Chapter 15 - Silence of the pigs

"Wolf Fang Fist!"

The kid zoomed forward and hit the tree log violently with his hand clenched in a claw-like gesture. The log didn't suffer much damage. The same couldn't be said of his hand.

"Ouch!" he screamed. He sat down and started blowing on his scrapes to get some relief. As soon as he managed to calm the pain a bit, he repeated the process, once, twice, three times. The result didn't change much.

"What are you doing?"

The young martial artist turned around to see who was calling him. Another child stood at the edge of the clearing in the forest he was training in. He looked weird - stood still in a stiff pose, and his eyes weren't quite right. Perhaps a bit too round and wide. He didn't point that out though, it would have felt rather tactless to do so.

"Training!" he explained, proudly. "I am Yamcha of the Dojo of the Wolf!"

"What is a Dojo?" asked the child, tilting his head.

"Uh, it's like a school. For fighting." said Yamcha.

The other nodded. "I go to school too."

"Oh, you too? What do you learn?"

"Things. Why do you want to learn to fight?"

"It's cool." the kid grinned. "It means you can beat up bad guys!"

The child nodded and stood there, in silence. Looking at Yamcha with those slightly off, slightly creepy eyes. The other kid went on training, trying to ignore him. He looked nice, if a bit strange.

"Say," he said, suddenly, "there is a wizard who keeps animals trapped in his tower. He makes them do what he wants. Is that a bad guy?"

"What, you want to play make-believe now?" Yamcha laughed. "Yeah, that sounds like a bad guy alright."

"So should he be beaten up?" asked the child.

"Yeah, sure! I'd show up and go like, 'Hey you, you old stinky wizard! I'm going to beat you up silly! You'll be sorry for all the evil you've done!'. And stuff like that. And then I'd beat him up."

The child listened in silence. Then, without a word, he turned on his heels and walked back towards the forest.

"What's up?" asked Yamcha behind him. "You don't want to play any more?"

"Some other time." said the child. "I'm sure we will meet again."

Entering the high security wing of West City penitentiary wasn't an easy process. Having arrived there before lunchtime, it was now almost 3 PM when Bulma finally passed all the checks. She had to go through a thorough body search, pass her belongings through X-ray scanners, and answer an interview about the reasons for her visit. She explained what she could without either lying or disclosing too much - that she was concerned about the security of a classified experiment going on at Capsule Corporation, and that she believed a prisoner held information that would be useful. She wasn't questioned much beyond that; her company was often contracted by the Crown, and had even designed the security of that very penitentiary. The name of her family was too well trusted for anyone to suspect foul play. The security officer was satisfied by her answers and didn't investigate further.

She was led through corridor after corridor and armoured door after armoured door, with locks clicking open and close at every few steps. She had braced herself to see some sort of den of suffering and villainy, prisoners howling behind their bars or shaking their fists and screaming obscenities at her, but she realised now how silly that had been. The place was clean, sanitised, silent. Cells were few and isolated. All she passed were some numbered doors that did not reveal anything of what was going on inside. Finally, after more locks and more armed guards, she reached her destination. The guards opened one of the cells' doors, and as she walked inside, she realised the place was effectively split in two. The half in which she was, and one separated from it by a large, thick plexiglass panel. A microphone and speaker system connected the two, and nothing more. Inside was someone she had already met, quite some time ago. Wearing an orange suit and sitting on a comfortable chair, he looked straight at her with a slightly amused smile.

Oolong, the pig. Both figuratively and literally.

"Leave us." he said, snappily. "And keep the conversation private. I will call you when we're done."

"Yes, of course. As you requested." answered the guard, with a small bow. Then he hurriedly left the room, locking the door behind him.

Bulma blinked. "I'm sorry, what was that about? That dynamic seems a bit... the total opposite of what I expected."

The prisoner chuckled. "Nice to see you too. Bulma, the woman who sent me here. Why, I should probably thank you."

He did have a point. The prison cell looked like everything but a prison cell. The furniture was nice - luxurious, even. There were all sorts of comforts, from a TV to a hi-fi music system. A nice screen kept the corner with the sink and the toiled discreetly separated from the rest.

"What, exactly, is going on here?" asked the girl.

"Superstition is a powerful thing." said Oolong. "You just need to be able to do a bit of magic, and suddenly everyone's really on board with the idea that you may just be a demon like you claim to be. The sort that can bring you good or bad fortune. The sort that you really want to stay on the good side of. The guards are basically competing to see who can shower me with more gifts and favours."

"Wow." Bulma shook her head. "You're a con-man... con-pig alright. Not worried that I might bust your little game?"

"You're one of those boring, sceptical egg-heads. Of course you'll say it's all just tricks." the pig shrugged. "You think no one's told them before? But you know, they're the ones who spend all day with me. Why take the risk? What if I'm saying the truth, and their one colleague who pleased me more gets that promotion they've always wanted before them, while they get stuck with some nasty curse?"

"Ok, I get the point. So if you're having such a good time here, why did you accept receiving a visit by me, of all people?"

"I was bored." explained the prisoner, candidly. "I thought it'd be fun to watch your face when you saw how I'm living here. And the guards around here - very nice to me, but mostly men. I don't get to see many pleasant sights, if you know what I mean."

