videl. You see people who struggle and want to rectify their situation. But from my experience, there are many others who would do the exact opposite."

Experience? He talked as if he were some jaded warrior fighting against an ancient evil, like in those doorstopper tomes she used to read. But as far as she knew, he was the same age as her, and he'd lived all his life in this relatively peaceful mountain.

"I'm sorry about the accident yesterday, truly I am. And if you want to, I can teach you how to fly."

Videl's eyes widened. "You can do that?"

"As long as we keep things on the down low, okay? I'm revealing all of these things to you, because after yesterday I do believe that you're better off not being ignorant about them. However, they're still secrets. And my family and I have good reason not to broadcast everything we know to the entire world."

Secrets. Videl had such a complicated relationship with those, as both a keeper and a revealer. It was astounding just how much the Ox Prince was trusting her with all these information, especially after knowing her for only a week. Was he more desperate to fix Frypan's fires than she'd initially thought? But then again, he was probably more than aware of how much she depended on him for her job. There was no way she would risk earning his ire if it meant losing her source of income. And that was true enough. Videl would keep his secrets, because she had no choice. And Gohan knew that.

"And you're still willing to teach me how to fly?" she asked.

"With your martial arts experience, I'm sure you're already using chi in ways you don't even know. In that way, teaching you how to hone that skill wouldn't be too difficult. We can meet on days when I'm not so busy. I know a room or two in the palace grounds that should keep us away from prying eyes."

"So if these secrets are so well guarded, how did you learn about them? The chi? The energy blasts? The senzu bean and Nimbus?" she asked.

"Mostly through my father." A fond smile appeared on Gohan's face. "He kept eclectic company when he was alive. And speaking of my father, there is another thing that I tried to put out Frypan's fire. It's a dead end as far as solutions go, but I did promise to tell you all about my previous efforts."

Gohan strolled over to a side table and picked up the red hat with an orange ball that Videl had seen the first time she'd been invited to his room. Even before Gohan sat back down in front of her, she braced herself for some momentous revelation. There was no way a hat with a ball could be used to put out a magical fire without being somewhat extraordinary themselves.

Turned out the hat wasn't important. Gohan detached the ball from it and threw it back on the sofa. But the ball, he handed over to her. It was cool to the touch and heavier than she'd expected. Floating inside were four red stars.

"That's a dragon ball," Gohan said. "The four-starred dragon ball once belonged to Grandpa Gohan, who gave it to my Dad, who then gave it to me. There are seven in total, and if you collect all of them, a dragon will grant you a wish."

Well. There it was. The genie that Videl had been waiting for, the one that would complete this fairy tale-esque world. She bit her lip, forcing herself to get over the disbelief; at this point, she should already be an expert at that anyway.

"And I'm guessing you tried to wish for Frypan's fire to go away?" Obviously, it didn't work.

"Yes, and I wished for the fire spirits to stop falling. The dragon said he does not have purview over their realm."

"Realm?" Videl's mind flashed to the footage she'd recorded of a fire spirit falling from the sky. A ripple had opened up before the fire spirit squeezed through. Did that mean the fire spirits were falling from another dimension of sorts?

She related her thoughts to Gohan, describing the footage she'd seen the previous day. "Do you believe that there's some kind of parallel world inhabited by these spirits?"

A look of deep thought settled over the prince's face. "I don't know if 'parallel world' is the phrase I'd use for it. It's not like an alternate version of reality or anything. If I have to guess, they're still of this world, just in a different plane."

"A hidden world, then." Like with fairies. Might as well add those to the mix too.

"In any case, the dragon not only can't do anything to impact the fire spirits' realm, but because their source of power comes from there, he also can't put out the fire," Gohan explained. "So we've pretty much hit a wall with that option."

"I see." Videl finally picked up the chopsticks she'd dropped, set it aside, then took a piece of bread and munched on it for a bit. "Still, knowing that the fire spirits are from a different realm definitely helps. It would narrow down my research. I wasn't sure if I needed to consider them as some kind of aliens at first, but the footage ruled that out. And they're not simply a natural or scientific phenomenon, because the dragon's refusal to grant your wish implies that these spirits have some kind of sentience or agency that he can't override."

