Aftermath and Interlude. A Chromatic Threat on the Horizon!
To the surprise of the fans in attendance, Jackie Chun did not stick around for an interview. Instead, he took his cheque and ran. Jackie had a perfectly good reason for this, though: He had to pull off his wig and put his suit and shades back on. When he found Goku and the gang, she was still recovering and needed to lean on Krillin a little bit for support. Krillin let her lean against Yamcha's leg while he ran to put on his suit.
"I'm sorry I couldn't win," Goku told Roshi bashfully. He smiled and patted her affectionately on the head like Grandpa used to do. That made her feel a little better.
"Don't feel bad," Roshi told her. "And this goes for the both of you," he added when Krillin returned. "You gave your absolute best. I couldn't ask for better students." He gave a playful shrug, "So you lost. Nobody cheated. You weren't sick. They were just better today. So you've gotta be better next time!" He gave them each a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder, "And as a reward for your hard work, I'm treating you to dinner!" He looked up at Yamcha, Bulma, Puar and Launch. "All of you, I suppose…" he added somewhat awkwardly. Not that he had any reason to worry. How much could they eat?
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"And your total," said the bewildered cashier, "comes to… to four hundred seventy thousand zeni." Roshi's jaw dropped in dismay. Stacks of empty dishes as tall as Yamcha covered the table and practically obscured Goku from view.
"But… but that's almost all my prize money!" Roshi blurted out. He'd been planning on getting a big fancy TV or cable or something to spice up his life. A hovercar so he could leave the island once in awhile. Something. Not anymore. He sighed and handed over the cheque as Bulma leaned over his shoulder with a smirk.
"Prize money from what, I wonder?" she asked suspiciously. She cocked her eyebrow and added a "Hmmm?" Roshi pulled nervously at his collar under Bulma's scrutinizing gaze.
"Oh, well, y'know…" he muttered before he swallowed. "Gambling. Horse races. Things you think an old man like me does." Bulma squinted at him before shrugging and backing away. While they'd been talking, Goku had already run off and got her Dragon Radar and Power Pole.
"Where are you going?" Krillin asked her in confusion. "We've gotta go back to training!" Goku smiled and shook her head.
"Nah," Goku told him in her quickly-becoming-signature bluntness, "It's been more than a year. I'm gonna go find my Grandpa's Four Star Ball! I'll come back and train after I find it." She turned her head up to the sky. "Nimbus!" The bright yellow cloud zipped down from the sky and Goku hopped onto it with a grin. "Bye everyone!" she said cheerfully and flew away as they all waved back awkwardly. After a few seconds of silence, Krillin spoke up.
"So, when is our flight to head back to the island?" he asked Roshi who peered over his sunglasses as he spoke.
"Who said anything about flying? You wanna get stronger by next year, you're swimmin' back!" Krillin's eyes popped out of his head and he swallowed nervously.
"Wh-wh-what?!" he asked incredulously. The old man didn't really mean that, did he? He yelped and ducked under a swipe from Roshi's staff.
"You heard me! Into the water! Let's go!" Krillin gave a cry of distress as Roshi chased after him while the others laughed.
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"Hello," Giran said as he adjusted his tie. He'd finally started wearing clothes. He was a person, not a monster. No reason not to be civilized. "And welcome to Giran's Reform Club for Monsters." He looked around the room at others like him. Wolfmen, foxmen, dinosaur people, and others of his own race that he'd brought out of the desert. "To start, we will go around the room and introduce ourselves and go over some of the problems we face." He cleared his throat and fluttered his wings. "I am Giran. Because I am a dragon man, people think I will eat them." 'Thank you, Krillin,' Giran thought, 'Thank you for making me confront my problems.'
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Although Namu had brought plenty of water for his village, he knew this was only a temporary solution. He had embarked on a several-day journey to find out just what was blocking the river. The river was blocked up with rocks glued together with what appeared to be Giran's strange gum. Apparently, this was some last cruel prank before Krillin… "knocked some sense into him" was the expression? Namu had struck the dam and pulled at the gum but the wall was immovable. He frowned at the dam. He did not come this far to fail his village now. Once again, he breathed his frustration in and out as he had at the world tournament. He dropped to a low stance and brought his hands to his side. He only hoped this would work.
"Kame… hame…" Namu thrust his palms out but the last word was not a powerful cry or a burst of train. Rather, it was a simple declaration. "Ha!"
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Roshi was sitting by the shore of the island the house had been moved to for training on a beach chair and working his way through the stack of magazines that Krillin had presented him with when he heard a faint whirring noise from over his head. The sound grew louder and eventually Roshi looked up to see a bright yellow flying car hovering just over Kame House. A few moments later, he heard the hatch open up and saw Yamcha leap out of the car with a duffle bag over one shoulder. He flipped through the air and landed in a crouch on the sand before standing up straight as Puar floated down after him like an open umbrella.
"Call me when your dad fixes the gravity chamber!" he called over his shoulder with a grin. The car honked twice and flew away. Evidently, it was being driven by Bulma. Yamcha turned to Muten Roshi and grinned before bowing. "Hello, Turtle Hermit," he said as respectfully as he could manage being, well, Yamcha, "I'm here for training." Roshi nodded and tossed away the magazine. He got up off the chair and poked Yamcha with his staff a few times.
"All right," he said as he started to turn towards the house. "Lemme get your turtle shell." Yamcha grinned and waved a hand dismissively.
"Nah," he said cockily, "I don't need any of that. I was training while carrying up to three times my own body weight! Let's skip that part." Roshi peered skeptically over his glasses at the arrogant young man.