Bulma sneered. "Considering your previous exploits, I would have thought I'm too old for you."

"A bit. But I'll settle. Now, why don't we move past the pleasantries? What is it that you're here to discuss, today?"

"Right". She swallowed her disgust at talking face-to-face with the pervert and focused her thoughts on the matter at hand. "Are you aware of anyone else who possesses powers similar to yours?"

"There is someone." said Oolong. "Why? Do you think you may have met him?"

"Perhaps."

His expression turned more serious. "Well, if you have, I suggest you steer clear from now on. He's not as innocuous as me."

Considering that the innocuous one was locked into the high security wing of a prison, that was saying something. Bulma frowned.

"Tell me about him. Everything you know."

"With pleasure. Never liked the creepy little shit to begin with." The pig chuckled. "Name's Puar. When he's not transformed, he looks like a small blue cat. He's also able to float - don't ask me how he does it - so you will never see him walk around."

"How do you know him?"

"We used to go to school together. Now, I say school, but that's just the way our master called it. More like, we were his subjects. You could say prisoners, but he didn't really put in much effort to keep us inside his tower. Mostly we didn't know how to survive outside of there, so it was just simpler to keep doing his bidding."

The girl bit her lip. "You mean there were many of you? All able to transform?"

"Yes. But me and Puar is all that's left. See, our master - he was a magician. He was the one with the power. Apparently, he could only do one thing, and that was bestow animals with both human-like thinking, and magical abilities like ours."

"That seems an odd skill." said Bulma. "Why would he only specialise in it?"

"My guess is, he didn't choose." Oolong shrugged. "It was probably some freak power he found himself with. But I'm just shooting in the dark here - he was not big on talking with us about his past. There was half a dozen of us. He would teach us to use our abilities at our best and then experiment on us, trying to figure out what made us tick. I think his greatest frustration was being able to give the power to transform to others, but not use it himself."

This, Bulma could sympathise with. Though she suspected this was going to turn out being a parable about the dangers of unethical scientific practices.

"Puar was by and large the best of us. You know how I can only stay transformed for five minutes or so? Almost everyone else had similar limits, though no one as short as mine. But Puar did not have any such limitations. He could stay transformed basically forever. Used to tell us it was because 'we didn't pay attention in class', bah."

"How does that work?" asked the girl. "Don't you get tired?"

"It's complicated. But I think I might have a better hang on it than him, since he never even had to worry about it." Oolong smirked. "We have some magic, and it sort of replenishes itself up to a limit when we're not transformed. You use up a lot to transform, and then you need a little bit, all the time, to stay transformed. Not much, usually, but the precise amount tends to depend on how far the form is from your original one. The same happens if you take damage, by the way - you can change back your form to a healthy one, but it'll cost you much more."

Bulma nodded along. She'd started taking notes. The pattern matched nicely her ideas about magic - a lot to define the initial form, a little to sustain it. This also matched the ongoing effect that she'd been victim of that one time she'd been a carrot.

"I think replenishing works better for living beings." continued the pig. "If you transform into something inanimate you don't have much and recover much more slowly, so you need to go back quickly, or you risk being stuck. Happened to a nice fox once. She ended up becoming master's bedside table forever."

"You mean you lose your own sentience and die? Or stay trapped in that form while still thinking and feeling?"

"I mean I am glad I don't know. Why do you think I never transform longer than five minutes?"

"Oh." Bulma shuddered. This part, luckily, did not match with her experience as a carrot, or killing the rabbit monster would have simply left her forever reduced to a root vegetable. It may have been that while the rabbit monster used magic to keep the person transformed, this technique merely used it to keep the soul bound to a form that wasn't its own. Perhaps it was necessary to keep the user conscious and self-aware so that they could revert later.

"Continue." she said finally.

Oolong smiled and obliged. "If you become a living being, instead, you recover more. And either way, it depends on the size of your new body. An elephant's better than an ant. Mind you, you wouldn't get as strong as an elephant anyway, which means you would probably not even be able to walk. But if you were really big, you could in theory stay up as long as you like, provided that your rate of regeneration was good enough."

"And yours isn't, but Puar's is?"

"Puar's was... something else." he shook his head. "As I said, I don't think he ever even realised he had limits at all. Never stretched himself that much."

"What about the kinds of transformations he could perform? Did he have any limits?"

"Only his imagination, like the rest of us. We can transform into anything as long as we can picture it well enough. We take on the abilities of the thing we transform into as well. If I changed into a car I could move around, but if I changed into a rock I could not. Puar was no different, in that."

"Ok. So what happened to everyone else? To the magician?"

"One day, Puar disappeared. Master thought he'd ran off. Then he showed up, all of a sudden. Said he'd met someone who would beat master up if he didn't let him go - said he wanted to leave. The others tried to convince him to stay, and he said they too should have been beaten up. That's approximately when I realised shit was going down and I discreetly transformed into a fly and left. Never looked back."

"Wait, so your big story is... that you ran away and didn't see anything?" asked Bulma in disbelief. "That is all you can tell me?"