"Do you think they're falling on purpose?"

Videl shrugged. "I don't know yet. My hunch is that they may have agency, but not much intelligence. Otherwise, they would have spread out well beyond Frypan by now. But it seems like once they've fallen, they just stay in the same place."

The two of them ate in contemplative silence for the next few minutes. When Videl had her fill, she placed her plate down, and finally broached the other topic she was curious about.

"How was your meeting with Vora yesterday?" she said, then added to show she already had some context, "I saw a few video clips."

Gohan's shoulders drooped. "Not as well as I hoped. I just can't figure out that guy. He's not acting rationally."

Videl snorted. "If you wait until bad guys act rationally, you'll be waiting forever."

"Thing is… I don't really view him as a bad guy. At least, I don't think he's evil. His methods are questionable, but his motivation is rooted in helping his town. That's why I just don't understand why he won't cooperate with me. I'm trying to save his town!"

"He doesn't believe that, then. He doesn't trust that you'll save it."

Gohan rubbed a hand over his face. "He wants a guarantee, which I can't give. Either that, or monetary compensation for the damages Scar Town is incurring from the fumes of the fire. My Grandpa already gave them large donations of food, water, medicine, and other necessities, but Vora is insistent he wants money this time. He says he knows better what needs they have, so he should be able to control what they buy."

Videl crossed her arms. "He's not wrong, but you also have to keep in mind that Scar Town is ruled by gangs, and Vora himself is a gang leader."

"Exactly. How do I know that money isn't just going to his gang? And if other gangs catch on, they'll realize that all they have to do is harass the Ox Kingdom and they can weasel money out of me to keep them at bay. I will basically be rewarding them for attacking us and potentially be funding a gang war between them! What a mess."

"Ox Prince," Videl ventured slowly. "Have you ever thought of… dealing with the gangs once and for all? Without them, the Ox Kingdom would be a lot safer while we conduct our research."

"You mean, take out Endy Vora and his followers?"

She shook her head. "If you take out Endy Vora's group, you gotta take out all of them. You see why, don't you? Leaving a power vacuum would mean that the other gang leaders would fight even harder to fill the void that Vora's gang left behind. Scar Town would be worse off, which just might spur even more attacks on the Ox Kingdom."

Gohan's skin paled a shade lighter. "But taking out all the gangs would wipe out the town's entire leadership. Unless we… wait, you're not suggesting we…"

"I think there's a reason the Ox Kingdom is flourishing and Scar Town isn't, don't you?"

"You're talking about conquering Scar Town." The Ox Prince breathed. "You're saying Grandpa and I overthrow their leaders and annex them to the kingdom."

"You don't look terribly excited about it."

"Excited? I think it's a horrible idea!" Gohan's voice rose a notch in outrage.

"Don't you think that the people of Scar Town deserve better? For decades, they've been ruled by warring gangs. There's not enough stability to establish any lasting industries or trade. The biggest dream some kid over there has is joining up with one of the stronger gangs. Wouldn't things get better of your Grandpa takes over?"

"No!" His answer was so vehement, he ended up standing. He paced between the couches, wringing his hands. "I don't think you understand what you're suggesting, Videl. We can't go swooping in and taking over an entire place just because I think we're better than whoever's leading it right now. That reeks of exactly the same logic I've heard growing up from power-hungry monsters who would have destroyed everything I've ever loved!"

Videl hadn't expected the prince to get so metaphorical. What kind of people had threatened the Ox Kingdom in his childhood? She thought that after the Ox King had reformed from being a violent raider, the kingdom had become quite peaceful.

She decided to drop the topic. "It's all right. You shouldn't be listening to me anyway. I'm just a servant and you're the prince."

Gohan blinked, then glanced at her and the breakfast table. He scratched the back of his neck. "Oh gee, I got a bit worked up, didn't I? I'm sorry about that."

"No need to be sorry," she said as he took his seat before her again. "In fact, I'm a little relieved."