"Oh, have you?" he asked suspiciously before entering the house. He came back out a minute later with a suitcase. He popped it open and inside was what appeared to be just another regular purple shell. Yamcha started to lift it out of the case and was shocked by how heavy it was. With a grunt of exertion, he slung it over onto his back. It was like the gravity chamber all over again!
"How did you even find turtle shells this heavy?" Yamcha asked incredulously. Roshi gave a shrug and smirked.
"Sister's a witch," he said casually before swinging his staff at Yamcha who barely dodged it. "Now start runnin'! I want fifty laps around this whole dang island!" Yamcha barely had time to bow in acknowledgment before Roshi swung again. "That means move!" Yamcha yelped as Roshi chased him around the island.
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Elsewhere on the island, Krillin was sparring with Blonde Launch. Since returning from the tournament, Krillin found that training by himself wasn't as fun as when he'd been sparring with Goku. Remembering how Blonde Launch often complained about not learning the Turtle School way herself, Krillin suggested that Launch could learn a little bit and spar with him to help him along in his training. Roshi had been against the idea at first but Launch eventually convinced him. With bullets.
Krillin pushed Launch back with a rapid-fire series of kicks from the air. Although Launch was a fast learner, Krillin still had over a year of training to her week. He sent her sprawling with a downward punch and landed on his feet with his hands cupped to his side.
'This time it has to work!' He thought to himself. "Ka… me… ha… me…" he could feel it building in his hands this time! "Ha!" He thrust out his palms and there was a flash of blue light that… flickered and faded away. "Hameha!" he insisted, however there was still no light. "Ha!" This time Launch kneed him in the face while he was distracted.
"I dunno why you keep doin' that when it doesn't work," she told him brusquely before kicking him up into the air while he was still dazed and swinging a wild haymaker at his head. Krillin dodged and landed on his feet to press the attack again. He'd get it right. He had to. Goku was stronger than him to begin with and he had to catch up!
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Private Vermillion grumbled and groused as he and Private Chartreuse searched through the desert scrublands with grimaces as they groused to each other.
"This is ridiculous," Vermillion muttered as he hacked apart a bushel of cacti to look for the object. "How are we supposed to find something so small just blindly looking like this?" Chartreuse shrugged as he broke apart a pile of rocks with a pickaxe to see if the object was somehow underneath them.
"Hell if I know," he said as he chipped away. "Do we even know what these things look like?" Then a voice spoke that made the blood in their veins run cold despite the desert sun.
"They are small, orange spheres about the size of a person's fist with anywhere between one and seven red stars upon it," said a man in a tone of cold authority. He wore a red neckerchief and a dark blue longcoat. His brown boots dug into the ground as he walked closer towards them. "And that is all you need to know." There was a flash of light every time he spoke. It was the sunlight glinting off his literal silver tongue. No one quite knew where he'd gotten it but they all found it extremely unnerving. He pushed aside the left half of his coat to show the two privates his sidearm. "And the longer you two decide to spend talking rather than working, the more expendable you become. Is that clear?" They nodded nervously and frantically before he turned away. "I have to report to the Commander and make a cup of coffee. Do either of you want anything?" Chartreuse opened his mouth to speak and Colonel Silver drew his gun and shot between the man's feet in the blink of an eye. "That was rhetorical. I don't actually care. Work!" They broke out into a sweat and then went back to work at a terrified pace as Silver stepped into his tent.
A few seconds later, a little girl in an orange gi dropped out of the sky and landed right in front of them.
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"Yes, Commander Red," General Silver agreed into a microphone before blowing steam off the top of his coffee. The general's rantings reverberated into the headpiece he had over one ear and it was all he could do not to roll his eyes. "Yes, Commander. I will work my squad doubly hard. Though perhaps if we had a more specific location than 'somewhere'-" he winced as the Commander shrieked into his ear. "I'm sorry sir. I meant no insubordination, I was only-" he heard sounds of struggle outside and was thankful for the break in conversation. "I am sorry, Commander, but I have to go!" He flicked a switch and cut Commander Red off before running outside, coffee in one hand. "What the hell is all this-" he was dumbstruck by what he saw when he got outside, "... racket?" His men were incapacitated and there were huge chunks missing from the land. Vermillion pointed into the sky with a trembling finger.
"D-Dragon Ball!" he wheezed, "Sh-she has the Dragon Ball!" Silver looked up into the sky to see a yellow cloud almost directly above him a few hundred feet in the air. He reached for his pistol and then thought better of it, instead opening his capsule that held a bazooka. He took aim and fired, the yellow cloud bursting apart. When he saw the small orange speck falling out of the sky, he expected to see the girl's corpse hit the ground and then to pluck the Dragon Ball from her dead body. What he hadn't expected was for the girl to still be alive and to punch him in the face as she came down.
"You killed my cloud!" she shouted angrily as she landed on her feet in front of him. She had a staff strapped to her back and some sort of weird… watch… thing in her hand.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Silver asked incredulously with his voice muffled by his hands over his nose. Instead of giving him an answer, she kicked him so hard in the chest that he doubled over in pain and was gasping for breath.
"Big jerk!" she muttered before going into his tent. When she came back, she was holding a capsule in her hand. "So I'm taking one of your plane capsules!" She threw it on the ground and a plane appeared in the smoke with one of their pilot robots in the front seat. She climbed in the back seat as the robot spun its head around to speak to her.
"Hello!" It said in a chipper voice. "Where would you like to go?" The girl held out her watch-thingy to it. "Allow me to plug that into my console!" It took the watch-thingy in one claw and inserted into the main console. In a fit of desperate rage, Colonel Silver emptied his clip into the side of the girl's head. But that didn't hurt her. Nothing happened! "Please put on your seatbelt!" The robot chirped before they flew away. Silver groaned and crawled back to his tent. The Commander needed to know about this.