"Had I stayed, I would not be here to tell it." Oolong shrugged. "No one ever came looking for me. I heard later the stories of the villagers who had the courage to walk up to the tower and found the bodies. I think that's enough to guess what happened."

"I can connect the dots, yes." Bulma nodded. "Can you tell me where did this all happen?"

"Somewhere to the north of the Red Lizard Desert. I never learned the name of the village - I wasn't exactly an active member of the local community."

"I can imagine." the girl snapped her note pad close. "Thank you for the information. May I assume it's all true, I hope?"

"Why would I lie?" the pig smiled in a slimy, unpleasant way. "It was a fun afternoon, however short. I hope you come visit again."

She clicked her tongue. "Don't count on it."

"A pity." Oolong pushed a button, and outside, a buzzer rang. "Have a nice day."

One moment later the door opened and Bulma was accompanied away by two guards. The last image she saw of the pig's cell was an open door and another guard entering, carrying a bottle of expensive wine wrapped in an exaggerated gift ribbon.

"You're dirty and you stink! That's it, you're a dirty stinky mountain monkey!"

"Technically, I'm an ape." pointed out Goku. "Like all humans. Though apes don't have tails so perhaps you're right?"

"ARGH!"

Bandages' scream of frustration echoed in the gym. The back-and-forth had been going on for a while, but it had not been very productive until now. Neither participant's heart really seemed into it.

"That is not how it's supposed to work, Goku." Spike massaged his chin, perplexed. "You should get angry."

"But I can't." objected the boy. "His insults are not offensive. They're too childish."

"What was that?" growled the man.

"Ease off, he's the one who's supposed to get pissed, not you." Spike warned him, then he turned back to Goku. "Listen, I did explain you how powers coming from the Other Side are strongly influenced by the deepest stirrings of our hearts. And so, you said that the emotion that most dominates you when your wilder side takes over, is..."

"Rage, definitely." Goku nodded.

"Exactly! So you need to feel rage for this training to work." pleaded the other. "You need to breathe it, to live it, and then you can learn to control it."

"But I already control it." objected the boy. "Most of the time."

"That's not it." the devil shook his head. "You suppress it, Goku. You avoid it. What we have done to take control of our powers goes beyond that. This much I can reveal to you: my Devil Beam is focused by hate. But I can't control it just by not hating people. It is a matter of being able to hate them when I want to, exactly as much as I want to."

"Ok, I know what will work! Didn't want to use this but the situation is desperate." said Bandages, clapping his hands. "Goku, your grandfather was an idiot! He was the worst martial artist ever and died because he was so weak!"

Goku hesitated for a moment. "You can't think that for real." he concluded, finally. "You don't even know his name. You're just saying that to piss me off."

"Yes, that's exactly the point!" screamed the other, exasperated. Fangs, observing the scene from the sidelines, chuckled.

"Well, maybe the kid is just like me." said See-Through's voice. "I never managed to do much myself."

Spike shook his head. "And for that I blame my own failure as a teacher. But I would not wish that to happen again."

"What's your trigger emotion, See-Through?" asked Goku.

"It's a little embarrassing." answered the invisible man. "But I have the power to hide perfectly in plain sight from anyone, all the time. What do you think it is?"

"Fear?"

"That is what we thought too." sighed the other. "But I never gained enough control over it to be sure."

"Fear is a complicated thing." intervened Spike. "It does not have to be the same for you, Goku. Rage is simpler, and you already have a hang on it. You are a man of thought, not impulse, and that will make things easier."

Bandages came closer, listening to the discussion. He casually walked up to Goku and put a hand on his shoulder.

"So what are we going to try next?" asked the boy.

"This." said the mummy with a grin, and gripping hard his shoulder he turned around to shoot a violent knee hit straight towards his solar plexus.

In a fraction of a second, Goku jumped backwards. Unable to completely free himself from the grip, he used it as a pivot to swing upwards, until Bandages' fingers bent so far back he had to let go. But Goku didn't fly away at that point either - he had gotten a hold of one extremity of the linen bandages that wrapped the man. Using his momentum and twirling around his arm, he unravelled some, then twisted them around the mummy's neck, holding on to them to swing in a controlled way. In a second, his opponent was half naked, had a lifted knee hanging stupidly in the air, and was being strangled with his own bandages, which Goku held tight, like a dog's leash. A moment later, the boy blinked and let them go. Bandages fell to the ground, coughing.

"Sorry." Goku apologised. "My fight or flight response kicked in."

"I do not believe I saw any room for flight there, Goku." said Spike, in slight disbelief at what had just happened.

"I have never needed it." explained the kid.

"I'll show you what you need when messing with me!" growled Bandages, who had just begun to recover and was now recovering all his linen. "Soon as I... oh, heck, where's my talisman?"

"Talisman?"

The huge man had gone frantic, walking on all four across the floor nearby, searching furiously through the fabric stripes unravelled on the floor. "It's, like, a lucky charm." he explained. "Some old stone fragment with a symbol like a letter W on it. I keep it wrapped close to my body."

"I'm sorry." said Goku, mortified. "It must have fallen when I attacked you."

"Yeah, help me find it!" roared the man.