"Relieved?"

"You don't know how many people I knew in the past who would have taken a suggestion like that and implemented it right away. They would have been so sure of their methods, their superiority, and thought little of the eventual suffering the residents of Scar Town would face if their entire society was uprooted."

"It's so tricky, isn't it? Because I do agree that the people of Scar Town deserve better. But I also think the change has to come from within. If only I were a smarter prince, maybe I would have figured this out already."

"You'll get there," Videl gave him a smile. "I think being a level-headed prince, at least, is a good start."

-o-

Videl's pencil flew in a flurry as she jotted down everything that Gohan had related to her during breakfast. She sat in the warm, golden light of the pre-noon sun streaming through the tall library windows. She was alone here, but her mind was noisy with thoughts arranging and re-arranging themselves, trying to form a cohesive picture. Books sat open around her, flaunting passages on ancient chi principles, scientific theories of energy, and illustrated fairy tales. Somehow, a line flowed across all of these, connecting them together, and Videl just had to figure out what that was.

Fortune seemed to have struck her in the form of a small, yellowed pocketbook of some travelling scholar who'd passed away thirty years ago. His journal was filled with notes about inexplicable phenomena that he'd encountered in his journey, one of which was a fire spirit.

According to him, there were only two places in the entire world in which people have witnessed a fire spirit fall. To Videl's surprise, Frypan wasn't even the most common one. No, there was a place over the sea just off the coast of the badlands where fire spirits fell at least once every other month, and they had been doing so for centuries. Of course, they never survived the fall into the deep, and hence, never caused any damages.

But when the traveller was still alive, the only instance of a fire spirit falling over Mount Pleasant was fifty years before the journal entry was written.

Videl rummaged through the notes and pages scattered around her. Before she left Gohan's room after breakfast, she had asked for a timeline of all his attempts putting out the fire at Frypan. She had also asked to mark the dates when he'd used energy blasts instead of the Bansho Fan.

It seemed as if Gohan had been keeping track of his activities, because he was able to supply her very quickly with it. He'd handed her a page with dates. The ones marked with asterisks were the ones when he'd blasted the fire away.

With this data in hand, Videl constructed a chart. She dotted all the dates when a fire spirit had fallen. Then she delineated the dates when an energy blast had been used over the area, including the one that Gohan's father's friend had performed.

When she finished, the pattern was clear. Before the first energy blast had been used, there was a space of almost a hundred years between fire spirits descending. After that, it was six. Two more times, fire spirits fell in intervals of six years, but Gohan had mentioned that they were put out quickly using the Bansho Fan and didn't cause any commotion. Then two years ago, the Bansho Fan had been moth-eaten, so when another fire spirit had fallen, it had caused a lot of damage before Gohan had flown to Mount Frypan and used an energy blast to put out the fire.

The interval got even smaller thereafter. Three months. Then another energy blast, and now the fire spirits were descending every one to two weeks.

Could it just be a coincidence? That every time a powerful release of chi had cleared the fires, somehow fire spirits started to fall faster? Did it have something to do with the fire spirits' realm? But correlation didn't mean causation, so…

Videl sensed the hand about to clap her shoulder before it landed, and she turned to catch it in her own.

"Merches!" she said, glaring at the smirking young man behind her chair. "What do you think you're doing trying to sneak up on me?"

"Aww, if you wanted to hold hands, you could have just asked," he replied nonchalantly.

"I didn't think you were the type of person to visit a library." Videl was barely managing to veil her contempt. She must have been so deep in her thoughts she didn't realize another person had come inside. Sweeping her hands over the desk, she closed the books and gathered the loose sheets into a tidy pile. It was bad enough that he could easily glimpse at the things she was researching, it was worse the he happened to be Merches. Possibly the one person in the palace that could suck all the hard-won patience Videl had honed over the years.

"I can assure you, I'm quite skilled at reading a book."

"But not reading the room, apparently."

Merches looked around. "Nobody else is here."

"And you didn't think that I might have preferred it that way?" Videl stashed the books and sheets in a tote back, and she slung it over her shoulder.