"Bandages, I understand the worth of such a relic myself. The ruins possess a dark energy that feeds into our own powers, and we are tied to them by fate." said Spike. "But it can not have gone far. And it is almost evening - I am sure if Goku will stay in here overnight, after we finish our training session, he can search for it and let you have it tomorrow..."

The boy nodded, but Bandages wouldn't have it. "We all look for it, now!" he snapped. "I ain't helping with shit until I have my talisman again."

And so, with a collective sigh, everyone started scouring the floor of the gym.

Another round of checks when leaving the prison, to make sure she had not received anything to smuggle outside from the prisoner, had wasted some more of Bulma's time. By the end of the ordeal she felt exhausted, and she slumped in the back of the taxi and only had the energy to tell the driver her home address and pass him a banknote. In the morning she had been a bit irked by the impossibility to drive herself, like she had done back in the wilderness - now she was only grateful that someone else was at the wheel. After ten minutes or so, the car was running on the elevated ring road that surrounded West City, and she discreetly slid the panel that separated the front from the back seats for added privacy, grabbed her smartphone from her bag, and called her father.

"Dr. Briefs here." answered the old man's voice. "Bulma, is that you, dear?"

"Yes, dad. Who else would call you from my number?"

"Maybe an escaped prisoner who took you hostage and is now asking for ransom."

"Ha-ha, very funny. No, it's me. I'm coming back. No prison riots that I know of."

The man on the other side paused for a moment. "How did it go?" he asked finally. "Did you learn what you wanted to?"

"Yes, and more." she played idly with her notebook, where she had jotted down Oolong's testimony. "I think I have a clearer picture now."

"Is something dangerous happening? You were awfully vague this morning."

"Don't worry. It's all under control. Just... suspicions, is all."

"Bulma, honest, if you did something, or something happened, I will not blame you or your research program. But..."

"It's fine." said the girl, strained, mainly by the nagging worry that it may not be fine at all. "I don't want to make you worry for no reason. If I ever really think there's anything dangerous going on I will let you know."

The phone sighed. "Bulma, you never think anything is dangerous at all until it's already way too dangerous. Remember when you spilled a vial from your chemistry kit and you thought you could fix it until the ceiling at the floor below started dripping acid?"

"I was eight." protested Bulma. "Look, I just think one of the subjects might be hiding something."

"What is it?"

She took a deep breath.

"I think he may have smuggled into our facility a magical creature with nearly unlimited powers of metamorphosis and a track record of mass murder." she blurted out.

On the other side of the phone, there was silence. Long, unnerving silence.

"Now that I say it out loud, it really sounds quite bad, doesn't it?"

"Yes." said her father, slowly. "Yes, it does."

"Listen, it may be nothing. But even if I'm right, there's no reason why anything should happen now if you don't provoke it. Just act casual, don't tell mom, don't do anything suspect. In case someone is listening. We'll try to figure out the situation when I'm back."

"I get it." the man's voice suddenly felt very tired. "See you later, Bulma."

She closed the call and put the phone back in her bag. She did not want to bring her parents into this, but what else could she have said? Lying would only have made things worse down the line. Especially if her suspicions would be confirmed. This could be too dangerous to just follow her fear of disapproval. All in all, it was a good thing that she had managed to speak, for once. Not that this removed much of the weight from her shoulders. She was still the one with most of the information. And there were too many unknowns. What were the creature's objectives? Was Yamcha in on it? Did they even have any nefarious objectives, or were they just scrounging off her?

Was the phone line safe?

She slid the panel in front of her seat open again. "Sorry," she said to the driver, "could you try to get there as fast as you can?"

Yamcha's day had turned out pretty stressful. He had expected to be called for further experiments, and when no call had come, he had started suspecting Bulma really was onto him, and about to sack him for his transgressions. After a whole day of walking back and forth, killing time in inane activities, and mulling over his troubles, all he had managed to conclude was that there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. So, feeling rather blue, he had ended up going back to his room, after dodging Spike's lively bunch, which having just finished training was now celebrating with a barbecue. Apparently, they had finished training with Goku a while ago, and had left him inside the gym, which he had the right to use during the night for whatever his and Bulma's mysterious purposes were. Outside it was dark already.

As he came close to the room, the door slid open on its own before he could slide his pass in the lock.

"Come in." said Puar.

Yamcha walked in. The door closed itself behind him. He tried to turn the light on, but even flicking the switch multiple times, it didn't work.

"Ah, it's broken." he groaned. "Great conclusion to a shit day."

"I prefer it dark. The sensory input tends to overwhelm me." said the cat. His friend looked around - it was pitch black, aside for the glow of the screen, and he couldn't see him anywhere. "You sound like you've been unhappy."

"Well, yeah." blurted out the boy. "Bulma did not call me all day. She's doing who knows what."

There was a short pause. "And you would have wanted to see her?"

"I mean, it's not that." explained Yamcha. "Just that I thought she would want to do experiments. If she didn't, I'm suspecting she may have found out our trick."

"I see. I have been thinking that too." confirmed Puar. "In fact, I think there is a 97% probability that she suspects something by now."

The other laughed. "Where the hell do you get those numbers? You're spending so much time at that computer, you're starting to talk like one."

"Phone tabulates, environmental recordings. Her activity today is highly suspicious."

"How do you even know that stuff?"

"Oh, it's easy enough. If you spend enough time at this computer."

Yamcha's eyes got more used to the darkness. He thought he saw Puar - right above the bed. But something was weird. The voice came from that direction, but it didn't look like him. The shadow was bigger.

"You know that I want you to be happy." said Puar, suddenly.

Yamcha nodded. "Right. Thank you, buddy."

"And you want to stay here and have this job."

"Of course. It's much better than the dumpster that we lived in before, right?"

"If it makes you happy."

"I'd say yes, it does."

"Then, if you want to keep it, I will help you."

"I mean, not that I don't appreciate your goodwill - but what can you do?"

"If Bulma found you out, we can eliminate Bulma."

Yamcha thought about that for a second before the meaning of the words really sunk in.

"Are you suggesting that we murder her?" he shrieked, alarmed.

"You should not speak of it out loud, or our chances of detection go up." whispered Puar.

"You're crazy! How would you even do something like that?"

"I possess more knowledge now. I have so many ideas. There are poisons and toxins and creatures that secrete them and I can become even new creatures, Yamcha. Creatures I can make up with my mind. There are so many ways, fast and slow, violent and subtle. And then, once she's removed from the equation, I can make it so no one even notices."

The shadow on the bed got up. Yamcha watched horrified as it came towards him. His eyes were getting used to the darkness, and he started to make out the figure. The step was uncertain, but he was tall - tall as a human. In fact, he was a human. The head was dangling a bit on the side, like that of a newborn; the arms were abandoned along the flanks, and the legs only moved in a jerky, uncertain way. The person that Puar had become dragged itself towards him until the body became fully recognisable. The first hint was the blue, metallic glint of the hair. Then he saw her legs, her thighs, her breasts - something that he'd thought about, surely, but never like this. In front of him was a naked, perfect copy of Bulma Briefs, staring at him with Puar's empty eyes.

"What the fuck." he uttered.

"I am still not used fully to such a heavy body." apologised Puar. "I will need some time to acquire a natural posture." The voice was still the cat's, thin, childlike. It came from nowhere in particular. The fake Bulma didn't even open her mouth.

"Your voice..." said Yamcha, shaking.

"I'm sorry. I was talking using my magic voice." This time it was Bulma's voice that spoke, and Bulma's mouth moved to follow, except it wasn't quite right. There was an off-key quality to it, like someone with a hoarse throat speaking. "Even moving the diaphragm of this body is still quite the challenge."

The boy didn't know if he should feel embarrassed or terrified. He averted his eyes. "What does this mean? What the hell are you thinking?" he said.

"If she disappears, and I replace her, no one will ever notice." explained Puar, calmly. "And we will be able to stay here and have access to all her resources, for as much as we like. This plan has a 95% success rate."

"I'm not killing her for her money!" screamed Yamcha. "What the hell are you even talking about? This was never the plan!"

"Until a few months ago, you were a bandit. Killing people for money was your job."

"I never actually killed anyone!" retorted the other.

"You weren't very good." admitted Puar. "But understand - this is all to make you happy."

"It wouldn't make me happy!" said Yamcha. "There's nothing happy about living here with you transformed in a bad copy of a person I was an accomplice in murdering!"

"I think it is quite a good copy." Puar spun around. Yamcha turned his eyes away, with a disgusted grimace. "I don't understand. Killing her would allow us keep having our own life here, more convenient than before. If you're afraid of being caught, I assure you I can keep this disguise indefinitely. No one will realise a thing."

"No, okay, I am also worried about being caught. But that's not the main problem here!"

"What is, then?" The fake Bulma's eyes looked straight into his. "Do you care about her?"

"I care enough not to want to kill her. It doesn't feel right!" protested Yamcha.

"She doesn't care about you, you know. She's just using you as a plaything for her science project."

"It's called a job. I knew what I was signing up for, and it's not half bad until now. Why do you have to ruin it? Why does it have to become some fucked up murder and switcheroo scheme, rather than just a regular, nice, simple, honest job?"

"I only want to make you happy." repeated Puar. "If anything, it was you who ruined it, by letting me be found out. But we can fix it."

"Ah, is that so? Then you ruined it, by insisting to tag along! I was against this from the beginning! But you wouldn't hear any reason!"

The other stopped. "Then are you saying you would have rather ditched me? Just to go work with her?"

Yamcha sighed. "You know, we don't need to live sticking together every single minute of our day. So yes, if the situation required it..."

"After all I did for you? I helped you escape the Dojo when you wanted to - chase your dreams of greatness!"

"I was a kid!" replied Yamcha. "And way over my head - I should have stayed in the Dojo, completed my training! What did I end up being? A failed bandit, a washed up baseball player. Now everyone hates me!"

"Except me." whispered Puar. "None of that was making you happy. No one else ever cared. Not the people in the Dojo, not the people in the League, not all those girls. Just me."

"Wait, those girls...?" something connected in Yamcha's brain. A spark of realisation that he immediately understood he should have had long ago. "The phone call! The president said it was a voice like a little child's - it was you! You ruined my career!"

"They were using you too." said Puar, weakly. "It was better that way."