"I only wanted to say hi."

"Oh sure, that's what you wanted." She moved across the aisles, heading towards the exit. "I bet tomorrow when I wake up, there will be whispers about me again. What would it be this time? That I'm a misanthrope who prefers the company of books to people?"

Merches laughed, following her down the aisle of shelves. "I don't think you need my help for people to think you're a misanthrope. Don't you think you're being a bit unfair to me? Everybody knows you're working closely with the prince on some special task. Even if I hadn't told one of the servants I'd seen you leaving his room one night, rumours would have started anyway."

"Spoken like someone who just doesn't have any accountability." Videl shook her head. "Don't you have things to can? Isn't that why you're even in the palace? Last time I checked, harassing servant girls doesn't make food canning faster."

"No, I'm not here to can the stalks. I'm here as the rep for the canning company." A sliver of amusement slipped into his voice. "And last time I checked, that means I outrank you by about five positions. Perhaps you should rethink your rudeness. I believe you owe me an apology."

Videl stopped in her tracks. Tension shot through her shoulders, down her arms, and in her fists. She turned around slowly, inspecting the young man before her. She'd thought he was just a nuisance, nothing more sinister than Sharpner had been before she'd won him over. A clownish, foppish sort more interested in himself than anybody else to do any real damage.

But now he was really getting on her nerves.

"Cant Merches, here's what you and I are going to do." It was time to nip this little annoyance in the bud. "We're both going to mind our own business. You'll focus on helping the restaurant can its food, you'll stop cornering servants and spreading tasteless rumours, and I will be civil towards you from here on out. Does that sound like a good proposition to you? You are a business man, after all."

Merches crossed his arms. "Are you sure that's the deal you want to go with? Because whether or not I keep my end of it, I'm certain you must be civil towards me, regardless. The moment I find you less entertaining, one word to the Ox Princess about how awful you've been to me, and I'll no longer have to deal with you."

Oh ho ho, so they were playing this game now, huh. Videl chuckled. "Are you threatening me? You need to work on that. I once fought a one-eyed beggar thief with rotten teeth and a cleft tongue who could spit out scarier things."

"You seem so confident in your standing." Merches cocked his head to the side, a fringe of auburn hair falling between his eyes. "What, you took down two copters, and you feel like you're better than the rest of us? As if you're not the daughter of the man who had the gall to fake his own achievements? Tell me you don't really think you're so powerful again."

"Oh, so this is about power for you? Well then, I can also tell the Ox Princess about how awful you've been to me and multiple other girls in the palace, and maybe we'll no longer have to deal with you."

Merches smiled. "But think for a moment, Videl. It will be your word against mine. Those girls aren't going to say anything, because I asked them very nicely not to. So, whose word is the princess going to believe? Yours or mine?"

Videl returned his smile, making it as sickeningly sweet as she could. She patted his shoulder. "I think you're smart enough not to want to find out."

-o-

She wasn't going to do anything about him, Videl decided. She was making headway on her research, feeling like she was finally on the route to a discovery, an insight. Merches was just a mosquito distracting her.

Still, that night Videl found herself walking down the steep steps of the mountain on which the palace perched. In the lower valley, some lights still twinkled among the houses of Paozu village. Sharpner had told her that there was a late-night cyber network cafe operating near the Stalk in the Frypan restaurant. For what she was about to do, Videl didn't dare risk using the network in the palace.

She didn't even know what had actually changed her mind about Merches. There were so many things about their conversation that had continued to spark fury in her veins whenever she recalled them throughout the day. The reminder that her word was tarnished because of her father. The insistence that she was supposed to be powerless. The absolute gall of him threatening the palace girls not to say anything about his behaviour. Did Erasa brush off his antics because she'd already received a threat? Did Sharpner know? How many others had Merches accosted?

Videl told herself this was about getting justice for them. Because they deserved it, and if Gohan's household became a place of fear and intimidation, that would reflect poorly on him as a prince. And if the Ox Kingdom suffered reputational damage, then maybe less people would want to visit the restaurant and they wouldn't need stalk gatherers anymore. Or it would embolden the gangs of Scar Town and they would wreak more havoc.