"Fuck that! Man, I can't believe that... you know what? Get out of here. Right now!"

The thin voice cracked. There was a slight trembling in it as it said, "No.".

The fake Bulma took a step towards Yamcha. The body swayed as it shifted the weight from one leg to the next, shambling forward.

"I mean it!" screamed Yamcha. He put one leg back, flexed in a fighting stance. "I don't want to hurt you - yet! Don't push it. Just go."

"Hurt me?"

There was an explosion, and smoke filled the room. When it dissipated, in Bulma's place was - something. Something that had no name nor could have evolved in nature. A creature of tentacles and claws and teeth and fangs, incongruously mixing flesh and metal, stitched together by a deranged mind, each of its extremities and weapons dripping a clear liquid.

"The edges of my blades are atom-thin, and a single scratch would paralyse you. I modelled this form not to secrete any lethal poison." said Puar, still with his child-like voice, now as grotesquely mismatched to his shape as it could be. "See? I'm the one who doesn't want to hurt you."

Yamcha screamed and abandoned his stance. He ran to the door, pushed the button. It didn't open.

"You were the one who taught me how to deal with those who were using me." the creature slithered closer. "I only want to do the same for you. I see now that killing Bulma is not enough. In order to set you free, I need to destroy this whole place. This whole city."

"GO AWAY!"

With a kick, Yamcha knocked the door down, in an explosion of dust and plaster. He ran out in the corridor and out of the building, amidst the puzzled stares of the other residents.

Inside the room, the creature disappeared again and transformed into a fly. When Bandages and Spike came check what had happened, all they saw was an empty room, and left as puzzled by Yamcha's behaviour as before.

Once sure they had left, Puar transformed back in his cat form and went back at the computer. Despite having been at the receiving end of such harsh words, he did not feel angry or offended. He did not think he needed to pursue Yamcha either.

All he needed to do was remove enough distractions from his path, and he would come back on his own.

"Welcome home, Bulma. I hope you've had a nice day."

Bulma didn't even deign to give Caroline an answer. She walked through the living room without saying a word - all she did was wave her hand and exchange a quick glance with her father. Then she ran upstairs and reached her room. Exhausted, she simply tossed her jacket away and launched herself on the bed.

What was she supposed to do?

At this point, there was a reasonable chance that Yamcha really had Puar with him. And Oolong's story made that sound like it was very much not a good thing. Yet there were also many potential weak points in her reasoning - maybe Yamcha's wristband really was just a magic item, maybe the vicinity of Puar and Oolong's wizard tower to the place where Yamcha had spent most of his "import-export" days was just a coincidence, or maybe Oolong had been bullshitting her the entire time, making fun of her and getting a nice eyeful in the meantime. But however low the probability, the risk that it entailed was beyond astronomical. If for whatever reason something like Puar decided that it wanted her dead, she was dead. She did not even know how to begin stopping him.

She was so immersed in these thoughts, she didn't even notice the soft slithering sound as something came out from under her bed.

As on every normal, quiet evening in the Briefs' mansion, Panchy was making dinner. She was stewing curry in a large wok, boiling over with coconut milk and vegetables and a dozen different spices, spreading a pleasant, thick, oily smell through the kitchen. On a smaller flame was a pot with water and rice. The kitchen was, of course, all automatic; the cooking temperature and times were controlled by the house's central computer. So Panchy would mostly spend this time reading a magazine, giving the occasional stir and waiting for everything to be ready. That's why she didn't immediately notice that the flame under the rice pot suddenly rose way past its normal height, making the water boil so furiously it poured out and put it off. And the strong smell of spices that filled the air was why she didn't notice another smell, subtler, less pleasant, and far more dangerous, spreading from the wet burner.

As on every normal, quiet evening in the Briefs' mansion, Dr. Briefs was reading in his study. He had a small fireplace in there - not the most modern heating system, perhaps, but he always thought it befitting of any serious professor to have a study with a fireplace to spend time working in. In keeping with the same image, he had also tried taking up a pipe, but that just didn't have the same feel as the cigarettes he was used to. The fireplace was on, providing both heat and academic atmosphere; of course, it was accurately regulated by the house's central computer to optimise fuel consumption and combustion efficiency. Dr. Briefs was thoroughly immersed in an especially puzzling paper. That's why he didn't immediately notice that the air flow in the fireplace had been adjusted in a way that was obviously inadequate for a fire of that size, leading to it being starved for oxygen and reduced to little more than smouldering coals. As for the gas that begun slowly filling the room, it had no smell that could be noticed at all.

The thing that had been hidden under Bulma's bed extended an appendix towards her. It came close to her own hand, closer, within touching distance. Then it grabbed it, and finally Bulma realised. She screamed, pulled herself up, but the thing had her in an iron grip - to which the only logical response she could come up with was jumping down the bed and stomping desperately whatever had come out of it. She kicked down, without looking, again, again, and again.

"Ouch! Bulma, please, stop, it's me!" said a familiar, masculine voice.

She calmed down and looked at the floor. Peeking out from under her bed, one hand in front of his face to protect it, was Yamcha.

"What do you want?" whispered Bulma, suddenly cooling down at the realisation that in her room was a man who could easily break her neck with a single hand. "We can come to an agreement."

Yamcha's attempt at a reassuring smile cracked into a horrified expression. "Please save me from the crazy murder cat." he pleaded, letting Bulma's hand go.

The girl did a double take. "Wait a second," she asked, "you're not in cahoots with Puar?"

This time was Yamcha's turn to be surprised. "How do you know about Puar?"

"I've got sources. How did you get in here?"

"Window. I was looking for a place to hide and ask for your help."

"Why couldn't you just come through the door like normal people?" asked Bulma, sceptical.

Yamcha looked around, paranoid. "He can see things." he said. "I don't know how but he knew stuff. What phone calls you made or where you went. He must have a spy in here. Maybe he hacked something in your computer system."

"Hacked? Is he able to do stuff like that?"

"He never was." admitted the boy. "But yesterday I told him he could try using our computer to read a bit from your library and since then he's been behaving very weirdly. Knows a lot of strange stuff, like that paper I mentioned yesterday."

"Hah. Knew that couldn't be you." Bulma sneered. "Give me a second then."

Yamcha nodded, while Bulma turned around to open a drawer and rummage through its contents. Strangely, he realised, for all his short but intense period of womanizing during his baseball career, he still wasn't very used to be in a girl's room. It felt somewhat of an alien, unexplored space to him, of which he had only been given glimpses. What did girls keep in their drawers usually?

Bulma extracted a gun and a clip from the drawer, loaded the weapon, and fired one shot at a corner of her room without a moment's hesitation. A small security camera of the sort that were spread all around the house exploded in a shower of plastic and glass fragments.

"There, now we're alone." she concluded. "I know all I need to know about Puar's ability to transform - possibly more than you. What I need to understand is what exactly..."

The room was suddenly enveloped by smoke. It all erupted from a single point and immediately started dissipating; from the heart of the cloud came a tangle of slender tentacles, flailing around with sharp extremities towards Bulma. She reacted instinctively unloading the rest of the clip in the direction of the thing, which retracted - but one moment later, when the smoke dissipated, it was clearly visible that it had not been damaged. It was also clearly visible that the thing wasn't anything that had ever existed on Earth and possibly anywhere outside of someone's especially deranged nightmares. Bulma screamed, tried firing again now that the line of sight was better but her gun was empty. She fumbled towards the drawer to get another clip, but the creature was soon above her. The tentacles zoomed towards her, and their claws were clearly wet with some kind of liquid secretion.

Something zipped straight past her head at incredible speed. She couldn't see it, but it hit the creature on its side, and the creature screamed with an unnatural, high-pitched, child-like voice. There was another puff of smoke. The thing was gone.

"I'm sorry." said Yamcha, who now was behind Bulma, next to the room's desk and library. "I couldn't find anything else the size of a baseball, so I tossed that snowglobe you kept here. I... think I might have broken it."

The girl turned around to look at him with wide, shocked eyes. "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?" she screamed, shaking.

"That was Puar." uttered the other. "I think I hurt him, but he's probably become a mosquito or something and we lost him in the chaos."

"Yes, I realise that." hissed Bulma. "What I mean is, what the hell had he transformed into?"

Yamcha averted his gaze. "He said he can make stuff up now. Uh, he, uh, read a lot of science books like I asked him to, I guess, and now has a lot of ideas."

Bulma took a deep breath. "You allowed and encouraged a clearly psychologically unstable creature whose transformation ability is limited only by his knowledge," she said calmly, "to access a complete scientific library and our computer system?"

"Yes." the boy gulped. "Am I... am I fired?"

"Fired?" the girl gave him a strange look, as if she was wondering if she was even talking with a creature able to understand her words. "No, you're not fired. I need your help tonight."

"Oh, thank the heavens!" sighed Yamcha in relief.

"To make sure that there's still a world or a humanity tomorrow."

"Wait, what?" he screamed.

Loud, furious knocking came from outside the door. "Bulma!" called Panchy, upset. "What happened? I heard noises and I swear that sounded like gunsho-"

Coming from downstairs, an explosion rocked the house. Alarms started firing and every sprinkler in the building simultaneously showered the rooms with water. Bulma grabbed a few more ammo clips, put them in a handbag, slung it around her shoulder, grabbed Yamcha's hand and dragged him outside. Before her stupefied mother could even recover from her surprise she raised her gun and again shot the security camera on the landing.

"Sorry mom," she explained, "we kind of have an emergency."

"The kitchen just exploded." mumbled Panchy, transfixed.

"Yes, I realised. Wait, where's dad?"

"Oh, in his studio." the woman got up on her feet, with Yamcha's help. "I always say that not even cannon fire could distract him from his books, and well..."

Bulma frowned. "Let's go."

They ran quickly downstairs - Panchy fumbling around, still confused, and leaning on the young man now and then to avoid falling - and passed right next to the kitchen, which was reduced to a blackened, blasted mess, with some pieces of furniture still smouldering. The studio was past that, the door still closed. Bulma burst in. Dr. Briefs was on an armchair, head reclined, a few printed sheets of paper falling from his hand abandoned on his side. The girl ran quickly to his side and put two fingers to his neck to feel his pulse.