The Ox Prince needed to maintain harmony in his palace, and she was just going to help him do it. She was already helping him with a diplomatic project, after all. This was simply going to be a little side quest.

Red and orange lanterns hung on the eaves of the roof of the address Sharpner had given her. Cigarette smoke wafted from the flaps that covered the doorway. Giggling girls and boisterous boys could be heard inside. Lin said that gamers often flocked here for a late-night tournament. Just the kind of noisy environment Videl needed.

She pulled her cap's visor a little lower over her forehead. It was 11pm, and she wasn't too worried about being recognized, but even if somebody did, who was going to question why an eighteen-year-old needed to access the cyber networks here? Every teen had their vice.

If Videl was going to help Gohan deal with Merches — and she was very certain that Gohan was the one who needed to be seen taking action, not her — she needed information. She needed some dirt that would tie Gohan's hands so far in his back that he'd have no choice but to fire Merches. Normally Videl would have reached out to the servants who'd been harassed, and in a just and fair world, their reports would have been enough, but Merches was playing a power game, and she needed more leverage.

Let him think she was powerless. That was fine. Her father had also believed for a long time that she was not as strong as he was. That she was just a naïve little girl who looked up to her hero of a dad and wished to be like him. And in some ways, she had been.

Videl entered the cafe. It was dim, but lights flashed from big screens, blinding her with vivid colours. Chirpy tunes and bass-powered beats competed for dominance in the crowded space. She navigated the maze of rooms until she found one that had some empty spots. She chose a computer at the very corner, and plugged in a USB stick to boot it up to a different operating system, one that already had all the programs she would need.

Even when Videl was tight with the police, there were some information she could only find out through the dark web — leaked passwords, personal information, scandals buried by million-sens bribes. And now that she had no official links to the police, this was the only way she could find out anything worth scaring Merches with.

It was a big gamble to do this. And as she fired up the special browser that could tap into websites that would normally be blocked on household computers, a wave of hesitation splashed through her.

The last time Videl had done this, she had also told herself it was for justice, for truth. That it was better to live a humble and honest life, than to live an ostentatious one mired in lies. She'd believed she was doing the world a favour. But in the end, she hadn't been able to predict just how many lives her action would upturn.

Videl's fingers reached for the USB stick. This was crazy. Merches was infuriating, but he shouldn't goad her into making rash decisions. He wasn't totally wrong about everything. He did outrank her, and as a servant, it was her place to keep her head down and just do her job. That's what she'd come to the Ox Palace for, anyway. Wasn't it? Get a job and get paid, that was all.

For a moment that felt like infinity, her fingers hovered over the stick, unable to move. She was done being a hero, wasn't she? Maybe she never had been. There was nothing heroic about ruining your own family. She could just report Merches to Gohan and Chichi, and let them handle it.

But years of brushing shoulders with powerful elites had told Videl that wasn't the most efficient way of dealing with this. Poor Gohan was already contorting himself trying to figure out how to pacify Scar Town without losing face and compromising his morals. There was a lot of pressure on Chichi to nourish the restaurant business as the lifeblood of the kingdom's treasury. Videl didn't know how important the canning venture was, but unless she could offer up compelling evidence for why they didn't need it or an alternative that could replace it, Merches would remain. And once he found out she tattled on him, she had no doubts he'd pounce. Or worse. There was a chance he might mistake the tattler as one of the other servants.

Videl lowered her hand and placed her fingers on the keyboard. Maybe there was no harm in just checking to see what she would find. If she didn't find any dirt, and Merches turned up surprisingly clean — though she didn't believe it — then she'll assess her next best course of action. But for now, she could use more information.

On the browser was a form, prompting her for her credentials. Taking a deep breath, Videl began typing her username: sunsetbeluga36.

A/N: I hope that revelation was foreshadowed well and doesn't seem like it came out of the blue! I think I dropped in so many crumbs in chapter 3, some of you were definitely getting suspicious, hehe.