"Yamcha!" she called. "Help me drag him out of here and into the bedroom upstairs. And try to breathe as little as possible!"

The boy obeyed, and easily lifted the old man and tossed him on his shoulder. A minute later he was putting him down on the double bed. Bulma sent her mother to fetch some water from the bathroom and asked Yamcha to destroy the local camera, which he did with a quick jump and a punch. They also opened the windows to ensure as much fresh air as possible came in. After a while, Dr. Briefs finally opened his eyes again.

"What happened?" he asked, with a slurry voice.

"You suffered a slight case of carbon monoxide poisoning." explained Bulma.

"Also, the kitchen just exploded." chimed in Panchy.

He shook his head. "That's it, honey." he said. "I don't care what your magazines say about cooking with gas, we're getting those electric hot plates."

Bulma shook her head. "That's probably a good idea, dad, but not the main issue. It's that thing I mentioned earlier today."

"The magical..."

"The magical transforming creature, yes. Let's say," the girl tossed a sideways glance at Yamcha. "mistakes were made. Now he's on the loose, trying to kill us, and in control of Caroline."

Dr. Briefs sighed. "I don't suppose you have any good news?"

"The good news is, he's new at this. So we have a fighting chance. Also, Yamcha here just managed to hurt him, which ought to help."

"Right." the old man pulled himself to a sitting position on the bed, then fell down almost immediately. He clearly had not fully recovered. "We need to put the whole facility on quarantine. Biological and digital. I have the remote control always with me, just in case."

"Do the digital one." said Bulma. "But for the biological, give me a minute. Once we're shut down from the outside we can't communicate in any way, and there's one other thing that worries me."

She looked into her bag to extract her smartphone. The bedroom had a window, and rising above the skyline of West City, she could now see the bright, full circle of the Moon.

With a swipe of her finger she called up the number of the phone she had given Goku that morning.

The speakers rang a loud chirping tune. Almost as soon as they started blaring, Goku jumped up from his bed, pole in hand, and it took him a moment to relax and realise there was no immediate danger. Years of sleeping alone in the mountains, sometimes camping outside, amongst bears and tigers, had left some habits that probably wouldn't go away any time soon.

"What's this?" he asked, out loud. "Caroline?"

The tune stopped. There was a clicking sound and then from the speakers came a soft white noise, like the background of a poor microphone. Then "Hello? Goku, do you hear me?" asked Bulma's voice. It was distorted, distant. The transmission's quality was low.

"Yes, I hear you. What is happening?"

"Oh, finally." the voice sighed. "I've been trying to get in touch for so long, but your phone doesn't work! Did you turn it off?"

Goku picked the phone up from his bedside table and checked it. "I think it's the signal." he concluded. "You said that there need to be those wavy symbols around the antenna, right?"

"Right. I guess the gym in lockdown mode blocks all phone calls too. Damn, sorry for not seeing that coming. Listen," Bulma sounded worried, "you have slept through it all, but tonight there have been... problems."

"Are you safe?" Goku frowned. "It sounds serious."

"It was, but it's over now. I had to regain control of Caroline to even manage to use the speaker system. But I'd like you to come over, so we can talk about it in person."

"But tonight is..." started Goku, then he saw the large digital clock on the gym's wall. It marked 9 AM. "I have slept a lot." he commented, a bit surprised.

"It's not like Caroline would have woken you up, given what happened. Look, just undo the lockdown and come out, it's morning and the Moon has set by now. We can go over this. Just... don't be too shocked when you see the house."

"I'll do my best."

Now he was genuinely worried. He quickly wore his gi, tossed the nyoibo over his shoulder, grabbed the cellphone and ran to the door. After pushing the button, all the sealed openings of the gym started sliding open again.

"I can't get a signal." said Bulma.

"Who is that you're trying to call? Goku?" asked Yamcha. "Do we really need his help too?"

"It's not that." the girl shook her head. "I need to warn him to not set foot outside the gym, no matter what happens, and stay on guard. Puar might try something. Damn, I should have imagined the lockdown would block the phone signal. Stupid me."

The young man looked incredulous. "Warn him to not-? You mean that full Moon thing is real?"

He didn't think Bulma could look scarier than she had before. She did. "What do you know about that full Moon thing?" she hissed.

"That was, huh. He was chatting with Spike, and I overheard. I think Spike had some weird ideas about him, you know, that sort of nonsense he blathers about all the time. He invited him to some kind of training in the full Moon, and Goku refused, and Spike then made up his mind that it meant that Goku transformed into a monkey monster or something."

Bulma grabbed him by his shoulders and pulled him towards her. "WERE YOU WEARING PUAR WHEN YOU HEARD THAT?" she shouted.

"I was." he said.

The girl let him go and had to lean on a dresser to stop herself from falling. She held a hand to her head and looked generally unwell.

"Bulma, are you seriously telling me Goku is actually a weremonkey?"

Goku stood outside of the gym's door, which he had crossed too quickly to realise that something was wrong. His hand still clutched the cellphone, his eyes stared at the sky, transfixed and dilated in fear. His pupils were shrunken to a pinhead.

In front of him, the full Moon shone her light in a terse night sky.

Inside his chest, his heartbeat got faster, louder, angrier.